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087 Issue # 11/11 : PublIc Issues
time to work together and to disagree. Spending time together seems
to be quite simple but over the course of my practice I have learned how
difficult it is.
In 2008, you developed the project shanghai Dreaming, Holding
an urban Gold card within the 7th shanghai biennale. What did you know
about the notion of the public sphere in china?
In 1985, I was an exchange student at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in
Chongqing. Since then, I have closely followed China's developments, its
rapid economic growth, and its urban politics in the news, academic
studies, and on blogs. When I arrived back in Shanghai for preparation
for the Biennale, after an absence of more than 20 years, nothing could
have prepared me for the shock of experiencing the proactive way the
Chinese state welcomed and embraced economic globalisation as a golden
opportunity for China to modernise itself. I decided to take that
be-wilderment as a starting point to work with. While construction is
ongoing everywhere, filling every possible space in the city, every few
minutes new businesses are being set up on every street, selling food,
toys and T-shirts, collecting recyclable paper, cans, wood and textiles
by migrant workers streaming in from the countryside in search of a
better life. (fig. 5) Vendors operating without license form an increasingly
dense web of informalities that serves the entire city and by that
defines its public face. I found it intriguing that the combined free
enterprise of this temporary population, which is granted only restricted
citizenship, should be the city's shaping force. So I went looking
for ways in which the dreams of fortune arising from migrant workers'
personal initiatives inform a new shared language of change.
How did the project shanghai Dreaming, Holding an urban Gold card
respond to this experience?
To show this language of change, we chose to work with T-shirts, as they
are used a lot on the streets of Shanghai as a means of expressing
different viewpoints in public. (fig. 6) This was one of the reasons for
the government to ban T-shirts bearing slogans from the stadium during
the Olympic Games. We worked with a young couple that normally organizes
freebee sessions and sample presentations of big brands on the street.
They organized a freebee presentation of T-shirts, for which we registered
a new brand called Fortune. Together with 40 volunteers, they offered
over 2,000 T-shirts to passers-by saying "you can have this sample of
Fortune but we would like you to put it on straight away." Although this
was merely a small gesture, it turned the "people's square" red in less
than an hour. That was how we bypassed gaining permission to show the
T-shirts on the street, as displaying 35 red T-shirts would be considered
a demonstration by the authorities.
5 — shanghai Dreaming, Holding an urban Gold card —
public action, 2008, Shanghai. Photo: Wenying Liao
6 — shanghai Dreaming, Holding an urban Gold
card — installation detail, 2008, Shanghai. Photo:
Wenying Liao