A salty egg

[imomus]

"In China we have a special way of preserving the eggs," says artist Gou Shaolan. "It's called salty eggs and we preserve them with a lot of salt in a container for one month and afterwards that egg can be eaten or can be preserved for another two or three or ten years."

The BBC, on the other hand, doesn't salt its eggs -- audio-on-demand radio programmes like the very interesting Sunday Feature on Beijing's Factory 798 stay online for only one week before they're obliterated. A couple of years ago the BBC announced that they were contemplating using p2p to distribute their vast and valuable archives, but nothing seems to have come of this. As a result, the public part of the BBC archive is a bit like the way Gou Shaolan describes Beijing:



"I'm amazed at the speed with which China changes, the city, the landscape and in terms of the shops around you -- the whole street can be torn down in two weeks time... I started to think that for a city or a nation like this, memory is no longer valid. Because you don't need, really, to remember anything, because things can change so fast."

One area that's changed is in Dashanzi in north east Beijing, just beyond the 4th ringroad, on the way out to the airport. Here, a 1950s factory complex on a wooded site (financed by the Soviets, designed by East Germans) has morphed into China's most creative artistic centre. A series of industrial units have been transformed into galleries, studios, bookshops, installations, workshops and cafes. After making several incognito visits wearing hats and sunglasses just to see just what was going on, senior party officials decided to let Factory 798 remain and even expand. It's undergoing a sympathetic architectural renovation (unfortunately the last traces of actual industry are also being forced out of the area).

I found BBC Radio 3's documentary about the area so interesting that I thought I'd make it available here in the form of a sort of audio salted egg:

The Sunday Feature: Factory 798 (40.3 MB stereo mp3 file, 45 mins. First broadcast Sunday 19th November 2006 on BBC Radio 3.)



You can enhance your listening experience by watching Roy Wang's Flickr slideshow of the complex. Here's a China Daily article about Factory 798, published to co-incide with the 4th Beijing Dashanzi International Art Festival on April 29th 2006. And here are some interesting tidbits which emerge in the course of the programme:

* The way you identify artists in China is that all the guys have long hair and all the women have short hair and crew cuts.

* One artist brought a gun to the gallery and shot her own installation, a telephone booth, then got arrested.

* Another dipped dolls in a bucket of red paint to protest the government's one-child policy.

* Another played a traditional Chinese instrument wearing a punky mohawk hairstyle, and another tore up the flag of the Communist Party.

* Not everybody interviewed in the documentary thinks these shock tactics are the way forward.

* Selling paintings and doubling, tripling or quadrupling your money is just a small part of what running a gallery is about. It's also about building relationships and trust with your artists and your collector base. Galleries who don't realize that can't deal with Western museums. "They can't talk the talk."

* One Japanese gallerist who thought he'd established a bond of trust with a Chinese artist was appalled to see her showing her work with two other galleries at a major art fair. The Chinese are very business savvy, but they fail to grasp that sometimes getting the best possible price for your work just overheats the market and isn't good for anyone in the long run.

* "What does China make money for? Money can't make people happy if they don't have any freedom for themselves."

Comments

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

I heard a comment once on China's rapid change that "the western economic model doesn't work in China". Hell no, that model doesn't work anywhere!

[(Anonymous)]

This begs the question, what exactly is the "western economic model"? Different Western governments employ divergent economic policies whilst simultaneously any singular democratic Western nation's economic policy undergoes fairly much continuous modification under successive governments and market conditions.
Assuming all these could by some means add up to a median definition of a "western economic model" what would you suggest as a viable alternative?

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

The western economic model is the "use and throw away" model.

[(Anonymous)]

The disposability in question is a product of our affluence.
Should we feel a self-flagellating, impotent guilt because we live in what is nominally a wealthy society whilst others living under other political regimes live in poverty.
Our indulgent self- loathing does nothing to help societies that do not have the benefits we enjoy, nor is there anything ennobling about the shackles which third world poverty puts upon people.
I am curious to interrogate what exactly is this Western economic model and for you to develop further your definition of it.
Whilst we in Western society enjoy a good carp at the flaws within the democratic systems we live in and whilst democracy and the free market are not by any means an ideal can you succinctly elucidate more fully on what alternative you would propose?
Regards
Thomas Scott.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

I think we should get more ecological, not so economical.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

And by that I think that there is way too much talk about how we need to grow economically these days though the way we "grow" economically these days is devastating for mother earth and our relatives in nature as we are destroying everything that we didn't build. Just like the taste of the jalapeño is to the non-mexican this way of living is ridiculous to those who want to keep the earth green.

According to that man who I heard that "Western economics doesn't work in China" thing said that at 2050 all of the forest on earth might be depleted if everybody in China would be middle-class wealthy.

That to say if they consumed as much as they do in the west, especially the US, who consume such a large amount of basically everything. What the fuck, leave something to the others at the table, I say. Sooner or later you won't be able to drink the wine as wine anymore since it is already been diluted with too much dirty water and urine.

[(Anonymous)]

I presume then that you have no more idea how exactly to construct this utopian alternative society than the rest of us.
Ecology meanwhile is a luxury we in Western society can afford to indulge in, we have roads, railways,educational institutes,hospitals, sanitation, infrastructure, mechanization, industrialization, all these wonderful things that we take for granted.
From our position of empowerment we preach to the third world the message of ecology and environmentalism expecting poorer societies to continue to live with disease, lack of sanitation,lack of infrastructure, to 'learn from our mistakes' and value the environment over humanity
This flawed view of the supposed responsibilities of developing societies is both anti-humanist and racist.
Environmentalism has become both the unquestioned orthodoxy of our time and a pernicious quasi-religion which deserves -but seldom gets- skepticism and scrutiny.
Thomas S.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

Hey, you got to start somewhere, a society doesn't need to be wealthy in the economic area to be able to be ecological. This goal can be reached if we put aside alot of things that we, as you say, take for granted and put down our mass-consumion behavior and start to help these poor nations.

It is not impossible, just something that will take some time to achieve, but if we would start now...

[(Anonymous)]

Hello again Cap Scaleman,
The best chance Third World countries could have would be if the World Bank, the I.M.F. and charity based N.G.O.s were to jettison their despicable policy of sustainable development and instead channel their funding to the bigger projects which developing countries need.
Third World countries do not want wells, mud hut schools and fabricated hospitals presided over by beneficent- faced missionaries they want hydro-electric power, highways, industry and infrastructure.
These developments will inevitably impact the environment- as all human activity I am afraid does.
But we cannot conscionably dictate agenda that favours the environment over humanism.
Had we in Western Europe chosen to follow the Luddite path at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution we would still be leading the 'short, brutish lives' that were most peoples lot hitherto.

[inuitmonster.livejournal.com]

One could say that the "Washington Consensus" set of neo-liberal policies is what does not work in China. They have achieved a high level of economic growth through a different set of policies - ones both statist and gradualist.

My studies suggest that the Washington Consensus policies do not actually work anywhere, which is why they only ever seem to be applied in Latin America and other parts of the world with disaster economies, but never in The West.

[(Anonymous)]

Loading days. Hacd been shopliftind and shoplifting. Think its indiscreet to post such indiscretion. On momuses blog? I don't give a shit. Hello this is zz from saturn

Logan's Run

[wringham.livejournal.com]

The BBC, on the other hand, doesn't salt its eggs -- audio-on-demand radio programmes like the very interesting Sunday Feature on Beijing's Factory 798 stay online for only one week before they're obliterated.

I discovered this myself only yesterday. I was looking for Stewart Lee's documentary about clowns, entitled White Face Dark Heart. I had assumed it would all be available on the 'Listen Again' feature, naively believing such a feature would do exactly as it said on the tin. But I was only able to listen to Part Two. Part One had been 'obliterated' since it was more than seven days old.

The Beeb's online service like a digital version of Logan's Run.

[xishimarux.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the egg! I've been wanting to know more about whats going on in the Chinese art scene.

[bricology.livejournal.com]

>>* Another played a traditional Chinese instrument wearing a punky mohawk hairstyle, and another tore up the flag of the Communist Party.<<

Chinese art 2006 = Western art 1976.

OK, I shouldn't be so reductivist, but that's how it seems. The paths Chinese artists are exploring nowadays have almost no significance (much less invention) to the rest of the world, other than in an ironic way or as an anthropological curiosity. The few exceptions that come to mind (such as Cai Guo Xing) are highly Westernized.

[(Anonymous)]

Is Western art in 2006 really any further along from this? Art here is still about cheap tricks for shock effect, and not for the sake of beauty.

-henryperri

[bricology.livejournal.com]

Well, without necessarily broadening the topic any further, three quick thoughts:

1. I'm not sure that art exists "for the sake of beauty", at least not since the Renaissance. Lest we forget, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Whistler, et al, were all criticized in their day for producing "ugly" art.

2. Are we "further along" than the Chinese? Undoubtedly, even if we're not entirely happy with where "along" has gotten us. Has Western music gotten "further along" since the '70s? Of course it has, even if I think that much of our contemporary music is crap.

3. There is a lot of beauty to be found in contemporary Western art, even if it's not immediately apparent:

[thisexplosion.livejournal.com]

thanks for posting the file, i'm currently living in beijing (have been here for a few months now) and the bbc is banned, along with wikipedia et all. if you're interested, there are some more photos of the 798 space here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennywongxo/sets/72157594397053576/).

[(Anonymous)]

Equating art with beauty is a little like equating poetry with Helen Steiner Rice greeting cards. Thomas.S.

[(Anonymous)]

The danger of coming up with such a comparison is that you admit to knowing what Helen Steiner Rice greeting cards are.

-henryperri

[(Anonymous)]

Ha,ha,good point, but by dint of your reply I presume you are au fait with them also!
Thomas S.

[maybeimdead.livejournal.com]

Chinese art 2006 = Western art 1976.

Yes, in the sense that art is a thing in and of itself (a Western conception), as does your notion of "progress".

[maybeimdead.livejournal.com]

On a related note, I would encourage you to read Michael Puett's (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~ealc/people/puett.html) latest research in comparing the Western modern and post-modern condition with pre-Common Era China, Confucian doctrine and the development of East-Asian cultural thought and philosophy.

[bricology.livejournal.com]

I never mentioned "progress", merely a process of development. I in no way think that Western art 2006 is an improvement over Western art 1976. But we've been there and done that. Why revisit it?

And clearly, Chinese contemporary art IS predicated upon the Western model, so it's not exclusively a "Western conception". Consider Huang Yong Ping -- one of the most famous Chinese contemporary artists -- who has based most of his output over the past 25 years upon Western works of art. He even founded a Chinese Dada "movement", 60 years after we had ours in the West.

[maybeimdead.livejournal.com]

I never mentioned "progress", merely a process of development. I in no way think that Western art 2006 is an improvement over Western art 1976. But we've been there and done that. Why revisit it?

So "if process of development" isn't progress, what is it? As to "we've been there and done that", who is we? And why does art have to be something new?

Perhaps Chinese Contemporary Art is merely super-legitimate.

[bricology.livejournal.com]

"Progress", to me, implies improvement. The evolution of audio recording from the Edison cylinder record to the stereo LP is what I'd call "progress". A "process of development" is just a linear exploration. For example, Fletcher Benton's sculpture in the '60s and '70s was quite good, but his subsequent body of work hasn't been nearly as good. It's all part of his linear process, tho'.

The "we" I referred to is the Western contemporary art world, of which I am a part. "Why does art have to be something new"? I wouldn't suggest that ALL art has to be new, but contemporary art is, by definition, an exploration in new ideas. It would be antithetical to contemporary art to back up and revisit previous trends without significant variation and change of perspective.

Sound

[(Anonymous)]

Nick, this is a bit off topic, but I thought you might be interested: I just performed on a bill with Sejayno, which is the new band that Pete, from The Gongs has formed. Very errie/beautiful. Just wondered if you were aware/interested.-Jed

[obelia.livejournal.com]

money buys food
food does make the chinese happy

make it up as you go

[(Anonymous)]

<< "I'm amazed at the speed with which China changes, the city, the landscape and in terms of the shops around you -- the whole street can be torn down in two weeks time... I started to think that for a city or a nation like this, memory is no longer valid. Because you don't need, really, to remember anything, because things can change so fast." >>

Wow this is very Sartrean, no? Being and Nothingness? Hope I'm not remembering his work, hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong. Hi this is zz finally on a fat client again.

Re: make it up as you go

[(Anonymous)]

<< Being and Nothingness? Hope I'm not remembering his work >>

That should read "Hope I'm not misremembering his work" (it was a long time ago).