从这个周末开始，你可以带着在你衣柜里占地儿或者不合身的或者…的旧衣服来到我们的家作坊（浅色和亮色都可以:)，深色不要），一个来自冰岛的艺术家Inga Svala Thorsdottir希望用这些衣服来完成她在广州三年展的新作品。（10－30元不等的收购价，如果你在衣服堆儿里发现了非想要不可的衣服，ok，可以用你带来的衣服免费交换！）加入我们一起来消磨这难得的奥运会假期把！除了满屋子飞的中文和英文～更有超级无敌好喝酸梅汤等着你！还等什么？

家作坊小团队一起去Yah Studio（亚状态互动）

2008年8月9日，星期六
晚上8点到11点
北京东城区北新桥板桥南巷7号
人民美术印刷厂西小院
周六(8.9号)的夜晚，跟家作坊小团队一起去Yah studio（亚状态互动）参加列奥林匹克的跨科学聚会！演讲的客人们包括：董冰峰 (策展人,尤伦斯当代艺术中心)；张安定 (艺术家)；杰夫里·卢德罗 (首席设计师，二乘四北京事务所)；李孟夏 (传媒创意人)以及家作坊小团队的何新城 (主席,动态城市基金会)和何颖雅！

带给你丰富多彩周末活动的人们是：胡宇君，Inga Svala Thorsdottir，高灵，韩彦和娄艺萌。

This weekend and throughout the HomeShop Games project bring your unwanted clothing to sell and be part of Icelandic artist Inga Svala Thorsdottir‘s new installation to be included in this year’s Guangzhou Triennale. Receive 5-20 yuan per piece (light/bright coloured only please!), or maybe trade for someone else’s clothes, and have some homemade plum juice while you’re here. Come by and let’s chat an Olympic chat, English and Chinese, we’re all still learning.

HomeShop visits Yah Interactive Lab

9 August 2008
20.00-23.00
People’s Art Printing Factory
No. 7 Ban Qiao South Alley, West Courtyard
(subway line 5 Beixinqiao)
On August 9th, Saturday evening, join HomeShop as we pay a visit to Yah Interactive Lab and a little Leolympic get together. Guests/speakers include Dong Bingfeng (Curator, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art), Zafka Zhang (Sound/noise artist), Jeffrey Ludlow (2×4 Studio), Sam Lee (Media Creative), and HomeShop participants Neville Mars (Dynamic City Foundation) and Elaine Ho.

This weekend’s events are brought to you by Philana Woo, Inga Thorsdottir, Gao Ling, Han Yan and Lo Yimeng.

[ 家作坊 HomeShop . 地 图 m a p . 联系 c o n t a c t ］

——–

日程安排 More events coming up:

TBA | 何新城在家作坊设置了一个可以跨屋内到街道拍摄和录象的装置，没多久你就能在网上看到！ Neville Mars creates a surveillance installation inside HomeShop. Watch from inside to streetside, soon online!

2008年8月7日：今天在火炬接力通过北京的时候，张哥送了我一本《北京人手册》。

7 August 2008: As the torch relay crosses Beijing today, big brother Zhang gives me the gift of “A Handbook of Beijing”.

家作坊系列一号。伴随着2008年8月8号北京奥运开幕式一同开放，我们在胡同里看奥运（他们没有提到的户外屏幕），陪王大爷和街坊们一起吃吃喝喝，还有家作坊牌超大屏幕。比电视机大——但比世贸天街略小…

20:00开始，到你上床睡觉才算结束。带个小板凳会更加轻松！（同时给何颖雅庆祝生日！)

HomeShop series number one officially launches on the 8th of August, 2008, with a hutong live site for viewing the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games in Beijing. Hang out with Grandpa Wang and the neighbours in the fresh air, enjoy drinks, snacks and a sporty-sized LED projection from the HomeShop window front. It’s bigger than your TV—maybe a bit smaller than The Place.

From 20.00 until bedtime… Bring a wooden stool for even more relaxing! (And come celebrate Elaine’s birthday!)

[ 地 图 m a p 联系 contact ]

——–

日程安排 More events coming up:

09-10.08.08 | 收集和出售二手衣服、家坊牌酸梅汤、中英奥运词汇小课堂. storefront sale of homemade plum juice and secondhand clothing buy/sell; English/Chinese lessons for Olympics speak

14.08.08 | 北京批判理论阅读小组——关于哈贝马斯的公共空间理论的批判阅读. Critical Reading Group reads Habermas

16.08.08 | “失败者”的大派对，有DJ Mellow Yellow以及蔡凯、Renbo的录象作品放映. street party for the losers featuring DJ Mellow Yellow and screening of artist films by Radical Media, Cai Kai, Renbo and others

TBA | 人人可以参与的“Wii”上奥运会. post event broadcast Wii-version instant replays

TBA | 艺术家粱越的行为艺术表演. performance and give-aways by artist Liang Yue

TBA | 崔凯旋将和大家开每人5分钟的会. ‘Talk’ sessions by Cassidy Cui

TBA | 关于体育理论学者Sean Smith的采访对话. discussion with critical sports theorist Sean Smith

A recent article in the Telegraph makes light of the fact that Olympics is very far from home indeed: it seems the initial excitement about London 2010 is already raising inland eyebrows. Recent questionably high numbers of taxpayer-funded junkets have been made by political committee members in the name of investigating and learning from former Olympic host cities. In light of this globe-trotting, it may be obvious to note the displaced understandings here of what it means for the Olympics to ‘bring the world together’. Togetherness in this case in not local, and what we think of as global seems to come together in these instances under the arenas of national competition, representation and one-upmanship. Not to dismiss the value brought to the athletes via their experiences (and those of their entourages, the officials and the press), the localities produced by the Games seem far removed from the reality of its host city, and it is rather the case that the local must be sold to its own people in terms of consumables, media and economic boosts via jobs, tourism and other short term et ceteras. In the cases of British research junkets and the year-long torch relay for the Beijing 2008 Olympics, it looks a lot more like post-colonialism in the name of cosmopolitanism (and in the above image, the ‘logo’ of the Queen!). The Empire of Sportsmanship is brought back to the local (like the glorious cat’s dead prey dropped inside the kitchen) whether we like it or not, beginning from the moment that the host city ‘winner’ is announced to however long a particular Olympics morning-after period may last. What is more interesting, then, is to examine how the cosmopolitanism of the Olympics does filter back to local practices, not in terms of illusory togetherness but, hopefully, by means of more sustainable exchanges and sharing in the sense of Jean-Luc Nancy’s inoperative community. Here we can examine the communities that are created not as fixed entities or operations (e.g., Olympics-type cosmopolitanism), but rather look toward dynamics affecting the local long after the ceremonies have closed and ‘cosmopolitan’ has left.

I still remember being quite shocked and moved by the level of excitement and emotion in the faces of all the flag-waving Chinese celebrating in Tiananmen square upon the announcement of Beijing’s bid for the 2008 Olympics. Watching on television from Hong Kong as those interviewed were moved even to tears, even my grandmother took interest and said, “Now at least China won’t bother Taiwan too much for a while longer.”

Seven years later, a friend sits with me at a café on Guloudong Dajie telling me how a crowd gathered one night outside a small shop near his home because the owner refused to move out by the marked date for the shop’s demolition. Its worn facade has in 2008 unfortunately become an unsightly too close to the Forbidden City—-thereby highly visible to the incoming flux of visitors who will likely pass by on their way to visit the palaces. The crowd of those gathered to see a potential forced removal were restless, and complaints over the Olympics roared loadly, with unmentionables like six-four even dared to be recalled in public space. On the other hand, not so far from that hutong my own neighbour has hung a miniature Chinese flag from his car antenna, and when asked by a friend why he has all of a sudden initiated this little act of patriotism, he replies matter-of-factly, “The Olympics will be here soon. Who doesn’t love the country?” (“奥运快到了，谁都不爱国？”)

All of these are ongoing processes within this flux of global-local, and just some of the many layers that we have to examine in order to understand a burgeoning Chinese economy, culture and society and how it finds itself in relation to a larger view. Of course, this is an oversimplification, but we can only begin to understand community when we examine in context its processes and the dynamics underscoring its identity. While the stadium may be left empty after the party (as has been the case with Athens after 2004), there has been in Beijing, for example, amazing amounts of newly-built infrastructure of which the city has long been in need. And what about the loosening up of the press, the acculturation of Beijingers to new tenets of civil society like queueing in line and reducing the usage of plastic bags? Will these things last as long as the fad for “I HEART China” t-shirts? I keep thinking of the over 2 billion trees that have been planted all over Beijing (Xinhua). Let’s hope.

c a l l . f o r . p a r t i c i p a t i o n

From the 8th of August, 2008 at 8:00 p.m. to the end of the closing ceremonies on the 24th of August, a small space located at Xiaojingchang Hutong in the centre of Beijing will be open to host and organise a series of minor practices[1] that will embark from the crossing points of the local community and the world spectacle of the 2008 Olympic Games. As a commercial storefront space that also hosts its proprietors for living, sleeping and eating, this space represents a metaphorical bringing together of the public and the private, a commercial trade with the common good or open exchange. During the period of the Olympic Games, a number of activities will take place to investigate, document and generate possibilities for our relationships as individuals to the 2008 Olympic plan, the timetable and its juxtapositions with local urban micro-society. This is an open call inviting your agency as participant, observer and player. [download full english project proposal as PDF here, 下载中文方案]

Please address inquiries, ideas and informal proposals for an activity you’d like to initiate by e-mail to: ho [at] iwishicoulddescribeittoyoubetter [dot] org, by telephone at +86 137.1855.6089. While there is no official budget available for any of these events and activities, if certain equipment and/or resources are required, please contact and we will do our best to make suitable arrangements. There is no deadline, and your ideas are welcome for the duration of the Games. Training is not required. 有时间过来玩！(If you have time, come over and play!)

Among the Events planned/possible…
. evening public viewing of Olympic Games via storefront LED projection
. field recordings of the neighbourhood (audio/video)
. public wii games via storefront LED projection
. street-logs[2] and hutong-side live sports announcing
. presentations and/or talks on related work
. storefront sale of refreshments and other goods
. Beijing Critical Reading Group session
. language lessons for sports and netspeak
. street party for Olympic losers

Participants, Potential players…
. Beijing Critical Reading Group participants
. Pauline Doutreluingne – curator, DJ
. summer school students of Fensiting Primary School, two doors down
. Beatrice Ferrari – geography and spatial planning; Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale Lausanne
. big brother Gao – next door neighbour, security guard
. 何颖雅 Elaine Ho – art and design
. 蔡凯 Cai Kai – art and design
. 崔凯旋 Cassidy Cui – professor
. Liang Yue – art and performance
. Ren Bo – filmmaker
. Ouyang Xiao – art and critical theory
. Sean Smith – critical sports theory, Brock University, phD. candidate European Graduate School
. Grandpa Wang – neighbour from the building across the street, retired musician, active ladies man
. big sister Wang and big brother Yue – the landlords, subway ticket vendor
. big brother Zheng – next door neighbour, postal office worker

HomeShop will be open daily by appointment throughout the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. A running schedule of all events will be continuously updated on this blog. The HomeShop Games 2008 project is an initiative of 何颖雅 Elaine W. Ho and 欧阳潇 Xiao Ouyang, hopefully the first in a series of community-based investigations of art practices, Beijing, networked spaces and the home. Documentation, essays and other contributions from this series will be compiled for a publication to be produced after the Games. In the case of inclement weather, we can huddle together.

———

[1] See http://www.sarai.net/practices/cybermohalla/minor-practices. A number of the ideas for the HomeShop games project are humbly attributed to the work Cybermohalla.

[2] “Streets are spaces of banal repetitions, encounter with world of things, gathering of people and occasional events. This is also how streets enter our conversations. To stand still in a street or to observe a street over a certain duration of time could make the street re-appear into conversations and thought with renewed vividness and perplexity. Street-logs were evolved by practitioners in 2004 to engage with the familiar and the banal, to find ways of re-thinking and re-imagining its disruptions, surprises and flows” (Cybermohalla).