I've been working on Learning from Hangzhou for about 3+ years now. Way too long for China... for me. In one way it's about time... watching things appear and dissappear in the context of a city over the course of time, especially in China's accelerated metropolisis of no turning back.
Learning from Hangzhou is about trying to capture a moment (s) in the trajectory of a city's and its inhabitant's development, its building and rebuilding.
Learning from Hangzhou has recently grown some legs:
The article below appeared (in edited form) in last month's MODERN PAINTER'S Magazine.
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown (the authors of the original Learning from Las Vegas) wrote a very kind and flattering introduction to Learning from Hangzhou (the yet unpublished book version see a few lines below)
AND We god willing, will show the piece as a construction billboard around Storefront for Art and Architecture starting next month - which is the perfect form to show the piece in (except for smaller more refined collectible prints which can now be purchased at reasonable prices if you just email me mabzchina@gmail.com)
ALSO - after a long and enthusiastic dialogue with APERTURE, MIT Press, Princeton Architectural Press and Chronicle Books... I still am looking for a publisher (no legs here- but beaming with optimism)
If you know any or would like to donate to the Timezone Book/LFZ printing fund please write me at mabzchina@gmail.com
Here's the short intro to the project proper:
"Above there is Heaven, below there is Hangzhou"
Over the last ten years the city of Hangzhou, China has tripled in size and gained over a million people in population. Learning from Hangzhou is an extended photo essay with brief, incisive texts that present the historical city of Hangzhou under the physically and culturally transformative influence of China's unbridled economic expansion.
From 2003-06 over three thousand images were taken and divided into patterns of reoccurring visual phenomenon. The resulting photographic catalog presents a developing city codified along the edges of its own physical utterances. The ubiquity of demolition and construction, vast architectural eclecticism, accouterments of habitation, graffiti advertising, the tenuous relationship of architecture and signage, climate control and cultural desire all collide in an orgy of permissiveness in a city once renown for its tranquil beauty.
The case study of Hangzhou is indicative of the rapid physical evolution and concurrent social transformation that is taking place in many of China's urban centers; it also provides lessons for a globalizing world and its increasingly frivolous commoditization of public space.
Here's the MODERN PAINTER's piece (in the current/May issue) which describes one singular section of the project:
AB-EX/BAN ZHENG 办证
In the last ten years the city of Hangzhou has tripled in size and gained over 1 million new residents, making it China’s 11th largest city with a population of almost 7 million. In the spring of 2003, amidst this traditionally romantic city’s infinite urban swell and the impending doom of the SARS epidemic, I began noticing something that looked strangely like defacement of public property. Due perhaps to the Confucian backbone of this authoritarian society, in my ten years of coming to China at this point, the only thing that I could identify as slightly resembling western-style vandalism was the ubiquitous 拆 chai character, which marked buildings for demolition. But this was different - cell phone numbers scrawled onto surfaces accompanied by the characters 办证 banzheng. From the center of the city to the outlying suburbs, these mysterious numbers enveloped everything from road signs to pedestrian overpasses, outdoor advertisements, newspaper kiosks to sides of buildings and light-posts. But it wasn’t just the scribbly cell phone numbers, redolent as they were -with their rapid-fire territoriality- of graffiti tagging, that was so interesting. Broad strokes of mismatching house paint slapped atop the numbers created a rich aesthetic language that brought the action painters and pop artists of the early 60’s immediately to mind. But while the drippy paint was seemingly intended to conceal the cell phone digits it was only a matter of time before the numbers would once again reappear over the paint. The results of this improvised public discourse left a weave of beautifully abstracted splotches throughout the city. But what was the meaning of this vandalistic game of numbers?
办证 ban zheng directly translated means to ‘make certificates’, i.e., fake certificates. Bad foreign press notwithstanding China’s growing problem with copyright infringement, intellectual property violations and other infractions of authorship is not only an export business. It is an enterprise whose pervasiveness puts China itself in the awkward position of continually re-assessing authenticity at home. One police officer observed that all the documents one needs from birth until death are obtainable by responding to these ads: marriage, driver’s and business licenses, identity cards, land deeds, diplomas, even army officer ID badges. An official from the Department of Education estimated that there are five to six thousand people holding fake degrees in China. One such banzheng company claims to employ 10,000 people, while the city of Harbin has an equal amount of workers dedicated to cleaning up the advertising mess.
China’s speedy urbanization and rise to economic superpower status has left behind many interesting ruptures in its wake but what happens when a country’s organs of legitimization have been circumvented? One banzheng worker described the situation as such, “only once society has advanced to a point of moral enlightenment will there no longer be room for us” . In the meantime demand for false documents is high and the “urban psoriasis” caused by its guerrilla marketing departments continue to abstract China’s urban canvases.
Mathieu Borysevicz 3.17.08
AB-EX/BAN ZHENG 办证 is part of LEARNING FROM HANGZHOU, a photographic archiving project that maps urbanization in Hangzhou from 2003-2007. This book and exhibition project will be shown at the Storefront for Art & Architecture in NYC this fall. All photos by Mathieu Borysevicz.
Mathieu Borysevicz, artist, critic, curator and filmmaker, splits his time between NYC and Shanghai. His photography and film work has been shown internationally at venues such as The Tribeca Film Festival, ICA London, the Bauhaus, Duolun Museum Shanghai, the Bronx Museum, Artists Space NY, Center for Contemporary Culture, Barcelona and at the Israeli Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv. Since 1994 Borysevicz has been involved, as critic and curator, with the contemporary culture of China focusing on the intersections of social transformation and artistic production. He is currently ART FORUM’s editor in Shanghai. His writings have also appeared in Art in America, ART Asia Pacific, WORLD ART, Yishu Journal, tema celeste as well as Chinese Art at the End of the Millennium, New Media Art Limited Press. He has also curated and consulted for numerous exhibition venues in the US, Europe and China including Asia Society, APERTURE, Jack Tilton Gallery, Thomas Erben Gallery, Le Sous-Salon, Paris, DDM Warehouse, Shanghai and Millenaris Park in Budapest. Since 1995 Borysevicz has also worked in the production and post-production of films and television for such networks as ABC, CNN, BET, ZDF, Channel 4 UK, Arté, History Channel, and National Geographic TV. He has also made films for the UNHCR, The European Union, and The World Bank as well as many commercial clients. His Film 'Zhang Huan Studio' is currently on view at Asia Society in NY.
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