The Universerse in the City

I took it upon myself to carry a school camera around last week in my ever widening effort to look for the way light shines. Thus I walked home from work with this and other locations on my mind. This is The Place (in capital because that is its name) just north of the Silk Market in east central Beijing. There is this long video screen and for sometime I watched and snapped photos of it. When I returned how and was sorting through what I took, I came across this one and thought "How delicious, this city is so big that the universe itself will fit inside of it".

In China one of the ideas I got from her (Tracy, who was visiting my school yesterday) was that artists are arguing about globalization in art and retaining Chinese-ness. There is a question about whether or not China should stick to its old way of doing things, teaching art making skills, so as not to loose it Chinese-ness. I think China is also feeling like someone is trying to take it over (China has been terrified of that since WWII) the Chinese, always very, very nationalistic, don’t want to be accused of toadying or copying other powers. I told her that China has a good system because it teaches skills but it lacks because they don’t teach anyone how to think. This is a big problem in China. This is why I am excited about punk rock here because that is the group of people in China that have had it with being told how to do things and are expressive, they may lack skills but they make up for it in creativity. The trick is how to get these programmers (computer programmers are a very avant garde group here), punk rockers and hip-hop-pers into the visual arts fold; or extend visual arts beyond, what it is right now in China, an elitist club. The articles I’ve studied about post-modernism have argued such a shift, even Andy Warhol was getting away from that as far back as the sixties, and since in China visual arts is still a select group, it is very difficult to do. We need more exhibitions like the Fuck Off exhibition at Li Liang’s gallery in 2000. This isn’t to say things have to be extreme, but they can be anything so long as its researched, expressive and done on purpose. And if we could blur the distinctions between who gets to participate in high art and who doesn't then I feel that we in China would really be creating a new idea.

Above photo is from Eastlink Gallery's Fuck Off exhibition. There is some really wild stuff there and while very little of it is salable, the exhibition was a visual success.
http://www.eastlinkgallery.cn

Day After Valentines

Not even sure what to write about but felt that it has been too much time since I've written. The students have been making collages to explore Pop Art recently and this photo comes from that, it's nice doing this stuff with them because there are some fun things that come about as a result. Andy Warhol, when asked what he does when he doesn't have ideas said he waits. I have been doing this lately, just waiting. I created a couple of drawings for play, thinking an idea will come and while I have produced a simple thing or two, nothing interesting has come about. To pass the time I've researched Japanese prints, worked on my school blog and finished carving a signature chop that I am actually pleased with. I wrote a bit about deliberate abstraction and I feel that this is where I should be moving at least I think it will break my block. There are a bunch of photographs I have wanted to return to to explore see if there is something I can abstract from there.

A building in Beijing caught fire last week. I saw some intersting fotage from the internet and I can see the biulding from my classroom. Have snapped a couple of shots of it, would have been something to actually see burn.