This was our idea
The background to our idea is very simple. Shanghai has been a sister city to Liverpool since 1999, and people there are fascinated to find out more about Shanghai and for those interested in art, what is happening. Liverpool has this really established biennial international and there was a lot of effort made a couple of years ago to see if there was a possibility of developing links between the Liverpool Biennial and the Shanghai Biennale that would be beneficial in stimulating ideas and debates concerning lots of different kinds of art, and different ways of making art. We thought this was a great idea as some of us have had a chance to see the last three Shanghai Biennales. So we came up with this idea, we being a group of artists and an architect living and/or working in Liverpool and Shanghai, and interested in the way art can be as much about the process of exchange and dialogue as making object or images. We use video streaming to make live links from art venues, more recently and again with this project, at the Bluecoat in Liverpool, which has a strong national and international reputation, and will host some of the Liverpool Biennial exhibits.
We are calling this process the e-space lab international.
The Shanghai based artist Hangfeng suggests we call the collective work Made Up the Translocalmotion, a mashing together of the the themes of the Liverpool and Shanghai Biennials now exhibiting.
We thought about using this concept as a way of instigating an exchange of ideas and impressions about both the Shanghai and Liverpool programmes. This would take place as a live video link 4-5 Oct between artists and us in Liverpool and Shanghai. We plan to re-visit the themes of both biennials on any basis we want, keeping in contact through links and our blog, and making a work over the following weeks that could be presented later in digital format on 1-2 November at the Bluecoat. It is a very open process that can include interpretation and critique, or something different designed to complement what is going on with the artists and themes, or even a completely new idea to help put the artwork in both cities in a context. Mashing the work and ideas is also a relevant approach.
Feel free! JOIN US!
The Shanghai Biennale explain the theme of the 2008 programme:
Our era sees an unprecedented scale of urban growth, especially in the developing world. In this process, cities grow in number, urban populations increase in size, and the proportion of the population living in urban areas rises. Urbanization is often the result of socio-economic development as an agricultural society transitions to a modern one. The theme of the 2010 Shanghai World Exposition, “Better city, better life”,? testifies to the importance of the reform and urban development agenda to China’s rise in the twenty-first century.
The curatorial team of the 2008 edition proposes to focus on people and their conditions in the dynamic urban space. The Biennale reflects on the socio-economic and cultural implications of urbanization on both the local and global levels, including the issues of migration and identity. It investigates the spatial and social boundaries between the rural and urban populations, migrants and citizens, guests and hosts. Is the fruitful interaction between them possible? Can cities make our life better?
This is the text from the Liverpool Biennial 2008 Press release:
LIVERPOOL BIENNIAL 2008
20 September – 30 November 2008
The fifth Liverpool Biennial: it’s all MADE UP!
Celebrating the tenth anniversary of its foundation by James Moores, the fifth edition of Liverpool Biennial will be even more impressive in scale and ambition than its predecessors, and a key event in Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture 2008.
MADE UP is the title of the 2008 Biennial’s International exhibition, an exploration of the ecology of the artistic imagination. MADE UP will include narrative, fantasy, myths, lies, prophesies, subversion, spectacle, and the ambiguous territory between the real and unreal. It is a reaction to the pervasive documentary focus of much contemporary art, highlighting the emotional charge within artistic imagination and our fascination with and need for ‘making things up’.
Liverpool’s cumulative experience of curating exhibitions by commissioning ambitious and challenging new artworks by leading international artists for gallery and public spaces enables it to realise exhibitions of a scale and ambition not to be found elsewhere in the UK. This has made Liverpool Biennial an example to others worldwide and a magnet to art lovers and professionals.
Consisting of around 40 new projects by leading and emerging international artists – principally new commissions alongside a few works previously unseen in the UK - MADE UP will be presented across multiple venues: Tate Liverpool, the Bluecoat, FACT (Foundation for Art & Creative Technology) and Open Eye, with half the exhibition sited in public spaces across the city. The curators for MADE UP are drawn from each of the partner venues and led by Liverpool Biennial Artistic Director, Lewis Biggs.
Liverpool Biennial continues to place an emphasis on commissioning new work from leading and emerging international artists. Artists commissioned for MADE UP include:
Ai Weiwei (China), David Altmejd (Canada), Atelier Bow Wow (Japan), Guy Ben-Ner (Israel), Manfredi Beninati (Italy), David Blandy (UK), U-Ram Choe (Korea), Adam Cvijanovic (USA), Nancy Davenport (Canada), Diller Scofidio + Renfro (USA), Leandro Erlich (Argentina), Omer Fast (Israel), Adrian Ghenie (Romania), Rodney Graham (Canada), Tue Greenfort (Denmark), Hubbard & Birchler (Ireland/Switzerland), Alison Jackson (UK), Jesper Just (Denmark), Otto Karvonen (Finland), Yayoi Kusama (Japan), Ulf Langheinrich (Germany), Luisa Lambri (Italy), Gabriel Lester (Netherlands), Annette Messager (France), Tracey Moffatt (Australia), Ged Quinn (UK), Khalil Rabah (Palestine), Royal Art Lodge (Canada), Sarah Sze (USA), Tomas Saraceno (Argentina), Richard Woods (UK).
Last post
The previous post below was the last in the sequence. This was due to the difficulty of the e-space lab grouping at that time to continue using this blog, especially from within China.It is now worthwhile looking back over the last few years and identify the way information traffic flows wax and wane in a context of political, economic and social upheaval.
Back in 2008, and well before the e-space lab international was launched, there were already occasional "road blocks" placed along our internet pathways. The background to these interventions implemented along the great firewall of China was the Beijing Olympics. Security is the watchword. It is interesting to speculate that events such as the Olympic Games are not so much the cause for the need to close things down in terms of "security", but a pre-text for implementing tactics that are more about maintaining social control, pre-empting any possibility for the conditions for social instability to arise.
The impression given during the Beijing Olympic Games that this event was part of a current of change moving towards a more open information environment, was highly effective but misleading. This mismatch between the flow of actual information traffic and a wider impression of things opening up is an ongoing one. The World Expo in Shanghai saw an interesting mix of control an openness. Whilst the Expo showcased a "world", and it was possible for e-space lab and the KIOSK project to make live links to the German Pavilion from the Bluecoat Arts Centre in Liverpool, the sporadic nature of the permeability of the great firewall continued.
This year the continental social and political phenomena tagged "the Arab spring" has amplified a continental response from governments across Asia and North Africa that is driven by a deep fear of social unrest and the possible breakdown of systems of control.
This situation now, draws together a number of themes and strands in the e-space lab project, strands and themes that are contained within this blog archive. In particular the following posts were particularly important:
Working with the Biennial-Biennale Themes
Saturday, 4 October 2008
e-space international in Liverpool and Shanghai
Today we are beginning our live video links.
Philip Courtenay writes:
Wow! What an exciting beginning. All of you in Shanghai, Shaw and co in the am space were just so full of energy and engagement with the questions that the e-space lab international is exploring. Hangfeng says things about the Shanghai Biennale that Peter Hagerty and I were just saying to each other. It sounds like the scale of some of the artworks in the Shanghai Biennale seems to drown out the smaller voices of artworks that deal with the really valid issues. Can marginalization occur, even within a big international art show?
So the younger group strongly value the fact and scale of a large scale international art show. It re-affirms the attitude of an outward looking Shanghai and an outward looking China, something that brings a benefit to everyone in China. Translocalmotion has been embraced by many tourists and citizens of Shanghai in the wake of the Olympics, and the lines of people waiting to enter the Art Museum wind around the building and the park. What are the works that ordinary people take pictures of? The Train! The Running Dinosaurs! Spectacle!
Hangfeng and I talk about the value of international misunderstandings between people and how such misunderstandings can, brilliantly, lead to the creation of new ideas. I ask Hangfeng if in Shanghai people take their songbirds from home to somewhere in the city where the songbirds can sing together in their individual cages, and he tells me that people do, and that they take them to the park. I say that this could be a model for another kind of art show, where different art is brought together so that the artworks can sing together and to each other. Later on, after the end of the link-up Peter Hagerty and I wonder if the caged songbird is an image that has a profound and analagous affinity to the plight of creative people everywhere we look.
Sunday, 5 October 2008
The discussion continues
Today we are continuing our discussions and making plans for the creation of new work.
Philip Courtenay writes:
We posted an image of the work commisioned by Liverpool Biennial International 08 from Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei. It is called Web of Light, and is placed in the Liverpool city square known as Exchange Flags (I always get confused by this placename, as it sounds more like an order!). In daylight you can see the engineering. At night you see the work as an illumination hanging in space. It is one of the spectacular works for Biennial. Bryan was wondering if the am space group looked to artists like Ai Wei Wei as a role model. They, in turn, wondered why they hadn't seen much of his work for a while.
The work is large scale, in a large scale urban setting, right by Liverpool Town Hall. Untangling the impact of scale from the first impression is difficult. Production values have a public meaning. Is the primary function to dazzle, despite the merits of the individual work involved? Is dazzle diversion? Looking at something big usually makes me feel small, which could be good in some ways, but I also feel left out of this game! I compare this feeling with the inspiration that came from seeing a small cardboard construction in the Picasso Museum in Paris, and realizing how fantastic it was to see how such ordinary (poor) materials could be a part of the making of an artwork rich in its making and in its transformative potential for me and anyone else who cares about such stuff.
There is a work here in the Bluecoat by Sarah Sze that provokes similar thoughts and feelings.
Below, is a photo of Sean Halligan (on left) and Philip Courtenay, stepping out of the Bluecoat on Sunday 5th October 2008 after the Jay Yung Show.
What's it all about art world?
Philip Courtenay writes:
At the moment I am thinking about the audience for art, and obviously in relation to the Liverpool Biennial, and the current context of Liverpool being the European Capital of Culture in 2008. Hanfeng asked us all some questions at the outset of this project, including:
What's the visitors reaction towards the Biennial?
The audience of art is potentially everyone who sees the art (a bit like Beuys' idea that potentially every human being is capable of becoming an artist), but it is the human beings who see the art, and also understand the art, they are the public for that art! It might be just one other person, but that is not just OK, it is fantastic. If millions understand then that is good as well, and maybe better? The term "public" needs a bit of space for thought as well, as it is a term that can be used in contradictory and confusing ways!
Below you can see a videowork by Shaw showing the lines of people waiting to enter the Shanghai Art Museum to see the 7th Shanghai Biennale.
Thursday, 9 October 2008
Conversation
Philip Courtenay writes:
Today I had a great conversation with Hangfeng.
We were catching up with ourselves after the weekend, reflecting on some of the topics of conversation. Hangfeng had heard how fascinating the discussion had been on Sunday, especially the discussion between the am space group and Jay Yung. Topics for us could include:
- wondering about the function of the spectacular type of art, in both the Biennial, Biennale and Liverpool '08 context.
- talking about working through process in a context where the fact of 'art as object' still seems to have a status that overides the value of 'things happening'.
- valuing collaborative processes.
- wondering about 'international art'! Is it international, or in fact, art world parochial?
- connections between people in different locations may be international, but they are also local.
- How are we going to make a different art for the e-space lab international?
What do you think?
Hangfeng speaks such good English. I feel embarrassed at my lack of a reciprocity in the language department. He speaks English in his everyday life as a matter of course, and this suggests a cultural environment of the exchange of concepts, and the interpretation of ideas that I do not have access to here in the UK. Translation as a process will always produce new consciousness, the discovery of other ways of thinking. My best hope is that visual material can contribute to communications in a non verbal, but nevertheless in a linguistic way. Connectedness in meaning is an ambition that continues to have appeal, along with the idea that at some points along the journey I can stir myself awake through the struggle.
We love the support we are getting from the Bluecoat and everyone involved in Shanghai and for those of us on the UK side I think it is worth pointing to something Hangfeng said in passing about the fact that in China there is no equivalent as yet to public institutions like the Arts Council in England supporting the arts and artists. There are issues to explore in this territory. I would like to suggest a project dedicated to Jin Shan and Hangfeng called "we still gonna do it too, plan still on..."
We were talking about songbirds in birdcages, and songbirds that fly away. The green ring necked parakeets of Esher in southwest London. The parrot as the proof that there are miracles (see green ring necked parakeet in picture by Jan Van Eyck). The sounds of the city and laughter as a sound. The richness in these topics will come through in the art we make. Of this I am convinced.
Hangfeng is going to take some video for me of the people in Shanghai who take their songbirds in cages to the park which are then placed near other caged songbirds, so they can sing together.
Friday, 10 October 2008
Aesthetics is for artists what ornithology is for birds
Philip Courtenay writes:
Working collaboratively, thinking collaboratively, translating and exploring, is fun! But, so far, it just seems to be me jotting stuff down on the blog. Anyone interested in adding stuff just e-mail me and I can give you details for editing this blog.
Barnett Newman (Abstract Expressionist, New York School) provides the quotation that titles this post. Interpreting this idea could, but not exclusively, include the following:
- Is this statement about the qualitative difference between the knowledge, awareness or awakeness, produced in a process of making art, as distinct from the reproduction and consumption of art?
- Has the reception of art, the experience of the audience of art, punters and experts alike, been drowned out by the accompanying noise of the "consciousness" industries (as discussed by Hans Haacke and others involved in Institutional Critique all those years ago) to an extent where it is sleepfulness that now reigns supreme?
The Wikipedia page on aesthetics includes the following questions:
- What is the value of art?
- Is art a means of gaining knowledge of some special kind?
- Does it give insight into the human condition?
- Is art perhaps a tool of education, or indoctrination, or enculturation?
- Does art make us more moral?
- Can it uplift us spiritually?
- Is art perhaps politics by other means?
- Is there some value to sharing or expressing emotions?
- Might the value of art for the artist be quite different from its value for the audience?
Considering this last question I wonder; can this difference be bridged? Is it worth bridging? Is there a way in art, a style of art that is about bridging? Bridge building is a job for engineers, but is art, the process of making art, potentially a part of a wider engineering of the communication structure that shapes our experience of the world?
When in 1973 Joseph Beuys wrote:
“Only on condition of a radical widening of definitions will it be possible for art and activities related to art [to] provide evidence that art is now the only evolutionary-revolutionary power. Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build ‘A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART’… EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who – from his state of freedom – the position of freedom that he experiences at first-hand – learns to determine the other positions of the TOTAL ART WORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER.”
Was he right? Or mistranslated?
Was he proposing rather than announcing?
Monday, 20 October 2008
Perfect Intervention
I accidentally saw 2 kids were playing shadow games in front of the artwork from the Shanghai Biennial, which was a slide projection, and their parents were taking photos. I thought this was such a perfect intervention!
- Hangfeng
Can not see the video below, please click the link
Thursday, 30 October 2008
The power of symbols
Philip and Hangfeng have been in regular contact since the launch of the e-space lab international project on 04.10.2008 in the Hub at the Bluecoat.
There are a number of collaborative art projects under way. One in particular has generated some video work. In English you can say that something is a something else. This is not just saying something is like something else, it is saying that one thing (that is not like another) is that other! So this is a complex juxtaposition that is the stuff of symbolism. This is not juxtaposition as things side by side, although the editing process works with apposition, it is exploring something by making it something other!
We chose songbirds in cages and birds in an aviary.
The songbirds in cages were video recorded by Hangfeng in a park in Shanghai. Parks in Shanghai are full of social and public discourse, people playing games, dancing, exercising, singing opera, and including people bringing their songbirds to a place where the songbirds can also engage in conversation and exchange. What if an art festival was organised in such a way that artwork could sing to artwork? The work of curators, looking after the artworks, would bring the artworks together, but the singing as discourse between artworks is something else. The gap might be as big as the difference in interests and understandings between birds and ornithologists, but crossing gaps is what our brains do best, and with symbols.
In the UK we don't take our birds to the park, but we like to see and hear them in situations like an aviary. We document the difference between China and the UK, and we make-up the scenario that the aviary is like the museum, situated in an international art world with artists networking, but they are not able to leave this particular environment. They are cooped up, literally! Nevertheless, as long as there is food and water provided, it is a life of song making.
Posted by Philip Courtenay
Friday, 31 October 2008
Event at the Bluecoat tomorrow
Following on from the 2008 e-space lab international
So, the theme of birds communicating is already there in the presentation of the video work, but for 2010 our chosen approach foregrounded the artist and the artist's studio in the urban contexts of Liverpool and Shanghai. This resulted in the instigation of the project X-position.
This project was destined for failure due to lack of funding support from the Arts Council England. In the competition for funds, choices that might have been available in previous years to the decision makers were severely limited in the context of spending on the lead up to the London Olympics 2012. This was the plan:
e-space co-lab international presents:
Art in the Cities & X-positions:
The curatorial contexts of the Liverpool and Shanghai biennials provide a framework of exchange and collaborative activity in the e-space lab e-dialogues for Art in the Cities. Parallel to this we believe in the crucial importance of the new e-space co-lab project now called x-positions. X-positions is about creating public access to an international dialogue that has a special mix of critical practices embedded in the life of the city.
The "x" position is the geographical/psychogeographical critical position.
The 6 new artworks will form part of the chorography and synthesis of conversation and making, from the street to the studio and back again, that 3 pairs of artists working together, will make together. This art making is not a form of commentary, it is about the being, expression and exploration of observant participants rather than participant observers.
• We will present 3 live video-streamed events during October and November in the context of the Liverpool Biennial 10 and Shanghai Biennale 8 and overlapping with the end of the Shanghai Expo. Weaving the two core themes of “touched” and “rehearsal” in a double helix, linking citizens with artists around areas of common interest.
• We will connect issues of public realm, urban transformation, and the practices of everyday life in an ongoing process of critical dialogue through the making of new work in a context of dialogue and interactivity.
For x-positions we will:
• Link the inside and outside of studios in Shanghai and Liverpool, art-spaces and public and private spaces in a web-based broadcasts throughout the duration of this project, accessible 24/7.
• Organize what we call a digital conference of artworks, the 6 outcomes of collaborative work between artists in Liverpool and Shanghai.
1. September 29 at the Bluecoat; presenting live art projects by artists in Liverpool and Shanghai working on the theme of the Expo 2010 “Better city, better life” (referencing the UK, Liverpool and China Pavilions).
2. October 28 at the Bluecoat; a live link on the Biennale programmes drawing together some of the open themes generated so far.
3. November 22 at the Bluecoat; a live link to showcase the Shanghai Biennale in a dialogue that intends to follow up on issues relating to public domain and leading on from previous explorations. To exchange reflections on the biennial experiences structured in the explorations by Shanghai and Liverpool based artists of new work relating freely to the biennial themes of “touched” and “rehearsal”.
Rachel Marsden kindly mentioned our plans in a paper she delivered at the CCVA Conference at the China Academy in Hangzhou. This is the section of the paper discussing our approach:
Refocusing on the 8th Shanghai Biennale, another planned periphery project was 'X ‐ positions’ by e-space lab, a collaborative group who use commonplace technology, including video streaming, to connect cities and urban contexts worldwide as a curatorial model and site for public cultural exchange. They build diverse networks of association, which are constituted by that association. It was unable to be put into practice, however, I still felt it necessary to speak about it here as it presents the possibilities of what it could have brought to the world of the “transcultural”, during the translation of contemporary Chinese art.
To e‐space lab, the public is not only the audience but also the spaces they use as spaces to create links, to create dialogues, to create exchanges, and must not be seen on a basic level as a form of video conferencing, but instead as a “public” event, much like the Shanghai Biennale as a whole. Continuing their previous projects of bringing new dialogues into galleries, a “public” space, the new project was intended to work as a ‘Biennales dialogue’ ‐ an online conversational exchange and collaboration between artists, curators, designers and architects examining each of the thematics relating to the 8th Shanghai Biennale, ‘Rehearsal’, and the Liverpool Biennial 2010, ‘Touched’.
‘X‐positions’ was to take a critical position on commonality between Shanghai and Liverpool and what co‐founder of e‐space lab, Philip Courtenay, sees as ‘the local to local, rather than the local to global’(5). It was to use artists’ studios as nodal points in both cities, building immediate relationships and cultural exchanges by directly bringing the conceptualising and making phase of contemporary art into new public spaces by hosting live web casts 24‐7 between contemporary Chinese and UK artists’ studios, a chance to visit them sub‐virtually. They were to connect what was happening in the studios, the artists’ works and the location outside in the urban fabric, to connect between the private space and public space, also the physical and material nature of the space and how it is managed and used, showing movement and physical interactions, whilst being able to listen to what was being said from either side. The web cameras and links to the studio spaces were to remain live even when the studio spaces were empty. This live streaming was to be shared and placed in accessible spaces for “local to local” public engagement and was not to be seen as an overall event but a conversation as you are able to respond at anytime. However, scheduled events through a Skype connection were to be staged as a further opportunity to more specifically and directly engage and converse. In addition to the video streaming, e‐space lab uses disparate blogs, a blog for each different project with their own identity, always orientated around the specific users related to the project, rather than the public as a whole, whereas in this case ‘X‐ positions’ would have had its own acting as another platform for “local to local” exchange, specific to the Shanghai Biennale and Liverpool Biennial public audiences.
During a Skype interview with Courtenay, or you could say cultural exchange, we spoke of the development of the “local to local” art discourse which he felt goes on ‘spontaneously through new media, where if you have connections that are not just about art but about location and space, then you begin to see how every day life connects to art and how the various assumptions about that environment fall away, then you become part of more of an exploring mode rather than †a †receiving mode. When this doesn’t happen, it becomes one of the big misunderstandings.’(6)
In this context, it becomes obvious that the sense of exchange and engagement between strangers in new “local to local” public spaces, and in this curatorial platform, makes certain ideas and concepts become unpredictable, bringing to the forefront the capacity for misunderstanding and mistranslation. I question, if and when it does happen, how should this misunderstanding and mistranslation be used? Courtenay states ‘When you become aware of the problem, or of misunderstanding, you suddenly wake up and begin to think about what the assumptions you are making, about the language, about the art, about the space and situation, then new ideas happen.’(7) I think through questioning this misunderstanding and mistranslation, the gaps and voids in between, you realise they hold space for emotional and intellectual thinking, which can be manifested into creativity.
On the one hand, the work of the West Heavens programme and ‘X‐positions’ can be seen as a mere spontaneous cultural comparison, the start of a new moment of hybrid practice. On the other, it can be seen as a juxtaposition of contrasting voices and public spaces, simultaneously existing as an apposition. As you engage in the exchange and qualities of the two different situations with shared “local to local” commonalities, acting on the newfound information and the possibilities of misunderstandings and mistranslations, it can create a more fluid exchange where creativity can arise and develop. Therefore, it is a case of trying to rethink the “transcultural” curatorial platform as it lies open, whilst considering what interventions can be introduced to the process, and in turn how we deal with the different levels of intellectual machinery and resources, socio‐investigative tools and instruments used to translate contemporary Chinese art.
To suddenly wake up
Let the birds do the talking
So, now, as things continue to get difficult. why not, let the birds do the talking?
