Can you identify which pictures are from Dalian and which are from Beiertiao?
你能分辨哪些来自大连，哪些来自北二条吗？

Several months ago a friend working for the “Un-Named Design” section of the 2011 Gwangju Design Biennale (titled “Design is not Design is Design”) put me in touch with some of her colleagues researching paraphernalia associated with death rituals, presumably as examples of un-named design. My friend was aware of the paper objects I have been making in dialogue with the neighborhood Shouyi, so the researchers asked where they could find these shops. I sent them some images of my objects and research, as I hadn’t even taken images of the insides of the Shouyi stores. But I deliberately refrained from telling them where our neighbors’ store is (it’s directly across from us in the alleyway).

In the summer one of our turtles stopped moving. We buried its body under the shrub by the gates. 夏天的时候，我们养的四只乌龟中有一只死了，我们将它埋在门口的灌木丛里。

This sounds silly now, but in my defense, I swear it wasn’t because I wanted to be the only cultural poacher in the neighborhood. I was simply trying to remain as true as possible to the subject I am following, which from the outset of my acquaintance seemed shrouded in secrecy. When we were preparing the first Beiertiao Leaks a year ago, Xiao and I went over to ask if the Shandong-bred mother-son business team living and working there would place an advertisement free-of-charge in our small newspaper. They refused on the grounds that it was bad luck to publicize as a profession dealing in “superstition.” They didn’t want publicity and wouldn’t allow any pictures or direct mentions of their store printed. Being a sector based on spirituality and superstition, it is kept a close eye on by authorities, and we were told that the government has a monopoly on the funerary industry. Apparently, if one were to buy an urn from our neighbors, it couldn’t be buried in an official cemetery, as they aren’t officially sanctioned. We suspected part of the issue was the instability of their own personal situation. They cagily but politely answered our inquiries, though, so we prepared a short article introducing the phenomenon only to the English-speaking readership.

The title of this brief piece had the Chinese characters “寿衣“ in it though, so the day after distributing the scrappy new copies of the first edition of Beiertiao Leaks we received reprimands from some of the neighbors for even broaching the subject. It seemed from their reactions that, aside from this little shop’s ambiguous relation to the state, as an area of human activity addressing the mysteries of what happens after you die, one shouldn’t speak openly about these rituals.

We had never given it a name, so in order to wish it well, we decided on one: 龟龟 (Gui Gui). 我们的乌龟生前没有名字，但为了祝福它，我们决定叫它龟龟。

Watching a presentation in November by Brendan McGetrick, one of the curators of “Un-Named Design,” we saw an inspiring methodology in organizing a wide range of ideas and artifacts. Toward this, there was a thoughtful attempt to broaden the definition of design to examples of rustic and simple but effective uses of everyday items, scientific innovations and even protocols of action and social situations: “a political protest manual, DNA barcodes, execution procedures, a transcontinental monetary system.” So what made these diverse examples design? McGetrick wrote: “The goal of this theme is to reframe design as a set of strategic solutions to human needs, rather than an ego-driven pursuit of subjective beauty.”

Shouyi goods draw from the design world in the most flagrant sense that McGetrick was reacting against, as they itemize the essential commodities of our lives, and more often consist of the most luxurious fetishes that our cultures share, like money, cars, fancy clothes, mobile phones, and mansions. Their production process rarely results in direct copies, of course. Neither are they really intended to function like shanzhai products, which are in a sense copies better than the original, though they often include subtle and sometimes humorous twists and references to their repurposing. A simple question of materiality determines the boxy appearance of Shouyi goods: they are made of paper and intended to be burnt. The indifference of fire determines a certain indifference of production where other definitions of design come in. The material must adequately combust, thereby expeditiously crossing from the world of the living to that of the dead—but almost anything burns. Having understood this in a peculiarly modern sense, as compared with the more elaborate offerings and sacrifices of bygone times, many people normally opt for rather indifferent forms of tribute to their deceased loved ones or ancestors. The modern sense of sacrifice is that with its democratization has come its effective desacralization and rationalization. However, the ritual of burning Shouyi goods is obviously intended more directly as sacrifice than its substitution with literature (Georges Bataille) or its resonance in all modern music forms (Jacques Attali). It fulfills its function but it must be cheap. Therefore, like all aspects of the modern world, it is conventionally mass-produced and readymade. An average full household set of the nine necessary amenities costs only 15 yuan. If money is no object, one can order the larger dollhouse-size villas or 3/4-scale plasma screens, from a catalogue of hundreds of choices, as the small shops in Beijing usually have them delivered from Hebei manufacturers on request. But logically, as money is an object, the most popular sales are bundles of extremely inflated denominations of “Hell Money,” a very good value-for-your-dollar deal.

What can a turtle do with a car, they questioned. 他们在琢磨，一直乌龟要辆车做什么呢.

But why, I wondered, should this be logical? If Shouyi is about venerating the dead and trying to make their afterlives more dignified, then why are we satisfied with the most cheaply-produced replicas? Is it that the most generic commodities are the most ready stand-in for “pure exchange”? And yet if there is the allowance of kitsch (for instance, pagers and mobile phones that boast of dual-band SIM cards functioning both on Earth and in Heaven, or Renminbi with the face of a god in place of Mao Zedong) then why do we have to buy these sham-brand-name goods from dealers instead of making our own or customizing them to suit our personalities, affections and values? Does it say something about our relationships with our relatives?

With this line of questioning in mind, I produced some very basic paper objects and brought them over to the shop to see if they would accept them to sell. Turning them over, our neighbors commented on the design but confessed they wouldn’t be able to sell them. They were free to set the price and to keep the money, I assured them, while the mother asked dubiously again and again whether they needed to pay me. My only request was to report to us how people perceived them. On our insistence, they said they were willing to take a couple of them, though, just to see what would happen. In my mind, I thought perhaps that at least the sign of the object being made by hand might make a difference to someone. The shop owners said that in the unlikely event someone bought one of them, no matter the price, they were more likely to put them on their shelves and hold onto them rather than set fire to them. This was interesting but still a frustrating compromise; it neatly avoided the problematic desire for real engagement that is the intention of my work, and which determined the relative secrecy and modest scale of my project. In any case, the possibility was there: passing the doors for the next couple of weeks, I was pleased to see my colorful car on the glass counter. After some time it disappeared, though I know it was never sold. They had simply tolerated my meddling enough and couldn’t justify the use of space. We were awkward enough to never again address the topic.

A boy was asked by his mother where Gui Gui is now, and he pointed up toward the dark sky. 一个小男孩问他妈妈，龟龟去了哪里，于是他的妈妈指向夜空.

Rituals surrounding death are a commonality among almost all peoples of the world, though the manner in which I grew up included fairly few practices comparable to Shouyi. For many, death is where religion is concentrated or re-emerges, as it is one of the only unaccounted-for parts of humans’ experience, otherwise always supposed to be understood. I remember funerals of my relatives seeming rather like any other momentous occasion, though blacker in mood. Some believe in heaven, but I don’t. In this, I may differ from other members even of my own family or those close to me (though on my mother’s side, which is Jewish and so the more distinct cultural identity, you could say there is a thoroughly secular tendency among sections of my relatives: in my uncle Alex’s words in an email, “An asteroid will hit the earth and it will all eventually end. It’s all bullshit.”). Traditions, if they can be said, fragilely, to exist in our case, do so only insofar as they punctuate our disparate lives.

In a way, this is the design of culture if not religion, hard-wired or useful enough to withstand all the dissolutions of the modern world. The gestures of a priest, the words of a rabbi or the rites of a woman burning paper money on the street are in some ways designs of community. In the latter case, perhaps it is the design that recreates in symbolic form a familial system of interdependency and debt that structures the lives of the living in China, and acknowledges its extending beyond. The custom of burning paper replicas might be seen to re-establish connections that can never be referred to exclusively as material, even as the designs of the objects themselves are periodically updated or added to.

As I am speaking from a rather uninformed perspective, it is hard to go much further into what might be anthropological, sociological or religious theories of action and belief, and it is also here where theories and beliefs splinter into seemingly contradictory positions. How can we really commune with ghosts if we sympathize with their presence in so utilitarian a manner? This question raised, am I already too late? A whole slew of understandings and misunderstandings of what is real belief underpins its approach as art, pulling in the contradictory directions of doubt and identification. After all, how can we say for sure that this intimacy desired is something actually shared with the people who burn the paper objects for their loved ones? Has the ritual itself not become something “diluted” into expected tradition? And therefore, what is the relation of individuals to their customs; as the outsider, isn’t it simply not my place to enter?

There are in fact many Shouyi shops in our neighborhood. I decided that it was time to approach one of the more “official” shops near the hospital. Like our neighbors they are open all hours, to match the contingency of schedule that moderates the ending of a life. One evening I went over with Chenchen and found that they were much more forthcoming in discussing the topic, rather than more closed as I had assumed. The woman there didn’t think there was actually a difference in the level of legitimacy of Shouyi shops, and she dismissed the idea that urns of so-called unofficial origin wouldn’t be acceptable in official graveyards. The explanation that she instead provided for the difference between the shops was that her family, made up of Beijing natives, did not come from away and had been in the business a long time, so they could be more sensitive in their counsel to local customers. The woman gave me criticisms of the objects I brought her. I returned a week later with a new version of a paper car, this time with hand-painted details, and she asked me where the other items were, the refrigerator, washing machine, wardrobe, bed, and so on. Her attitude was what finally lead me to this betrayal, to loosen my hold on the discretion I felt necessary for real engagement. Activity that operates on rather personal levels sits awkwardly when shifted to a discussion that could be called public, as I am doing now, namely for the reason that doubts arise about the genuineness of the engagement. (Are you a real believer?) This can’t be proven either way, in the end, and the future of this engagement cannot be predicted. Classifying a practice as design is a sign of the removal of belief, as one sees the ends an object is put to, its actualization “as a set of strategic solutions to human needs,” rather than as truth itself (a suspicion that recalls Vilém Flusser’s assertion: “A designer is a cunning plotter laying his traps.”) But if opening up the discussion allows us to see another perspective and to extend the idea beyond fitting in, exploiting or imposing, then that may be when this external custom is made into our own ritual. Rather than reining in spirits for instrumental ends or liquidating everything into the irony that glazes the oblivion lying behind our modern world, artwork can make moves toward becoming authentic—it cannot arrive there too hastily.

Last meeting we discussed desire from two distinct but quite broad perspectives:

From Deleuze and Guattari, we saw desire as part of a machine that includes but subsumes the individual and their ego, and makes of subject and object a co-determining relationship rather than a hierarchical structure;

In Bataille, we saw a dangerous desire that threatens to dissolve the subject and the object into one another, and if pursued to its ecstatic ends, approaches death;

Keeping in mind why we arrived at desire in the first place, we wondered what these perspectives could do to help our dilemma of abstraction and speed;

In the former, where in the machine does intention fit? Where do we locate the means to make a distinction between desire and abstraction such as that made in Bifo’s article?

In the latter does the subject and object divide that the subject must overcome presuppose its inability to make the connection between them? In other words at the extremity of becoming an object (to the point of suicide) do we gain the capacity to “reactivate our ability to connect language and desire”(Bifo), or do we simply assume they can ultimately never be resolved? (Bataille seems to offer a partial answer to this: literature as the substitution of death and sacrifice.)

The next reading proposed is “Bodies That Matter” by Judith Butler (1993) to approach desire through a more focused lens on the construction of sexuality.
The meeting will be held Sunday the 8th of January at 5pm.

Hope you can join in one more repudiation of the solar hegemony before our flight from the terror of the lunar!

已经到了一年两期《北二条小报》印刷的最后期限，新一期即将出炉！借着家作坊入住交道口北二条一年的良机，新闻工作人员将对我们驻地媒体传播者的角色进行反思，这种反思是微型群体与城市的对话，艺术界的内部八卦，或一种试图理解和过滤当代地缘政治的尝试。

诚邀你参与我们这项带有北京胡同风格、对媒体和交流进行的调查，你可以以记者、编辑或撰稿人的身份参加。在市政府出台了一系列市场调控政策之后，哪里是安定门最热闹最隐蔽的地方？什么是堵塞交通或占领胡同内公共空间的最创新方案？为什么范老师不再对着墙壁打乒乓球了？

这周五中午12点之后来家作坊逛逛，与我们一起参与这份特别的本地报纸出版工作，大功告成后与我们的出版团队共饮。DUST bar 是家作坊的内部酒吧，提供威士忌及概念性故事游戏，以保证我们的新闻工作者们能够高效地运转。

概念青年旅舍［再现17岁］将组织有趣的饮酒游戏和“真实经历”交换活动。最佳故事讲解员将获得免费鸡尾酒一杯及其他惊喜。

出版工作室开放时间为12月23日（周五），从中午12点至晚上8点。DUST bar 开放时间为晚上8点至深夜。所有收入将用于家作坊的后续公共活动。非常感谢你的支持！

我们将利用周末两天时间完成报纸得制作与印刷，欢迎 任何对丝网印刷的基本技巧感兴趣的朋友在此期间加入我们。 第三期《北二条小报》将于12月25日之后发行，别着急！

BEIERTIAO LEAKS has reached its impromptu biannual print deadline——time for a new edition! Coinciding with the one-year anniversary of HomeShop’s residency at Jiaodaokou Beiertiao, news staff are taking this opportunity to make a critical reflection of our role as embedded media purveyors both in and outside of the local scene, whether that encompasses a small community in Beijing, art world gossip, or an attempt to understand and filter contemporary geopolitics as a concurrent reality.

You are invited to participate as reporter, editor and copywriter for our ongoing investigation into media and communications in Beijing hutong style. Where is the hottest hidden property in Andingmen after the stern hand of market control takes hold over Beijing? What are the latest creative schemes to block traffic and usurp public space in the alleyways? Why doesn’t FAN laoshi play ping-pong against the wall anymore?

Drop by HomeShop this Friday anytime after 12 pm to participate in the production of this unique local newspaper, and stick around after work hours for a drink with the press team. The DUST bar is embedded in-house for maximum efficiency, with whiskey and conceptual storytelling to keep our newshound teeth sharp and hungry.

The Conceptual Youth Hostel [Prototype 17] will play host to fine drinking games and “real experience” exchange, with free drinks and a round of other surprises to the journalist-narrators with the juiciest LEAKS.

The pressroom is open on FRIDAY, 23 DECEMBER from 12 NOON to 20.00. The DUST bar opens from 20.00 until late.  All proceeds go toward supporting the public activities of HomeShop; your support is greatly appreciated!

Presses will run all weekend at HomeShop, and anyone interested to learn basic silkscreening processes is welcome to join. This third edition of BEIERTIAO LEAKS will be available for pick up and delivery after the 25 December, easy going!

失物品 014：欧阳（177 cm、很瘦、25－26岁、曾是驻唱歌手）
发生失踪时间：5年前（贴报2011年11月29日，下午1点发现的）
地点：五道营胡同，靠近东口

Lost & Found Object No. 014: Ouyang (177 cm, skinny, 25-26 years old, used to be a hired singer)
Last seen: 5 years ago (notice discovered 29 November 2011, 13.00)
Location: near the east entrance of Wudaoying Hutong

—–

如果您要收回家作坊失物招领处的任何物品，或者有关于欧阳的信息，请跟 oylcleslie@163.com / 13611334246 联系。Please contact oylcleslie@163.com / 13611334246 if you would like to reclaim any lost & found item or have information regarding Ouyang.

The next meeting of Happy Friends Reading Club will take place at HomeShop on Sunday, the 18th of December, 2011 at 5pm. Below are the readings, please make a request if you wish to receive them:

• “Desire Horrified at Losing and at Losing Oneself” and “Object of Desire and the Totality of the Real” (Chapters 3 & 4 of Part 4, vol. 2) of The Accursed Share, by Georges Bataille, written between 1946 and 1949 (translated and published in English in 1991).
  And the counterpoint to this text is:

• Desiring-Production” (Part 1, Chapter 1) from Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1972).

This combination was selected with the enigmatic finale to Bifo’s article from last meeting in mind:

This generation, which experiences a problematic relationship between language and the body, between words and affection, separates language from the body of the mother, and from the body in general—for language in human history has always been connected to a fear of trusting the body. In this situation, we need to reactivate our ability to connect language and desire, or the situation will become extremely bad. If the relationship between the signifier and the signified can no longer be guaranteed by the presence of the body, we lose our relationship to the world. 

We located one of the problems being the definition of desire, its relation to language, its helping to provide the grounds for a connection to “the world.” To be continued…

《革命将至 L’insurrection qui vient》, donated by 蔡凯 CAI Kai

Recent acquisitions inadvertently parallel other discussions we’ve been having lately, or trying to have, a discussion about the discussion. Sometimes things feel a bit removed, like translators talking about translation, and either we get so entrenched in our own discourses that we never reach consensus, or we play multimedia-like because we cannot escape certain distancing from ourselves.

《The Anarchist Cookbook》, donated by 蔡凯 CAI Kai

After a long split, the anarchists find one another again in commiseration for their loneliness.

《香港投诉合唱团 Complaints Choir of Hong Kong》, donated by 麦巅 MAI Dian  (By coincidence, view the first mainland edition in the form of the “北京有机农夫市集吐槽歌会第一波 Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market Spitting Trough Singing Party“, premiering Saturday, 26 November)

There is a triangle here, let’s not call it love just yet, between art and language and activism—one moving each through another—but we have yet to place our subjectivities within them, even if we could say that it is our intention to implicate every stage of an aesthetico-political engagement. But here, in a system where all negotiations have been cut, “what kind of association is enough?” To 上访, to self-immolate or to break out in violence are not so much about negotiation as much as flailing demonstration, so it becomes difficult to see the usefulness of an explanation of the systemics at work, and how many people does the activist have to convince anyway before we could find ourselves on even ground?

“I am not sure I know how to how politics,” the artist tells the poet. We lose ourselves in μετά. Translation and translation and translation, activism cannot escape its traps, art indulges. And yet, in commiseration for our loneliness, he mumbles quietly to me today, “我们的本地文化是什么?” Yes, we had lost ourselves over assertions, growing nations, a new space. So I’m wondering if we can go back to simple observations again, the concrete of “the good life”, another consideration of locality. Productivity (…art and language and activism…) is difficult amidst rough re-identification, but we’re thrown again, teenage angst, the revelation of freedom. The results are not external to good will, or the intention in aiming, but as the old saying goes: “Do what you must, come what may.”

木扇 wooden fan, donated by Fotini LAZARIDOU-HATZIGOGA

——
Even if you don’t understand my writing, the above pictured objects and less than 10,000 other items are available for lending from the HomeShop library/10,000 Item Treasury. Please drop by to browse the collection.

有种者常有种，然说有种者实非有种是名有种，故上下求索，觅而不得。去年夏夜，一场自发讨论播下的种子在后来的一段时间内悄然发芽，各种解读继而破土而出。暗示。当时的肺腑之言我们没有忘记，并在今天找到了面对这个问题的勇气：夫有种者，宁有种乎？

这种勇气本身影射着某种集体性，或在聚集与集中过程中滚雪球般的集体构建，“有种”是对于运动状态的描摹，意指自我在形成过程中的潜在能动，而非目标，即阿纲本的“潜力（之所以为力）之力”。 它以某混淆者的方式出场，对理解进行阻挠。与简单的自我满足相比，我们应将这种并置设想为一种在聚合中对内部与外部不做明显划分的共在（being-with, Mitsein)。因此“有种”必须是自我之概念形成与自我游离的重叠——即外在于内在中。我们是运动中的身体，并在运动中向身体运动，寻找着作为惊喜的不同与自由。就让我们的自治如是吧，即便这种自治是从某成文系统之中的绽出。暗示，惊喜。

至此特邀请你为独立杂志《穿》第三期提供稿件。任何围绕着“有种”这个主题的创作均可，形式不限。如果有兴趣参与，请于11月30日前向家作坊提交一份300字左右的稿件描述，其中包括最终稿件的长度及范围（比如媒介、与“有种”的关系等）。《穿》杂志编辑部将给予最终入选的提案回复及建议。最终截稿日期为2011年12月30日。

了解更多《穿》杂志的信息，请查看这份PDF文件。 作为北京胡同中的一个项目空间而运作的家作坊经过反思，决定《穿》杂志将保持对本地的高度重视。 因着相似的实践、斗争和方法，“本地”的概念扩大至更广阔的范围，即通过链接、社区和共识审视日常生活和微型地域。我们期待您的消息。

Our ballsiness is a long time in the making. The crux of such a statement is cruxless, one thousand layers of pancake and complexity pickings through and through. One time last last summer, a spontaneous dialogue of seed erupted in quick, excited interpretation. Innuendos. But ballsiness sticks to the gut, and now we’re finally brave enough to say let’s try and put it all together.

Such bravery connotes a certain form of collectivity, as in concentrations or assemblages—the snowball rolling—but it is perhaps the making collective that comes to greater light here, as our call to “ballsy” is moreso a tracing of movement rather than a static form. Ballsy describes a potentiality in the same moment that it moves towards, not an ends but the constitution of itself as such, Agamben’s “potenza as potenza”. This occurs as a frustrating ‘ambiguitor’ of sorts. No mere self-satisfaction, we should consider the juxtaposition as a being-with that defines neither an interior nor an exterior in its coming together. Ballsy can only be the coincidence of the conceptual formation of the self along with its own departure—as in going beyond, extrinsically intrinsic. We are moving bodies, moving towards bodies and our own without end, finding difference and/or freedom as surprise. Let our autonomy then be as such, even in acknowledgement of those codified systems, still gifted as ecstasis. Innuendos. Surprise.

You are invited to submit a proposal for a contribution to the third issue of the independent journal wear. A broad spectrum of publishable formats are welcome in consideration of this issue’s heading theme: BALLSY. If you are interested to contribute, please contact HomeShop by 10 December with a 300-word description of your ideas, including the length and scope (e.g., medium, relation to the theme, etc.) of your proposed contribution. Guidelines for final submissions will be determined by the wear editors after selection. Final submission deadline is 22 January 2011.

For more information about wear journal, please download this PDF document. wear maintains a strong emphasis on the local, stemming from HomeShop’s reflections and work as a project space in the hutongs of Beijing. These considerations of the local extend geography to a larger scale, whereby parallel practices, struggles and approaches examine the daily and the micro-scale, through links, communities and common ground. We look forward to hearing from you.

For the next meeting of the Happy Friends Reading Club, scheduled for 3pm on Sunday, November 27th at HomeShop, we are reading two short texts, “On Potentiality” by Giorgio Agamben (2000) and “Time, Acceleration and Violence” by Franco Berardi aka Bifo (2011). Please inquire to receive texts.

For those who are interested, immediately preceding this meeting will be an edition of “Brunch Club,” (more info to follow) and hopefully some overlap will occur… but potentiality in cooking doesn’t mean you’ll go hungry!

张爱玲说过,“降到尘埃, 开出花来”
虽然是小到如一粒尘埃般的酒吧, 但精华自在其中
每月穿越一次，找到 DUST bar…

11月的DUST，Edvard Munch的画、Paul Celan 的诗 和 李增辉的音乐 有怎样的联系？ For our initial installment, find dark autumn companionship with Edvard Munch, Paul Celan and LI Zenghui.

Eileen Chang once said, “Step down onto dust and a flower will bloom.” Even if this is only a small as dust kind of bar, find yourself a bit freer in its midst. Beginning November, drop by HomeShop once a month for the DUST bar project.

请于11月4日中午之前预约，发邮件至lianxi@homeshop.org.cn或私信至@HomeShop新浪微博。

A film screening, poetry and spontaneous outbursts will accompany the ten whiskeys/cocktails/beers served to you from the HomeShop menu of favourites.

我们同时供应来自“家作 坊最爱名单”上的10不同威士忌 / 鸡 尾酒 / 啤酒。
Make your reservations before 12.00 pm, November 4th by sending an e-mail to lianxi@homeshop.org.cn or private message to @HomeShop on Sina Weibo.

时间 TIME：11月4 日，周五晚上 20:00－ 你想回家的时候
  /  Friday, 4 November, from 20:00
地点 LOCATION：家作坊（北 京东城区交道口北二条8号）
电话 TELEPHONE：010－8403 0952

所有DUST bar的收 入将用于支持家作坊未来更丰富的活动。谢谢你的支持！
All proceeds from the DUST bar project go towards sustaining great future activities at HomeShop. Thank you for your support!