MIGRATION ADDICTS

“This century has seen a drastic expansion of mobility, including tourism, migrant labor, immigration, urban sprawl. More and more people "dwell" with the help of mass transit, automobiles, and airplanes. In cities on six continents foreign populations have come to stay -- mixing in but often in partial, specific fashions. The "exotic" is uncannily close. Conversely, there seem no distant places left on the planet where the presence of "modern" products, media, and power cannot be felt. An older topography and experience of travel is exploded. One no longer leaves home confident of finding something radically new, another time or spaces. Difference is encountered in the adjoining neighborhood; the familiar turns up at the ends of the earth.” by James Clifford from the The Predicament of Culture .

Shanghai is, at present, definitely one of the most exciting cities on the planet. Since Deng Xiaoping抯 visit to Southern China and the decision of turning Shanghai into an experiment of Chinese modernization; in the last few years the city has become a very important site in Asia Pacific region the site, with the highest attention of foreign curiosity and investment of capital. A tendency of the cosmopolitan world is that it rapidly brings social, material and environmental transformations. These rapid transformations bring an unstable loss of self-control into the citiy抯 reality.

Th e tension be tween Western and Chinese traditional values, life styles, encountered between the late arriving capitalism and the still existing communism, in the last few years proves the Chinese tendency of opening towards the “Worlds Standards” and the fostering of it抯 own economic development. Chinese fever for development, material satisfaction and consumption makes Shanghai the dream city to live in. Urban spaces and it抯 expansion in China, following the model of Shanghai brought in new social conflicts within the Chinese social structure. The urban environment and consumer抯 desires attra ct the Country抯 population from different areas into the cities. (The flow of the population from countryside and small towns bring challenges to the existing social structure and at the same time bring it抯 own vitality into the cities life).

According to statistics in the Asia region, almost hal f of the Asian pop ulation are living in the t owns and cites so mankind抯 future will be urban future. Will this urban future lead us to uniformity and force each of us to leave independent concepts aside facing the market economy?

Facing rapid urbanization the art scene in China experienced changes as well. The phenomenon of urban mutations became a topic for artists. The show Migration Addicts , which combines two concepts of urban lives that we are living in- migration and addiction. The goal of having Chinese and foreign artists dealing with the migration concept within a global context is to draw these concepts as the essential discourse of the exhibition.

Modernization and Urban sites in the Asia are in the process of re-enforcing National and Ideological identities and the deconstruction of established social values and cultural codes. The urban, ever changing environment, in Cities like Shanghai, demands new ways of living from each individual and the speed that the city is suggesting to us is a game that we get involved in and then become addicted to. These situations re-determinate the issues of human identity, gender and spiritual needs. What this atmosphere brings is the pressure to move into the crowd and create homogenized realities. Migration is the phenomenon that cities all around the world are dealing with. The physical migration to the big cities like Tokyo, Shanghai, Berlin and that each individual needs to re-create and face with new environmental changes and requests.

With at least 23 million migrant workers in Asia, labor migration is an important phenomenon in Asia today. The migration in China raises the problem of official registration (Hu Kou) and health insurance they have problems due do the dialect barrier and the problem of being accepted as an individual in new society. But the communities that migrate are the ones who are actually taking the part in process of the cities re-construction and transforming of the places. Being directly involved in the cities transformation appears to be the request of changing identity.

The same situation occurs within artistic circles. Big urban centers attract communities where the migration of certain cultural groups in the metropolis bring a new atmosphere towards the uniformity of life style that we face in everyday reality. This climate requests the re-definition of individuality and the critical concept that cultural circles ought to bring. The Migration Addicts exhibition and the participating artists deal with questions of the temporal and spatial strategies that deal with this situation.

Susanne Winterling抯 living sculptures “the pearls in between” takes the architecture of the warehouse and through the work, prolongs it. A video projection on the wall shows a dark gangway, through which then leads the audience into a lightened passageway of daylight. An image which is both illusionary and uncertain has been emphasized by a performance of five girls in front of the gangway. Girls dressed in the bright, silky dresses playing an elastic band game recalls the memory of the Twenties and the history of the site (the warehouse). The girls presence brings playfulness and a strange stillness in the atmosphere of the warehous e, asking the viewer to picture a migration from childhood to adulthood, from darkness to light, from past to present. The girls playing in fron t of the dark gangway with the blurred man抯 figure standing in the dar k (gangway) also paints out gender issues and the exposure of individual fantasies that could be easily shattered. In the opposition to the almost still images of the living sculpture, Jin Shan抯 work paints out the beauty of speed. Transforming the stair passagew ay (and also the only entrance to the exhibition space open to the audience) of the warehouse into a slide that the audience at the very entrance of the space become the participants in a game that artists has set the rules. Slide , a symbol of childhood turned into the adults game without any age limits and without the choice to be into the game or not. The images on the slide present the artists memory of public matters during the artist抯 life, the moments that are very deeply involved into public memory. At the end after the person slides down, they bu mp into a soft city of Oriental pearl towers and gain a good look at the last image of the future, the year 20 08. Speed is a tool that represents the urban life that artists transform into a game where at the end the audience are faced with an illusionary fake architectural horizon. The speed doesn抰 allow the participant to clearly take a look in the images accept for the last one, reflect the moments in everyday life that vanish.

Four scenes of domestic occurrence by Sookoon Ang, four short videos presented in the four boxes so that audience must look at through a peephole, a pair of scissors, a toppled bucket moving slightly, a room with flicking light, a tracing wheel seen through the peephole blurs the boundaries between the intimate and public and at the same time requests the viewer to stay within an artists intimate world.

Jiang Chongwu piece “ 24 Bridges Under the Bright Moon Night ” installation brings in Chinese traditional poetic sense and lyricism. A big white pool with water centered in the dark place, white bridges floating around in the ‘moon light?gives the sense of loneliness brought about by the transition from traditional to modern life. In between the white bridges, small Creon boats floating in between the bridges leaving traces behind. After a short time the boats stop, the water calms and the whole space becomes even more silent. Self-reflection, the flow of time and bridging the spatial and spiritual distances is the artists concern. The flow of time the moonlight in the space, the bridges drowned in the water brings the segment of local cultural elements and gives it a new concept of today.

Superstructure by Huang Kui from its display to the title is more provocative then we could see at first sight. Bamboo sheets, reaphook and hammer are the installation抯 main symbols. The bamboo sheets specific material for Asian region in the construction, fields something that refers to the new rise of shopping malls and sky scrapers, all done by hands of migrant workers. The bamboo in traditional context symbolizes intellectuals and literates that became the symbol of the countries re-construction and paradoxical urban development. At the same time superstructure term in Chinese mostly represents countries leadership, law etc in the Huang Kui抯 work superstructure seems to paints out the lowest level of labor workers and urban construction around China. The hummer and reaphook in between bamboo sheets bright and sharp implies the problem of the superstructures democracy, human rights and survival.

Naho Kawabe抯 Sugar Cube video at the very beggining shows a white emptiness with a few pink drops that reminds one of time existence. The image arises into the pink sugar house that allows us to reminise on a cartoon and playful, warm home sweet home place, at the end, the house is melted by a strong rain that makes the sugar house into the pool of water directly implying the existing condition around the ddm warehouse of deserted, half torn down houses, sites where some forgotten details talk of their story.

The exhibition deals with the special locality of the ddm warehouse; the district around the warehouse faces the destiny that most of the old districts face in China. Sites of torn down buildings that mop away the cultural context of the site. In the whole district only four buildings will be preserved as cultural heritage, so the whole district抯 local environment is changing without any time for negotiation. The specific locality brought by the Migration Addicts team into the warehouse space. The space of the warehouse, the theme, artists projects and it抯 realization gave a chance to the artists to deal with the migration discourse and a chance to discuss with each other. The show keeps it抯 site specificity and deepens the theme challenging the context of where the exhibition took the place. Migration Addicts is meant to posses it抯 own continuity and deepen the artist抯 idea on cultural context and developing process. Bringing the artists from different countries (China, Japan, Singapore, Germany) to discuss the same topic of the mobility in our lives, global and local identity issues. In the institutional system and it抯 exhibition context, the experimentation research placed on cultural experience. The show is meant to migrate not like the static touring show but its context will be site-specific in every place. New artists can join the show to work on the theme so that the exhibition has an inter exchange with local community involving the local artists into the show to deal with local site specific issues on migration in between global and local cultural, economic and other context that emerging urban sites bring.

Exhibition Structure

The exhibition Migration Addicts takes the architecture, place as an integral part of the work.The show from ddmwarehouse in Shanghai is meant to migrate to different sites and deals with the migration topic as it抯 main discourse.

As the works are site specific, the location of the work is an integral component of it抯 meaning, so displayed works can not the moved elsewhere and will dissapear at the end of the each exhibition. Artists in each place will consider locality which implies architectual, social, political and many other element in the work which is going to be produced in a specific place. The artists will work on a same topic in a different places dealing with the special locality background and how does migration implies in the certain sociaty.

The idea of site specific works brings the distraction of the work after each site which challenges the artistic ideology which wants a work to be immortal so at the same time it抯 unique form of exhistance for it抯 individual and continual distraction and takes the place of the exhibition as an integral part of the work and it抯 belonging to the specific locality. So the idea of Migration Addicts show have it as a touring show but with site specific works.

The artists will stay in a certain place to produce the work around three weeks.

Another characteristic of the exhibition is besides having permanent artists participating, every time when the show comes to the new locality will have cooperation with local artists community, curators…including the local artists into the show in order to give a chance to the artists with different backgrounds to work together and through the cooporation with local artists understand better specificity of the place.

After the show finish with the migration the whole documentation will be presented in Shanghai and print out the catalog documenting the development of the show.