Presented by Shao Foundation
Co-presented by Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art
Festival:
August 15 – 16 (UCCA)
August 22 – 23 (BAMA)
August 29 – 30 (BAMA)
CROSSTALK: 5:00pm, August 30, 2009 (BAMA)
Inquiry: (86) (10) 6561 0361, info [at] shaofoundation.org.cn
Born in 1977, Ying Liang is a young director in China who has been living in a small town called Zigong in Sichuan province, where most of his films are produced by a crew consisting of his friends and relatives. Taking advantage of the global distribution system in the ‘Long Tail’ era, Ying has managed to secure a place in the international festival circus with his ultra-low budget productions. He is, however, not to be mistaken as one of the many faceless auteurs. He’s dedicated, resourceful, flexible and prolific, with a distinctive personal style. With all three of his feature films and several shorts screened for three rounds in three weekends, Sichuan Chronicles is the most comprehensive presentation of Ying’s works to this date.
(Some of these films are in Sichuan dialect, with Chinese and English subtitles.)
Taking Father Home (2005)
Fiction / Color / 100 minutes
Xuyun’s trip to the city in search of his father serves to document his initiation into adulthood. The background is the conflict between urban and country life, tradition and the new generations, development and its victims. The couple of ducks that Xuyun carries in his back are the precarious symbol for a search that the gallery of surrogates of his father can’t terminate, having enough problems by themselves. Xuyun wanders the streets of Zigong only to find chance, violence and loneliness.
Shot with a borrowed camera and the help of lots of friends, this first feature of Ying Liang’s already presents the elements that will confirm his unique style: human stories in a sober, at times documentary-like style; long takes that never constrain but rather give ample space to the characters and the ubiquitous voice-over of press and government statements.
The Other Half (2006)
Fiction / Color / 111 minutes
When Xiao Fen gets a position as clerk of a team of lawyers, the audience of The Other Half witnesses the stories of a wide range of testimonies asking for help in their lawsuits. The stunning performances of these characters, with the full force of the oral tale (in the line of Jia Zhangke’s 24 City), depict the situation in the small town of Zigong, where hope is to flee to the coastal areas, and staying back means degradation.
The other half of many of these characters, an incredible mix of professional and non-professional actors, is revealed too often to be made of cynicism and cruelty. Particularly interesting is the examination of women’s condition, as many female voices hopelessly confront an anonymous lawyer’s camera to find no solution.
Good Cats (2008)
Fiction / Color / 103 minutes
Following the chauffeur of a real estate big boss, we examine the forces of development and its discontents. Not surprisingly, this film takes its title from Deng Xiaoping’s famous formulation: It doesn’t matter if the cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice. The economic development that such sentence gave birth to is portrayed with brutal and surreal accuracy in Good Cats. Particularly as the film includes the ghosts and obsessions of these fast and furious changes, with wide angle establishing shots and long takes of uncanny duration. The musical excerpts by metal band Lamb’s Funeral, which break the fictional barrier, provide the dooming undertones that push the film to its fatal denouement.
As in all Yang Liang’s films, an archetypal universe is constructed out of the reality of Zigong, always portrayed at the brink of the disaster, echoing the haunted atmosphere of Tsai Ming-Liang’s films.
Stories in Mountain (2002)
Fiction / Color / 11 minutes
These Stories are structured around parallel narratives: While we see the harsh conditions of a migrant worker in Chongqing, his voice reads the letters he sends to his mother and sister. The contrast between both narratives produces a compelling short that comprises the predicament and illusion of rural migration to the big city in contemporary China.
The Missing House (2003)
Fiction / Color / 28 minutes
In a similar vein as Zhang Yuan’s Seventeen Years (Guonian Huijia, 1999), The Missing House follows a young prisoner who visits his home on a special Spring Festival one-day permit. Upon visiting his family, Chen Jun discovers the changes that had occurred during his imprisonment. However, while Zhang Yuan’s film leaves us with a note of hope, Ying Liang’s short movie is a dry tale of alienation and dislocation. Taking urbanisation as a trope for the rapid transformation of the cities and ways of life — as in many sixth generation films — Ying Liang achieves an intense film about solitude and despair.
I Love Lakers (2008)
Fiction / Color / 14 minutes
The alluring images of Lakers players Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol populate little Junjie’s daydreams. Basketball is the only way of escape from the bulling of Junjie’s father and the school boredom. This short narrates effectively a tale of children abandonment and illusion, with a great performance of the young actor Feng Junjie.
Medicine (2009)
Fiction / B&W / 12 minutes
Medicine (‘The colors of the butterfly’, in its Chinese title) presents young Hudie (Butterfly) taking care of his sick granny while her mom is at work. When a blow of wind closes the door, leaving her outside the house, Hudie looks for help among her neighbours and friends, but everybody seems to be too busy except for Wang Siwei, another young kid with adult’s responsibilities. This short, shot beautifully in black and white, presents a vivid sense of realism that shows once again Ying Liang’s talent with young actors.
Condolences (2009)
Fiction / Color / 19 minutes
The burial rites for two deceased in a bus accident that killed 15 people in Zigong become the theatrical mise-en-scène where politicians, the media, a monk and an infuriated neighbour, among others, depict a vivid image of Zigong. Sitting among them, lost in her pain, Grandma Chen, who has lost her husband and son, gives her back to the audience and barely nods to the rest of characters.
In Condolences, Ying Liang’s narrative techniques are synthesized to a great effect. After the initial stills from the media reports about the accident, this short movie remains in a distant single take of strange beauty and warm empathy. Such scarce resources are nonetheless enough to convey Ying Liang’s style and preoccupations.
August 8, 2009 – September 19, 2009 | Three Shadows Gallery
Curator: Karen Smith
This exhibition is sponsored by Shao Foundation, the opening party will be held at 4:00pm, August 8, 2009 (Saturday).
By Liu Heung Shing, 1979.
Seek Truth from Facts is the first exhibition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Liu Heung Shing in mainland China. It features a selection of Liu’s photos taken from 1978 to 1983, all of which were published in China After Mao: Seek Truth from Facts by Penguin in 1983 (reprinted in 1987 and 1992). The Chinese edition will be published by the World Publishing Company (Shijie Tushu Chuban Gongsi) this September.
Liu Heung Shing was born in Hong Kong in 1951 and graduated from Hunter College of the New York City University in 1975. He was a former foreign correspondent / photojournalist who had been dispatched to China, U.S., India, South Korea, and the former Soviet Union in a span of 20 years. From 1997 to 2000, Liu was the Director of Business Development for Time Warner Inc. in China. He worked for News Corporation (China) as the Executive Vice President from 2000 to 2006. In 1992, Liu shares the Pulitzer Prize and the Overseas Press Club Award for the coverage of the collapse of the Soviet Union. He is currently the Editorial Director of Modern Media Group, which publishes eight magazines including Modern Weekly.
Please visit Three Shadows gallery’s exhibition page for more info on the exhibition.
Public Space as Side Effect: The End of Neo-Liberalism
3:00pm—5:00pm, August 30, 2009
The CROSSTALK Beijing # 5 echos the retrospective of Ying Liang. Film critics Chiao Hsiung Ping， Shu Kei, Cui Weiping and Du Qingchun joined the discussion with Ying Liang on art value of these film and how film directors with extremely low budget can survive today.
When: 15:00 – 17:00, May 21, 2009
Where: Beijing Angle Modern Art (4/F, Tower 1, Zhongguo Hongjie, Jia 2 Gongti Dong Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing)
Inquiry: (8610) 6561 0361, info [at] shaofoundation.org.cn
Free admission. The talk will be in English with consecutive Chinese interpretation.
Shao Foundation is proud to announce CROSSTALK Beijing #4: Public Space as Side Effect: The End of Neo-Liberalism, a talk by Professor Scott Lash from Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Disagreeing with Ma Qingyun’s famous dictum ‘There is No Public Space in China’, Lash will look at the terminal crisis of Neo-liberalism with the financial meltdown of 2008 – 09, striving for an understanding of Neo-liberalism in the context of ‘The Washington Consensus’ and financialisation — including especially the corporate bond markets and the triumph of the funds — hedge funds, venture capital, leveraged buyout and private equity. Neo-liberalism will be examined as the competition between monopolies and a certain legalisation of production, including sharply defined property rights. Lash will also elaborate on a possible ‘Beijing Consensus’ of blurred property rights, relationality in place of individualism, and of course a different financial regime. If classical liberalism features market transactions, Neo-liberalism features corporation as the site of transactions. Lash will look at how this creates externalities that is side effects or spillovers from the neo-liberal corporate space, which creates for itself not just environmental damage but also public goods and positive externalities. These externalities include the creation of a certain kind of public space itself — not the public space in the classic western sense, but something else. In his talk, Lash will discuss the implications of this new kind of space for urbanism, the arts and new media, including different possibilities for meta data, semantics and the social web.
Scott Lash is the Director of Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He’s the author (co-author) of The End of Organized Capitalism, Reflexive Modernization, Critique of Information, Another Modernity, A Different Rationality, Global Culture Industry, Sociology of Postmodernism and Economies of Signs and Space. Currently, Lash is working on a new book called Intensive Culture. He has been doing research on the ‘Risk Culture’ in China, and is a part of Rem Koolhaas’ OMA team for the West Kowloon Culture District bid in Hong Kong.
CROSSTALK Beijing is a new kind of conversation programme conceived and presented by Shao Foundation. We invite artists, scientists, thinkers, architects, designers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, futurists and software developers to a lecture or conference setting, confronting them with the live feedback from the audience — local and remote — through the use of new web technology known as ‘Micro-blogging’ (a la Twitter). The event is free.
Beijing, April 20, 2009 — Ou Ning, the Director of Shao Foundation, joins the jury of this year’s Benesse Prize at the 53rd Venice Biennale.
Initiated by the Benesse Corporation in 1995, Benesse Prize is awarded to young artists who are opening new horizons outside the current paradigm with an experimental spirit. All the artists and works in the Biennale, including those in each pavilion and the special exhibitions, are open for consideration. The judging process is executed separately from the official judging, and a new jury group is organised for each Prize. Besides Ou Ning, this year’s jury consists of Hans Ulrich Obrist (Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes, Director of International Projects, Serpentine Gallery), Tom Eccles (Executive director, Centre for Curatorial Studies), and Fram Kitagawa (General Director of Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial).
Past recipients of the Benesse Prize include Cai Guo-Qiang, Alexandros Psychoulis, Olafur Eliasson, Janet Cardiff, Georges Bures Miller, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Tacita Dean and Adel Abdessmed.
The Benesse Prize is a part of ‘NAOSHIMA: Art and Architecture Projects in the Seto Inland Sea’ to be presented by Naoshima Fukutake Art Museum Foundation this June at the Venice Biennale. The event consists of a symposium, exhibition, the annual awarding of the Benesse Prize, and an overview of the latest projects by Tadao Ando, Kazuyo Sejima, and Ryue Nishizawa in the Seto Inland Sea area.
The symposium this year will be conducted on June 3, with theme of ‘how to revitalise the Naoshima and the Seto Inland Sea region by creating a cultural sphere based on architecture and art’. Guest speakers include architects Tadao Ando, Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa, and Hiroshi Sambuichi, as well as Soichiro Fukutake — the Chairman and CEO of Benesse Corporation. Francesco Dal Co, one of Italy’s most prominent architectural historians, will be moderating the discussion.
The exhibition, which aims at a retrospective of the art projects in the Naoshima and the Seto Inland Sea area in the past twenty years, will run through June 7 to June 21. In addition to learning about art and architecture, visitors to the exhibition will have a chance to experience the area through the natural environment and local culture on the islands.
In the past editions, one of the features of the Benesse Prize was that the artist was chosen based on the understanding that he/she would be considered to create a commissioned work in Naoshima. Last time, the possible site for the commission was extended to Echigo-Tsumari. This year, it would be further extended to the seven islands in the Seto Inland Sea as part of the Setouchi International Art Festival, which will be launched in July 2010.
Click here to download the original press release by Benesse Corporation.