Portrait of the City from Dawn to Dusk, Shanghype!

Artissima Cinema, curated by Davide Quadrio, BizArt/Arthub, Shanghai

Location: Mirafiori Motor Village
Time: Friday, November 9th at 7:00 pm
Preview of the project and conference

Location: Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Mole Antonelliana
Time: Saturday, November 10th from 9:00 to 1:00 pm
Video Review

Locaiton: Artissima 14 Cinebus
Time: Sunday, November 11th from 11:00 to 8:00 pm
Video review

Futura, Prague, March 2008
Bund 18 Creative Center, Shanghai, December 2008
Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, September 2009

The first event of Artissima Cinema 2007, is devoted to the city of Shanghai, with a review of videos by a group of international artists, which took place at Mirafiori Motor Village. The preview of the project and conference, The OFF Story of the Contemporary Art Revolution in Shanghai, was held on November 9th.

Alexander Brandt and Davide Quadrio offered an untold vision of Shanghai. A journey through three exhibitions that have made their mark in the Shanghai art-world. A group of artists who challenged the city of Shanghai from the suburbs. Pictures from the city’s past, when negotiations with the government for “proper” visibility were at the heart of the art work of the avant-garde group headed by Xu Zhen, Yang Zhenzhong and Alexander Brandt, supported or connected in one way or another to BizArt. The selected exhibitions include: Art for sale, 1999; Fang Mingzhen and Fang Mingshu, 2004; Solo Exhibition, 2006. Shanghai’s aspiration and desire to once again become the legendary place it once was, its need to be an international representation for modern China, coupled with the idea of power, which Shanghai is constantly seeking between its own local identity and globalization–these are the themes to be explored through a collage of documents, catalogues and documentaries.

The backdrop of this evening will be the presentation of Hipic.org, an image for all time: an online project, a place for the ephemeral, where in 30 seconds a photo sums up the need for vision, before disappearing into a cybernetic void–forever. The online project displays art without an artist, art without economic value, art that disappears and re-appears, it is on a quest for attention and observation, knowing that in the end this is the singular possibility in the world and the only simultaneous moment in the world. Hipic, a democratic archival location with no hope for the future, is very fitting in the case of today’s China, with specific reference to Shanghai: the idea of a continuous move towards something else, with no past and no possibility of the future. Our impertinent, optimistic and flattering present leaves no time other than for a cursory glance at reality, like so many others: it is totally useless.

Saturday, November 10th, during the contemporary art fair, the spectacular building of Museo del Cinema hosted a selection of art videos devoted to Shanghai, including new works produced especially for the event.

“The years fly by in Shanghai and each month changes the one that follows. In just a few years, we went from technological pre-history to the digital era. LED screen and LCDs are everywhere–in taxis and skyscraper lobbies, in the subway and on entire facades of buildings, or on huge screens brought out at night on the river barges of the Pujiang, so bright that you cannot help but to look. What I’m trying to get across in this latest version of Shanghai is its inevitable contradictions, for it is bent through the eyes of artists until it becomes a fictitious, distorted reality that nevertheless conceals extravagant details somewhere in between poetry and drama, revealing once again the true face of Shanghai.” – Davide Quadrio

Shanghai was presented through the eyes of local artists such as Zhang Ding, Liang Yue and Song Tao and the well-known video Robber-South, 2001 by Yang Fudong; the animation video by Melanie Jackson Made in China; a multimedia installation, The Next Second, be Alexander Brandt, a German artist who lives in Shanghai. Other works included: the video clip Hero by David Cotterrell, the historic Shouting video from 1998 by Xu Zhen, Yang Zhenzhong’s work subtitled Skyscrapers: Phallic Symbols? In this lat work the city is represented as a phallus, in which architecture is no more than space snatched away from the sky.

The city then decomposes into an avalanche of pictures without a guiding thread in: Huang Kui’s video, Go Away; Pierrre Giner’s latest creation; the duo Mattia Matteucci and Patrick Tuttofuoco’s work, The Green Sky. The review starts and ends with Olivo Barbieri’s A Silent Story and Riverscape #1 Night, 2007.

Sunday, November 11th, during the opening hours of the Artissima Cinema fair, the public had the opportunity to review the artists’ videos in an unusual location: a special bus parked in front of the Artissima pavilion, the ideal finale of an amazing and fascinating urban trip into the true Shanghai, the Shanghai beyond the dazzling lights, a “city of the people who live there and who trade their own survival.”

The event brochure can be found here.