I forgot to add a picture from last time I was in China. This is one I took in one of the new bakeries. These places are springing up at a pace of knots and are Western in style. They serve coffee and tea with some pretty creative flvourings like a tapioca and hazenut cappucino. What is most exciting are the baked goods. They are making stuff up as they go along. Taking Western products and using them as raw materials for their own creations. I saw such things as an Osaka Pizza or my favourite, which I got a picture of, the Hot Dog Danish. they really take a danish pastry and stick a hot dog on it then add a drizzle of cheese for good measure!
There is a sense of pace and innovation here and I rather suspect that many of the creations don’t line the shelves for more than 2 or 3 months while a few manage to become established tastes. They were advertising for chefs and one of the criteria was to be under 35 in age. No purists allowed. I love these sort of crazy places.
Special Evening Exhibition Reception
Featuring Live Performance by BILL AITCHISON
Thursday 3rd May, 8PM – 9:30PM
THE RESIDENCE GALLERY, 229 Victoria Park Road, London, E9 7HD
One of a kind artist, traveler and all round professional eccentric BILL AITCHISON has taken the citizenship test… in Southern CHINA and now in the multi-faceted exhibition, HOME OFFICE OF THE FAN FICTION EMPIRE at THE RESIDENCE GALLERY in LONDON.
The Customer Is Always Wrong is a creative and personal report on the experience of being a Westerner in China today. It is also a complete confusion of languages: a hybrid of imperfect Chinese and Chinglish translations. The performance is inspired by the disorienting roller coaster experience that is the daily life of a visitor to a bubbling Chinese City today.
The performance is available as a collector’s edition Video Work (2011, limited edition of 6). It is currently exhibited in HOME OFFICE OF THE FAN FICTION EMPIRE at
THE RESIDENCE GALLERY, 5th April – 27th May, 2012.
www.residence-gallery.com
https://www.facebook.com/events/371169566258404/
The opening just got busier and busier and I managed to take a few pictures before getting sucked into the crowd.
Following this I had an idea for how to present some of the language experiments I made back in China. I’m going to call these a meeting of minds series that uses the computer generated translations to produce some attractive results that nobody quite knows what to do with.
We have now settled on a date for the performance at the gallery, it will be on May 3rd. It quite a small space, so even if only 7 people show up it will feel busy, more and it will be crowded.
For the first time I will be putting a video piece of mine on sale as a limited edition DVD. This is a new thing for me and has caused me to think again about the role of video in my practice. I have typically used video to act as documentation of the live performance but I see that this relationship has been changing for a little while. Even though the live event remains the centre of my practice, these videos function as video works independent of the performance. I can see myself working further in this way, even making some works that exist as videos without ever being performances for a live spectator. Indeed, I have some plans brewing for just that over the Summer. If I do make that sort of step in the work then it would be good if I could sell a few more videos!
Got my Vimeo account this morning and started uploading…
