feeling beijing

too much to say already here in Beijing.
I am here doing a project with maya lin, the architect/artist.
I spend my days at the beijing center for the arts, building an installation called WHAT IS MISSING? about issues of the environment and endangered species (including human species).

The piece is a large platform based installation, with 9 simultaneous projections and sounds that emit from below. The images appear on  hand-held screens the spectator carries as he or she wanders from video zone to video zone. The work is very large, in a very large space (1500 sq meters), and the videos are spread over the floor  throughout the platform, allowing the spectator to effectively capture the images with their hands. The sense is, perhaps, of listening to nature while questioning the ephemeral character of the media and the precarious nature of the lives of the species being featured in the work.

At night, I go to see music…saturday I was led around as if on a derive or a dream by the photographer matthew niederhauser to some of the best music I have heard from a band in a long time. Call me a fanboy, but I found new inspiration for feeling in the bauhaus-blonderedhead-deadkennedys-Hebei province-twist sounds of rebuilding the rights of statues.

here’s an NPR blog about them as well.
Maybe it was the cheap chinese beer and the exuberance of a diverse crowd of expats, drifters, punks and beijing scenesters that really fired me up, but even the day after, their sound still rings true. I am not sure, but maybe it is because there is so much to rebel against here—in preparation of the October 1st 60th anniversary of Mao, the internet and the streets have becaome a cat and mouse game, as facebook, twitter and youtube are all offline, not to mention street closings and soldiers goose-stepping about in rehearsals for the upcoming parades—or maybe it is just good music from crisscrossing paths. It felt a little Jarmusch night-on-earth (and yes, I realize that is rather 90′s, but that is also the feeling here, sort of Berlin post and pre-peristroyka), but I can’t negate the sound and energy was amazing, filled with hopeful hopelessness. And that sums up some of what I feel here so far…