Redirection and Network Timeout

Phew! It has been another busy day, and two long traffic jammed bus rides to and from the SFAI new campus, although admittedly I fell asleep on both the way there and back. I have not yet had a bus journey Chongqing where I have not nodded off – it must be the combination of the heat and purring engine.

This morning Jessica took me to the Masters Printmaking studio where I could print my woodblocks. Two English speaking Masters students helped with with the equipment. It was a shame that their press was broken so we had to burnish by hand with spoons, and took a lot longer, and several times the paper moved so we had to start again. The paper I had been advised to use what not the best, and also the board was not so strong, so we had some difficulties with printing, and in the end an MA student gave me some paper to achieve a better print. Due to doing by hand the paper has picked up a lot of extra marks, and even though I am going to work onto them further, I am not as happy I had hoped I would be with them. I am thinking about doing another one, but I really need to move onto an installation.

It was really interesting to watch their approach to printmaking, and the department, including the office were very, very welcoming to me. I will have to give them a special thank you.

I also visited the Sculpture graduate exhibition, the New Media graduate exhibition, and an exhibition by the second year students (which one of YanYan’s students, Shu Wen is in). There is always so much to see and do.

I am starting to become aware that I will really miss it here when I leave. It is fantastic to have all day, every day to focus on work. Despite communication difficulties at times, it is a productive time for me. China has been both what I expected and not what I expected. I have travelled a lot in Asia, as well as living in Japan for 18 months, so I had anticipated life slowed down to miscommunication, and the feelings of being the show pony spotted in the supermarket for a photograph (which I was very tired of by the end of my time in Japan). But I don’t mind it so much as the attention will only be for the next few weeks, and the Chinese I have met although interested in foreigners, are more nonchalant than the Japanese. My experiences living here is of a more relaxed society, but unfortunately, hygiene is questionable at times!

I am going to continue developing the prints tommorow…..

A solid day of woodcutting today, and I am glad to say I have completed cutting all three. The third one is simpler and more of basic layout that I am going to draw into, but it is different from the others so I am interested to see how it turns out. The second one has quite an illustrative element to it, which I has been developing into also the drawings.

It has been pretty quiet today, apart from a visit from Peng Bo ( a painter I have mentioned before and has a studio at Tank Loft). I am getting up early tomorrow to get the studio to the new campus to print them hopefully.

No new pictures today, and the unprinted board does not take a good picture – but I will hopefully have something to show you on the blog tomorrow.

No hand cuts today – phew!

Today has mainly been occupied by cutting, and although I have done a lot of woodcutting in the past few months in preparation/ practice, I overestimated that I could get both A2 boards cut in two days. This slowness is also in addition to extra surprise visits and a lunch out today, which although enjoyable, I felt I could not get out of. The director of 501 is away for a few days so I am hoping I will be able to get a lot done. I am hoping now to print on Thursday – so it will be a long day of cutting tomorrow.

Not much report today, aside from the lunch and morning visit, I have taken breaks by chatting to family and my partner on skype at home. I have also been speaking with Huang Lin, an interesting installation/painting artist and Director of Normal Space, which is an exhibition space, also in the Huang Je Ping Art Centre.

It is Day 13, and today I have mainly been drawing and cutting my second woodcut board in the studio so I do not have a lot of daily information to tell you.

Whilst doing this I have reflected on my progress so far in relation to my project plan I submitted to the arts council.

For week 1 I had the following goals –

1)Photography and drawing of local digital and physical architecture.

2)Internet navigation interviews.

3)Blog documentation.

I feel I have undertaken necessary research of architecture locally (which is not traditional, and has been constructed in the past 10-15 years), and have sourced the Ciqikou traditional town, and created a series of drawings from social networking sites that I have discussed with locals. There is another site I will visit later this week, but as I am relying on YanYan’s assistant for help I have had to wait until she was available. I feel however, that I have more than enough information to work with for now. Navigating is a little difficult, as no travel information is in provided in English so you have to try and remember or match up the characters when getting from A to B.

As I mentioned previously, 99% of traditional architecture in the local area has been demolished to rebuild new tall buildings, many full of apartments. Although I was aware of the development, the scale and speed of this has surprised me enormously. My original proposal focused on the controlled grid pattern of the traditional town, but such towns are very few and far between now. I was interested in how the traditional town layout controlled access to the city by high walls, keeping the most important people and places within the centre of the town, within another walled area. I was also interested in how this related to the control by the top of the hierarchy, or government, as control of movement on-line is controlled by the PRC.

Researching into censorship has been both clear cut and difficult, and some of the information I have sourced I have decided not post on-line for now. As it stands the censorship on-line is the way it is – for most days here I cannot access Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Posterous and any other UK based user generated content website. However, on one occasion, I could access Wikipedia, and today I could access YouTube for an hour or so. Research and discussion has gleaned that as soon as the sites became popular in China, they were cut by government. Through discussion, I have sourced Chinese only equivalents of all of the above, where you must have a Chinese name and details to register. Many of the younger people I have discussed this with, just believe that you cant get it in China, like it is country specific product, such as a local speciality (this obviously goes against the libertarian ideology of the internet as a space without walls and divides). The strict rules on censorship reflects ‘real’ life rules upon creativity and free speech.

The research into navigation has also been difficult, as my Mandarin is very limited, and the people who have been translating or have been communicating with in English has been limited, or it has at times in been difficult to grasp abstract ideas. These are also sensitive issues, that people are hesitant to discuss.

Writing on the blog has provided a suitable and welcome place to reflect, outwith peers here, and conversation with friends, family and peers at home.

In Week 2 I hoped to achieve the following:

1) Attend Woodblock Printing Workshops

2) Source materials and meet with artists

I have managed to do both, although I think my approach to woodcut is different and less methodical to the Chinese approach. Sourcing materials has been convenient, due to the many shops. Meeting with artists has been constant and ongoing, and a few are now coming to my studio to see works in progress, and it seems to be a positive response which is good.

Tonight I went for HotPot again with Wan Jung – I ate intestines and throat – I think the jury is still out!