Yesterday, Baishizhou Superhero opened at Handshake 302. Impressions from the opening, below:
Also, the latest weixin meme: the next US Ambassador to China, Max Baucus is looking for a Chinese name. On offer: 没咳死-包咳死, or “Have not yet coughed to death, but coughing to death guaranteed”! — hee.
And an interview with moi at the Nanfang daily.
Baishizhou Superhero has been installed at Handshake 302. Come and see and play with the first urban village superhero photo stand-in!
Below, the curatorial statement for the installation.
Baishizhou Superhero
Superheroes navigate the debris of urban despair, haunting the rubbished alleyways and crumbling staircases that lead to cramped spaces at the end of unlit hallways. They appear as exaggerated silhouettes or bursts of neon light. They leap over tall buildings in a single bound and rescue the victims of unfettered greed and malignant desire. Most importantly, superheroes represent the fantasy of latent potential and unlimited transformation in these techno-modernized times; mild-mannered, nerdy and bureaucratically inclined Clark Kent steps into a telephone booth and strides out a decisively manly man, who rights systemic wrongs through physical prowess. Hooray!
In the installation Baishizhou Superhero, Liu Wei’s playful cartoon characters transform Handshake 302 into a magic telephone booth. Visitors step into the space and through the power of a photo stand in become one of seven possible urban village superheroes – Methane Man, Wonder Granny, Stir Fry Fly, the Amazing Beer Babe, Village Guardian, Super Dog, or Cat-a-go-go. Friends can then take pictures of each other as they model the most common social roles in any of Shenzhen’s urban villages.
At first glance, the installation seems a tacky party game until we remember that these social roles – deliveryman, child care provider, food hawker, beer waitress, and village fireman – are the vehicles through which migrant workers transform their lives. Each migrant worker undergoes the sometimes exhilarating and often bizarre transmogrification from ordinary peasant to urbanite. However, the Baishizhou Superheroes also sustain Shenzhen’s economic boomtimes. After all, these superheroes provide the services and social network that Shenzhen’s factory workers need to make themselves at home in the city.
At second glance, the insidious charm of the installation becomes even more apparent. There is no doubt that human beings have latent potential to transform ourselves and our lives. The Shenzhen Dream hinges on this fact and migrants come to the city in order to improve their material lives. Within the maelstrom of globalization, however, the latent potential of human beings to transform ourselves has been limited by the necessity to commodify ourselves. The super power of an unpaid grandmother, for example, is to create value by providing unpaid childcare so that both fathers and mothers can join the gendered labor force, as deliverymen or waitresses.
The “super power” of all Baishizhou migrants is, in fact, the power to sell their labor on an unregulated market for as long as their bodies hold out. A popular expression maintains that migrant workers “sell their youth”. As individuals, there are limits to the scale of transformation. When a deliveryman’s legs can no longer pump a bicycle or when a waitress’ breasts succumb to gravity, these workers are replaced by younger, more energetic migrants. And there’s the fantastic allure of the superhero myth – unlimited strength to endure and transcend physically exhausting and emotionally alienating jobs.
Participating Artists: Lei Shenzheng, Liu Wei, Lv Linxuan, Mary Ann O’Donnell, Yang Qian, Zhang Kaiqin, Zhang Yan, Zhou Tianlu
Hours: Weds 19:00-21:00; Sat & Sun 15:-17:00, or by appointment.
Access: Baishizhou Subway Station Exit A, walk north to Jiangnan Baihuo Supermarket, make left down alley, follow to Shangbaishi Block 2 Building 49 (above the flip flop store). Ring bell and come up.
We’ve been included on the Fringe Urbanism [2013 UABB*HK Exhibition] map by Chris Gee and his collaborators. To check out the edgy contexts of alternative urbanizations in the region click link below the map. Yeah!
For those interested in the 2013 edition of the biennale, here’s the website. Alas, many of the pictures are distorted, but upside? Fat Bird’s Urban Village Fetish / Baishizhou is featured today!
The translation of 城中村 as “urban village” misleads. In fact, it is more accurate to call them urbanized villages, with the understanding that a village is not simply a rural settlement, but also and more importantly a corporate entity. The village settlement became urban, and in the process created a class of corporate land owners, who own the buildings. Thus, for example Baishizhou, where several thousand households control the real estate where 140,000 people live. Dalang Precinct (大浪街道) has an idegenious population of 8,000+ with a migrant worker population of over 500,000. The villages and some villages are not poor, they are the “local rich”.
Dachong, Hubei, Baishizhou — the list of urban villages that have been or are in process of being rennovated (a euphamism for razed and rebuilt) is, of course, the list of the most important real estate developments in contemporary Shenzhen. The plans for these new neighborhoods resemble those of Southern California, with climate controlled buildings, exquisite landscaping, and carefully planned walking areas.All this to say, when not talking about the need for low income housing (for both the working poor and recent college graduates) or rejoicing in the messy, cheap convenience of urban villages, the general Shenzhen consensus about urban villages in general is that the buildings and environment sub-standard. The goal is to replace them with neighborhoods that have enormous shopping malls at their center.
Now, the ideological irritant is the extent to which young intellectuals and urbane Shenzheners have coded the suburban impulse as tasteful, while the guilded buildings of the village corporations are being called “dirt wealth” buildings (土豪楼). In other words, there is something worse than being “exploding” or nouveau riche (暴发户); one could be “vulgar” rich, or 土豪. Indeed, vulgar rich is the term used to describe the skyscrapers and office buildings that villages (or individual villagers) have commissioned. The problem, of course, is that the logic of building vulger rich buildings is the same as building nouveau riche buildings. Urban villages and suburban cities hire the same architectural firms, use the same materials, and aim for the same symbolic ends — to announce their social importance. The only difference is the exterior of these buildings; where’s the guilded tipping point from nouveau to vulgar riche?
More importantly, the cultural coding of suburban urbanization as “tasteful” and rural urbanization as “tacky” misses the point — neither urban typology completely nourishes the human soul because both forms rely upon exploitation and exclusion in order to generate the capital investment necessary to build and rebuild Shenzhen.
Handshake 302 opened yesterday! We held our opening at the Baishizhou Cultural Plaza, where we distributed 1,000 balloons to neighborhood children. People chatted at our information table while waiting to be guided to the art space. For over 3 hours, Kaiqin dialogued with visitors about the installation, Special Forces, and the importance of public art. At 5, the second part of the day began, with a workshop led by Pete Moser. More Music Baishizhou brought together 20 members of CZC special forces to workshop a song about Baishizhou and plastic stool percussion. Then Pete shared his fabulous one-man show with residents. Impressions, below:
We’re installing Accounting at Handshake 302! The opening happens October 20 15:00 to 17:00 come and enjoy an afternoon of public art in the village. Later, at 19:00 Peter Moser brings his community music project to the Baishizhou Culture Square. Impressions and map to Handshake 302 as well as the Culture Square, below.
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.
Handshake 302 is a 12 sq meter effeciency apartment, which is transformed through changing site-specific installations. We are open Wednsdays from 19:00 to 21:00, and Saturday and Sunday, 15:00 to 17:00. Our first show opens October 20 with two installations, “Accounting (算数)” and “Exchange Corner (交换角)”. “Accounting” is a room-size installation, collaboratively conceptualized, designed, and installed by Lei Sheng, Liu He, Mary Ann O’Donnell, Wu Dan and Zhang Kaiqin. “Exchange Corner” by performance artist Fang Fang is installed in the tiny kitchen space of the efficiency appartment. Here’s the poster:
The poster for “more music” with Peter Moser is also ready for the October 20 19:00 performance at the Baishizhou Cultural Plaza. Here’s that poster:
Very much a “yeah us!” moment chez CZC特工队.
CZC特工队 is a group organized to engage Shenzhen’s urban villages through art, theater, and social media documentary projects. Our first project is called “Handshake 302”.
The concept behind Handshake 302 is simple: Baishizhou is our “artspace”, which has its office at Shangbaishi, second block, building 49, apartment 302, a 15 sq meter conveniency apartment in Shangbaishi.
We will use the actual apartment to commission and develop installations. Our first project is “Numbers” and will open on October 10. In addition, we work with visual artists, performing artists, and writers to develop projects that engage and extend Baishizhou. We will use the Baishizhou Culture Plaza (and outdoor stage) to develop performance pieces. On October 20, for example, Peter Moser will work with local street musicians to create a communnity concert. We also encourage artists and performers to create and install / perform works throughout Baishizhou. Fat Bird, for example, is currently developing a piece that uses the Tangtou rowhouses as their stage.
Handshake 302 has been accepted by the 2013 Shenzhen-Hong Kong Architecture Biennale as a collatoral venue, bringing Baishizhou into conversation with the main venues in Shekou.
Impressions of 302 and its immediate environment, below.
Shenzhen Noted 