Preview screening tickets being collected at the entrance.

Because the seats were limited, we could only give out 102 tickets based on first-come, first-served principle.

Our staff handing out tickets.

Waiting for the movie to start.

Audiences entering the theatre at 1:20pm.

Hall 7 of Megabox cinema.

The movie started.

Wang Hong (left) and Jia Zhangke in Beijing Angle Modern Art.

Jia Zhangke and Lin Xüdong (right).

Wang Xing, founder and CEO of the micro-blogging start-up Fanfou.com and the popular SNS site Hainei.com. Fanfou is a strategic partner of Shao Foundation.

We had a full house even before the discussion began! Some of the late arrivals could only stand on the sides. We will try to make it better next time.

Guest speakers (from the left): Ou Ning, Lin Xüdong, Wang Hong, Jia Zhangke and Zhai Yongming.

Zhai Yongming speaking.

Zhai published her first poem anthology in 1986. She is the co-writer of 24 City’s screenplay.

Jia Zhangke answering question.

Ou Ning moderating the discussion.

Audience taking notes.

Shao Foundation intern Pan He asking question.

Audience asking questions.

Jia Zhangke responding to the audience.

Wang Hong speaking.

Lin Xüdong answering Ou Ning’s question.

Our micro-blogging system powered by Fanfou.com. SF has been working with Fanfou since the first installment of CROSSTALK Beijing. The audience can ask questions and make comments in real-time via cellphone or laptop.

Audience can also discuss amongst themselves on the Fanfou screen.

‘May I have your autograph please?’.

The New Yorker’s Beijing bureau chief Evan Osnos talked to Jia Zhangke after the discussion.

Jiang Zhuo (left) from Ruzuo.com, a start-up through which members can organise movie screening by and for themselves. This allows them opportunity to watch movies which are not often available in the mainstream cinemas in China.

Lin Xüdong talking to audiences.

Business cards left by journalists.

(All photos by Sun Xiaoxi.)

* This text was originally written by Sun Xiaoxi in Chinese and was translated by Xu Yijing.

Here’s a straightforward description of the events that’s going to unfold soon:

1. An exhibition based on the film 24 City at Beijing Angle Modern Art. Time: February 23–March 8.

2. A free preview screening of 24 City. Time: 13:30, February 28 (Saturday). Place: Megabox cinema, The Village, Sanlitun.

3. A panel discussion (CROSSTALK Beijing #2) on the film and related topics. Time: 16:00–18:00, February 28 (Saturday).

It seems that many people got the news from our Facebook event page, on which the actual date of the screening (not the exhibition) was tucked at the end of the press release. The confusion may also come from the fact that we’ve compressed the above three events into one press release. Again, we apologise for the inconvenience.

To avoid having people going to the theatre on Monday only to find that they have the wrong date, we are going to publish the final list of audiences by tomorrow evening on our website. Everyone on the list will also be notified via email.

(The text is originally written by Sun Xiaoxi in Chinese and translated by April Zhang. All photos by Sun Xiaoxi.)

Chi Jang Yin (Professor of Depaul University, abbreviated as Yin later on): I’m very moved by the works of the artists and the friendship they have with the local villages, so to say, the whole plan. Usually the majority of the audience of contemporary arts are a relatively special group of people, in other words, the organisers are likely to put borders around them. But for you, the audience is villagers, which breaks the traditional relationship between arts and the audience. My question is, given the audience might not have the knowledge of art history or art concepts, when they see these experimental works, like performance artists rolling on the ground, they must have lots of questions. How do you communicate with them and in what way you maintain this relation?

Jay Brown (abbreviated as Brown later on): We created some methods to introduce the artists to the locals. One is to collaborate with kids. We often screen films in school and organises workshops for them. They then will pass the message to other locals that these artists are outsiders but they’re also human beings. They will tell their parents they’ve had fun with us. These help build a good image for us and show we are not here to make money. After these, they are willing to collaborate with us.

Yin: Then how do you communicate with them? Many experimental works are conceptual. How do you explain to them?

Brown: It happens that they understand the most experimental works best like the works we showed just now. In fact, it’s quite simple. For example, they can see direclty that some works deal with food issues. They’ve thought about these issues for long time, unlike citizens who don’t need to think about what to eat. The more experiments I make, the clearer thoughts I have about it. Though for some works like shooting videos, the process is not transparent. We have to change it but it can’t be solved in one day.

Xie Yijun (student): Hello! I’m a student of anthropology. I’m interested in the interactive and cooperative relation between your studio and local culture and residents. For example, you mentioned you might invite over 100 foreign artists to your studio. I assume there will be some disagreements regarding culture or concept in the process of communication. How do you regard the relations between your studio and the local residents as well as local culture? Thanks.

Brown: For example, we have an artist who wants to do fresco in peasants’ house. We would ask them whether they’d like to participate in this project. And then introduce the artist to them. Let them have a meal first and get familiar and comfortable. Then we will talk about how to carry it out. If we give them a proposal immediately, it will be hard for them to accept. Now we almost all know each other. For example, though we have a neighbor who collaborates with us regularly, we will pass on the opportunity to other families, if they have something interesting. For example, a local artist sold some of his works in our exhibition and a magazine and the local TV station reported it. Just like this. We haven’t come across any conflicts.

Audience from internet: Lijiang Studio is, as Ou Ning said, is a rural organisation. What kind of staff structure does it require? It will need people of different professions and backgrounds, possibly including biologists, anthologists, artists and architects. What’s the simplest structure you can think of?

Brown: At the beginning, we were very interested in contemporary arts, now we found we should expand our interest to more disciplines, like biology, anthropology, history and politics. Next year, we will invite many artists to join us and will bring up some questions, for example, the reason of the existence of the third world, for them to research and discuss.

Audience from internet: Lijiang studio is supported by American funds. Such kind of non-government organisations (NGO) locate most densely in Yunnan Province. Can it be explained that NGOs have developed a harmonious relationship with the Yunnan Provincial Government? Is such kind of model worth promoting to other parts of China?

Brown: We mainly want to host some events around where we live. We don’t participate in the events of any fund. We are not NGO. We do not aim to help. We do not aim to help (Lijiang’s) development. We don’t do such kind of things. We just want to do experiments. And we happen to have chosen here. However, we obtain money from the same system as NGOs, so we still have something to with them.

Audience A: Do you think Lijiang serves the best as a laboratory for contemporary architecture?

Brown: I think it can be anywhere

Zafka Zhang (sound artist): So far, what’s your favourite work of the lab? You have invited more than a hundred of artists there. How do these artists regard issues like artistic colonisation – the so-said colonising villages after colonising towns – to which extent they can understand the rural areas here? The whole lab is more like an anthropological research site for artists to study and practice. Given you’ve spent so much money on (building the studio) in the village, what kind of works created by what sort of artists with what kind of concepts can be considered as good works? I did a lot of rural investigation in my graduate study, my major is politics. I did lots of research on rural politics and I’ve spent a considerable time in rural environment. What intrigues me most is just like what you said, social sculpture, then to what extent you can understand the invisible local system, to which extent you can participate in it, to what extent you can destroy it instead of just inhabiting there? Even after you spend a year there, you can’t become a real villager. When you built such a lab, what’s your purpose?

Brown: The best work is by Na Yu. His video is still under editing. I will inform you when he is ready to show his works. Some German and Austrian artists would bring up several questions in an amusing way, not like I tell you how to do and what to do. We’ve never made any claims. We don’t have any artistic aim. From the beginning, we want to learn through the process of practice instead of school study. In the process, we make mistakes again and again, every of which is different, and we learn from them. So we don’t have a specific purpose.

Ou: Actually, it’s a difficult question. Like the Land Foundation of Rirkrit Tiravanija I mentioned, although it’s carried out in rural areas, it was hardly involved in the life there. But the practice of Shinsuke Ogawa is outstanding. He did nothing other than planting the rice for several years. He didn’t start filming until his staff had the same life habits and physical reaction as the farmers. It’s really remarkable. In fact, artistic practice which lots of people endeavour to do right now, requires much longer time. Lijiang studio has just started with a history of mere three years.

Brown: I find that such people often relocate when they are accustomed and revealed.

Ou: Now I’d like to invite a friend to talk about his feelings about participating today’s talk.

Wu Wenda (Secretary of Yi County Party Committee): I come from the countryside of Yi County, Anhui Province. I came specifically for this talk today. Someone asked your reason of establishing such a lab in the countryside, you want to make it a platform of art or build a relationship with rural culture and world economy and society. This is what I’m interested in because I come from the countryside. There are many farmers in China and many problems in rural areas. From what I understand, it seems like arts which originated in rural areas now come back. You can do contemporary art activities and research in rural areas, but how to integrate with the farmers, rural economy and society and culture and avoid conflicts is very important. I come from Yi County in Anhui Province. There were two world cultural heritages there: Xidi and Hongcun. It’s one of the origins of Hui Culture. As we all know, in Ming and Qing Dynasty, there are two predominant merchant communities, Jin (in today’s Shanxi, China) and Hui which originated in my hometown. It became World Heritage a bit later than Lijiang. The core culture of it is Confucianism and Taoism. So what intrigues me is, what’s the best way to deal with these relations?

Brown: What I forgot to mention is, during May Fourth Movement, as mentioned before, Liang Shuming, James Yen and Mao Zedong were thinking about the problems and solutions of China’s rural areas. Afterwards, Mao realized his plan, as we all have seen the effect. Then we came back to another system. Now we need to consider the issues of rural areas from an analogical new angle. The current type of economic system is ending and we don’t know what the next type will be. Farmers have to face worse problems and more decisions. We never say that we can solve the problems of peasants. With some experimental and light-hearted attitudes, we can make the severe problems easier. We can try this or try that, through research, like scientific research if you want; or through communication, the local government sometimes provides technologies and we can help them to communicate; or try some methods that worked in the US. The problems of the rural area are difficult and don’t say we are here to solve problems.

Sophie Chiang (Director of the Metro Section of Modern Weekly): I still want to know your answer of Zafka’s question earlier because I think his questions are crucial. You said that everyone can participate in the politics and everyone per se is a politics system. I’m curious that your practices in Lijiang, if I borrow Ou Ning’s introduction of Hsieh Ying-chun’s practice in Taiwan previously — let me explain a little about this because I’m from Taiwan myself. He has done two remarkable projects. His major is architecture. He helped Thao Tribe who are aborigines of Taiwan (to rebuild their houses) and he devoted himself to the reconstruction after 921 Earthquake. With architecture, they got involved in countryside and helped them on reconstruction. What they do is not simply building; it might influence the whole architecture industrial chain. And with the attitude of the government to reconstruction and it becomes a social movement gradually. My question is: besides doing art practice, have you accumulated some power; where do you want to lead this power, and whether the power can form a social or cultural movement? Another question, you emphasised what you do is an attitude and not a solution, although you’ve worked out some small systems already. How do you consider the knowledge you’ve got? Will you analyse them and sort out a knowledge system, as well as the methodology? And what would be your guidelines?

Brown: To have your own guideline is vital. For instance, before I established this studio, I was in a chain of corperate market system, in which personal opinions were not taken into account at all. Several years ago, I started to research some issues like food. I don’t even know genovariation before: corn, beans or whatever. Things I didn’t know three years ago, now I know. We have experimented making our own vegetable seeds. We grow our own food gradually. After learning these things and then you can make your own choices. Talking about this ability, now many peasants have to buy seeds from American companies. When they want to grow corns, they have to buy seeds. These seeds can be used only once. They have to buy nutriments and fertilizers from the same company also otherwise the plants won’t grow well. They can’t preserve the seeds from the corns to next year because they might not turn out the same in the third year. Therefore, under the de facto permission from the Chinese government, the peasants are controlled by American companies. If there is a plague of insects, no corns will be left. If some preserve their own seeds, they will have their own food. But many people don’t realize this and they totally accept the situation. The peasants say if it’s not good, the government won’t let us do it. But that’s not the truth. What I can say is I start to know these things and they influence my actions. I still participate in many big systems. I still take plane and do many other things but I’m not satisfied with it. Now since I’ve got some experience, I can think of the best model and see if I can walk my own way but not in a closed situation, and still interact with many systems. It won’t work if I make an exclusive system all by myself. It’s why we say that everything one does has a political implication. Only having conceived this sentence, one can start his contemplation of entire system. One can not impact the world with one step, as his power is limited. So on the issue of systematisation, I’ve not yet prepared for it. Before that step, many contradictions should be resolved in the course of experiment of self-sustainability, which costs much time. Plus, self-sustainability is not an ideal social model. First, maybe we can do it in a small scale, like a village with 100 residents realising the model with mutual help and labour exchange.

Audience B: Did any zhiqing (educated youth who went to the countryside during the cultural revolution, as a response to the call of Mao) get to the countryside of Lijiang?

Brown: Yes, some did. I don’t know the result of it but I know they went there.

Audience B: Then do you know if they have any impact on the local people? Did they work as ‘new peasants’ there for long time?

Brown: I met some people in their fifties or sixties. Most of them were zhiqings. They have a very good relationship with the local people and are well aware of their problems. They aren’t the kinds who look down upon the peasants while the younger generations who have enjoyed the advantages of urbanity tend to look down upon peasants. Their attitudes are quite different. Speaking of how they’ve influenced modern China, I think they have some influence but I haven’t research specifically on it yet.

Ou: Actually, the way Zhiqings went to the countryside is quite different from what artist do today. The former is the result of politics and is a method to allocate people by power. Phoenix TV has a program which documents the life of Zhiqings after they settled down in Yunnan. The fact is the whole generation was bamboozled. In the past, intellectual youth or even the general public were often utilised by political mobilisation. They didn’t volunteer to go to the countryside. It’s the Communist Party who used powerful propaganda, like using photograph of a female tractor driver on endless farmland, to arouse the passion of going to rural areas.

Audience B: You weren’t a zhiqing, were you?

Ou: No, I wasn’t.

Audience B: So I think what you said is not correct. They didn’t go there for the female tractor driver, they had no other choice.

Ou: Yes. It was also the consequence of national mobilisation. If the government didn’t do it, it wouldn’t be like this.

Audience C: Not all of them were forced to go there. I am an example of the volunteers.

Ou: You can talk about your own experience.

Audience C: I grew up in Beijing. I was among the last group of Zhqings. My elder brother didn’t go to the countryside but I did, though only in the suburbs of Beijing for about one year. It’s also, I don’t know how to say, though not comparable with his, a life experience. You are different after you go to the countryside and become new peasant. It’s a totally different experience. I have nothing more to say.

Liang Jingyu (Director of Approach Architecture Studio): My question was inspired by the topic of Zhiqings. Perhaps most of the audience here have much interest in rural areas and want to know what’s happening there. Ou Ning himself is also wondering whether he will miss cities once he really lives in the countryside because these people are born urban. If our generation goes to the countryside also, our aim will overlap with Jay’s at some point. We are very interested in the issues like the corn seeds and the issues of the whole economic trend. But when Mao Zedong let many Zhiqings go to the countryside, though there might not be much conflicts between urban and rural areas or we can say his ideal at that period was to diminish the differences between rural and urban areas. What he did was not as specific as what Jay does; it was more generalised. My question is what the starting point was, and what intrigues Jay to practice in LIjiang? Is it for your interest in rural areas defined generally or just somewhere that is far from your own background? Perhaps the further, the better? Then maybe you will go to Tibet next time or even the outer space because it’s different enough from your own life? If you’re really interested in rural areas, then why didn’t you do experiments in the U.S.?

Brown: I will be happy to go to outer space also. I can see some Chinese culture in the US; and I find in the US, there is no way to see the real face of China. I can get some information from books, documentaries and news but I decide to come to China’s rural areas because I feel I can only understand it when I live there. I got very interested in May Fourth Movement when I was learning Chinese history. I think how to view rural areas is still a problem yet to be solved. It has something to do with my family also. I grew up in cities and went to countryside very occasionally, once every several weeks the most. I didn’t experience rural life that deeply. I found I don’t know how to do farming, how to arrange a farmland. I really don’t know. Now in the US, there are some relatively new and high-quality farming techniques. Most of the farming is done by large companies with huge tractors equipped with air conditioners and DVD players and they can rely on GPS to operate their tractors. I think this is not the real farming. I know the traditional methods of farming exist somewhere else. In China, because of many cultural reasons, it’s more suitable to go to the countryside. And the current period is very important to China so I should take the opportunity to live here. I don’t know how much time I will spend here.

Lawrence Li (abbreviated as Li later on): I’ve been to Lijiang Studio with Ou Ning and I’d like to share my experience with you. I’m partly inspired by Liang Jingyu’s question. I’m entirely a city person. I don’t like the countryside. For example, Lijiang, everybody thinks it’s cool while I don’t see anything fun about Lijiang. Then I went to the old town of Lijiang and I didn’t think it was much fun either. Usually people say city life is tense and they feel relaxed in Lijiang. What I felt was totally opposite. When I came back from Lijiang and arrived in Beijing, there were all kinds of cafes and so many places to get online, I felt very relaxed and safe in this environment. This was what impressed me most in my rural trip: everything became direct when I was there. It was not for me because I experience many things through a medium. Even when I arrived at Lashihai, the village where Lijiang Studio was, I still kept this tendency. For example, I would rather find out everything about Lashihai on Wikipedia than ask people around. It turned out Wikipedia did have an entry for it. Also, when I saw a tree a bit like ginkgo tree, though I had little knowledge on botany, I found the tree beautiful. I wanted to know what tree it was. I preferred not to, but of course I had to ask someone since I couldn’t find any relevant book. But if there was a library, I could borrow a book and learn the basic knowledge of botany. I learn many things through reading but in the countryside you probably can’t find related books. For instance, it’s difficult to buy a book about how to kill pigs. If there is any, I’d like to have one and I will have much interest in reading it. It’s to say the learning method in a so-called civilised culture system is quite different from the direct way of learning in rural areas. Another issue is Jay told me many local kids never used a computer before. There was a computer in the studio and some kids had parody MP3 players and they learned computer skills to download music. They didn’t know how to copy, paste or use any Microsoft Office softwares but they knew how to download. This is very interesting because we tend to think computers are multifunctional and we consider computer skills as advantage. Computers are good because they can do all kinds of things, no difference for musicians or office workers. Now the computer technology has developed to an extent where specific apparatus does specific work. Maybe we should reconsider computer as single-purpose tools. These two are the most remarkable experiences of mine in Lijiang.

Ou: When we were in the Old Town of Lijiang, before we ordered a dish that was made of worms, we checked people’s comments online first.

Li: When we were looking for restaurants to eat, we had no references and there was no point of asking because everyone would claim their restaurants were the best. So we could only search in dianping.com (a user-generated restaurant ranking website). Many people thought it was eccentric but I didn’t see anything wrong with it. I said it has something to do with Liang Jingyu’s question. The first day was really cool for me also but it’s because everything was fresh. I wouldn’t be able to stand it if I had to stay there for three days.

Ou: On the first day of the trip he saw a buffalo. I was wearing red. So he asked me whether my red t-shirt would irritate the buffalo. On the second day we went for horse riding, these are all new and fresh to him.

Audience D: Did you learn your mushroom-cultivating techniques through computer, or any plant books?

Brown: It’s mainly one person who is the neighbour of these artists. He is an expert on mushroom now and has published several books. I told him our ideas and he gave us the key books and I studied them. We have internet in our courtyard so we can search online sometimes as well.

Audience D: Did you fail in the first several times?

Brown: We planted many mushrooms, some of which are contaminated by other bacteria and these failed.

Pan He (student): One of the attributes of social sculpture is its irreversibility. Is it because of this irreversibility that you try to avoid transforming the local rural society with any structured systems? Or because of this irreversibility, you let yourself and those artists avoid getting involved in the society in all kinds of ways. Do you think the best thing for the local peasants is to bring them some joy and broaden their views with another kind of life style? Do your experiments there maintain their original life style while bring them as much joy as possible? And let the west see the alternative production model and bring this experience back when the current mechanical production model can’t sustain entire operation on earth? Is that your idea?

Brown: Exactly. We’re a bridge. They know we’re a bridge. We will borrow some concepts from rural areas instead of working in a completely shut-off environment. We can not foresee what it will become or at the end of the world what will happen.

Pan He (student): Yes. But since every activity has a political nature, how can you limit the extent of social transformation in a small scale?

Brown: I don’t know. Before participating in politics, we need to develop more. It’s still not the right time for us to partake in political system.

Xu Ya-zhu (sound artist from Taiwan): Your rural experiments remind me of Rudolf Steiner. Can you talk about the connection between your thoughts and those of Steiner?

Brown: We are interested in some of his ideas; for instance, planting a cattle bone with vegetable together. We don’t have this kind of system yet. He is the one who investigates on biodynamic agriculture. Before him, Goethe had similar ideas as well.

Xu Ya-Zhu: He also talked a lot about earth. Art, earth, life and human are all connected. This is the concept of organic creation. So I think your work is more about this instead of experiments on politics and sociology.

Brown: Yes. Oxford Brookes University has a Social Sculpture Research Unit. I think it has eight years of history now. Shelley Sacks is the director of it. What the professors there publish is quite interesting. Their research covers from Goethe to Steiner. Speaking of this, one problem is their actual work is not that interesting. Maybe we can borrow their concept only but this is very difficult because in contemporary art, most people are very rational, especially in the ideological system nowadays. Once is enough. But if a concept is useful, we can work on it for several years. So how to carry out some historical ideas still need to change some conventional concepts. I’m still researching.

Li: About the opinion that once is enough in contemporary art, I have something to say. A friend of mine had a trip in Europe. He doesn’t like contemporary art. He is not an intellectual either though a fan of cinematography. After his trip, he was excited to tell us what he saw there, like paintings by Leonardo da Vinci or things we got to know in basic education. His excitement made deep impression on me. I rarely see such excitement so I asked him the reason of that. What he said shares similar opinions as Jay. He said contemporary art focus too much on innovation. I won’t do things people have done before. One result is enough logically. For example, if everybody does oil painting, it will create competition, like during the period of Renaissance, you must draw better than others. The superior gets selected while the inferior gets eliminated. If no one makes oil painting any more after one does an oil painting already, competition doesn’t exist any more and it’s hard to tell its quality. For other areas like IT, you can often get excitement of improvement but not often in contemporary art. I think it’s a pity and I do hope to see more excitement in it also. However, I have not yet seen any so far.

Yin: I am quite moved because the audience is the peasants. This is a fair treatment. I found another thing moving: practice is the process of learning but not the aim. You’ve spent a lot of manpower and material resources. What’s your goal? Maybe it has something to do with Chinese culture. When I give lectures on experimental films, Chinese students always want to know whether they’re good films and what their aims are. You’ve been emphasising the relationship between process and study and I can’t agree more with that. My question is you said one of reasons why you started this studio is that you want to understand the aim of artists by witnessing their working process. Is it just for this reason that you found the studio and do the experiments? Now that three years have passed, what have you learned?

Brown: One thing I neglected in the process is the academic side of things because I was trying to move away from academic and institutional world. I realised that I need to get back to the academic side. So the questions she is raising and that some of the materials that Ou Ning put on the screen. It’s very important to understand the history of how these ideas and social movements develop. Would you be part of a social movement, would you be part of an institution, would you be part of a political system? I want to explore those questions.

Yin: So why coming back to the academic side now?

Brown: Because in corporate history, it’s through writing these ideas get passed. I don’t know if you know Fei Xiaotong who’s written a lot about villages, rely on speaking and visual recognition but not on written language while internet and academic stuff all relying on language. So basically, I’ve been away from language. My Chinese is practical Chinese in villages but not academic or the same as my English. It’s a way you look at history how ideas get moved up to now. So recently I’ve been really fascinated by this idea of reenacting. So we participate in shanghai a couple of weeks ago to reenact a work done in New York years ago. It’s not an original idea but just by doing that you put a lot of focus on what we do now. I also learned a lot about psychology because that plays a huge role when you go to a new place and making work and how you interact with people. I think I have an unofficial degree in psychology now.

Yin: Do you finally discover the process of partly creating these ideas and getting unknown ideas but end up to have a problem?

Brown: Not really. There are ways to shake the reality. One end would be to just do one work you’ve already done by being in a very different environment. Another would be to rethink from the beginning. In that case, you can do any work. When artists arrive they face the whole spectrum and they have to choose what they can bring and what they can do. Some people just give up what they did. There were photographers and now they started painting. They really want to push themselves. To get your knowledge fit the environment is very important.

Ou: Due to the limit of time, that’s the end of our conversation today! Please stay tuned. Next year we will have Asia Agriculture Conference and continue to discuss the issues of rural areas and agriculture. Thank you all!

Jay Brown: If for anything that this doesn’t work just get up and say something, I think this is the whole idea anyway. Thanks to Ou Ning, and the Shao Foundation for inviting me.

I’m going to try to give you an idea of what we have been doing in a small village – Lijing, in Yun Nan for the last three years. We have built a small studio, which is a space we experiment, often with art, with performing, and some other things. They are all related to each other. The title of the talk – “Xin Nong Cun Shi Yan Shi” (Experiments in the New Countryside Lab) is something that we have come up recently. Before we get to the topic of this poster, I’m going to spend some time to explain some background of what we have done so far.

First thing after deciding to go to the countryside is to find a base. We found two bases. The first one is a regular farm house. It was empty for 10 years, and about 15 kilometers away from Lijing. When we first got there, we started growing vegetables in our courtyard. We clean up the place to live in. Then we built a green house, so that we could grow our own vegetables 12 months in the year without using any chemical pesticide or fertilizer. We also grow what traditionally grow around us, this “liang shi” (grain) like corn, which is fed to pigs. After the pig gets fat, we kill the pig. After we kill the pig, we eat the pig and the vegetables. Once we have done that, we can start talking and start working. We have presentations, and spend hours of making art. This is the basic living background of Lijing studio.

After that, we decided we needed a public space. So we engaged the architect Lü Biao. He is a good friend who worked a lot on the countryside. He had a way of “xie shang” (negotiation) – taking students to countryside in Yun Nan, having them draw and do investigation which involved drawing what they saw, making measured drawings, and doing interviews. Ethnographies in a way that architecture students would interest in. That was an experiment based on the ideas of Rural Studio in America, which started by a guy named Samuel Mockbee. They took an architecture department, which is traditionally based on the computer, taught the students design built skills, and taught them construction skills on construction site. The students need to solve with their skills, and learn some of the requirements of the local people there.

This photograph shows the structure of a traditional Na Xi house, a timber frame structure with no nails. That structure has been modified a little bit. The team is from the village; normally you invite all your neighbours to help you build the house, to construct it. The other part of this building project was adding some non-local materials, the emblematic construction of modernism, which is glass and steel construction. The building on the left of this photograph already existed, the building on the right, was an adaptation of the building on the left, and the building in the middle was from another place.

One of the requirements we gave to the architect for the art exhibition space here was that it would be suitable for kids and for old people. The bench which faces the road is usually used by older people. Especially in the morning, because it faces east, it’s a nice and sunny place for the villagers to go to, to gossip, to tell each other jokes.

This photo shows our front door from the exhibition space. Here is a Russian tire, made in the 70’s. Some trash, some unwanted materials, also used in construction.

Once we’ve completed the building, we started activating it. There are a lot of program involving kids, for example, we went around picking up trash. These are all plastic bottles of trash, probably thrown by tourists. We started to make things with trash – you can make musical instruments, sculptures. You can make a lot of stuff.

There is a slide in the middle of the main exhibition space, when you are having exhibitions; the kids are going up and down on the slide. We made some visual tricks. Older people seem to enjoy hanging out here too.

When we invited outside artists to use this place, a lot of them responded the architecture by making a performance. Berlin artist Alfred Banze brought images from different parts of the world at different times. He asked kids from school to pick a few of images, and make stories using the images.

This is a photo of the opening for his performance, and exhibition. The kids on the front row are waiting for their turns to perform. With Alfred, they set up their performance, so that they perform at each others stories and their own stories – they reinterpret each others’ stuff. It’s all being fed live, there was a video camera there, and all being fed live back onto themselves. It gets quite dense.

We generally don’t use a lot of technology. But when we do, we try to make the technology very visible and obvious what it’s doing. If you are using a video camera, and feeding it live onto a TV, people respond very well to that. For example, an opened ‘final cut’ project was on that lab top. And the performer, Alfred Banze, was playing with that project. It’s not a set take; it’s responding.

Another thing that he did was to respond to the ethnographic urge or anthropological complication that comes from a foreigner, especially a European. He finds a lot of imagery from very difficult, problematic periods in ethnography, and uses those in his performance.

Another type of work, which made by one German and one Austrian artist, a little bit different, but can be realized only by having this base in the country side. This is an installation, from a video. Let me show you the video.

(Play video)

This is a road that was being built right outside our studio, against the desires of the local villager. A) They didn’t want the road. B) This was something done by the government and they didn’t get approved on. It would be better just let other people do it. So it was actually people from neighbouring villages that were hired to do this road, and they ended up calling their neighbours, their buddies to help them to build this road.

In the process they were using disposal work gloves. These glues would last for two days. So this road was covered by gloves, these guys were going through twenty gloves everyday. There is a saying – “Lu bu shi yi”, which means not anyone just picks up something they found on the road, anyone wouldn’t take something that’s not theirs. The idea is, there is a system of what belongs to whom and how you treat things you don’t know in the village. This road was to us at the time, and this was the break down of that system. So that is why they made this installation – Lu Bu Shi Yi.

There were artists who usually used to working in urban public space. We wanted to see what would happen if they come to the village. This is the work they made, this time in Lijing old town, Lijing tourist district.

Another way that an area has been interpreted, this is more in the private space, is through dance. We found the dancers have a lot of stimulation from being in farming environment, because of how much a body is involved, when they farm or making food. So we invited Butoh dancer, Min Tanaka, in Chinese “Tian Zhong Min”, he’s performed in Beijing last year. He did a number of performances, I don’t have a video of this, I will just show you images from one performance he did in our barn yard, with chickens and the pigs.

He also collaborated with a sound artist, a young sound artist mostly works in Tokyo. He was recording in different places in the barn yard. He had speakers in the pigs and in the chickens. He was feeding the sounds back to his own set-ups as well. He was getting some feedbacks from the outside as well, he’s not telling you. The audience of this is simply our neighbours, just the family whose barn yard this it. Min Tanaka did one piece at PS1, only one person was allowed for an audience, every person experience was different, and he/she remembers that for the rest of his/her life. The end of the performance was when the pig actually kissed him, and it was over.

I wanted to show different kinds of work and approaches we are taking. Here is another kind of approach that is quite a bit different; it’s coming from Joseph Beuys. Some people call it social sculpture. This is done by two Americans; they call themselves “KATALOG”. They are trying to visit the problem of what happened to the art from the 60s and 70s, why we are still part of this art; and are the political, environment problems from then still the same as now. They are using some of the language of that time, and they redo pieces by Gordon Matta-Clark, Beuys and some others, try to re-ask these questions.

There is something this word “social sculpture” we try to use, to highlight how people can be intentional about their position in society, and how they can actually to change social system to some extent. We imagine people re-socializing with each other, and the basis of that is basically your environment, and the most basic part of your environment is food and subsistence. So this project was conceived around food production, our energy cycles, and what you have to do as a group, also what that might possibly politically inform and all that. One of the other assumptions for this kind of approach is that really basic understandings of a national world, biology or chemistry or something like that s very empowering for people to make their own social model.

Here is a clean room which is where we are beginning to collect the spores for mushrooms, and develop those into editable mushrooms, and will later become part of a sculpture. Incidentally most of the materials in the clean room are recycled art. The process of these very basic messing around can be anesthetizing of your relationship with nature, and it’s something these guys doing a lot. We had pretty basic equipment. This is a shot from a microscope; we just looked at water in a ditch. We had one book, from a guy named Paul Stamets, who worked on mushrooms a lot. We are basically following his example of how to grow mushrooms. The KATALOG group took mushrooms, grew them onto other materials where they can eat. And they built this house, which is also recycled art, trash, and mud to hold the mushrooms. This process happened very slowly. Every week we have open house, workshops. We invite people, local villagers who were also considering growing mushrooms, whether just for their own consumptions or to diversifying their income. The idea is to expose the process of this research. If you attempt or participate in the process, you can come out with some skills you can use, regardless whether it’s in art world, or in other professional world. This work was designed to be done in this village, and if they want to do another work, presumably here (in BAMA), it will be a different set of skills.

We actually had mushrooms grow, and we are very proud of that. The next step of the project which begins the world heritage beer garden picnic is to use some of the characteristics of mushrooms. It could actually change things such as environmental disasters, small scale environmental pollution. Mushrooms can take a pretty long carbon based molecule. The ends that mushrooms consume and digest can actually break molecule into smaller pieces that is perfectly safe for humans to eat.

There is a tractor repair shop nearby. Oil was running into the liquor factory where we get all our liquor from. We started working with the liquor. There was another side of it. But we also did a mushroom installation that was designed to eat the oil; the mushroom will break down the oil flows into the liquor shop. Inside these baskets are clumps of mycelia, enough food to last them for a year or two. And those clumps of mushroom mycelia then hack into dry corn starch which the mushrooms will then eat; they presumably will eat the basket and everything else too. The tractor fixing shop is just around the corner of the hill, the oil runs down right into this edge of earth. It’s a perfect trap to trap the oil. The owner of this “jiu chang” (liquor factory) will just make a little garden based on the sculpture. Inside the middle of these baskets are small mushrooms. The mushrooms are packed in these baskets; they will eat all the materials in these baskets. We put these baskets in earth, and then gradually the mushrooms will grow and start eating the oil.

Another installation with the same idea is designed not to treat the oil but to beat erosion. This is a site where someone started to build a house and then gave up. The top soil is removed and disappeared.

The installation of these things each time was an event, we’ve got quite a few around our village. The idea was that the installation is a kind of ceremony; we have an exhibition or performance. The things we eat are hopefully delicious, and more importantly are grown using some new understanding of the cycles of how things can be paired with each other, and grow from each other based in our farm.

In this photograph, the beer is made at home. After we used barley in one step from making the beer, we fed that to the mushrooms. They grew really well on the spent of brewing the drink. Cooked barley actually is more nutritious for pigs or fish, and mushroom, it is extra good food.

In these simple cycles, we try to consider where is trash and where is nutrition; energy we had and taking them away. The farmers are usually pretty sensitive to this. By just trying to connect a few, you can make a lot of progress and make yourself self-sufficient. It’s also heaps of fun to play around with. There is that element of social sculpture in the process of making these things. In the ritual, we try to invite a cross section of people in Lijing. In this photo, there are artists, curators. This guy in the middle represents Lijing bureau for getting foreign investment. These guys are musicians. There is another guy from the environmental department. We try to get them to talk to each other base on this experience. We went to interview people in the government, we found that each department was not talking to each other, and have no idea what the other department was doing. At that point, we decided we have to bring all those people we talk to together. And to demonstrate what we are trying to do and talking about.

So that’s it, we hope at some point the process is fun, and you can get some simple joy from watching these things grow or from just having a beer.

So, end of nerd speak, here are some photos from the event.

Ou Ning launching the event.

Thank you, anonymous person with cellphone number ended with 2117, you really spiced up the micro-blogging screen! Thank you too, Zafka.

Anyone else noticed the striking resemblance between Jay Brown and Glenn Gould? ^_^

The turnout is pretty good, we have 40 chairs and about 10 stools, and some people had to stand behind. A lot of people got the news from Facebook, which is surprising to me as I ignore Facebook invitations most of the time. ^_^

Michelle Liu of Approach Architecture and writer / editor Brendan McGetrick.

Ron Henderson (right), landscape designer and professor at Tsinghua University, and Lawrence Li, Shao Foundation curator.

Wu Wenda, the Party Secretary of Yi township (黟县), Anhui province.

Jay Brown responding to questions and confrontations from Ou Ning and the audience.

Artist Weng Wei (in black).

Liang Jingyu from Approach Architecture asked how Jay Brown would define himself against the countryside: is it simply ‘a venue of otherness’? Is there a threshold of his involvement with the locality there?

(All photos by Sun Xiaoxi.)

The workers are installing light-blocking curtains, which help to improve the image quality on the projector screens.

The chairs and stools are being put in place.

(Photos by Sun Xiaoxi.)

Let’s get started!

The 450W JBL JRX115.

The audio professionals.

Zhang Ning, our web designer.

Our visual designer Sun Xiaoxi put together the words ‘CROSSTALK Beijing’ with the little spanner tools coming with the chairs.

Ou Xin, the videographer of Shao Foundation.

(The post was written by Sun Xiaoxi originally in Chinese and was translated by April Zhang. All photos by Sun Xiaoxi.)