Samantha Culp

(Opposite House Blog, Sep 2009)

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Taken from the window of a passing taxi a few weeks ago. Near impossible to believe, but somehow I had never passed it since moving to Beijing last summer (there was the requisite tourist visit years ago, of course). I kept expecting it to happen on some gloriously mundane day, and by the time it did, I had almost forgotten. But suddenly one evening, I looked up and was struck by a sight so familiar, so unreal, that I knew what it was before I knew.

It still seems stuck inside my mother’s little pink TV on the kitchen counter that summer. Like all things from the past, tiny and infinite at once.

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…

Words of wisdom from the Carrefour check-out girl. With my abysmal Chinese, I was unable to ascertain whether she had written the slogan on her register herself, or it was someone else’s graffiti… pretty great regardless.

Yesterday up at Gulou, I finally got around to buying the new albums by Hedgehog (just released) and Ourself Beside Me (came out in January)… Only to discover a few hours later via the salivating tweets of more media-savvy Beijingren that Google China had just launched its free mp3 service, which, of course, happens to feature both albums.

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…)

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).

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Lunar New Year in Beijing.

At first it sounded (especially to the Californians) like random drive-by shootings…

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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)

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As my last spurt of journalistic productivity before going on my present “sabbatical,” I have two pieces in the current issue of Theme Magazine (NYC). One is on Beijing band “Ourself Beside Me” (also known as “Ourselves Beside Me”; there is no definitive right spelling and I suspect the girls prefer it that way); the other on Thai television show “Dreamchaser.”

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!

(Theme Magazine, Dec/Jan 2008/2009)
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(Artkrush, Feb 2008)

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(Artkrush, Jul 2007)

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(Tomorrow Unlimited, Jun 2007)
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(The Fader, Jun 2006)
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(The Fader, Jan/Feb 2006)

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