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.
