gated communities
We climb Jingshan, the manmade mountain where the last Ming-Emperor hung himself. From here is a great view of The Forbidden City and we decide to enter. The 1 km by 760 m walled city, initiated in 1420, sets the scale for the greatness and power of China. Our walk ends on Tiananmen Square, the worlds biggest, where student demonstrators built a 30 m paper Mache model of the Statue of Liberty before being massacred or arrested in 1981.
In the evening we visit the Italian exhibition Rolled Up opening in neighboring compound Suo Jia Cun. As rents in the 798 area have risen, artist are driven to live and work in more distant suburbs and communities like Suo Jia Cun. Home to over 100 Chinese and foreign artists, built in 2004 without informing all necessary bureaus, it now faces threats of demolition. Media and artists are involved in trying to secure its future. From a New York perspective, these new, rather large, raw, customizable spaces in gated communities seem both luxorious, isolated and weirdly safe. My experiences from living/working in the East Village, Lower East Side, Times Square, Williamsburg and Redhook - were all individual spaces in buildings integrated in an urban fabric. Here the surrounding villages are used by the artists to eat and produce at minimum cost while the locals enter the compounds to act as assistants, cleaners and drivers. I have to think and find out more about this.
In the evening we visit the Italian exhibition Rolled Up opening in neighboring compound Suo Jia Cun. As rents in the 798 area have risen, artist are driven to live and work in more distant suburbs and communities like Suo Jia Cun. Home to over 100 Chinese and foreign artists, built in 2004 without informing all necessary bureaus, it now faces threats of demolition. Media and artists are involved in trying to secure its future. From a New York perspective, these new, rather large, raw, customizable spaces in gated communities seem both luxorious, isolated and weirdly safe. My experiences from living/working in the East Village, Lower East Side, Times Square, Williamsburg and Redhook - were all individual spaces in buildings integrated in an urban fabric. Here the surrounding villages are used by the artists to eat and produce at minimum cost while the locals enter the compounds to act as assistants, cleaners and drivers. I have to think and find out more about this.
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