CZC特工队 (tègōngduì) organized in 2012 in order to discuss, plan and support creative engagement with Shenzhen’s urban villages. Three questions have inspired us.

1. What can be learned and gained from returning to the urban villages?

2. How can handshake efficiency apartments, densely crowded streets, and bustling small plazas be repurposed as cultural spaces?

3. How can creative interventions motivate Shenzhen residents to cross cultural and economic difference and discuss our common urban condition?

Our decision to locate our art space and the performance series, Handshake 302 in Baishizhou, one of Shenzhen’s most (in)famous villages, constitute concrete answers to these questions. We hope that each visitor to our art space and every audience of a performance will use these diverse works to discuss and formulate their own answers to these questions, stimulating a rediscovery and re-evaluation of Baishizhou – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

In order to integrate art exhibitions, performances and research with the residents of Baishizhou, we are collaborating with the Shenzhen Baishizhou Investment & Development Company. We also attempt to purchase supplies from Baishizhou shops and vendors.

We welcome collaboration with artists, performers, and scholars from Shenzhen and the rest of the world. Please contact us if you have a project to realize in Baishizhou or another urban village.

Handshake 302 has been selected as a collateral exhibition of the 2013 Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture.