Very interesting day today, although not really for reasons to do with this project directly. After fruitlessly searching for books recommended by a contact at dinner last night (I’ll find some other way to get them), I went over to the Moganshan Road art district, where H-Space had a new show (Useful Life 2010) featuring new work by Yang Fudong. This time I really did relate to it. (Pity I didn’t when Frieze asked me to write about his work a few years ago.) In addition to a photo series called “International Hotel” of girls in 1980s-style one-piece swimming suits of the type you suddenly saw in China then, there was a 6-screen projection called “Film Night.” The screens all overlapped a bit, the cameras panned a bit, there were props from 1930s Shanghai and 1930s buildings, it was in black-and-white, and featured a number of lost-looking characters wandering around. Maybe it’s a response to the idea of modernity in China today as also shocking and disorienting. It was eerie and beautiful. I wish I could take my Magic & Real students to it in a few weeks. A few days ago I was wondering about how galleries displayed video here. I guess this is my answer. The space is darkened, discouraging people from wandering in and out and talking with each other or chatting on their mobile phones. The piece is short, and so people can come in, sit down, and watch it like a regular short experimental movie.

In the evening, a few of us went to a public talk by Prof. Wang Xiaoming of East China Normal University. It was called “The City Has Problems” and in it he talked about a website he’s been running in an effort to stimulate debate. He told us they wanted to use the same title for a book derived from postings to the website, but that they weren’t allowed to use that because it is too negative. That, he said, was the first problem. But then it became a New Left thing about the “logic of capital” that I felt was a stalking horse for talking about absence of democracy (which of course is something you can’t talk about at all). No air con, 30+, I confess I didn’t stay to say “hello” to him because I felt so exhausted by the end of it.