Today I learned about cultivating oysters. I also visited Shajing, the town that oysters built even though oysters are no longer cultivated here. Instead the oyster babies are sent to Taishan where they are raised and returned to Shajing for processing. It’s almost like assembly manufacturing, except its agricultural production. Continue reading
First day of 2015, I walked Fishermen’s Wharf, Shekou where they’re still selling fish. The oysters cultivated on the Hong Kong side of Shenzhen Bay are sold in Dongguan and Guangzhou. Impressions, below.
For those following the shifts in Guangdong structure, you noticed that yesterday Shekou, along with Qianhai, Nansha, and a bit of Zhuhai was designated a self-governing trade zone (自贸区). Inquiring minds want to know: what does that mean? Speculation abounds and adjustments are coming, but there seem to be two key points. Continue reading
Desire ravages Baishizhou.
Last night at Handshake 302, Fu Honghong discussed her wall, “Floating Desires (漂浮的欲)”, the fifth installation of the series, My White Wall Compulsions (墙迫症). Fu Honghong is one of the few CZC Special Forces who lives in Baishizhou. She came to Shenzhen via a rural childhood and urban university, and now works as a graphic designer in neighboring Overseas Chinese Town. On her wall, Fu Honghong wanted to map Baishizhou in terms of the desires–to find a job, to meet a life partner, to buy a house and leave–that although immaterial, nevertheless are the reason that Baishizhou exists as it does. Continue reading
The balmy days of installation gave way to cold winter rain for the opening of “This Time, This Place” in Shenzhen’s Central Park. Our brief as participants was to respond to the site, and in this sense the weather reminded us just how different indoor and outdoor exhibitions can be. But that’s not what I want to talk about. Today, I’m wondering: is there art that ameliorates rather than is predicated on class privilege? Continue reading
Lei Sheng and I have worked together with a team of craftsmen from a Shenzhen factory to create “Evolution”, a site specific installation for the Shenzhen Public Sculpture Exhibition. The show opens tomorrow in Shenzhen central park, along side the Futian River. Comments and thoughts tomorrow, along with images of finished sculpture and other installations. To contextualize project, please click houhai, land reclamation and/ or oysters in the tag cloud. Below, pictures of evolutionary progress.
Walked the old float glass factory yesterday. Less than a year ago it hosted the Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism. Today it stands empty, but magnificently so. The fearless waste of high modernism and steely industrialization. We take our temples where and as we find them. Continue reading
This week while helping to install the next edition of “My White Wall Compulsions (墙迫症)”, Laura Belevica’s beautiful “Threshold (生死之门)”, I was struck by the beauty of collaboration within small, shared spaces. Indeed, our exploration of what can be done with the walls of an efficiency apartment has revealed unexpected vastness and implicit conversation. Continue reading
In 2009, Sam Green and Carrie Lozano made the short documentary Utopia, Part 3: The World’s Largest Shopping Mall about the South China Mall in Wanjiang, Dongguan. On November 1 and 2, 2013, I visited said mall. This post serves as a partial update. It also a brief response to the ideas of “too big to fail” and “acceptable capitalism” that haunt so many apologies for contemporary neoliberalism. Continue reading
Visited the New South China Mall in Dongguan, which is undergoing a family makeover (more next post). Today, impressions of my neon romance with the semi-abandoned re-occupied playground. Continue reading
Shenzhen Noted 