.Last Sunday, one of my Chinese friends and I went to the Shanghai Power Station of Art (上海当代艺术博物) to check out the 11th Shanghai Biennale, Why Not Ask Again: Arguments, Counter-Arguments, and Stories. The Shanghai Power Station of Art is an interesting building itself, even without the art. Established in 2012 in a renovated power station on the site of Expo 2010 the Power Station of Art maintains an industrial feel; one of the massive ceiling mounted cranes from when the Power Station of Art was just a power station still hangs over the lobby and the area around the Power Station of Art is dominated by the Power Station's now dormant smoke stack (now used as a giant thermometer). The plan for Why Not Ask Again: Arguments, Counter-Arguments, and Stories is to "emphasize the possibilities of South-South dialogue;" basically discusses issues the countries and the people of the Indian subcontinent face such as nuclear war (an issue since both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers who don''t like each other that much), poverty, poor working conditions, immigration, and pollution. While I wouldn't hang any of it in my house, the individual pieces on the three massive floors of art varied from the very interesting to the very weird. Their was one piece about the futility of nuclear war which I quite liked that let you walk through the simulated nuclear wastes while blasting the hit North Korean propaganda song No Motherland Without You or Ode to Kim Jong-Il. Other pieces involved light shifting based on your position in the room (it is hard to describe and was impossible to photograph) and a room filled with strobe lights that felt like one of the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques." Why Not Ask Again also included a large amount of rather artsy multimedia displays. We saw about 2/3s of Why Not Ask Again before getting hungry. Since my friend had to return to the Minhang campus, we had lunch at a beef hot pot place I previously visited in Global Harbor and knew was good. I am pleased to stay it was still good the second time. Finally we got fresh juice and strawberries in Global Harbor before walking back to campus and parting ways. While I enjoyed both the juice and the strawberries my juice (pineapple-mango-pear) would have been significantly better with some rum.
1 Comment
Dad
3/9/2017 03:46:11 am
I like the powerstation building and concept of using it for a museum more than the actual art
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AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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