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Posts tagged ‘共同体 community’

文 TEXT  //  曲一箴 Twist QU、何颖雅 Elaine W. HO、Michael EDDY、植村 絵美 UEMURA Emi、刘颖 Dongdong LIU Ying

家作坊小经厂胡同空间 HomeShop at Xiaojingchang Hutong,2018-2010年(摄影 PHOTO:高伟云 Jeroen de KLOET)

关于这个2018年十二月的到来已经存在很多讨论,认为它纯粹是四十年前那场洪流开闸的一个象征。四十年的开放,一直不间断的变革,使得我们——至少是我们当中年下四十者——并不真的知道“如果不这样,会是什么样?” 纪念日,成了对我们“一直以来都知道”的现状的庆祝。不过生日、周年庆不就是希望事情都如此进行下去、庆祝我们自己以及“事物现有的样子”吗?不是扫大家兴——啊大好盛世万岁万岁——实话说,庆祝现状还是有些令人悲哀沮丧的,即使或者说尤其这现状发展如此不均衡,不间断的转换一切发生的那么快,我们的灵魂都要跟不上了。¹

There has been a lot of talk about the arrival of this December 2018, a purely symbolic commencement of that which was real and like a wildly burst floodgate forty years ago. Forty years now of opening and ongoing change that many of us, at least those of us under forty, don’t really know otherwise, so the anniversary becomes a celebration of a state of existence that we’ve always known. Indeed, are not birthdays and anniversaries merely a wish for things to continue, a celebration of ourselves and ‘the way things are’? Not to be a party pooper—long life and all that hoo hah are great and everything—but to be honest, there is something pathetic and disturbing about the commemoration of the status quo, even if—and perhaps especially if—that status quo is uneven development and constant transition happening so fast that our spirits are unable to keep up.¹

得承认,为这个特殊的纪念日写点什么于我们而言有点难度。写作,正是这个纪念日所蕴含的精神之一,但我们的精神却没跟上。没有跟上改革开放,也没有跟上另一个——比人人都在讨论的这个规模小一些的,情况。

So yes, this particular anniversary is something difficult for us to write about. The act of writing is perhaps exactly an exercise of the spirit, and our spirits have still not caught up. With Opening Up and Reform, but actually also to another, slightly smaller occasion than the one that everyone is talking about.


空间门口的黑板每天更新的PM 2.5天气预报,查看纪录在家作坊的微博:@jiazuofang
Daily PM 2.5 weather reports posted outside HomeShop and on the HomeShop Weibo account @jiazuofang


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《丽江工作室壁画故事》一次当代艺术在中国农村的实践
新书发布 + 艺术家对谈

Lijiang Studio Mural Stories: Contemporary Art Episodes in Rural China, book launch and talk

日期/时间 date__ 8月19日周日,晚上7点 | Sunday, 19 August, 19:00
地点 location__ 家作坊 HomeShop [地图map


对谈艺术家:胡嘉岷,雷磊,刘斌,刘传宏,那颖禹,汤艺,吴俊勇
“壁画项目”策划+《丽江工作室壁画故事》主编:李丽莎
丽江工作室“新农村实验室”项目总监:正杰

participating artists: Hu Jiamin, Lei Lei, Liu Bin, Liu Chuanhong, Na Yingyu, Tang Yi, Wu Junyong
“Mural Project” curator & “Lijiang Studio Mural Stories” compiler: Li Lisha
Lijiang Studio “New Countryside Laboratory“ director: Jay Brown

本书是对非营利艺术机构丽江工作室在旅游城市丽江纳西族农村所做的一次当代艺术实践的全面记录,展现出艺术家和农民合作壁画的各种故事,用创造力试探当代艺术创作在农村的活力。

“新农村实验室”之”壁画项目”
丽江工作室2008年主持的“壁画项目”旨在参与中国社会主义新农村建设。在城市化进程加快的背景下,“新农村”一词显示了新时代的建设要求,其具体意义在农民心中各有侧重。

丽江工作室
从2005年开始,丽江工作室一直在位于中国西南边陲的云南省丽江市一个叫“吉祥村”的小村庄进行与农民日常生活互动的艺术实践。我们希望通过艺术家进驻项目创作作品,为到访艺术家和当地居民提供有益的经验。所有活动均不以营利为目的。假如你有意加入,请与我们联系:lsirlisa@gmail.com。

This book is a thorough documentation of one art project that Lijiang Studio, a not-for-profit arts organization, did in a Naxi village near the tourist city of Lijiang. It tells the story of local farmers and artists collaborating to paint murals. It is an attempt to probe the possibilities of creating contemporary art in a rural area.

New Countryside Laboratory Mural Project
The “Mural Painting Project” run by Lijiang Studio in 2008 aims to get involved in building the Chinese “New Countryside” (xin nongcun jianshe). The “New Countryside” is a term that has come up in recent years to describe the new status of rural China in the context of urban China. In our experience the specific application of the term varies greatly.

Lijiang Studio
Lijiang Studio has been making experiments relating to art and village life in this Jixiang (meaning “auspicious”) village near Lijiang, in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province, since 2005. We run an artist-in-residence program with the aim of making art that is as interesting to the visiting artist as it is to local people as it is to us. We have indulged in this in a strictly not-for-profit way. If you have any ideas you think would be interesting in our context, please contact us at lsirlisa@gmail.com.

       

土楼茶话会 Tulou Tea Time

日期/时间 date/time__ 7月8日周日,下午3点至5点 | Sunday, 8 July, 15:00-17:00
地点 location__ 家作坊 HomeShop地图map

这周日,家作坊、遥遥工作室新界工作室汇聚一堂,品尝铁观音,分享在土楼的美好时光,回顾上个月在福建田中村组织的“土楼参观开放日”项 目。合作组织者吴遥遥, 高文雅及Anna Laura GOVONI (都市实践研究部)将介绍此项目,艺术家和其他项目参与者也将出席,开放问答环节,品茶闲聊,交流土楼社区最新的消息——其中贯穿对艺术、建筑和可持续性在当下及未来的思考。周日下午来家作坊了解更多信息吧!

This Sunday, HomeShop, Studio YaoYao and New Territories Studio come together to share tieguanyin (the tea of the iron goddess of mercy, of course) and tulou time for a dialogue and review of the Tulou Open House project organized last month in Tianzhong village, Fujian. Co-organizers Dana WU, Samantha CULP and Anna Laura GOVONI (Urbanus Research Bureau) will introduce the project, and artists and other project participants will be on hand for an open Q&A and teatime chitchat about the latest goings-on in the tulou community —— relaxation intersects with present and future considerations of art, architecture and sustainability. Learn more about it this Sunday afternoon at HomeShop!

让先人给让先人给我们指点迷津 Let’s get some help from the Dead

日期 date:  2012年4月4日(清明),星期三下午二点 / Wed 4 April (Tomb sweeping day) 2012, 14:00

地点 location: 家作坊 HomeShop[地图 / map

用费 cost: 44

人 类的延续,就是生命一个个轮回交替,为生者死,为死者生。今年我们会设计一个人形种植园(一直到5月20日),这象征着人的身体与自然的物质转换与平衡。 中国传统的清明节祭扫,会用各种食物祭奠先人,因此我们还尝试恢复清明节中另一个重要的部分——寒食节,因此今年我们除了会焚烧一些特殊的纸钱,还欢迎大 家来这里跟我们一起吃冷食过节。

For human survival, we receive other’s life for maintain our own life. Today is the perfect day to appreciate their work on food production even after the loss of life. We will design the body sized garden (continued on 5月 20日) burning giant building and eating cold food to celebrate together with the dead.

organized by 植村絵美 Emi UEMURA, 方丹敏 Barbara FANG and Michael EDDY

 

日历餐厅介绍 About Calendar Restaurant:

日历餐厅是在种植季节期间每月开放一次的餐厅。它始于2010年7月至10月的一个艺术项目。自 2011年种植季节起,我们希望在日常生活和植物生长的时间表(这也是日历的来历)下探索这种实践。在日历餐厅,消费者变成厨师, 从我们的田园中采摘新鲜蔬菜, 并分享各自的经验。一起做好饭后, 大家围坐在一起,还会讨论一些更复杂的话题:健康、食品安全、社会、政治、天 气、中医、老北京烹饪、食物设计和储存-当然,这些看上去严肃的讨论并不会影响我们品尝美味。2011年我们的种植场地由小毛驴农场赞助,日历餐厅由家作坊支持、2012年我们的种植场地由 潤田農園赞助,日历餐厅由家作坊支持。
 
Calendar Restaurant is a restaurant that opens once every month during the course of the farming season. It was initiated within the context of an art project from July to October, 2010. When farming started in 2011, we simply wanted to explore this practice within the framework of daily life and timeline of vegetables’ growth (that is where the calendar originates). In this restaurant, customers become cooks, working with fresh vegetables from our garden and sharing stories of their experiences. Once food is ready we sit together at one big table to discuss complex food issues: health, food safety, social systems, politics, weather, Chinese medicine, old Beijing cooking, food design and preservation ― but not to the point of making the taste muddy! This year our farm plot is supported by Runtian Farm and the restaurant is supported by HomeShop. Calendar Restaurant is organized by 植村絵美  Emi UEMURA and 方丹敏 Barbara FANG

日历餐厅 时间表 春夏 2012 Spring Summer Calendar Restaurant Schedule

3月20日(春分)开始農耕 Start farming
4月4日 星期二(清明)让我们为先人做点什么 Let’s Get some help from the dead
5月6日 星期天 (立夏)日历餐厅开放日Calendar Restaurant Open
5月20日 星期天 (小満) 想得瓜就种瓜,想得豆就种豆  Planting seeds for your wishes
6月2日 星期六 (芒种)儿童乐园 Child land
6月23日星期六(夏至)传统中医食物  Chinese Medicinal Food
7月休 holiday
8月5日(立秋)星期天 日历餐厅研究计划 Calendar Restaurant Research Trip
8月24日(七夕)星期五 情人餐 Dinner for Love

Walking around the church grounds, one step after another is fluffily soft; feeling microorganisms living underneath. Someone mentioned that perhaps a graveyard is the most nutritious and healthy environment to grow plants, on which no one has spread chemical pesticides. Sometime in the 16th century, the cemetery of St. Andrews church in Coniston, England was established to accommodate the practice of burying dead bodies. No records of death were kept, and it was long before the current church was constructed in 1819. According to the vicar Mark East, the first appearance of gravestones was around this time; in order for the family of the deceased to express wealth and living history, a visualization of death was constructed and carried on as a conventional wisdom.

“There is no wealth but life,” were the words of John Ruskin, the great thinker and early pioneer of ecology, who from 1900, the year of his death, also sleeps at grave #172 at St. Andrews church. He had spent his later years in Brantwood, his house overlooking Coniston Water. During this period, he published a monthly series called “Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain”, which took a form equivalent to the Blog in today’s terms, predicting the effects of industrialization on the natural world, and devoting his writing to his social reform crusade.

Although the issue of social inequality was addressed to the factory workers around the time of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, it hits a sore spot in current society. Coniston presently engages with tourism on industrial scales: the town is surrounded by nature, and 40% of the local population is composed of holiday homes; sheep farmers are subsidized by the government to maintain heritage varieties; people are generally “well-off”, so consequently isolation in one’s own individual interests cuts off engagement in village culture, and it interferes in local food production and distribution. In this context, small local farmers went into bankruptcy because of the price control of multi-national corporations, better able to service the high turn-over rate of tourism. Urban agriculture and the allotment system are very popular community models elsewhere in England, but in a place like Coniston they are not the custom.

Well then, how can we (artists) revitalize the idea of village food production, and maybe thereby revitalize the village? Together with Grizedale Arts, we proposed to the Church Council of Coniston the idea of growing vegetables on John Ruskin’s grave at St. Andrews Church.

“…six feet square, if no more can be had, — nay, the size of a grave, if you will, but buy it freehold, and make a garden of it, by hand-labour ; a garden visible to all men, and cultivated for all men of that place. If absolutely nothing will grow in it, then have herbs carried there in pots…” (John Ruskin 1874).

Taking his words seriously, this project is more symbolic rather than provocative, by growing food by hand to enrich the village with a group of locals.

to be continued…

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Grizedale Arts is a residency organization based on a farm in the centre of the Lake District in England. It tries to develop the way art thinking and art practice impact on society, through projects, exhibitions and events developed through an extended community of artists and creative people associated with it. Emi Uemura is a resident artist for Grizedale Arts 2011.


ずーんとみしらぬ大きなもの。植えたことさえ忘れていたとうもろこしをみたときここにいなかった30日分の太陽と雨と空気とかがすっかりかたちになったことに気づいた。とそんなことはおそだしで今つけたしたが。そのすぐそばには空心菜が一面を多い、おいしい実りをつけているはずの豆類は跡形もなくなっており、レタスが上に伸びてかっこう悪くなっており、シソがものすごく幅をきかしていてその影で凛としたたたずまいでオクラが3本。じゃがいもはまだ地中ですごしているようだし、トマトは大暴れの雨や風邪にひやかされながらも真っ赤な実をいくつもいくつもつけていた。雑草達はゆかいそうにきっちりとびっちりと意気投合したよう。ピーマンと辛いピーマンはみごとなもの。なすびは規格サイズくらいなものから巨人クラスのものまでさまざま。きゅうりはビールッパラの下膨れ何がどうなったらこんな形になるもんだか、きゅうりってすらっとしていぼいぼの予定だったんだけど。6月上旬にとれていたズッキーニも見当たらない。ダンミンとチンサン(畑の相棒)によるとこの夏は雨だらけ、幾度も雨。そういえば今日も寝ている間ものすごい音をたてていたかしら。そんな中でも7月の日历餐厅では新じゃがでニョッキ、バジルソース、菜園サラダ、オーブン野菜、スコーンとラズベリージャムフロムUK plus wine and teaで目もおなかもみたしながらもお天気予報お姉さんと農夫がする”天気と野菜を育てる話”に耳とこころをかたむけます。(google translate will offer no help for this article).

2011年7月的雨水多得超乎想象!

7月1日  雨

7月2日  中雨转小雨 收紫甘蓝,拔草,松土,两周前洒的白菜长了,不过很多叶子都烂了,因为种植太密,架不住一场雨一顿阳光,下涝上烤,自然扛不住;洒白菜籽,未浇水~回家的路上开始下雨。

7月5日  阴转阵雨

7月6日  雷阵雨转多云

7月7日  雷阵雨 趁凉去小毛驴农场,发现地里的玉米倒了一片,有好几棵都抽穗长苞了;emi的小西红柿被直接拍地上了,估计命不久长,紫甘蓝姑娘们雨淋日晒后脸现溃斑,芳华尽逝;劳作一天,深刻体会看天吃饭农民之苦。

7月11日 多云转雷阵雨

7月12日  雷阵雨转阵雨

7月13日  多云转雷阵雨 田间劳作

7月14日  阵雨转多云 入伏第一天   植村绘美同学从伦敦回京。

7月16日  多云转雷阵雨 有机农夫市集马甸集。11:00植村绘美同学在交流讲座环节跟大家分享了伦敦墓园种菜的有趣经历。

7月17日  阴转中雨 晚7:00,北苑路北,植村绘美与方丹敏讨论日历餐厅本月活动。讨论最多的是:多雨的北京,对有机生产者来说意味着什么?对有机销售者意味着什么?对有机消费者又意味着什么?

7月18日  中雨转阵雨

7月19日  阵雨

7月20日  雷阵雨转多云

7月21日  雷阵雨 下午四点,植村绘美与方丹敏在小毛驴农场,刚干了一个多小时活,开始打雷,又要下雨了。

7月22日   雷阵雨 凌晨的窗外,正在打雷下雨

7月23日  (预报)晴转雷阵雨

7月24日   (预报)中雨转阵雨 我们将在哪片有雨的云下收获蔬菜?又将在那哪有雨的云下吃饭?

七月日历餐厅活动主题,是从那湿漉漉的地里拔了新鲜的蔬菜(因为雨,有一些不太好看),让这些蔬菜传达给我们当月大自然的信息。我们其实很希望有气象达人来跟我们分享一下雨量多少与大气环境或自然环境变化的关系,让我们的眼界从小小的餐桌延展到更广阔些的地方去。我们也希望能邀请 一位在有机耕作中兼具种植与销售经验的人,给我们讲讲如何认识消费者心理的故事(这两位的活动免费,我们还会提供少量的市内交通费)。气象达人仍然在寻找 中,请大家积极艾特@哦,如果气象达人们实在都没有空,我们就自己边吃边聊吧。

我们的厨子除了植村绘美同学,本月流动厨子(moving chef)是@海花胖蜗牛厨房 的海花胖同学,她也是日历餐厅6月活动的参加者。以后我们每月都会邀请一位流动的厨子,当然,每一位前来参加活动的同学都有机会一起共做一道菜。

7月的菜单/menu

–  蔬菜沙拉, Tomato,Cucumber, Shiso(紫蘇)salad

–  意式(新鲜土豆)团子, Gnocchi (with fresh potato)

–  巴西沙司, Basil sauce

–  烤茄子,辣椒,  Roasted eggplant, green pepper

–  空心菜, Konxincai dish

–  腌紫苏(保鲜技巧), Salted Shiso(紫蘇) (preservation technique)

–  覆盆子司康(用于做此甜点的覆盆子酱来自圣安德鲁斯大教堂,关于此果酱的故事emi已在市集介绍,没听到的同学可以餐间随时问~)Scone with cream and Raspberry Jam from St. Andrews Church

– a glass of wine and tea   一杯酒 / 茶

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活动时间:2011年7月31日 晚18:00-21:00

活动地点: 交道口北二条8号,家作坊
地图 MAP: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=217570249394613675179.000497a945f6f4b280f37

活动方式: 我们将邀请10位朋友,在日历餐厅以活动共享的方式,跟我们一起品尝我们种植的自然生长的有机蔬菜,交流, 互相学习, 我们可以一起做饭。请带毛巾和围裙

报名方式:评论回复微薄@日历餐厅报名即有效我们将从前往后确认到第十位,并在微薄@日历餐厅公布。如果收到确认信息因有事不能参加,请即刻联系告知,我们将及时把空出名额转到下一位。

鸣谢:小毛驴市民农园对日历餐厅活动的大力支持


all photos by 曲一箴 Twist QU*

If we had not been able to come closer to an understanding of affect at the reading club meeting, it came to me again in a recent text by another Brian (“The half-life of disaster“), where somehow the descriptive traversing of scales felt familiar, and of course it can hit us with as much impact as watching a slow-motion montage of the year in review, or Olympic triumphs, or yes, the touching moments and heroes of disaster. We should be immune already perhaps, cynical viewers whose forms of belief have decayed parallel to these half-lives, and yet even at standstill, reduced to its barest linguistic denominators, it could still be possible to induce a notion of affective scales on a billboard covering an urban construction site: “Grandpa lazing in the sun. Boys dancing hip-hop. Businessman checking e-mail. Woman carrying shopping bag.” She was kind of pissed off about this, about all that it left out or pinned down too characteristically in succinct world view, but it seemed also something more than ‘trace’ in a collective reading on media. This is an affect of the kind that Michael mentions, “understood as the embodiment of certain codes, to be read and embodied by a particular community”. Such embodiment is a continuous training, like watching these disasters in constant cycle, like urbanity itself. We learn to traverse the levels, moving from horror and shock at grand scale to human warmth and its accompaniments in the everyday heroes and miniature miracles that soothe a constant, half-toned fear.

Taking distance can occur in both directions, towards macro-scale world views or into the safety of the small moments in a day to day. What Massumi claims as a ‘trace-form anticipation’ singularly and collectively describes this back and forth motion; it is a kind of subjective being-in-motion that typifies our here and now condition. To make a hero of our friend A W W abroad stresses the silence nearby, it casts scales of individual activism helplessly against nameless foreboding forces at the state realm, naïvely paralleled by his name being coded “Love the future”. Larger and stronger pursuits of activism in the last years (in education, in the art world, the Middle East, the mid-West…) echo, or are symptomatic of such “affective conversion circuits”, but there remains to be seen what “alter-” could possibly step out of it. Should affect move out of affect? What lies outside of scale itself? The movements seem to encompass everything already, like fantastic ideas kept to oneself, like capitalism’s neverending ever in sight, like half-lives in decay.

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* there was a thought at the beginning of writing this post that these photos bore some relation to the things i was going to say, but the distancing ended up there. there is a lot of ambivalent feeling in their transmission, but they speak of a relation…

Che Fei and CU OFFICE’s trans-community: Jin Street Model
车飞与超城建筑的超街区:“
金街模型

Trans-Community space usage distribution. 金街模型空间利用展示。

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photo by GAO Ling

After trying to begin to write for quite a long time now, it finally comes down to seeing no other simple way to begin but with all the complexity of ‘I’, which means that proper reading and research are lacking enough to make one unable to (attempt) to pursue a more objective line of reasoning and/or explanation. In all honesty, the last months have dried up words, and parched like this city, thoughts do not find language in balanced cycle. Even the pronouns don’t dance as much as they used to, as per those (known for) past avoidances of the reflexive pronoun, and I wonder which particular subjectivities have been lost along the way.

I think about the past often, but I’m not so nostalgic.

Where does this ‘I’ come from, this ‘I’ that has somehow come in the last years, across particular oceans and with the looking back upon those far fallen bridges? There is a loathsome identity game going on here, and recent events have triggered repeated keywords, or perhaps it’s simply grammar.

‘I’ cannot separate from this question of what ‘this’ is, but where we were led astray during the conversation was the point at which things needed to be named, where it matters how we define [定义] a certain audience, forms of art-making, goals and Five-Year Plans. The fact is that I don’t want things to fit so easily into well-written descriptions, institutions or fixed modes of communication.

Communication, or art, for that matter, does not occur in ‘I’ alone, or even by mere grammar. The signifieds are too complex these days, like Hollywood hoaxes piled upon political ones. The politics exist in representation as much as in our language, and ‘I’ should get confused with ‘we’ or ‘she’ or ‘he’ much more often than it does, perhaps.

Name Game

如果唯一可以信任的是个体对自我的主体性的信任的话,那么被分裂的不是自己,而是系统,也正是系统的分裂促成了一种生成(becoming)。
If the only thing to be trusted is individuality’s subjectivity, then being divided (split-off) is not the self but the system; it is a form of becoming precipitated by a fissure in the system. [1]

– 麦巅 MAI Dian

Some friends at Womenjia Youth Autonomy Lab [“我们家”青年自治中心] in Wuhan recently had one of their texts re-translated at China Study Group, and what strikes me most is the need for a rethinking of terms amidst the proliferation of #tags# and “elevator pitches”. In the same moment that some may ask us for more clarity in explaining a practice, or a work, it becomes also useful to note when the omittance of certain signifieds allows a form of agency that cannot be practiced otherwise.

The Womenjia Youth Autonomy Lab describes itself thus on its Douban page with a question mark, and this, as shown in his text, is fraught with all the layers of subjective and objective dilemma that come with giving “the house a name”:

只要出力,物质空间就来得颇为容易,改造也颇为顺手,但超乎预料的是,「自治」招牌甫一挂出,社会关系就立马需要重建,破与立的冲撞此刻就显出其厉害来了。新的关系还未有「蓝图」…
So long as you put forth the effort, physical space will arrive rather easily, and transformation will proceed smoothly. What we didn’t expect was that the moment we hung up the sign with the word “autonomous,” everyday social relations would have to be redefined. From that moment onward, the destructive and constructive sides of change began to collide with each other. New relations have no blueprint. [2]

Words like ‘I’, ‘community’, ‘representation’ and some of their possible outputs—’we’, ‘society’,  ‘art’ and ‘media’—exist likewise in constantly shifting relation. This occurs at the level of semantics but also in the means with which we can create those outputs. I think we somehow failed to get to this in all the discussions of ‘alternative practice’ that have gone on lately [3], and this is also why it may be quite tricky to look at such researches (at least contemporarily) as anything more than an index, or a means of self-reflection.

This goes back to the ‘I’, and of course, its evil partner ‘other’. Alternative arts practices and many other forms of cultural production in China are catalysed to a great degree by ‘the foreign others’, and this can be explained largely by matters of economy, varied forms of thinking of agency and initiative, as well as, at a larger scale, ideas about what ‘DIY’ or ‘politics’ mean (and where they coincide). Media finds itself intertangled within all of this, from the rhetoric of finding Chinese origins for Western initiatives [西学中原], to the politics of representation and yes, language. This tends to be frustrating or opaque-rendering for those seeking forms of lateral exchange, and a lot of the time, well, the vocabularies are just too different. This is not to say that nothing can be exchanged, but we should be careful of what ulterior motives drive seemingly open-ended discourse. Desire is rarely so easy as the statement ‘I want you’, and more often than not, “the ‘tragedy’ that is love is simply laughed at”. [4]

I’m circling around here. After cynicism about cultural exchange, more recent topics that have come up as possible focuses for our next publication include translatability, opacity, ballsy. It sounds vague, but I trust that we are already in the same vein. At the same time, we are thinking about how different forms of media we utilise can be better refined to address the who, what, where, why and when we would like to communicate. This is why I am relieved and re-struck to refer to DYAC again, albeit from the somewhat sophomoric attempt of our own Beiertiao Leaks. This very slow day newspaper was a first attempt from our new home base at Beixinqiao to organise a form of media that is participatory, multiplicitous and public. It is not an equal exchange. But, as Michael says, it’s “a conversation starter”.

All of this rambling, likewise, is a kind of conversation starter. For HomeShop and for optimistic efforts to understand the juxtapositions between language, art and politics. “最正经的如「政治」,并不是理所当然的政党与特殊利益集团的国家治理,甚至法西斯极权,它更是我们作为一个有主体性的人参与社会关系的建设…” Politics not as in the “state administration by parties or special interest groups,” but as “our participation as subjects in the construction of social relations”—a kind of grammar, perhaps—involving more than one pronoun. [5]

——–

[1]  麦巅 MAI Dian. “复制抑或连接:两个亚洲人飞往欧洲 To Copy or to Connect: Two Asians Fly to Europe”.  穿 Wear, No. 2. 家作坊 HomeShop: 北京 Beijing, 2010年.
[2] 唐水恩 TANG Shui’en. “一个小朋克的基础另类教育 The Alternative Education of a Chinese Punk”. First printed in Chutzpah!. Shao Foundation: 北京 Beijing, 2009年. Translated to English by www.libcom.org, and later revised by 猢狲子 HUSUNZI at China Study Group.
[3] I refer here to the alternative arts practices in China as having been recently discussed by a number of critics and researchers, including Edward SANDERSON, Clara KIM, 蔡影茜 Nikita CHOI and The Office for Art and Theory (刘鼎 LIU Ding and 卢迎华 Carol Yinghua LU).
[4] 唐水恩 TANG Shui’en, “一个小朋克的基础另类教育 The Alternative Education of a Chinese Punk”.
[5] ibid.

Have been taking workshop of Re:Farm the City in past week, it is part of  Tsinghua Art & Science MediaLab program / Environment and Ecological Art.  Making urban (this time indoor) farm and compost shed with found object with electronics to solve the problems of city people (watering, pesticide control, not knowing how to start…). For now, we have 2 farms that grows the vegetable of Beijing dish. This farm is attached with water and electronics with humidity system to control water supply.  For a water pump, using the  internet cable as a water tube, and inner cable for making panels. This panel is inside of the scare crows (hot).

Panels with all colorful electric cables are crossing eye experience but now geeky-san in my classroom can invite me for dinner and we have something to talk about. Our food waste goes to make soil for coming up season. Re:farm the city is the project happening in different places in the world and the local people of each place carried on, experimenting their own way. In Beijing version will start regular meeting from tomorrow at the HomeShop, we will develop compost shed and perhaps small green houses for spring time to sprout the seeds. Also, would be amazing to develop small solar system for the building, or any. If there are any engineers / students who would love to experiment with real situation, please join us.