‘Many hands make light work’ – 20th June 2011
I managed to achieve a lot today due to many people helping me with my installation. Almost all people that I have met so far came in to help with drawing and painting in the basic structure, it is amazing what you can do when you have a lot of extra hands.
I am painting a version of the traditional layout of the Ming town structure in black first with a internal pale yellow. There are also a few blue panels that I will attach to the walls that are locally discarded materials from buildings.
Tonight we went for huogo – there was myself, YanYan, Peng Bo, Wang Jun and Chloe. After we went back to the Moon Bar for beer and lots of toasting.
I feel like I have worked hard today. I managed to finish the working into and three dimensional addition to all the prints, so I now have five finished maps of physical/ digital spaces and movements in some format. I would like to do more prints, but I am running out of time. If I cannot, I will continue once I return home.
I have started my last map on the architectural paper, and I have one last idea using the country shapes in a colonial style format for another drawing.
I have decided on the wall in the larger studio space to use for an installation, so I will start it tomorrow. It is going to be a combination of paint, pen and 3D construction, with the original segmentation of the walled city of Beijing.
When I visit Xian and Chengdu, there are some more walled cities that nearby that locals have recommended to me.
I am also hoping to doing a series of sprays around the area, which YanYan has told me is legal to do. It was not in my original plan, but I am keen to fit it in, so hopefully later this week.
Today I had visits from Chu Chu, a young girl who will start her studies at SFAI in September and is a lovely, endearing young lady. Li Cao, an artist I have mentioned previously, who is an excellent and very interesting sculptor also dropped by. For tea, we went to have dumplings with Peng Bo and Lee another artist. I also spoke to my Dad of course as it is Father’s Day.
This morning and late afternoon has been occupied with drawing. I am getting up earlier as often there are artists visiting, or surprise events, so I need to fit in work in late morning and afternoon, and evening.
This afternoon we went to a talk by signologist Christopher Connery, who is from the USA, but on secondment to a university in Shanghai delivering a programme (in English) to American students on his research into Asian Studies. The panel discussion with him and other activists/ researchers, focused on in-habitation of urban space, and issues arising from vastly urbanised space with little physical room for reflection. The talk was delivered in Mandarin, so YanYan translated, with the help of ChuChu’s electronic dictionary. However, the ideas were complex, and hard to translate so I found myself a little in the dark. However, it is clear that the quickly changing urban environment is a collective problem, with many complex influences, and at the same time the potential for change comes from the government – society has ‘their hands tied’.
There was much discourse at the panel however, after which we went to the HuangJePing Teahouse. This was my first time, and it was full of men playing cards and enjoying themselves. YanYan and I got onto the topic of the position of the female in Chinese Society. One of my main problems when living in Japan was the viewpoint of the female, inequality with men, and the females lack of acknowledgement of this and subserviant nature. This leads to confrontations and conflicts with male peers in the workplace that were rude to me which I challenged by calling meetings to discuss (very unusual there) and the situation after was more respectful. The body language and surface behaviour of Chinese females I have met yet does not majorly demonstrate this subserviant nature, but my discussions with YanYan explained that there is still not been any female liberation and lack of knowledge of ‘feminism’, and females have lower social status than men although this is changing very very slowly.
I talked to Christopher and Diego (an Italian Signologist on the panel who also speaks excellent Mandarin) and they gave me some interesting researchers to look into.
I squeezed in some drawing late afternoon, and this evening I had a studio visit from Wan Jung and his girlfriend. She speaks a little English, but much more French, so I pulled out my five years of French study and it all came back after some rusty starts. How funny to be chatting French in a coffee bar in the South West of China!
I have nearly finished my first print, I have still to add some 3D parts to it.
Friday 17th June
I have been catching up on drawing the morning, and starting to develop some of the prints. This afternoon YanYan and I went to the opening of the Dandelion exhibition at the Paradise Walk in JeFangBe, that was set up by the British Council. There was very much pomp and ceremony, but the Dandelion (a very interesting sculpture/installation/architectural structure at the Shanghai expo 2010) looks such an interesting work. Also, of course it was great for me to meet up with some British people working at the council, some other foreign artists and creatives in Chongqing. We also went for dinner hosted by Virgin Atlantic at a very posh resort called Tienda. We were hosted at a french restaurant called BonBon, so I had some western food for the first time, and a toilet with a seat on it! Ah the simple things in life!
I also met a British artist Oliver Gosling who is based in Chongqing – I am going to go to his studio on Sunday.
