Week eight and a half: Beijing, the final countdown

Yes, it my last week and a half to make my mark on Beijing.

Hopefully, I am planting seeds that will blossom into amazing opportunities.

What did I hope to accomplish, but didn't:
1) learn more Mandarin
2) find more purchasing power (due to our ever decreasing dollar)
3) find a vintage track bike

But what I did do:
1) Get a smooch from a baby elephant!
2) Sea kayak around a tropical paradise and into pitch black caves
3) See a Gibbon Rehab Center for all those poor monkeys that had been captured as babies and trained to do very awful things for the jollies of the tourism industry!
4) Got acupuncture-d twice my last week
5) Go for a site visit with Henry to the Villas. These are the villas I have been thinking about.
The American- style villas at Yosemite...they go for around 4 mill US. Totally absurd.

One thing I would like to ask of you:

If you were to donate ONE book
to a developing photo library in Beijing, what would it be?

Please post as comments and so we might all share your generosity.
I'll be sure to include all contributing members in the final list.

Our Conceptual Library starts here:
1) I Want to Take Picture (the Twin Palm re-print, recently released)
2) (your book here)
3) Classic Essays on Photography by Alan Trachtenberg
4) The Contest of Meaning Critical Histories of Photography Editor Richard Bolton
5) The Burden of Representation by John Tagg
6) Against Interpretation & On Photography by Susan Sontag
7)
8)

Any and all answers will be helpful and documented for a project I am currently formulating
a million miles away. OK, so that was an exaggeration: it is exactly...

Distance is 11,012 kilometers
or
6843 miles
or
5946 nautical miles

That is traveling west from New York and East from Beijing.
You don't have to understand it, just fly it and it will make sense!

How about them nautical miles.

PS
for you clandestine Sailors out there, I want in.
Make yourselves known & tell me where to sign up for a private lesson.
It is not just a romantic notion I'm after, I have just added "sailing around the world" to my list of must-do's before I turn, lets say...50. (before 30, was learn to surf. before 40, is still a secret.)

I'll be screening Deep Water ASAP.
The story of Crowhurst is fascinating.
No macho stunts here.
Not trying to make this an endurance race to place one's self in nautical history.
Just looking for a good time with educational opportunities.
There are many ports I want to visit and explore.

If I were back in college, I would go to semester at sea, but now as a thirty-something...
I'd rather rock it on my or a friends boat and skip all the group planned activities.
The joys of finally being an adult. Freedom to not join groups.

If it is not translating, you should be having a giggle right now.

[ha ha, HA HA (fireworks in the background) ha...]



So, the sounds outside my window, are the sounds of explosives. Little explosives meant for use in celebratory activities and only allowed here for very special occasions, such as New Years. It is a time when any Joe, Mick, or Jennifer can buy them freely on the streets and set them off as they choose, excluding right next to diplomatic areas and Im sure other "sensitive" areas. I spent 10 RMB on some love rockets for Henry, so I could exclaim my love through fireworks! To be honest Im not sure which way is up or down and there are no "safety" labels, so they are decorating the coffee table for now, but we have to set them off before the deadline...sometime around when I have to hop on the place back home.

For those of you who have not watched a movie with me in a while, part of the joke is that I love having the subtitles on, even on English language films. It started with watching so many foreign language films. And on the occasion that it was a Korean film, I was amazed at how language often didnt translate well, whether the translator or due to cultural differences, a lot falls through the cracks.
Anyway, I became addicted to watching with the subtitles for anything that offered it. You would be surprised with even English to [English] translation can be very funny. Point is, I figured out I know more Korean than I thought and that I love problems with translation!

SO, Im in heaven watching DVDs "made in China" with subtitling for [English]. Imagine, you pop in a silly Rom-Com (cuz thats all Henry will watch) and the subtitles are a whole other story happening under the main story line. Sometimes, there another layer of having an Italian copy of an American film that then has to be translated back to [English] (am I blowing your mind, yet?)...basically, you get "Fur," an imaginary portrait of Diane Arbus, starring Nicole Kidman & my teenage fantasy, Robert Downy Jr., in a pretty provocative love story that probably went straight to DVD, but first was distributed in Italy to some critic that sold his industry copy on the black market (oh, sorry that was an episode of nip/tuck) anyway, you get the convoluted stream of consciousness flow of my story. End result is an pretty hilarious [English] translation of the dialog in the original film.

Guess you had to be there.

I'll try to bring home "Fur" for your viewing pleasure. I think there are a lot of these films with recognizable Hollywood stars but in totally unrecognizable titles that are just sold to foreign markets as part of delux packages with blockbusters. There are so many, it's truly a C-movie paradise. But the other unique thing is that lesser known art films that you may not have even had access to in school. Its like a film geeks dream come true. 10 RMB per DVD with cover. Criterion anthology after anthology of your favorite film makers. I even saw copies of the highly acclaimed British documentary series Planet Earth & The Blue Planet Seas of Life narrated by David Attenborough, which I had given to my sister and her husband for Christmas before I left Atlanta and have by very eager to see ever since!


MUST SEE FILM:
Antonioni's documentary Chung Kuo made in 1972,
just 2 years after Italy opened diplomatic relations with China.
He was invited here to document everyday life.
After viewing the film, the govt banned the film and was not able to be seen here until 2004.
get it here.

Italy 1972 Color
35mm 240minutes
Producer
Michelangelo Antonioni
Photography
Luciano Tovoli
Music
Luciano Berio

"...I don't believe that a documentary would have been closer to reality if it had lacked "organized" scenes. The singing children in the houses, and all the rest of the "representation" are obviously images that the Chinese wished to provide, but are not images forced upon the reality of the country..." "Everything I did in China was done in complete accord with the people who were there to accompany me. Usually there were eight of them. In Nanking there fourteen. Thus I never did anything that wasn't allowed and I never shot anything without their being present."
—On Chung Kuo Cina
(Chung Kuo Cina, ed. Lorenzo Cuccu, 1974; Film Quarterly, Summer 1975)

Read more here.

I am in the process of curating a film series as part of my residency work.

The idea is to show films are not easily accessible there, that look at human nature, everyday life, and how culturally specific our values and ideas can be. My aim to to show the universal humanity across cultural divides, but also how social value systems are cultural and sometimes very political.

1) Titicut Follies, Wiseman, 1967
2) Antonioni's Chung Kuo, 1972
3) How to Live in the FRG, Farocki, 1990
4) Does your soul have a cold?, Mills 2007
5) TBD

Possibles List:
Glaneurs et la glaneuse, Les (The Gleaners and I), Varda 2000
Gates of Heaven, Errol Morris, 1978



ON GETTING ACUPUNCTURE-D



I met a lovely new friend this week named Mia. After meeting her for the first time, we had exchanged ideas about art, film, china, the press, and acupuncture! I had been wanting to try acupuncture for a while, but after subjecting Meta to it, I thought I better find out for myself. Mia took me to a traditional Chinese Medicine hospital, where I had to register for the doctor of my choosing and just go find his office. We arrived at 1:30 to find that our doctor was taking a little nap after lunch. He woke up and began to ask about our ailments. I had a couple I could choose from but had to decide quickly whether I would be laying on my back or my stomach for the next hour. I went with the chronic problem- knots of tension in my neck and shoulders, meaning I could lie down on my tummy. Mia advised me on the best position to take, as one should not move around after the needles have been placed. I did my best for the next hour to remain still. As each needle was placed, I thought about how the doctor was mapping my body in a way it had never been done before.
The best part of the experience was the conversation Mia and I had while letting the needles work their magic. Through a dingy white hospital curtain, I asked questions. Sometimes for the doctor, so Mia translated and sometimes to Mia. Then she asked me questions. Its akin to dialog that happens between women while at a salon, but instead of when the next wedding was or what was the next fashion or the new celeb gossip, we talked about our histories. How we got to be where we were, identity, and cultural difference. The questions I asked the doctor fell flat. I asked about how he decided to study acupuncture. He said it was before the cultural revolution and back then people didn't decide. He has been working for over 36 years in the field. I asked if he knew anything about acupuncture of animals, if such a thing existed in China. His response: many people can't even afford acupuncture. I just responded by saying it is something that is catching on in the States, even for animals. So, Mia and discussed our trajectories and how we came to meet one another, as we let time pass.


MORE SOON



ETA Hot-lanta is February 25.
ETA Brookyn TBD

XXX
SJ