China Presentation for the 2005 Yokohama Triennale
(2005.09.28 - 12.18)

About The Long March Project - Chinatown
"The Long March - A Walking Visual Display" is a continuously ongoing and developing art project. Since being initiated in 2002, it has continuously developed along the route of China's historic Long March, as well as in international art spaces. It is an enormous project which displays, engages, and discusses Chinese and international contemporary art and visual culture. Its second stage "Long March - Chinatown" will be similar to the first part in that it is a process of ongoing development that will move across boundaries of different nations, regions, histories, geographies and cultures around the world.

Similar to when the Long March first started out, Chinatown must first respond to misreadings, those of stagnated and narrow recognitions of regions and borders. We want to widen and expand the methodological understanding of the history and geography of visual culture initiated by the first segment of the Long March to include specific works within specific contexts. What the "globalization of Chinatown" narrates is regarding the metaphor of repetition - its key terms are: Globalization / Migration / Chineseness / Post-Nationalism / Self Colonization / Locales / New Social Movements / Historicization / History in action / Site / Cross border / Movement / Translation / Transplantation / Mobile Contexts / un-regionalism / Repetition and derivation / Imagination of Asia / Consumption of Identity / Relationships of Cultural Production

The Yokohama Chinatown as first established during the Chinese Ming Dynasty (1871). Over 100 years of history, the Chinese have developed from first relying on three knives (hair-clippers, chef's knife, and tailor's scissors) to today where there exists a well developed and independent economic culture and social system.

In this context, "nostalgia" has been converted into a reciprocal experience and strategy. Within this self-recognized world, how do we use the vision and method of culture to deconstruct and distinguish between those spiritual/psychological spaces that either exist, have been extinguished, or completely altered, and the space left between the individual cultural discrepancies and the collective subconscious memory? How is all of this being covered and symbolized in the "ordinary"?

Because of the relationship the history of Yokohama has with today's social and political-economic conditions and Chinatown, the Yokohama Triennale presents an ideal context to realize "Long March - Chinatown." Within the Chinatown proposal, there are works by 5 Chinese artists, as well as 1 anonymous work, 1 Long March workstation, and 1 Long March installation. The carrying out of the works will create a connection between the exhibition space and the Chinatown. At the same time, a portion of the works will be carried out in Chinatown spaces, creating a relationship with the art audience and the people on the streets of Chinatown that lies somewhere between art and the ordinary life.