Just returned from Beijing after 10 days of working on an installation for NOTCH festival 2011. NOTCH festival is an annual event in China showcasing Nordic and Chinese artists and designers, and this year we collaborated with a local Chinese designer called Been, who we met last time we were in Beijing. We got along so well, and now we just want her to move to Denmark!
This year’s theme for the festival was Feedback, and all the artists used recycled materials found in the hutong area where the factory and exhibition space is situated.
Our work consisted of 4 large weaving frames hanging from the ceiling. In between the cotton strings we wove pieces of colourful paper from used cigarette boxes.
If you happen to be in Beijing, you can go and see the whole exhibition at 8 Dawailangying Hutong, Dashilan, until October 9th. Other participating Nordic artists were Jacob Sikker Remin from Denmark, Tuomas Laitinen from Finland, Gudrun Kristjansdottir from Iceland and Baltos Kandys from Lithuania.
We are very soon heading off to China. We’ll be doing a project with Notch festival, which we are really looking forward to. We’ll be working on an installation on an old factory building, close to Tiananmen Square in Beijing, in collaboration with our friend Been, who we also met last time we were there.
If you want to order something from our webshop while we’re away, you’ll have to be patient and wait until we get back, late September. Thanks!
Sofie spent Monday and Tuesday this week in the lovely city of Berlin, working on a print for upcoming gallery Limited Works, who will feature prints from great artists, such as Mathias Malling Mortensen, Stine Tranekjær, Husk Mit Navn, Helle Mardahl and Andreas Emenius (among others). Limited Works is focusing on hand printed screen prints in small editions, and is initiated by Morten Halborg-Møller (also known as MHM1). The idea behind Limited Works is to present great art of high quality at affordable prices for everyone.
All the prints will be printed by Louise Drubigny, a French artist and printmaker living in Berlin. It was such a pleasure working with a real pro, who really took the time to make everything accurate!
Here’s a sneak peak of the 3 colour print and some pictures from the work in progress.
By the way, we have now uploaded some more photos and information about our workshop at LAFA on our website!
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The day before yesterday we had a guest talk at CAFA, Central Academy of Fine Arts – our last one on this trip. Our Chinese friend, Been had been so kind as to arrange everything for us. We also got to meet Professor Xiaoyong, a famous designer and professor of graphic design at CAFA. We didn’t have much time to see the school, but hopefully we’ll be able to go back one day and see more.
After our guest talk, we had a cup of coffee with our Danish friend Sidsel Tuxen who is studying at the architecture department at CAFA this semester. She had made two new Chinese friends with really cool Western names – Highway and Oxygen. Later Oxygen, Been and a bunch of her friends then joined us for dinner at a nearby restaurant. We ended the day with Jessica on a roof top bar with a magnificent view of the forbidden city. Beijing is a magical city.
Yesterday we did some regular tourist business, and we also visited our friend Jessica at the architect office where she works, called Dada.
And now our trip is nearly coming to an end! It has been an absolutely amazing experience for us to visit China. Tomorrow we are flying back to Denmark, back to our little basement studio. We are looking forward to seeing our friends, family and most of all our (other) better halves…
Sculptures at CAFA
Tourist business included visiting the galleries of 798. This photo is from Olafur Eliasson and Ma Yansong’s collaboration at UCCA. It’s a giant room filled with colored lights and smoke, an amazing experience.
2 Comments 798, Been Design, Beijing, CAFA, Ma Yansong, Olafur Eliasson, Sidsel Tuxen, UCCA, Xiaoyong
We are now in Beijing, staying with our Swedish architect friends in a very charming hutong area very near The Forbidden City. Not much internet access, so there will probably only be a few updates from here. But some great news is that we have been invited to do a small guest talk at CAFA, Central Academy of Fine Arts, which is the no. 1 arts academy in China, and we are of course very exited about this.
Today we are going meet a local friend, Been, and see more of Beijing. We are already in love with the city!
Caroline and Jessica live here
Our time at LAFA is nearly up. The workshop ended yesterday, where all 80 students brought their food plate to the students’ cafeteria where we set up a gigantic dinner feast of colourful meals. The table was almost 45 meters long! We then had to chose which students to give special awards – something they seem to like a lot in China. So we did as we were told, although this goes a little against Danish teaching spirit as we know it. When we get home we’ll upload photos of the whole workshop on our website.
Today we went on a sightseeing trip organised by Miss Yu from LAFA’s Shenyang campus. We were taken on a 2 hour drive to a neighboring district, where Miss Yu’s parents live. Actually we weren’t quite sure what was going on as the driver got lost several times, but when we reached the destination and Miss Yu’s mother handed us swimming suits with matching swimming hats, we knew that we were in for another special experience! And true enough, the next minute we found ourselves submerged in a hot spring, in matching retro swimsuits and hats. None of the local guests hesitated to stare at us curiously, and consequently Mu is now in the possession of a handful of potentially dangerous photos. After the hot bath, we went to have a delicious huge lunch with Miss Yu’s parents. They had been preparing it for a week, and we were very touched by their kindness and hospitality.
Later there was an award ceremony at the packaging studio, where we gave the students awards in 6 different categories – it was quite like the Oscars! The president of LAFA, Mr. Sun Ming, came by and it was a great pleasure meeting him. Afterwards there was a lovely buffet and a lot of group photographing with the students. Now our cheeks hurt from smiling to the cameras.
Sweet Mu got all teary at dinner, thinking about our departure tomorrow. “Time is frozen and I have so many memories” he philosophically stated. We will surely miss him! We make a brilliant trio.
Just now a crazy thunderstorm broke out, so hopefully we can fly to Beijing tomorrow.
Student work
Student work
Student work in the cafeteria
Paper dinner for 80!
Cheers!
Here we are in yet another group photo, this time with Mu, Miss Yu and her parents
Today we got to see all of the students’ amazing homework assignments of carefully folded paper food, and we gave most of them a little talk about which direction to take their project. We were so impressed by their work! All the students are working on individual paper-meals, and tomorrow we are going to set up a huge dinner table for 80 in the students’ cafeteria. Hopefully this will result in a striking installation and some good photographs.
For lunch we discovered a whole new part of LAFA campus: an underground shopping mall and food court. This school is huge! And later Mu and Dong took us to Discovery Land, an amusement park close to campus. We tried some different rides, but stayed clear of the wild ones, as we were told that the roller-coaster recently ran wild and wouldn’t stop for 25 minutes, resulting in cascades of vomit. Brave Mu is doing such a good job in taking care of us – he even took the lead inside the haunted house, warding off all danger with a careful little voice saying “Hello Ghost?” while the rest of us followed cautiously behind. We were given 3D glasses at the entrance, only to discover that everything in there was three dimensional anyway and the only purpose they seemed to serve was to blind our left eyes.
Examples of paper meals folded by our students at the Packaging Design department. So nice!
Detail of paper food
Some of the students’ other work – they they are experts in folding paper
Students in class
We tried this one, much fun!
Our new press photo?
Yesterday was the first day of our workshop with the students of LAFA. A lot of details got lost in translation but we’ll see tomorrow if they understood what the homework was about. We’ve asked the students to fold a plate of food out of paper, so hopefully we’ll see lots of nice paperwork tomorrow. After the workshop we just walked around on campus and did some shopping in the students’ supermarket, where there’s a special sale on chicken feet.
Today we went on a sightseeing tour of Dalian with Mr. Lu (one of the teachers at LAFA), Mu and one of the founding sisters of Dalian based design company, Aissen. They took us out to the shore and it was very nice to see some more natural and picturesque surroundings, without skyscrapers or construction sites. It seems like the Chinese never sleep, and are always keen to build new buildings all over the place.
After another fabulous lunch, we went to meet the founders and designers of Aissen. We gave them a short introduction to our work, and they showed us some of theirs in return. After that we shared our experiences of Danish and Chinese design culture and traditions. It seems like it’s a tough world out here, and we felt very privileged to have the freedom that we have in our work. The two sisters of Aissen started their company 8 years ago and it has now grown to a staff of 15 people. Maybe we’ll also have 15 employees in 4 years… but probably not!
We can’t get over how extremely friendly and hospitable the people we meet out here are. They drive us around, pay for our food and give us gifts and make us feel very special and welcome.
Students sketches for our workshop
Amazing painting skills in the textile studio
Thread and yarn in the tapestry studio
The LAFA basketball court
View of Dalian from a hill
A kite over Renmin Square
Meeting with Aissen: once again Mu is translating our words to the staff and to the two sisters and managers to the right
The design team at Aissen
View of Dalian from the Aissen office on the 27th floor. Before we came, we had never even heard of Dalian, and it turns out that there are more inhabitants in this city than in the whole of Denmark! Not so surprising maybe…