Screen Diaries

screensproject — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:59 +0000

Visited Shanghai Museum at the People’s Square, with Rachel. There were five floors of ceramics, bronze, painting, calligraphy and so on, very few screens and those that we came across for information weren’t in English. A very traditional museum, somewhat untouched as far as we could see, by contemporary display methods.

Janet Harbord

screensproject — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 00:00:05 +0000

We trekked out in search of a panorama for Rachel that we had been told about. The rather unlikely subject of the museum was the Chinese national anthem, a museum mostly riding on the knowledge that the anthem had been written in Shanghai, therefore this was a scene of birth. Despite the slimness of the topic in intellectual terms, the museum was rather fantastic in its use of new media. Various loops of old films and photographs playing on screens downstairs including Paul Robeson singing the anthem, and upstairs an assemblage of various ‘texts’: an interactive book which turns the pages as you glide your hand over its surface but it is a projection, a bank of one minute films of contemporary people who have a relationship with the anthem (the films start speaking when touched and can run simultaneously), wall texts showing the chronology of the anthem, and many, many photographs and film posters of poet Tain Han, who penned the lyrics initially for the film ‘Children of Troubled Times’, and Nie Er, composer of the music. In 1935 it is recorded and therefore distributed across distances along with the film version. Its significance in a national resilience to imperial invaders (Japan) was, according to the museum, critical. Nationalism born in a time of adversity, like most of the ‘best’!

The central theatre-piece was a panorama, recently made, lasting about ten minutes. The sequence was predictably chronological, opening with the silhouette of a boy with a trumpet, running around like a shadow puppet. The range of dissolves, shifts in colour and rhythm and sound affects made it a powerful experience.

Janet Harbord

screensproject — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 00:00:32 +0000

Today we visited Shanghai Museum of Science and Technology in Pudong, a huge, monumental building with overtones of Mussolini as Chris notes, an ambitions again of the architecture of airports: cavernous, diminishing human form, light-filled. The first exhibit we saw before passing through the turnstiles was a touring exhibition of penguins and other arctic animals. The products of taxidermy, they looked tatty and moth-eaten, past their best even in their after-life so it was a strange greeting.

Through the turnstile was a screen offering information on the museum at the present moment, statistics about how many visitors were in the museum and how the museum gauged the flow (few people = smooth on this morning). The first exhibit we entered was about robots and computers and the first exhibit was a row of three robots ‘dancing’ in pre-programmed unison. Children and parents were watching and taking photographs at this display, remarkable for the likeness of robot movement and human bodily gesture. On the wall was a description of robots as the natural extension of puppets: puppets were animated things that appeared to take on a life of their own. One might deduce from this and Chris’s comments about China reclaiming its own narratives of development, that this was a national re-telling of robots as part of a ‘long tradition’ in China. There were other robots that you could play games with, again machines poised to mimic human movement (a long neck with a downward ‘head/face that is moved from side to side and up ad down in response to the moves made by the human opponent). On the wall here were descriptions of the history of robots and the ethical concerns in human-robot relations (a writer had proposed rules that defined a robot-human contract).

Also in this exhibit was a game about computer processing and the dispersal and re-assembling of information, set out in the form of a game. Many children were playing this. We played a game of assembling an animal description and, if we assembled an existing animal, it strolled across a large screen. In the centre of the second room was a tree of TV and computer monitors. None of them ‘worked’ and so were rather unexciting compared to other exhibits, but they were all dated and showed an evolution of screen technologies at least in terms of differently shaped objects.

The following room was concerned with ecology, and was lit by ambient orange and yellow and green lights. The wall displays described the effects of pollution on flora and fauna, animals and human populations. A small semi-circular tableaux with a moving painted (animated at times) background, and in the foreground three mannequins who each came to life to tell the story of different moments in the polluting and clean-up of the Souzhou river (a peasant, a worker from the 1980s, a contemporary specialist in a suit with ‘clean’ engineering skills to offer).

Outside of this display was a number of circular glass tanks packed with gold fish and other kinds, also some stuffed birds that had become extinct in the Shanghai region. The incongruousness of the stuffed birds (like the penguins and seals) next to the high-tech displays was notable. The museum had a subliminal question running through it about different forms of life, or even what counts as life, a question raised by a futuristic relation to technology. All kinds of possibilities were packed into this space: people, robots, computers, stuffed animals (dead things), animated mannequins, animated pictures, live fish.

The last section we spent time in was about conceptual ideas and bodily experiences of energy: currents, balancing and weight in movement, energy created by cycling shown graphically as enough to run various appliances. Perception and energy were also addressed in certain displays. This room was fun and the few visitors there were all engaged in doing things, notably with attendants on standby to assist. I was impressed by the mostly sophisticated way that games displayed complex concepts. Not many of the displays seemed gratuitously ‘interactive’ for the sake of engaging the attention of the young.

Janet Harbord

screensproject — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 00:00:27 +0000

Today we went to Shanghai South Station mid afternoon. The approach seemed odd at first as you are denied a view of the station on the approach. You blindly follow signs including up two escalators where you can’t believe you’ll find trains in so elevated a place. But then the scene opens out at the top of the escalators as a futuristic, circular building of huge proportions, more like an airport than a station, full of light through the stadium-like domed roof and hard surfaces reverberating the sounds of human traffic like a swimming pool does. The structure is tiered as an outer circle where anyone can walk, a security check system through which you can go without a ticket, and a further inner circle where a ticket is required to pass through the gate and down into the centre, a lower space that the upper circle can look down into. This area was full of rows of seats in front of gates to the trains, holding pens where people looked dazed and vacant in a not unpleasant way. At the ends of each gate area were screens displaying the same content to all gates: advertising, train journey advertising/information, and a ticker-tape line of news along the bottom of the screen. In the centre of the lower circle a middle aisle displayed another screen with a message to the citizens, written in characters and without images.

As we watched we thought that the station had provided a space of relief from the anxiety that travel induces (getting to the station in time, being prepared, avoiding contingencies and so forth). Getting there, travelers were funneled into particular places at particular times, and it involved waiting at each stage. But waiting looked like light relief in this huge space where everyone was visible to everyone else, and the people who reached the central holding area automatically became the object of attention for those in the outer circles. The screens seemed to reproduce this sense of being on automatic pilot (the repeated loops of content), and also reassuringly bland in content (not demanding too much consciousness).

My over-riding impressions: guards blowing whistles not when the train is about to leave (the train isn’t visible) but at people lining up in a non-linear fashion, people carrying washing bags full of goods on poles balanced across their shoulders, people carrying plastic drums of oil and other stuff, teenagers with smart haircuts going home, a very alert baby strapped into a basket on a man’s back, a small drunk man persistent in his begging, rows of people filing onto the upward escalator as though they were scaling the heights, the whole scene organized as though it were choreographed for visual effect.

In the evening we had dinner at a French restaurant near the hotel, and then cocktails at a tower on the ‘other’ side, looking over at old shanghai. A mist came in and the lights were shaded out eventually, but it felt like a new information and banking area (Docklands) looking over at an old imperial quarter as if it were a relic. We had a long discussion about shopping malls and the history of the concept (I was trying to think through its relation to department stores via Friedberg), and enchantment as illumination, aspirational culture and boredom in stations (Rachel on Heidegger’s essay on boredom that opens at a station).

Janet Harbord

screensproject — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:00:19 +0000

Visited the Museum of Urban Planning at The People’s Square. This is a municipal building at the centre of the city and imparts a strong sense of civic pride presented in the newest designs. It reminded me somewhat of Foster’s gerkin building on the south bank, with its displays of planning and overview of the city, but on a more ambitious scale, of course! On the exterior and over the sliding doors is a huge screen showing public information films and notices.

Inside, the entrance hall a huge screen in front of a fountain dominated the lobby, screening a show-reel of city life (to be seen in various parts of the city all week, for example on screens in the subway, it featured alongside public information films and news). Like a modern day city symphony film edited together with a corporate gloss, the various aspects of life were triumphantly shown: leisure in public spaces (a middle age couple dancing together in a park/street), workers in a new ‘clean’ technologically-driven workplace, an assembly line of robots making cars, painted faces and traditional dance performance leading into upbeat ‘disco’ performance to represent art and culture, and various types of sport, all shot with increasing emphasis on activity, fast paced cuing and a rousing soundtrack. I was gripped. The concept: a monumental city where everything working together (harmony), where everything is vibrant but also clean and new.

The theme was repeated upstairs in exhibits about the economy, industry, transport, all in stages of construction and development. This was one of the overwhelming sensations of the city, that it is under rapid construction and is already working efficiently, that massive investment in transport, education, information and service industries, ‘clean’ manufacturing, is taking place. There is definitely a sense of before and after (before is old industrial labour and production suggestive of dirty factories and pollution coupled with remnants of imperialism, after is the new cleansed workspace of robots labouring and IT workers and engineers in primary-coloured workstations, and a new post-imperialist, post-communist China). In addition to before and after, the ability to imagine the future is paramount, and the urban planning museum makes this clear in its ability to persuade the visitor (me at least) that this huge development is indeed planned, controlled and centrally managed. It is a vision that is rapidly becoming materialized (the transport system for example, and the building of Pudong).

The central space upstairs was filled dramatically with a model of the city (a model city in both senses), a microcosm of the rows and clusters of apartment blocks, iconic high-rise buildings at the centre and along the river opposite the old imperial banking district, the raised highway running through the middle, the display being lit variously (and to some unknowable remit) as we watched.

And as we watched this display, with Chris and Rachel discussing displays and panoramas, ‘as if by magic’ there was a circular raised ‘box’ behind us, to one side of the model city. This was a 3D ten-minute film of the city as an animation, a fly-over and through starting with the old airport and ending with the new. We stood in the middle next to a railing whilst the film started, its captivating principles being its shift of direction (suddenly you go this way and then it reverses and you instinctively turn around to be in the wake of the movement), and its ability to change levels of perspective, to swoop down and beneath underpasses, low over trees, high around the sky-scrapers.

In the afternoon we visited shopping malls, eating in a food hall with a perplexing payment system and multiple food options. Escalators dominated the central pillar of the mall as though people ascending and descending were part of the spectacle. Many global brands of shop (Starbucks, Addidas, Mango) as well as brands that were as expensive as these but not familiar. Stopped for tea with Lu Xinyu and a discussion of documentary film. By the end of the day and as the light faded, we had taken the metro out to the Wujiaochang (five corner square) in the Wanda area, the site of the egg, and the place where local people ballroom dance outside the mall, itself a lower grade mall than the others we had been into. The egg itself was larger than I had imagined from photographs and more of spectacle in terms of its light displays. I also hadn’t realized that there was a quite large road between the egg and the mall where the dancing happens, so that the space is even more incongruous for a social gathering of dancers. We walked up the road to look at the new IT area being developed which seemed nicely landscaped but quite familiar in a mediacity generic way. We walked in the other direction to look at the extensive Fudan University campus. By this time it was dark and the various light displays on almost every building took over the landscape: the lights that block-outline high-rise offices and apartments, the ‘falling rain’ light displays across the whole surface of a building, the multiple colours and patterns that change and pulse, and defy you to look away until you have understood the sequence. The illumination of the city was far more elaborate and beguiling than anything I’ve seen in other cities.

We were pacing and stretching time in the hope that the dancing might start, but it didn’t. Maybe it was too cold, we were.

Janet Harbord

screensproject — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 00:00:42 +0000

Arrived mid morning and checked into the Donghu Hotel in the French concession, ate lunch in a Vietnamese restaurant. In the evening we met the photographer Chris has been working with, Wenhao and his wife, for dinner (food highlights were yam cut into straws with some berry sauce, Chinese cauliflower vegetable cooked with spices, fish soup). First impressions of the city: very calm, relaxed, unaffected by the presence of foreign visitors, beautiful fusion of a fading 1930s deco architecture and traditional Chinese buildings, a city of height and lights being constructed by the minute.

Janet Harbord

screensproject — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 13:04:52 +0000

The Mid-Autumn Festival public holiday continues, so we cannot ambush any more bureaucrats! Today, I went over to Hongkou district, the former Japanese concession area and where Dr. Yang Ji of Fudan was born. He walked me around the neighbourhood. Despite its historic value, it’s not an area I’ve spent a lot of time in before.

In a way, this was a bit like the Talaat Harb walk in Cairo, because it took us to a lot of 1930s and earlier cinemas, including the site of the first ever movie theatre built in China. I had not realized before that was in Hongkou. In relation to our project, a few things caught my eye. First of all, a new screen installation has appeared at the entrances to all the subway stations. Instead of a fixed plaque or poster, there are 2 screens where you enter/exit the station. One says it has news concerning that particular exit, but really gives basic information. The second one is the subway system’s equivalent of the slide show screens you find at the entrance to residential neighbourhoods, with 3 slides: map of the station, subway map, and map of the neighbourhood. They alternate at 30-second intervals.

The old movie theatres we went to first were on 3 of the four corners of a crossroads. So, this feeds into my idea that the intersection rather than the mall is the topography of leisure/shopping/recreation activities in Shanghai. Later on, when we got to the intersection of North Sichuan Road and East Baoxing Road, we discovered another situation a bit like Wujiaochang, with a big department store on at least two of the corners, each with its own huge screen. The screen on Bali Chuntian (Paris Printemps) there was showing a long (several minutes) public advertisement about how to evacuate a department store in the event of fire. It did not make me want to go into the store.

screensproject — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 13:03:19 +0000

What follows is fascinating story about a small corner of screen culture in Shanghai today. I wish it was part of our research, but I guess it is not! This is my letter to Katja Wiederspahn in Vienna. She and I are involved in programming some films for an event in Vienna next year.

Dear Katja

Yesterday, the visit to Mr. Liu Debao happened. This was very interesting indeed! I think it promises to be potentially very useful for the Vienna event next year. So, I will give a full report.

Mr. Liu has a photography business and is based out in the Putuo neighbourhood of Shanghai. You enter what appears to be a garage space via a roll-up metal shutter. Inside there is a sort of mixed space — part archive, part screening room, part office, part shrine. He has 10,000 + posters and 3,000+ films from the Mao era. The films include everything from documentaries and newsreels to features, including completely forbidden and banned materials. He also has a number of old projectors, old radios etc. In other words, the guy is a classic collector, with his particular fetish and an absolute obsession about it.

In attendance at the meeting were myself, Mr. Liu, Maria Barbieri, Wu Jueren, Professor Shi Chuan, Professor Chris Connery, and 2 of Prof. Connery’s guests. You may know Maria. She lives in Shanghai and has helped various film festivals, especially those in Italy, for a long time. Prof. Shi Chuan is in the film department at Shanghai University. Wu Jueren is his student, and working closely with Liu. Chris Connery is the University of California Education Abroad person here in Shanghai. Except for Wu Jueren, who I have just met, these are all old friends and we all know and trust each other pretty well (I think).

Mr. Liu was born in 1951, and says he is a child of the revolution. He was a Little Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution here in Shanghai. He was approximately 16 when it began. He rose high enough in the ranks to be sent to Beijing twice to see Mao (along with millions of others in Tiananmen Square, no doubt). He clearly is full of nostalgia for the good old days, and very proud of China’s independent achievements during this era. There is an irony here, I would say. He is really part of the generation that were thrown on the scrap heap of history when the government turned to the new market era. But he himself has acted in a thoroughly entrepreneurial manner to survive and thrive in this new era. He helps people to locate and buy Maomorabilia, and he offers to send people copies of the newspaper from their date of birth, etc. But most of all he has turned himself and his unique collection into something that can tour etc.

He explained that he started collecting when he found out people were just throwing their old celluloid out and he could get it for next to nothing. Now he goes to the far ends of the country and even overseas to collect the stuff. It’s sitting in his hot damp garage deteriorating, sadly. The authorities are not interested so far in helping him to preserve it. Either they want to take it from him (in which case it would disappear from view), or they don’t want to know because they are a bit embarrassed about the Cultural Revolution era.

Mr. Liu holds screenings in his garage and even in the alleyway nearby. Friends come round. They spend all day talking about the good old days. He screened the 1966 and 1969 October Day celebrations in Tiananmen Square for us, using one of his old projectors. The projector and Mr. Liu are as important parts of the whole spectacle as the slightly pinkish films. He gives a strong introduction and then off we go. It’s a bit like a benshi performance, except Mr. Liu likes to crank the soundtrack, with its exciting martial music, up as loud as possible!

We then had a long discussion about showing this material. He has been to Singapore and done screenings there. Maria is helping Asian Film Festival in Rome, which apparently runs in November. By coincidence, they are making the Cultural Revolution their theme this year. She asked about the procedures and permissions. Lots of talk about bureaucracy followed. But eventually we understood something important — he was talking about the bureaucracy in Singapore and the visas etc. He didn’t need to get any permissions on the Chinese side. He just went to the airport with his rusting cans of film and his projector and got on the plane. The Chinese authorities only care about new films, he insisted. These are his private possessions. (Again, given his nostalgia for the good old days, this is ironic, too!)

Maria is now going to see if Rome wants to invite him. If they do, then they can be guinea pigs and we will see if there is no problem when he goes to the airport again. In the meantime, I leave it to you to think about whether an evening with Mr. Liu Debao, China’s “Red Collector” (as he is known), would be an interesting and potentially affordable and doable part of next year’s exhibition.

Attached, a few photos.

Much love

Chris

screensproject — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:02:12 +0000

Today is a public holiday (since last year) to mark Mid-Autumn festival. So, no interviews etc are possible. Inspired by Monika and Zlatan’s work at St. Pancras and on the Edgware Road, I decided to go down to the Shanghai South Railway Station and observe passenger behaviour. I was planning to spend a few hours down there. But after an hour, I decided that was enough. First, there was quite a crush. Second, operating by myself, there was only so much I could do before my attention started to flag. And, third, as a custom-designed space, for the most part it seemed to me that things were well-designed. I did not take a camera, as I think we have already photographed everything I was looking at.

Overall, I would say it is absolutely clear that the priority in this station is getting people through it smoothly. The station is part of a nationally-owned network, not a private-public mix or anything like that. Its priority is transport, and that’s all.

11.50 a.m. I arrive on line 1 of the subway system. The subway station is absolutely overrun with people (even worse than I’ve ever seen before). Presumably this is because it’s a holiday, and for some people if they can get away today, they can stay away for a while. Once I get through the subway station and come out into the lower level of the railway station itself, I think about taking up a position to observe. But there’s not really anywhere to get a vantage point, and there are crowds milling about in various directions. To their credit, it hasn’t quite reached the pushing and shoving stage. There is a large screen on the wall near the exit, giving details of arriving trains for those who have come to meet people. This is the northwest exit. I do see people standing and looking to check which trains have come in, and then moving towards the exit. Apart from individuals putting kids down, stopping to talk to their family members or whatever, I don’t see anyone else stopping here or looking at any other screens (e.g. the TV screens with entertainment and commercials hanging from the ceiling). Realizing this is a space to get through, I join the crowds on the escalator up to the 2^nd floor level where you enter to get to your train.

12 noon. Coming off the escalator, I move towards the area where the security check is, which is also opposite the street entrance for people arriving by car. This means I am positioned looking at a large LED information board in front of me. The entrance in front of me and to the left is the North-West entrance, between pillars 17 and 18, which is very familiar to me already. It has two security checkpoints, but when I arrive only the one on the left is open. For people arriving by car, the screen is to their right as they walk in. But for people coming up off the 2 escalators — and they are the majority — it is right in front of them, and it remains in front of them as they go into that security line. For them, there is also a sign (non-LED) on the left as they come off the escalator telling them where some waiting rooms are, and another similar one is right in front of them as they come off the escalator. There’s a flight of stairs, too, but I did not notice many people using that. I noticed that someone had written “WC?” in black marker on the sign to the left when you come up off the escalator. I guess he had an urgent need, but I also see his point!

Turning back to observe people coming up off the escalators I count 30 coming up one of the 2 escalators in 1 minute. That means 60 a minute, or 3,600 an hour, plus whoever arrives by road, or in an elevator, or up the stairs — perhaps 4,000 an hour or 4,500. 3 out of 4 entrances are open, so this would mean they are serving between 12,000 and 14,000 departing people every hour (and presumably a similar number of arrivals), not counting those who are just using the subway station. So, they must be easily processing a quarter of a million people every day. No wonder they are not trying to slow them down or get them diverted into shops.

Everyone coming up off the escalator takes a look at the big LED screen. It’s right in their line of vision, and it’s the brightest thing around.

12.10 p.m. I move over to the other side, so that I can observe the people in line better. My position is not quite directly under the screen, but close. People in line are primarily concerned with getting ready for going through security itself. But they also do glance up and down at the big screen. Once they get through security, all the information is repeated (although, as we noted before, not in the same order) on another screen, which is right in front of them. They all look at this, then decide where to go. These screens tell them where to wait for which train, basically. What I would find a bit challenging is that the trains are only identified by numbers and not by destinations.

12.15 p.m. They open the right security line, because the numbers are getting bigger. People look at the screen just before they turn into the right security line, after which the screen is behind them. This line is closed again after 5 minutes, when the immediate crush is over. Since the flow from the escalators leads naturally to the left line, it becomes easy to judge when to close the right line again, i.e. when no people are walking over to take it.

12.25 p.m. I go through security and walk over to a point below pillar18 from which I can see the various waiting areas that go off the central aisle once you get through the ticket check and walk down the ramp. Most people go straight down, but some wait in the same area where I am and where the shops and restaurants are. I think these are people who are too early to be let down into the waiting areas already. The seats in the waiting areas are in rows. The TV screens are at the aisle end, perpendicular to the rows of seats, and the LED screen with more details about the train and telling you when to board is at the other end, where the doors to the corridor down to the platform open. Neither screen is in your line of vision. Nobody watches the TV screens, although some glance at it (and at the info screen) occasionally. This confirms my suspicion that the main function of these TV screens is to tell you it’s OK to wait here. A lot of the people who are not talking to their fellow travellers are busy with various mobile screen-based personal devices (phones, MP3 players, game players etc).

12.30 p.m. Move left to a position below pillar 1 where I can observe the central aisle. People are funnelled down to this via two ramps from where they get their tickets checked after going through security at the Northeast and Northwest entrances. In other words, I am at the North end of the station now, looking South. There is a steady of flow of people down the ramps (I count 109 over 4 minutes coming down one ramp). Once they get to the turn onto the central aisle, the brightest thing is the row of flag-like LEDs at the top of the towers marking off the different waiting areas to the left and to the right. Most look straight up at these to locate their waiting areas, and depending on whether their seat is in a carriage to the left or right, go to wait. This means the train and the platform are below, running East to West. The “flags” are marked with the waiting area numbers, too, although these are not lit up. It’s all very clear, there doesn’t seem to be any wandering around lost, and the flow is smooth and steady. There is a place you can go to here to get a snack, and also there are toilets and so on.

12.40 p.m. I walk past the Northeast check-in area round to pillar 5, where I sit on a ledge around its base, looking at the “soft seat” lounge, i.e. first class. Inside there, the rows of seats are once again arranged perpendicular to the TV screens and information screens, and there are also TV screens above the seats. People look right or left occasionally, but nobody stares at these screens. Again, lots of people are busy with their personal screen-based devices. No one looks at the screens above.

12.55 p.m. The “soft seat” ticket-check ramp opens, and a huge crush of people pours out of the East soft seat lounge and down the ramp, too many to count. They are in a hurry to get on the train, joining the crowd coming out of the regular waiting area.

At this point, I decide I’ve had enough and can go. I guess that Shanghai South does not have the charm of St Pancras. But in a way it’s easier to use. You don’t have to crane your neck or negotiate endless “retail opportunities” to find your way around. On the other hand, it’s not a destination in its own right, and I don’t think it is meant to be or ever will be. It’s very efficient as a space to move through.

screensproject — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:01:39 +0000

This morning, Dan and I decided to simply present ourselves at the Shanghai Gongshang Xingzheng Guanliju, who deal with the content for outdoor advertising on screens such as those at Wujiaochang, and see what happens. We weren’t expecting too much, given how they’d responded to our requests so far. But sometimes it is a good strategy to play dumb foreigner and just walk straight past all the “no entry” signs etc and see what happens. And I am amazed to say that this time it worked.

When we arrived at the building, armed with our passports and identity documents just in case we needed those to even get into the building, we asked to two rather gruff men in uniforms for the media office (who Dan had dealt with on the phone before). They sent us up some stairs to the 3^rd floor. This was a mistake, but one that I think worked for us. Once up there, we couldn’t find any sign of the office. So, we asked some people, and soon a rather flustered young woman showed us into a “VIP room” and asked us to wait there while she got someone from the media office. The VIP room was a bit like the sort of space you see Chinese leaders welcome foreign leaders in. It was all golden yellow (the colour exclusively used by Emperors in China before), with 6 very large armchairs organized in a sort of U shape. It was for me as primary guest to sit in one of in the base of the U, and for any host who materialized to sit in the other one. Both of those chairs have their backs to the wall, to protect us from attack from behind (!)

A couple of women in uniform appeared. Once they realized who we were, they were not very impressed, as they clearly had thought it was someone important. One of them was the person Dan had been dealing with on the phone, and who had always been in a hurry to put the phone down on her. Throughout what happened next, she kept asking why Dan hadn’t phoned to say we were coming. Of course, the implication was that if we had done so, she would have told us no one was available. Anyway, we made various excuses (my departure so soon after the public holiday etc), and in the end they got us Mr. Ying Jun (应钧),a vice-Section Head, to come and meet us. We only had a few fairly straightforward questions, which he gave official answers to, all of them quite hard for me to understand because he used specialized bureaucratic language, and also because I was a bit nervous. We recorded the interview (and I noticed that he appeared to be using his mobile phone to do the same thing!), so I hope that Dan’s transcription will help me to understand more.

Basically, I understood him to tell us that most of the people they deal with arrive quite well-briefed and knowing what to do, because they have already dealt with the Urban Beautification Offices at the local council level before they arrive at this City-level office. In other words, they are stage 2 in the process for an applicant. (Dan comments: I think he pretended not to understand your question purposely. Not because your expression isn’t clear enough. He played dumb too. I don’t know why he refused to tell us if all applicants are well-briefed. According to my experience of dealing with other bureaucracy, they’re indifferent and gruff. You have to come again and again to understand their rules of game. They should have got tons of complaints on their complicated procedures.)

I asked about the levels of compliance with regulations and undertaking processes of application, especially for small shops and so on, who might simply have a “walking word” screen, the content of which changes daily. I’m not 100% confident that I understood his reply. But I think he said that if those “walking word” screens were simply informing people of the nature of the business, then it was not really necessary for his office to deal with them, but that in theory any commercial content intended to promote sales did come under their remit. (Dan explains further: He meant that if you use the screen itself to make profit, like rent the screen out to a media company to broadcast other information than promote your own business. You need to apply to their department.) They had not done any actual research into levels of compliance, but they were aware that obviously not everyone gets permission right away. Inspections and checking out what is happening in the field is delegated down to local level offices, and is not something his office deals with directly.

We also had a bit of a discussion about non-advertising content. For example, what if you intended to use a screen to put up an artwork? In principle, all non-advertising content would need to go to be approved by the local level Cultural Bureau. Certainly, you can’t just go putting things up in public without permission. (In reality, people do stick phone numbers for various dubious services all over the place, and the local city government tears them down, but obviously, an LED screen would be harder to use without the city government noticing!). (Dan adds: He says that Zhongguo Guangdian Ju (broadcast and TV and Movie administration) is in charge of non-commercial art-works. Actually my friend told me, usually if your work is not ad, you just need to talk to the owner of the Screen to get their permission. My friend in Beijing Film Academy is doing research on installation art-works in public space. He might know more about that. I’ll check with him later.)

Dan asked about ads that were nationally produced. Before those are shown on a local LED screen, do they need local level approval? My understanding is that just so long as they are nationally approved already, then there is no need for that. (Dan adds: He says that all TV or Movie ads are no need to get approved before they were shown. If anything goes wrong, Gongshang Ju might punish them. Only ad in public space, especially two dimensional ads, need to be approved before put it on. That’s my understanding.)

After this huge achievement, we had lunch and then went book shopping, and also made some progress there. The heat was ghastly. There were huge crowds on Fuzhou Road, where the bookstores are, because there is also a famous producer of the hockey-puck-sized “mooncakes” everyone is supposed to give on Mid-Autumn festival tomorrow. In the evening, met with Tani Barlow of the journal Positions, who would like me to submit an article on the Shanghai side of our project. Given that they are one of the most prestigious Asian Cultural Studies journals, this is a good opportunity I must try to take up.