Last week the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published my text about the demolition of Beijing Shangyuan Art Museum in June. It is available online, maybe for free by the time you read this. I have assembled screenshots with some commentary in English on my blog (https://banianerguotoukeyihe.com/2024/08/20/shangyuan-art-museum-in-the-faz/). What follows is the English version. Please email me if you have any questions. Thank you!
Best,
Martin Winter 维马丁 <dujuan99@gmail.com>
Shangyuan Art Museum. A Demolition.
Martin Winter
How can I write about it? Write down what I know. In detail. How did it start. On June 3rd suddenly there were people measuring buildings. Three or four people. Then one of us artists asked them what they were doing. These houses will be demolished. What? Yes, all of these. Our studios. Why? It’s all illegal. We are just measuring, they sent us. Who? The village committee. And those above. On June 4th too, other people. Where is Cheng Xiaobei? Does she know? She is coming to Beijing. Next week. She is the boss. One of the founders of Shangyuan Art Museum and the only person around willing to take charge, able to negotiate and decide.
I am one of the artists. Every year they invite artists to live and work there. Over thirty, sometimes 40 people. From early April to late October, sometimes late March till early November. Trees bloom in March, some bloom in February. But there’s no heating. Each year water is freezing somewhere in the walls. Doors and windows are not made for winter. The one really solid building, the big exhibition hall, is now gone.
The studios they wanted to demolish are still there. Except one building, B2. Right down in the middle, but directly next to a big outer wall, directly next to the film set. Bamboo pyramids, some as tall as our exhibition wall was. Zhang Yimou did a movie there, part of a movie. Or whatever. An assistant of his lives there. I have not been inside. But you can see into the area, from the balcony where I lived, from many houses. Grass, shrubbery, fresh green and flowers after rain, between and over bamboostructures. Quiet in the early morning, except for the goats on the hill and the birds and the frogs, but they only croak at night. The trains are loud, you get used to them. Two train lines intersect, one over the other, about five hundred metres from my balcony. Half a mile, in front of the mountains.
I was there last year too. Arrived April 13, left on May 17 or so. It was intense. This year there was also a foreign artist who stayed only one month. Ainhoa Azumendi from Spain. From Basque country actually, but she doesn’t speak Basque. Her mother is from Andalusia. Not very much information, but it makes us think of of the artists from Inner Mongolia. Only one of them speaks Basque, I mean Mongolia. Dorina, with her young daughter Chamin. Don’t know how they write her name. In vertical squiggles, I learned some, forgot. Charming. She should be in school. But running around in the artist village she learns Mongolian from her mother, and English and Chinese from everyone. Seems like they tolerate home schooling where she comes from. Maybe since the pandemic. Schools there have only Chinese, since 2020. Nolessons, no books in Mongol. Same with other languages, they say, all over China. It is worse in some parts, they say. In Xinjiang for instance.
What shall I write about? Last year I was there only one month, a little more. Not expensive, over 400 Yuan per month, also some for power and water and garbage disposal, maybe 60 or 70. One American dollar is seven Yuan, one Euro is also around seven Yuan. Between seven and eight. Hasn’t changed very much since thirty years ago and more. Not so much money there in the countryside. Most people earn very little. Fields and orchards, not very big. Fruit trees going into the mountains. And goats. Not enough to live. If you have a job for the village committee, in charge of anything, including artist’s houses, that’s not bad. The local government ownseverything anyway. And when the relatively new party secretary says, we are demolishing those on the hill, no problem. Up on the hill where there is no-one anyway most of the time paying for protection and keeping relations smooth. No problem at all.
So they began on June 3rd and June 4th. June 4th is taboo. The night before too. And so on. Everyone knows. Everyone connected with art. Or news. And so on. Because it’s taboo, you have to pretend you don’t know. Everyone knows, especially people outside of China connected to China. If you haven’t heard about it, you will. Or you might ask.
In Taiwan it’s February 28th. That date was taboo. Now it is a public holiday. That’s the difference. Very simply put.
Should I leave that out, the thing with the date? People noticed. Older artists especially. No, not the foreigners, except me. There were hardly any foreigners at Shangyuan Art Museum in Beijing on June 4th. Jackie had left on the 3rd, before those people came. She was just visiting, also for my birthday on June 2nd. And then she was gone.
I was there, and Seth from Capetown, and Goran from Belgrade. Three foreigners and over thirty artists from all over China. Some from Inner Mongolia. About half of us women. Almost everyone had been to Tibet, some many times. Spirituality and art are connected. Believing in and searching for other worlds. Some place where the party secretary and his minions are not supposed to demolish the local international temple.
Nothing much happened between June 4th and June 12, relatively speaking. Cheng Xiaobei came back. She thought she could stop them. They just want money, like before, she said. But it was about power. Showing their power. Demolishing a few buildings every two years or so. There are buzzwords coming down all the way from the top. Shallowing, thinning out, the three realms, whatever. Everything in and around the capital. No, those aren’t buzz words invented by foreigners. They come from high up, from Winnie the Poo.
Sounds absurd. Is absurd. But that’s how it is. No, not a forced removal of people. No plans for building anything else. There is no concrete reason at all, as far as I know.
In the first days after June 4th I thought we would be chased out. Everything would be demolished. But no. They only demolished the temple. The monks and nuns can remain in the village. In the buildings that are still there. They have always been derelict next to the temple. But that is often the case, isn’t it? And the library still stands. It was connected to the exhibition hall. There were three ways, connecting rooms and walkways on three stories. All cut through and torn away now. That’s how the library looks, torn. Except from the front.
We didn’t know what would be demolished. Nobody knew, not even the party secretary. Just that he would demolish. At first we heard, the library has to go. In addition to B2 and how many others. And the big one. But maybe not, who knows?
Cheng Xiaobei negotiated. The party secretary came into the library. I prepared tea and served it. They didn’t drink any. It was good tea. I tried to talk to them. Several times. You are chasing out foreigners! That‘s against policy! After the pandemic, there aren’t enough qualified foreigners! They are giving out visas right at the border for many passports! We have an artist from Serbia here! Isn’t your president going to Serbia?
Nobody was chased away. It is absurd, doesn’t make sense. But this is our world. Not the world of artists, the worlds of artists. Those are maybe more beautiful. The temple is beautiful, when it’s there. But the village around it, the district, the city. They stay how they are.
The villages in the mountains are beautiful. The mountains are great. Not very far from the Great Wall. Not so close that you walk there on foot. But it’s possible with a bicycle. I know someone who did that, rode his bicycle to an undeveloped part, unrestricted part of the Wall. And back home the same day. And visited Shangyuan Art Museum on the way, because I spotted him on the road outside and invited him in.
The temple was doomed, but still standing.
Shayukou is the name of the village. There was an art school, it is still there. Tall walls around it, keeping young people inside. But they ate outside, at a cantine in Shangyuan Art Museum. In the library. Some lived in the studios. Also where I stayed this year. The museum got money from them. So it was cheaper for us. That was last year, not any more. Maybe that started only in the pandemic, that arrangement. Not important now. Shayukou, sha meaning sand. Yu meaning ravine. Kou as in mouth, opening, entrance, exit. Mountain pass, maybe.
There are two villages called Shangyuan, not very far away. No, Shangyuan and Xiayuan. Shang and Xia, up and down. They have many artists. Many villages around Beijing have galleries and artists. They have been chased around for decades. At first there was the artist village at the Old Summer Palace. And so on.
Songzhuang is still there, even though much was demolished, much is being demolished. Zhuang means village. Zhuangzi, or Chuang Tse, the famous Taoist, or Daoist, almost as famous as Laozi, Lao Tse, whatever – Zhuangzi means one from the village, master from a village. Literally, I mean.
Songzhuang, like the Song dynasty. East of Beijing. In Tongzhou district. Songzhuang is very urban in comparison to Shangyuan. Many galeries big and small. Many artists. But spread out, in between all those urban structures. Songzhuang was promoted. Art brings international connections and money. Shangyuan Art Museum and the structures around it. That was also promoted. There is nothing else in the village, except goats and trees, a few fields. There is even a bus stop, right in front of our gate down by the road.
The bus stop is called Shayukou Dong. Dong is east. Xi is west. Donxi is thing, things. Singular or plural. Depends. One bus stop. Or two actually, in the village. One line, H27 to Huairou. If you walk 20 minutes into another direction, there are other buses to Shunyi. In another village.
Shunyi and Huairou are northeast of Beijing. Huairou is farther north. Capital Airport is in Shunyi.
Songzhuang and Shangyuan are a few hours from each other. Even with a car, except when you are lucky.
When it was clear they would demolish our temple, they called in pilgrims and believers from all over the country. Even though it was too late. Art is dead, that was the catch phrase.
And so Shangyuan Art Museum flourished once more, around its demolition. Music, concept art, installations, happenings. In the ruins, around the ruins. Films, documentaries. Videos, songs.
The museum is dead, long live the museum. The library is there, the studios are standing, except B2. It looks grotesque. It is grotesque, absurd. See above. But they are inviting people again. For 2025. Not just down south in Huangshan, even in Beijing.
August 6th, 2024