Hangzhou Blowin in the Wind: Migrant Encampments, Video Pop’s Parking Tragedy and Sun Xun’s Animation Farm

As I sit poised to re-visit the southern, tranquil neighbor of Shanghai for yet another blow out art exhibition I think about my last trip not so long ago in the frigid depths of winter when the Lunar New Year’s plans were upset by massive (by Southern China standards) snowfalls. Thousands of stranded, mostly migrant workers whose only break from the back breaking tasks that occupy the rest of their year finally comes to fruition. But this year snow falls cut down train lines and left lots of these modest proletariat folk stranded on both sides of my trip. Shanghai’s UFO shaped South Railway Station was packed to the brim with instant noodled-out, comatose pedestrians. They filled every nook and cranny – sometimes stacked on top of each other and their belongings… They all seemed surprisingly patient. And when I took the hi-speed line 200kms south to Hangzhou, the army had erected tents (without heat or floors) so that the runoff riffraff from the insides of the station didn’t have to brave the pissy weather while they waited for their trains to come in- up to 2-3days for some.

Anyway I went to see Zhang Peili, the appointed father of Chinese video art and dean of the New Media Department at the China Art Academy, to see if we could work out one convoluted and ultimately flawed book deal. I’m not sure who appointed him “father” but somehow the title seems appropriate- and he seems fatherly, though still very active as a video artist - most recently with a show at Jack Tilton Gallery in NY for which Holland Cotter (friend of anything Chinese) wrote a funny little ditty about in the Times. [It might’ve been while working at Jack Tilton for a brief stint in '98-99 that I first collaborated with Peili- curating his exhibition FLY for which no one really paid attention except the good folks at MoMA who ended up collecting their first Chinese artwork- Zhang’s many channeled EATING piece –directly from the artist for which J.Tilton is still pissed off]

Peili picked me up and we went for tea. As we pulled up onto the sidewalk- people park on the sidewalk sometimes- I thought our positioning created an obstacle for any pedestrian to pass– Peili assured me that if the parking attendant didn’t say anything – it’d be fine. Anyway- we had a few too many cups of extra strong, locally grown Dragon Well tea and between cellphone interruptions we tried to work out some kind of deal and catch up on each other’s lives. Afterwards we exited to discover Zhang’s car has been ticketed! Zhang bewildered and pissed walks over to accost the unsuspecting attendant – what the F**? You saw us park here and you didn’t say anything – and now I’ve got t his 500yuan ticket! Do you have your head up your ass? I’m a regular customer here for Christ’s sake! The driver claims he doesn’t know anything about the car or ticket. Zhang Rages on about the attendant’s incompetence and threatens to talk to the management about his job.
Anyway
Even fathers of video art get parking tickets.
Then we went to see his exhibition at a local galley where an interactive video piece wasn’t really working so well so we had some espressos –doubling an already phat caffeine fix . One piece that was working, and that was also in Zhang’s NY show was a very small monitor which played, what seemed, a porno film but when the viewer approached the film turned off frustrating the viewers desire and expectations. Very smart and somehow reminiscent of the parking ticket earlier.

Afterwards Zhang drops me off in front of the Academy and I am relayed to Sun Xun, one of China’s young artistic heroes who belongs to, for lack of a better name, the 80’s generation- those born into a China already in full swing of economic reform and opening up - way after the dreaded Cultural revolution where Starbucks, KFC and bootlegged Hollywood were already quickly healing and homogenizing the wounds of yesteryear.

Sun makes charcoal animations of men in top hats that pontificate while big insects buzz around and the sound of impending doom makes the soundtrack. For lack of a better referent I’d say he’s China’s William Kentridge BUT us westerners are always looking for some sort of hole to put these “others” into, always looking for the derivative, the link back to our shores- like we invented everything and anything that occurred and everyone else are producing cheap ripoffs. Sun Xun’s adopted his aesthetic from many varied and globally available referents and complies them into these dark animations that describe dystopic societies of both and neither yesterday and tomorrow. I’m supposed to write his catalog essay for the HAMMER museum in LA and have only dystopia and poor Willy Kentridge to begin with. When I mentioned William, Sun said William’s process is one that documents the drawing and erasing while he produces new slates for each motion- adding up to a helluva lot of drawings that can be sold in groups – see his last show at Shangart’s D Space. But Sun Xun isn’t about the market- he’s rather about the system and he has quite an efficient one in he likes of his workshop. A sleuth of 20 or so workers produce his short abstract animations. He also has one of those old-school three barreled video projectors (like the ones we used in ’99 at Jack Tiltons for Zhang’s exhibition) and only buys imported, mostly German, items. He believes that if you don’t push hard people don’t work hard. He likes Nietzsche and Nietzsche likes him. More on all of this and hanging in Hangzhou later.

PS1 Arthur Danto Art Asia Pacific and dictatorial algorithmic censorship

So as I sit here listening to PS1 radio, briefly depressed and perplexed by the fact that my blog has somehow offended someone in this country to the point that it’s been censored (as has my own art website www.mabz.net for the same unknown reason or algorithmic formula that has left us high and dry in webland), and hearing a forum conducted at PS1 on something to the effect of :”The crisis in art criticism” where on the one side there was the argument that there is indeed no “true” criticism left (which is as much the critics fault as it is the audiences and the publication’s in their tendency to cater to an increasingly dumbed down, market driven art world) while on the other side Arthur Danto and a bunch of headies bantered back that there is the lack of a crisis, that criticism still exists (at least for him- who is of a generation that can publish virtually anything he wants at this point and still be consumed OR as one panel member noted “seen” as in, “Oh I saw your article in Art in America or I saw your catalog essay … like Oh I saw your exhibition as I drove by the gallery”. In the end everyone basically agreed that not many people read art criticism for fun except maybe other critics or the artists that are being written about and even then, it’s not fun. Either way it was reassuring to have WPS1 and it’s entropic discourse blaring through my iTunes in a small attic flat1000000 miles away in a country that will censor me but not PS1MoMA. Another notable point of the above mentioned discussion was that one of the anonymous panelists (I tuned in late – after everyone was introduced) pontificated, everytime the mic landed in his hands, about the dynamic, exciting, vanguard art world in Asia, in particular China. He lauded the efforts by ArtAsia Pacific magazine (for which I have written for many times in an age when no one noticed what was going on in Asia – very much like this blog now) and their devoted attention to an increasingly commendable scene which all seemed a bit ironic sitting here in the pinko land that has censored me and my attention to the same scene while tuned in to an elitist NY discussion about crisis in arts publication… Go figure.

(BTW- ArtAsia Pacific is available at some specialized bookstores here as is the rest of the lot: Art Forum, Art in America, Flash Art, Parkett, Penthouse, etc. though they are usually a month or two late)

MoMA, MoCA- Anxiety is everywhere so just eat your breakfast, Anxiety is everywhere so just eat your breakfast

Who said that big museum people are scary? Not true. Sarah Suzuki and Deborah Wye, curators from the MoMA prints and books dept. are the lovliest people in the world not mention to their acute attention to the most important meal of the day. Meeting them for a steak and eggs breakfast after waking up and running around my congested hood at 6am was a pleasant treat. Not only where we perched way up at nose bleed heights above People's Square with Shanghai strecthing out as far as the eye could see and the imagination can muster, but we actually had a fine conversation about, what else?, China Contemporary Art. They are here on an acquistions and basic R&D tour because they feel that the MoMA, as prestigious and super significant it is, has lagged behind in their dealings with the Chinese. One might say that the MoMA is a modern art museum and shouldn't take on the tasks of what a host of other contemporary venues are responsible for... but it just shows you that everywhere, everyone, even that seemingly secure bastion of the canon is anxious about the Chinese art world.. feeling that they've been observing from way too far and that China, in art like economics, etc. may be turning the tides gently gently away from Western shores.. or at least making some new rules.
New Rules- Haunch of Venison (gallery in London who represents Zhang Huan- the only Chinese artist making prints worth mentioning to these two print curators- monumental, phenomenal, unique and masterly works www.zhanghuan.com/) is now owned by Christies Auction house and this too puts the art world's age old tiered gallery>museum struture in slight jeopardy.
Zhou Wenqi The Zhang Studio Driver waits downstairs with a piece of paper clutched between his hands "Zhang Huan Studio"
And off they go for their tour of Zhang Huan's sprawling Art Factory.

I go to The MoCA across the street at the above mentioned People's Square which is a fine example of how museum standards vary considerably in and out of China. "Remote Control" An interactive media show that brings together Western and Chinese artists is better than a graduate show but not (my western centric notion of what is) museum quality. There are some fine works and many fun works which is the nature of the genre, a lot of cell phone, flashlight, and movement induced interactivity. The piece that stands out is Alexander Brandt's (aka FeiPinguo) 13 monitor video installation not only for his ability to procure 13 large flat screen monitors but by his acute observation (and probably personal experience) of fatalistic young couples in China. Dramatic scenes of distress, arguing, fights, suicide attempts and love making loop in silent, black and white video until the viewer stands in front of it and it changes to color accompanied by an audio track. Interactive

So then there was the evening that began with the promise of Shark Paella made by a group of Valencians tucked away in this tremendous apartment complex not far from M50. Shark, not to be found at the Carrefour, was substituted by salmon and octopus as the concotion steamed away on a 24" diameter paella pan imported as checked in luggage from Jose's most recent trip. Wine and olive importers, hash smokers, the hosts kept everybody satisfied until> we go to Suzhou Rd to Peter Sellers Party - a scene that looked like a Versaci double page advertising spread in Vogue- beautiful multiculti people in designer drab slinking way on Phillip Starkesque furniture eating little Italian cheesecakes, drinking champagne and googling ever soo cooly at the exquisite views of Pudong in the distance. a breath of beautiful decadence before> Glamour club with bumbumbum music and sloppy expats falling onto overly made up Asian beauties, a few hundred yuan gin and tonic, some booty shaking, yelling introductions into evertyone's ear and then> Attica, not unlike the NY State prison, is a starker darker danceteria. more sloppiness, yelling booty bumping, champagne, gin, club closesc> After hours at the Dragon Club packed beyond maximum capacity and still people keep coming as the sun keeps rising, offers for blow, Russians falling down in the bathroom, Jose bleary eyed inebriated but still hanging on for dear life but I break away and go home. 6am