Meditations on the Urban Spectacle2021.11.06 - 12.12
Participating Artists:大鱼营造 Big Fish,李青 Li Qing,郑波 Zheng Bo,UNO织城网络,顺德学小组 Shunde Study Collective(徐坦 Xu Tan,廖宝欣 Liao Baoxin,黄锐 Huang Rui),黄成 Huang Cheng,箭厂空间 Arrow Factory(张辽源 Zhang Liaoyuan,瞿秋繁 Qu Qiufan)
Address:
Sunke Villa, 1262 Yan'an Road, Changning District, Shanghai
For Meditations on the Urban Spectacle, Arrow Factory invites musician and sound artist Qu Qiufan 瞿秋繁and visual artist Zhang Liaoyuan 张辽源 to make separate works that respond to the unique characteristics of the historic Sunke Villa in Shanghai. Beijing-based Qu Qiufan’s soundscape transforms the building’s vault into an intimate Listening/Reading Room; Hangzhou-based Zhang Liaoyuan’s Autumn Wind 《秋风》responds to the back lawn’s leisure-sport past. Both works draw from the history and spatial conditions of this remarkable site.
The vault, normally a space for securing valuables, becomes a site for collaboration between Arrow Factory and Qu Qiufan, turning it into a Listening/Reading Room. The intimate vault features copies of Arrow Factory’s three publications, “3 Years,” “The Next Four Years,” and “The Last Five Years” for perusal. These three books document the fifty-nine projects that transpired between 2008 through 2019 in Arrow Factory’s fifteen square meter storefront art space located in Beijing’s city center. The tiny vault also features Qu’s original soundscape, a composition of field recordings of Beijing’s hutong neighborhoods, snippets of interviews that were conducted for the production of “Arrow Factory: The Last Five Years,” and Qu’s own compositions. Qu’s ambient soundscape paired with the Arrow Factory books are designed to be an enhanced reading experience.
Zhang Liaoyuan’s Autumn Wind recontextualizes the villa’s lush backyard lawn as a borderless tennis court. A standard issue tennis net stretches across an expanse of green grass, and stray tennis balls are sprinkled throughout the property. Autumn Wind reflects on the original state of the Sunke Villa as a private, walled estate and toys with the property’s proverbial edges by presenting a game with amorphous rules. In Autumn Wind, the boundaries of the tennis court melt away, and the exterior walls of the estate itself are left to try and contain this boundless expansion. A multitude of tennis balls, like autumn leaves, are scattered around the property with the wind.
More info |