He Ge Zhuang village

Opposite the unfinished gallery mentioned in my last post is the village of He Ge Zhuang which has become an exemplar of refurbishing villages in traditional style but with contemporary facilities. The project is the work of the couple who run the very tranquil Orchard restaurant in the village and who have set up the YinYang community centre too ( a mixture of Western Psychotherapy practice, Traditional Chinese massage, pilates – somehow very New York and tranquil and chai latte).



The Orchard also runs a charity to support the children of migrant workers in the He Ge Zhuang. Also through a project called REAL LIFE they intended to make some of the renovated traditional houses available to expats. Their publicity blurb goes like this:

Tired of living in a gated compound of luxury villas?
Wondering from the 27th florr of your downtown high-rise apartment whether is possible to live closer to nature?
While expats have traditionally enjoyed a special status in China, some have described the gated community lifestyle as far too removed from the reality of the Middle Kingdom. 'It's so fake,' we often hear people tells us.
In 2007 the Real Life Beijing Co.,Ltd., signed contracts with the local government officials to renovate several courtyards in the village of Hegezhuang in Cuigzhuang Township.

...

Most importantly, this project seeks to not marginalise the residents of Hegezhuang, but rather to improve the lives of both the villagers and the Real Life clients. Clients sign a long-term lease with the company which in turn provides a fair income to the village landlords. The clients, in turn, have the opportunity to enjoy a lifestyle not readily available to expats in Beijing, and which is protected by the Real Life company with official approval by the village and township governments.

I wish them well but there are murmurs of anxiety in the brochure copy, little nodes of tension not far away: 'a fair income', a lifestyle 'protected', 'official approval'. And the Real Life name sounds like the title of an organisation in some dystopian novel.

The fact the village is surrounded by trees makes it particularly peaceful.




Some of the village houses seem empty awaiting renovation.








It’s quite beautiful and I hope it works out for everyone.

Architecture of boom and crash-bang

I do go on about building in China but I’ve also come across a number of stalled building projects. Near where I’m staying there’s a huge space which was intended to be an art gallery but remains unfinished because there isn’t the money to complete it.







Next door is a series of spaces that were intended for use as artists’ workshops but these too are empty because there may not be the demand for the spaces that there was at the height of the China art frenzy in recent years, when young Chinese people decided to become artists as a quick way to make money! That’s changed now and many artists here seem happy since they think that quality will emerge from the ruins of the market funfair.




I attended the opening of a new exhibition at the Red Gate Gallery’s Watchtower space last Sunday. For the exhibition, called ReGroup - New Opportunities in A New Climate, some of the gallery’s well known artists were asked to make work on a much smaller scale than they’d become accustomed to in the past few years. The new modesty is more commercially viable in this climate and perhaps more appropriate.

So when I dance in these unfinished buildings in Beijing, I feel like I can insert myself in the narrative structure of the global financial crisis, as it is manifest here. What am I saying when I do so? Maybe nothing more than that I’ve survived so far. I’m still here. More than that, there’s potential I can work with.

Richard Long - Land Artist

"One thing I like about my work is all the different ways it can be in the world," he says. "A local could walk by and not notice it, or notice it and not know anything about me. Or someone could come upon a circle and know it was a circle of mine. I really like the notion of the visibility or invisibility of the work as well as the permanence and transience."

"I guess I'm an opportunist, really. I go out into the world with an open mind, and I rely to a degree on intuition and chance. The idea of making art out of nothing, I've got a lot of time for that. Walking up and down a field, or carrying a stone in my pocket, it's almost nothing, isn't it?" Almost.

Richard Long in an Observer feature

Ikea Beijing and an art auction in 798

The hum and hiss under 798's art factory market

Rehearsing Dialogue

While I'm here in Beijing, Xiao Ke, Yin Yi and I are rehearsing Dialogue, the piece we made in Dublin last year. We will perform the piece in Edinburgh in August but more pressingly here in the Penghao Theater at the start of June. For these rehearsals, we're using a great studio that's also in the village of Fei Jia Cun (just beyond the modeling school - that's modeling school as in America's Next Top rather than clay modeling). Quite apart from it being light and tall, this fantastic dance space has two bedrooms and a kitchen. It could be a great residency space if only they had wifi. I'm not jealous but having a dance floor is a little kinder on the joints than my concrete set up.



I have purchased some comforting yoga mat building blocks from the village shop (full of surprises - though decaf coffee isn't one of them) and the colours can't help but match the paint splashes on the floor.

Meanwhile in Dublin...'exemplary professionalism'

The Irish Times Digest keeps me in touch with news in Ireland so I was happy to read this feature about Sarah Browne and Gareth Kennedy who are representing Ireland in this year's Venice Bienale. The feature alludes to the couples 'exemplary professionalism' as some kind of counter to the questions that were raised about their youth and profile when their selection was announced. I'm glad they were selected, not because they're professional, but because they are good and because they engage with ideas and experiences that are meaningful to a wide range of people.

Gareth is bringing a group of Dublin buskers to Venice

AS PART OF Kennedy’s individual project, the buskers have already been in action in Dublin’s Docklands. Architectural photographer Ros Kavanagh has photographed them against contemporary buildings there – incongruously, as Kennedy notes.

“Docklands was supposed to be this new, thriving urban quarter,” he says. “You have the utopian language of the architecture, but it’s unfinished, it’s aspirational, and now its future is unclear, and the buskers look out of place against these empty glass facades. They’re part of the informal, human economy, as opposed to the official economy.”

The photographs will be on display in Venice, where the buskers will perform and, all going well, accumulate quantities of coins which will be displayed in a vitrine in a corner of the Irish space.

“There is always a public dimension to what I do,” Kennedy says of his work. “I like taking the notion of the vernacular, of the way people take what is given and somehow manage to make it their own.”

Taking what's given and somehow making it our own - a motto I'm always keen to promote.

Firecrackers

In the morning I hear firecrackers and late in the evening too. It puzzles me as I don't know of any festivals going on at the moment. I asked my composer friend why people are setting of firecrackers and he explained that in the villages people set off firecrackers to celebrate the completion of various stages of construction: the foundations, the walls, the roof. Each stage is also an opportunity to invite the neighbours to a celebratory meal. So in this culture, each house is also an exercise in community building. A wall can bring people together as well as separate them.

The frequency of the firecrackers in this small village suggests that the building boom hasn't stopped here.