请登陆我们的网站首页  VISIT THE MAIN HomeShop SITE

Posts tagged ‘agent’

After a prolonged research and analysis period highly implicated by HomeShop’s recent search for a new space, our newfound expertise has led to the temporary return of the current space at Xiaojingchang hutong to its former status as real estate agency (pre-2007 era). We are pleased to inform you that we are taking up a new role as an offshoot office of the well-known chain 我爱我家 Wo Ai Wo Jia (“I Love My Home”), henceforth named 我爱你家 Wo Ai Ni Jia (“I Love Your Home”). If you are looking for a new house or office within Beijing’s old city centre or are merely interested to learn more about the real estate market and private life in the capital, our multilingual agents can offer free advice and direction regarding a selection of some of Beijing’s hottest properties. We do not take commission, and while our services may be limited, our knowledge is vast. Please stop by HomeShop or telephone to make an appointment. You may reach us at any time by mobile phone at 137 1855 6089.

Thank you! We are here waiting for your trust!

—–
“我爱你家 I Love Your Home” is a project of 何颖雅 Elaine W. HO and Fotini LAZARIDOU-HATZIGOGA for HomeShop. On view from 24 May 2010.

经过家作坊对寻找新空间的一段旷日持久地研究和分析,我们现在在小经厂胡同的空间暂时回到了它过去的房产中介公司状态(2007年早期)。我们很高兴的通知您,我们现在成为了著名连锁机构“我爱我家”的分店之一,并从此叫做“我爱你家”。如果您正在北京老城区的中心地带寻找房子或者办公室,或者至少对首都房地产市场和个人生活感兴趣的话,我们多语言的服务团队将为您提供免费咨询以及对某些北京最热房产的指南。我们不收取中介费,虽然服务项目有限,但我们的知识很丰富。请在家作坊门前留步,或电话预约。您可以在任何时间通过这个手机号码找到我们:13718556089。

谢谢!我们期待您的信任!

——
“我爱你家 I Love Your Home” 是由何颖雅 Elaine W. HO 及 Fotini LAZARIDOU-HATZIGOGA为家作坊做的一个项目。从2010年5月24日开始。

Jet-lag and sleeping until four in the afternoon after arriving in Beijing City seems to find new use in making one groggily well-rested for the upcoming postmodern adventure. The three days thereafter have been filled with the high intensity sport of attempting to obtain a visa extension to stay in pre-Olympics China. (pant, pant, pant) Queuing in huge lines! Leaping buildings! Scanning overly witty online forums filled with bitchy expats! Filling in forms faster than the speed of light! Working the guanxi for all it’s worth!

Oh, sweaty palms…

The outcome of this relay is yet to be known, but it’s extremely interesting in the question of means in the Chinese socio-cultural context. There are ways, and there are ways. And while we can probably say this anywhere in the world (Fred Ulfers talked about the pressure of over-abundance that is often mistaken for an economy of lack and scarcity), it becomes so…incredibly…fantastic here. Ideas of decorum or appropriateness are culturally determined, of course, but how they play out in the public intellect is an interesting game of what we can and cannot, dare and dare not to do in our lives, to get away with or take advantage. The singular heavy-handedness of the oppressive red regime of communist China is a highly fallible idea, not because it is by any means “democratic”, liberal and free, but because it evades singularity altogether. There is no one way of anything in this country, whether it be national policy, cultural identity or simply just getting by. The laowais here have to learn that fast if they want to keep playing the game, and if they blindly stick to the what’s on the cover, well, they are no different than any other well-indoctrinated mass. Of course, what makes China not so different than anywhere else in the world is that money still talks best of all, and after visiting the Public Security Bureau, it seems that official rules, shiny floors and piles of bureacracy are still not up to par with the power and efficiency of the agent. Who is this phantom figure within Chinese society? Singularity steps out of mass and piles of paperwork (toting a hand full of official looking business cards but remaining rather anonymous) as a specter through the network. This is the point where locality moves and maneuvers through officialdom, this is agency enacted on the initiative of subjectivities (or maybe one just calls it survival), and though we may have our qualms about wheelings and dealings, the agent’s politicking is an individualised ingenuity that works on the level of the face-to-face. It is the realm of the private making use of an inefficient public, and while I don’t want to banter triumphant about this veiled version of dirty capitalism, there is something to these micro-networks that exist like nowhere else I’ve been before. I call her mobile phone. Serena comes to my house. There is no office, or if there is, that may as well exist only as a stamp on the business card. The agent moves fluidly through the network! The agent has a mobile number and a name! She can metamorphise seamlessly through the giant hands that haphazardly striate the premises. This is the agency of the little fishes in the China sea, and that’s more than we can say about our dealings with the Public Security Bureau. In fact, here both person and state are highly fluid, but whereas in other cultures we may be taught to engage one with the other in terms of confrontation, dealing with, addressing level with and upon more level, here we can imagine the agent as a concocter of the smooth, shifting through, butting through sometimes rudely but highly flexible and maybe—-just maybe—-with a thing or to from which we could learn.

(p.s. b… can you send me the link again for that 代理 in geneva? i can’t find the e-mail anymore, and have a friend who’s interested! thank you!)