Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 14:58:15 -0500
(late) xpost from MCLC LIST - images omitted

From: Robin Visser <rvisser@email.unc.edu>
Subject: destruction of the Beijing International Art Camp
******************************************************************

List Members: I have just received the dismal news that the new Beijing
International Art Camp in Suojia cun, a quiet, productive artist
community built in 2004 that currently houses 126 artists, is being
demolished. Those of you who have visited this site know what a
travesty this is. I'm not sure if anything can be done at this point,
but if you have access to media outlets, please inform them. I have
attached several photos, and have more if listserv members are interested.

Robin Visser

===================================================================

Emergency in China's Leading Artists Community!!!!

The 100 Artists studios, built in 2004, currently house about 126
artists: as both studios and live/work spaces are being destroyed! Many
of Chinese leading contemporary artists have studios in this complex.
Several of the artists are considered as living treasures! The first
studios have already been destroyed with less then 12 hours notice!
Artworks have been damaged and artists and their families have been
displaced. We need your help now to save this community and to protect
the artists, their families and their artworks!

Where: BIAC - Beijing International Art Camp- Suo Jia Cun, the artists
village. West of the airport highway, north of the 5th Ring Road, is
facing imminent destruction.

*Background*: In May of this year, the Government informed the
landlord/developer that the construction was illegal and about to be
torn down. The developer had received a land lease from the District
Mayor, but the district Mayor did not have proper permission from the
central government. Interventions on different official levels as well
as the public attention resulted in the Government allowing the landlord
more time (which was understood as being one year) to try arrange the
paperwork and register the development.

*Action*: Last Monday (November 14, 2005) police informed the
landlord/developer that the buildings would be destroyed on Tuesday.
Yesterday, Tuesday, at 08:00 a.m., a police force arrived at the
compound, together with several trucks of removal companies and an
ambulance. One row of buildings was broken open, all furniture removed.
After lunch the entire line of buildings was torn down. The landlord has
now received notice that the remaining 90% of the studios have 10-days
to move out before destruction of the buildings.

The artists of Suo Jia Cun are working around the clock to reverse this
decision and are counting on the international press to make the
situation known.

We are also calling out to friends who have connections in the Central
Government to speak out on behalf of protecting this development.

*For more information, you may get in touch with :*

*Brian Wallace – Red Gate Gallery – 13701078721 – mail :
Redgategallery@aer.net.cn*

*Laetitia Gauden – Imagine Gallery – 13910917965 – mail :
laetitia.gauden@imagine-gallery.com*

*Li Gang – Pickled Art Center - 13910652494*

*Bradley McCallum, ConjunctionArts - New York -718-875-0373 or
917-418-3516 - mail : brad@conjunctionarts.org
<mailto:brad@conjunctionarts.org>*

*Pascale Geulleaume - CAAW (China Art Archives Warehouse)*

Beijing International Art Camp – Suojiacun – Chaoyang District – Beijing

November 15th 2005

At 8:30 this morning we discover that police are encircling BIAC (the
complex with more than 100 artists studios and in which we are living in
one). By order of Chaoyang district all of the artists’studios are to be
destroyed today. The entrances are closed and the D street is barricaded
by security tape, only the occupants of the street can enter the
barricade with a maximum of 4 people of their choice to help them
evacuate their artwork and for some of the artists all of their
belongings. A woman with a husband who has a cardiac problem asks the
police for more time and the police answer that whatever they have of
their belongings they must take as the bulldozers are ready to destroy
their home. Less that one hour later an ambulance arrives. As artists
want to photograph and film the destruction they say “because you police
are dedicated to serve the people and are going to do something illegal
then let us take the photos”. Throughout the day permission to
photograph is said to be totally forbidden but at other times during the
day artists are not stopped from photographing. In the middle of the
morning an unknown exit to police is slightly open and journalists are
able to enter the compound and film the events. Other friends and
journalists come later to film but surprised by the police they are
forced out. Early in the afternoon two bulldozers start to demolish the
homes: all the artists studios of the D street are destroyed with
windows and doors exploding into the street. Some artists have just time
to put their belongings onto the other side of the street.

Then around 2:30 p.m. the whistle blows and the police leave. We hear
that we have only 10 days to evacuate.

Martin & Priscilla Salazar

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Tuesday 15th November 2005

Today my home at Suojiacun was threatened for demolishment. My
neighbours at Beijing International Art Camp are also under threat of
their homes being destroyed.

I woke to find barricades in the streets of BIAC. Many police came to
our compound and our gates to the outside were closed. We were unable to
go out and others were not allowed in.

Homes in the next street to me had the locks on their doors cut and the
peoples belongings removed.

While trucks came to load the belongings, all of the residents of BIAC
were kept behind the barricades. Two large bulldozers then came into our
compound and destroyed the homes.

While I gather my belongings, not knowing when my home will be
destroyed, I am devastated that this unreal event is taking place.

BIAC is a significant site where artists working in all media live and
display their work. Professors, academics, International artists,
galleries and art curators also live and work from the BIAC site. I am
currently showing my artwork in Imagine Gallery at Feijiacun the village
next to Suojiacun. The gallery director Laetitia Gauden lives at BIAC.

Delegations of art patrons visit BIAC to view and purchase art works by
Chinese artists.

Within one week two delegations from America and England visired and
enjoyed a unique environment that does not exist elsewhere in the world.

Why this place is being destroyed is beyond my comprehension, for the
opportunity to live, work and visit this place focused on art making and
Cultural Exchange should be encouraged by all in Beijing.

Denise Keele-bedford

--------------------------------------------------------------------

For two years I have been working in Beijing International Art Camp-
Suojiacun. I was one of the first to move in and since then I have
enjoyed this very strange but unique situation. As far as I can remember
artists’ communities, mostly in Europe, are mostly people gathered
together by the urban squatters culture, which has its own goals and its
own “unwritten” rules.

Here in Beijing I accepted and enjoyed working in an artist’s community
because the spirit and the situation were completely different. BIAC
Suojia Cun studios are rented and used by Chinese, Asian and Western
artists of very different age, background and formation – Old masters,
new contemporary risin’art stars, artists-in-residence, visiting
professors and teachers of various academies and independent travelers.
The styles and the kind of art in Suojiacun are multiple and not
representative of only one approach, ideology or school of thought
approaching art. Working, walking around, exchanging ideas in this place
has been a very interesting and rich experience. Artists come to work
regularly or live in their workshops and even if it’s possible to spend
time together for lunch or tea, nevertheless everyone manages his own
privacy and working space independently.

Suojiacun is NOT A PARTY-ALL-THE-TIME PLACE, it is a silent, calm area
where artists mostly work and spend time together in small groups of
friends for an interesting chat or to visit an exhibition together.

Anytime that visitors, curators and journalists are visiting the place,
a sort of unwritten and unspoken solidarity links the artists who
introduce each other to their own friends and contacts naturally. I’ve
been often involved and invited to work and exhibit with my Chinese and
Western collegues and I have the chance to get to know them both
professionally and on a human plane. I always had the chance to approach
them early and directly and our relationships have been sincere and
respectfull.

My art and my human experience have both improved and developed in such
a simple and rich way during this time. I believe this kind of art
community represents a unique artistic reality and that its existence
and activity should be protected and encouraged by the local and central
authorities and government. The authorities together with the artists
should work to find a way to legitimate completely the Suojiacun art
village and preserve its value as a symbol of international artistic and
cultural cross-over and as a means to allow Chinese art to grow and
become well known and appreciated all over the world.

Alessandro Rolandi

November 16^th , 2005

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The Artist is an outsider. Outsiders are vulnerable. Vulnerability is
loneliness. Artists have, most likely, the loneliest profession in the
world.

History describes the artist as a free spirit. May so be, but this
freedom has always been oppressed and the free spirit has been regarded
as madness.

Creativity is, to many people, a madness. What you can not understand,
you neglect, or even worse, you try to get rid of.

In China, some 300 years ago, the great painter Bada Shanren was
regarded as mad. But was he really, or was it not possibly so that it
was the society that could not understand him that was mad, and thus
branded him as crazy.

The important American poet Ezra Pound was crazy. Possibly true. But
then again, artistry is madness, a sickness and because of that, the
artist is a soul outside the society, souls inside the secret world of
energy, creativity and imagination.

To stand alone is to be strong we hear. Yes, but to stand alone is to be
vulnerable. And the stronger, far too often, disregard the vulnerable,
because it is such an easy target. At least it seems so.

But the artist is also something far more dangerous than just villain.
For people outside the creative process, he or she is subversive. And
the society that refuses to accept these madness will try to protect
itself, its insularity, by stating that the outsiders are mad and
therefore dangerous.

History was made in the art village Suo Jia Cun Tuesday the 15^th of
November 2005. Riot police accompanied by bull dozers concretely stopped
the possibly most vibrant art experiment in the history of China through
knocking down a handful of artist’s studios. The vulnerable, the
creative, the outsider had, once again, to be regarded as mad and as
such, unnecessary for a society that can not understand that the only
thing history, has taught us, is that history has taught us nothing.

Lennart Utterstrom

---------------------------------------------------------------------

11月12日,星期天,一个湖北的画家朋友邀我陪他去拜访尚扬老师,电话联系后尚老
师抱歉说没有空,并约好11月16日星期三见面.

11月15日一早传来索家村要拆的消息,立即赶去,早已森严壁垒,警察已把索家村团
团包围,里面的人不让出,外面的人不让进.

北京的天空上有馅饼,没想到等来一个大馅饼.

下午再去时,尚老师的那排画室已如地震后的模样,看见尚老师,我上前叫了一声:
“尚老师.”就不知道说什么是好了, 尚老师说:”沈敬东啊,原来还说好明天来玩的,
可现在_____”我是不忍心看到他伤心的样子.那么一个德高望重的艺术家.

我不知道在拆与不拆之间有没有更好的办法,我只知道这件事以后,又有多少人再次
伤心.

沈敬东 2005年11月16日

---------------------------------------------------------------

The events of Tuesday 15 November 2005 will remain etched in the memory
of all present for a very long time. The sight of giant yellow
bulldozers entering the gates of the Artist Camp and proceeding in the
destruction of the many studio residences in D Block filled many with
horror. It was almost too difficult to comprehend!

How is this possible in a place so full of potential for creativity,
cultural exchange and human interaction?! The act of violence should be
condemned by both the local and International Community. Amid the chaos,
as the dust settled, it was a very poignant moment when an international
artist paused to pick up a tree which had been torn from the ground and
replant it in the recently dislocated soil.

Liliana Barbieri (Australia) Ri Williamson (New Zealand)

Artists in Residence BIAC.

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Chinese information: www.tom.com

 

__________________

with kind regards,

Matthias Arnold
(Art-Eastasia list)

http://www.chinaresource.org
http://www.fluktor.de

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