"Platform for Urban Investigation " - from 20 MAY 2006 to 20 JUN 2006
Island6 Arts Center, Shanghai's venue for the latest trends in
contemporary art invites you to "Platform for Urban Investigation ", a
show curated by Allard van Hoorn, May 20th 2006 at 19H.
• curated by Allard van Hoorn •
• art direction by Thomas Charveriat •
*People*
/Jiang Jun/
Designer and critic, Jiang Jun has been working on urban research and
experimental study, exploring the interrelationship between design
phenomenon and urban dynamic. He has been the editor-in-chief of Urban
China magazine since the end of 2004, in the meantime working on a
book. Born in Hubei in 1974, he got a bachelor's degree in Tongji
University (Shanghai) and a master's degree from Tsinghua University
(Beijing), he is now teaching in Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts.
/Underline Office/
Underline Office is a project-oriented group founded in 2003 by
designer, photographer and critic Jiang Jun. Based in Guangzhou and
registered in Hong Kong, most of its members came from Guangzhou
Academy of Fine Arts. Since the beginning of 2005, Underline Office
has been fully engaged into the founding and researching for Urban
China, an urbanism magazine based in Shanghai, and also involved into
a series of important exhibitions. Main works include: /Systematic
Superficiality/ (Exhibition analysis and Design) for /Get It Louder
Exhibition 2005/; /Hi-China/ (An interactive installation for the
images from 100 cities of China) for Guangdong Triennale 2005;
/Directory Lianzhou/ (A Branch work for Hi-China) for Lianzhou
International Photography Festival 2005; /Objects to Come/Objects in
Disappearing and Future Past Tense/ (A video installation cooperated
with Crystal CG) for Shenzhen Biennale 2005; /Informal China/ for
China Contemporary Exhibition in NAi, Rotterdam, 2006; /Urban Image &
Text/ for China Contemporary Exhibition in Fotomuseum, Rotterdam, 2006.
/David Cotterrell/
received an MA in Fine Art: Combined Media from Chelsea College of Art
and Design in 1997. David is an installation artist working across
varied media including video, audio, interactive media, artificial
intelligence, device control and hybrid technology. His work exhibits
political, social and behavioural analyses of the environments and
contexts, which he and his work inhabit. Recent work has involved
research into computational models of conversational speech, an
artificially intelligent pedestrian urban population and a
self-sustaining gridlock generator. He is currently working in
Shanghai, China on research into the impact of population expansion
with the support of an Arts Council England and British Council award.
/John Ingledew/
Head of Photography at Central St Martins College of Art and Design,
the University of the Arts London and a visiting Visual Communications
Lecturer at Raffles Design Institute, Dong Hua University Shanghai. He
has run projects and workshops with students in Europe, America and
Japan and instigated projects with leading creative companies and
magazines including /Diesel, Illy, Jigsaw, Getty, Vogue and Elle/. His
book of pictures /A View From the Bridge/ was published in 1998. His
book /Photography/ was published in the UK and USA last year and will
be published in Spain, Holland and Italy in 2006.
/Lee Walton/
Lee Walton is an Experientialist whose projects and performances are
full of humor, detailed planning, and interaction with the outside
world. Serendipitous combinations of rule and chance, Walton's
projects are always playful, precisely calibrated, conceptually
on-target and deeply attentive to the everyday patterns and rhythms of
contemporary city life. Walton has exhibited at numerous venues both
nationally and internationally, most recently at the Museum of
Contemporary Art Berlin and Clubs Project Inc., Australia. He has been
invited to lecture and lead projects at various institutions,
including the Reykjavik Museum in Iceland and the Psy-Geo-Conflux in
New York.
/Shanglie Zhou/
Shanglie Zhou (1958, Shanghai) arrived in Antwerp about fifteen years
ago where she further developed her career as a visual artist.
"Throughout the years, the works of visual artist Shanglie Zhou have
continued to astonish the audiences by their originality and strong
identity. Sometimes shocking and bizarre, at other times sober and
serene or even witty and playful, this chinese artist, now residing in
Antwerp, always surprises us with the only thing we can always expect
from her: the unexpected." (Quote: Alex Otterlei)
/Jan Van Woensel/
Jan Van Woensel is a freelance curator based in Antwerp, Belgium. He
was appointed as a guest-professor at the Karel de Grote Hogeschool,
dept Audiovisual and Fine Arts in Antwerp. Since 2003 he works as a
curator, co-director and co-editor of a.o. Vlucht magazine Amsterdam,
The Fields Projects publications, Kunshart magazine, free-Flux and
Markers project VI at the Documenta in Kassel. He is also the founder
of ICPA (International Curators Platform Antwerp)
/Rose Tang/
Rose Tang was born twice, first as a boy, on the beautiful hills
surrounding Taichung(Taiwan) in 1967; and then again, in Shanghai, at
the turn of this century, as the most promising Chinese artist of her
generation. Rose is extravagant, rebellious and fearless, and she
indiscriminately touches on all aspect of Chinese culture. Her /daddy
(2006)/ and /Aunties (2005)/ will be displayed at Island6 during the
/Platform for Urban Investigation/.
/Martin Tzou/
Martin Tzou, 31 years old, architect from Belgium, based in Shanghai
since 2004.
/Annie Wang/
from Beijing, 30 years old. Profession: TV program manager. She lives
in a tower, works in a high-rise office, and takes underground
transportation to move around in Shanghai.
/Allard van Hoorn/
Allard van Hoorn creates a visual language made of signs, symbols and
demarcations that indicate alternative routes in contemporary society.
It is a visual code he co-develops with people he works with in all
parts of the world and, specifically, in local communities. His
complete body of work is aimed at assisting mankind in obtaining
another way of looking and seeing, discovering that we now have the
option to make it work for all of humanity.
*Projects*
/Urban China/
Urban China magazine is reflecting on urban culture throughout China
and has issued themes like /We Make Cities/. /Hong Kong Alphabet/ with
guest editors Gutteriez + Poertefaix, /Made in China (Reality and
Identity of the World Factory)/ and /City Sculpture/. The next two
issues will coincide with China Contemporary, a simultaneous
exhibition at the Netherlands Architecture Institute, Museum Boijmans
Van Beuningen and the Nederlands fotomuseum in Rotterdam, to be opened
at the 10th of June 2006, where Jiang Jun and Underline Office will
show their work.
/Hi-China - Jiang Jun & Underline Office/
Hi-China is a database based on the excursion of 100 Chinese cities as
well as over 200,000 images systematically taken from it. It is also
the name of the generic directory constructed for the massive
database, whose target is to set up an aggregate, which can both
reflect the multiplicity of Chinese cities in the greatest
possibilities and offer the most efficient way to be managed and
searched. Not only can this generic directory classify the large
numbers of images from each city quickly, but also it sets up parallel
relations between different cities, so that it generates links between
the parallel segments of them in a generic directory. As the
subdirectories of all levels are simultaneously a series of
independent urban projects, Hi-China is gradually evolving into a
Project of Projects, in which each project can be linked to all the
cities that have the same segments. In this way the invisibility of
order is indicated by the visibility of phenomenon, the incredible
super-reality is constructed by the ordinary and trivial reality.
Hi-China is an on-going project that is being revised and optimized
constantly. The phased outcome will be presented as books, magazines
and websites. More sub-projects and marginal projects will be
generated through the extending and detailing of its local elements.
/Model Junction No. 1 - David Cotterrell/
Based on study of various models of traffic simulation of, amongst
others, Shanghai, an attempt is made to forecast the ultimate
road-planning scheme if car ownership would be the only driving force
within this framework. Step-by-step growth from footpath to clover
highway structures are developed and shown during the Platform for
Urban Investigation.
/Visual Ping Pong - Students from Raffles Design Institute / Dong Hua
University in Shanghai and Central Saint Martins College of Art and
Design in London./
Each week visual messages are being sent by email between Raffles
Design Institute/Dong Hua University in Shanghai and Central St
Martins College of Art in London. Like a game of visual ping pong the
images move quickly to and fro between the two sides with each player
adding their own imaginative spin to the pictures. Like any game each
player cannot predict or change what the other player does.
/Remote Instructions - Lee Walton/
Lee Walton will provide instructions from Brooklyn, New York for the
Platform for Urban Investigation to be executed in Shanghai.
/Shanghaid - John Ingledew/
Posters project, SHANGHAID - vandalised billboards of future Shanghai,
photographed in Pudong, May 2006.
/Contribution - Shanglie Zhou and Jan Van Woensel/
Their contribution to the Platform for Urban Investigation-project
elaborates from their specific local orientation and aims to changing
the environment through a direct intervention in the public space. Ten
postcards representing monuments, historical buildings and famous
touristy places in Antwerp will be appropriated by the artist and
reprinted on poster size to be displayed at ten different locations in
Shanghai. The postcards are addressed to specific persons that are
significant for the cities' cultural scene; Zhou Benyi (former
Professor at the Shanghai Theater Academy), Chunming Gao (Director of
Shanghai Arts Research Institute), Sheng Han (Vice-president of the
Shanghai Theater Academy), Jianguo Zheng (Director of Shanghai
Oriental Publicity and Education Service Center) a.o. As the
handwritten messages on the back side of the postcards will be
presented alongside the colorful images of this Northern Belgian city,
they become public notes. Hereby the artist introduces a personal
reflection on the project by integrating her situation of being
disconnected from her original habitat to generate moments of
concentration in the changing cityscape. These messages will include
impressions from both cities; their cultural scene and historical
background; but will as well reflect upon the rapidly changing and
expanding city and the social conditions this irreversible evolution
evokes. This contribution to the Platform for Urban Investigation aims
to reach the people of Shanghai and establishes a public debate
through a socially engaged intervention in the public space. The
concept for this project was designed by Shanglie Zhou and Jan Van
Woensel.
/Daddy & Aunties - Rose Tang/
Rose Tang was born twice, first as a boy, on the beautiful hills
surrounding Taichung (Taiwan) in 1967; and then again, in Shanghai, at
the turn of this century, as the most promising Chinese artist of her
generation. Rose is extravagant, rebellious and fearless, and she
indiscriminately touches on all aspect of Chinese culture. In /daddy
(2006)/ and /Aunties (2005)/, Rose tries to understand the impact and
influence that culture, relationships and family values had on the
development of her sexual identity. Rose Tang's work captures much of
the essence and uniqueness of her identity journey by presenting a
delicate balance of sociological analysis, social perception, facts,
style and history.
/Tracking Annie in Shanghai - Martin Tzou & Annie Wang/
Contemporary urban life implies more and more vertical movements in
the city, which however are not often investigated. The project wants
to explore the vertical dimension of the movements of citizens in the
city of Shanghai. Annie and Martin, two characters who know each
other, are to be tracked in the city during one week. Using GPS
technology, geographic positions indicating the movements of the
characters will be recorded. The data will be put into graphs and 3D
models, and displayed along with photographs and videos of the
experimentation.
/Reappropriation of Geometry - Allard van Hoorn/
One of the projects that will take place at Island6 Arts Center is
/Re-appropriation of geometric forms/. The public is cordially invited
to actively participate in the development of this activity. Fellow
humans like R. Buckminster Fuller have thoroughly proved we are the
first generation that can fully make the whole of the system of
cohabitation on this planet work, that we have more then sufficient
technological standards, non-organic energy resources etc. to provide
a high standard of living for all people on earth. The only thing that
keeps us from doing so is knowledge. This project uses the
re-appropriation of geometric figures as a method of stimulating an
alternative look on the world. By defining the properties of the line,
triangle, square and circle differently and using these physical forms
accordingly is intending to change our perspectives on the world
around us. The way humans have evolved on our planet is to a certain
extent arbitrary. So is the way we describe the world around us.
Accordingly, formulas and descriptions in physics and mathematics are
developed over many generations, building theory upon theory. One can
imagine that in a slightly distinctly developed world these
descriptions of the world around us would have developed differently,
giving other meanings and functionality. This project is an exercise
in imagining other functions and definitions of very common forms in
our daily lives like a line, triangles, squares and circles. Together
we will investigate how to re-interpret or re-appropriate these forms
in a different manner from their currently known geometric realities.
Island6 Arts Center, 120 Moganshan Rd, buiding #6, 2F, Shanghai 200060
China
______________________________________________
SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe
Info, archive and help:
http://coredump.buug.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre
