Aesthetic Cartography

I’ve often stated that I prefer new experiences to new stuff, so last October, along with the new Jay Chou 周杰伦 CD, foam backing for some African batiks (so that I can use them as acoustical treatment), basil and rosemary plants, and a fresh-baked apfelkuchen, Jutta told me there was one more present coming, but that I would have to wait for a free and sunny afternoon to enjoy it.

So about three weeks ago, when I was planning an excursion to Pudong to pick up a new Xbox 360 (my old one, a first generation Japanese model, finally bit the dust, continuing to display the three red lights after having been repaired several times) and have dinner with my first Chinese teacher Shi Linna 施琳娜 (she’s also Jutta’s latest, last year’s Christmas present), Jutta suggested we might want to leave a little early.

When we emerged from the Dongchang Lu subway stop, she revealed my birthday destination, already dominating our field of view: the Shanghai World Financial Center 上海环球金融中心, by some measures the tallest building in the world, designed by New York’s Kohn Pederson Fox and built by the Japanese firm Mori Building.

The Shanghai World Financial Center at Dusk

Superlatives can be tricky, depending on your yardstick, but Shanghai sure loves its superlatives. The spire of the Taipei 101 building in Taipei reaches 509 meters, which is why it’s generally considered the world’s tallest building. (Antennae don’t count, which is why the Sears Tower’s 527.3 m antenna in Chicago doesn’t place). But the SWFC has the world’s highest roof, at 492 meters, and the highest occupied floor, the Observation Deck, at 474 meters. It’s also got the tallest hotel, surpassing the Grand Hyatt at the Jin Mao Tower just next door (though presumably the Jin Mao retains title to the world’s highest post office). (Of course when the Burj Dubai is completed, at over 800 meters, it will dwarf everything on the planet; it’s already the world’s tallest free-standing structure, though it won’t be done for another year or so. I checked in on progress last April, and it’s crazy; ooh, look at my Facebook pictures!)

For me, the jury was out on the SWFC for a long time. I’ve always been a fan of the Jin Mao Tower 金茂大厦 (designed by Chicago’s Skidmore, Owings and Merrill), striking, bold, yet tasteful, mindful of its geographical, cultural, and historical environment. At first it struck me as goofy to see an even taller building going up right across the street, instead of spreading out to create a better balanced skyline. And of course, it’s impossible to ignore the SWFC’s remarkable resemblance to a gargantuan bottle opener. The form of it seemed a bit too simple to occupy so much real estate.

Other Shanghai residents have also voiced their skepticism; I got an earful from a taxi driver the other day about how the SWFC resembled a menacing Japanese tanto, the traditional samurai short sword, an association no doubt exacerbated by the construction company’s Japanese provenance. The tale is often told about how the opening towards the top of the building was originally designed to be a circle, but that it too closely resembled the rising sun of the Japanese flag (the building already being located on Shanghai’s east side), met with protests, and was traded for a trapezoid.

But as we examined the building more carefully, I found it surprisingly slippery to get a handle on such a simple form. I had already noticed how its actual height could be hard to gauge; even though it’s located right next to the Jin Mao tower, the relationship between the two buildings, and to other buildings in the Pudong skyline, changes constantly based on one’s perspective, and there are many vantage points from which the Jin Mao building still appears taller.

Two Views of the SWFC

Even from up close, the shape and scale of the building remain elusive. Two of its edges taper as they recede into the sky, playing with your sense of perspective, so that you’re not sure if the building is narrowing, or if it’s merely receding into the distance. At times it looks flat, at other times curved, sometimes symmetrical, sometimes asymmetrical. Its form remains ambiguous, requiring you to continuously engage and evaluate it, which strikes me as a good quality for one of Shanghai’s largest objects to possess, positioned, as it is, for millions of people to see and contemplate each day.

So after I finally surrendered a hard won thumbs-up on the building’s exterior, we ventured inwards. The SWFC’s basement courtyard houses some retail stores (including a Starbucks and, I believe, a Stone Cold Creamery), underneath lots and lots of office space; the upper floors contain the new Park Hyatt, and the building is crowned with an observation deck.

Although the day on which we went was sunny, it wasn’t super clear, and we were racing to catch the sunset. There’s quite a ways to go from the point of entry until you actually reach the optimal vantage point, so if you go, you should probably plan to take more time than we did. We didn’t have to wait in line on a Tuesday afternoon, but I’ve heard of long lines on weekends, since the place just opened on August 30. (It was a long time coming, too; I read that construction started in 1997 but was halted for 5 years due to financing issues before resuming in 2003.)

I was almost disappointed there wasn’t a line, in fact, since there were round screens on the ceiling that seemed to be emitting some kind of dripping sounds in the area where we would have had to wait. You could do a really fun sound-installation with such a set-up, but since we didn’t have a chance to linger and listen, I can only assume they seized the opportunity to do something amazing.

From here we were ushered into the “pre-show room,” where we beheld the baffling “pre-show.” I cannot fathom what inspired the designing of this dark vestibule, with a model of the SWFC encased in a clear cylinder in the middle of the room. When the door closed, the lights dimmed, and the model started to spin, as some electronic minimalist music began to play. Lights began to flash in time with the model’s rotation, producing little animations of strange fruit helicopters along the sides of the cylinder, a cartoon version of one of Gregory Barsamian’s kinetic sculptures (one of which was on display this year, I believe, at either the SH Contemporary Fair or the Biennale, I forget which, and at the Zendai Museum back in 2006). After maybe 2 or 3 minutes, the rotation slowed, the lights came on, and we were permitted to leave. I have no idea why we were forced to watch this garish little spectacle before being permitted into the elevator; it conveyed absolutely no information, was of limited entertainment value, and as an aesthetic experience seemed meaningless in the extreme. I nonetheless smiled upon exiting, bemused to live in a world where such a goofy, high tech bauble could exist.

The elevators presented us with more space-age kitsch, white walls with abstract video projected from a portal on the ceiling. The whole experience bore more than a passing resemblance to a Disneyland ride (something in Tomorrowland, like Star Tours, or Captain EO) with uniformed personnel to complete the scene.

Come Live with Us among the Stars!

In the end, we didn’t quite make it to the top observation deck before Shanghai’s soupy smog swallowed the orange sun, but the view was nonetheless spectacular. The three observation decks actually line the top and bottom of the big hole in the top of the building (which I realize is not visible in any of my pictures; my apologies), and the top deck has glass panels in the floor to prove it, providing a sickeningly vertiginous vantage on traffic far, far below. I think there are different price points for the different observation decks, but I don’t know why you wouldn’t head all the way to the top, if you had already come so far.

Sickeningly Vertiginous

My Old Office in Times Square is Down There Somewhere

Friendly Denizen of the Observation Deck

The space age décor and lighting continue to permeate the observation decks, especially the sci-fi escalators that carry passengers the last bit of the way to the top, but upon arrival, at least at this most wonderful time of the year, the synthetic new age music jarringly gives way to an anachronistic mix of pop Christmas tunes: Wham!’s “Last Christmas,” John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” (#2 on my list of John Lennon songs I never want to hear again), and charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” (This has got to be one of the dumbest songs ever penned; “There won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas,” as though that was a pre-requisite for anything. Some of my happiest Christmases have been spent in Africa, and I didn’t miss the snow one bit. It’s not like there was snow in Bethlehem, ya know.)

"Feed the World!"

Having missed the sunset, we lingered for a while, waiting in vain for the lights to come on along the Bund. Shortly after ascertaining that 5:30 pm was not the magic hour of illumination, we decided to head downstairs and compare this view with one from the Park Hyatt. This entailed going all the way back down to the bottom (via a rather bland gift shop, with a tiny coffee bar in the corner, where you can actually buy SWFC bottle openers) and walking around the base of the building to the entrance of the hotel.

The Bund Lights Do Not Come On at 5:30

A Very Strange Perspective, To Be Looking Down on the Jin Mao

Everything about the Hyatt oozed class, every texture, lighting, decoration, wall hanging, and sculpture. I’d be tempted to call it a Japanese minimalist aesthetic, and Jutta noticed some of the same concrete-treated wall panels that first caught her eye when we visited the Mori Art Museum at the top of the Mori Tower in the Roppongi district of Tokyo last February (also built, as you may have surmised, by Mori Building).

We headed up to the 100 Century Bar, which boasts a fantastic booze selection, zillions of single malt scotches, and a handful of small batch Kentucky bourbons. (Just hearing the wine list described to me was intimidating enough; I didn’t venture a peek.) No Knob Creek, but I enjoyed a tasty double Maker’s Mark, neat, for 120 RMB. Not exactly within my sabbatical budget, but it was my birthday (kinda) and Jutta was treating. The bar is connected to a classy-looking restaurant of the same name, and we’d love to come back for dinner. We had a peek at the chefs in passing; the whole restaurant is very open, with all manner of wonderful smells wafting by. Maybe next year.

SWFC at Night

In all, an awesome gift. Thanks to my girl for this journey into adventure!

Nice Hat!

SWFC and Jin Mao Tower by Night

Let me say first that I’m coming at you as a Yoko Ono 小野洋子 fan. Back in Seattle, the composers collective of which I was a member, Seattle School, did a tribute show to her and other Fluxus artists, named for her 1964 book Grapefruits. One of my pal Korby’s prized possessions is the letter from Yoko Ono’s people authorizing us to use her image in promotion of the show. Check out this article that ran in the Seattle Weekly.

I think a lot of the poetic little text pieces that comprise Grapefruits, notwithstanding a strand of dark deadpan humor, evince a certain optimism, the idea that by simply unhinging your brain a bit, you can see the world with fresh wonder. So I headed out to the Ke Center to catch her Fly show opening last weekend with this mindset, in a spirit of goodwill and hope—hope that was mercilessly dashed almost upon arrival.

As we entered the compound, we were engulfed by a huge sea of people waiting to enter. Evidently we had missed a formal welcoming address from Ms. Ono, delivered to the throng from on high in a makeshift podium erected on the gallery’s third floor balcony. But the gist was reiterated in a video that played repeatedly on the side of the building as we waited to be granted admission. The concept was simple: “I love you, Shanghai.”

To transmit this simple phrase, Ms. Ono employed an algorithm of her own devising to encode her message of love into an abstract sequence of flashing lights. She adroitly counted the number of words in the expression “I love you” (there are three), and assigned each word a number corresponding to its position in the sequence of words that comprise this short phrase. Using this system, “I love you,” can be rendered on a flashlight as, “flash,” “flash flash,” “flash flash flash.” In case you didn’t bring a flashlight with you, small souvenir “Onochord” keychain flashlights were distributed to certain lucky attendees.

It’s hard to explain why this is so dumb, but let me try. First of all, the act of encoding this message in lights does nothing to increase its potency or tweak its meaning, so there’s really no reason to do it in the first place. I mean, you could imagine using flashing lights to suggest some kind of emergency message or beacon or whatever, but she didn’t do anything to develop the idea along those lines; she was just flashing lights at people she could just as easily have been talking to. An even bigger problem is that there’s no coherence (let alone elegance or robustness) in the method of encoding she employed; it’s simply a blunt, arbitrary assignation. If you want a binary, human intelligible, time-based encoding system, either do the work to develop a complete and meaningful system yourself (and accept the fact that no one will take the time to learn it), or adopt an existing system, such as Morse code, so you’re at least deferring to other on matters in which you yourself lack competence.

This system belies a fundamental lack of understanding about how language works. Further, it actually erects an artificial barrier between people, because who, outside of the small subset of humanity who crammed into this show, will recognize a sequence of 1-2-3 as meaning “I love you?” (By contrast, you would touch a significantly larger percentage of humanity by simply speaking the words in English, or Mandarin or Spanish or Hindi, for that matter.) It serves only to obfuscate what is apparently intended to be a very sincere and meaningful message. And on top of that, what is the need for this kind of communication in today’s environment of high speed digital communications, when a voice can be relayed vast distances on a laser?

I suppose that what Ms. Ono was trying to achieve with her light code is related to a story she recounted in the video being screened to the impatient masses outside the museum. She talked of how John Lennon once invited her back to his home in rural England and requested a piece she had listed among her works in “Ono’s Sales List,” a catalogue raisonné from 1965 that was appended to the 1970 expanded edition of Grapefruits. In category E, “Architectural Works (priced according to contractors’ arrangements and cost of property),” type A is listed as,

LIGHT HOUSE-a house constructed of light from prisms, which exists in accordance with the changes of the day.

A footnote informs readers that, “Patents applied for, machines, and models for Architectural Works, may be viewed by appointment, only written requests accepted.” Of course, there were no plans, and when John Lennon asked her to build one in his backyard, she responded, as she said in the video, that she had no idea how to build a lighthouse.

The video then flashed us forward to the 21st century, and the LIGHT HOUSE has finally been constructed on Viðey Island, Reykjavik, Iceland. (I don’t know the details of construction, but at a certain point it strikes me as goofy to claim authorship for a work in which all you said was “build a lighthouse,” and someone builds one for you.) It’s clear from the video that Ms. Ono views this as a way of finally granting Mr. Lennon his request. Throughout the video, “Imagine” played over archival footage of the doting couple (raising the uncomfortable suggestion that Ms. Ono’s work couldn’t stand on its own without invoking the music and likeness of the great rock star), suffusing the whole endeavor in a nostalgic and completely backwards-looking sentimentality. Here she was in Iceland, 2006, flashing her coded “I love you” into the sky, hoping that the man who wrote “Imagine there’s no heaven” will hear and smile down on us.

(And let me say for the record that I wouldn’t mind if I never hear that stupid song again. Give me “Glass Onion” any day.)

It’s clearly a very lopsided kind of love that Ms. Ono is promulgating. Nothing about the show suggested equality between lovers; instead the very architecture of the show enforced power relationships, as when Ms. Ono delivered her opening speech from a pedestal high above the crowd, or when the selective bouncers in the third floor lounge limited entry to her performance to VIP’s only. But most egregious was the 1-2-3 encoding that was also the crux of the show. Instead of promoting free love for all, Ms. Ono was saying that we could only love her on her own terms by adopting her goofy and arbitrary code, and she even had the audacity, as an artist in a position of privilege and power, to suggest that we should use this same meaningless code to express our love to each other, as if the love of others required her mediation in any way.

In any event, the message of love was clearly lost on the crowd gathered at the entrance, where the scene was less like a 60’s love-in and more like the frenzied mob scene that erupted when Comme des Garçons launched their fashion line at H&M a week or so prior. There were flashes of anger, name-calling, and pushing as the guards attempted to regulate the flow of people into the gallery. And when she made her hurried exit later on, a crowd pressed upon her all the way from the elevator to the waiting car outside.

(And let me pause to ask at this juncture, What is up with you fickle people? Prior to her arrival in Shanghai, I didn’t know a single person who would voluntarily go on the record, as I did above, as a Yoko Ono fan. I, for one, think the Beatles ruined Yoko as much as the opposite may have been true. But in general conversation, if her name comes up, it’s usually with a mocking grin and a rolled eye; she’s blamed for the Beatles’s demise, decried as the queen of caterwaulers, and made to embody the disconnected capriciousness of “avant-garde art.” Yet on the night of her opening, the place was thronged with people. I can only attribute this to Shanghai’s insatiable obsession with celebrity in all its guises.)

And once the antsy crowd was inside, what spectacle greeted them? A sparse and cursory retrospective show. Photographs of women’s breasts with the caption “My Mommy Is Beautiful.” A wall on which people could write about how much they love their mommies. A tree on which people could hang their wishes. Selected works from Grapefruits enshrined in frames on the wall (which strikes me as somewhat contrary to the spirit in which they were meant to be experienced, but maybe that’s just me). As for her performance, I didn’t make it into the third floor VIP area to see it for myself, but Jutta did, and what she demonstrated to me later was a kind of half-hearted Chicken Dance.

Just inside the door was a new instruction piece entitled “Mend Piece for Shanghai,” which looked disappointingly as though it could have been torn right from the pages of Grapefruits. I really can’t be bothered to go back to the gallery to copy it down verbatim, but it was something along the lines of

Mend piece for Shanghai
Mend.
While mending, think of all the people in the world.
Think of how much you love them.
Mend the world.

Or some such fluff.

And the fact that this piece sounds fresh plucked from Grapefruits illustrates the biggest problem with Yoko Ono’s work. There’s none of the depth or maturity that you would expect from a renowned 60-year-old artist. It seems she’s been living in a bubble since the 60’s. Since her catapult to celebrity, her youthful efforts have been alternately enshrined and reviled, and she never grew beyond them. As often happens with celebrities, the very fact of fame costs them the frisson of interaction with peers that can hone great ideas, for who dares to argue with an established star? But the price is great, for it is this contact with people (as equals), the experience of the quotidian, where real love (I’m tempted to add, “the John Lennon kind,” in reference to that song from the Beatles Anthology, but that would probably come off as a bit hokey) truly springs.

I just posted a long overdue overview of the various eArts performances I was able to attend over on GNO. I’ve been honing my blogging skills on that site for over a year, under the strict tutelage of Yao Dajuin and Lawrence Li, though I plan to focus my blogging activities here from here on out.

In particular, I may draw your attention to my arduous, year-long translation of Li Jianhong’s 李剑鸿 account of his December 2006 Japan tour (the last time I plug this link, I almost promise). I’ve also blabbed about Stockhausen and Cardew and videogames and the 2PI Festival, and who knows what all else. I’m sure you will find hours of entertainment.

Or, if you want an alternative account of what went down at eArts, check out Carl Stone’s two part review over at New Music Box!