Tag Archives: dafen

原创－the sz cultural industries fair

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The Seventh Shenzhen Cultural Industries Fair (文博会) opened three days ago. Of note is the ongoing institutionalization of types of creativity; by Hall theme, various Shenzhen ministries recognize and promote the following types of cultural industry:

  1. Integrate Culture and Science and technology, Advance Industry and Market Development 文化与科技相融合，产业与市场相促进
  2. Creativity, Taste, Life 创意 • 品味 • 生活
  3. New Media, New Life, New Future 新媒体 • 新生活 • 新未来
  4. Inheritance, Craft, Products, Preservation 传承•技艺•产品•保护
  5. [No Hall 5]
  6. Design, Branding, Quality 设计 • 品牌 • 价值
  7. News Publications 新闻出版馆
  8. Culture, Collision, Exchange 文化·碰撞·交融
  9. Creativity, Challenge, Going Beyond 创意·挑战·跨越

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Planned obsolescence? The Dafen Lisa and Shenzhen Identity

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507 artists worked on the  Dafen Lisa for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. However, as the City beautifies for the next big international event (the Universiade), the piece was targeted for removal because it does not conform to (ever changing) urban plans. Unexpectedly, the decision was successfully protested because the scale of Dafen’s collective copy of the Mona Lisa has produced a cultural item that is recognized as being unique to Shenzhen, which in turn, has led to debates about “to raze or not to raze (拆，还是不拆).”

This debate interests because it speaks to Shenzheners’ increasing recognition that over the past thirty years, what they have done is valuable and worthwhile, no matter what other people think. The birth, if you will, of civic pride against the very standards that were once the city’s raison d’être. Here’s the quote:

深圳为大运会整顿市容本没有错，街道、城管相关部门没有错。政府关注的是安全、规范、整洁；媒体关注的是文化艺术氛围，艺术家与画工关注的则是生存与创造环境。若果一定要说错，那可能是我们的文化错了：在一次次国际盛会面前，我们是如此“激动”，以至于显得不太自信。

Shenzhen is not wrong to beautify the city for the universiade, the relevant street and city departments are also not wrong. The government is concerned with safety, order, and tidiness; the media is concerned about cultural and artistic atmosphere, artists and art workers are concerned about their living and creative environment. Perhaps if we have to say something is wrong, maybe its that our culture is wrong: in international event after international event, we become this “excited”, which makes us seem to lack self-confidence.

中国观澜版画基地: What is a cultural resource?

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Yesterday, Wenzi and I visited her classmate, Zhao Jiachun who works at the Guanlan Woodblock Print Base (中国观澜版画基地). Jiachun generously showed us the Base and briefly introduced its history.

Guanlan interests me for three reasons (in addition to the beautiful setting, pictures here):

Guanlan is, at the moment, a purely municipal government funded project. This points to the growing ideological importance of culture in Shenzhen’s identity – both domestic and international.

Guanlan is part of the movement to recuperate elements of Shenzhen’s pre-reform history as a cultural resource. What’s interesting is that this recuperation is happening village by village. Consequently, what emerges is a loose network of sites, rather than an overall “history” of the city. In this case, Guanlan is the third Hakka site incorporated into the municipal cultural apparatus. The first was Dapeng Suocheng (大鹏所城), a military installation in the eastern part of the city. The second was Crane Lake Compound, which is now the Hakka Folk Custom Museum (深圳客家民俗博物馆鹤湖新居) in Luoruihe Village, Longgang (罗瑞合村).

Guanlan is an example of using pre-modern architecture to incorporate international art production into local identity. More specifically, the experience of architectural difference (such as living in a Hakka compound) bridges even as it creates cultural difference. Thus, the Base invites foreign and Chinese artists for residencies. These residencies allow foreign artists to “understand” China / Shenzhen and incorporate these new experiences into their art. At the same time, these exchanges also refigure a local art form (woodblock printmaking) as international cultural heritage. Importantly, this kind of “experience” of the local past as a cultural bridge seems a global trend. In Switzerland, we visited Romainmotier, which also offers artist residencies in a beautiful, restored, pre-modern setting.

This has me wondering about the ideological relationship between past and present urban settlements: Is “history” now the location of “culture”, while the “present” is all about one’s location on a scale of relative modernity? In other words, do Shenzhen and NYC participate in the same “culture”, their real differences explained away as “levels of modernity”? While their cultural “difference” must be found by excavating the past?

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dafen museum

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dafen village museum

went to dafen village the other day. the museum building is finished and staff are now finishing the interior, including choosing pictures and designing galleries. the idea of a dafen museum is itself stunning, especially as the museum is a 5 minute walk from the dafen louvre, one of the largest art malls associated with the village. (unlike the museum, the louvre is located accross the street from actual village borders.) so pictures of what seemed incredibly like a critical performance piece but was in fact business as usual–pictures of workers transporting oil paintings from the yet unopened museum to waiting trucks, the same small, blue trucks that are used throughout shenzhen’s industrial villages…

大芬村：souvenir update

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i went back to dafen with a friend and bought several souvenirs. i met a husband and wife who have a shop selling old ceramics, including mao busts and plates from the cultural revolution. unable to resist the irony i bought a plate of mao and lin biao. the quotation (published in the p.l.a. news on august 3, 1967) reads, “revolution is the liberation of productive forces, revolution is advancing the development of productive forces (革命就是解放生产力，革命就是促进生产力的发展)”。i then flipped through their collection of cultural revolution posters, all the while wondering, “what if they’re fake?!” however, authenticity wasn’t what stopped me from buying a poster; i didn’t purchase a poster because i wanted brighter colors. the vendor explained the black and white prints in terms of development: apparently china didn’t have color printing in the 1960s.

i also met a husband and wife who sell contemporary vases, as well as remnants from their former business importing russian folk art (by way of harbin). so i bought a small vase and am using it to hold pens and pencils. the folk art had me thinking again about the aesthetic politics of copying. i don’t look for unique folk art, but authentic, which is defined by continuing a tradition, usually through emulation–the big latin word for copying. in a nearby shop, a woman selling miao folk art, all guaranteed to be hand embroidered, reiterated this truth. repetition authorizes tradition. but repetition by whom? could i make a vase, or only appropriate the technique, no matter how accurate my interpretation?

so three examples of reproductions that aren’t forgeries–cultural revolution stuff, russian folk art, and miao embroidery, all sold in dafen. meanwhile, the shenzhen daily reports that huang ye (黄野), one of the most successful entrepreneurs in dafen, has a factory of over 200 employees, with 10 designers making “original” works within a particular tradition for sale in europe and the united states.huang ye has contextualized artistic reproduction in terms of italian tradition and global economics. in mandarin, these oil reproductions are called 行画 (hanghua). according to huang ye, the reproduction of classic works used to be based in italy. however, given economic development, this production moved to korea in the 1930s and 40s, with the orders and models coming from italy. in the 1960s and 1970s production moved from korea to hong kong, where the reproductions were called 韩画 (hanhua), eventually moving to china in the 1980s.

a final irony. the vendors of russian folk art also like indian religious iconography. behind their desk, they have placed a russian mary and guan yu, the god of wealth beneath two indian gods. when i asked, they said that guan yu was important in guangdong; all businessmen had a guanyu in their shop. the other gods were just aesthetically pleasing.

dafen office space

who’s to say that dafen hasn’t been revolutionized?

大芬村: when is a copy not a forgery?

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located in buji town, dafen village is (in)famous for the assembly line production of copies of famous works of art, usually western masters. dafen artists pride themselves on making authentic copies, giving attention brush struck, style, and feeling. all for as little as US$ 10.

i have visited dafen village several times this summer and have yet to persuade myself to buy a souvenir painting. not that i need to. i already have a dafen souvenir, which a friend gave me after her hong kong shop went under. (she tried to cash in on the hong kong passion for interior make-overs by selling dafen copies in hong kong.) as it stands, my reluctance to purchase a dafen painting intrigues me. after all, living in shenzhen i regularly buy pirated dvds and cds; i also buy “improved upon” copies at luohu mall at the hong kong-shenzhen border. my l.v. billfold, for example, has giant flower smiley faces, which i haven’t seen on any authentic l.v. i wear knock-offs when i can’t find what i’m looking for in outlets. moreover, i live in a housing development that looks like housing developments all over the city; my apartment is itself a reproducible unit in a mass produced building. and even on superficial reflection, i remember buying posters of great works of art to hang on my college dorm wall.

the only other area of my life as a consumer, where i seem as resolutely committed to originality seems culinary. yet here again, the question is not so much one of whether or not a dish can be reproduced (after all the sign of a top chef is the ability to reproduce the same taste day in and out), but rather one of freshness; i enjoy fresh vegetables, unfrozen meets, and innovative tastes. i want the same on my walls. or so i tell myself as i look at the mass produced spring festival couplet i have hung on my door (年年如意新春乐；岁岁平安合家欢) with glittered chicken.

my reluctance to purchase a copy found its counterpart in the pictures i took while there; i again found myself looking sideways at what was happening. i ended up photographing an unintentional street performance. however, yu haibo of the shenzhen economic daily won at the 2006 world press press photo of the year contest for his photos of dafen village. eastsouthwestnorth provides a translation of 天方乱谭‘s analysis of yu’s photos and how representative they are of china.

those interested in purchasing a dafen oil painting can order directly from various websites (dafen village dot com and dafen dot net).　the people’s daily provides a brief history of dafen.