Wang Lingzhen and I collaborated to translate three pieces of autobiographical writing by Wang Anyi, one of contemporary China’s more important writers. The collection is called “Years of Sadness” and published by Cornell University.
Enjoy.
Am posting from flickr again. Sigh. I hope this is just a glitch and not a return wordpress being blocked. We had a brief period of relief…
Poet Steven Schroeder and I have collaborated to create A Walk in Shenzhen II. The original Walk took place four years ago, 2005.
Participants in the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Biennial will
Explore the possibility of large-scale effective social mobilization in a time that lacks centralized force, spiritual solidarity and practical organization – Ou Ning, Biennial Curator.
In the context of Shenzhen’s thirty year history, the word “mobilization” resonates ironically. In 1966, Mao Zedong began the Cultural Revolution by mobilizing Chinese youth to prevent the restoration of capitalism through ongoing class struggle. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping initiated Reform and Opening by mobilizing the national engineering corps, architects, and reform-mind cadres to plan and build a Special Economic Zone, where elements of capitalism would be deployed to finance modernization projects throughout China. In other words, the construction of Shenzhen was a countermeasure to large-scale social mobilization during the Cultural Revolution and the city itself is the product of effective social mobilization under the auspices of modernization. Juxtaposed with the stated aims of the Biennial, Shenzhen’s history thus begs the question, “Why mobilization? Why now?”
Closure on the foodscape project. Last Wedensday, Sept 16, 19:30 at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, mccmcreations hosted a book launch for foodscape, the book. The book is on sale at the Bookshop of said Arts Centre. Please stop by, puruse, and buy a book!
Also, Milan Buttner completed Inter-view, his 30-minute exploration of inter-cultural exchange and multi-lingualism during the project. Click, view, and enjoy!
About a year ago, I had the privilege of participating in Vexed Urbanism: A Symposium on Design and the Social at The New School. I contributed Tianmian: East West South North an image poem that mapped four of Shenzhen’s formative ideologies along east-west and north-south axes. In this piece, I aim to show – quite literally – how landscape is never simply place, but also and always a symbolically organized world, a cosmos. Thus, Tianmianillustrates how it is possible to read not only Shenzhen’s history, but also the values that have informed the city’s construction in the lay of the land, the placement of a building, and movements in and out of an urban village.
For more on the upcoming open house, please visit the Newport Times.
invitation designed by Dawn Stetzel
“CONFLUENCE: ARTISTS FROM THE SITKA CENTER FOR ART AND ECOLOGY”
Open House Event January 11th, 2009
Five artists have been at work this fall in the studios and surrounding community of the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. A culmination of their work will be on display January 11th during a Sitka Center Open House at the Lincoln City Cultural Center from 1 pm to 5 pm. The Open House will include an exhibition of completed artworks, conversations with the artists, and a short program of song and readings.
The artists include Matthew Bower, Louisa Conrad, Mary O’Donnell, Kim Stafford, and Dawn Stetzel. The full article is here.
A week into my residency and Shenzhen and Sitka begin to speak to each other.
Yesterday, I walked along the banks of Salmon River. Kim provided snowpants and Jalene lent me a pair of boots, so I trudged happily through the muck, where the grass, barnacles, some kind of seaweed, and spiraling sands enabled a silence that I have previously only experienced in meditation. The natural beauty of Cascade Head gentles me, helping me to feel where I am.
Feeling space, as opposed to resisting space is new to me. In Shenzhen, I devote much of my time to documenting spaces that shock or outrage me. This means that I rarely allow myself to experience the agony of how the environment has been transformed in Shenzhen. Instead, I back away at critical moments and sink into abstractions about place and space. This abstracting is both defensive (Houhai truly depresses me) and part of a struggle to engage others in dialogue about what is happening in Shenzhen because I’m not sure how much others know about what is going on here (and here even in Sitka is Shenzhen…)
What strikes me in Sitka is how Shenzhen allows Sitka and other beautiful places to exist without questioning the conditions that make them possible–contamination out of sight/site, out of mind. Specifically, In Lincoln City, I haven’t seen any manufacturing. Most of the stuff around me was made in or near Shenzhen, including parts for the eMac that I’m using to type this entry (FoxConn is in Longhua, just past the Meilin Checkpoint.) Everyone at the center is involved in consumption, including consumption of this amazing environment. The rub of course is that this kind of consumption (in house with central heating and internet hook-up) is predicated on the existence of places like Shenzhen…
Together, Sitka and Shenzhen make visceral for me the question of sustainable livelihood. It is not just that we need to preserve places like Cascade Head, but also that we need to come up with ways of living that do not lead to the level of destruction that go into creating Shenzhen. The point, of course, is that these worlds co-evolve; FoxComm is where it is for real reasons, including poverty throughout neidi.
Online Universities dot com has published a list of the top 100 anthropology blogs and Shenzhen Fieldnotes was included in the category of fieldwork. Other categories include general, biological, social and cultural anthropology blogs, and archeology. Worth checking out for virtual entries into the discipline.
it’s true. if you build it, npr eventually comes. mary kay magistad reports on shenzhen here.
Shenzhen Noted 