The Long March flag signifies freedom to move into public
spaces as well as
providing a banner for the general public to enter into traditional art
spaces.
Courtesy of the Long March Project.
LONG MARCH PROJECT
People's Republic of China with Kah Bee Chow and
Daniel Malone
Lantern Festival - Albert Park, 2- 4 March 2007,
ARTSPACE,
The Gus Fisher Gallery,
ST PAUL ST, radio transmissions and online
Take part in the No Chinatown survey
Download the No Chinatown architecture competition entry form
The Long March Project is a complex and multifaceted art and social project that uses visual display to reconstitute and revisit different contexts, geographies, histories, and cultures across borders and limits. The Project, like the journey itself, is continually developing, marching through local and international spaces and acting as a platform for mediation, communication, discourse, and debate. In collaboration with artists, curators, scholars, and the general public, the Long March engages with local contexts, exploring and imagining new possibilities and experiences for the understanding of the relationship between art and society.
Since 2002, the Long March Project has been simultaneously marching along three parallel strands. First, it has continually returned to the Long March route. A second strand of the Long March Project is the Long March Space in the new Beijing art district of Factory 798. The third strand is international. The Long March's international projects are not an arrival into international space. Rather, they are a new departure point, taking the form of discussions, artworks, exhibitions, and investigations into bodily experience and collective memory, migration, the urban, and rural construction, and the connection between history and the present.
- Lu Jie, Chief curator, Long March Project
No Chinatown
For the 2007 Auckland Triennial, the Long March - Chinatown will be brought to Auckland in a collaborative project with artists Kah Bee Chow and Daniel Malone entitled No Chinatown. The project takes a public minded approach by utilising public spaces not just as exhibitions sites, but also involving the contributions of many other individuals, communities and collectives as a vital part of the work. The metaphor of 'Chinatown' will be used to engage with the Triennial's curatorial theme of turbulence, and the subsequent dynamics of immigration, tourism and cultural diaspora raised in the process of globalisation. Within this framework Chinatown serves not as an illustration of identity politics or post colonial discourse, but rather, as a metaphorical site to explore general notions of performed and constructed identity, as well as focusing on the local context of Auckland, a city, which has been deemed a 'high-immigration' city.
No Chinatownwn will engage with the ambivalent social atmosphere, at times ambiguously, at times provocatively, around the relationship between Auckland and its Chinatown(s). Should Auckland have a Chinatown? Does Auckland in fact already have Chinatown(s)? What indeed constitutes a Chinatown or any (self) determined cultural identification with place? No Chinatown will raise these questions and the discursive space for any number of simultaneous answers, sometimes contradictory, acting as a catalyst to precipitate the emotional state of Auckland; at times lamenting a lack, or proposing an action, at others giving voice to confusion or resisting over-determination. It will engage in the Triennial's broad discourse around multiculturalism, as well as the unique context of Aotearoa New Zealand's bicultural geo-politic and the notion of Maori as Tangata Whenua (people of the land).
- Long March Project, Kah Bee Chow and Daniel Malone
Background
Initiated in 1999 by artist, Lu Jie, and realised in 2002 with co-curator Qiu Zhijie, the Long March involves the collaboration of over 250 Chinese and international artists from Sites 1-12 (3000 miles) along the historical Long March route. Taking the Long March Space in Beijing as site 13, Lu Jie continues to organise projects at various sites along the Long March route and throughout China, for example, The Great Survey of Papercuttings in Yanchuan County, a massive survey project in north-western China to determine the current state of papercuttings in one Chinese county. Additionally, the project has moved into the international sphere, conducting exhibitions and museum shows, as well as selected Long March projects. Recent exhibitions include Le moine et le demon - An Exhibition on Contemporary Chinese Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon, 2004; Techniques of the Visible: 5th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum, 2004; Do You Believe in Reality?: 2004 Taipei Biennale, Taipei Fine Art Museum, 2004; Art Circus: Jumping from the Ordinary, 2nd Yokohama Triennale, 2005; Classified Materials: Accumulations, Archives, Artists, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2005; How to Live Together: 27th São Paulo Bienal, 2006 and 5th Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia, 2006. For further reading see Lu Jie and Qiu Zhijie, Long March - A Walking Visual Display (New York: Long March Foundation, 2003). In association with the 3rd Auckland Triennial the Long March Project will be artists in residence at Elam School of Fine Arts in February and March 2007. The Elam Residency Project brings remarkable and talented artists from all over the world to New Zealand. The Residency Project and students will assist in the production of No Chinatown, allowing students of the National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries an insight into the practice and working methods of the Long March Project.
