SAFARI 4, A SELF-GUIDED TOUR OF URBAN WILDLIFE, IS ON DISPLAY ON BEIJING'S NO.4 LINE

Beijing, January-May 31, 2012 - Columbia University’s Urban Landscape Lab, an experimental research lab of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), has launched Safari 4, a public art project installation on Beijing’s No. 4 subway line through which Beijing residents can explore urban animal life in the city. Safari 4 features installed videos and map brochures throughout Beijing’s newest subway line, offering riders a self-guided tour of Beijing’s most vibrant ecosystems. This project is the second installment of a series of global wildlife tours, which began in 2009 with Safari 7, a tour of New York City’s Number 7 line.

The 4 line is a physical, urban transect through Beijing’s most diverse range of ecosystems. The 4 line follows the former course of the Yongding He River, and runs across water networks linking the Summer Palace and the remnants of Beijing’s moat system. It connects historic civic spaces, hutong neighborhoods, and China’s “electronic avenue” before terminating beyond the Fifth Ring Road. Safari 4 circulates an ongoing series of video tours and maps that explore the complexity, biodiversity, conflicts, and potentials of Beijing’s ecosystems. Tours and maps for self-guided exploration of the city are available online at http://www.safari4.org and for distribution in all Beijing No. 4 line train stations. From January until May 31, 2012, Safari 4 posters will be on display in No. 4 line train stations and videos focusing on the YangShan Tunnel and Beijing’s water networks will be displayed on video screens inside of No. 4 line trains.

Safari 4 is the second in a series of urban wildlife tours. The project began with Safari 7 (http://www.safari7.org), a tour along New York City’s Number 7 line, in January 2009. Safari 7 collaborated with New York’s MTA to celebrate Earth Day 2010 and established the project throughout the New York City subway system. After Beijing, the project will travel to other GSAPP Studio-X locations throughout the world, including São Paulo, Mumbai, Amman, and Moscow.

Safari 4 is organized by the Urban Landscape Lab at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and the New York City-based graphic design firm MTWTF.

Safari 4 was supported in part by the Asian Cultural Council and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. The project was installed throughout the No. 4 line in collaboration with the Beijing Mass Transit Railway Corporation (MTR) and Balintimes Advertising Co., Ltd.

Emerging Architectural Practices in Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo Compared at Studio-X Beijing Conference

STUDIO-X BEIJING, August 11, 2010 - Nine emerging architectural practices in three cities experiencing dramatic urban growth gathered on July 10, 2010 at Studio-X Beijing for an event sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation of Columbia University, and co-hosted by Central Academy FA.  Xian Hu, Fan Ling and Zhenfei Wang from Beijing, Poly.m.ur, Systems Lab, and The Living from Seoul, and Ryuji Fujimura, Go Hasegawa and Osamu Nishida from Tokyo presented their views on how their practices engage the conditions of their respective cities.

The discussion was moderated by Jeffrey Johnson, Director of China Lab, Professor Mark Rakatansy, and Enrique Walker, Director of GSAPP’s Advanced Architectural Design program.  What emerged was a comparative snapshot of how contemporary architecture is being influenced by the rapid changes in these three urban centers.

No time in the history of Beijing has been as extreme as the past 30 years.  Engaging with this transformation has been challenging for an emerging generation of architects like Xian Hu, Fan Ling and Zhenfei Wang.  While much of the discipline and discourse has focused on high-profile large-scale projects, these three firms — by necessity, or perhaps, tactically — have built their practice on small-scale, and at times ephemeral, interventions within the city.  Where emphasis on bigness and speed in Beijing has neglected the human element, their work argued for a more approachable result.

In response to the rapidly changing social and temporal dynamics of urban production in Seoul, the firms Poly.m.ur, Systems Lab, and The Living are providing an internationally-influenced approach to creating new aspects of mutable urban networks.  Their work has moved away from more discrete forms toward complex accumulations and dispersals of iterative figurations.  This could mean designing individual buildings as micro-urban complexes or literally drawing the city into the building.

Tokyo has developed an active disciplinary debate on architecture and the city alongside the radical urban transformations it has experienced since the 60s. The city has oscillated between being at the core of the discussion (e.g. in the early 60s or the mid-80s), and being neglected at the expense of a discussion on the architectural object (e.g.in the mid-70s or the mid-90s).  Ryuji Fujimura, Go Hasegawa and Osamu Nishida positioned their practices vis-à-vis this shifting question, and discussed the way their work raises questions about —or exploits — the urban condition of Tokyo.

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‘Ink: One Day in June’ Exhibit Opening and Film Screening at Studio-X Beijing

STUDIO-X BEIJING, June 26, 2010 - “One Day in June,” opened on June 26, 2010 and featured an exhibition of ink paintings and abstract films of dialogues in ink between Qin Feng, Michelle Fornabai, Liang Quan and George Zhang.

The exhibition explores the ‘spontaneous’ aspect of ink in painting and abstract film. Spontaneity has a history in ink painting, ranging from the “spontaneous style” of the scholar-amateur painters of the Song dynasty in Chinese ink painting, to the “automatic writing” developed by the Surrealists used to explore an involuntary recording dreams and desires, in order to elicit the subconscious level of the mind to stimulate creativity. By definition, the ‘spontaneous’ is alternately described as a voluntariness or will, yet one which is inflected by, pleasure, desire and frame of mind—the humor, mood, disposition and inclination of the, impromptu, indeliberate, unmediated and unprompted. The ‘spontaneous’ implies a rawness of material and of untrained action balanced by self-control, determination and resolution.

The artists in this exhibition display a diverse range of directions, applying chance, coincidence, accident, or incidental circumstance to disciplined mark making, thus freeing the drawing process of rational control. The works provoke questions—how does spontaneity as a ‘flowing cognition’ experienced through varying occupations in time—by the gesture which moves from a moment to a memory, or by the repetition of improvised movements which accumulate experience in duration—transform our ideas of habit, function and program in the architecture of everyday life?

A series of abstract films that document a dialogue in ink between the participating artists will be screened at the exhibit opening. By documenting the artists speaking to each other directly through the medium of ink, the films intend to provoke a consideration of the ineffable aspects of ink

As part of Columbia University GSAPP’s growing Global Studio-X Network Initiative (www.arch.columbia.edu/studiox), the “first truly global network for real-time exchange of projects, people, and ideas between regional leadership cities,” “ink” is proposed to foster interdisciplinary dialogues among scholars, artists, curators, calligraphers and architects in Beijing and New York. Conceived as three panel discussions on “ink” which gradually broaden in scale and scope to be held over the course of a year—in Beijing, then New York, and again in Beijing—this series of “ink” events and “ink” exhibits will explore ink’s rich and varied potential as a medium to reflect upon elusive aspects latent in intellectual and artistic expression.

Participants:
Curated by Qing Pan, Curator for International Exhibitions, National Museum of China

Michelle Fornabai’s “Synesthesia Series” paintings explore the relations between material stimuli and their perceptual and cognitive associations. Synesthesia, an experience by which one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to an automatic, involuntary experience in another--sound to color, form, texture, or text—is engaged by painting, literally, on a song. “One Day in June,” originally inscribed on a piano roll for automatic play by a player piano in 1917, acts as both a medium (paper scroll) and an acoustic milieu for a process of painting over the course of the month of June. The original song, stretched to a period of six hours forty-eight minutes, provides the interval for each day’s painting period, and informs the gestures of the painting process itself. Repeated over the course of the month of June while in residence at Studio-X Beijing, Michelle Fornabai uses these strict temporal constrictions to explore the extemporaneous.

On the first look, George Chang’s (??) meticulously rendered mysterious images appear very different from Michelle Fornabai’s work, but surprisingly they share a kindred spirit in making. George Zhang begins all his images with a free-hand scribble that comes to him in a moment of fancy. From these unconsiousnessly constucted marks and forms, he makes a conscious aesthetic choice that brings an image into the foreground. Sometimes he starts with a random set of lines; sometimes with a patch of color. He often works with several paintings at the same time, leaving them unfinished and scattered on the table of his studio, and returns to complete them whenever inspirations strike. He allows the capricious images within him to surface according to his mood at a given moment.

Liang Quan’s (??) tea diary series (???????) are also memories of his thoughts and feelings. While George’s images reveal a diverse range of emotions and dreams, Liang Quan’s tea series aim at achieving an ideal Zen-like state through daily meditation. Liang Quan uses the marks left on paper by tea cups as a journal to record his daily peaceful moment with himself. These daily traces, though similar in appearance but full of subtle and varied details, echo the characteristics of daily life. While looking at the tea marks individually, we cannot decipher artist’s state of the mind, but looking at them as a whole, we sense a state of tranquility. By reinterpreting meditation, Liang Quan uses a simple daily activity to experience the essence of Zen.

Qin Feng ’s (??) paintings use gesture to emphasize the physical and performance aspects that are embodied in Chinese ink painting. While traditional Chinese ink painters aim at “having the bamboo fully formed in the mind” before putting down a mark on paper, Qin Feng amplified the spontaneous aspect of the painting process by trusting the guidance of his gestures. His brush process reminds us of Jackson Pollock’s action-painting which unleashed the artist’s emotion. On the other hand, his marks of action revealed the wide repertoire of Chinese calligraphy

Photos from this event are on our flickr.