propositions press

cramming mrcc time

Between family commitments and work, I have less and less time to explore my world. These explorations—which sometimes involve doing nothing—were always a luxury, but one that, for artists, is practically a requirement of the work. Studio creations and new texts grow out of them. As departures from the routine, they fuel thought, feeling, vision. These days, if I have a rare opportunity to get out of the house for no particularly good reason, I grab it.

One of the best outings from my home in Madison is a one and half hour drive up US Highway 14, through Cross Plains, Spring Green, and Richland Center, to Viroqua. It makes for a terrific day trip, a car trip along a midwest radical culture corridor. But this time I had only a half day to spare. My friend Mike Koppa hosts a mid-morning radio show on the community radio station WDRT and he invited me to supply the records. I could make it for the show, a quick lunch and stroll, and then return to Madison before three. It was worth the drive, even through the dense morning fog of an abnormally warm mid-March Thursday.

Besides getting to enjoy the very impressive studios of WDRT, I caught up with Mike and all his goings on. New cabin under construction out at the Acres, new gig for his band, and with the spring coming, more stone lettering.

I also managed to get in a few minutes of browsing at Driftless Books. Luckily for me book hunter Eddy Nix recently hauled in an exceptionally deep collection of books on China, now filling a whole wall of cases in the front room, outside of the store proper. I took home two, The Workers of Tianjin, 1900-1949 by Gail Hershatter, and The Making of a Hinterland by Kenneth Pomeranz. The Pomeranz book caught my attention for two reasons. One, it is a study of western Shandong, the province of my ancestors that I periodically visit. And two, he writes about a region that historically had no name, but that he somehow identifies as possessing a geographical and historical coherence, enough to write a book about. Being interested in the slipperiness of regional definition, I want to find out more about his methodology.

It was also fun to see the Compass production A Call to Farms out on a display table of titles by area authors, especially knowing that the book is now very hard to get.

 

Because it was only a half day, I spent most of this trip in my car. But that was okay, too, because this was my first time out to the Driftless Area since late last summer, before the Walker recall campaign got underway. I was heartened to see a good number of anti-Walker signs along the way, including these sturdy constructions, which gave me reason to pull over for some quick pics.

I am refreshed, with ideas. I’ll make it out there again this year, I promise. Maybe with the family, next time.

 

 

 

closing down the drum tower office

The first and most important phase of The Journey West is a wrap. My collaborator and the project’s heavy-lifter Stephanie Rothenberg is in Beijing for another day or so, bringing the Drum Tower travel office to a close.

 

Was it a success? Yes. Why? Because it happened. The point being, staging something like this is not a small achievement for two foreign artists working in China for short periods without any kind of gallery, residency, or curatorial support. The essential support we found, we found by ourselves, and without it the project certainly would have been less fully realized. But as it happened plenty of folks chipped in with substantive involvement. For example, Elaine Wing-ah Ho and the Homeshop crew made the worker performances, Lee Ambrozy offered lots of feedback and supportive writing on Artforum.cn, Ed Sanderson made himself a critical observer from the get-go, and Peggy Wang is busy roping us into her world of research even as I type. Plus lots of others, to be named in the future.

So what happens now? Mainly it is a matter of continuing to build the discourse through secondary exhibitions and conference presentations. There are so many angles to this project and each one of them is so complex that the constraints of group shows and conference panels will be helpful in giving us occasions to focus on just one or two angles at a time. Also, having the distance of a show or conference in North America will inevitably help to clarify some of the outstanding issues made visible by the Drum Tower storefront, but that we simply did not have time to address while in Beijing.

Selected material generated through The Journey West project will make appearances in group shows in Buffalo and Brooklyn in the late summer and early fall, and possibly in a couple of conference gigs for 2012. Details posted here later as things develop.

As for the travel office itself, another iteration will be appropriate in time. I think that will happen only if and when the groundwork has been properly laid for a trip to really take place. With the way things work in China, we may find it easier to arrange a tour without going through the retailing of it. In which case, the Drum Tower travel office will go down in history as a one-time show, installation, and performance, in the best tradition of China's avant garde.

 

a chimerican revolutionary celebration

Tomorrow, July 1, 2011, is the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. There will be many celebrations and occasions of reflection and appreciation, in all media. Chinese internet portals will be festooned with commemorative banners, television specials will air, and a major motion picture will be released. You can't miss the Party's birthday decorations around town, not least in Tiananmen Square:

There is no way to fairly assess both the accomplishments and disasters of Communist Party Rule in anything less than a multi-volume study. As much as the cold warriors of the West would have us believe that communist systems are simply and only evil, the fact remains that for China the CCP was the only force able to impose stability after a half century of unbelievable social and economic chaos. This is something that the Party itself never ceases to boast. On the other hand, it is also true that the Party makes mistakes, sometimes on a massive scale. Some of the worst problems facing China now are being exacerbated by issues having to do with the political system. Without being prepared to write a long essay about specific things, it is pointless to go beyond saying that.

But what I can say is, what would be better than following the Party's party, with a celebration of our own, and to do it Beijing. Especially since the Fourth of July is only three days later. So, here it is:

Celebrate American Independence Day with The Journey West! 

Monday July 4, 2011 at 19:00 2011年7月4日 周一 19:00 

Parade begins at 19:00 sharp at The Journey West Travel Office. 

Come celebrate the day America became America and declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain on July 4, 1776.

To commemorate this historic event that happens every year in America we will hold an abridged reading of the Declaration of Independence followed by a parade of simulated fireworks, fire eating, jugglers, music and classic American BBQ (barbecue) featuring hot dogs with all the fixings, corn-on-the-cob, Coca-cola, Pepsi and of course apple pie! Special discount price on all package tours! 

来参加美国独立日的庆典！庆祝美国在1776年7月4日从大不列颠王国独立出来。为了纪念这一历史性事件，我们将宣读部分独立宣言的内容，同时还准备了烟花，音乐，魔术及传统美式烧烤，热狗，汉堡包，番茄酱，可口可乐，百事可乐以及必不可少的苹果派！  

The Journey West Travel Office/西游旅行社 is a performative installation that casts a critical eye on global tourism created by American artists Dan S. Wang and Stephanie Rothenberg.

The travel office is open Saturday and Sunday from 12:00-15:00 through July 17th and by special appointment (bestjourneywest@gmail.com) 

Recent post about the project on Artforum.com.cn:

“西游计划”的网站设计；西南部的“大美国实验基地游”项目是由一个隐藏的军事基地，政府的秘密空中旅行，和监狱的著名权威Trevor Paglen领团。

“西游计划”（“The Journey West”）是两位美国艺术家王念华（Dan S. Wang，中西部）和史蒂.罗森博格（Stephanie Rothenberg，纽约）的合作项目，他们在北京创立了一个旅游机构，推销另类的“美国游”，他们也让几位旅游机构的工作人员，帮助将旅游项目推广给公众，同时也举办与旅游相关的艺术家表演，七月中旬结束。关于项目详情，可登陆网站, 七月四日美国国庆日，他们将举办派对，用传统食物（玉米和热狗）待客，还有吞火和杂耍表演。以下罗森博格谈艺术项目。

我的作品运用相似的消费者交流方式，比如旅行社，或者我的“血汗工厂”，或者脱口秀，以有点荒诞的形式提醒我们对自己在经济体制内所起的作用的意识。通过让一切极端和夸大化，暴露出组织结构和它的机械性。这也是我们想让旅游办所要做的事情，但因为太新颖了，很难预料人们能从当中获得什么。

但它却是贯穿了事实和虚构的界限，因为这些旅游都是真实的，但当中虚假的部分，我们完全是一个功能性的旅行机构，同时又是一个艺术项目。作为新的商人，也许在鼓楼我们并没有最佳的市场策略，我们尚不知道如何将这些旅游活动售出，也许明年夏天我们会回来，开着一个小车，去三里屯或CBD。

我们的目的是想挑战主流旅游，这些旅游都是围绕地标性的景观等级展开，我们想要质疑的是这些地标性景观的重要性。比如，每个人都想去好莱坞，想看山上的好莱坞地标，它代表着一种文化或一个群体，但这些其实是很空洞的或表面的。所以，我们提供由艺术家打造的旅行，作为导游，这些艺术家们都是更能介入社会的导游，比如“自由女神半日游”，一位环保主义者带领人们穿行中央公园，在那里你可以觅食。这些都是具有教育性的项目，是那些未被听到的声音，它们研究政治和历史，某个地区当前的社会环境，比主流旅游所承载的要多得多。但它们也会给出你为何想去一个城市或公园的主要原因。我们要挑战的就是主导性的历史。

这个机构是想构建露西-里帕德（Lucy Lippard）在《本土传统》（Lure of the Local）中所说的“批判性旅游”（critical tourism）。我们也正在看迪恩-麦康纳（Dean MacCannel）的《旅客阶层理论》（Theory of the Tourist Class），这个是对托斯丹-凡勃伦（Thorstein Veblen）100年前写的《休闲阶级理论》的谐谑，此书在今日依然言之凿凿。

 这项目最初的想法是王念华和我碰到了一个来纽约的南方朋友。我们讨论的文化标识完全是和历史断裂，

这也是全球化的一个问题之一，有趣的是它们在不同文化里被重新语境化的方式，这些我和Dan在这里都感受过。我们经历的究竟是一种模拟产物还是一种普遍化的全球文化？其它国家是否仍受到美国文化的影响？

在爱德华-伯汀斯基（Edward Burtynsky）的《人造风景》里，一位中国女孩带领着参加了一座中国工厂，她所运用的言辞具有美国企业文化色彩，但是与中国式价值观结合起来的，所以我们在旅游行业里雇佣年轻的中国人，这样，他们做推销，我们帮助整合。我们想知道的是再次挪用意味着设么？中国正在挪用我们的企业文化，但他们赋予其自己的价值观，之后卖回给我们。我们想反过来，将它们（在美国的旅行）卖给中国观众。

这些都是和我们对旅游的批评、文化标识、保真性有关。还包含一个完全不同的元素：展览模式。一种表演与装置艺术但逃跑传统画廊则发生于公共空间。我在北京碰到过几个中国艺术家，都是在这种关系性和情势性的状态下创作，如Michael Yuen和他的驴车，或者如马永峰和Forget Art。

这是一种文化殖民主义么？很多这样的情势关系艺术出自欧洲的社会政治运动，策略性媒介和方式在美国以“批判艺术体”（Critical Art Ensemble) 这样的人开始。它们是对这个商业化、

单一的艺术世界的回应，人们从哪里受到这些影响而做这样的事情呢？就如Forget Art的澡堂介入一样“地点：龙泉洗浴”项目，我觉得那真是非常明智的，之所以行之有效，因为也是在草场地。

— 文/ 采访 / 安静

 

http://artforum.com.cn/words/3667 

 

The travel office is located at 43 Zhonglouwan Hutong Dongcheng District

东城区钟楼湾胡同43号

directly between the historic Drum and Bell Towers and next to the Drum and Bell bar.

Check our website for details on special events and package tour discounts http://www.bestjourneywest.com. 

 

************************************** 

 

Dan S. Wang http://prop-press.typepad.com 

Stephanie Rothenberg http://www.pan-o-matic.com

 

 

towards home, but still drifting

The China Drift continued even as the traveling group fractured and parts went in different directions. Wuhan was the place from which the big group, which grew over the first week to twenty-two or so, started to lose members. Xiao, Qu Ge, Orienna, Michael, Emi, Desiree, Jing, and Gordon all caught Thursday night trains back to Beijing. Gao Bei stayed to visit her family and I think SiSi went to another town to see hers. Elaine returned to Beijing the next night.

From Lashihai it was I who fell behind first. After two days together at the Lijiang Studio, I waved goodbye to Jay, Sarah, Ula, Claire, Brian, Stephanie, and Mai Dian as they rode off in the studio’s van, bound for Wumu on the rainy third morning. After another two days with just myself and the neighboring He family for company, I flew back to Beijing, rejoining Jing and Gordon. One night later, Ula and Stephanie caught up to Gordon, Joseph, and I for food and beer in Caochangdi. Stephanie and Ula brought stories of mountain liquors and pictographic scripts from Wumu, the remote Naxi mountain village. I wished I had gone with them until I heard about the rain and stomach bugs.

I had to get back to Beijing a day before them in any case. I needed a day to visit a future niece at the Shepherd’s Field Children’s Village way out of the city, practically in Tianjin. The outing mixed family stuff with research, which is to say, I was quite curious about Shepherd’s Field. It is a full service foster home for Chinese orphans with special needs that grew out of the Philip Hayden Foundation, a fifteen year-old service organization founded by an American couple dedicated to helping orphans in China. I was told that there are currently some 75 children in residence. A minority of them will be adopted into forever families (that is the lingo of American child services culture, something we’ve learned as we have gone through that culture ourselves). Some children will live at Shepherd’s Field for years.

Where would China be without all these Christians helping out? I am sure the society would be worse off, and that there would be many fewer social services than exist now. But I don’t think there would be any hugely increased number of Christian converts. I know that there are intense cultures of Chinese Christianity in both Taiwan and Singapore, as well as overseas. And yes there have been religious movements in China, some of them quite potent on a political level, from the Taipings to Falun Dafa. But I simply cannot imagine a faith like Christianity (which, let’s face it, is founded on some pretty outlandish stories) gaining serious mainstream traction in post-’89, post-idealism mainland China. After all, the missionaries of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did not manage to reshape China in any ultimately significant way, even though they fed millions of poor and hungry. My bet is, to most Chinese Christianity is, in the end, something that will always seem foreign. And therefore irrelevant to them, but for the concrete contributions the Christians can make.

More universal, and deserving of more effort to connect and weave narratives are the analysis of and the shared discontents around the concrete conditions of life. The Drift, at its best as an encounter-based research method, extends odd and specific strands of connection, far beyond the convoluted theologies of the proselytizers. So as the China Drift participants went off on our separate ways, I am sure many of us continued to draw connections. That was the case for me when I found myself eighteen hours beyond Beijing, traveling by pick-up from the Bainbridge Island ferry landing to to the Poulsbo home of climate and conservation scientists Jennie Hoffman and Daniel Froehlich, on the Kitsap Peninsula across the water from Seattle. My first stop: the grave of Chief Seattle, he of the famous words that laced a requiem for his land and culture with the biocentrism we dream of today. What place to kiss the ground of my country could be more American–and more global. And true to the experience of drifting over histories, places and cultures, thoughts about common fates and all the rest, I was just a little surprised to find that Chief Seattle had been, according to his gravestone, baptized. Those Christians again. Maybe they'll get us all in the end, Chinese or not.

Later that evening Dan continued telling me about the local history, Poulsbo’s Norwegian heritage, the raising of Seattle, and so forth. In the process we came across this photograph by Asahel Curtis documenting the flattening of old Seattle’s Denny Hill, a project also known as the Denny Regrade. The earthen towers visible in the photograph are the property owner holdouts who demanded better compensation or maybe just refused to leave. Having just returned from the land of the nail house, I thought I was seeing double, through time and space.

The part of Seattle that was reshaped by the Denny Regrade eventually became known as Belltown. Decades after whatever upheavels caused by the Denny Regrade had been settled or forgotten, artist Brett Bloom documented the neighborhood’s recent creative efforts to humanize the available public space. I remember learning something about Belltown when Brett and Ava Bromberg released the book seven years ago. But it was not until this trip, with China’s nail houses, big hydroengineering projects, and, most of all, the report we received while in Wuhan about the property megadeveloper OCT’s plans for an amusement park on the shores of Wuhan’s jewel, Donghu, fresh in my mind that the work in Belltown resonated. Now I wonder, after the futility of a last stand, whether in the face of corrupt developers or unstoppable eminent domain, what are the struggles and achievements to come, even on the same piece of land? What the Denny Regrade showed is that after the development happens, other problems and challenges emerge; it is always a matter of spatial politics in the end, and there is never a perfectly satisfactory (or even minimally functional) spatial arrangement for every stake holder. There is only another political problem.

I spent my first night back on North American soil managing my jet leg constructively—a 3:30 AM departure for the backlands of Fort Lewis and McChord AFB, to help out with some bird banding. It was the first session of the season for this particular station, one of several maintained by the Puget Sound Bird Observatory.
The data collected is given over to the MAPS program of the Institute for Bird Populations, one of the only continent-wide research programs that allows for a large-scale picture of bird populations, without which conservation management would be comparatively blind.

Dan told me the story of how the MAPS program came to be. It had to do with the timing of radioactive releases from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, the suspicion that catastrophic breeding failures among certain West Coast raptors that year were linked to the April 26 disaster, but then not having the data to conclusively determine whether the radioactive iodine cloud could in fact be counted as the aberrant factor. Thus the MAPS program was born, to build a global perspective on bird population trends across species, through continental units. Obviously, with the Fukishima disaster still unfolding, not to mention the acceleration of climate change and habitat destruction, the work of collecting data is more important now than ever.

That said, it is science, meaning, attachments to presuppositions must be held minimal, even if those presuppositions are somewhat operational. There are simply too many factors at play at the level of detailed interaction between organisms and environment. Dan himself offered that the data collection helps with the broad outlines of what’s going on, but in the end the whole effort is still an educated gamble. While the physical laws point us toward definite conclusions (ie greenhouse gases work in a known way, therefore the planet is warming), the complexity of the planet’s natural systems makes management often less than straightforward. To the politically minded inhabitant of planet Earth and the politically-minded experimental artist, it is where our work exists: careful diagnosis, experimental strategies of response, and uncertain outcome.

 

 

china drift: reflections on the lijiang studio

What a relief. The houseflies have gone to bed.

The flies, the spiders, the farm cats, and the rain are constant reminders of where Lijiang Studio is. As are the bits of Naxi speech that constantly waft in from the nearby fields and farmyards. This is Naxi farming country, the valley and community of Lashihai, about an hour beyond Lijiang, over a mountain pass via an increasingly congested and very narrow two-lane highway filled with a line of breadloaf taxis and heavy trucks carrying gravel, rock, and lumber. It is not the easiest place to get to, but it is not the most difficult, either.

Wholly unlike the common language of Mandarin and all other regional variants of Chinese, Naxi is the main tongue of Lashihai. All my efforts to improve my language skills (one new word a day!) would have been of little use here, except that most all of the Naxi speak the common tongue, too. Their bilingualism intrigues me, since it represents a kind of bi-culturalism, and even bi-nationalism—these folks are at once Naxi and Chinese. But the contemporaneity of hybrid or multivalent identities that city people and other modern creatures get accustomed to seems somehow far away from Lashihai. After all, much of life around here goes on as it long has, maybe for centuries. Media penetration is minimal, social life is interwoven with daily and seasonal labor, foods are mostly local, and the cash economy leaves a comparatively light imprint. Life is slow, cyclical, weather-dependent, and, if the word still means anything at all, traditional. And yet, this is hardly a pre-modern environment. Most obviously, the Chinese state governs, and that includes administering large projects such as building an earthen dam for water control around Lashihai (also the name of the nearby lake) in the 1950s and again more recently, or, presently, building a new highway that will cut through the valley. Also, there are the schools. They now teach English beginning in the elementary grades, producing some rudimentary trilingualism among the younger Naxi. And there are the contemporary artists.

We blog, photograph, document, install, paint, draw, film, write, discuss, taste, study, take long walks, get inspired—a whole suite of behaviors that don’t have much to do with the life of the native people. Or, rather, didn’t used to have much to do with their life. But Jay Brown, American by birth and Chinese by adaptation, has been living on and off in Lashihai for nearly a decade. With the incremental improvements he, his neighbors, and his resident artists have made to the compound that is Lijiang Studio, one can really say he has moved in. As have the procession of resident artists who come for weeks or months at a time. For our brief time here, the China Drift crew, including we four Compass comrades, played the part of this relatively constant presence of artists. 

It is easy to immediately pose here the same question that vexes artists back in cities like Chicago. And that is, what is our role in the process of gentrification and development? Except here, the forces are not entirely familiar, the fault lines less clear, and the minority people possibly being put at risk of displacement (culturally and/or spatially) seem rather savvy to the ways of power as seen in their adaptations to the loopholes around them. For example, as with other people in China, many of the Naxi around here build structures on lands that they know will be taken for new roads. Especially on such lands, in fact, in order to increase the compensation they will be due. It is the Chinese version of eminent domain—they can’t fight it, so they figure they’ll increase the value of their land by improving it before the road comes. To achieve this they will build without any regard for permits or legality, essentially changing “the facts on the ground.” And for decades they have existed semi-autonomously under the umbrella of the People’s Republic of China, and for centuries before that, under the waxing and waning reach of the imperial dynasties. Somehow they’ve managed to persist as a culture and a people. If the Naxi are a people who have negotiated contradictory social forces and locations successfully for generations, then what is going on perhaps is just another chapter in a continuous tale begun long ago, and at least co-authored by them rather than for them. 

But do the visiting artists—let us just say, does the Lijiang Studio—have something to do with this development? Of course they and it do, but I think we should avoid the question of effect and impact. Those concerns are a smokescreen, an incubator of liberal guilt, and a distraction from the more important problem of grappling with ethical relations. The question I do want to ask is, what is the most responsible way to build a working relationship between visiting outsiders (who bring their own culture, and in the case of our six people coming together, our own society) and the Naxi of Lashihai? The answer is difficult to grasp positively, but fairly easy to identify in the negative. For example, the Ancient Town tourist market of Lijiang offers a model that seems most definitely undesirable and not worth replicating. Stall after stall, scores of them, offering “authorized” minority handicrafts, food stuffs, musical recordings, and assorted souvenirs, along with Naxi-led pony rides and costumed performers, reduce the relationship between visitors to one of seller and buyer, and the Naxi sellers themselves into competing retailers.

 

The arrangement at Lijiang Studio is very different. There, the visitors are expected to be producers primarily and consumers secondarily. We come to make, to create, to build, design, express, grow, and learn. Not to buy, and only to consume as our sustenance demands. There isn’t much of a place for such activity in the Ancient Town. So far, so good. But create what? Art objects and art images? Or a society, economy, and culture that brings people from the far corners of the earth into affectionate, mutually supportive, and productive contact? If it is the former, exclusively, then we might as well forget the whole project and go back to the Western-oriented hang-outs in Lijiang. Thankfully, and it is pretty obvious once you are there, Lijiang Studio leans heavily towards the latter set of possibilities. But how do visitors—people who are known in advance to be leaving at some point in the future, whether that’s weeks, months, or years, and probably are not returning—help to create the worlds implied by the latter?

One way to think about it is to understand that investments are always limited. There aren’t too many examples of unlimited investment in this world. Therefore the limited inputs of any given resident artist should not by itself be reason to discount the truth of their contribution. On the concrete level, I’m afraid to offer any suggestions on “what to do.” Partly, that is because I am not familiar enough with the workings of the Studio and the Lashihai milieu to confidently prescribe a course of action, having only spent a few days there. But also it is because I believe that mapping the appropriate ethical relations is a site-specific project in the most literal sense, meaning such a map is specific to each one of us, and follows the contours of not only our skill sets and life histories, but also of our own spiritual callings. That is not to say that there aren’t any models. At the Lijiang Studio, Jay Brown has been mapping these relations according to his callings for years now, creating a model, with the help of his Naxi neighbors and resident artists. We on the Drift were fortunate to travel the territory with him for a little while, adding our footnotes to the map he has been drawing.

 

china drift: professors yang and wen meet the young generation at homeshop, beijing

Some of us diasporic Chinese who “return” to China sometimes have family and kin obligations that other visitors do not. Even though I am two generations removed from the mainland, this is still the case for me, depending on where I go in China. Sometimes it is a pain, and sometimes it is a pleasure. On this trip my primary obligation was more than a pleasure, it was a real blessing.

The Wang clan has had a long and close family friendship with a man named Yang Xianrang. He is a friend to my father’s side, with a very close history over three generations dating back to the days of my grandparents in the intimate circles of the Chinese minority in Korea. Professor Yang went to study in Beijing as a teenager, in 1944, tested into the Central Academy of Fine Arts for university, and went on to a long career as a faculty artist and then a dean at that school. He visited my family on his first trip to America and stayed with us for nearly a month, around 1981 or so, and that’s when I met him as a kid. He spent those days painting in our basement, and both I and my parents have works of his from that time hanging in our homes today. Shortly before he retired from CAFA, my mother and I visited him in the winter of 1992 in Beijing, my first time to the mainland. After retiring, he joined one of his children in the United States, first in Philadelphia and then in Houston. After sixteen years, he returned to Beijing for the twilight of his career. In the year 2011 he is eighty-one years old. On this trip, making it a point to visit Uncle Yang was a priority. But this is the Drift, so why not fold him in, somehow?

He trained as an oil painter, spent many years working in water colors, and then turned to traditional ink and brush painting. But his widest renown was earned as a woodcut print artist. He produced a number of the iconic graphic images from the revolutionary period, including works such as these.  
  

We invited Professor Yang to HomeShop for an informal conversation, which turned out to be a cross generational encounter the likes of which I’ve never really heard of, much less experienced. HomeShop promoted the event up and down Bei'ertiao Hutong in the old-fashioned way, with posters.  Professor Yang brought along a friend of his, Professor Wen, an oil painter who was one of his early students but is now also retired from the Central Academy. Professor Yang spoke of his period as a woodcut artist, the whys and hows of his woodcut activity. He told of how his image of Zhou Enlai became a popularly disseminated image that broke through to the mass level, with ordinary people buying mass reproductions of it. Together they described their work and careers, showed examples from catalogues they brought, and took questions. They shared their perspectives on the art market boom in China, the influences of European art traditions, and their reflections on having had such traditional training. They took some questions about art education, how CAFA has changed. Professor Wen in particular expressed suspicions about the art market. He told a great story about how he had sold works to a Japanese collector who then asked him to sign the works. He acceded. But then the collector asked him to alter and then sign a canvas painted by another artist. Professor Wen found the request appalling, refused and broke off the relationship. 

Michael and Elaine took a turn explaining to the two elders the activities of HomeShop. Running through the various functions of the space (residency, design, translation, food work, etc) seemed to confuse them. But there ended up being two significant areas of connection and understanding. One was revealed when the younger generations expressed their skepticism about the turbo-speculative art market, their distaste for the vacuousness of meaningless monumentalism, and their sincere desire for serving a public and community. There are of course substantive and irreconcilable differences in the particulars of practice having to do with the innumerable changes in the world over the last sixty years, but some of us felt that a shared spirit could be found.

The other connection came with the final encounter of the morning, in which we showed these two old-school masters the large poster produced by the Beehive Collective, The True Cost of Coal. Sarah Lewison had the brilliant idea of bringing a cache of these with us to China, and here one was unrolled to great effect. Professors Yang and Wen could see that in addition to the digital and social media of our contemporary world, there remains a special place reserved for handworked media—and specifically pencil drawing and illustrative figure drawing—in our toolkits. They were extremely impressed and greatly heartened by the quality, the detail, and the social responsibility evident in this work.

Photos by Claire. 

Professor Yang inspecting the True Cost of Coal poster.

Elaine Wing-Ah Ho, Professor Wen, Professor Yang, and me.

selections for homeshop, may 19, 2011: listening, learning, and...rocking

The text that follows is a modifed version of the handout distributed at the event. Will post Chinese translation when I have it, plus pics of the event afterward.

Selections for HomeShop: Music from Detroit and Michigan

A group of us are starting out on about twenty days of travel and research through different parts of China, beginning with a week in and around Beijing. Four of us come from current homes in the midwestern part of America, specifically the states of Wisconsin and Illinois. Together and separately, we have been writing and making art about the many ways that the economies, social movements, and institutions based or begun in the Midwest gave birth and remain tethered to the global systems of exchange that now bind humanity in a single flow of information, capital, biology, and cultural forms. This event helps to serve the purpose of introducing ourselves to you, of telling you where we are coming from, and of describing through music another of our place obsessions, Detroit.

The music history of Detroit and lower Michigan is as rich as that of any other American region. But unlike the older musical traditions of regional America—for example, the Delta, Appalachia, or New England—the musical culture for which Michigan is known is newer. Michigan artists did not make a collective impact nationally and internationally until the 1960s. But beginning in that decade and continuing ever since, a steady stream of artists with Michigan origins have put out sounds across genres that have entertained and influenced millions of listeners far and wide, in contradistinction to the very specific and provincial characteristics of Michigan society. Obviously I can only deliver a very limited introduction in one evening, leaving scores of important artists and hundreds of outstanding songs and albums not even mentioned, much less heard. A comprehensive introduction is hopeless, and, I must emphasize, my knowledge is pretty superficial. Instead, I have brought along seven long-playing records and suggest we go deep into them. The playlist emphasizes rock but includes a significant chunk of soul. It is through these records that I can give you some idea of the culture of Michigan—a culture that is now emerging as a post-industrial present from which other places all around the world can and must learn.

The musical culture of lower Michigan was fertile in the 1960s because of several factors. First of all at the material level, the state was by then an established economic engine, creating the conditions of marketplace, education, and leisure time. The postwar generation of autoworkers, due to the long growth phase of mid-century America and to the political power of the unions, became probably the best paid working class the world had ever seen. The management and owner classes, for their part, enjoyed an overflowing affluence akin to the tech fortune amassed on the West Coast a generation later. This was the consumer/producer society in a kind of temporary and relatively stable balance, at least regionally. There were good jobs for the working kids and good universities for the bookish ones. Individual workers had not yet been deskilled but also performed the part of the mass consumer. The conditions were ripe for hugely increased local consumption and production of media in general, and of popular music in particular.

Then there was the mix of cultures, races, ethnicities, and nationalities. The massive influx of economic migrant communities over the decades of industrial expansion created in lower Michigan a northern stew unlike in any other place, especially when the proximity of Ontario is recalled. With the longtime presence of both Canadians and Mexicans, vast numbers of southern blacks and southern whites, small but intense Chinese and Korean communities, big Polish, German, Greek, Jewish, and Arab communities, the mix of cultures contributed to the trading of influences evident in the work of, for example from the 60s Mitch Ryder or the Funk Brothers, and in the 80s with the innovations of the Belleville Three. In particular, black owned media was strong early and consistently in Detroit, including in radio. In recent times the tradition of artists upholding a musical multiverse continues in the Detroit scene. For example, for those who understand southeastern Michigan it probably was not a surprise that the first white rapper to earn a large and hard-won black fanbase, Eminem, came out of the Detroit area. Similarly, African American musicians like Mick Collins keep race-based genre-definition unbalanced now, as did Question Mark and Mysterians forty years ago (in the years before the lead singer legally changed his name to “?”).

It must also be said that while the mixing took place constructively at the level of cultural innovation, on the political and economic levels there was a constant low level of class-defined strife even when times were good. Add to the primary class division the intra-class fault line between blacks and whites, plus the many lines of separation between different ethnic communities, and you see the complicated tensions present. The Detroit rebellion of 1967 was only the most dramatic and violent uprising in a social landscape made up of everyday inequalities of power, economic and political, that are being played out in the present-day politics of austerity even as we speak. So while the industrial strength and wealth of lower Michigan did not fashion a conflict-free society at all, the musical output as a whole was and is, truly, the sound of a polyrhythmic, multi-vocal, politically clued-in family of subcultures. Formally innovative, sonically seductive, bodily pulsating, emotionally uninhibited, and artistically committed, in the musical realm this was and is a literally unofficial harmonious society. And a loud one.

As a native of the state, I declare the places that I lived, Saginaw in the mid-1970s and then the suburbs of Oakland County north of Detroit in the mid-1980s, amazing places to grow up with musical sounds in the air, for kids like me, grade school and then teeanage consumers of popular culture. My generation went from grooving to the national AM hits on the transistor radio—everything from Afternoon Delight to Abba and the Ohio Players—to hearing harder stuff on Detroit’s legendary free-form radio station in its late years, WABX. Lots of stations mixed local and regional acts like Grand Funk Railroad, Martha and the Vandellas, and Alice Cooper in with the national stuff, thereby launching a great many careers. Even as we studied the soul and psychedelic sounds from the earlier generation, in my young memory disco wasn’t so bad and the synth-pop/indie/alternative/punk mix that dominated the suburban 1980s also made sense. Not everybody liked everything, but in that place and in those years we were exposed to it all, and had artists we could believe who represented where we were from.

The Selections

Artist—Album

track title

Please note! This is a sequence of tracks delivered pretty much in the order that they appear on the records. That is how we will listen to them, just like I would do at home. This whole exercise is about listening to records, not deejaying or play-list writing. 

Laughing Hyenas—Life of Crime 

Here We Go Again

Wild Heart

Outlaw

Life Of Crime

The Stooges—Fun House

Down On The Street

Loose

Fun House

MC5—High Time

Future/Now

Skunk

100 Proof Aged In Soul—Somebody’s Been Sleeping In My Bed

Somebody’s Been Sleeping

Love Is Sweeter (The Second Time Around)

I’ve Come To Save You

Ain’t That Lovin’ You (For More Reasons Than One)

Martha Reeves—eponymous first solo LP

Power of Love

Sweet Misery

Question Mark And The Mysterians—Action

Don’t Hold It Against Me

Just Like A Rose

Do You Feel It

The Paybacks—Harder and Harder

Bright Side

Me

Can You Drive

Scotch Love

The Guide: A Random Selection of Twenty-Five Artists and Entities with Michigan and Detroit Connections 

This is laughably basic list. No geeking out here. Hopefully there is a name or a factoid that my music geek friends had not known of before. But, really, this is a guide for people who have no context, no experience with the broad outlines of Michigan music history, and possibly no working knowledge of rock history in general. And yet there is a thriving rock scene in Beijing, with lots of kids going for the image, the look. Let's help them get deeper into the spirit of the thing. Dylan just played Beijing like a month ago; how is anybody supposed to get Dylan without a bit of context? It is important that we make the info available, beginning with the basics that we who grew up in America tend to take for granted. So:

1. Hank, Thad, and Elvin Jones

One of the great families of jazz, spanning pianist Hank’s mastery of the 40s and 50s styles to trumpeter Thad’s big band arranging to Elvin’s landmark work with John Coltrane and and his own groups after.

2. Mitch Ryder

One of the original rock and soul voices of Detroit, blending black soul styles and harder white rock, who came up in the mid-60s with his group the Detroit Wheels. He still performs in clubs.

3. Crucifucks

A 1980s punk band from the Lansing scene whose lyrics and sound were harshly anti-authoritarian, perfect for the Reagan-era America, or, for that matter, right now. Founding singer Doc Corbin Dart remains vocally radical and antiwar.

4. Carolyn Franklin

Talented sister of Queen of Soul Aretha and daughter of the Rev. C.L. Franklin, a black preacher widely renowned for his oratorical performances from the pulpit. Along with sister Erma, Carolyn performed backing vocals for Aretha on a number of different recordings and also wrote songs for her.

5. Bob Seger System

Led by the raspy-voiced singer who came out of the Ann Arbor youth scene, the band is remembered for a hard rocking antiwar single “2+2=?” Seger later recorded the album Live Bullet at Detroit’s Cobo Arena, the last of his rock efforts before going on to mainstream success.

6. Grand Funk Railroad

A rock outfit from Flint that became one of the country’s biggest selling arena acts of the early 70s. After the group’s demise, a bunch of the alumni formed a short-lived band called FLINT.

7. Mabel John

The first female vocalist to be signed to the Tamla label, the label Berry Gordy founded before he reincorporated it as Motown. The lesser known but equally talented sister of rhythm ‘n’ blues legend Little Willie John.

8. Death

Recently rediscovered proto-punk/hard rock band, with reissued lost demos and studio cuts for a mid-70s record that never happened.

9. Eminem

Starting from the D12 crew to becoming one of the biggest selling musical artists of our time, he also starred in the 2002 movie 8 Mile, which put Detroit back into the popular consciousness as a post-industrial society and culture.

10. Detroit Cobras

For more than fifteen years Rachel Nagy and Mary Ramirez have lead a group in performing garage rock covers of obscure soul singles.

11. Rodriguez

A late 60s-early 70s lost folk-soul legend who somehow gained a cult following first in Australia and then in South Africa and Latin America, in all cases years after he’d first recorded and been consigned to obscurity in the US, including in Michigan.

12. Mary Wells

The song My Guy was one of Motown’s biggest early hits and helped to establish the label. Mary Wells had record company disputes and health problems for years after that kept her career limited, passing away at age 49.

13. Sun City Girls

Though the experimental and avant garde Sun City Girls formed in Phoenix, the Bishop brothers grew up in Saginaw. Their Middle Eastern musical influences came to them through their Lebanese relatives, part of a large lower Michigan Lebanese community.

14. Jackie Wilson

Wilson was one of the most amazing singer/dancers of his generation. Even though other artists named him as an inspiration, by the time of his death in 1984 he had been largely forgotten on the popular level as an outstanding talent. Michael Jackson kept his memory alive by often citing Wilson as a key influence.

15. Smokey Robinson & the Miracles

One of the Motown label’s earliest and longest-represented artists. His career with the Miracles, and as solo artist and record company executive, was celebrated with a National Medal of the Arts lifetime achievement award in 2002.

16. Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen

A country rock outfit from Ann Arbor with a honky-tonk barroom sound unusual for the time, and that went completely against the grain of the hard rock psychedelia of the local countercultural scene.

17. The Go

Part of the same late 90s scene that produced the White Stripes, but with a touch of psychedelia, helping to bring honest, dirty, loud guitar riff-based rock music back onto the national scene in the early 2000s.

18. The Layabouts

Originating out of the Cass Corridor scene of early 1980s Detroit, inspired by Crass, the Clash, and the new political music of that time, the Layabouts are still together today. Over the years they have played their fun but acerbic radical songs at continental anarchist gatherings, all kinds of political rallies, and countless benefits. 

19. Dennis Coffey

Session guitarist from the Upper Peninsula who played as a member of the Funk Brothers on many of the Motown tracks from the labels second phase, when many of the artists were turning to a harder, acid-influenced sound. He regained critical appreciation with a new record in 2011.

20. The Up

Along with the MC5, The Up played as a house band at the Grande Ballroom, the performance space around which the late 60s Detroit counterculture centered. Unlike the MC5, they never recorded for a national label. Until a compilation of their singles was released in 1995, the band was hardly remembered and even less heard.

21. Big Mack label

A Detroit label from the 60s and 70s golden age that pressed many singles by casual semi-pro local talents over its twenty years, scoring no more than a few very minor local hits. The label’s catalogue was given the Numero Group Eccentric Soul treatment in 2006.

22. Insane Clown Posse­

Using a carnival/horror concept for a tasteless hip hop act that many have never understood or taken seriously, this group with Detroit origins somehow manages to sell multiple millions of records.

23. Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival

If you see a car bumper sticker reading “See you in August!” they’re talking about this festival held on private rural land on the state’s west side, the largest and most complete of its kind. Womyn-built, womyn-sponsored, womyn-consumed, the festival has been a kind of long term practical project in constructing a temporary but perennial womyn’s world.

24. The Belleville Three

Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May, and Juan Atkins were three teenagers in the early 80s living in Belleville, a suburb between Detroit and Ann Arbor, often credited with inventing the sounds that become Detroit techno. The culture born partly out of the innovations of these three lead to the establishment of the Detroit Electronic Music Festival as the first and still biggest event of its kind in the US, beginning in 2000. May and Saunderson both took a turn managing the festival.

25. Tempermill

Suburban Ferndale studio founded by musicians where dozens of Detroit artists and groups have recorded some of their most important work over the past twenty years. 

YouTube Sampler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsQ0rDnlhNM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjZ5ECKC8do&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwqL3ENO4sA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RchoabH5fhg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7eTOnNBwYU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_OHry9Nf0Y

 

Books

John Hersey—The Algiers Motel Incident

John Sinclair—Guitar Army

Angela Jimenez—Welcome Home: Building the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival

Donald Goines—Dopefiend

Craig Werner—Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul

 

 

china drift, initial itinerary!

Pasted below is the schedule of events for our China Drift, with plenty of middle dates yet to be filled in. They will be; we'll be having some announced events in both Wuhan and Chongqing. Many thanks to the HomeShop crew for their fabulous organizing and networking skills. Stay tuned!

*

大陆漂流 . 中国 Continental Drift China

2011年5月18日至2011年6月5日
18 May �C 5 June 2011

“大陆漂流.中国”活动将众多的艺术家，策展人，理论家，与活动家召集到一起，共同探索当 代地理政治转化对于公共框架与亲密生存 空间的影响。在一周的时间里，本活动将“漂”在北京，尝试将抽象分析（经济，社会学，都市生活研究，美学等等）直接导入不同的艺术实践当中。通过报告，工 作坊，讨论会与实地考察等方式，我们希望自己能在闹市与乡间的穿梭中构建一个充满欢乐，感觉试验，偶遇与思考的游历方式。

The Continental Drift China brings together artists, curators, theorists, and activists to explore the impacts that current geopolitical transformations are having on the public frameworks and intimate environments of existence. For one week, the roving seminar will drift through Beijing, endeavouring to bring abstract analysis (economics, sociology, urbanism, aesthetics, etc.) into direct contact with situated projects. By way of presentations, a workshop, discussion sessions and site visits, the project provides a movement through space thriving on conviviality, perceptual experimentation, unexpected encounters and informed travel in both metropolitan and rural settings. 
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本次大陆漂流活动由 "我们家” 青年自治中心，“家作坊”，“哪里哪里”策展联盟，与“罗盘”（美国中西部激进 文化走廊）等组织共同合作举办。

The Continental Drift China is developed by Desireè Youth Autonomy Center, HomeShop and the Where Where Curatorial Collective, in conjunction with Compass (of the Midwest Radical Culture Corridor).

活动安排 SCHEDULE
欲知所列每项活动的细节，请看本安排表下的具体内容。请注意不是所有的活动都在同一 场所，活动地址安排如下：
For detailed descriptions of each of the events listed, please see below. Note that not all events are at the same location; addresses are listed accordingly.

星期一 monday	星期二 tuesday	星期三 wednesday	星期四 thursday	星期五 friday	星期六 saturday	星期天 sunday
			19 “合辑”，底特律音乐人类学赏析，王念华主讲 “Selections”, an evening of musical anthropology led by Dan S. WANG 晚上7点开始 地点：家作坊，东城区交道口北二条8号 Thursday, 19 May, 19.00 HomeShop; Dongcheng District,Jiaodaokou Beiertiao 8	20 “大陆漂流”漂去天津Continental Drift to Tianjin	21 杨先让（艺术家， 曾任中央美术学院民间美术系主任）讲座 a Talk with Professor YANG Xianrang, artist and former head of the Central Academy of Fine Arts Folk Arts and Crafts department 具体时间待定 地点：家作坊，东城区交道口北二条8号 Exact time to be confirmed HomeShop;Jiaodaokou Beiertiao 8 “西�[计划”艺术假扮旅行社简单开张 “Journey West” Travel Agency performative soft opening 5下午4点开始  钟楼湾胡同41号  Saturday, 21 May, 16.00 41Zhonglouwan Hutong (next door to The Drum and Bell Bar)	22 《北二条小报》自办出版工作坊 Beiertiao Leaksself-publishing workshop 5月22－23日，周六到周一，早上10点开始直到印刷完毕 10.00 until the presses are hot HomeShop;Jiaodaokou Beiertiao 8
23 《北二 条小报》自办出版工作坊 Beiertiao Leaks self-publishing workshop 5月22－23日，周六到周一，早上10点开始直到印刷完毕 10.00 until the presses are hot HomeShop;Jiaodaokou Beiertiao 8	24 从5月23日“大陆漂流”继续向武汉与重庆漂流，6月4日返回北京。如果你对我们下一步的旅行感兴 趣，请e- mail垂询： lianxi@homeshop.org.cn。 From the 23rd of May until the 4th of June, the Drift continues on to Wuhan and Chongqing before rounding back up in Beijing. If you are interested to continue with us on this leg of the journey, please inquire:lianxi@homeshop.org.cn.	25	26	27	28	29
30	31	1	2	3	4	5 “哪里哪里” 艺术空间将与大陆漂流参加者联合举办一个开放总结论坛。更多的详情稍候发布。 The Where Where Exhibition Space in Caochangdi will host a final forum with China Drift participants open to the public. More details to be announced. 下午3点开始 15.00 “哪里哪里” 艺术空间 朝阳区草场地村319-1艺术东区A区内 Where Where Exhibition Space No. 319-1, East End Art Zone A, Caochangdi

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关于“大陆漂流”About the Continental Drift project

漂流是一个开放性的实践研究项目，由布赖恩・赫姆斯与克莱尔・潘迪科斯特所发起。项目基于这样一个观察可得的事实，即全球化是根据政治和经济 力量的大陆性 区隔构成的。大陆漂流以自组织的研讨小组的形式，在纽约与萨格勒布进行，合作者包括了雷内・加布里，艾林・阿纳斯塔斯以及策展人集体WHW (What, How for Whom)。2008年，漂流以移动的形式，在中西部进行了为期十天的考察，自此以后，常有定期的短期旅行。 今年4月，克莱尔与布赖恩与阿根廷同志一道从罗萨里奥旅行到巴利亚・布兰卡，追踪南半球之后新自由主义弧的区域范围。现在我们与“罗盘”的同 志、以北京为 基地的合作者以及受邀的朋友们一起，将进行为期20天的讨论与交会，中国漂流会令大陆漂流项目将在全球化大潮中进一步做杯水车薪的努力。

更多关于“大陆漂流.中国”的参加者信息在：www.douban.com/group/topic/19783008/

The Drift is an open practice research project initiated by Brian HOLMES and Claire PENTECOST that begins with the observed fact of globalization structured along continental blocs of political and economic power. Continental Drift has taken the form of self-organized seminars in New York and Zagreb, with the collaboration of Rene GABRI, Ayreen ANASTAS, and the curatorial collective WHW (What, How and for Whom). The Drift took mobile form for a ten-day expedition around the Midwest in 2008 with regular short trips afterward. In April of this year Claire and Brian traveled with Argentine comrades from Rosario to Bahia Blanca, tracing at regional scale the post-neoliberal arc of the global south. With Compass comrades, Beijing-based collaborators, and invited friends on board for twenty days of discussions and encounters, the China Drift will bring the Continental Drift project one step closer to squaring the circle of global society.

For more information about the participants of the Continental Drift China, please visit:www.homeshopbeijing.org/blog/?p=2482

合辑 Selections

5月19日，周四，晚上7点开始
地点：家作坊，交道口北二条8号
Thursday, 19 May, 19.00
location: HomeShop, Jiaodaokou Beiertiao 8

“合辑”是 一个聆听系列活动，2003年产生于芝加哥，目的是为满足音乐爱好者在学术界和吵闹的俱乐部之间的中间地带上彼此分享他们最喜欢的或最感兴趣的录音。最初 开始于芝加哥的一个实验文化空间“膳房（Mess Hall)”， 这一系列至少包括九个活动。在家作坊这期的“合辑”是第一次在美国本土之外举办。过去的主持人包括批评家Mike O’FLAHERTY，谈论关于 1984年的地下摇滚、艺术家Marc FISCHER表演音乐中的叫喊，作曲家Janice MISURELL-MITCHELL谈论关于先锋-古典传统、以及实验音乐家Gabriel SALOMAN谈论关于Crass的无政府主义朋克。通过适 当的音量和友好的讨论，“合辑”是另一种乐迷悦耳的完美去处。在今天晚上的节目中，艺术家兼作家王念华将播放两小时来自底特律和密西根的强烈 摇滚和真正黑人灵歌，在音乐方面，最具创造力的原创之一。

Selections is a listening event series born in Chicago in 2003 in answer to the need among music fans to share their best-loved or most intriguing recordings with each other, in the terrain between uptight academia and too-loud clubs. Beginning at Chicago's experimental cultural space Mess Hall, the series has included at least nine events. Selections at HomeShop will be the first in the series to take place outside the US. Past presenters have included the critic Mike O'FLAHERTY on the underground rock of the year 1984, artist Marc FISCHER on screaming in music, composer Janice MISURELL-MITCHELLl on the avant-classical tradition, and experimental musician Gabriel SALOMAN on the anarcho punk of CRASS. With moderate volume levels and friendly discussion, Selections is the perfect place to treat your ears to the fandom of another. For this evening's program, artist and writer Dan S. WANG plays two hours of intense rock and true soul from Detroit and Michigan, one of America's most musically creative regions.

西�[计划 The Journey West

5月21日，周六下午4点 
地点：钟楼湾胡同41号（钟鼓楼酒吧隔壁）
Saturday, 21 May, 16.00
location:  41 Zhonglouwan Hutong (next door to The Drum and Bell Bar)

作为“大陆漂移项目”的一部分，丝特芬妮・若芬堡和王念华将为他们那个名为“西�[计划”的合作旅行社项目开一个张。这个旅行社位于钟楼和鼓楼 之间， 将提供一个你连梦都没梦见过的“美国梦”一条龙服务。

As part of the Continental Drift program, Stephanie ROTHENBERG and Dan WANG will present a soft opening of their collaborative travel agency project entitled "The Journey West".  Located between the Drum and Bell towers, the travel agency will offer full service package tours of an "American Dream" that you haven't even dreamed of yet. 

《北二条小报》Beiertiao Leaks
5月22－23日，周六到周一，早上10点到印刷完
地点：家作坊，交道口北二条8号
Sunday & Monday, 22-23 May, 10.00 until the presses are hot
location:  HomeShop, Jiaodaokou Beiertiao 8

北二条小报将于2001年5月22日至23日着手进行第二版的筹划及发行工作。以日报的形式为模板， 我们将再次把注意力集中在日常生活中的某一天。胡同里的新鲜事，天气状况，转瞬即逝的交易等等都是我们探索并试图记录的对象。 由于本次活动 与大陆漂流艺术项目正好同时举行，我们的记者需在运动中记录下自己所背负的种种。报道作为一种投射或敏锐感知的前提是它必须对读者的反应有某 种预判，通过模糊性，虚拟性与可能性达到对事件即时性的超越。
 
具体事宜：
从2011年5月22日开始，我们将相聚在家作坊北二条新闻/设计/印刷室，在此参与者们将各就各位，在实践中面对文本交织的瓶颈并探索隐匿 其中的突破口。 在活动结束前，小报将以丝网印刷的方式出版并准备好投放到读者手中。 我们欢迎您在这两天中随时到访，为《北二条小报》提供 文本，图像，信息，周边新闻，设计，工作，点心或灵感。 至于我们每个字的稿酬，你可以向任何记者打听：写作赚不来钱，但我们的工作是出于对 新闻事业的热爱，对吧？

Beiertiao Leaks continues with its second edition for a two-day workshop from 22-23 May 2011. In the tradition of the daily paper, we will again address the content of a single day. The local news, the weather, fleeting bargains and other phenomena are still to be sought out and documented. But in this edition, coinciding with the Continental Drift in Beijing, we must also record the baggage we bring with us as our correspondents go mobile. Reporting is a form of projection as much as of sharp perception, insofar as it organizes reception. Insofar as it follows stories beyond their immediacy, through ambiguity, virtuality and possibility. 

The Facts: 
Starting at 10am on 22.05.11, we will gather at the Beiertiao newsroom/design department/printing press in HomeShop, where participants will take their positions and weave together the unweavable. By the end of the two days, the edition will be silkscreen printed on-site and ready for distribution. You are welcome to come at any point over the weekend to contribute text, image, information, local rumors, design, labor, refreshments and/or inspiration. As for our rate-per-character, ask any journalist: writing doesn't pay. But we're in it for the lifestyle, right?
-- 

 家作坊 HomeShop 
 北京市东城区交道口北二条8号，邮编：100007 
 Beijing 100007 Dongcheng District 
 Jiaodaokou Beiertiao, Number 8 

 T /// +86 010 8403 0952 
 W /// www.homeshop.org.cn  
       www.homeshopbeijing.org/blog 
       www.weibo.com/jiazuofang 
       www.douban.com/group/HomeShop/ 
 E /// lianxi@homeshop.org.cn 
       jiazuofang@sina.com 

 

before i leave

I am wrapping up my teaching duties for the semester; summer is around the corner. True to the short springs of the upper midwest, it’s about to get warm after only week or two of sixty-degree weather. Up until late April spring had been all chilly rain and occasional flurries, as cold to the bones and body as the frosty air of winter proper. The shock of summer heat will be made greater by travel. A week from now I will be in Beijing, under the blazing, hazy sun of their hot season. It will be my eighth trip to China. Each time the experience becomes more familiar, but I don’t think it will ever feel routine. Maybe because the older I get the more I feel rooted to the midwest of my birth, youth, and adulthood, going to China will never feel like a casual trip, even as I spend more time there. Perhaps the more I live in both places, the more I understand the distance between them. Getting ready for a trip to the other side of the planet is a good time recap some recent art experiences. 

I made it to the Wisconsin Labor: A Contemporary Portrait show at the Watrous. It was full of photographic images and some video that faithfully, respectfully, and affectionately document the people who perform the work that makes Wisconsin. Workers in the agricultural, retail, hospitality, tourism, manufacturing and other sectors besides, are represented, with the subjects mostly shown in their occupational environment. 

But I left a tiny bit disappointed. The show could have and, really, should have been more ambitious in its concept. Of course, there is the increased urgency of addressing ideas having to do with workers’ rights because of Wisconsin’s current political climate—ie Scott Walker’s all-out neoliberal assault on all things public. But obviously the timing of the show cannot be planned in relation to a spontaneous social movement. So it is not that. 

Rather, I wished that the exhibition concept incorporated some analysis of Wisconsin’s economic system as it exists in the region and world. Maybe that can’t happen, since it would mean addressing the logics of globalization. But this is the problem: the concept and reality of both Wisconsin as an easily defined place, and labor as a self-evident category of human activity, are no longer the stable realities they were one or two generations ago. How, for example, is the work of those who live in Wisconsin but work a job across a state line to be categorized? Are we not “Wisconsin” labor? For that matter, what about the workers who make all the stuff that is imported into Wisconsin? What about the call center employees in India performing customer service for a Wisconsin company? What about the financiers and traders on Wall Street or in Dubai who invest in Wisconsin mortgages? Are they not Wisconsin labor? To me, the most glaring oversight on the labor side, for that matter, was the absence of the unemployed, especially those in the job hunt. Looking for work, it is often said, is a full time job in itself. I see this at the public library all the time—jobless folks working on applications, resumes, cover letters, and browsing the jobs listings over and over. 

Also there is the question of our present Great Recession, which as many of the more forthright social scientists will admit is actually a depression. This was hardly touched on in the show, but it defines the economics of all but the wealthiest households these days, and most certainly shapes the lifes of the working people represented in the show. To me, this is a picture of Wisconsin labor:

 

That's my favorite local music store, Good ‘n’ Loud, closed down due to a weak economy.

Deeper still, how about this for a picture of Wisconsin (or “Michigan,” or “California,” or “American” labor:

 

Automation, at the most quotidian level, rendering redundant a candy store or snack counter worker. These conveniences are so deeply naturalized by now that we hardly think of them as part of an economic logic that makes human beings unnecessary. Only the booths where a parking lot attendant once sat reminds us that unemployment is built into our economy’s tendency toward real and imagined increases in efficiency. 

I also caught the MDW Fair in Chicago. I browsed the last two hours of the Sunday it was open. Even though it was near to closing time, the energy was great, and as expected delivered a social experience as much as an art experience. This was an event organized by and for Chicago, and damn the big shot outsider buyers courted by Art Chicago and pretty much all the standard commercial fairs of other cities–that seemed to be the attitude, especially considering that scheduling it for only one weekend later would have brought it into direct comparison with Art Chicago and Next (favorably, is what most people I talked to felt). The organizers—Threewalls, Roots & Culture, and Public Media Institute—did an excellent job of bringing on board every grassroots initiative, small art publisher or bookstory, apartment gallery, non-commercial space, oddball collective in Chicago, and even some local art school departments. 

The bottom floor of the Geo Lofts was an open floor display of various sculptures and constructed projects. For me the highlight was getting to see Hui-min Tsen and James Barry’s Mt. Baldy Expedition boat, finally:

 

The second floor was all booths, tables, and exhibition walls. Regional Relationships, AREA Chicago, and Half Letter Press were all there, along with some cool things and people I hadn’t known of before. Like this:

 You know I'm a sucker for all things Aldi.

I was very happy (!) to see the Happy Collaborationists (a group of Columbia College alumni making fun things happen around town, including Anna, pictured below), a bizarre and super engaging floor arrangement in the Green Gallery booth, and the free-standing kiosk of the Silver Galleon Press. There were public discussions all day on Saturday and Sunday on the third floor, along with the first public display of the Threewalls CSA project. There was also a small room with a display of Dorchester Project plans, a Hyde Park Art Center exhibition space, and Philip von Zweck’s untitled free editioning project to which I was thrilled to contribute a drawing.

All in all,
satisfying. That’s saying a lot for an art fair.

 

on the nobel peace prize, 2010

So the Nobel Peace Prize for 2010 goes to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. While an improvement over last year’s award to President Obama, I have some serious reservations about this choice. I believe that whatever positive effects year’s peace prize will have on the cause of democracy in China will be outweighed by the negative effects of reinforcing a very unhealthy and sometimes unfair pattern in China’s relations with the Euro-American west.

The awarding of the prize to Liu will put enough attention on him as an individual to lessen his personal suffering. The authorities will probably be extra careful about Liu’s personal health, for example, and be less likely to punish his family and relations collectively. Celebrityhood can become a kind of protection, and that is a good thing. Any development that slows down the outrageously heavy blows of law (and non-law) enforcement in China is a good thing. Nevertheless, not only will the publicity and attention fail to budge the Chinese Communist Party at any systemic level, but the way this story plays out in the West does nothing but strengthen the self-satisfied, self-presumed moral superiority of the West. This is a very bad thing, especially when belligerent conservatives are edging toward power in many western nations, including of course in the USA. Look where self-righteousness and certitude got George W. Bush, about 4400 American soldiers, and a couple hundred thousand Iraqis.

Some of my American leftist friends and acquaintences have jumped right into supporting the cause of freeing Liu Xiaobo. Or at least joining Liu support and protest pages on Facebook. The casual quality of this Facebook “activism” speaks volumes about the problem of superficiality in American activist circles in relation to a political line on China. Without a basic working knowledge of Chinese political history, it is all too easy for Americans to channel their activist impulses into causes based articulated in human rights universalisms.

The document for which Liu and others got punished is actually pretty good about providing historical context. Being Chinese intellectuals, they are sensitive to the historical challenges that led China down the path it took in the first half of the twentieth century. But the solutions they propose are ahistorical. Do the authors and signatories not understand that the simple prescription of periodic elections, for example, is fraught with the problems and contradictions of political histories and national contexts? There isn’t any such thing as a system that makes use of “periodic elections,” because it is never that simple. Elections, no matter where they occur, are the productions of much debate and compromise within particular political circumstances, and are in very few places completely free of controversies themselves.

That is only one problem I see with the document. Another problem is the authors' failure to resolve or even recognize the fundamental contradiction between the desired well-being of the Chinese citizenry–which is supposedly the motivating concern driving this document–and the advocacy of private property rights, including "free and fair markets." Market logics invalidate all but the individual proprietor as the locus of economic progress. So what is to protect the citizenry as a whole? To call this kind of advocacy naive would be putting it generously.

Overall, the language of the document, when it comes to its prescriptions, is far too general. As such, it more or less falls into a set of demands that conform to Western democratic ideals, but gives no attention to the manifold problems and ever more acute contradictions that have emerged in every single society that took those ideals as their starting point for a system of governance.

At the same time, using the language of these ideals leaves aside the more promising analyses of global labor. There are worker movements going on right now in China–young workers in the southern factories, pensioners or former state-owned enterprise workers in the north–that have no meaningful connection to a Western left, but whose fate will have an impact on the economies of the US and scores of other countries. To me, using the (Marxist!) language of labor rather than of individual human rights ("democracy") is the path with more political potential for a global left, a left that circumvents the prevailing pattern of morally-superior and "democratic" West versus a backward and "totalitarian" China.

(You can read a translation of the document by Perry Link here.)

My choice for the prize? If it has to be a jailed dissident, then Leonard Peltier would be the more courageous choice. When using the peace prize to spotlight a Chinese dissident, it’s like that movie Groundhog's Day–going through a ritual we already know, without any way out. As far as the Nobel committee's gesture goes, putting the world’s attention on an American activist would take a lot more guts.