Tag Archives: prd art

film maker liu gaoming

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On Tuesday, December 2, 2008 SACS hosted the Shenzhen premiere of Shenzhen filmmaker, Liu Gaoming’s film, “A Song.” Mary Ann O’Donnell interpreted the after film discussion. QSI Shekou provided the venue.

Ostensively straightforward, “A Song” tells the story of the anti-Shenzhen Dream; a young guitar player migrates to Shenzhen, looses his job, lives off his friends, and falls in love with the possibly drug-addicted hostess who lives in the apartment across the alley. When not hanging out or trying to sell commercial yellow pages over the phone, A Song spies on his pretty neighbor. One day he vanishes.

However, unlike traditional films, “A Song” challenges genre conventions by documenting the filmmaker Liu Gaoming’s memory of A Song, rather than presenting a cinema verité of A Song’s life. In 1996, Liu also migrated to Shenzhen. For three months, he and A Song lived together in a crowded apartment in one of Shenzhen’s urban villages. Then Liu changed jobs, moving to another part of the city. He and A Song lost contact with one another. Later, through a mutual friend, Liu heard that “Maybe A Song made a mistake, so maybe he’s hiding from the police.” Liu has repeatedly wondered what could have turned his first Shenzhen friend, the friend who cooked him dinner and cared for him, what could have turned this basically decent human being into a swindler? What actually happened while Liu was at work and A Song hung out at the apartment?

“A Song” is Liu’s painfully intimate exploration of that fundamental time, when both men faced the existential challenge of making a new life in an alien city, alone. According to Liu, “The only difference between me and A Song is that I persevered and stayed, while he left.”

In fact, unlike A Song, Liu Gaoming has achieved the Shenzhen Dream. He is now the creative director of his own design company, has a beautiful condo in one of Shenzhen’s upscale neighborhoods, and drives an imported car. His wife is an equally talented and successful fashion designer and their four-year old daughter laughs easily.

Liu came to Shenzhen after receiving a teaching degree in painting from a teacher’s college in Ganzhou, Jiangxi. After graduating from college he taught middle school art class for half a year before deciding to pursue his dreams in Shenzhen. During his first year in Shenzhen, Liu did odd jobs in art related businesses. However, the following year, he was hired to work in a design studio and his life became more stable. He settled into his job, learned the trade, and then in 2001 opened his own design company, Brothers Design.

However, the more materially successful Liu has become, the more he has felt disconnected from the city that enabled his rags-to-riches transformation. This is one of the paradoxes of the Shenzhen Dream. Once a migrant achieves the dream and becomes a Shenzhener, it becomes apparent that although everything is different, nothing essential has changed. The desires and dissatisfactions that compel one to migrate to China’s most important post-Mao experiments don’t dissipate simply because one makes good. If anything, existential questions become more acute. Indeed, thirty years after the Reform and Opening era began, many of the beneficiaries of Deng Xiaoping’s policy to transform Maoism are actively asking themselves if there is a spiritual dimension to all this economic booming.

For Liu, the question, “How did I get here?” became salient in 2003, when his parents visited him. He was shocked to realize that they really were already old and that time really was that relentless. Liu Gaoming suddenly wanted to know: how did I get here?

In order to understand both his alienation from the Shenzhen dream and the actual city, Liu Gaoming began making films. However, when he picked up a Sony 790 and turned his gaze on Shenzhen and its residents, Liu had no previous film making experience. In fact, no one on the production team of “A Song” had any film making experience and Liu himself still doesn’t know what kind of sound system was used during film. He does remember that they used two hanging and two body mikes. Consequently, Liu has humorously named his film company “Amateur Productions”.

To date, Liu has completed two films, “Rib” and “A Song,” is editing a third, “Beijing” and is planning his fourth. Each film focuses on a Shenzhen anti-hero, someone whose life never quite takes root in the city. Instead, like the pirated DVD hawker of the eponymous documentary “Rib,” the Shenzhen anti-heroes who populate Liu’s films start off at society’s edge, begin a downward spiral into its uncharted depths, and then vanish without a trace.

Filmed in 2004 and edited in 2007, “A Song” was Liu’s first interrogation of the anti-Shenzhen Dream. The film implicitly asks: If the only difference between a Liu Gaoming and an A Song is that Liu stays and A Song leaves, what does it mean to inhabit Shenzhen? Is there any point to staying in the city?

Liu takes a non-judgmental view of A Song’s inability to pursue the Shenzhen Dream. Instead, he matter-of-factly shows the sparse conditions of A Song’s life. The apartment is not only cramped, but also presses up against other apartments that are so close that if A Song were to reach out through the barred window, he and the neighbor could shake hands. The incessant noise compounds the visceral lack of privacy. At the same time, A Song doesn’t speak with anyone; he practices speaking Cantonese with a book, he pretends to call customers on the phone, and he grunts instead of answering the pretty girl who washes his hair and cajoles him into joining her for a “chat”.

A Song’s silent implosion is painful to watch, but Liu holds the camera unwaveringly on the memory of his friend. A Song stands on bench. A Song smokes a cigarette. A Song rides a bicycle in the apartment living room, first circling then crashing into the long sofa. A Song becomes nothing more than a body occupying space. A Song vanishes. Liu admits that he originally filmed in color and then converted the files to black and white because, “That’s what I felt like when I was making the film.”

“A Song” ends with a fantasy sequence in which Liu imagines that A Song has returned to his hometown and resumed his career as a music teacher. This image poignantly speaks to how migrating to Shenzhen has changed individuals like A Song and Liu Gaoming, begging the question: is going home the last, unrealizable Shenzhen Dream?

shenzhen photographer bai xiaoci

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this past week, my friend jonathan has been visiting. he’s doing research in shenzhen and has inspired me to get out of my usual orbit. on tuesday night, jonathan set up a meeting with with bai xiaoci (白小刺), a photographer documenting shenzhen on his blog, 抓拍城市／我所见的城市和城市化.

one of bai xiaoci’s more interesting projects is “i live in here (我住在这里),” a series of shenzhen home interiors and their occupants. definately worth a visit.

urban form and memory

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joshua kauffman and gwendolyn floyd

the bienniale opens tonight. well, bienniale the third. but it’s my first. i missed the previous two. i’ve been hanging out at oct loft with fat bird and silo, and these past few weeks, with gwendolyn floyd and joshua kauffman, co-founders of regional, which they define as “an interdisciplinary design and research network that performs and applies original analysis of global society, culture and commerce, uncovering and developing opportunities for profitable innovation and meaningful cultural intervention.”

their installation is called “foreground”, which was built out of bamboo. the design is derived from GIS data of a recently removed shenzhen mountain ridge. over the past twenty years, shenzhen has aggressively reclaimed land from both its eastern and western coasts. in everyday conversation this process is called “moving mountains in order to fill the ocean (移山填海).” with foreground, floyd and kauffman have respond to this transformation by using bamboo to re-construct a mountain that no longer exists. the contrast between the structure and the ground actualizes the difference between shenzhen’s pre- and post-urban topographies, creating a visible and material history for the area. more importantly, the installation enables bienniale visitors to imagine the lay of shenzhen’s land before urbanization and, in doing so, re-imagine how the city might reproduce itself in the future.

at least i hope so. one of the illusions of land reclamation and disappeared mountains is how quickly they vanish from consciousness. when i go to houhai and look out at the new landscape i have to think, and think hard, to recall something about what was once there. most of the time, however, i end up taking another round of photos and then doing a little side by side comparison. that was then, this is now.

its hard work to keep the city’s past and present simultaneously in mind. usually, i depend on the material world to do that for me. the old buildings, certain parks, particular roads–these hold my memories, which i enter by way of an evening walk. to the extent that it remains in place, shenzhen keeps my memory intact. but the city keeps getting razed. or rebuilt. or refashioned. and as the buildings collapse and new edifices rise, or factories get a facelift and industrial areas are upgraded, i forget. or rather, i loose access to memory. all that stuff are also doors to memory, and when a building gets razed, i am locked out of my past.

click for images of gwen and joshua’s work in progress.

old man party, shenzhen

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this weekend, independent documentary digital film-maker liu gaoming (刘高明) and independent film producer zhu rikun (朱日坤) curated “old man party, shenzhen (老男人的party)”. like many shenzhen artists, gaoming has a white-collar day job (he has his own design company), which supports his artistic activities. this makes the shenzhen art scene very different from other cities, where being an artist is often a fulltime practice. zhu rikun is the head of fanhall films, a beijing based institution which produces and promotes chinese independent films.

the event was held at club de vie (圆筒艺术空间) was founded by a group of professional artists and wine tasters, bringing together both economic and aesthetic interests in a way similar to the loft space at oct. club de vie’s owner, feng zhifeng (冯志峰) is designer by day. again, the shenzhen twist on art promotion. club de vie is located within the shenzhen sculpture institute hosted the event–this is the same unit that sponsored fat bird’s “draw whiskers, add dragon”. the head of the institute, sun zhenye has said that it is their goal to turn 8 zhongkang road (中康路八号；their address) into a brandname.

the party took place on saturday and sunday; three films were screened each day. invitations to the event were texted to folks in gaoming’s and zhifeng’s circles. all of the films were digital documentaries, made out of diverse interests and commitments, but sharing limited financing. information about the artists and their work is available on the fanhall site. i have noted when the artist has an independent website. anyway, the artists and their films were:

huang wenhai’s (黄文海) “dreamwalking (梦游)” was about several beijing artists who went on a road trip to nanyang. performance artist li wake(李娃克), poet motou beibei (魔头贝贝), and painter ding defu (丁德福)　are all somewhat known within contemporay art circles. their intention was to make a film with wang yongping (王永平). huang wenhai went to help with the filming. however, the filming fell apart and huang wenhai ended up filming the artists’ daily life, which included drinking, impromtu performances, and drunken discussions on the meaning of life.

zhao dayong (赵大勇) presented “nanjing road (南京路)” about garbage pickers living at the heart of shanghai’s fashionable shopping district. the film focused on heipi (black skin), a migrant from the northeast whose poverty and subsequent arrests and beatings by the police lead to him going crazy.

wang wo (王我) showed “chaos (热闹)”, an impressionistic account of how it feels to live in contemporary china. interestingly, “renao” refers more to the general excitement of a crowded and prosperous area than it does to chaos, per se. indeed, describing a place as “renao” is more often than not complementary.

xu xin (徐辛) presented “the huoba troupe (火把剧团)”, a film that looks at the demise of sichuan opera. once the home to opera troupes and tea houses, chengdu is increasingly modern. young people prefer to go to discos and bars, and some of the old opera stars are now running song and dance troupes.

zhou hao’s (周浩) “hou street (厚街)”　brought the documentary lens to guangzhou, chronicling a year in the lives of migrant workers on hou street. all lived hand to mouth, looking for jobs in nearby factories. none have the kind of traditional relationships that made life meaningful back home.

hu xinyu (胡新宇) presented his first work “men (男人)”, an intensely personal film about hu xinyu, his friend old su, and their neighbor shi lin. old su graduated from the national film academy. after loosing another job, he moved in with hu xinyu, who filmed their days together.

all six films were made by non-professionals, who had turned to digital film-making as a way of expressing themselves. to my knowledge, this is the first time such an event has been organized in shenzhen. so an art scene emerges.

移民与海： oh that shenzhen cultural industry

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yesterday at 派意馆,　the shenzhen sculpture institute (深圳市雕塑院) hosted the opening ceremony/press conference for its multi-cultural documentary “immigrants and sea (official translation of 移民与海). paiyiguan is an exhibition space located in the oct loft area, right near the art center. the documentary explores the question of (in word for word translation of the chinese) “coast cities immigrant culture way of life (滨海城市移民文化生态).” a string of descriptions that force grammatical impositions in english. safest translation, perhaps: the immigrant culture of coastal cities.

the entire project has three parts: a documentary film about cultural life in latin american coastal cities; a public culture project in shenzhen; and an exhibition in the shenzhen architecture biennial. the documentary recounts cultural moments in various south american countries and cities. in havana, the shenzhen photographer xiao quan (肖全) takes the audience on a tour of havana’s charms. “he passes through cuba’s big streets and small alleys, searching for and recording cuban smiles and happy faces, ceasely uncovering the native warmth of cuba’s powerful culture and integrative force.”

in chile, liang erping retraces the footsteps of pablo neruda, citizen of a country of only 15 million people that nevertheless produced a nobel laureate. in brazil, shenzheners are less interested in rio than they are in brazilia, itself a famed overnight city. our guide in brazilia is shenzhen television personality, hong hai. the documentary pays special attention to carnival. in buenos aires, a shenzhen designer han jiaying explores the richness of argentine tango, soccer, and architecture.

that brief sysnopsis helps define what the film makers mean by “culture”; it is not only high culture, but also culture as giving a city definitive international identity. what kind of culture would shenzhen’s immigrants have to create in order to attain similar recognition?

historical alleys like havana? the attempt to package the ming and qing dynasty county seat at nantou has not succeeded.

noble prize worthy literature? one of shenzhen’s most famous author is an ze, a woman who broke out of being a laboring daughter (打工妹) by exposing the gritty and sexualized underside of shenzhen’s development. unlike the protagonist in wei hui’s better known book, shanghai baby who attempts to realize herself through writing and sex, the protagonist’s of an ze’s (also banned) books use sex to get ahead. sex in shenzhen, the story goes, is not liberatory, but cohersed and mercenary.

municipal festivals like carnaval? at windows of the world themepark, shenzheners already participate in carnival, oktoberfest, and water festival. there is, however, no city wide festival, in part, because most native festivals are village based. indeed, going with a local festival would entail shenzhen’s urban elite recognizing the contributions of local villagers to urban culture, something that hasn’t happened as of yet.

architecture like in buenos aires and brazilia? this seems the most likely, and shenzheners continue their pursuit of architectural excellence. it is telling that this project is entering shenzhen’s public culture through the architectural biennial.

fat bird enters this picture in part three, the sculpture exhibition. the sculpture instute is the same organization that sponsored fat bird’s inclusion at the guanshanyue museum’s tenth anniversary celebration. they have also invited us to participate in the biennial. we are currently working on a project about remembering nanshan’s now banned oyster farming as our contribution to shenzhen’s coastal culture. in fact, remnant beaches (in yantian district) of oyster cultivation could become an important and unique marker of shenzhen cultural identity. the catch is that oyster farmers immigrated generations ago, and shenzhen’s cultural elite are interested in creating high culture out of their immigrant experience.

yang qian and i left the press conference with a purble paper bag stuffed with gifts: a neckless, advertising materials, and purple immigrant & sea shirts. unfortunately, my camera was uncharged, so i didn’t photograph the event. so i have included a picture of yang qian modelling the purple shirt. he is standing on the balcony of our houhai apartment. faintly visible in the background is the land reclamation project, which is perhaps shenzhen’s most concrete contribution to coastal ways of life.


the purple shirt, the balcony, the reclaimed coastline

oct loft: enculturing shenzhen

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remaking industrial shenzhen: pedestrian street, oct loft

space by space, shenzhen is transforming its industrial self. at the same time that tianmian is remaking its factories into design studios, overseas chinese town (oct) is transforming its factories into a more explicitly bohemian art space. those factories that aren’t being transformed, are being razed to make way for upscale residential areas. gentrification in a generation, before anyone had time to grow up in an industrial city and miss anything about it.

this weekend, i visited oct loft (one year anniversary web release here) this weekend. the area is still under construction, but tea houses, restaurants, studios, and the contemporary art center have opened. along with he xiangning museum of art, the art center is holdoing a month-long exhibit called “abstraction is an expression of freedom (抽象是一种关于自由的表达).” the exhibit will tour hong kong, beijing, and then new york.　art center’s director huang zhuan provides an explanation of their inspiration, here. as at the open ink painting, there’s an urge to make china’s past contemporary.

two details struck me about the space. first, like tianmian, oct loft’s industrial facelift entails replacing cement walls with glass. so the structure of the buildings remain, but now its all shiny and exposed. lots of black as well. second, the quality of the exhibition suggests an anti-dafen village moment. indeed, when i met several of the young men involved in getting this project up and going, one was vehement about separating what he was doing from dafen. such are the debates over “professional” versus “commercial” art in shenzhen, itself a telling distinction.

take a walk through OCT loft and compare with transformations in tianmian.

开放的水墨：the open ink painting

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whiskers cast, main entrance, guanshanyue museum of art

the guanshanyue museum of art was built ten years ago. at the time, it manifest shenzhen leaders’ understanding of state of the art, so to speak. it also incorporated the practical details of the state of construction. pink tiles, green glass, and limitted use of elevators define the space. this year, the museum is celebrating its anniversary with a series of exhibitions and events. draw whiskers, add dragon was commissioned as part of the celebration.

yesterday was the opening ceremony of the open ink painting invitational exhibition at the guanshanyue museum of art. in addition to organizing the regular media to come to the opening, exhibition organizers also invited art bloggers, who have uploaded introductions to and interviews with key participants, here and here. indeed, there’s more online about the exhibition than in the regular newspapers.

as with many shenzhen art events, there was a predictable tension between the cost of the show (an index of the importance that the municipal government now places on “art”) and attendence (an index of the importance that museum visitors place on “art”). this crude opposition highlights the urgency that organizers and participants expressed feeling about making ink painting relavent to contemporary audiences. contemporary audiences included:

westerners who take ink painting to be a sign of “chinese identity”;

chinese artists who believe that ink painting is a sign of “chinese identity”, but a sign which has been corrupted/transformed by the internalization of the western gaze. importantly, speakers included the organization of art exhibitions in their understanding of “western gaze” and stated that the guanshanyue exhibit was an important attempt for chinese artists to take the lead in defining the social and aesthetic meaning of contemporary ink painting;

young chinese who don’t know or care about ink painting. for these youths, participants seemed eager to strategize forms of aesthetic outreach. however, it’s worth noting that participants themselves (except for one artist, the dancers and actors) were all born in the late 40s, 50s and early 60s.

all of the participants agreed that it was necessary to investigate and explore and transform chinese tradition to make it relavent to contemporary audiences. during the opening discussion, much of the conversation circled around the themes of “ink painting spirit (水墨精神)” indeed, this is why organizer sun zhenhua (孙振华) invited shenzhen composer wen li (文莉) and fat bird to perform ink painting inspired dance and play, respectively.

the differences between wen li’s piece “江峡行　（river canyon walk)” and fat bird’s “draw whiskers, add dragon” suggest the possibilities and constraints on transforming ink painting spirit. wen li uses tradition as an asesthitic; she creates beautiful forms and sounds that suggest a refined sensibility and moments of private contemplation. fat bird described a world where the only way in which chinese tradition could survive was through advertising and tourism.

during the three-hour discussion, one of the fat bird actresses had sat quietly, playing a game on her cell phone. when i leaned over and asked if the disappearence of ink painting would make her feel less chinese, she laughed, said, “no,” and then went back to her game. the participants kept talking. images of the show, museum, and organizers.

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…

updates, or, where fat bird fits in the commodification of shenzhen’s emergent cultural landscape

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the following two updates on godot and the nanfang daily’s cultural avant garde popularity contest give a sense of where fat bird fits into the commodification of shenzhen’s emergent cultural landscape. it also gives a sense of contradictions within this landscape and the various ways actors are positioning themselves to shape shenzhen’s cultural scene as well as to control the resources that have been both budgeted to and generated by that scene.


godot cast

update number one: godot, we performed on december 28 and 29. after both shows, members of the audience made comments about the play that point to diverse and sometimes contradictory assumptions about what shenzhen theatre should be. significantly, comments were grounded in the subjunctive (what theatre “should be”) rather than the declarative (what theatre “is”) because most of fat bird’s audience assume that shenzhen lacks culture and (therefore) fat bird is helping to establish the conditions for local arts. accordingly, most actively encourage fat bird, whether or not they personally like what we do.

from a professional director, trained in beijing and semi-retired to shenzhen, “not bad (还不错). godot leaves room for directorial interpretation so it was interesting to see what judi did with it.”

from an elementary school teacher, who hasn’t seen much theatre, “this was fun, but i didn’t understand what you were trying to do. maybe next time.”

from a foreign teacher, who doesn’t understand chinese, “now i think i’ll go home and read the script.”

how does this fit into the commodification of shenzhen’s cultural landscape? although fat bird began preparing godot outside official auspices, in september, cong rong (从容), secretary of the shenzhen theatre arts federation (深圳市戏剧家协会) approached us about participating in shenzhen’s creative creative december theatre (创意１２月剧场), program here. now, cong rong wasn’t given enough money to stage an entire festival, but in order to get funding next year she still had to produce a festival. this meant she had to come up with pieces that had been independently produced, but would nevertheless be part of creative december. she also decided to use most of the funding to produce two of her own plays, the language of flowers《有一种花的语言》and blue symphony 《蓝色交响曲》, hiring professional directors and actors at standard rates. this decision meant that she had to find collaborators who would work for a nominal stipend. her choices for collaborators included shenzhen university department of acting, the various cultural bureaus of the district governements, and fat bird. i’m not sure if she approached any of the district cultural bureaus, but she did approach shenzhen university and fat bird. shenzhen university had two plays that could go up in december, into the woods, and basement dwellers《坑人》, while fat bird was preparing godot. both the university directors and fat bird remain more interested in performance venues than revenue, consequently, the creative december theatre consisted of the aforementioned plays.

this is the second year that shenzhen has sponsored creative december (创意１２月), a program designed to encourage cultural development in the city, combatting or countering what has come to be ironically known as “desert theory (沙漠理论),” which refers to ideas about why shenzhen continues to lack world reknowned cultural institutions and artists. complete program and contacts, here. tellingly, one of the activities designed to encourage general citizen participation in creative december was an online competion to select the top ten shenzhen cultural activity brands (文化活动品牌), including: the much hyped annual china (shenzhen) international cultural industry fair (中国（深圳）国际文化产业博览交易会), the relatively obscure popularizing sociology week (社会科学普及周), and the provincially supported international tourism festival (深圳国际旅游文化节). all of the twenty candidates for best cultural activity brand have come into existence in the past few years. more interestingly, perhaps, is that efforts to create art and spaces for the arts in shenzhen are explicitly tied to developing cultural markets, even as shenzhen’s top cultural products (animation, computer games, advertizing) are dismissed as not being cultural precisely because these industries have been so commericially successful (see this entry for my take on fat bird’s participation in the 2006 cultural industry fair). at any rate, for the curious, the commplete cultural activities brand ballot is here although results have not yet been posted.

update number two: contest results, as you know, the nanfang daily nominated fat bird as one of shenzhen’s top ten cultural avant garde labels or tags (文化先锋标签), which i mistranslated as “postcard” in a previous post. thanks to a technological intervention, we placed second. it turns out that the voting was not limited by computer or site visits, so anyone who went to the site could vote for fat bird as often as they wanted. accordingly, i went the first night and happily voted one hundred times. however, by day two, we were already about 10,000 votes behind the leader and i gave up, realizing that i wouldn’t spend more time voting than i already had, the hard realities of clicking tempering what might have been my shameless pursuit of first place. on day three, one of our members downloaded an automatic clicker program, that hit the vote button once a second for as long as the program ran. given the final tallies, i suspect we weren’t the only candidate resorting to technology to buttress our populary. as qin wei said, “i’m not even computer literate and i found this program. of course the other candidates have already downloaded their own, if they haven’t already.” for those in need, an automatic clicker can be downloaded here.

this popularity contest was part of a two-day conference on the avant garde city (先锋城市). this conference ran both parallel to and within creative december, with a slightly different focus on cultural production, focusing on the socio-cultural meaning of the avant garde. this conference gained its political import from the fact that in 2005, the shenzhen bureau of urban planning published its 2030 urban development strategy (深圳２０３０城市发展策略), which called for shenzhen to become a pioneering global city with sustainable development (可持续发展的全球先锋城市). what’s interesting here, and the nanfang daily’s point of intervention is the word “xianfeng”, which is usually translated as “avant garde” and not “pioneering”, although both definitions appear in the dictionary. in previous development strategies, shenzhen’s pioneering function was described with the word “kaituo 开拓,” which originally meant (long, long ago) to remove rocks from a field but came to mean the emperor’s opening of new administrative territory. so in the eighties, for example, the first generation of shenzhen immigrants were called territory openers (开拓者: pioneers) and not the avant garde (先锋: pioneers). moreover, this is the first time shenzhen has explicitly called for efforts to strengthen its leadership position (vis a vis the rest of the country), which had previously been assumed, so that in the 1996-2010 shenzhen urban plan, for example, the city aimed to become an international modern city (国际现代化城市), which was, at the time, a pioneering position.

at the conference, expert guests produced two lists: one of china’s avant garde cities (shenzhen placed fifth overall) and one of shenzhen’s avant garde labels. alas, fat bird didn’t place in the top ten even though we performed “this body, this movements” at the conference and yang qian was one of the invited experts. neverthelesss, what was interesting here was that although the experts focused on creativity, they nevertheless designated the meaning of avant garde in political terms: “expermentation, investigation, tolerance, and freedom (实验、探索、包容、自由).” consequently, their list of cultural avant garde labels included, like the cultural brands of creative december, institutions rather than individuals.

the nanfang daily conference on the avant garde city was designed to provide a space for thinking critically about the position of creativity in shenzhen’s cultural development. in contrast, creative december was organized to promote city activities. consequently, this december fat bird participated in two very different versions of what shenzhen’s cultural landscape should look like. significantly, both these versions represent views held by shenzheners who are positioned differently with respect to the chinese state apparatus. the shenzhen theatre arts federation is connected to but not directly under the shenzhen bureau of culture, which makes them financially dependent on the city, unless they can come up with commercially viable theatre. the nanfang daily is connected to but not directly under the guangdong ministry of propaganda. this makes them answerable to guangdong, rather than any particular city. as such, the nanfang daily has actually created local markets for itself by being critical not only of shenzhen, but all of guangdong’s cities, except guangzhou, the provincial capital. when i asked several newspaper reporters why guangdong tolerated criticism of its second city,the response was usually a chuckle and then social analysis.

“guangdong doesn’t like shenzhen,” one explained, “because the city is too independent. it answers primarily to beijing rather than guangzhou.”

“it [the nanfang daily] is using media events to create a shenzhen market,” another reasoned. “the special economic zone daily and other papers still have to listen to the shenzhen government. the only way to compete is to create an alternative shenzhen voice.”

a more optimistic journalist suggested that there were a few officials who wanted to increase freedom of the press in china. “after all, if shenzhen succeeds in becoming an experimental, investigative, tolerant, and free avant garde city, it will be good for the country.”

synopsis: fat bird, like other shenzhen art groups and inviduals, survives by navigating these diverse political currents, which are shaping the city’s cultural landscape. sometimes, straddling the fence works. both the organizers of creative december and the avant garde city paid fat bird to participate in their events, making 2006 the first year we almost broke even! happy new year.

南山区作协：on literary production

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yesterday yang qian and i participated in the second nanshan district writers federation council meeting on literary creativity. yang qian was made a council member and i was made an honorary council member.

artistic federations are quasi-governmental organizations that promote the arts. just recently, for example, when fat bird invited the theatre practice to shenzhen, it was the nanshan district united artists federation (文联) that sponsored the event. federation members assume that a good working relationship between the government and artists is necessary to establish a creative environment. moreover, members assume that the arts are necessary for various reasons. one is to civilize society. another is to educate the public. yet another is to bridge the differences that separate different groups of people. these tasks are regulated by the bureau of dissemination (or propaganda, depending on your dictionary’s understanding of 宣传部). altogether, nanshan has 8 arts federations (戏剧 theatre、影视 broadcast、舞蹈 dance、音乐 music、曲艺 traditional stage arts、摄影 photography、书法 caligraphy、美术 fine arts), which are administratively under the united artists federation（文联), a government department in the ministry of dissemination/propaganda. zhang ruoxue (张若雪) heads the nanshan district united artists federation.

established in 1997, the writers federation specifically supports the development of writing (fiction and non-fiction) in nanshan. federation members come from both government and non-government institutions. several members are independent artists. the chairman of the writers federation, nan xiang (南翔) teaches in the shenzhen university department of chinese, while the secretary (秘书长) is zhang ruoxue, head of the united artists federation. perhaps unexpectedly to westerners accustomed to thinking of social conflict in terms of government and anti-government groups, divisions within the nanshan writers federation (at this meeting at least) did not fall along an official-unoffical axis. instead, the contradiction between high and popular forms of literature was the most salient axis of difference.

nan xiang, for example, gave a long talk on how chinese writers should pay attention to the chinese writer communities outside of the mainland. he also encouraged nanshan writers to pay attention to those foreign writers being celebrated abroad. in this way, nanshan writers could begin to interact with a larger world. ding li (丁力), however, took a strong stance in favor of writing from local experience for local audiences. indeed as each writer spoke about their current projects it became clear that their were two primary kinds of writers, with different funding sources an intended audiences. these groups were metaphorically characterized as the temple (庙堂) and the river and lakes (江湖) writers. “river and lakes” refers to the unofficial worlds of bandits and travelling performers. crudely, the temple writers wrote for an elite audience, including foreigners and looked to the government and (international) agencies for funding to produce high art. in contrast, the river and lakes writers wrote for the mass of chinese readers and looked to the market to support themselves. in this sense, elite artists positioned themselves as more dependent on the government than did the mass artists. during the meeting, elite audiences were more sensative to ideological constraints, while the mass artists tended to celebrate the market as an index of literary value.

a third group, women writers were the palatable absence in all this conversation. outnumbered in representation, they also spoke less than the other council members. indeed, their silence posed the question about multiple fractions within the group, or differences that have yet to be articulated. likewise, the difference between literary criticism and literary production was glossed in conversation. it may be, however, that as china’s economy continues to become polarized between haves and have-nots other social differences seem less important.

below i provide links to sites by or about some of the writers who attended the meeting.

independent writer 丁力 writes about 8 to 10 books a year on his shenzhen experiences. this site is from his “ding li commercial books series”;

shenzhen university professor 钱超英 has written on the new chinese language movement among overseas chinese in australia;

nanshan policeman 肖双红 also writes about his shenzhen experiences;

middle school teacher 严凌君 reports from shenzhen. he also organizes a website for young writers;

independent writer 谢宏 has his own blog;

shenzhen university associate professor of chinese 汤奇云 critiques the relationship between aesthetics and social position in 王晓华’s《西方生命美学局限研究》;

government official and telenovela script writer 张友高 talks about developing characters;

shenzhen university associate professor, 谢晓霞 critiques magazine articles before reform;

haiwang enterprises executive, 吴迪 has written a fictional account of the student soldiers (学生军) who helped build the third line of defence during the cultural revolution;

independent writer, 王十月 blogs about art;

shenzhen university assistant professor, 曹清华 has uploaded his academic papers.