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.

Just another found Performance art documentation project, Shanghai 2008 1st Installment

It was around Lunar New Year in Xujiahui, Shanghai's hyper modern mall district. On the busy sidewalk outside a photo printing store, might've even been a Kodak, a woman was burning ID photos in a dust pan. Of course I rushed to document this odd occurrence only to be barred by the woman. She kept pushing me away and told me I shouldn't be taking pictures She balked "How weird that you want to photograph this!" I replied " How weired that you are doing this!"
Anyway - the whole affair had the looks of some ancient ancestor worship ritual ... but in a very PM way. In effect- this whole 'found performance' solved one of the dilemmas of the contemporary arts in China in general- how to make traditional practices modern. Gu Wenda, Xu Bing, Zhang Huan, Huang Yongping, Qiu Zhijie at times, and a host of others including this photo store employee are all engaged in this arduous task.

Just another found Installation photo project, Shanghai 2008 2nd Installment

This one is called "Sunflowers and Garbage Can", various views, set of three, edition of 12, signed on the back

Post Partum and Proud

As I sit here listening to the blood curt ling cries of a 13day old being tortured with the ancient Chinese - getting the diaper changed - method I realize that everything anyone ever said about having a child is true... The good, the bad, the in between- all true. Now I can finally say that the twelve zillion times I've heard my mother say - "You'll know when you have children" and I smart aleking rebutted "I'm never having children", has all been with merit I guess I know ... or am just starting to know Either way it's one helluva lesson in humility
Here's the Birth story below ...

After an amazing show of triumph on the part of Yan our son was born yesterday March 18, 2008. He was 8 lbs. 8 is a lucky number in China and we feel SOOOO very LUCKY!. While it was super dramatic and emotional - It took less than two hours from water breaking to the birth - no meds, no C's. Yan and the baby are recovering just fine. While he still doesn't look like either one of us, he's healthy - eating, farting, sleeping, snoring and crying only once in a while. In the tradition of long, arty, un-pronounceable, multi-culti names that run in the family his is:
RUI VINCIEN YANG BORYSEVICZ but you can call him Ray :)
RUI (sounds like Ray - means morning dew and is Yan's grandfather's name- Yang Rui- his Chinese name is also a Tang Dynasty military hero)
VINCIEN (is a derivative of Vincent, the name of my grandfather that both my father and I never knew - He was killed while my dad was still an infant and has always remained a mystery and legend. Rui Vincien will be the first to carry on the Borysevicz name of his generation)
YANG (is Yan's sir name)
BORYSEVICZ (is mine)
Yes a little long and heavy. We don't expect him to live up to it. We just want him to happily keep farting and remain healthy! And we still can get out of it - we have yet to sign the birth certificate.

Thanks for all your love and support along the way!!! Mathieu and Yan

Just another found Installation photo project, Shanghai 2008 1st Installment

Having lately seen the crossover of art and life reak beautiful havoc both in Zendai's Art and Intrude 366 days of public art interventions for which I have created a proposal and began a project for and which has already been published in its virtual photoshop proposal form in both the impossible-to-navigate website and the Shanghai Daily English version (Thank you Defne Ayas for alarming me to the matter and saving the day old paper- I hope that the southern seas have gotten you over your cold) As well as in Duolun Museum's Archive project of a local park which I profiled in the all new, though slightly lagging, ARTFORUM China website- I have decided to record the many instances of where art and life unknowingly overlap. That is- due in part to the increasingly pluralistic nature of the contemporary arts on one side and the increasingly surreal nature of reality (I blame it all on 911) on the other - art and life are increasingly miostaken or taken for one another. Through mere indexing I claim this art or its record as my own. Mine Mine mine
right
Here's some photos that Ive taken recently in Shanghai of impromptu and most likely unknowing (or I am just a culturally insensitive tool?) public installations projects. Many of them use meat as raw material referring to the unbridled consumptive tendencies during this time of year and the absence of animal rights in this overly peopled place. Other works show other food stuff- like the all over orange composition that momentarily occupied the corner by my house until, with the good participation of hungry and not too fussy passer bys, it gradually dissappeared. There's also a lot of laundry like installations which signify man's eternal post-paradise shame as well as the artists' attempt to harness the wind spirits... I think. Anyway there are a great many ways to read these great works. Please contribute your readings to mabzchina@gmail.com - It's not my usual address but I figured it was cool to have gmail

BizArt's New New Year's eve- Getting older and wiser with age

No matter what Bauldrillard had to say on the subject- representation will never catch up to that being represented. Now a full one month from when it occurred Biz Art’s New Year’s Eve Party finally makes the press. What is curious though is how the (this) event’s value, credibility and candor changes with age… almost like wine that gains character, a growing man that gains wisdom, and a story that gets elaborated with age.
Biz Art's event was what Kierkegaard called the “the brainstorm that anticipates the orgy”… well maybe not that extreme… but we did have one intoxicated tug-of-war with a lot of cold meat scattered on the floor plus a lot of manly buzzcut artist men doing the hootchy koo in plastic grass skirts… And OH yes if this was a gossip column, which it might as well be, we could say there was a certain celebrity ala Shanghai art world present: Arthur Solway- cousin of 26th street James Cohan Gallery, now officially in town to do big business, was here trying to reassure himself, via his conversational charm, that opening shop here was indeed the right decision and that SH, as superficial as it seems from the outside (and that I purported it to be in Dec.’s Art Forum- for which many folks including Arthur gave/still gives me flack for) has a big PHAT soul if you just look for it. Mian Mian, the writer was there. As was all the artists you could imagine including the legendary, albeit super humble, Lao Geng aka Geng Jianyi up from Hangzhou even though he has high blood pressure and a general disposition that one may characterize as existential angst mixed with pubescent zeal. It seems that everybody has high blood pressure these days- My theory is that all those cigarettes and MSG have finally come back to haunt this smoky crowd. Pauline Yao, down from Beijing via Hangzhou, where she’s writing a book about museums with and for the collector GuanYi who will build one soon- He’s using the switcherup- ‘gotta write the book before you build it’ method- blessed us with her presence. (Bea Leanza says that museums are all the rave now- everybody wants to re-examine, deconstruct, and basically f**k the museum- something that has been going on in various unsuccessful ways in the west – problem is the museum wins by default each time). She and Chen Shaoxiong were smoking in unison to the beat of some over-modulated KOK whilst in the background Fei Pingguo was playing limbo with the kids.
Anyway the legend continues- no one really has parties like this in China… only Biz Art, especially the tug of war part- which, with our hands still sore, got echoed back at us a few weeks later at the Lin Yilin opening- see below.

Lin Yilin, Glocal in Shanghai; and 3 on the Bund under new management

Lin Yilin is from the old skool of the Guangzhou Big Tail Elephant Group, a posse of progressives down south who found inspiration in urbanization and its accoutrements (building materials, migrant labor and lots of fast (sur)real estate ca$h) in the late 80’s early 90’s when the avante-garde was perhaps aptly titled. He was in Shanghai last week was it last week?- hard to keep up anymore, for a solo show at Shanghai Gallery of Art otherwise known as Husheng Hualang which is under new management after the high-princess of the Sichuan School, Weng Ling left for dryer maybe higher ground... we’re all waiting for her to pop up out of the ground somewhere soon but no one can yet say for certain where that may be… Meanwhile David Chan is the main, and slightly overtaxed, man. I met Lin Yilin for the first time through Cao Weijun (who also works at the gallery but in reduced capacity these days having had some body and soul issues) while we were all living our hiphop lives in NYC. Lin Yilin was fresh off the boat- so to speak- just getting acquainted with the Chinese art Diaspora in NYC and revving up for his new life in a new city… he came to an exhibition opening of mine and I still use a photo with Cao and Lin standing in front of my work to document it. The piece was a photo installation depicting a girls softball game that Roberta Smith in the NYTimes mistook for a cricket game –It was meant to metaphorically collapse the space of an otherwise claustrophobic courtyard with the added addition of window onto somewhere else… but that’s another story altogether. Lin Yilin still lives in NYC. Greenpoint, Brooklyn to be exact, in the old apartment of Qian Zhijian’s (critic, NYU Chinese art history doctorate, last seen teaching at Parsons) on India St. to be even more exact. It’s right near the studio that I gave up last month as the result of one mutha of a subletter nightmare. Before that Lin Yilin and I would once in a while have coffee, talk shop, while Greenpoint’s garbage processing plants glimmered in the distance. Soooo now a year or so later Lin Yilin is in Shanghai reminiscing not about Brooklyn but about the late 80s in Guangzhou -when a new influx of money caught everybody off guard and effected some funny incidences- He was talking with his head thrown back like he was back in the golden days of naivete all the while fiddling with his new iPhone at a restaurant with lousy service and even lousier Peking Opera performances. MianMian who, sitting next to him, after six years of not publishing a book, due to birthing a child, bouts with rehab and now a fundamentalist, diet coke downing Buddhist sits next to him talking in and out of English/Chinese about Chinese artists in the most enlightened way: “Chinese artists don’t need sex- because they’re always fucking each other” I think most people in the circle knows what she means. Lin Yilin’s show was very well installed – lots of big video projections inside partitions created especially for them and then one big fiberglass sculpture of “San Mao” sitting spotlight under the atrium. It reminded me vaguely of the Ghandi Statue on Union Square. Like Ghandi San Mao has his holy qualities, I love San Mao (a dirty little beggar kid with 3 hairs (san mao) who hangs with the bourgeoisie during Shanghai’s gilded age. He’s a comic strip character who has been manifested elsewhere in black and white films, etc. One may argue (LYL may himself be in this piece) that he’s an integral part of modern Shanghai-ese culture) But I’m not sure what he was doing in the show … The other videos were raw funny performative – there was a document of a tug of war orchestrated by Lin Yilin as part of Documenta in Kassel, Germany over the summer. One other especially poignant piece depicts a class of white European kids on a tour of China. Here LYL turns them into stand ins for Chinese people: The group sits in a Chinese class room, rides the bus, sings KOK (Madonna’s Papa Don’t Preach) in effect the group embodies (due to their placement/context) the Chinese-ness that the (non-Chinese) audience seeks in Chinese things (esp. art). But they are white and western. They are our mirror. Yep. LYL NYC based, jetset, Chinese artist with his European kids in tow touring Shanghai. More on the subject
By the way that's LYL in the upper right next to Zhou Xiaohu who you've met earlier