Their house

Souvenir

Children playing with toys, architects using miniature models, hobbyists creating realistic, albeit romanticized railway landscapes, do they not all ultimately have the same motive? They use small effigies to anticipate, practice, control, understand, what is otherwise to big, difficult, unknown or threatening.
They sell different toys here in Asia. In this case a heavy Japanese cruiser from the same class as the Haguro, that sunk the Admiraal de Ruiter in WWII, taking my grandfather with it. Will gluing this thing together give me any insights about a man I never knew, or the way he came to his end? It might, even. But not to the extent that I don't have more important things to do. It is still in it's box.

China girl

Click image to enlarge. I should have asked what she was thinking.

Dreamhouses

Rumor has it that My Little Pony lives in the left tower.

Kim Jong Il sighted in Beijing

Kim Jong Il as seen on the streets of Beijing, yesterday the 19th of February, 2009

human walls

You see them everywhere, in front of every building, compound or community: guards. They come in different price ranges. The expensive ones at the hotels and condominiums are like military officers or smartly dressed vigilantes with red berets. The more reasonable variety dresses in what looks like Soviet army surplus supplies (always at least ten sizes to big), often a red band around their arm makes them look even more like peoples army. They live in lobbies, little offices, sometimes places no bigger than a broom closet.

The picture above shows the guards outside my building. At night the doorman resides in the pillar behind the woman. Only a thin line of light under the door indicates that someone is dozing inside.
They seemed pretty useless at first, just another case of shared poverty. But three days ago I saw them come into action.

We were having dinner with people who are all somehow involved with Koolhaas' CCTV building. At some point phones started to ring, the building is on fire! We got in a taxi. We had to walk the last two miles: only emergency vehicles and busload upon busload of soldiers could get through.

It was impossible to get close to the action. A human wall of military (two or three rows thick) cordoned off the entire area. We went into the lobby of a hotel just opposite the burning building. It turned out to be the place where all the politicians came to oversee the proceedings. Needless to say I was soon asked to stop photographing.

I decided to walk around the CCTV building to get some angels (felt quite the reporter by now) and this is when the whole doorman concept became clear.
In every city there are alleys, bushes and building sites that allow some kind of informal access. Not so in Beijing. Buildings, courtyards and fences constitute walls.The smallest cracks are filled with one uniformed character after another, smiling or growling. They are the cement with which whole areas can be closed off. Quite sensible of cause, burning buildings are not to be trifled with.
I joined forces with a photographer from the Beijing Evening News. To no avail, none of the lobby staff of the hotels or office buildings would let us get up to take a picture, not even the immigrant workers of an unfinished building would have us (for a bribe).



By the time we got there the show was over. I now realize that the best way to photograph a burning skyscraper is not to try and get under it. A real reporter would have taken the image comfortably from the window of a friend in high places (20th floor would do it), drink in hand (I begin to suspect that most expats are alcoholics) and the ear to the ground from a save and critical distance.
The next day searches for "cctv tower fire" only came up with sites that were blocked. Only CNN was available. CCTV themselves hardly mentioned the incident. The best way to get information in Beijing are the personal blogs. Marginal enough that the censor does not bother with them.

First opening in Beijing

Censorship creates a kind of paranoia that is hard to imagine if you are not subjected to it. I was confronted with it on my first day, when my friend Liu Gang warned me that all e-mail's would be read by "them". True or false? They might just have the manpower and the inclination. Self censorship immediately kicks in: can I use that for a google search, or will my connection get even slower? Why does hotmail not work, but google does? True: if I post a photograph of the tank man on this blog, the whole blog will be removed. False: who knows what is false, or true?
The day before yesterday I went to my first opening. It was an anniversary of the China/Avant-Garde Exhibition held 20 years ago at the National Art Gallery. Back then, it was closed by the police after 4 hours. This time we arrived at the first venue only to hear that yesterday evening the police had asked for most of the exhibits to be removed. In a corner, some photographs of the original 1989 exhibition remained. A bus was taking us to the next place: The Agricultural Exhibition Center. Sounds funny for an art show, but it is in fact very prestigious.


Again nothing but a huge empty hall. More and more people started to arrive. The situation became hard to read. Everybody seemed to be randomly photographing and filming eachother.


With paranoia and censorship you never know where you are at. We strongly came to suspect that the whole absurd situation was itself a conceptual statement. There never had been an exhibition, we were made to experience what it was like 20 years ago, etc. We also began to feel a bit stupid, pawns in an only moderately satisfying happening. You get that a lot in the art world. What the hell, it was a nice, sunny day.


The picture above shows Gao Minglu, the curator, surrounded by some of the artists from 1989. He gave a speech: Yes, the exhibitions had been there, they had to be removed and there was only one venue left, a bus would take us there presently.
There was a show. Documents and photographs of all the works from 1989. They were black and white, which made the works look even more out of date. Most of them resembled Chinese remakes of Dada, Expressionism and Cubism: not so 1989. But some of it was really good and it was a break through at the time and place. It is incredible how quickly many artists developed since then. Many of the now famous artists where among the exhibits and those present. Then there where perfomances: Xiao Lu (who shot herself in a mirror in '89) got married to herself, somebody wrote things on the wall with his shit and then ate it, another cried and ate roses. A good time was had by all and many pictures were taken. As an introduction to the Chinese art scene, the whole day could probably not have been better.
Next day the international press (on the Internet, very difficult to get a decent newspaper here) confirmed that the shows had been closed by the police.