The Producer(s)- Making Patty Chang's dream come true while Gorged on incompetency and indecisivness at the 3 Gorges

In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse
-TS Eliot

One of my multiple hats is that of an artist but I must say:
Working for artists is like a bullet in the head
I would feel bad for gallerists if most of them weren't such slimebullies themselves ... Or maybe it's working for artists that makes them that way in the first place... Or maybe vice versa, who knows
Either way wishy washiness reached tremendous heights during the last 3 weeks and my producing skills gained new momentum- somebody mentioned changing course and becoming a diplomat...
having said that artists and gallerists are alright
Intuition itself is to blame!

I just spent the last 3 weeks in YiChang, Hubei along the Yangtze river, known here as ChangJiang, producing a film for the American artist duo of Patty Chang and David Kelley. The film was a fantastical, very broken narrative about man and his futile attempts to control nature... I think. Fused into this general theme was the story of a submarine that crashed into a mountain and the Three Gorges Dam project which is one mutherload of engineering that is an attempt by man to control nature. And then there were scenes loosely based on the pyscho-drama technique of acting out one another's dreams as a a form of healing. These employed a bunch of out of work Beijing Opera actors and their hitherto untapped dreams.
When you're in the position of producer all the theoretical narrative twists and overriding concepts are pushed aside and you're left concentrating on nuts and bolts. So I'm not sure what the film is really about. Truthfully I don't think the authors do either. That's the majic of art.
"We need a submarine for the next scene" you don't ask why? you think how to get a sub in this pinko little town? what color do you want the sub? You ask questions that will eliminate future misunderstandings and OT
Let's just say that artist's, by nature of relying on intuition rather than careful planning, tend to make things a lot more complicated and time consuming than most other professionals. For instance we were to be shooting in an altogether city just 2 weeks before production which needless to say, made things very frantic. A lot of reliance was put in the direction of a bunch of unsuspecting drivers, baritones, laid off state workers and museum tour guides all of which performed exceptionally well in their new found roles as casting agents, line producers and prop stylists.
In the end Patty and David were delivered what they wanted and everybody was happy. In between - a lot of chaos and sleepless nights.
The truth is there couldn't have been any other way to make the piece. Sometimes you just have to toss all the ideas and practice into the breeze and chase it around till you have the piece you want.
The work was commissioned for an Italian art space in Turin. It will be a hit for sure. Stay tuned.
PS. a very special thanks to Liu Peng- my right hand man- met while on set with (and recommended by) Yang Fudong- Liu Peng and his friends have a little art production brigade and criss/cross between working on films, TV and sappy esoteric artshit

Yang Fudong, the garbage man. On set on the final Chapter of '7 Intellectuals'... they come back to the city and the city is gone NEW PART2 YFD

Yang Fudong, clad in a Black Sabbath T-shirt and red underwear that creeps out every time he bends over the jimmy rigged playback monitor on the set of the final installment of "Seven Intellectuals in the Bamboo Forest", yells out commands to the actors via his diligent AD's (assistant Director) mega phone. First Yang softly then the AD boisterously "Stand a little to the left- get a board under there!" Lulu, one of the actors in heels, skirt and rain coat keeps sinking in the sludge of this improvisational garbage dump along Shanghai's shanty-town outskirts. The red underwear is because it’s year of the pig and Yang’s a pig- those that are born in the year are susceptible to both good and bad luck… the red warns off the bad and welcomes the good. I’m a pig too and have an ample supply of red undies too. One needs a fair bit of luck to keep things in order along these freight train tracks that harbor a small resilient population of this mega-cities’ garbage collectors. Families from neighboring provinces live amongst heaps of garbage and eek out a living sorting the recyclables from the rest of the shit. A single water spout emerges from the rubble, women washing their clothes look up at the actors carefully circling two pool tables set between two diverging train tracks. The smell is unbearable. The crew, along with Yang himself converse in rugged Beijing accents, adding to the out of place-ness of this film set’s presence in this Southern apocalypse.
ohhh Im falling asleep More to come…



More here!
So as this big busy city churns onwards my steps have fallen behind on catching up with Yang and his trusted crew until... the day before installing PastFoward (the show I've been working on forever which I will discuss some other time), walking back from a hot Hunanese lunch with the OV gallery bosses fresh in from HK, in heated discussion with Yan about how these sly Southern mofo's owe us big time for putting on such a mighty exhibition in their otherwise overly designed/under programmed gallery... We run into Yang Fudong sitting on some steps with a green bean popsicle stuck sideways in his mouth. This time a red t shirt. Wearily he gestures behind him towards a slightly weathered neo-Grecian edifice and explains "ice cream break" Yet another weary day on the set. The Cococabana, a club on Ruijin Lu modeled ever so slightly off the NY original is a high scale, lounge bar with glass beaded curtains seperating several burgundy red velvet sitting areas... lots of booze on all the tables... props I am told as they hand us green bean posicles. Everybody looks distracted and tired as they line up the next dolly shot across a few cubicles with the same cast that, knee deep in garbage last time, are here drinking and toasting as if celebrating the fresh change of set locations, albeit half a little heartedly ... this time for picture framing.
Qiu Anxiong steps out of the dark and says 'hey'. Like Lu Chunsheng, Qiu is helping out with Yang's epic. Camaraderie amongst creative types always makes my heart flutter and it is ever so prevalent in China... where a circuitous system of bangmang -helping keeps the art worlds and relationships in general afloat.
Yang locked picture on the 15th after one month of continuous shooting. Hats off to a job well done! Now post production begins urgghh

Weekend Past: Yang Fudong @ Shangart, Picasso, Helmut Lange and Johnny Walker don't dance

Catching up here.
Last weekend saw the tremendous opening of Yang Fudong- Parkett wonder boy, Marian Goodman sweetheart, international art star- who is Finally having his first solo show at Shangart, his first and only mainland China gallery. “No Snow on Broken Bridge” is a dazzling 8 channel 35mm film>video transfer depicting a bunch of beautiful, some slightly androgynous, youth in turn-of-the-Chinese century costume (a sexy mix of traditional east and debonair west). The group wander aimlessly around stunning landscapes (shot along Hanzgou’s West Lake), sometimes arm in arm, sometimes in rowboats, some tend sheep it’s all very hypnotic as it unfolds across the eight panels, like a scroll, some 40+meters long. (for those that are following Stateside it was the same piece shown at Marian Goodman's and in London- see article)

Outside the opening crowd sipping wine from glasses (you know it’s a fancy event when there’s actual wine glasses) is very jovial, international, celebratory. Yang, the shy guy that he is, gravitates to his buddies and crew but a collector and gallerist from Holland tug him into a group photo because hey, they just bought this photo here for quite a bit of Euro, YA… The gallerist, Rob Malasch, I find out later once kidnapped a bunch of Fang Lijun pieces from a solo show at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk museum that took a great deal of surveillance and perseverance on the part of Shangart’s mastermind, Lorenz Helbling to safely rescue. Zhang Peili, China’s father of video art- a title which he is very tired of because it doesn’t really sound all that hip and exciting, and PiLi, Universal Studio partner recently pictured and profiled in a NYTimes magazine article from which his ego is still reeling, compare each others fattening waist lines in front of one Yang Fudong’s very nice, very large production stills. Amidst the art going public Sally (fashion designer and curatorial partner of Christopher Phillips in the Shanghai exhibition in Toronto- see Christopher a few days ago) and Garth (sweet and fashionable fashion laborer) look for a model to use in a Helmut Lange Shoot happening the next day for which there is no budget (editorial thing- it’s a labor of love) and which the premiere Shanghai modeling agent, Mr. Dao will charge more than most NYC rates for his overflowing stable of “super models”. China's premiere abstract painter Dingyi, who runs a very cool Shanghaiese period Art deco furniture store in M50 shines a smile our way. I run into Gao Jiasuo (Chinese for Picasso) a guy I knew from ‘95, whom I haven’t seen in ages. He’s one of the tallest and skinniest Chinese people I know. He is someone everyone knows but doesn’t really pay attention to.

The after after party was on at Valor, another Philippe Starck designed showcase (the man runs wild in China) that juxtaposes Victorian kitsch with a virtual Hiphop street dive-ification thematic (there’s something that loosely resembles NYC graffiti painted carefully in select areas of the club). Huang Liaoyuan and Zhou Tiehai had been warming up the seats since they had already eaten at the MoCA opening (Zhang Jian opened at the neighboring Shanghai Art Museum for which a tribe of Beijing art folk came to town: Liu Ye, Qi Zhilong, etc.) and skipped the after party dinner. By the time we arrived a bottle of Johnny Walker mixed with green tea (drink of the month here- used to be Chivas with Green tea now JW) had been consumed. Even though just me and my baby were the only ones who danced … A good time was had by all.

M50 almost like an AK47 to the head

Phil Tanari and LuLu Huang, came to town today sporting their bohemian chic best and a grab bag of Art Forums. On a brief east coast tour, Phil over coffee, broods about art criticizing in an age of ballet shoe oblivion. (I don't mean the shoes that he was wearing though they were especially special - albeit a little wet from the rain- but the idea that we tip toe around on padded soles as to not disturb the flow.. maybe even at the expense of critical integrity? but then again who reads the stuff anyway) The review was of a politically corrected convulsion of a show with apparently no mojo or, in the end, politic at the Moscow Biennial. What's a writer/ reviewer to do? Especially without a wireless connection? Sell some ART Forum Ad space... which goes like steamed dumplings in Shanghai, and as I find out later that day, for at least a grand less than Art in America .
And the rain poured down as we stood in the palatial mess of ShangArt's warehouse space, FINALLY getting a face lift and plugging in them roof leaks.. never good for art preservation. Shanghart the biggest and best gallery in Shanghai has garnered solid relations with all the artists in the Yangtze River Delta in case you haven't heard- Next week Yang Fudong opens at their project space H -This week the remains of a Li Shan show - his very gay but somehow magical paintings and his photographic works that graph human testicals and insects together.
Wrapped in plastic, a 100,000 some odd dollar Zhou Tie hai tripdych beckons on the way out.
and then all of a sudden...
Hugo and Juan come tripping out of the Shangart construction on a mission to find a day light studio here in (raining till Sunday) Moganshan Artopolis
We go see to Wang Xingwei, in his recently renovated and paintingless studio. His Urs Meile show showed the world that there is still hope for (or at least someone who has an active imagination in his) painting
The studio won't work because the subject, aforementioned Li Shan, will be hanging with wings and there's no way to hang the man here...
Wang Xingwei will be being chased by a fighter plane as he runs across a ground that is a big potato (read Hugo from last week if you are lost)
anyway
China Art now took off the money wallpaper ... but they should've just left it on
Robert Bernell's Timezone Books, just opened in Shanghai, is sooo much slicker than his old digs in Beijing and they have both Art Forum and Art in America and Parkett where you can read about Yang Fudong
It's all related
I promise

Hugo Yang Fudong Lu Chunsheng

Hugo Tillman has been photographing "film stills of contemporary Chinese artist's subconscious'" The images are culled from brief interviews of the artists. I had the pleasure of translating for Yang Fudong, my Pig Year hero (who showed at MoMA, Marian Goodman and is often profiled in Art Forum etc. for his series of films that remake Chinese literature classics into updated, languid 35mm black and white films usually portraying a bunch of beautiful and desperate Chinese youth mulling around idlyllic landscapes in strange clothes); and Lu Chunsheng who follows in Yang's footsteps with a similar film series called "The History of Chemistry" which has little to do with either history or chemistry but according to him makes an inquiry into these belief systems.
Anyway
Both interviews were pleasurable for the fact that we talked very little about art, instead focusing on these artists childhoods. Yang Fudong whose very modest childhood (somehow giving birth to pretentious films) was defined by his father's military posting and later factory manager, whose mother was a cashier in a store, who had strange visions of horseback riders in the sky during the '76 earthquake in Beijing, and whose childhood toys were spent gun cartridges and bullets.
Lu Chunsheng also had some weaponry in his early years. Also a factory kid, though he's not certain what his father exactly did, traded two ping pong paddles for gun parts being assembled in the adjacent factory from a a bunch of other factory kids.