Short Stays, the film project I produced for The Opposite House hotel in Beijing, will have its long-awaited premiere on May 18. Read more on the Short Stays website.
SHORT STAYS / 暂停
3 Short Films by / 三个短片
Zhao Ye / Liu Jiayin / Peng Lei
赵晔、刘伽茵、彭磊
“It returns the child’s eye to the retinas of men. Emerging from subway, [taxi] or even hydrofoil, the visitor to the [Shanghai Expo 2010] feels that he is in a special world, full of runaway pylons, impossible cantilevers, and buildings that look like flowers or accidents of flowing lava.
Is it the future? Not exactly.”
This John McPhee surveying the 1964 New York World’s Fair in his essay “Fairs: The World of Already,” but he could just have equally been describing the Shanghai Expo. Some photos from the still-unfolding, barely-comprehensible spectacle.
Slideshow of May 1 (on Flickr):
Slideshow of May 2 (on Flickr):
A short review I did on “Light Streams,” the current show at Center for Cosmic Wonder in Tokyo, is up at Artforum.com. Read online here or in the vault. See some pictures from the show below.
My rambling notes from the week of SHContemporary are up at Artforum China; read the full article online here or in the vault. They didn’t end up using all of my pictures, however, so here are a few extras below…
(Hong Kong)
Wandered around ART HK 09 (lamely attempting to play paparazzi for Scene & Herd), saw friends, drank on rooftops, went to the track… the usual.
Full set here.
Spring picnic in Chaoyang Park with friends (including visiting HK artist Lee Kit, who graciously supplied one of his beautiful cloths for us to feast upon).
Just in case you weren’t aware, it is not possible to enter Chaoyang Park at West Gate 1 and walk north to West Gate 3 within the park. Well, it is possible, but only if you are willing to scale chain-link fences and sneak through restricted horse stables and climb over the padlocked metal gates at either end of a decommissioned bridge…
When I lived in Hong Kong, the flight to Don Muang (and then Suvarnabhumi) was a frequent and familiar one… but since moving up north, far less easy to wrangle. Luckily I got to head back for a bit recently. I didn’t realize how much I had missed it.
Beijing was still covered in snow when I left, and grey when I returned. Just like “The Wizard of Oz,” BKK remains the Technicolor in the middle.
Full photo set here.
On the third day of Ox Year, Dongyue Temple Fair had some interesting games that looked almost like art installations (and seemed impossible to win).
More pictures from the Vitamin Creative Space Beijing Mini-Marathon, 2pm Dec 31 2008 – 4am Jan 1 2009, are here.
(I also may have been blogged by Ai Weiwei here)
