The e-space lab international was a move to inter-connect on a global and continental platform with issues, thoughts generated in the virtual encounters of artists in Liverpool and Shanghai in the autumn of 2008 whilst the Liverpool Biennial and Shanghai Biennale were simultaneously showcasing examples on international art in these cities that have a very dynamic set of cultural connections.
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.
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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:
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.
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.
The e-space lab project is exploring how internet connections between people in diverse urban and international contexts can enable a dialogue that helps make more meaningful a reciprocal representation of what the conditions of actual everyday life in different places really are. Many of the ideas, illusions and misrepresentations that shape our understanding of where and how other people live in places different from our own can fall away in this kind of dialogue, and also be replaced by a live and ongoing pattern of multiple alternative representations. The forms that we use range from the human voice (by Skype or phone), text, text messages, and images produced by digital cameras and mobile phones, video of course, and even to web pages and podcasts. We like to engage with these forms in a process of dialogue and exchange, using whatever resources are available, and exploring the potential of new tools as they come on stream, especially streaming video. As artists we are especially interested in the role the arts play in valuing practices and the human qualities that shape everyday life in the different places we find ourselves.
