ARTHUB FAVORITE: WEEK 18

As transcultural mediators, Arthub is particularly perceptive to linguistic oddities, nuances and ironies. And so, the clever word play of the independent photography magazine GENDA immediately caught our attention. The publication’s Chinese name Zhende (真的, meaning real or really) is pronounced as GENDA—a phrase most foreigners in China master within the first few weeks of arriving. Zhendema? Zhende!

This Saturday, GENDA launches its newest issue at Closing Ceremony.

Time: May 14, 2016, 15:00 – 18:00
Venue: Closing Ceremony, No. 15 Wulumuqi Road, Shanghai

GENDA #1 Theme
BODY AS PACKAGING

The body as construction material, deprived of its sexual, moral, and social aspects. The body used like any other material, a form to assemble, overlay, split, observe, and forget. The body as just another object, not instrument, not seduction, not for exchange, and not as a place of violence to attack the person.

Body without rhetoric, history, ethics, deprived of that dignity we take for granted and that recognition that pertains to a living person. Body as encumbrance, structure, scaffolding, and nothing more.

About GENDA

GENDA is a magazine intersecting Western and Eastern culture thought photography, established in 2015. Two sets of editorial staff – one in Italy and one in China – first identify a common theme which is then elaborated through the misunderstandings and complicities at the base of every concrete exchange.

Seemingly different and far-off worlds and cultures observe and copy one another, modifying themselves without being mutually accountable. GENDA is born from a misunderstanding: it is the Western mangling of the popular Chinese Zhenda – ‘Really?’, it is also the name of the preferred flower of Hindu rites and celebrations.

GENDA is a container of accidental, compressed, distant yet dangerously similar material. Its symmetrical structure separates the two spheres which are then recomposed and redistributed through the binding. Clashes and confluences result from the apparent remoteness of approaching worlds.

GENDA is an independent and interdisciplinary object. It proves the presence of things and the existence of occurrences, it is about experience.

Every edition of Genda contains proofs, manifestations of the impact of the world on the authors. The text forms part of this and thus both language and translation are considered.

GENDA has a title, it seeks out the conditions for triggering new questions. Its contents are apparitions; their original order is recomposed in the pages where an incidental and unexpected factor – of which the authors are aware – exists.

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS ISSUE #1

WEST
Geert Goiris, Isabelle Wenzel, Blaise Cepis, Joanna Piotrowska, Chloe Rosser, Aaron McElroy, Todd Fisher, Agnes Geoffray, Charlie Engman, Paul Kooiker, Ute Klein

EAST
Ren Hang, Xiaopeng Yuan, Shen Wei, Lin Zhipeng (aka No.223), Pixy Yijun Liao, Yi Lian, Liu Shuwei, Sophie Tianxin Chen, Nononino, Tang Ting