When: Saturday, 8pm-10pm
Where/Contact: 383 Xiangyang Lu, #20, first floor between Jianguo Lu and Yongjia Lu | Map | Call Monika at 136 8176 4514 or David at 137 6118 0110 for more info.
What: We’re organizing a series of casual salon-style gatherings in which people who are doing interesting things present talks to friends and colleagues. We’re calling it Salon 383, and this is the first one. Salon 383 is a chance to hear what artists, writers, designers, architects, filmmakers and other creative people are doing, have a glass of wine and a few snacks, chat, take part in the discussion, meet people and have a good time. If you’re interested in presenting your own work, come and talk to us. Space and support is provided by “The Kitchen At” Cooking Studio and Colorbox Creative Arts Center.
JAMES BREARLEY: CHINA’S NEW GHETTO CITIES
In our first session of the series, we’ll be saying goodbye (for now) to long-time Shanghai resident architect, urbanist and professor James Brearley, who will give a talk titled China’s New Ghetto Cities. James is adjunct professor of architecture at RMIT Melbourne. He opened his Shanghai studio BAU (Brearley Architects + Urbanists) with partner Fang Qun in 2001.
James will provide and overview of the big issues of urban planning in China and introduce a range of strategic initiatives BAU has found useful, touching on matters including the difficulty of creating livable and sustainable new cities and districts in China due to China’s unwavering adherence to its modernist urban planning formula makes it in which large-scale development and a tabula rasa approach dominate. He’ll also addresss how the Chinese cultural tendency towards a clan-type introversion as opposed to collective culture exacerbates planning problems of the planning formula, resulting in cities of gated enclaves of work and living with little quality public space.
James is heading off on a months-long trip with his family across Asia and Europe, making occasional stops to talk about his work in making China’s booming cities more livable, humane, healthy and sustainable. This will be your last chance to hear James speak in Shanghai for a long time–don’t miss the opportunity.
REBECCA CATCHING: SPHERES OF INFLUENCE
We’ll also hear from Rebecca Catching, director of OV Gallery, art critic, and deputy editor of online art magazine randian (“Flashpoint”). Rebecca will give a talk title Spheres of Influence: Western Art in China and the Vehicles, Actors and the Motives Which Brought It Here on the history of the history of exchange of artistic ideas between the West and China. She will trace this history of exchange through the export paintings of southern China (China’s first Dafen Painter’s village), to Matteo Ricci and the introduction of Western perspectival techniques, the role of the Japanese in introducing literature and woodcuts, the role of the Russians in introducing socialist realism and things such as Robert Rauschenburg’s exchange in China.
DAVID PERRY: SO GOING AROUND CITIES
Finally, David Perry, a poet and critic who will be teaching writing at NYU Shanghai and launching the new NYU Shanghai Writing Center this fall, will talk about how intensive urban environments’ speed, densities, experiences of simultaneity and disjunctions, noise, static, topographies, dirt, commercial lingos, slangs, smells, pigeons and all the rest of it affect the reading and writing of contemporary poetry. Drawing on works by “New York School” poets like Frank O’Hara, Ted Berrigan (whose poem “So Going Around Cities” provides the name of the talk) and Alice Notley, David will also read a selection of his own short & fast poems that have emerged from his time spent in Shanghai, New York, Mexico City, Berlin and other cities.
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Ling 