The line between freeloading and house sitting: Rania Ho and Wang Wei Liverpooling while I drink their coffee

So I came to Beijing night before last on a flight that cost an astonishing 300 kuai = 37.97 USD (by the current, plummeting dollar exchange rate). Yes, an exceptional deal. I arrived at 12.15am (part of the deal) and had to wake up video artist Kan Xuan (who I never met but had curated into a "Personal Space" at Thomas Erben’s last year) to get the key to Rania Ho and Wangwei’s who are away.

I have stayed at these two amazing artists, super friendly hospitable, laid back, old and bold friend’s sooo many times and somehow they don’t seem tired of me. It used to be an equal exchange: I come to Beijing I stay with them when they come to NYC they stay with me but over the years the scale has tilted way down - they have won in the exchange game and now I’m just one of their many regular visitors.

Wang Wei (also in the Thomas Erben show) is participating in the Liverpool Tate show- "The Real Thing" (as opossed to the copyright infringed fake version) He does these poignant architectural installations, spatial manipulations that reorder the hierarchy of the physical environment- outside becomes in, inside out, facade become structure and vice versa. He’s been using traditional Chinese motifs as of recent where bridges and pagodas fashioned out of scaffolding material extend around the space like untamed ivy ... he’s also not a bad photographer for which last year he went all over Italy photographing on a commissioned project for Deutsch Bank and brought home this very fancy espresso machine that Im now tending to quite intimately.

Strange – to be sitting a house or visiting when the host is away the remnants of their life around

Rania Ho I know from way back when we were both big TV producer types NOT slaving away for a magazine show about the world of film that was continually censored by both the boss’ bad taste and by the ethics committee of CCTV

Rania is a renegade conceptualist tinkerer who besides making: interactive robots out of household objects such as toasters, inflatable fatso suits and miniature golf installations, she’s the main brain behind the art rock / anti-band “The Contractors” which satirize the ubiquitous and notoriously corrupt Chinese building contractor. The contractor – usually a nouveau rich farmer with aspirations to be a gangster- spends most of his time cutting costs that are then spent on alcohol soaked meetings in shabby-chic restaurants. Remember China has an urbanization rate of 40% where all sorts of crazy and dangerous shit goes down- e.g., horrific working conditions and workers that never get paid for months and even year’s worth of work.
Anyway Rania is not “really” Chinese. She’s an ABC (American Born Chinese) so she’s not really accepted in the (male dominated) artist club here and almost always overlooked by the constant stream of international curators who come to town even though her work stands firmly on it’s own. This is one of the reasons I left in ‘98 because there’s still not much of a place here for non-“real” Chinese artists. People come here not so much for the art but for reassurance of some sort of, arguably and infinitely elusive, Chinese authenticity.

Anyway the coffee has run its course and now I have to find out where they keep the TP in this place. Thank You Rania and Wang Wei for the pleasant stay!