[artinfo] Fifth System: Public Art In The Age Of "Post-Planning"

[Andreas Broeckmann]

From: Houhrparis at aol.com
Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003 02:51:20 EST

hello from Shenzhen, China, I'm currently here to 
work on a new project called "the Fifth System, 
Public Art in the age of 'post-planning'", as a 
new edition of the Shenzhen Public Art
Exhibition, taking place on 12 Dec, 2003, at the 
OCT, Shenzhen. it will last for two years. hope 
you will be interested in it... and look up the 
website: <>www.thefifthsystem.org

all the best

Hanru

The Fifth System : Public Art In The Age Of  "Post-Planning"
The 5th Shenzhen International Public Art Exhibition
12 December 2003 - 11 December 2005
Venue: Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China
Organiser: He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen

Curators: Hou Hanru, Pi Li

Artists:

Chen Shaoxiong£®Guangzhou, China£©
Chu Yun (Shenzhen, China)
Olafur Eliasson ( Berlin, Germany£©
Fu Jie (Hong Kong, China£©
Jiang Zhi (Shenzhen, China)
Michael Lin£®Paris, France £©
Liu Chuang (Shenzhen, China)
Liu Wei£®Beijing, China£©
MVRDV (Rotterdam, The Netherlands£©
Marjetica Potrc ( Ljubljana, Slovenia£©
Sha Yeya£®Guangdong, China£©
Bert Theis (Luxembourg£©
Rirkrit Tiravanija  (Berlin, Germany£©
Suzanne Wang (Shenzhen, China)
Xu Zhen£®Shanghai, China£©
Yan Lei (Hong Kong, China£©
Yang Jiechang£®Paris, France£©
Yang Yong (Shenzhen, China)
Zheng Guogu ( Yangjiang, China)

Special Events (music)
Wang Lei ( Guangzhou, China)°¢LMF (Hong Kong, China)


The Fifth System : Public Art In The Age Of  "Post-Planning"

The He Xiangning Art Museum has successfully organised four editions
of Shenzhen Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition in Overseas Chinese
Town, Shenzhen for the last years. It's fifth edition will take place
with a new name Shenzhen International Public Art Exhibition in 2003.
OCT is located in the central-western part of the Shenzhen Special
Economic Zone. For the last decade, like Shenzhen itself, it has been
developed into a new town of modern enterprises of real estates,
tourism, financing and production and inhabitant communities. Its
mode of development, creating a fresh city life, is becoming a
remarkable and exemplary model of urban creation and expansion in
China and Asia. It even further influences makings of new cities
across the globe.

>From both horizontal and vertical dimensions, one's perceptive modes
of the city can be resumes in the following aspects. Horizontally,
the city consists of four typographies: conventional buildings,
artificial nature/cultural-scape (the special forms of architecture
of theme parks in OCT), traditional public art introduced in
different periods and the masses on the move. Vertically, it can be
perceived in other four levels: high rise buildings, lower buildings,
"sight-seeing architectures" and fluxes of humans and traffics. These
aspects are in turn woven into four different systems of urban
perception.

The four systems as our perceptive modes of city life are also
generating a cityscape of high density and exuberant hybridity. The
question for us raised out of such a context is: how does
contemporary art face and intervene in such a novel reality? More
concretely, how is contemporary art redefined in such an urban
environment? As mediums of observation and critique of reality, art
should be considered as a "fifth system" which is to be inserted but
also transcends the four systems. According to the specific reality
of OCT, we'd like to introduce

such a "fifth system" to the city via site-specific works of artists
from different countries on the occasion of the 5th Shenzhen
International Sculpture Exhibition.  This is to provide the public
with new ways of perceiving and rediscovering the urban reality. This
"fifth system", situated in-between the various levels of urban
structure, is creating a different space to negotiate with the
existing four systems in order to evoke new and more open
relationships between the urban mass and the city from both interior
and exterior perspectives. OCT, developed at much faster paces than
the planning, condensing elements of different geo-cultural clichés
and various modernities, incarnates a unique urban typography of high
speed and high efficiency. The city hence created out of the process
transcends the conventional modern urban planning to
become a "post-planning" city. Comparing to traditional cities, this
town implies much more flexibility and openness. It signals the
coming of a new age of city making. The project of "The Fifth System"
intends to open new spaces of experiments in the field of public art
with divers works produced specifically for this unique cultural
context.

The Curators:

Hou Hanru, born in China, living in Paris, France, is an independent
curator. The exhibition "Cities On The Move" co-curated by him and
Hans Ulrich Obrist explores the interactive relationship between
contemporary art and Asian cities on fast expansion in the context of
globalisation travelled to seven cities in Europe, North America and
Asia. It has become a significant event in the international art and
architecture communities. Currently, he is focusing on researching
new possibilities and forms of public art in today's urban spaces and
has curated a series of public art projects such as "Community,
Collaboration, Art" (2002, Evens Foundation, Paris) and "Arte
All'Arte 8" (2003, Tuscany, Italy). He has also curated and
co-curated numerous exhibitions including "Out Of The Centre" (1994,
Pori Art Museum, Finland), "Parisien(ne)s" (1997, Camden Art Centre,
London), "Hong Kong, etc." (Johannesburg Biennale, 1997),
"International Photography Biennale" (1999, Mexico City), French
Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 1999, Shanghai Biennale 2000, PICAF-Pusan
International Contemporary Art Festival, 2000, Gwangju Biennale, 2002
and "Z.O.U. - Zone Of Urgency", Venice Biennale 2003. His book "On
The Mid-Ground" was published by Timezone 8 in 2002. Hou Hanru, a
professor at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten,  is a frequent
contributor to various international art media as well as serves as
member of international art institutions and juries including the
Global Advisory Board of Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and Advisors
Committee of Kumamoto Contemporary Art Museum, etc.

Pi Li, born in China, is currently a teacher at Central Academy of
Fine Arts, Beijing. The exhibitions he has curated include Future
Hope (Tsingtao Sulpture Museum, 2000), Fantasia (Donga Ilbo Art
Museum in Seoul, 2001, Eastern Modern Art Center in Beijing, 2002),
Moist: Asia-Pacific Multi-Media (Millennium Museum, Beijing, 2002)
and Image is Power (He Xiangning Art Museum, 2002). He was the
assistant curator for Chinese Pavilion of Sau Paulo Biennale (2002),
Shanghai Biennale (2002) and "Allôrs la Chine"(Centre Georges
Pompidou, France, 2003). He has published the books "Post-modernism
Sculpture" (1999) and " the Time of Curators"(2003). He was the
founder of web-site Art Union (arts.tom.com), chief editor of
"Contemporary Art Magazine" and director of Chinese Contemporary Art
Awards 2001.

(more information about the artists will be available shortly on the
internet website: www.thefifthsystem.org )