This month, HomeShop embarks on a series of exercises in “cultural exchange”. As some of us have been already thinking about this question in relation to a Swiss-Chinese cultural exchange project, we wonder where ‘coming closer together’ begins and ‘exclusivity’ takes over. What is being learned in this process could be a mere mocking, or composed accidents and collisions in repeat formation. The guise of cultural exchange offers ample opportunity, through the cloudy difficulties of language, to easily binarise one another, see the you as you-all and make hit-and-run types of meeting that can’t help but feel colonialistic, too strategic. What could be “natural” in this case? How long does it take, or what kind of ‘serious events’ (to the extremity of Bataille?) should occur to ‘naturalise’ a new kind of community?
Reading 1: “Friendship, Assymetry, Sacrifice: Bataille and Blanchot” by Patrick ffrench [download PDF, 320kb]
Exercise 1: Zhang Shuo (aka Bobby) and Fotini (aka Fontini, Fotina, Fontina,
Fortini, Fotimi, Finito, Fotoni, Foutini, Fontine, Fontino, Fontani and Fontana) engage in a Beijing-Berlin video web chat, commencing in a series of language exercises in “Name This Object”, including ‘书 book’, ‘脚 foot’ and ‘猴子 monkey’. Running out of objects within arm and vocabulary’s reach, they resort to physical exercises, including Jumping on One Foot, Laying Back in Relaxed Fashion and Walking on Hands and Feet Together Like Slow Animal.
Coming up next week: Twist, Xiao and Elaine at HomeShop will work with Re:Activism co-creator Leanne Wagner to develop an urban game to be played in the streets of B-town among students of Parsons School of Design in New York and Beijing’s Tsinghua University. If you are located anywhere around the 后海 HouHai/鼓楼 Gulou/景山 Jingshan areas of the city and you would like to participate, please e-mail us at lianxi[at]homeshop[dot]org[dot]cn.
时间 posted on: 4 June 2009 | 
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June 6th, 2009 - 15:44
dunno if there’s still time, but wondering if you’ve considered easter eggs for your game in houhai? and, at their core, aren’t all easter eggs linguistic?
June 7th, 2009 - 01:37
oh, don’t you worry… LOTS and LOTS of easter eggs this time… but linguistic? how do you mean? perhaps yes, we are working at the level of riddles and games…
June 10th, 2009 - 23:40
culture exchange. this word already has so high expectations involved.
i recently read an interview of the director of the Schauspielhaus zurich, that is now leaving to the burgtheater. he is german and germans don’t hae it easy here in switzerland.
the interview made me think and a bit sad. it was the most retarded interview i ever read. hartmann didn’t stope to curse swiss people and culture and the journalist didn’t stop to provoce him. hartmann was very unpopular in zurich and was seen as rude and too direct and he saw himself as victim of the antigerman resentiment in switzerland. he says at one point in the intereview: ‘now you have the german you want!’ so frustrated. i felt pity. a real cultural exchange disaster. it’s sad when at the end saying good bye the answer to failure is reduced to cultural difference. there is much more than that and so much to investigate about it.
http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/kultur/theater/in-zuerich-wird-wahnsinnig-viel-gelogen/story/20502079
(only in german, sorry)
So fazit: i am exited to your proposals. let’s do it better. culture exchange is often developing out of a sort of friction, difference and than moving toward eachother, hopefully meeting somewhere.
July 13th, 2009 - 15:53
and here’s our next reading, Slavoj Zizek’s “Tolerance as an Ideological Category”, for when we get a chance.. on page 8 now and it’s very very interesting..