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COMME des MARXISTS

PLEASE, TEACH ME CHINESE / PLEASE, TEACH ME ITALIAN

Marx a Prato / Gucci a Prato

>> FABRICA CINESE / FASHION SHOW on an active Chinese owned factory table <<

 

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- Concept:
-- China town Prato performance / FASHION SHOW
- June 22nd, 2018
- Chineese Factory Prato FABRICA CINESE performance / FASHION SHOW on an active factory table - June 19th, 2018

THE DRESSES / GARMENTS/ OUTFITS / SHILOUTES
... for managerial class
- Prato vestiti
... of Chinese workers - The condion of the working class in Prato, Prato vestiti cinese
- Accessories:
- Prato videos

- Discontent a Prato/ Prato stress

PRESS RECEIVED
artnet - see pdf Naomi Rea, June 21. 2018
‘Art Can Be as Effective as Surveillance Cameras’: Why an Italian Fashion Capital Is Commissioning Artists to Relieve Racial Tensions- The city of Prato has invited artists including Rainer Ganahl and Yoko Ono to help bridge the sociocultural divide between its Chinese and Italian populations.

La Repubblica - see screenshot (Laura Montanari)

Prato: Rainer Ganahl fa arrabbiare tutti    ( GANAHL MAKES EVERYBODY ANGRY)
L'artista austriaco proietta video di ispezioni di forze dell'ordine nei capannoni cinesi e scatta la polemica: si conclude quasi irissa la festa di quartiere "Pop Art".
Lorenzo Tempestini - 23 giugno 2018 / PRATOSFERA, local newspaper / translation to english is here.


 

CHINA TOWN PRATO II - performance / fashion show at a CHINESE FACTORY

Please, teach me Chinese / Please, teach me Italian / Marx a Prato / Gucci a Prato

FASHION SHOW on an active Chinese owned factory table

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see chinese factory owner, who participated and posed free of willl (I did not force him .. he enjoyed it)

 

MORE IMAGES TO COME

 

 

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see PREPARATORY VIDEO STILL  -- FOR THE WORKING CLASS ASPEC. HENCE VIEW INSIDE CHIENSE FACTOREIS AS PRESETNED ON THE EVENING. THIS WAS THE VIDEO THAT drove people to  stop the performers

VICEO HERE.. FOR CHINESE WORKER PART

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video https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&ar=1&video_id=gU4mVy_nh80

 

 

why my worker part was not presented as plaanned and interrupted


I was invited to present an art project to ease tensions between the Italian and the Chinese community in Prato. Prato is said to have 50 000 Chinese inhabitants in a city of below 200 000. I was right away told that the budget was coming from the city. The city representative Rosanna Tocco said verbally: “We believe in art versus security cameras.”
Given my nearly 20 year old attempt to learn Chinese, I opted for a language learning project and called it PLEASE, TEACH ME ITALIAN / PLEASE, TEACH ME CHINESE. Given my involvement with a somehow ongoing Comme des Marxists fashion project, I wanted to create actual fabrics and make clothing for the managerial class and the working segment of the population. I was agreed and everybody was happy.

In the meantime, I started to inform myself on Prato with the help of Google. I found out that the city had created really bad headlines over the last decade, including deadly factory fires in sweatshops and clashes between Italian authorities and Chinese workers and factory owners. It become for me more and more important to work this information into my project as it was unknown to me. Hence, for the worker part of the outfits, I decided to stay all realistic and simply try to purchase the actual garments worn to work and retrofit them with my labels.

For the actual presentation of the entire project, I announced that I will project visual material to explain the project, the small details as given with the fine fabrics and offer orientation to the actors and presenters. This logic applied to both parts of the show. I encountered only little resistance for the rich, managerial part of the preparatory videos organized around Gucci catwalk footage as found on the fashion channel. For the working class part of the presentation, I wanted to focus on Chinese voices and show material that propped up when searching “Prato” and “textile worker.”

Here, the problem started. The proper interaction with the Chinese operated factories was not established in time and blamed on the “cinesei,”, Chinese owners that could be first or second generation immigrants with Italian passports. But the very logic of the project consisted of building bridges, hence it was an important part that the people who invited me find Chinese collaborators. Without a Chinese collaboration, --- as I was told over 6 4 months – we couldn’t find any Chinese workers willing to sell their outfits for a price of their liking. There was also a label that uses biographical parts and that also was not available in time. The absence of the worker part information and photographs was therefore making the preparatory film difficult and it needed to be done in Prato. Finally, when I arrived in Prato they could find a Chinese factory owner, willing to let us stage a runway show in a sweat shop and even on top of a delicate mechanized work table. I was also able to ask myself for permission to ask workers whether they could sell their outfits. It was not only immediately agreed, the owner offered me to give his Versace tshrit as a present to me personally (he mentioned the price, 400 Euros) and gave a price for all his workers garments (20 Euros) each. TO MY SURPRISE, this offer was immediately rejected by Sergio who was my Prato relationship man saying they had no money. AT that moment it become clear that the museum had no interest in the making of my working clothing part because of the labels, that contained google results with negative information about their town.

I still didn’t give up on the Chinese part of the work and accepted a bag full of garments that was presented to me as workers’ outfit. On the first look, it became clear that it was cheaply purchased anew since it still had price tags on it. I also was lied at that the fictious workers of this part didn’t want any biographical data be used. For the logic of the project but also to show the degree of resistance to my project and the unease with their Chinese population and the unease with handling negative information about their town, I accepted this part and added an extra label saying Fake. But to what degree this objection arose became clear when it came to the making of the preparatory video for the Chinese part of the presentation. The video editor with his computer was constantly withdrawn from me and many excuses were found so we couldn’t not produce the preparatory film. Also during the rehearsal and in spite of a promise to let us work without constant supervision by city and museum people the place was filled with people who constantly reported back by phone and explained whether I now use the google information or not.

Finally, when the time of the presentation came, my outfits where ready, my preparatory project was not. At 9 pm, I insisted to not present anything without the Chinese part. Only then, the museum gave permission to send back an editor and a computer to assemble the preparatory video for the Chinese worker segment of the runway show. For this video, I had lined up interviews by Chinese people taken from newscasts. I also prepared news reports of of conflicts, unannounced police inspections of factories called razzias and my google screenshots to be pasted on a timeline. After about an hour we could render the video and drive directly to the site of the fashion show where the editor and I saw the video for the first time.

The impact of the rough editing, / with no preview / the unfiltered presentation of razzias and police actions / justified or not / had surprised everybody, including me and the performers themselves who knew what to expect but who refused to continue to perform. Thus the show was abruptly brought to and end and a discussion started. Two involved actors accused me of lies. The Pecci museum director, Cristiana Perrella, ridiculed me of failure and suggested publicly, that I was incapable to understand the complex situations of Prato. The director also added that she had been living in Prato for 3 months and not experienced anything of what I presented on screen, corroborating that it was a lie. This denunciation and the aggressive screaming and interrupting by the museum board member of the Pezzi Edoardo Donatini created /// as a blogger observed correctly on a youtube comment /// a climate that lead to the aggressive physical attacks on me by the city official Rosanna Tocco and the attemtps of physical aussault by that very board member immediately after the performance.

According to the film crew, the museum ordered all video material about the show and the scenes afterwards to not be released or handed over to me as it was planned, discussed and agreed upon. Nor was any of the works including my camera and my ipad be returned within the last 2 months. This so far has prevented to show and visually proof that the Comue di Prato official Rosanna Tocco with a directorial title - Director of PR or so - overstepped her role and attacked me not only verbally with obscenities but also physically by ramming her elbows into my body. It also protects the museum board member who had to be hold back. I had to run away from him because of his attempt to physically hurt me. So far, we have nearly 2 months passed and nothing has been released. I was told by the Prato journalist Lorenzo Tempestini that the city “has built a wall” around me and any questions about me. Just like the printed the on ground invitation card without my name, they know act as if this event never happened.

While the Pezzi director Cristiana Perrella was ridiculing me directly after the show for using google, for misrepresenting the town and for not being capable of understanding the complexity of the city, in subsequent emails she also blamed me for the violence and the tumultuous scenes that followed.

Again, I do not care what happened to me personally but I do care what happened to me in the function as an artist If an artist doesn’t have a right to work with journalistic material, if an artist doesn”t have a right to use google results, if an artist is physically attacked it is not just a question of personalities or styles of communication. It represents a big problem for the understanding of art and the institution it stands for. A people like this should find a different type of occupation because she fundamentally disqualify themselves.

More information on this can be found HERE
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