One of the features of the Longhua (Dalang) Sub-venue of the UABB will be an exhibition of artifacts that were taken back to Switzerland, when the missionaries left China in 1948. To learn more about the Basel Mission and their “Chinese children,” please read the rest of the article. The artifacts will be on display at the Longheu P+V Gallery from December 22, 2017 through December 4, 2018.
This past Sunday at the Longheu P+V Gallery, we began the “Stories of Rice,” an art project which explores the meanings of women’s work through history. A warm-up for the “Migrations” exhibition, the project combines stories, old photographs, and embroidery. The project is curated by German artist Katharina Sommer. Interested? If you would like to join us, please subscribe to the Handshake 302 We Chat account to register for the next workshop on Sunday, November 26.
From December 2017 through February 2018, the P+V Gallery will be the site of the Longhua (Dalang) sub-venue of the 2017 Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture. The main venue will be at Nantou Ancient City. The theme of the sub-venue is: Migrations—Home and Elsewhere, Rediscovering Hakka History and Chinese-Western Cultural Exchange. The program is curated by Dr. Mary Ann O’Donnell in collaboration with Handshake 302 and the P+V Gallery History Association. The founding of the school and Hakka history are our point of departure for rethinking what it means to be an immigrant. Continue reading
Established in 2007, Shenzhen’s Ya Ya Theatre is an amateur troupe that specializes in playback theatre, a form of improv in which audience members tell stories from their lives and watch players enact the story. Ya Ya meets once a week to rehearse and have occasional performances in diverse venues, including Shenzhen’s indie bookstore Feidi (飞地书局), the Yuehai Community Culture Station, and Shenzhen’s Fringe Festival. On Saturday September 23, they brought their program “One Person, One Story” to Handshake 302. What follows are impressions and clips from that program. Continue reading
Friday August 25, 2017 I had the honor of participating in the closing meeting of the second edition of the “Shenzhen Oral History” project. It was a high level and exciting cultural event that commemorated the people who contributed to Shenzhen’s second decade, 1992-2002. A week later on Friday September 1, I attended the salon for Wu Xingyu and Zhong Yuxiao’s art project “Demolition.” Continue reading
I am translating Deng Shijie’s We Chat post of the Flash Exhibit he created at the Jiada Printing Factory in Baishizhou. It was one of several Labor Day events organized by the current Handshake 302 Artist-in-Residence, Lao Tu. Continue reading
After the Contested Innovation Symposium at the International Institute, U of M, organizers Silvia Lidtner and Irina Aristarkhova brought participants on a full day, full on tour of Detroit. We visited Civilla, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Henry Ford, and the Heidleburg project–one day, (potentially) five blog posts super tour. Today, I’m reflecting on Civilla’s practice, with an eye toward understanding what it might mean for my practice at Handshake. Continue reading
We are slow, but we move forward. Here’s Handshake’s most recent intro-PDF:
These past two days, Zhang Kaiqin led a Handshake 302 art workshop in the Shenzhen Fairy Lake Botanical Garden. The workshop was organized quite simply: on the first morning we learned about the plants and then in the afternoon and next day we created site-specific art. The only rule was that we couldn’t bring anything (except tools) into the botanical garden. And that limitation led to visceral experience of how narrow the actual space for creative subjectivity is in modern spaces.
The city is man’s most consistent and on the whole, his most successful attempt to remake the world he lives in more after his heart’s desire. But, if the city is the world which man created, it is the world in which he is henceforth condemned to live. Thus, indirectly, and without any clear sense of the nature of his task in making the city man has remade himself.
－Robert Park
Lightscape focuses on the relationship between sensory experience and external structures within the city. Continue reading
Shenzhen Noted 