Dive into the archives.
- Beijing Rising
Through a miracle of Facebook, I just became aware of this beautiful/bleak video made by Neville Mars of Dynamic City Foundation. Neville strapped a camera to a helium baloon and flew it over Wang Jing, a neighborhood in northern Beijing. During the Olympic viewing frenzy, some people asked me to explain what Beijing was like before the Games. I wish I’d had this clip then, it would have saved me a lot of unnecessary waffle.
Check out more DCF projects at the bURB site.
Also, buy their book The Chinese Dream.Popularity: 8% [?]
- A handshake from Lok
My friend Lok Jansen is an architect, illustrator, and all around awesome person. He lives in Tokyo with his equally awesome wife Naoko and I don’t see them enough. Fortunately, Lok occasionally hits me off with some of his latest work, and somehow the space between here and there feels smaller. Yesterday was such a day - in my inbox, amongst the boring work shit and junk mail, I found a glowing orb of flavor in a the form of email from Lok with 4 sketches attached. The sketches are inspired by the urban villages around southern China. (I wrote a little bit about a visit I made to one in this post from a while ago.)
Anyway, these sketches are off the hook. Here’s what Lok said about them:
I’m doing these for a new cityscape or two about the Urban Villages. Went and spent time in a couple of them in Shenzhen and in Guangzhou. Places like the Handshake Apartments (Wo Shou Lau) in Shenzhen, and Ba Deng Cun (巴登村). After the mostly Japanese cityscapes I was looking for something new and was of course struck by the very high density, the amount of life, activity, struggle and joy. Which is why I added people to these for the first time - to have them contrast with the wild machine-like surroundings, and have the environment stand for the overwhelming situation the people are trying to overcome. I was impressed by peoples ‘let’s make some money’ attitude, but also struck by the vulnerability of each individual. And of course I wanted to do tribute to the pajama stylo.
Here they are (click to enlarge highly recommended):
And as an extra bonus, here’s a short film Lok made while walking through the “handshake apartments” (我手楼, so named because the buildings are packed in so tight that neighbors can shake hands out of their windows) in Shenzhen. I think a lot of what Lok mentioned is evident here and it makes the sketches that much more beautiful.
Popularity: 11% [?]
- Mo’lympics
I realize that I’m in danger of turning this into some sort of Olympic blog, but fuck it, you can’t fight the zeitgeist. Anyway, I just wrote a little account of my trip to the Bird’s Nest for Art Review’s site. It’s a lot like something I would put on here, but this time I got paid. ((Michael Phelps fist pump))
Intro:
What can be said at this point about the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games? They are awesome. They are big and pretty and well organized. Zhang Yimou’s shock-and-awe opening and the physical domination that followed slammed the door on 100 years of humiliation for the Chinese and signalled to the rest of us the passing of the torch (!) from the old superpower to a much older one.For years now, the Chinese media have presented the Olympics as a kind of referendum on the nation’s status in the world. Now, based on the montages of awe-struck visitors and the gold medal count that scrolls triumphantly along the bottom of nearly every TV channel here, it is clear that the results are in: China in a landslide.
The Beijing Olympics’ televised image (provided by American network NBC) has been as slick and selective as Zhang’s intro. The viewer, here and everywhere, is exposed to majestic shots of the National Stadium (aka the Bird’s Nest) and National Aquatics Center (AKA Water Cube) detached from their surroundings, their neighours cropped out, either by camera angle or cloak of darkness. A jump cut brings you suddenly inside the stadium, where the world’s greatest athletes are busy straining themselves within some sort of rectangular shape, surrounded by thousands of flag-waving fans. Knowing the great lengths to which Beijing has gone to disguise its blemishes – a cluster of dilapidated buildings next to my apartment was walled off from public view a few weeks before the opening – and knowing that the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube are anomalies in Chinese architecture, I was curious to see what else is going on at the Olympic venues. What is there beyond the edge of our TV screens? I travelled to the Olympic Green a couple days ago. Here’s what I found:
Read the rest here.Popularity: 6% [?]
- Take me out to the ballgame
Popularity: 5% [?]
- Shameless Plug 2
[image courtesy of divine-interventions.com]I just arrived back in Beijing after months away, and a few of the things that I worked on before I left are coming out now, so I thought why not put together another one of those awkward self-promo posts to spread the word…
Plug 1 (Posdnuos):
I haven’t been doing much freelance writing these days, but the last two articles I wrote come out this month in the new issues of Domus and AD magazine. The Domus one is about the new museum at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, designed by Arata Isozaki. The AD article is about the new residence of the Dutch Ambassador to China, designed by Dirk Jan Postel. Cop that!
Plug 2 (Trugoy):
The book MAD Dinner that I wrote about a while back is finally out. It took ages, and actually I’m not even sure if it’s in western stores yet, but they’ve got it in Beijing an on the publisher Actar’s website so….
Here’s a description form the press release:
MAD Dinner is the first book by the Beijing-based architectural office MAD. Organized around the metaphor of dinner table conversation, the book is a collection of ideas and opinions about topics ranging from politics to ecology to fame to the future. The dinner’s “guests” include people from all levels of Chinese society: a government official, hairdresser, migrant laborers, a doctor, a taxi driver, and a developer are all brought together to offer their views in an atmosphere of openness and exchange. MAD’s work is embedded in a series of extended conversations with international advisors, including the Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, British writer Ian Buruma, filmmakers Zhang Yimou and Jia Zhangke, and the artist Ai Weiwei. The conversations work in tandem with MAD’s proposals to create an essential account of the architect’s experience inside the fastest urbanization in world history. (2008, edited by Brendan McGetrick)
So as they say, the book emphasizes conversations. I learned a lot working on it, and got to meet a lot of cool people. Here’s a list of the MAD Dinner guests:
Hans Ulrich Obrist_curator/ 小汉斯_策展人
Yang HongJun_delivery man/杨红军_快递员
Zhu XiaoDi _ architect/ 朱小地_建筑师
Lao Dong_taxi driver/ 老董_出租车司机
Ai WeiWei_artist/艾未未_艺术家
Qu HongYuan_construction site foreman/ 渠洪源_现场工程师
Wang MingXian_art historian/ 王明贤_艺术史学家
Hu LiZhong_ doctor/ 胡力中_ 医生
Jia ZhangKe_film director/ 贾樟珂_导演
Ian Buruma_critic/ 亦安·布鲁马_评论家
Wang BaoJu_curator/ 王宝菊_策展人
Jiang QiHong _state-owned businessman/ 蒋启虹_国企领导
Shi Jian_critic/ 史建_ 评论家
Huang Yan _city governor/ 黄艳_首规委领导
Tony_hair dresser/ 托尼_发型师
Zhang YiMou_filmmaker/ 张艺谋_导演
Mies Van der Rohe_architect / 密斯·凡·德罗_建筑师
Cao Fei _artist / 曹斐_艺术家
Kuku_3D renderer/ 酷酷_渲染图师
Peter Cook_ architect/ 彼得·库克_建筑师
Lei Jin _model maker/ 雷进_模型师
Ma QinYun _architect/ 马清运_建筑师
Li MengXia_fashion editor/ 李孟夏 _时尚主编
Jiang Jun_editor/姜珺_主编And since it’s topical, here’s a selection from the conversation we had with Zhang Yimou, the director of the Beijing Olympic Opening that everybody’s raving about. I personally found the opening’s heavy emphasis on Chinese history a little clunky and against the internationalist spirit of the Olympics, but I think from what he says here, you can get a sense of why it ended up that way…
MAD: As director of the Olympic opening ceremony you seem to have the obligation to juggle many different representations – first a kind of traditional Chinese culture taken from imperial times, then the mass spectacle associated with the communist era, and then a future vision that gives the event a feeling of hopefulness and modernity. How will you balance these different qualities?
ZYM: It is not personal work but team work, and it’s relevant for so many people and their expectations. Just look at all the buzz about it on the Internet or as text messages - there are as many sarcastic remarks as [hopeful] anticipations. It’s indeed impossible to appeal to everybody.
Here’s how I look at it: this is doubtless a very, very important presentation, but you still have to stay calm and treat it as it is - it’s still just an entertainment show, and you need to follow the rules and remain sane. Yes, we Chinese think it’s a centuries-old dream come true, so we have to grab the chance and comb through our 5000-year history, but in the end it’s nothing but a one-hour show.
No matter how great you are, it’s not possible to tell a 5000-year story in one hour. What you want to do is to present the story in visual, aesthetic, and emotional terms. It would be ridiculous to expect anything more than a show from it simply because of the unprecedented anticipation. I mean, why don’t you just write an editorial piece instead of producing a show then?
So I think I have a proper attitude towards it, and I won’t be bothered with all of that. I know it won’t be perfect, but the most important thing is to be entertaining and innovative - we also want to have general appeal. We need to have a universal, humane perspective, which is able to strike a chord in, say, an 18-year-old African youth’s mind. He who knows nothing about China should be able to say, “I seem to know a little bit of the Chinese elements now.” These are all important. When facing such a complicated creative project, I think it helps to start by simplifying things.
Plug 3 (Maseo):
Last, Becoming, a book I made earlier this year together with Ai Weiwei, had its launch event this week. It’s basically a collection of photos taken by Weiwei during the construction of Beijing’s new Air Terminal 3. For the book, I asked Weiwei and the airport’s designer Norman Foster to answer the same set of questions. I didn’t go exactly as planned, but there were a few points where I think the vast differences between the two men are spotlighted.
Here’s Norman Foster:
BM: What insight do you try to offer the students who work for you?
NF: Architects have a duty to design well and to design responsibly – whether that is at the scale of an airport or a door handle. The design process can question our assumptions about buildings and can reconcile needs which are often in conflict. That may mean breaking down social and physical barriers between user groups, or finding ways to bring different functions together under one roof. In that sense, design is a process of integration. The holistic thinking we apply to buildings applies equally to infrastructure – transport systems, streets and public spaces – the “urban glue” that holds a city together.
BM:What have students taught you?
NF: An amazing amount. Every year in the studio we have an evening when recent graduates show their work. The quality and intelligence of the work on display is extraordinary. Every person gets to present his or her work, and that generates a discussion. For me, it is one of the most challenging events of the year. Nobody stands on ceremony and the discussion can be very fast moving. If you begin by thinking you’ve seen it all and know everything, then you’re in for a very big surprise.
And here’s Ai Weiwei:
BM: What insight do you try to offer the students who work for you?
AW: To share the knowledge and to examine it.
BM: What have students taught you?
AW: The students told me it is very difficult to be a student.
LOL. Anyway, Becoming is also my first foray into graphic design, so I’m mostly excited about that. Here’s a couple of images…
And here’s a few of my favorite photos from the book. Click to enlarge…
Popularity: 5% [?]
- Awesome Book: The Chinese Dream
Very Friend Neville Mars and his colleagues at the Dynamic City Foundation have just released an amazing new book called The Chinese Dream. Neville is an architect from Holland. We met in New York in ‘99 when he was working with a couple friends on a film called NYNTEEN NYNTY NYNE, and over the years I’ve come to deeply admire his commitment to quality and overall flip mode ethic.
He moved to China four or five years ago, lured by an announcement that China planned to build 400 new cities of 1 million inhabitants each by 2020, or 20 new cities a year for 20 years. He co-founded DCF, a kind of amorphous collective of sociologists, planners, researchers and designers, and got to work. In 2003 they launched the Urban China 2020 project, an in-depth study of the effects of China’s flash-urbanization and what designers could do in response. To expand the pool of participants, observers, critics, etc. a couple of years ago DCF established an online collaboration platform called BURB for open-source research and design.
The Chinese Dream (010, 2008) is the culmination of these efforts, a 784-page opus that I can honestly say is the most beautiful book on China I’ve ever seen. Besides that I can’t say much more, though, because I haven’t actually read it yet. Neville showed it to me last month between drinks and in poor lighting conditions, but I was honestly blow away by it. So I’m riding with that emotion. (Nev holla)
Here are some sample spreads, in case you think I’m exaggerating. Click to enlarge…
To view many more and read the book’s introduction, check out the Chinese Dream fact sheet here.
I don’t think it’s arrived in western stores yet, but you can order the book from the publisher’s site here.
For all the Beijing heads, here are a few places where you can pick it up…
FakeSpace www.fakedesign.co.uk
Bookworm www.beijingbookworm.com
Timezone8 timezone8.com
Onewaystreet Library, Yuanmingyuan www.onewaystreet.cnPopularity: 6% [?]
- Chinese Gvt: Don’t be a spastic - get drastic about plastic
I’m back in Beijing and the big piece of non-earthquake/non-Olympic news here is the new ban on free plastic bags. According to China Daily
From June 1 on, all Chinese retailers, including supermarkets, department stores and grocery stores, would no longer provide free plastic shopping bags.
The number of plastic bags consumed in China is literally unbelievable. It’s estimated that Beijing alone consumes nearly 10 billion plastic bags annually, which is equivalent to around 27 million bags per day. Really.
So this is great news for everybody I guess, but especially for China’s overworked, underappreciated environmental activists. Last year I got to know a bunch of them while I was doing research for the 桌志 | Eat Up project and I thought, to celebrate the new policy, I’d post up a conversation I had with Takeshi Ikeda, an organizer for Global Village Beijing, one of China’s earliest environmental NGOs. At the time he was spearheading an information campaign aimed at reducing the use of plastic bags. He talked a lot about the challenges of doing environmental activism in China, and he actually ended up saying the public advocacy doesn’t really work here. Anyway, I found it really interesting, check it out….
(more…)Popularity: 9% [?]
- 四川大地震
I’m still in Dubai, but my mind isn’t. A lot of friends have written to me from China about the earthquake, and I want to share some of the images they’ve sent. These are pretty excruciating. Love to everyone suffering and supporting.
(more…)Popularity: 7% [?]
- Ordos 100: Bringing a taste of everywhere to the middle of nowhere
I spent most of last week in Inner Mongolia as a part-time observer, part-time participant in Ordos 100, a gathering of architects from around the world organized by Ai Weiwei’s FAKE Design Studio and the good folks at Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Co. Ltd. It was a strange few days of socializing, work, worrying, gawking, furious drinking, and compulsive, borderline creepy recording. I’ll probably write a piece or two about it in the end, so for now, I’ll stick mostly to images & captions…
Popularity: 24% [?]
- Where is the love?
In honor of Valentine’s Day, here’s the most appropriate thing I’ve got: a little essay I wrote last year about losing my libido in China. XX
PLAYED OUT: Confessions of a neutered white male in China
I have always prided myself on being a sexual person. Not promiscuous, but, within the proper confines, freaky. Since moving to China about a year ago, I have felt my sexuality shrink to the point where I could now potentially lose it in the shower. How could this sad state of affairs come to pass? I’m out on the town. I keep fit. I’ve managed my drug intake in a manner that allows me to get an erection when and wherever I damn well choose, thank you. So, what happened to me?
(more…)Popularity: 100% [?]
- Party like it’s 4999
Happy Year of the Rat everybody. As I mentioned before, I played a new year’s eve party in Beijing last week. I got the audio today, here it is….
The first hour is (blazin) hip hop and r&b. The second is mostly house and a little speed garage. They’re broken up by an unfortunate vocal interlude, which I was forced to do by the club’s owner, who handed me the mic with instructions to “be joyful”.
Part 1
DOWNLOAD
right-click + ’save link as’ (mac) / ’save target as’ (windows)Part 2
DOWNLOADVery big shout to everybody at Red Balloon. You guys were some down to party motherfuckers.
Popularity: 7% [?]
- Happy New Year
Today is Chinese New Year’s Eve. It’s shaping up to be a big night. So to start it off right I just bought a whole mess of fireworks. If I survive the explosions with all my fingers, I’m supposed to DJ later. The promoter told me he’s going to record the whole thing, so hopefully I’ll have audio of it in the next couple days.
For now let’s mark the occasion with the most and least appropriate song I can think of: Clipse - “Chinese New Year”
Goodbye pig, hello rat…
Popularity: 5% [?]
- The Beijing Caucus
Sexy Beiijing is an online TV show hosted by an American girl called Su Fei. It’s basically sociology meets Sex and the City, and mostly inlvolves Su Fei roaming the streets of Beijing asking local people for advice on how to find a man.
In this episode she’s looking for advice on who to vote for in the presidential primary.
Awesome.
Popularity: 7% [?]
- HOW TO NOT MAKE MONEY: good conversation with the head curator of Beijing’s first non-profit art center
One of the coolest things about being in Beijing at this point in history is watching the ways that the city processes the huge amounts of new cultural information that enter it each day. On its surface, Beijing’s cultural identity seems pretty fixed. It’s the PRC’s symbolic center, and it needs to look the part. But if you look below the surface, you see a city passionately seeking out and soaking in new forms of life and living. For the past few months, I’ve been interviewing some of the people who seem to be at the front of this process. I’ll post up some my favorites as time goes by.
For the second installment, here is a conversation I had last week with Colin Chinnery, the deputy director and head curator at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art , China’s first not-for-profit art center. As you’ll see, the project is blazing several trails at the same time….
Quotables:
“I think, without a doubt, there is not single person in this team who has had this amount of freedom, or could possibly expect to have anything like this amount of freedom in an institution in the West.”
“It’s a little bit like social engineering.”
“This money from the market and the speculators is a tidal wave, and a hell of a lot of artists are going to be washed out to sea.”
“The French called the Americans and the Americans called the Chinese, and both the French and Americans said, ‘This has to come down!’”
Popularity: 15% [?]
