2007

December 2007
A project for the Second Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism
Shenzhen, CN

curator ::  Beatrice LEANZA
in collaboration ::  何颖雅 Elaine W. HO
graphics & uniform design ::  ourwork.is

artists // 宋琨 SONG Kun (artist; Beijing, CN), 洪启乐 HONG Qile (sound artist/musician; Hangzhou, CN), Can ALTAY & Asli KALINOGLU (architect & artist; Ankara, TR), Patrick TUTTOFUOCO (artist; Milano, IT), PROGRAM initiative for art + architecture/Carson CHAN & Fotini LAZARIDOU-HATZIGOGA (architecture & design; Berlin, DE)

DeadEnd is predicated on the disconcerting experience of urban destinations as increasingly orchestrated spectacles, dissimulating participation, observation and accumulation in “pictorialized time/space” resorts (M. Christine BOYER). This form of programmed anticipation, widely deployed in strategies of city marketing, tourism enterprise and cultural entertainment, is one that appropriates the concept of termination not as an end in space but an end in experience, which disposes of the cultural mediation of difference by severing the city from its possible (multiple) reconstructions. Five new works have been commissioned by BAO Atelier as tour guides/mental scapes for pedicab journeys from the main Biennale venue into greater Shenzhen. Under the urgency of a city of expiration, each work and its concordant route is assigned one of five pedicabs to be stationed at the exit of the primary exhibition hall of the biennial at the DeadEnd station.

Radical (In)difference: Thoughts and gatherings around flexibility in public and artistic practice

2009 – 2010
Research and program proposal for Pro Helvetia Swiss-China two-year Cultural Program

Radical (In)difference is a progressive program of analysis, discourse, documentation production and curatorial activism in three tempi. The dossier describes a year-long tool-making process of giving physical shape and territory to dialogue. Through constant documentation and real-time mapping of these semantic exercises, richness is made relational, reflective, narrative and spatial.

The program is envisioned to generate confrontation as a modicum to constructive discussion, and while drawing a framework of reference for theoretical, artistic and curatorial praxis, it challenges the establishment of alternative forms of interaction, dialogue for a critical, creative community.
The three main discursive areas grouped under each section are conceived in a progressive build-up, which will explore issues relevant to COMMUNITY / NETWORKING, INDIVIDUALITY / SUBJECTIVITY and PUBLIC SPACE / COLLECTIVE IMAGINATION.  Each tempo is exposed into a specific format for public fruition and circulation (1:: a forum, 2:: a printed and online documentation series, 3:: an exhibition), all throughout implemented by small and medium scale multidisciplinary events ranging from workshops, artistic collaborations, open talks and exhibitions in collaboration with a variety of international professionals.

Nike 706

November 2006
Dashanzi Art District | Nike Energy Space

Creative research and concept development for opening event, program planning and art direction of Nike China’s creative space in 798 Art District. Located in one of the largest industrial spaces within the well-known art district, Nike 706 looked at creating a foundation for informed brand and culture appreciation by delivering a cumulative consumer experience over the course of 2 years, in the run up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The research focused on an analysis of existing subcultural trends, neo-tribal communities and creative industries in contemporary China.
Book, print items and program planning.

Nike China ’08

January – October 2007
Nike & Beijing 08 Olympics | Golden Team

On the backdrop of the 2008 Olympics, an in-depth case study of local youth trends and sport culture through the lens of Nike’s start athletes, developing strategic creative formats redefining the brand’s positioning and its impact in contemporary urban culture. Production of research tools, multimedia and textual supports.

Nike Alter Ego

January – October 2007
Nike & Beijing ’08 Olympics | Golden Team Manga Series

Integrated yet running parallel to the research for Nike China ’08, this project included development of concept structure, storyboards and production plan for a series of comic books fictionalizing sport and sportsmanship through the life and adventures in a mysterious megacity.

June 23 – July 1, 2007
various locations | Beijing, CN
www.borderlinefestival.org

The graphic project included visual identity and design for all communication material, posters, flyers, invitations and web. The festival published also a free independent journal chronicling all events and projects. The main visuals is inspired by Beijing City sprawling mobility, each character of the title Borderline (边界线) is cut out of a simplified map of the city.

main organizers :: BAO Atelier & Platform China Contemporary Art Institute, Beijing
in collaboration with: Soho China, Ltd., 86/33 Link, Theatre in Motion, Chaos Projects
supporting institutions :: CAFA (Central Academy of Fine Arts), Beijing Film Academy, Goethe Institute Peking, Austrian Cultural Forum, Norwegian Office of Foreign Affairs, Embassy of Belgium in China, Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations (Mexico), Icelandic Art Center
sponsored by :: MinSheng Bank, Barco, Boloni Group, Intelligent Alternative
media partners :: Modern Media, Domus China, Time Out Beijing, Danwei.org, City Pictorial, City Weekend, Vision, Art&Design China

June 23 – July 1, 2007
various locations | Beijing, CN

art direction ::  Beatrice LEANZA & Pauline DOUTRELUINGNE
main organizers :: BAO Atelier & Platform China Contemporary Art Institute, Beijing
in collaboration with: Soho China, Ltd., 86/33 Link, Theatre in Motion, Chaos Projects
supporting institutions :: CAFA (Central Academy of Fine Arts), Beijing Film Academy, Goethe Institute Peking, Austrian Cultural Forum, Norwegian Office of Foreign Affairs, Embassy of Belgium in China, Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations (Mexico), Icelandic Art Center
sponsored by :: MinSheng Bank, Barco, Boloni Group, Intelligent Alternative
media partners :: Modern Media, Domus China, Time Out Beijing, Danwei.org, City Pictorial, City Weekend, Vision, Art&Design China

An experimental urban platform unfolding over the course of nine days, it takes as its area of investigation the interconnection between visual production and contemporary urban culture with a focus on video art and its multidisciplinary accounts. Conceived as a continuous narrative, the event moved every day into a new location within different areas of Beijing city, networked through public and private institutions, commercial and educational spaces including universities, galleries and art venues.

It featured an international program of both exhibitions and public programs such as talks, workshops, screenings, and live performances bridging perspectives from installation, short film, documentary, animation, performance and music, sound art, architecture and design.

Borderline‘s structure included three overarching sections: 2 thematic exhibitions, 6 days of Mobile Lab and night events. Full content on all events can be viewed at www.borderlinefestival.org.

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A Theory-Fiction between the Real and the Possible

June 2007
Opening exhibition of Borderline Moving Images 2007
SoHo Shangdu Underground Parking Lot | Beijing, CN

curator ::  Beatrice LEANZA
exhibition design ::  LI Naihan

artists ::  Fikret ATAY, Johanna BILLING, Candice BREITZ, Mircea CANTO, Calin DAN, Claire FONTAINE, 高世强 GAO Shiqiang, Clarisse HAHN, Teresa HUBBARD & Alexander BIRCHLER, Jesper JUST, Mathieu LAURETTE, Melik OHANIAN, 欧宁 OU Ning & 曹斐 CAO Fei, 石青 SHI Qing, Ulla Von BRANDEMBURG, 吴文光 WU Wenguang, 张培力 ZHANG Peili.

design background ::

Through the ideal city, the grand socialist city, the modern city — the social, subjective and political space are represented.
 The space design accommodates the narrative of the different video pieces into a constructed environment of ephemeral simulation, where the spatial qualities of certain Beijing urban tropes and structures of spatial signification, sociality, movement, will be juxtaposed to specific filmic stories. Seduction is a staged fiction that wishes to provoke how forms and processes of production ultimately surface while questioning the reception and understanding of cultural orders as reconstructed truths. In the underground site of SoHo Shangdu parking lot, the experience offered to the viewer and the challenge put on the works presented is that of reconsidering the way they expose themselves to each other (as belonging to diverse critical/cultural/information systems and subjective spheres) while restoring that minimum distance necessary for the latent meaning of the image to remain still and become a point of collective meeting and counter representation. In this sense the show also puts together filmic languages that are very distant yet articulates vivid coded systems within a hybrid environment. The participation of the public in the reading of the show is thus one based on displacement and surprise, unattended meetings with subconscious and alien “possibilities” of existence that the one dimensional media performance of the modernizing process often hides, yet perpetuates.
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A Theory-Fiction between the Real and the Possible

June 2007
Soho Shangdu Underground Parking Lot | Opening exhibition of Borderline Moving Images 2007
Beijing, CN

curator :: Beatrice LEANZA
exhibition design :: LI Naihan

participating artists :: Fikret ATAY, Johanna BILLING, Candice BREITZ, Mircea CANTOR, Calin DAN, Claire FONTAINE, GAO Shiqiang (高世强), Clarisse HAHN, Teresa HUBBARD & Alexander BIRCHLER, Jesper JUST, Mathieu LAURETTE, Melik OHANIAN, OU Ning & CAO Fei (欧宁 & 曹斐),  SHI Qing (石青), Ulla Von BRANDEMBURG, WU Wenguang (吴文光), ZHANG Peili (张培力).

A constructed story-telling portrayed by the experiments of 17 international artists, Seduction is a theory-fiction inspired by the homonymous book by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, featuring diverse video installations, including documentary, experimental video, and footage appropriated from personal and public archival material, CCTVs, mass media, pop culture video-clips, cinema repertory, etc.

“On the backdrop of modernization and the inspirational economic leverage incited by the countdown to the Olympics, the changing relationship between politics and culture articulates within a process of experimentation which interrogates locality and its historicity against, on a side, the products of global consumerist culture, and on the other, the convergence of new models of spatial thinking and occupation, popular culture, social ‘neo-neo-tribalism’, corporate branding, viral marketing and hybrid libidinal economies. The perpetual nature of this predominantly visual production giving rise to new urban imaginaries speaks to the paradigmatic quality of fluid social networks, where communication is situational, metaphorically consumed in the digital time of internet and experienced in the superficial flux of moving images. Indeed the synthesis of global connectivity is not only challenging our sense of space, but also that of human presence within; while displacing the time of history in a one-dimensional media flow, it furthers brings into questions that of its immanent possibilities and “invisible” modes of existence. It is thus in the spatial convergence of our mental vocabulary/memory, one of compound narrativity and filmic character, and the digital tempo of contemporary hyper-production that opens up the measure for art to forge critical distance and innovative models of counter-representation.”

Nike & Beijing ’08 Olympics – Golden Team

January – October 2007

On the backdrop of the 2008 Olympics, an in-depth case study of local youth trends and sport culture through the lens of Nike’s star athletes, developing strategic creative formats redefining the brand’s positioning and its impact in contemporary urban culture. Production of research tools, multimedia and textual supports.