[spectre] Platform for Urban Investigation

[franck ancel]

> "Platform for Urban Investigation " - from 20 MAY 2006 to 20 JUN 2006
>
> Island6 Arts Center, Shanghai's venue for the latest trends in 
> contemporary art invites you to "Platform for Urban Investigation ", a 
> show curated by Allard van Hoorn, May 20th 2006 at 19H.
>
> • curated by Allard van Hoorn •
> • art direction by Thomas Charveriat •
>
> *People*
>
> /Jiang Jun/
> Designer and critic, Jiang Jun has been working on urban research and 
> experimental study, exploring the interrelationship between design 
> phenomenon and urban dynamic. He has been the editor-in-chief of Urban 
> China magazine since the end of 2004, in the meantime working on a 
> book. Born in Hubei in 1974, he got a bachelor's degree in Tongji 
> University (Shanghai) and a master's degree from Tsinghua University 
> (Beijing), he is now teaching in Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts.
>
> /Underline Office/
> Underline Office is a project-oriented group founded in 2003 by 
> designer, photographer and critic Jiang Jun. Based in Guangzhou and 
> registered in Hong Kong, most of its members came from Guangzhou 
> Academy of Fine Arts. Since the beginning of 2005, Underline Office 
> has been fully engaged into the founding and researching for Urban 
> China, an urbanism magazine based in Shanghai, and also involved into 
> a series of important exhibitions. Main works include: /Systematic 
> Superficiality/ (Exhibition analysis and Design) for /Get It Louder 
> Exhibition 2005/; /Hi-China/ (An interactive installation for the 
> images from 100 cities of China) for Guangdong Triennale 2005; 
> /Directory Lianzhou/ (A Branch work for Hi-China) for Lianzhou 
> International Photography Festival 2005; /Objects to Come/Objects in 
> Disappearing and Future Past Tense/ (A video installation cooperated 
> with Crystal CG) for Shenzhen Biennale 2005; /Informal China/ for 
> China Contemporary Exhibition in NAi, Rotterdam, 2006; /Urban Image & 
> Text/ for China Contemporary Exhibition in Fotomuseum, Rotterdam, 2006.
>
> /David Cotterrell/
> received an MA in Fine Art: Combined Media from Chelsea College of Art 
> and Design in 1997. David is an installation artist working across 
> varied media including video, audio, interactive media, artificial 
> intelligence, device control and hybrid technology. His work exhibits 
> political, social and behavioural analyses of the environments and 
> contexts, which he and his work inhabit. Recent work has involved 
> research into computational models of conversational speech, an 
> artificially intelligent pedestrian urban population and a 
> self-sustaining gridlock generator. He is currently working in 
> Shanghai, China on research into the impact of population expansion 
> with the support of an Arts Council England and British Council award.
>
> /John Ingledew/
> Head of Photography at Central St Martins College of Art and Design, 
> the University of the Arts London and a visiting Visual Communications 
> Lecturer at Raffles Design Institute, Dong Hua University Shanghai. He 
> has run projects and workshops with students in Europe, America and 
> Japan and instigated projects with leading creative companies and 
> magazines including /Diesel, Illy, Jigsaw, Getty, Vogue and Elle/. His 
> book of pictures /A View From the Bridge/ was published in 1998. His 
> book /Photography/ was published in the UK and USA last year and will 
> be published in Spain, Holland and Italy in 2006.
>
> /Lee Walton/
> Lee Walton is an Experientialist whose projects and performances are 
> full of humor, detailed planning, and interaction with the outside 
> world. Serendipitous combinations of rule and chance, Walton's 
> projects are always playful, precisely calibrated, conceptually 
> on-target and deeply attentive to the everyday patterns and rhythms of 
> contemporary city life. Walton has exhibited at numerous venues both 
> nationally and internationally, most recently at the Museum of 
> Contemporary Art Berlin and Clubs Project Inc., Australia. He has been 
> invited to lecture and lead projects at various institutions, 
> including the Reykjavik Museum in Iceland and the Psy-Geo-Conflux in 
> New York.
>
> /Shanglie Zhou/
> Shanglie Zhou (1958, Shanghai) arrived in Antwerp about fifteen years 
> ago where she further developed her career as a visual artist. 
> "Throughout the years, the works of visual artist Shanglie Zhou have 
> continued to astonish the audiences by their originality and strong 
> identity. Sometimes shocking and bizarre, at other times sober and 
> serene or even witty and playful, this chinese artist, now residing in 
> Antwerp, always surprises us with the only thing we can always expect 
> from her: the unexpected." (Quote: Alex Otterlei)
>
> /Jan Van Woensel/
> Jan Van Woensel is a freelance curator based in Antwerp, Belgium. He 
> was appointed as a guest-professor at the Karel de Grote Hogeschool, 
> dept Audiovisual and Fine Arts in Antwerp. Since 2003 he works as a 
> curator, co-director and co-editor of a.o. Vlucht magazine Amsterdam, 
> The Fields Projects publications, Kunshart magazine, free-Flux and 
> Markers project VI at the Documenta in Kassel. He is also the founder 
> of ICPA (International Curators Platform Antwerp)
>
> /Rose Tang/
> Rose Tang was born twice, first as a boy, on the beautiful hills 
> surrounding Taichung(Taiwan) in 1967; and then again, in Shanghai, at 
> the turn of this century, as the most promising Chinese artist of her 
> generation. Rose is extravagant, rebellious and fearless, and she 
> indiscriminately touches on all aspect of Chinese culture. Her /daddy 
> (2006)/ and /Aunties (2005)/ will be displayed at Island6 during the 
> /Platform for Urban Investigation/.
>
> /Martin Tzou/
> Martin Tzou, 31 years old, architect from Belgium, based in Shanghai 
> since 2004.
>
> /Annie Wang/
> from Beijing, 30 years old. Profession: TV program manager. She lives 
> in a tower, works in a high-rise office, and takes underground 
> transportation to move around in Shanghai.
>
> /Allard van Hoorn/
> Allard van Hoorn creates a visual language made of signs, symbols and 
> demarcations that indicate alternative routes in contemporary society. 
> It is a visual code he co-develops with people he works with in all 
> parts of the world and, specifically, in local communities. His 
> complete body of work is aimed at assisting mankind in obtaining 
> another way of looking and seeing, discovering that we now have the 
> option to make it work for all of humanity.
>
> *Projects*
>
> /Urban China/
> Urban China magazine is reflecting on urban culture throughout China 
> and has issued themes like /We Make Cities/. /Hong Kong Alphabet/ with 
> guest editors Gutteriez + Poertefaix, /Made in China (Reality and 
> Identity of the World Factory)/ and /City Sculpture/. The next two 
> issues will coincide with China Contemporary, a simultaneous 
> exhibition at the Netherlands Architecture Institute, Museum Boijmans 
> Van Beuningen and the Nederlands fotomuseum in Rotterdam, to be opened 
> at the 10th of June 2006, where Jiang Jun and Underline Office will 
> show their work.
>
> /Hi-China - Jiang Jun & Underline Office/
> Hi-China is a database based on the excursion of 100 Chinese cities as 
> well as over 200,000 images systematically taken from it. It is also 
> the name of the generic directory constructed for the massive 
> database, whose target is to set up an aggregate, which can both 
> reflect the multiplicity of Chinese cities in the greatest 
> possibilities and offer the most efficient way to be managed and 
> searched. Not only can this generic directory classify the large 
> numbers of images from each city quickly, but also it sets up parallel 
> relations between different cities, so that it generates links between 
> the parallel segments of them in a generic directory. As the 
> subdirectories of all levels are simultaneously a series of 
> independent urban projects, Hi-China is gradually evolving into a 
> Project of Projects, in which each project can be linked to all the 
> cities that have the same segments. In this way the invisibility of 
> order is indicated by the visibility of phenomenon, the incredible 
> super-reality is constructed by the ordinary and trivial reality. 
> Hi-China is an on-going project that is being revised and optimized 
> constantly. The phased outcome will be presented as books, magazines 
> and websites. More sub-projects and marginal projects will be 
> generated through the extending and detailing of its local elements.
>
> /Model Junction No. 1 - David Cotterrell/
> Based on study of various models of traffic simulation of, amongst 
> others, Shanghai, an attempt is made to forecast the ultimate 
> road-planning scheme if car ownership would be the only driving force 
> within this framework. Step-by-step growth from footpath to clover 
> highway structures are developed and shown during the Platform for 
> Urban Investigation.
>
> /Visual Ping Pong - Students from Raffles Design Institute / Dong Hua 
> University in Shanghai and Central Saint Martins College of Art and 
> Design in London./
>
> Each week visual messages are being sent by email between Raffles 
> Design Institute/Dong Hua University in Shanghai and Central St 
> Martins College of Art in London. Like a game of visual ping pong the 
> images move quickly to and fro between the two sides with each player 
> adding their own imaginative spin to the pictures. Like any game each 
> player cannot predict or change what the other player does.
>
> /Remote Instructions - Lee Walton/
> Lee Walton will provide instructions from Brooklyn, New York for the 
> Platform for Urban Investigation to be executed in Shanghai.
>
> /Shanghaid - John Ingledew/
> Posters project, SHANGHAID - vandalised billboards of future Shanghai, 
> photographed in Pudong, May 2006.
>
> /Contribution - Shanglie Zhou and Jan Van Woensel/
> Their contribution to the Platform for Urban Investigation-project 
> elaborates from their specific local orientation and aims to changing 
> the environment through a direct intervention in the public space. Ten 
> postcards representing monuments, historical buildings and famous 
> touristy places in Antwerp will be appropriated by the artist and 
> reprinted on poster size to be displayed at ten different locations in 
> Shanghai. The postcards are addressed to specific persons that are 
> significant for the cities' cultural scene; Zhou Benyi (former 
> Professor at the Shanghai Theater Academy), Chunming Gao (Director of 
> Shanghai Arts Research Institute), Sheng Han (Vice-president of the 
> Shanghai Theater Academy), Jianguo Zheng (Director of Shanghai 
> Oriental Publicity and Education Service Center) a.o. As the 
> handwritten messages on the back side of the postcards will be 
> presented alongside the colorful images of this Northern Belgian city, 
> they become public notes. Hereby the artist introduces a personal 
> reflection on the project by integrating her situation of being 
> disconnected from her original habitat to generate moments of 
> concentration in the changing cityscape. These messages will include 
> impressions from both cities; their cultural scene and historical 
> background; but will as well reflect upon the rapidly changing and 
> expanding city and the social conditions this irreversible evolution 
> evokes. This contribution to the Platform for Urban Investigation aims 
> to reach the people of Shanghai and establishes a public debate 
> through a socially engaged intervention in the public space. The 
> concept for this project was designed by Shanglie Zhou and Jan Van 
> Woensel.
>
> /Daddy & Aunties - Rose Tang/
> Rose Tang was born twice, first as a boy, on the beautiful hills 
> surrounding Taichung (Taiwan) in 1967; and then again, in Shanghai, at 
> the turn of this century, as the most promising Chinese artist of her 
> generation. Rose is extravagant, rebellious and fearless, and she 
> indiscriminately touches on all aspect of Chinese culture. In /daddy 
> (2006)/ and /Aunties (2005)/, Rose tries to understand the impact and 
> influence that culture, relationships and family values had on the 
> development of her sexual identity. Rose Tang's work captures much of 
> the essence and uniqueness of her identity journey by presenting a 
> delicate balance of sociological analysis, social perception, facts, 
> style and history.
>
> /Tracking Annie in Shanghai - Martin Tzou & Annie Wang/
> Contemporary urban life implies more and more vertical movements in 
> the city, which however are not often investigated. The project wants 
> to explore the vertical dimension of the movements of citizens in the 
> city of Shanghai. Annie and Martin, two characters who know each 
> other, are to be tracked in the city during one week. Using GPS 
> technology, geographic positions indicating the movements of the 
> characters will be recorded. The data will be put into graphs and 3D 
> models, and displayed along with photographs and videos of the 
> experimentation.
>
> /Reappropriation of Geometry - Allard van Hoorn/
> One of the projects that will take place at Island6 Arts Center is 
> /Re-appropriation of geometric forms/. The public is cordially invited 
> to actively participate in the development of this activity. Fellow 
> humans like R. Buckminster Fuller have thoroughly proved we are the 
> first generation that can fully make the whole of the system of 
> cohabitation on this planet work, that we have more then sufficient 
> technological standards, non-organic energy resources etc. to provide 
> a high standard of living for all people on earth. The only thing that 
> keeps us from doing so is knowledge. This project uses the 
> re-appropriation of geometric figures as a method of stimulating an 
> alternative look on the world. By defining the properties of the line, 
> triangle, square and circle differently and using these physical forms 
> accordingly is intending to change our perspectives on the world 
> around us. The way humans have evolved on our planet is to a certain 
> extent arbitrary. So is the way we describe the world around us. 
> Accordingly, formulas and descriptions in physics and mathematics are 
> developed over many generations, building theory upon theory. One can 
> imagine that in a slightly distinctly developed world these 
> descriptions of the world around us would have developed differently, 
> giving other meanings and functionality. This project is an exercise 
> in imagining other functions and definitions of very common forms in 
> our daily lives like a line, triangles, squares and circles. Together 
> we will investigate how to re-interpret or re-appropriate these forms 
> in a different manner from their currently known geometric realities.
>
> Island6 Arts Center, 120 Moganshan Rd, buiding #6, 2F, Shanghai 200060 
> China