DEERFANG.ORG

前段时间火炬传到了广州，跑过了我住附近的一条街。我因为不清楚几点钟火炬会到，所以就骑着车出去观察局势。结果我到比火炬早到了两小时，所以有幸目睹了观望人群形成和军警的列队等候火炬的过程。虽然我从一开始能站到最前排，但我还是在看火炬和看人两者间选择了看人，所以我又退到了人群外. 下面是些照片。

2008-4-27 in Seoul.

1960s in Beijing

Tomorrow Thursday night is our video screening event at Huangpu village. Two weeks ago students from my video class started projects to created various video projects to document and narrate the life and history of Huangpu village. Huangpu village is about to have its fifth redevelopment. My friend Wang Ge is one of the main designer in this redevelopment and with him we initiated this project. The screening will take place in an ancient hall in the village from the Qing Dynasty called Hu Shi Zong Ci. We have invited villagers, students in the university and designers from the redevelopment studio. The planning of the whole event is less than two weeks, so everyone is pretty excited but little nervous at the same time. (Please don’t rain that night!)

It is the first time for most of my students to make documentary videos, and hopefully this first time will have them realize the digital media they are using can be history making tool.

Chinese posting about this event is on mediaexperiment.org Feel free to contact me (lu@deerfang.org) if you want to come and need someone to guide your way.

前几天就有留意旧金山艺术学院里Walter McBean画廊里，侯瀚如策展的Adel Abdessemed个展所引起的争议。然后今天才了解到这个展览因为几个动物权利组织的抗议和威胁已被迫关闭了。展览上的一些录像纪录了动物被屠杀的过程，因而引来了众多抗议。展览开幕那天本来只是一个学院内的展览开幕，据说人不算特别多，可是过后学院却收到了8000多封投诉信，其中一些信还威胁学校的老师和学生，称要以暴力回报。(SF Gate上有具体新闻)

我无法在这里评论Abdessemed的作品因为我没有现场看过这位巴黎艺术家的作品。可是这种围绕所谓的政治“正确性”而进行的自我审查实在是可悲。在中国如果有展览被封，那可能是因为官方的限制。而这个Abdessemed展览被取消却是因为维护动物权利的团体和个人抗议而被取消的。这个维护动物权利的头衔就是我上面指的“正确性”。我发现在美国，特别是 旧金山这个提倡自由和多元的地方，这种“正确性”是最时髦的一个取向。时髦好比练瑜珈，吃有机食品(organic food), 不买第三国家血汗工厂生产的产品等等。因而这个展览才在旧金山引起了这么大的风波和抗议。

我并不反对这些“正确性”，可是我认为”正确性“的背后充满了对现实的无知，发达国家的优越感和惺惺作态的同情。就拿现在对西藏的争论为例子，那些高喊自由独立口号的人中，到底有多少是真正了解西藏，毕竟文化和宗教差异太大。那天我和一个从美国回国探亲的朋友吃饭，她满口理所当然的藏独让我摸不找边际，也不想回应。直到她话锋一转，她说回国最大目的只是购购物，我才暗自恍然：原来所有关乎自由的激进言辞其实和现实并没有什么关系。就像那些维护动物权利的抗议者们，或许他们已经把世界上所有的动物都同化成了他们家里那只宝贝宠物，却忘记了他们自己生活在和世界其它地方完全不同的现实中。

We visited Hangzhou last weekend in a perfect time. 18 hours train ride from Guangzhou on Friday afternoon, we arrived in Hangzhou on a Saturday morning. It was rainy the first day but for me that’s the Hangzhou weather you got to have. The next day was bright and sunny and all the flower paddles, seeds, leaves that got loose from the rain were flying in the wind. It’s quite impressive that the city planning of Hangzhou is formed as an infinite park around the west lake. There are amazing amount of public space for people to spend time out door.

The reason of this Hangzhou trip is the art show in Hangzhou Art Academy (aka China Art Academy). My friend Huang Xiaopeng is in the show and also with works from his students in the lab in Guangzhou Art Academy. There are two parts of the exhibitions: Unpack and 18 Cases studies of experimental art. The goal was to present and include Chinese contemporary art in Chinese art colleges. From the opening speech, it’s also an attempt to raise the status of Chinese contemporary art from “amateurism” to “academic”.

Hangzhou has the best spring I have ever seen.

One of the most interesting piece in the show, Huang Xiaopeng’s installation: “CCTV is in operation. Please keep your smile”. (more…)

Hello! My blog is back finally after 2 months unavailable. Yes I am still in Guangzhou right now. And I am working with about 140 students from Sun Yat-sen University on new media art and experimental video. Every Thursday and Tuesday about this time, my brain is normally not very active anymore after six hours teaching with two classes. But today Jon gave the students a web workshop in class. So Hive-five to Jon!

The students are very interesting because they mostly didn’t have background in art before entering the university. Therefore to me they have great potential to be shaped and formed. Some of them have produced very exciting projects in the class. It’s amazing for me to see some of them change in their work. And I try to make sure to assign them home work that can change their normal way of thinking and leave enough freedom for them make decision and take action. But of course you can’t always predict what the result is especially having a large group of people.

Beginning of the year of Rat in China, the word “disaster” came up again and again in the news media. Here I will point out two major ones that are most talked about local news. They are not related but since they happened around the Chinese new year, I will just call them “disasters” in the name of Rat.

The first round of disaster was millions of migrant workers who were traveling home for spring festival stuck at train stations for days. Guangzhou, a money-making capital in southern China has increasing amount of migrant workers from all over the country. Like other major cities, most of these workers travel home by train for Chinese new year. And when this happens, it means the biggest human migration on earth. This year, the extreme cold weather made traveling an impossible task, snow and ice paralyzed many of the railway system that is powered by electricity. Guangzhou train station was one of the major disaster site. Some pictures here.

The second round of “disaster”, which of course might not be more entertaining than disasterous for most of us is happening online these a few days and, even now. Hong Kong Pop idol/singer Edison Chan’s sex photos with seven (so far) HK entertainment celebrities are exposed all over the web. I didn’t pay much attention in the beginning because that kind of news happen every minute in HK’s very saturated entertainment circle. But not until yesterday I saw some of the photos and read into the story more, I realize the intensity of the event. Till the night before, there were four hundred of these photos had been leaked on web. I haven’t see the full download of the images but only a few. And here we are talking about explicit sex images that are in amateur porn. The only differences are that they are personal pictures of these celebrity singers and actresses. Some of them like one singer from the Twins were idols for the Hong Kong youth with their pretty and innocent appearance; and some of them had retired from the entertainment career and married into the rich. With the leaking of the images, Edison Chen and the girls appeared in the photos, the career of pop idols and marriage life of the rich wives and mothers are in great dangers.

Maybe less interested in moral stands of these stars, I am most intrigue by the media aspects of this whole event, from the way the information leaked out from Edison Chen’s Mac book, to the speed the photos has been spreading and how it went beyond the HK police control and kept flooding the web with new images continuously, and how the online community circulated these images during all the online crack down. Images are what forms public perception. And in this case they are used like weapon. With the traffic of internet and the mass, the effect of the sex images are maximize to another extreme that is unseen before. Not only on web, there were stores selling CDs of these images package illegally, and even have service to download for your cell phone…

I am not going to include any pictures here, but go search them on your own. It’s part of the game, isn’t it?

Regardless, hope we all have a good year! A late happy new year to you all.

Europa, Lars von Trier 的一部1991年的老电影。这个导演每部电影都在制作手法上做新尝试。这部电影，虽然在他的Dogma 95 宣言之前（一个反高成本电影制作的运动），但已有很大的实验性。片中多处采用演员在投影的场景下演出，画面采用多层重叠来叠印不同人物或背景。后来我看了DVD上的制作特辑（多亏现在翻版碟的日益专业精良化），才了解到片中涉及大量群众演员的大场面都事先在波兰拍摄，涉及主要演员的戏都在芬兰的录映蓬内拍摄。也就是说同一个画面，背景人物和主角分两次在不同地方拍摄，最后再用后期重叠在一起。主要目的应该是节省制作经费。根据DVD的介绍以当时的情况，一个波兰群众演员一天的工资仅需6美金。

主要剧情这里就不详细说了，这是Lars von Trier 欧洲三部曲的其中一部。你也可以从这部电影看到他后来《Dogville》等电影相关联的主题，以一个完美主义的英雄式人物为主人公，但最终主角还是成为了真实世界的牺牲品。

前天下午终于从台北回到广州。这是我第一次去台湾，尽管办入境许可证时波折重重，但总算在出发前一周收到了台北寄来的许可。

台北总的感觉人文和教育素质比较高，城市发展比中国内地要平缓，没有那种明天就要翻天覆地的恐慌。台北文化深受日本和韩国文化影响。

台北的的士司机很友好也有一定的知识面。在台北的最后一天晚上，我们遇上了一位女的士司机，第二天她还把我们送去了机场。机场的一路上我和她聊开，了解到一些独特的台湾现象。

那天上了车后，出租车女士热情地要载我们去买葱油饼早餐，我们自然也赞同。我下车买了葱油饼后，出租车女士告诉我卖饼的男人是从大陆来得。他很年轻来台湾做工，虽然他在大陆有一个妻子，但以当时政策他以为他再也不能回大陆，所以他就在台湾又娶了一个妻子。后来回国政策宽松后，他回去大陆探望他在那儿的妻子，而其实在他离开她不久，她才发现她有了他的孩子。二三十年后，孩子都已经长大了，而他才第一次见到他。后来，大陆的妻子决定跟他一起去台湾。所以现在他有两个妻子，一个大陆的妻子和他一起做葱油饼赚钱，另外一个台湾妻子则和他感情上比较亲近。出租车女士告诉我这样的情况在台湾很常见。

这次在台湾除了参加亚洲与公众创用国际研讨会，我们还在非常廊(VT Art Salon)举办了第二次媒体互换活动（Media Exchange 2)。除了预定的几位展示者：Christopher Adams， 王春燕，朱捍东，Jon Phillips方力中和我展示之后，林其蔚等几位台湾艺术家也播放和介绍了他们的录像行为作品。我很庆幸尽管时间仓促我们还是最后做了这次活动，特别是回想起媒体互换在广州的第一次活动，我想这样定期的交流活动对个体艺术家来说很重要。所以我们的原则是不排除任何流派或艺术形式。谢谢Christopher Adams ，蔣慧仙和非常廊的支持和场地提供。

我没有拍太多的照片，我把其中一些放到了我的flickr上。另外还有一些来自Rebecca MacKinnon的照片。她拍得比我的好多了。

非常廊的媒体互换2活动。这些是Rebecca MacKinnon拍的照片。

方力中和林其蔚（Lin Chi-Wei)

猪头皮和他的乐队搖滾主耶穌。我很欣赏猪头皮的表演，因为你无法辨认他的慷慨陈词和夸张的表演是讽刺还是真实的。不过无论怎样，他都有办法把自己和其他人表演弄得有意思。

By Rebecca MacKinnon

台湾新闻很有娱乐性。

台北故宫博物院

We are heading to Taipei tomorrow. In this five days trip, we will attend ACIA (Internationl Workshop on Asia and Commons in the Information Age) 資訊時代之亞洲與公眾創用國際研討會. On Friday night January 18, Jon Phillips, Christopher Adams, Wang Chunyan and I will be hosting Media Exchange 2 at VT Art Salon. Media Exchange 1 took place last winter, with a big group of artists and students lead by our artist friend Huang Xiaopeng in the new mega university town of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts campus. The initiative of the event was to present and discuss projects. Now it’s already one year! So to me it will be an “annual report” on my work.

Here is more information on Media Exchange 2. Sorry it’s a last minute call. But if you are in Taipei. Show up with your friends or your work!

Media Exchange 2: Open Call

Location: VT Art Salon
Address: Yitong St., #47, B1
Map: googlemaps , vtartsalon
Time: January 18, 2007 Friday 9:00 - 11:00 PM
Contact: christopher.lee.adams@gmail.com
Tel: 09-53-036-630

Open Call to Exchange Media: come and present your project this Friday at VT Art Salon in Taipei. Media Exchange 2 is a night of presentations about art projects, models of art practice and art communities. The set presenters of the night are Christopher Adams, writer and critic based in Taipei; Jon Phillips (www.rejon.org), Open Source Developer and artist from San Francisco; Deer Fang (www.deerfang.org), media and video artist from Guangzhou and San Francisco; and, Wang Chunyan, project Lead for Creative Commons China, and a Professor at Renmin University of China Law School.

If not presenting, come to have a drink and discuss the topics throughout the night. And, if you want to present, contact us as soon as possible. Otherwise, show-up the night of and we’ll have a projector and sound system to plug you in. （Email: christopher.lee.adams@gmail.com, Tel: 09-53-036-630)

Christopher Adams - CRUFT: The generative and procedural artwork of Robert Spahr (digital images) 
Jon Phillips - Collaborative art models with Overlap.org and Fabricatorz
Deer Fang - Straight Outta HK and Panda Express. (video screenings)
Wang Chunyan - CC Photo Contest in China

媒體互換 2：公開召集

地點：非常廊
地址：伊通街47號B1
地圖： googlemaps , vtartsalon
時間： 2007.1.18 星期五 晚上九時到十一時
联系：christopher.lee.adams@gmail.com
电话： 09-53-036-630

“媒體互換 2”公開召集：我們邀請您這個星期五來 “非常廊” 展示您的作品和項目。“媒體互換 2” 是一次展示藝術作品，藝術工作和藝術團體模式的活動。預定展示者包括Christopher Adams， 駐台北的作家和評論家；方力中Jon Phillips (www.rejon.org)， 來自舊金山的開放源發展者和藝術工作者；方鹿 (www.deerfang.org)， 廣州和舊金山的媒體和影像藝術工作者；和王春燕，中國人民大學法學院教授和創意共同體中國大陸項目主任。

如果您不打算展示作品，請來一起參加我們的討論。如果您希望參加展示，請盡快和我們聯繫。（christopher.lee.adams@gmail.com， 09-53-036-630）

Christopher Adams － CRUFT: Robert Spahr 的生成和程序式的藝術作品(數碼圖片）
方力中－ 合作性藝術模式（Overlap.org和Fabricatorz)
方鹿－ “直出香港”和”熊貓快遞” (錄像播映）
王春燕 － 中國CC攝影比賽