Where to begin with the topic of gentrification?
Of course, in our city, right here in our very neighborhood where we are implicated.
No.
We will get to that.

Suppose we start in a future-primitive state: something beginning from a point far too under-urbanized than we conventionally conceive in such a process, resulting in something far too over-developed, centrally-marketed and artificial, not to mention out of the city, to speak the gentrified language.

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photo by GAO Ling

After trying to begin to write for quite a long time now, it finally comes down to seeing no other simple way to begin but with all the complexity of ‘I’, which means that proper reading and research are lacking enough to make one unable to (attempt) to pursue a more objective line of reasoning and/or explanation. In all honesty, the last months have dried up words, and parched like this city, thoughts do not find language in balanced cycle. Even the pronouns don’t dance as much as they used to, as per those (known for) past avoidances of the reflexive pronoun, and I wonder which particular subjectivities have been lost along the way.

I think about the past often, but I’m not so nostalgic.

Where does this ‘I’ come from, this ‘I’ that has somehow come in the last years, across particular oceans and with the looking back upon those far fallen bridges? There is a loathsome identity game going on here, and recent events have triggered repeated keywords, or perhaps it’s simply grammar.

‘I’ cannot separate from this question of what ‘this’ is, but where we were led astray during the conversation was the point at which things needed to be named, where it matters how we define [定义] a certain audience, forms of art-making, goals and Five-Year Plans. The fact is that I don’t want things to fit so easily into well-written descriptions, institutions or fixed modes of communication.

Communication, or art, for that matter, does not occur in ‘I’ alone, or even by mere grammar. The signifieds are too complex these days, like Hollywood hoaxes piled upon political ones. The politics exist in representation as much as in our language, and ‘I’ should get confused with ‘we’ or ‘she’ or ‘he’ much more often than it does, perhaps.

Name Game

如果唯一可以信任的是个体对自我的主体性的信任的话，那么被分裂的不是自己，而是系统，也正是系统的分裂促成了一种生成(becoming)。
If the only thing to be trusted is individuality’s subjectivity, then being divided (split-off) is not the self but the system; it is a form of becoming precipitated by a fissure in the system. [1]

– 麦巅 MAI Dian

Some friends at Womenjia Youth Autonomy Lab [“我们家”青年自治中心] in Wuhan recently had one of their texts re-translated at China Study Group, and what strikes me most is the need for a rethinking of terms amidst the proliferation of #tags# and “elevator pitches”. In the same moment that some may ask us for more clarity in explaining a practice, or a work, it becomes also useful to note when the omittance of certain signifieds allows a form of agency that cannot be practiced otherwise.

The Womenjia Youth Autonomy Lab describes itself thus on its Douban page with a question mark, and this, as shown in his text, is fraught with all the layers of subjective and objective dilemma that come with giving “the house a name”:

只要出力，物质空间就来得颇为容易，改造也颇为顺手，但超乎预料的是，「自治」招牌甫一挂出，社会关系就立马需要重建，破与立的冲撞此刻就显出其厉害来了。新的关系还未有「蓝图」…
So long as you put forth the effort, physical space will arrive rather easily, and transformation will proceed smoothly. What we didn’t expect was that the moment we hung up the sign with the word “autonomous,” everyday social relations would have to be redefined. From that moment onward, the destructive and constructive sides of change began to collide with each other. New relations have no blueprint. [2]

Words like ‘I’, ‘community’, ‘representation’ and some of their possible outputs—’we’, ‘society’,  ‘art’ and ‘media’—exist likewise in constantly shifting relation. This occurs at the level of semantics but also in the means with which we can create those outputs. I think we somehow failed to get to this in all the discussions of ‘alternative practice’ that have gone on lately [3], and this is also why it may be quite tricky to look at such researches (at least contemporarily) as anything more than an index, or a means of self-reflection.

This goes back to the ‘I’, and of course, its evil partner ‘other’. Alternative arts practices and many other forms of cultural production in China are catalysed to a great degree by ‘the foreign others’, and this can be explained largely by matters of economy, varied forms of thinking of agency and initiative, as well as, at a larger scale, ideas about what ‘DIY’ or ‘politics’ mean (and where they coincide). Media finds itself intertangled within all of this, from the rhetoric of finding Chinese origins for Western initiatives [西学中原], to the politics of representation and yes, language. This tends to be frustrating or opaque-rendering for those seeking forms of lateral exchange, and a lot of the time, well, the vocabularies are just too different. This is not to say that nothing can be exchanged, but we should be careful of what ulterior motives drive seemingly open-ended discourse. Desire is rarely so easy as the statement ‘I want you’, and more often than not, “the ‘tragedy’ that is love is simply laughed at”. [4]

I’m circling around here. After cynicism about cultural exchange, more recent topics that have come up as possible focuses for our next publication include translatability, opacity, ballsy. It sounds vague, but I trust that we are already in the same vein. At the same time, we are thinking about how different forms of media we utilise can be better refined to address the who, what, where, why and when we would like to communicate. This is why I am relieved and re-struck to refer to DYAC again, albeit from the somewhat sophomoric attempt of our own Beiertiao Leaks. This very slow day newspaper was a first attempt from our new home base at Beixinqiao to organise a form of media that is participatory, multiplicitous and public. It is not an equal exchange. But, as Michael says, it’s “a conversation starter”.

All of this rambling, likewise, is a kind of conversation starter. For HomeShop and for optimistic efforts to understand the juxtapositions between language, art and politics. “最正经的如「政治」，并不是理所当然的政党与特殊利益集团的国家治理，甚至法西斯极权，它更是我们作为一个有主体性的人参与社会关系的建设…” Politics not as in the “state administration by parties or special interest groups,” but as “our participation as subjects in the construction of social relations”—a kind of grammar, perhaps—involving more than one pronoun. [5]

——–

[1]  麦巅 MAI Dian. “复制抑或连接：两个亚洲人飞往欧洲 To Copy or to Connect: Two Asians Fly to Europe”.  穿 Wear, No. 2. 家作坊 HomeShop: 北京 Beijing, 2010年.

[2] 唐水恩 TANG Shui’en. “一个小朋克的基础另类教育 The Alternative Education of a Chinese Punk”. First printed in Chutzpah!. Shao Foundation: 北京 Beijing, 2009年. Translated to English by www.libcom.org, and later revised by 猢狲子 HUSUNZI at China Study Group.

[3] I refer here to the alternative arts practices in China as having been recently discussed by a number of critics and researchers, including Edward SANDERSON, Clara KIM, 蔡影茜 Nikita CHOI and The Office for Art and Theory (刘鼎 LIU Ding and 卢迎华 Carol Yinghua LU).

[4] 唐水恩 TANG Shui’en, “一个小朋克的基础另类教育 The Alternative Education of a Chinese Punk”.

[5] ibid.

Update of Jan 18th meeting Tue to build worm compost:

About worms, we could not find some right now. Worms live deep underground and no fishing shop carried them in this time of the year. But, good news is that a friend of mine knows the people in NGO who are promoting worm compost so she can help us contacting with them. Worm compost structure is finished today by Elaine and Michael. Now, just waiting for worms to come in.

Since kitchen of HomeShop was started in mid-Dec 2010, we are collecting food waste which stayed outside for now in a big ceramic bowls. If you live on the land with animals, you can just give left over to pig and leafy vegetables to rabbit and chicken, also make compost by put food scrap under the ground and mixing with soil and old leaves. Not producing so much of food scrap is always better so I tend to not scrape the skin (also lazy) of vegetables. Do not know if worm compost is the best way to deal with food waste in the city, but at least we can easily build material from whatever we find from scrap and shops around the corner. Rococo style castle is welcoming for prince / princess worms to get waste with endless supply, seems very unnatural. That is conflict I have so far but better than dump them into garbage bin with all other material and hid inside of the ground somewhere in country side. So, worms, hope them to arrive soon. We use the finished worm compost to make vegetable from this April.

Here is the link to the instructions we used to make this compost container: “ Worm_bin_bag_for_indoor_vermicomposting” [PDF, 1.7 mb]

小运动群论第三——艺术实践中自我建构的可能性
Little Movements Round Table Discussion No. 3: Possibilities of Self-Construction in Art

个体体系——“家作坊”的实践
Individual Systems: the Practice of HomeShop

主持 Moderators：刘鼎 LIU Ding、卢迎华 Carol Yinghua LU
参加者 Participants：戴章伦 Asea DAI、何颖雅 Elaine W. HO、黄然 HUANG Ran、欧阳潇 OUYANG Xiao、苏伟 SU Wei
摄像 Photography：王俊艺 WANG Junyi

时间 Time：下午1点半至3点，2011年1月20日星期四; Thursday, 20 January 2011, 13.30-15.00
地点 Location：家作坊 HomeShop，北京市东城区交道口北二条8号

会议纪要 Discussion Summary

家作坊［Home(work)shop]由何颖雅与欧阳潇创建于2008年，最初落户鼓楼附近的小经厂胡同，后迁至北新桥附近的交道口北二条。正如空间名称本身所提示的，它意在探讨“家”与“作品”之间关系，私人空间与公共空间之间的流动性转换，更替。“家作坊”，这个看起来像是具有私密感的空间事实上却在不同的公共社区中活跃而公开地进行着自身的实践。

无疑，“家”这一寓意丰富的能指在中国这样一种特殊文化语境中所暗含的私人与公共领域之间的微妙而特殊的关系是值得进一步反思并在实践中进行探讨的。关于这点，我们或许能想起日本汉学家沟口雄三（Youzou MIZOUGUCHI）及岸本美绪(Mio KISHIMOTO)的观察，在他们看来，在中国，“私”与“公”并非是两种平行的异质领域，而更像是一种同心圆的层级递进关系（因此，国人的公私观向来是不那么分明的）。而这与持续了千年的“家国同构”的社会形态密切相关，“父母官”这样的称呼可称得上是国人的一大“发明”。传统儒家更是将这种层级递进的关系上升到一种所谓的 “修身，齐家，治国，平天下”的政治-伦理法则的高度。

因此，在这样的语境下，相较于在相互平行的公私空间中谋求交流对话，“家作坊”更像是在“同心圆”中进行着相互叠加的双向运动：对于已然形成了某种情感维系的社区来说，它无疑是陌生的进入者，它的活动是从同心圆的外层向里层的逆向运动；而就其“家”的名称而言，它又是试图进行从内向外进行辐射递进。倘若将这种同心圆的模式从与社区的联系转化到“家作坊”作为一个有机个体与整个艺术界的联系，它的运动同样耐人寻味。艺术家刘鼎便敏感地意识到，这种向外辐射的过程所产生出的强度和张力决定了“家作坊”如何在作为整体的艺术界中定位自身的工作，也即苏伟所说的，若干年之后的走向问题。

然而，如果我们搁置上述假定，另从阿多诺关于 “介入的艺术”以及“自治的艺术”的对立统一关系来看待“家作坊”的工作时，发现它作为一种与其平行的，（也许）体制化了的艺术界的否定（或制衡）因素而存在并与其形成一种持久的张力也是成立的。然而也许正如艺术家黄然和策展人卢迎华所担忧的，即便是作为一种平行的，自治的制衡力量，“家作坊”的这种艺术生产和输出也必须考虑到它的最终去向问题，对象的接收问题，也即，是给予对方一块砖还是给予一块砖背后的观念的问题（如果我们不使用“启蒙”这个显得有些一厢情愿的词的话）。这种不同语境之间如何衔接铆合或许也正是“家作坊”工作坊的难点和意义之一吧。

– 戴章伦 Asea DAI

—–

原文2011年1月27日发布在卢迎华的博客 Originally posted 27 January 2011 at Carol Yinghua LU’s blog: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5cd68bae0100ol7p.html

The first post-New Year meeting will be held at HomeShop on February 23rd, 2011. We will read Critical Art Ensemble’s Electronic Civil Disobedience (1994), the first chapter (p. 5-30) of “Electronic Civil Disobedience” (1995).

It is available for free from the Critical Art Ensemble website: www.critical-art.net/books/ecd/

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Happy Friends met on January 12th in the evening in HomeShop to discuss Brian Holmes’ “The Affectivist Manifesto”. Despite the particular viewpoint with which he begins his manifesto (regarding the 20th century as a monolithic period obsessed with medium), it is rather ambiguous how the text merits the “manifesto” in its title. (…)

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2011年1月23日的“正音”即兴声音道场…

finding more order than imagined…

换一下招牌 a change of signs:

我们每年换一次…
We do it every year…

祝大家春节快乐！Wishing everyone a happy Spring Festival (get warmer, get warmer, get warmer)!

“The Large Glass (half empty)”, from The Drawing Machine series written with Processing, 2006-2010, Alex GIBSON

Alex GIBSON主持的数字艺术讲习课

A Digital Art Workshop facilitated by Alex GIBSON

日期： 2011年1月30日，周日 － 14.00 – 17.00
费用： 免费。如果你喜欢Alex的讲习课并愿意支持家作坊办的活动，欢迎现场赞助！
预定席位请发电子邮件至：lianxi[圈a]homeshop[点]org[点]cn。

Date/Time:  Sunday, 30 January 2011, 14.00 – 17.00
Fee:  Free, but donations highly appreciated.
Reservations requested, please e-mail:  lianxi[at]homeshop[dot]org[dot]cn.

家作坊诚邀你来参加计算机编程基础课。本课适合于艺术家，设计师，建筑师以及对使用Processing开发环境感兴趣的人员。本讲习课将集中为需要创建影像，动画，互动媒体的朋友讲解如何创制互动和生成框架。Processing 是一个开放原始码的程序语言及开发环境，本语言被广泛应用于学习，原型制作以及生产。更多信息请造访： http://www.douban.com/group/processing/.

参加者无须计算机编程知识。您只需带上您的笔记本电脑，构思您的用途/实验即可。讲习课将用英语讲授并配有基本汉语翻译。

HomeShop invites you to participate in a workshop about the basics of computer programming for artists, designers, architects and anyone interested in using the Processing development environment. The workshop will focus on creating interactive and generative frameworks for people who want to create images, animations, and interactions. It is an open-source programming language that has become widely used for learning, prototyping and production. For more information about Processing, please visit: http://processing.org/.

No prior knowledge of computer programming is required to participate. You only need to provide your own Macintosh, Windows or Linux laptop computer and begin brewing ideas for your own application/experiment. The workshop will be in English with basic Chinese translation.

—–

Alex GIBSON是一名澳大利亚数字艺术家，从事装置，摭拾影像／物艺术与视频图像工作，其中包括绘画，视频和软件等元素。他特别对开放软件运动和共建艺术共享领域感兴趣。

Alex GIBSON is an Australian digital artist that works with installation, found images/objects and the moving image that include elements of drawing, video and software. He is particularly interested in the free (as in freedom) software movement and the social construction of an artistic commons.

Have been taking workshop of Re:Farm the City in past week, it is part of  Tsinghua Art & Science MediaLab program / Environment and Ecological Art.  Making urban (this time indoor) farm and compost shed with found object with electronics to solve the problems of city people (watering, pesticide control, not knowing how to start…). For now, we have 2 farms that grows the vegetable of Beijing dish. This farm is attached with water and electronics with humidity system to control water supply.  For a water pump, using the  internet cable as a water tube, and inner cable for making panels. This panel is inside of the scare crows (hot).

Panels with all colorful electric cables are crossing eye experience but now geeky-san in my classroom can invite me for dinner and we have something to talk about. Our food waste goes to make soil for coming up season. Re:farm the city is the project happening in different places in the world and the local people of each place carried on, experimenting their own way. In Beijing version will start regular meeting from tomorrow at the HomeShop, we will develop compost shed and perhaps small green houses for spring time to sprout the seeds. Also, would be amazing to develop small solar system for the building, or any. If there are any engineers / students who would love to experiment with real situation, please join us.