Get it Louder, Detroit/Beijing and Pineapple Season in University-ville

Qinghua University aka Tsinghua University, Architectural Dept.
After a sleepy, and slightly left leaning lecture by Kyong Park on the systematic destruction (along racial and economic lines) of Detroit as a warning for Beijing - wherein some actual, black Detroit natives in the audience protested the heavy handed liberal, look for shit, tactics of the architect cum artist cum documentarian - part of Get it Louder's forum on urban issues I went out for some side of the road pineapple purveying . The pineapples all the way from Hainan island arrive by the truckloads every year. They used to come combined with the truckloads of strawberries so that you can really get the full effects of a Vitamin C high but now they arrive independently ... love that pineapple.

Life, a series or events or time soup: The 3 Shadows Photography Center and the overdue era of cultural philanthropy

So it's been a while and after a while life goes on and you forget that it's a series of events but instead you think of it as a soupy time conspiracy that blends traffic with sleep, dinners with getting dressed and friends visiting with remembering little work details.

Either way I was in Beijing a while ago and visited the construction site of The 3 Shadows Photography Center which was beautifully designed by the super-prolific Ai Weiwei (artist/architect/god father who has designed almost 1/2 of all the buildings in the encircling 100km) and is run by the Zen duo of Photographer Rong Rong (famous for both his early East Village performance photos of people like Zhang Huan and Ma Liuming, and then his luscious demolition site surveys, and also his later collaborations with wife Inri, where the two long haired hermaphrodites frolic, sometimes in the nude, across a range of dramatic land and city-scapes) and Zhang Li (a super sweet, soft spoken curator and critic who has been around since I was around way back when and who continues, somehow, to avoid being tinged by market frenzy ... or does he?).
Anyway The Center's $ comes almost 100% from Rong Rong who hasn't done so badly with them black and whites, and who is one altruistically minded mofo... or maybe there's moolah to be made? But somehow the dilemma of the China art market today is epitomized in the issues that the Center faces. The Center has many diverse and wonderful functions that will benefit the international shutterbug and photography admirer alike: exhibition spaces, lab/studio equipped with both digital and traditional capabilities, residency program and/or just residence for exhibiting out of towners, library, cafe, and project space for events such as concerts, lectures, etc.
It is a marvelously conceptualized Center along the lines of, but possible surpassing, NY's ICP.
So how does one fund it? Rong's pocket is only so deep... aha! They have an idea sell the work on the walls! Well why not everyone else is doing it... a big photo shop...

But doesn't this compromise the nature and choice of the works shown and the vibe of the place in general? Doesn't the neutrality of a Center- a place to educate, exchange ideas, practice, methodologies, become murky with money grubbing and financial priorities?
Can't the Chinese neauvou-riche just take some of that disposable income and be benefactors to such a marvelous place without getting a print off the wall? Can't a system of membership, ticket sales, museum shops and corporate sponsorship float this ark? For Christ's sake this is China and people are making BANK... they want a high culture of connoisseurship why not let them pay for it . Give them parties, studio visits, trips to Venice, whatever it takes... It is time China enters the era of cultural philanthropy...
yeah I know it's not that easy but to anyone listening I have one word - Development - There are so many institutions hurting because no one has figured that right way to tap into the shitload of dough that is wasted out there..

Beijing2: Saturday 798 Openings, Spaceman, water problems Soft Landings, and a lot of orange snacks

Right outside the Beijing TokyoArt projects in Beijing's 798 gallery district was some serious water problem that had about 15 guys in blue jump suits down in a trench wrestling several rubber hoses and muddy pipes. The gallery going public, uniformly dressed in black, hobnobbed their way through the mess to the table with a lot of orange colored snacks displayed. Art? or refreshment?
Inside the gallery, mountains. Feng Boyi, one of the busier indie curators in China helped put on Yuan Shun's outer worldly installation Soft Landing - a moonscape complete with smoke machine. Hovelling about the scene was the artist himself clad in a space suit (something with uniforms today). Song Dong, Feng Boyi, Mu Chen and Shao Yinong watched as the orange-snack chomping audience viewed the installation and then photos of the installation and then drawings of the installation. I give this exhibition a star, happy face, an A- for effort, something like that

Yin Xiuzhen, watching her and Song Dong's child climb on the mub mountains, tells about her recent trip to NY where she participated in Brooklyn Museum's Women's Work exhibition which included a seat at a recreated Judy Chicago Dinner Party table. While the geusts were females from all over the world (a great opportunity for global art girl talk) Yin only spoke with Lin Tianmiao who also spoke Chinese.

Carol Lu one of the youngest/oldest, most promising curator/critic/no-it-alls about the scene (married happily to Liu Ding- one of the most promising young/old artists of his generation) curated "The Weight of Reality" at Marella Gallery which sported salami sandwiches (being an Italian outfit and all). The Weight was Wang Jianwei I guess who just by proximity one can feel the Weight of Reality. He exhibited an archaic, early 90's video which besides looking very vintage-conceptual was esoteric to the point of unwatchablity. Over dinner he reminisced about the days where all the artists could fit into one room and everybody was poor but passionate and exhibitions were indeed renegade or maybe the government was just too intolerant and couldn't really see the dollar value in it. Wu Xiaojun, also in the show departing altogether from photography, showed a neon sculptural thing which was almost knocked over by a German two year old; and Li Yu & Liu Bo showed some light boxes depicting, in different degrees of surreality, discontent with things in general. In the background Bea and Javier argued about being late to a "Get it Louder's" architecture/urbanity forum out in Yuanmingyuan 's East Gate architectural outpost. Wengwei and Pauline Yao the other two members of "The Contractors" posing very pop-starish by the salami sandwiches whispered about band non-practice.
And then there was the overcrowded livery cab ride to dinner with Ros from Universal Pictures where Pauline is curating an exhibition and having interim headaches with the egotistical, anxious and eternally absent bosses.
But that's Daily Life in Beijing's burgeoning art world or maybe it's just the Weight of Reality or Real Estate or maybe its Dailg Life who knows?

Beijing 1: Zhang Dali, Sanlitun Renewal project with special geusts LOTeK, ShOP, etc. Sue and Gianfranco debate debate and chapped lips

So Im in Beijing re-curating a semi-pre-curated show and after a day on the subway to Tongzhou (a nondescript hellhole suburb city that harbors many a Beijing artist) I meet Zhang Dali, an old war buddy of mine in a Sichuan restaurant decorated with shiny new, violent looking, farm tools. Dali, fresh back from NY told of his exhibition's opening night where both he and his gallerist, Ludivic of 'Chinese Contemporary' (now there's a name that evades any enigmatic misreadings- not like Jack the Pelican or the Wrong Gallery or Oriental Vista - which points one in an altogether wrong direction - this here Chinese Contemporary (I always wanna say (con)temporary but know it's not true) is as clear as Toys R Us) raked in a whopping 400,000 USD each. Of course this info came out after a (the first of many) very very spicy meal and half a bottle of Wu Liangye and the waitresses were kicking us out using that old Chinese torture method of telling us very politely every 3-4 minutes that they have, "so so sorry we have closed"
Anyway however it came out Beijing was all dollarchat

I meet Sue in Sanlitun- Once upon a time the only place for a drink in Beijing has now been completely obliterated and now flanked by encroaching mega malls is haven to bad coffee shops, preying bootleg DVD salesmen and girls that want to be you girlfriend. NOW on the west side of the street another SUPER mega mall designed in part by anybody who's anybody in the architectural field- not sure how they divided the labor here or maybe they just paid a fee to use the names. You can see the the list of these heavy hitters, some more surprising that others, advertised as sexy creative types on the mirrored wall outside of the construction site: LoTek, Shop Architects, Kenjo Kugma, etc.

Sue Qiu aka Qiu Keman, another old dear friend from back in the day who has lived both in Roma and Barcelona for a combined total of almost 10years and who speaks all of those languages plus English Mandarin and god knows what ever other Chinese dialects, tells Gianfranco, an Italian friend who like me is living in Shanghai, about her plans for an artist service center in Beijing. A place maybe like Art in general or Harvestworks in NYC. Sue recently back and feeling the fever here sees that anything is impossibly possible.
Gianfranco, a little conflicted about living in Shanghai vs. Beijing (like most people in China in general - foreign or not- it seems) works for a machinery company called WAM which was recently accosted by an Australian client for shipment that contained an alarming rate of asbestos - apparently something that's business as usual in the middle kingdom.
O well