a film by Samantha Culp and Nicolas Sauret, currently in post-production

A blend of documentary and fiction, “Many Mansions” explores the mythical structures of Hong Kong’s Chungking Mansions.

(supported by a Fonds des Artists grant, Alliance Française, HK)

Oh well – still nice to support an actual music shop, and made an additional purchase of some Cui Zi’en (崔子恩) DVDs I haven’t seen around before. A few years ago at HKIFF, Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang described to me his first exposure to Cui’s films as something like this: “I put on the tape, and was watching it until I felt I had to turn it off, but then I couldn’t turn it off… it’s so bad that it’s fascinating, and then it becomes interesting.” Intense paraphrasing going on there, but it sticks in my mind as fairly apt. The weird, self-conscious crappiness in the aesthetic and tone of “Withered in the Blooming Season” is kind of amazing.

The Hedgehog and Ourself Beside Me albums are available for streaming and download below. (Legally! Though the concept of something that is both “digital” and “legal” in China is still confusing to me.) I’m still making my way through them…

Ourself Beside Me “Ourself Beside Me”
(Loving the Rundgren/Barrett-by-way-of-Lisa-Frank cover art; also I’m amazed that they actually did use ‘Ourself Beside Me’ as the official name on it – they had barely decided it while my THEME article on them was going to press)

Hedgehog “Blue Day Dreaming”
(I wish time machines existed just so that Hedgehog could travel back to 1993 to appear on 120 Minutes, and we could now watch it on grainy Youtube VHS capture…)

Profile: Ourself Beside Me, Theme Magazine, Issue 17, Nov/Dec/Jan 2008/2009 Eureka!

Theme: Dreamchaser, Theme Magazine, Issue 17, Nov/Dec/Jan 2008/2009 Eureka!

IMG_0605, originally uploaded by New Territories.

My dream apartment in 1963 Vientiane.
Basically when not with the video crew, I just walked around this tiny, adorable capital taking pictures of old sixties buildings and eating croissants. How colonial!
More here:
http://flickr.com/photos/samanthaculp/sets/72157604824954350/

Title: “Asian Cultural Council, Twenty Years in Hong Kong”
Book Editor: Samantha Culp
Publication: Original anniversary book by non-profit arts organization Asian Cultural Council
Download Sample PDF

Up in the room, things are quiet. There is the whirring fan, and water dripping in the airshaft, but the ancient, wall-mounted television doesn’t go above a murmur, so better to keep the Nepalese evening news on mute. Down on the street, however, the world is at full volume.

On a typical night, the sidewalk of Hong Kong’s Chungking Mansions is roaring. In contrast to the sedate Peninsula Hotel just across Nathan Road (the colonial “grande dame,” where white-gloved butlers still reign), there is no white marble reception desk—just the pavement.

Here, there is a gauntlet of eight young Indian guest-house touts, each aggressively trying to persuade a dazed Australian backpacker and a broad Nigerian businessman that his establishment is the best. Some of the men are doing double-duty by simultaneously pushing restaurants or tailor-shops, copy-watches or hashish. The Nigerian waves them away: he has been here before and knows exactly where he’s going. Heading to the A block elevators, he passes a bunch of women in bright blue shalwar kameez, changing rupees at one of the Xchange booths that line the entrance; young Chinese women with frizzy hair sit behind the bullet-proof glass with sour expressions. He zig-zags toward the bank of elevators at Block B, and joins the queue. The dazed Australian is also here, with a guest-house worker who is practically holding onto his backpack (to make sure his “sale” doesn’t get stolen away), plus a lanky Somalian woman with a swaddled baby, and a young boy laden with take-out containers from a restaurant.

At the 7th and 15th floors the Australian and the Nigerian split for two different guest-houses. Doors are opened. Fans and televisions are demonstrated. Room rates are bargained down. Keys change hands. And then, most likely, because nobody wants to sit in a bed-sized room watching the fuzzy Nepalese news on mute, the guests will lock their bags in the room and head back to the mainframe.

This massive complex of five blocks (A-E) and 17 stories was completed in 1961, originally intended as luxury flats for Hong Kong’s elite (hence the aspirational noun in the title). Somewhere down the line, things changed. The first tenants were recent immigrants from the Mainland, who in turn sold units to members of Hong Kong’s resident Indian community. As a major transportation hub (Victoria Harbor, the Kowloon-Canton Railway, old Kai Tak Airport), Kowloon was always a natural magnet for travelers. TST gained a seedier reputation in the 1960s and 70s, due in no small part to hordes of American servicemen on shore-leave, who were some of the earliest guests of Chungking Mansions. Decades later, Chungking is hardly just a hotel space, but its nearly 1000 guest-rooms have shaped and given purpose to the structure as a whole. Although the rooms belong to around 90 distinct guesthouses, these distinctions begin to melt as the greater design of Chungking Mansions reveals itself.
The rooms are usually the same– large enough for a bed (a rock-hard twin kitted out in fading Mickey Mouse sheets), a single square-foot window, and, if one is willing to upgrade to “ensuite”, a telephone-booth bathroom. Some, of course, are a bit more “business motel” (double beds, pastels), others more “flop-house” (six Indian restaurant workers sharing the floor of a 40 sq. foot room). But as few of these guest-houses are anything beyond a blank hallway with 5-10 guest-rooms, there is little space for the expression of individual hotel identities. Which is why they are all subsumed into the experience of Chungking Mansions: the meta-hotel.

Within the building, guests can choose from several dozens of restaurants, or order room service (all restaurants deliver). For entertainment, cheap DVDs and DVD players (both bootleg) abound. Internet cafes and international calling-card shops (“$1 per minute to Ghana!”) serve as the “business center”, and restaurants that stay open late, the “hotel bar” (not to mention the all-night 7-11 around the corner, which is also the place to pick up female company for the night).

Strangely enough, most of the waiters, cooks, touts, and men pushing boxes through the hallways, as well as the women who “work” Chungking Mansions (primarily Indian, dressed in bright saris and too much make-up) are travelers themselves. Of course those who own property and shops in the building have proper immigration papers or HK residency, as do the managers they hire. But the managers then rely on temporary, illegal labor to run their businesses. Because of tight visa regulations, many of these temporary workers must return home fairly frequently, or go on exit/re-entry runs to the Mainland or Macau. Some may continue this cycle, coming and going, for years. This is another remarkable feature of Chungking. In essence, the guests are running the hotel.

While illegal labor is rampant, and prostitution and drugs are plied, Chungking’s current illicit activities pale in comparison to those of the past. The 80s for example was a period that saw a series of murders, assaults, deadly fires and peculiar arrests within the building. Between 1985 and 1988 there were 29 fires reported (a Danish tourist died in one, trying to jump out of a window). When inspections were attempted, the Fire Services Department only had 800 addresses of 1500 suspected guesthouses. Then there were bizarre stories like the capture of a New Zealand man who had been resident in C block for some time—in his own DIY bomb-making workshop. All manner of urban legends spun out from these events, which eventually led to public pressure on the Mansions management to do something. About three years ago, security cameras were installed on all floors, illegal guest-houses (like those built in corridors, or in gaps on stair-landings) were removed, and former police officers hired as enforcement muscle. Still, the image of Chungking Mansions as ultimate den-of-iniquity remains—maybe because a city like Hong Kong needs a mythic ghetto to call its own.

In many ways, Chungking appears to be a system that is organically running itself—a sort of urban artificial intelligence. It is also an illustration of ground-level globalization (it is estimated that at least 20% of all mobile phones in usage in Africa have passed through the entrance of #36-44 Nathan Road at one point), and a condensed model of world catastrophe (there are currently 2500 refugees and asylum-seekers in Hong Kong, most of whom have stayed in Chungking Mansions or use services there daily). It’s a holographic hotel, or perhaps small city, made up entirely by its own tiny reflections.

Ironically, it now seems that Chungking Mansions may outlast most other Hong Kong landmarks. Because the colossal structure is owned by so many individual property-owners, for another developer to buy them all out would cost around 20 billion Hong Kong Dollars (about 3 billion USD), far more than any new development could possibly justify. Somehow fitting that as the Peninsula Hotel down the street gives a glimpse only to a darkening past, Chungking Mansions is a window (one square-foot, covered with a Snoopy drape, facing an air-shaft) to the future.

Title: “Autumn Asian Biennials”
Publication: Artkrush (now defunct, a branch of Flavorpill)
Date: Oct 2006
Full Text Below

With record-breaking auction sales and intense media attention, Chinese art has grown in the past year from “the next big thing” to an undeniable force. But what does this mean for Asian art in general? With five major biennials and a handful of art fairs opening in Asian cities this fall, it’s time to take a look. Judging by three of them, the great China art hype is serving as a dynamic catalyst and magnet for provocative work throughout the region.

Although the Shanghai Biennale was once only a national event, this year’s show features 93 artists from 23 countries, all reflecting the theme of Hyper Design with dramatic visuals and skewed perspectives on the ordinary. Chinese artists are still among the most exciting entrants, including Qiu Anxiong, who combines traditional ink painting with video animation, and Liu Jianhua, whose Yiwu Research Proposal illustrates China’s surreal economic boom with a shipping container full of beeping plastic toys. Beyond the PRC, Taiwan’s Tu Wei-cheng presents Finds from Bu Nam Civilization, which appears to be a straight, archaeological exhibit — except for the mobile phones in the stone pictographs. Pakistani new media artist Osman Khan’s Sur La Table allows viewers to leave digital traces on a dinner table, while India’s Tallur L.N. creates a human body with nylon innards inflated by a vacuum cleaner. South Korean Lee Kyung-ho displays an army of tiny, robotic bulldozers and projects live video feed of them at work, in another off-kilter view of something utterly mundane.

Although including international artists, the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea explicitly focuses on Asian art, particularly the creative tension arising between tradition and modernity. Korean-American sculptor Michael Joo surrounds a plaster Buddha with a halo of tiny video cameras, while local master Whang In-Kie reconstructs a classic Korean painting using 30,000 magnets. Also featured are Japanese artists Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, who deals with trauma and memory in hallucinogenic performances, and photographer Miwa Yanagi, who explores the inner lives of young women struggling with Japan’s societal expectations.

Some of these concerns are also addressed in the Taipei Biennial, entitled Dirty Yoga for its interest in globalization, conflicting values, and liminal states. Thailand’s Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, who also appears in Gwangju, reads prayers and performs rituals for the souls of women who died alone, while underground filmmaker Wu Chun-hui adapts Stan Brakhage for Taiwan’s hidden queer heritage. Japan’s Tanaka Koki records bizarre experiments, like turning tortilla chips into a pancake, and work by young Indonesian artist Eko Nugroho displays now-global graffiti and comic book sensibilities.

The rich diversity of artists and works appearing in these biennials may herald a new season for Asian art — in scope, attention, and support — with China’s stratospheric ascent leading the way. (SC)

The Shanghai Biennale is on view until November 5 in Shanghai, China; the Gwangju Biennale continues through November 11 in Gwangju City, South Korea; and the Taipei Biennial will run from November 4 to February 25 in Taipei, Taiwan.