LIM College 2009 Trip to China

LIM College’s 2009 Trip to China – The Highlights from My Perspective by Professor Derek Cockle, Fashion Merchandising Deparment

798 ART ZONE

As I reminisce about our wonderful trip to China, what stands out as the biggest eye-opener for me was not the usual tourist spots such as The Forbidden City, The Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, or Pudong with its skyscrapers that appear to kiss the heavens. Rather, it was the 798 Art Zone and The Place in Beijing, which for me were both a breath of fresh air. As I had secretly hoped, these venues showed China’s new openness and the freedoms given to the younger generation to express themselves through art and imagination and the message of hope that they are putting out for the world to see.

798 Art Zone (also known as Dashanzi Art District) is a part of Dashanzi in the Chaoyang District of Beijing which houses a thriving artists’ community among 50 year-old decommissioned military factory buildings. It is literally a stone’s throw from the Bird’s Nest Arena and the Swimming Cube erected for the Beijing Olympics.

I compared it to SoHo and Chelsea in Manhattan, where the major galleries are to be found, but there was something inherently more exciting and vibrant when one walked about this artists’ community and visited the galleries and the 798 Art Zone Café Area.

The Chinese government tolerates the work seen here but it cannot be extremely happy with it. Fortunately, many of the artists working here have now found acclaim in Europe and to a certain extent here in the U.S., so perhaps they will be left alone to continue their work.

In one of the spaces at 798 Space Gallery, old Maoist slogans are still visible on the walls and ceiling arches. This factory complex was part of the Socialist Unification Plan which was a program of military–industrial cooperation between the Soviet Union and the newly formed People’s Republic of China. By 1951, 156 joint factory projects had been realized under that agreement and this was part of the Chinese government’s first five-year plan. It is basically an abandoned munitions plant built by the East Germans for the Chinese which has now been taken over by this thriving artists’ colony.

Ground was broken in 1954 and it was officially named Joint Factory 718 following the Chinese government’s method of naming military factories beginning with the number 7. The complex is on a low-lying patch of farmland to the northeast of downtown Beijing.

Avant-garde art was frowned upon by the government and the artists had traditionally set up studios on the fringes of the city, but fortunately for these artists, the Dashanzi factory complex was vacated at a time when Beijing’s contemporary artists’ community was in search of a new home away from the prying eyes of the government. From 1984 until 1993, they worked in run-down houses near the old summer palace, but they were eventually evicted. The now defunct Factory 706 was the first building used as it offered not only a vast workshop space but the rent was also cheap. It had been used by Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts since 1995 as it offered cheap, ample workshop space. In 2001, a transplanted Texan, Robert Bernell, moved his bookshop and publishing company into the complex and later that same year Tabata Yukibito moved from Japan’s Tokyo Gallery and set up his Beijing Tokyo Arts Project.

So what does the future have in store for this amazing complex? Various development plans were drawn up for the area which involved preserving the buildings, but unfortunately they would not be financially viable, as a profit had to be made. Many people tried in vain to appeal to the developers’ sense of economics by making comparisons to Greenwich Village and SoHo. In 2004, all new rental spaces were frozen and all lease renewals were prohibited. Tenants resorted to subdividing and subleasing spaces. Fortunately, however, it was eventually decided that the area would continue in its current format of a special art zone. New galleries are proliferating as is the emerging café culture. What a breath of fresh air this gives Beijing and the artwork and sculpture on display is nothing short of phenomenal.

The most important artist on display there, in my opinion, is the cynical realist Fang Lijun who has been accorded the title of the most gifted of the nation’s post-1989 generation of artists. He has used his early schooling in propaganda-style Soviet Socialist Realism as his own tongue-in-cheek way to poke fun at the Central Government and somehow he manages to get away with it.

The Place

Referred to by many Beijingers as the Great Screen of China, this huge LED screen was constructed as the main attraction for The Place, which has sprung up in Beijing’s central business district and is a new 70,000 square-foot development of high-end mixed-retail stores and two 23-story office complexes. Covering the entire city block, the Sky Screen, as it is known, is 2,296 feet in length and 88 feet in width by 80 feet above the street. The viewing surface, clad entirely with LED modules, makes the square footage a close second to the Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas and is the largest single screen in the world.

 In 1992 the Fremont Street Experience was conceived and Jeremy Railton was hired to produce, direct and create the first shows for it. Railton was recruited to China in 2003 when it was decided that The Place had to have a Sky Screen as its major attraction. China being China, it was decided that the undertaking would have to be accomplished using local engineering and technology. Railton has been quoted as saying, “Doing business in China is a hot topic these days, both politically and in the entertainment industry.” For him, the experience was both enriching and memorable, not only because of the great civilization he was dealing with, but also because of the kindness, humor and enthusiasm of the people. I too experienced this in my own way during one of my early morning sojourns to Tiananmen Square, where I had to be photographed by at least four groups who were obviously visiting from the countryside and had probably never laid eyes on a "round eye" before, but they were gracious and enthusiastic and treated the whole thing with humor.

 

Railton’s first design both expanded the uses and viewing angles of the screen, so that it could be integrated into the architectural surroundings. Because of the budget, this was scrapped in deference to a simplified structure with a large flat frame covered with glass and totally engineered in China. The LED panels were also manufactured there in Suzhou, the beautiful old city with gardens and canals reminiscent of Venice, situated on the outskirts of Shanghai, which was also a place we visited.

The Place is spectacular, not only offering the visitor a free, theatre-like experience but also offering exposure to a huge retail site. Being new, the content of the shows must appeal to a wide audience while still encompassing the venerated values and traditions of China.

Being too big to function as a single movie screen, the traditional movie-making techniques when employed here tend to disorient viewers. The narrative also encompasses music and images moving at real-time speed in many different shows no more than ten minutes in length. The Sky Screen is divided into zones and simultaneous satellite TV broadcasts can be shown with movies and one can even have one’s minute of fame as visitors can upload their own pictures.

The primary purpose of The Place with its Sky Screen is to attract new shoppers there without impinging on their valuable shopping time. Our small group actually went there for dinner and were not disappointed by the restaurant or the amazing video experience which was totally captivating and took me back to The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, London in September 1968, where I was fortunate enough to experience a concert featuring the Doors and Jefferson Airplane and they had the Joshua Light Show with them for an all-encompassing experience, which really was very similar to The Place in Beijing.

Two very different Beijing experiences. Both very unique in their own way and both very much a part of the new millennium city of Beijing. Were we in Bladerunner, or was it just my vivid imagination?

Cited Works:

“Your World in Pictures”, Anthony Gordon. September 16 2009

“Beijing 798: Reflections on Art, Architecture and Society in China”, Huang Rui. 2004.

“Cynical Realist Fang Lijun”, Ben Davidson. ‘Beijing Scene, Volume 5, Issue 1, March 12-25, 2008.