Crossing the Hangzhou Bay Bridge - Contemplating with Caspar David Friedrich, 1774 - 1840, 2008
Hangzhou Bay Bridge color photographs, 2008
Hangzhou Bay Bridge is 36 km long and one of the longest bridges in the world. It is near Shanghai - about 2 hours - and links a new economic developing zone with another part of China on the other side of the sea. The bridge and the area are very impressive and reflect the new economic, social and political power of contemporary China and some of the problems of its current authoritarian turbo-capitalism: Pollution; environmental neglect and unequal economic and social development with big discrepancies between poor migrant workers and farmers and the new expanding rich middle and super rich upper classes. Also lot of land is taken away without the consent of the owner for large developments. Each time, we left or entered the city of Shanghai and crossed into a different province the bus was stopped and everybody had to hand over their ID's which were checked on a computer data base, a process that took quite some time but gives a distinctive idea how the 'free movement' of people and labor is handled. (The taxi driver told me that the large factory on the picture belonged to the family of the current president - something I cannot check or confirm. It is definitely a strategically intelligent asset, right next to the bridge linking two parts of China.)
Invited to Shanghai Biennial, I decided to just cross this new bridge before its official opening on May 1st 2008. Due to the heavy handedness of China's cultural affairs - they seem to strangle themselves with the Olympic rings -, I ran into all kind of pitty problems we usually refer to as censorship. I wasn't allowed to use a bicycle - made in Taiwan - by the SUV making US firm Hummer after they understood - I pointed it out - that Hummer also produce for the military. Which firm doesn't produce for the military? Ironically enough, there are Hummer dealerships in Bejing and you can by a militray style Humphee in China without any problems if you have the money.
In addition to this problem, the Chinese part of the curatorial team (the European part, Julian Heynen, alwasy defended me) saw descriptions of my bicycle videos in Berlin and Bucharest in which I make references to their former communist regimes. These purely descriptive references on my web site made them to kick me out of the Biennial. The issue of censorship became more evident and a trip to Shanghai was canceled only 2 days before departure. I went anyway and tried to do the work "on my own". Unfortuantely, it was impossible to access the bridge wthout the official help of the Biennial. I experienced rather 'unpolite" treatment from the bridge management. But this gave me a chance to take a look at what goes on around the bridge.
Here is a set of 8 photographs taken in the immediate vicinity of the bridge which I am not yet interlinking on my web site since I don't want to have further problems with the Chinese part of the Biennial. Needless to say, that my eye was also put on bicycles and its amazing multiple use in China.
24 x 32 inches / 61 x 81.3 cm, color photographs, 2008
