>> Sep 2014, unbreaken publication launch

Unbreaken, an experimental collaborative publication produced within the second module of the AFFECT residency, is launched on September 13 at 7 pm at L’Atelier-KSR, Grossbeerenstr. 34 in Berlin.

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>> Summer 2014, Precipitations summer screenings

Precipitations summer screenings:

Art in Action exhibition, Museum Bärengasse, Zürich, July 17-27

Oil Street Community Screening Hut by Elaine W. Ho, part of 假如（在一起）Can We Live (Together) exhibition at Oil Street Art Space, Hong Kong, August (photo above)

Affective Cities, 2nd Annual Conference of The International Association for the Study of the Culture of Cities, Toronto, August 5-7

Asia and the Pacific Screens, film programme season three: “Survival Politics”, Australian National University, Canberra, September 3

>> Jul 2014, AFFECT residency

Moderating the second module of AFFECT residency, taking place at Agora in Berlin between July 11 and September 19. You can read a short interview here.

AFFECT module II is moderated by Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga, facilitated by Diego Agulló, Yves Mettler, Sarah Lewis, John Holten, Judith Lavagna, and coordinated by Paz Ponce.

>> Jun 2014, Commoning the City

In Vienna for Commoning the City summer school organized by Spaces of Commoning, an interdisciplinary research collective based at the Academy of Fine Arts. June 22-29, 2014.

>> May 2014, Precipitations screening

Precipitations screening in Berlin. Wednesday, May 21 at KuLe, Auguststrasse 10.

>> May 2014, Royal screening

Royal, Nebraska screening on May 20 in Athens, hosted by Docutrance. See more here.

>> May 2014, HomeShop’s Late Editions

HomeShop Late Editions at Art Metropole’s window in Toronto!

Over its duration, HomeShop investigated the ins and outs of publicness and locality through the process and form of journals, books and newspapers. HomeShop’s Late Editions brings together the three issues of HomeShop’s Wear journal (2008-2012), copies of the in-house produced newspaper Beiertiao Leaks (2010-2012), copies of The YellowSide Daily and GreenBox Leaks produced in the context of two exhibitions in Guangzhou (2011) and Hangzhou (2013) respectively, as well as HomeShop’s last publication called Appendix (2013) — a collection of 43 parallel moments gathered from those who had been close to HomeShop for years, or in passing.

Visitors are welcome to browse through this material or use the opportunity to take the HomeShop Audio Tour and transport themselves to a different place and time, while sipping tea with mint harvested from HomeShop’s rooftop.

>> Dec 2013, Appendix

HomeShop’s final publication, Appendix, is now published!

Located at the edges of our project, Appendix is a publication bringing together 43 parallel moments gathered from those who have been close to HomeShop for years, or in passing. As the project space closes its doors for good at the end of 2013, this publication begins from the question of what extra has been produced during this time, and seeks in part to address some of these residuals, imagining to incorporate them, or at least to acknowledge and trace the extent of their supplementation.

More information: www.homeshop.org.cn/#appendix

>> Dec 2013, Letter of withdrawal

Open Notes on our Withdrawal from the 2013 HK-SZ Bi-City Biennial of Urbanism & Architecture (UABB) [chinese version here]

This letter is hardly a boycott against the Hong Kong Biennial, as our singular action lacks the faith of a collective gesture (in the sense that a boycott implies a greater sense of solidarity), but perhaps it is exactly a feeling of ineptitude towards mobilisation that requires such an open statement. These notes serve therefore moreso as an exploration of a couple of nodes in the making of a decision, a fermata.

A fermata is the musical symbol of an indefinitely sustained ending, and it was also the title of a performative symposium project proposed to the UABB, the metaphor meant to find a rhythm for addressing a cluster of issues surrounding collaborative artist initiatives, and more specifically, those pertinent to the diverse group of participants we intended to gather from HomeShop (Beijing), the Institut für Raumexperimente (Berlin) and WooferTen (Hong Kong). Each of these spaces have or will in the near future, for various reasons, discontinue in their current forms, and for us, these endings are the beginning point for a reflection on the unstable nature of educational and artistic alternatives within the larger system of commodified and/or more traditional modes of artistic production.

Whatever suggestion of awareness stems from this was in this case unfortunately countered by the naïveté of having entered a long-distance discussion with UABB with an insufficient knowledge of the controversies surrounding the Biennial site in East Kowloon, managed by the government-run Energizing Kowloon East Office (EKEO). While we initially tried to find out more information regarding the ongoing urban developments, these concerns irresponsibly fell to the background the more we became invested in developing our ideas and negotiating details with invited participants and the UABB team. And here, even after hearing one of the curators chime the warning bell of a phrase like “doing it for exposure”, is where we have fallen too easily again into the systemic trap affecting art labourers everywhere. Because as artists, the fact of being engaged with and actually liking what we do somehow becomes a token traded in for fair working relations (e.g., getting paid). Granted, the UABB was clear from the beginning about their limited position within the larger machine of knowledge production. But even if we leave aside the fact that we have been invited to act as unpaid professionals in a large-scale event supported by public funds, we continue with the reciprocation of having no finalised agreement as to the site location of our project nor the financing, only two weeks before installation was set to begin (three weeks before the opening). What this undermines is any faith in a reliable working relationship with the bureaucratic organisation we would be dependent upon to realise and represent our work, and it also undermines, therefore, any possibility for creating our project in a respectable and timely manner with integrity towards the ideas and people involved.

Without the resources of some of our more local friends who will continue to participate in their own manner, we are not close enough, cost-effective enough (a great deal of our budget would have had to be spent on airfare and lodging), nor readymade enough to work around these obstacles. The “exposure” we are offered would thus be our implication in the usual creative industries strategy for top-down gentrification, whereby the UABB serves as a bedazzled playing card in the ten-year masterplan for turning Kowloon East into Hong Kong’s second Central Business District. And it is this aspect of the famed “Hong Kong Value” which prioritises not one, but two CBDs, over the current public space and low-rent industrial studio spaces occupied by many young artists and musicians.

This is the glamour of the international biennial circuit, Hong Kong style. From the perspective of HomeShop in Beijing, it’s ironically a similar path of development that factors into the very endings that this project originally set out to explore. And while we are aware that our non-participation may do little to change the planned course of privatised public space and accelerated market value in the area, we hope that this minor act of doing it for “exposure” can generate a productive discourse about and awareness of the implications of (in)dependent practitioners involved in large-scale events that turn out more often than not to consist simply of “land decoration” and up-marketisation.

We hope that a loud and resonant fermata can continue under more favourable circumstances elsewhere. Thank you to everyone who has been involved so far.

Humbly yours,

Elaine W. Ho and Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga

—
For more information regarding recent protests of EKEO and the plan to revitalise East Kowloon, see:
http://www.inmediahk.net/8akt http://www.inmediahk.net/node/1018957 http://www.inmediahk.net/node/1015360 http://www.vjmedia.com.hk/articles/2013/10/30/53266 http://www.ekeo.gov.hk

>> Nov 2013, Precipitations at Pori Art Museum

A special edit of Precipitations presented as part of EAST ASIAN VIDEO FRAME screenings series curated by Doctor Minna Valjakka at Pori Art Museum, Finland. November 2013 — January 2014.

>> Oct 2013, Weather Stories in Thessaloniki

Weather Stories at Aneton Theater in Thessaloniki as part of the 48th Dimitria Festival, October 19-20, 2013.

>> Sep 2013, Revolution is also a language

Revolution is also a language class at the Public School Berlin
September–October 2013