Monthly Archives: December 2005

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从太石村到东洲坑——更危险的一步 From Taishi village to Dongzhou–a step into danger

The massacre of peasants in Dongzhou, in Guangdong Province happened earlier this month, when I was having blog problems and I haven’t written about it here. Along with the Taishi village mess, and several other events in recent weeks, to me it represents an escalation in the repression and enforcing of complete control by the central dictatorship and regional rural mafia-style groups. 中国数字时代 China Digital Times put up a translation of a commentary on the Donghzhou massacre that 梁京 Liang Jing gave on Radio Free Asia and appeared on 新世纪网 New Century Net, 从太石村到东洲坑——更危险的一步 From Taishi village to Dongzhou–a step into danger.

Hu Jintao evidently realized that if he did not place pressure on the regional mafias, the sound of gunfire might quickly break out all round the country, and be beyond recall. He therefore directed a shut-down regarding the situation regarding the shooting of the Dongzhou villagers. But, how was the resistance to their defence of their rights to be conveyed to the world? After several days of silence, Hu finally decided to support the local power and influence groups, defame the peasants defending their rights, and slander the resisting disadvantaged as rioters. Hu Jintao has poured a basin of cold water on the land-losing peasants who are fighting to defend their rights all around the PRC, and has taken a yet more dangerous step towards social upheaval.

— 中国数字时代 China Digital Times

Dongzhou Dongzhou

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angel of death meets C64 & NES

Most people who know me a bit understand I love metal. In all it’s forms, from the original heavy stuff of Sabbath and Motörhead, through the crossover decade of speed metal when I was confused if I should like Slayer, coz they sounded awesome, but weren’t punk, and DRI who are the hugely unacknowledged missing link, all the way to this year’s introduction by Emile Zile (who has a birthday tomorrow) of Agoraphobic Nosebleed and Sunn O))), like Depeche Mode say, “I just can’t get enough”. harhar.

And it was Emile again, when we did a sharing of blogs we read, who turned me on to { { { { – - Sky Noise — >>>, who became a daily read in mere seconds, and is one of my favourite sites of computer/art/technology/stuff. (Emile and I have talked about the flabbiness of the term “new media arts” that through its attempts to be all-inclusive becomes both meaningless and exclusionary).

The point to all this is today there was a meeting of some of my favourite things, Slayer covers using C64 & NES, available for download in juicy MP3 goodness.

Slayer C64 NES covers Slayer C64 NES covers

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nine lives – the birth of avante-garde in new china

SCALO Books have just published Beijing resident Karen Smith’s Nine Lives – The Birth of Avante-Garde in New China, and she was at Timezone8 Books in 大山子艺术区 Dashanzi Art District, a couple of weeks ago talking about it.

Karen Smith, Nine Lives – The Birth of Avant-Garde Art in China

In the early 1990s, the idea of contemporary art in China simply did not compute to a foreign audience. But in 1993, ten contemporary Chinese artists debuted at the 48th Venice Biennale. They were immediately hailed as progenitors of a Chinese “avant-garde.” Their brightly colored, Pop Art-inspired paintings played with socialist motifs, parodied Mao, and gave a visual expression to the feelings of disaffected Chinese youth. They were everything western audiences expected of contemporary art from the People‘s Republic of China. But a number of critics were rather guarded in their opinions. Was this another flash-in-the-pan phenomenon just as Soviet art had been in the 1980s? Could a Chinese avant-garde maintain a distinct identity of its own and shake off its penchant for imitation? The answer is clearly “yes.”The emergence of a market for their art transformed the lives of these avant-garde pioneers from rags to riches, from outcast to hero, from social pariah to cutting-edge cool in a Chinese society adapting to a new era. They did not change but China has changed. The ideology they once had to fight now propagates a cultural climate of laissez-faire that is tantamount to encouragement. Set against China’s official program of modernization, Nine Lives paints a compelling picture of artists working beyond the pale of official culture, who started a new cultural revolution that is sweeping China today.

— SCALO

nine lives nine lives

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feel the pain, baby

There’s been a complete lack of indoor climbing in Melbourne since the place in Collingwood closed a couple of years ago, and Vic Ranges in Flemington burned down. Not that I really counted Flemington or certainly any of the others as climbing in Melbourne. Toronto had three big gyms in the middle of the city, like being around Spencer St, and even Guangzhou has a new bouldering gym in Tian He. (Let’s not talk about the Kletterzentrum in Zürich, which despite being mega-awesome was grievous assault to enter at CHF25).

Chockstone has had rumours going about a new bouldering gym in Collingwood, and woohoo! it’s finally opened. The Lactic Factory. It might almost make me take a couple of days off a week from cimbing on railway bridges.

The Lactic Factory The Lactic Factory

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You can create art & beauty on a computer

On the other side of the hemisphere in Berlin, the 22nd Chaos Communication Congress has hackers making the world a beautiful place through art, and artists making the world a beautiful place through hacking.

Art & Beauty is the central area (B01) at the ground floor of 22C3. It houses a list of interesting projects devoted to doing creative things with technology and is the central relaxation point of the Congress. You also find the catering facilities here along with good music day in day out. Furthermore you can buy congress shirts, pullover, jackets, poster and so on.

The VISUAL BERLIN association is responsible for sound and visuals at the 22c3 art & beauty area, in company with c-base.org, kulturtaikonauten.org and supported by the jfe.kleinmachnow. VISUAL BERLIN is a community of local video artists and VJs that gets involved with cooperative projects and mutual exchange with the local and international visualist scene and deals with the technological and cultural aspects of video art. In the course of organizing the 22c3 cultural program in the evenings, VISUAL BERLIN will present harmonic showcases of different audio- and video-artists – visual jam sessions during the day along with collaboration and communication. During the whole time there will be musical output from several DJs and Open Source Netlabels. Furthermore VISUAL BERLIN will organize the audiovisual program of the 22C3 Aftershowparty on the last day at the C-base.

If you want to participate or have any questions, please contact ST.

areas and activities

AV-Node (visualberlin.org)
BlinkenArea
Gimp
Go Lounge
Holo-Arts
Mechatronics

— 22CCC

blinking the Alexanderplatz blinking the Alexanderplatz

21C3 - Art & Beauty 21C3 – Art & Beauty

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先锋光芒 – ray of the avante garde

Guangzhou’s 广州中华影城 Zhonghua Cinema is running a festival of recent Chinese films, 先锋光芒–中国青年导演电影展映（柏林篇）Ray of the Avante Garde – Chinese Young Film Director’s Festival, from December 26th till January 3rd. Most if not all the films have been available on DVD for some time, but for many it’s the first time they will have been screened in a theatre in their original 35mm format. EastSouthWestNorth translated Director 张元 Zhang Yuan’s blog post on his film 《妈妈》 Mama being selected to open the festival.

The Black and White/Colour film Mama was my debut as a director, finished around my graduation days from the Beijing Film Academy, I was 25 then. A few days ago on December 22, a restored digital copy of Mama made its first-ever public screening in Zhonghua Cinema of Guangzhou. It was chosen as the opening film of a film festival sonorously titled “Ray of the Avant-Garde” by the organizers. It means a lot to me that Southern Metropolis Daily, 21cn and Sensei Cui Qiao helped getting this film a public screening at this moment. The first person that introduced the film to the west is the veteran Hong Kong film critic Shu Kei, he’s also a good director, with films like Soul (Lao Niang Gou Sao) and Queer Story (Jilao Sishi) on his portfolio. I would never forget his help. We are not close to each other by then, but after watching a VHS copy of Mama, he recommended the film to the director of Nante Festival des Trois Continents, who immediately sent me an invitation, and the film entered the competition section. I still remember how Mr. Wong Kar-wai helped stuffing the heavy film reels into his luggage, carefully brought them abroad for me. Only with these people’s help was Mama able to tour the world, getting screened on nearly one hundred film festivals, sometimes as film in competition. In fact, the same copy has been played so many times that it has drastically deteriorated. Thanks to all the friends who have supported me. It’s precisely because of all those western screening that I was able to get grants and fund from various foundations in France, Italy, Switzerland, Japan and Netherlands, which enabled me to realize several more movies afterwards, I would like to express my appreciation to them too.

— ESWN

T-Mama 张元 -《妈妈》 zhang yuan – mama

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Gothic Nightmares

Getting all ready for the start of rehearsals of hell in Melbourne, and watching lots of Peking Opera, 1970s Japanese sexploitation movies, and similar Euro-trash horror flicks, I was very pleased to see I am quite keeping up with the Joneses at the Tate. Horror, nightmares, a general pervasive miasma of evilness as the Tate Britain Presents “Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination”.

The Nightmare - Henry Fuseli The Nightmare – Henry Fuseli

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transsexuals in china

There was a kinda interesting article in China Daily, about a transsexual named Xiao Ying, who is about to have the sex-change operation. Kinda interesting in that much of the English language media coming out of China presents a fairly benevolent world of being queer in the country, and seems reasonably matter-of-fact about it. The consistent slips of personal pronouns though, and inaccurate descriptions of terminology makes the parade a bit of a freak show, or more accurately makes the journalist and editors look like illiterate hillbillies.

Xiao will soon be one of around 300 people in China to become a transsexual (a person who has undergone a sex change), according to his doctor Chen Huanran, a top sex-change surgeon with the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

It is estimated that between 13,000 and 26,000 people in the country show transsexual tendencies.

“We have little difficulty technically,” Chen said.

“Transsexual woman can even go through a pre-marriage check without being discovered. But major obstacles lie in the lack of social understanding.”

Chen said a significant number of his patients who have successfully mutated into the opposite sex hide their gender history from friends and spouses because they are scared they would be discriminated against.

“About 20 per cent of my patients cannot live normal lives because they fail to gain understanding from people around them,” he said.

— China Daily

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同志 tongzhi getting queer in china

It could have been the part of town I was hanging out in, or it could be that Guangzhou is getting queer as fast as it can. Last time I was there, I saw guys who looked like they lived in Taipei or Hong Kong, and had too much style to be straight, and the suburb I was staying in seemed to be full of international jet-set fags. Not that I made it to any of the clubs or bars, but lots of people were very keen to tell me the town is awash in homosexuality. So maybe they can stop pretending they’re straight because they’re married.

China Daily plasters cute young fags on the top of a piece about how fast China has gone from gay equalling mentally deranged hooligans to wanting a piece of the pink pie in a matter of years. Though they still like shutting down the gay festivals.

Conan Liu, 24, a tax consultant with one of the Big Four accounting firms, told Beijing Review that he has never tried to conceal his sexual orientation since finding out he is gay.

Unlike the older generation, Conan’s age group is more willing to talk about their lives and love experiences. Fashionably dressed and charming, Conan is proud of who he is. “My friends usually say that I need to be protected,” he smiled, saying that he seldom has difficulties either at work or in his life.

“Most people around me understand and accept my homosexual orientation,” Conan said. As for those who don’t like men behaving in a feminine manner, he’s defiant. “I like the way I am and I will stay away from those who dislike me. It’s no big deal.”

— Beijing Review

Conan Liu - gay in Beijing Conan Liu – gay in Beijing

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don’t drink the brown acid

The first time it was almost world news; the second when upstart southern capital Guangzhou tried to get in on the ‘dump poisonous shit in the river and see if anyone notices’ routine, it barely brought a roll of the eyes. Shaoguan is along the Bei river, near the border of Hunan, and not far from Yingde and some of the places I’ve been climbing in. The achingly beautiful landscape, as real as a cliché of a Chinese ink and brush painting is eviscerated by a Mordor-esque gangrene of endless factories pouring a toxic soup of waste into the air and rivers and leveling the hills as surely as scraping muck of the sole of a shoe.

The astounding thing in this latest spill is not that it happened but that it was able to be measured against a background of such high levels of pollution. And as for claims of advising Guangzhou residents not to drink the water, no-one is stupid enough to drink the gunk anyway (though I did see one mad Chairman Mao impersonator doing laps in the Pearl River beside Shamian Island once).

Authorities had dumped 380 tonnes of chemicals and opened reservoirs to dilute the more than 1,000 tonnes of cadmium-contaminated water a zinc smelter spilled into the North River on Dec. 15, the newspaper said.

“The cadmium content of the slick dropped 20 percent on Saturday,” local environmental protection official Li Zisen was quoted as saying.

Shortly after the accident, cadmium levels in the water surged to nearly 10 times above safety standards, forcing authorities in areas downstream to turn off tap water supplies to tens of thousands of people in Guangdong province.

— The Star

yingde water yingde residents carrying water

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