URBAN NOMADS IN SHANGHAI

Looking through the window of the little kiosk, the Xiaomaibu, one gets a framed view on a typical scene of Shanghai street life: people passing by on bicycles with huge loads on their bike trailers, school kids in their school uniforms stopping to buy snacks, motor bikes honking. This scene is displayed as a movie inside of the original kiosk where it was shot – located now inside the ddmwarehouse gallery at the Red Town, Shanghai Sculpture Space.
For the exhibition “Double Act” 2010 the young Chinese artist Xu Zhifeng aka Shaw worked together with the German artist Petra Johnson to memorize this spontaneous, popular and original street culture that is slowly erased through the rapid urbanization. They have localized kiosks in Cologne, Liverpool and Shanghai and connected them with video feeds over the internet, so local residents can communicate across the world. (also see http://www.sss570.com/, http://www.ddmwarehouse.org and http://www.zoezhangbing.com)



Shaw, who studied architecture in Shanghai, is dealing in his art work with Shanghai’s fast changing environment and China’s shift towards the West.
In “TALK WALK”, which was created for the 5th anniversary of the Dutch company Five Spices, he and Theresia Leuenberger documented a virtually interactive tour through Rotterdam and Shanghai taking place at the same time along the “same route”. The two participants never actually met in person but were each showing their intimate view on the city. They were part of the 5 international teams, who each worked in one of 5 disciplines (architecture, photography, paper-art, light design and dj’s). (http://www.fivespices.nl/)
We had the chance to meet him in person and see his working approach. Thank you Shaw!