intro, day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5, last word
Pudong International Airport is vast. A single, elongated arch of a structure, it immediately announces to new arrivals that this is a city both keen and able to impress. Only a year old, the airport gives us an idea about Shanghai's intentions. How is that? Well, it is mostly empty now - so we know that Shanghai expects a future when there will be ten times as many flights.
The long, wide highways that run from the airport are equally new. Freshly tarmacked, with neat rows of saplings planted in strips several miles long, these roads, like the airport, emphasize that Shanghai is preparing for something big. The roads stretch as far as the eye can see in the morning haze, and yet I can count only six cars. Six cars on a six lane highway - this is what's known as 'spare capacity'.
These roads may be global-scale additions to the city, but they still have local idiosyncrasies. How many mega-highways have you seen that people push bicycles across? And that's the Shanghai twist: the highways, of course, are still local roads for those who live beside them.
I arrive in the Pudong area, the Special Economic Zone that has probably seen more development over the last decade than any other region in the world. It feels like this part of the city was built as an extension of the airport. I'm staying in the tallest hotel in the world, which is situated in Shanghai's new landmark, the Jin Mao Tower. The hotel lobby is on the 53rd floor, with 35 more floors above that. Other towers surround this one, each in various states of construction. (I later find out that all of Shanghai is like this; every block has three skyscrapers, one complete, one nearly finished, and one just started.)
The wide-open spaces and brand-new tower blocks give the Pudong area an alien feel. Not in the colonialist sense of 'this is the exotic Orient' - no, the impression it gives is more like a Hollywood sci-fi movie. These buildings wouldn't look out of place in a future settlement on Mars. And this is the point; Shanghai is literally living in the future - it has been rebuilt for a time when air and road traffic begins multiplying exponentially, and when Pudong is one of the world's business capitals. Shanghai is definitely ready. Whether the rest of the world is, including the ruling Communist Party, we'll discover over the next five years.
Crossing the Huangpu River from the Pudong region into the old town brings us back to Earth. Although there are towers going up all over the place, and bright white flyovers knotting themselves over the main streets, the old town doesn't quite have the same artificial, manufactured feel of the new district. It's almost a different city.
In the middle of the town you can find both Shanghai Art Museums. Both? Well, there's the original building, which still holds exhibitions, and the new building, which has just been converted into the museum's permanent home. I say 'new building', but it is in fact a former library, and before that it was the colonial Racing Club - an elegant building with a complex history. The biennale is being hosted in both venues.
'Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished Friends, Comrades...' So opened the Shanghai Biennale 2000. During the opening ceremony, awards were announced - the highlights being the awarding of prizes to the Paris-based Chinese artist Huang Yongping (who co-represented France at the last Venice Biennale) and Heri Dono, a young Indonesian artist.
Huang Yongping's contribution to the exhibition is a vast sculpture which reproduces the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, one of the most important colonial buildings from the early 20s which still stands by the river on the famous main street, the Bund. This sculpture certainly won't last so long though; it has been built entirely from sand. The artist could be seen late on Sunday night carefully spraying the sculpture with water. During the show it will be allowed to dry out, and so to crumble to the floor. It is a most impressive piece, and one of the few to have been specially made for the biennale.
Heri Dono's work is a host of mechanical angels hanging from the ceiling. These figures slowly flap their wings and, from the speakers set into their bellies, emit insect noises. Wearing mystical horns and little red booties, they are hybrids - they have female faces and male genitalia. I asked the artist about this piece and he caught me by surprise by citing Flash Gordon as an inspiration. 'Flash Gordon was written long before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon,' he said, 'which shows that our ideas are always ahead of our technology.' I wondered if he thought this was a good thing, so I asked whether they were optimistic angels. 'Yes,' he said, 'they're very optimistic. They show an accelerated flight forward.'
Growing up and studying under the Suharto regime in Jakarta, Heri Dono found that everything was always 'done for the country or the ruling party, and never for the individual'. Which is why, when so many of his college colleagues were producing overtly political work, he was producing individual works of fantasy. By deliberately avoiding politics, Heri Dono is actually taking a strong political stance: in favor of the individual. Not an easy thing to do in Indonesia.
Huang Yongping and Heri Dono were awarded their prizes by Pierre Restany, who is something of a legend in the artworld. He was instrumental in launching French artists like Cesar, Arman and Yves Klein, and has made a habit of searching out art from off the beaten track. Who better to ask about the importance of this biennale?
Restany suggested that the biennale indicates a careful compromise by the Communists, as does most of Shanghai (a city in love with consumerism, I was surprised to learn), and that the 'level of culture that you find here reflects this ambiguity'. So for him, it makes sense that this biennale should represent a spirit of modernism that manages to retain a strong ancient presence.
Restany also made the point that many of the exhibiting artists were born in China but educated abroad. This, he thought, showed the nomadic spirit of China. 'We all know that the Chinese Diaspora is great in the world of business. But we should recognize that it is not just within business - there are Chinatowns in cities all over the world, indicating a global Chinese culture.' He concluded that there is a new generation which has no deep complex about Western countries; 'they will travel, they are free people of the world. They take the Chinese culture around the globe and, with events like this, bring global culture back to China.' In short, he thinks that it is a milestone exhibition.
This is something that I would tend to agree with, but there are a lot of issues within the biennale that don't look likely to be resolved, and they are beginning to gnaw away at me. I'll try to explore these in later reports, along with an in-depth look at some of the artworks. Tomorrow it is the beginning of the international conference - perhaps that will shed some more light...
intro, day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5, last word— End —