rainer ganahl hong kong basic chinese artist commune

index

Basic Chinese - photographs

Basic Chinese - Studying by numbers

Ball-Point drawings and post card works - works on paper

Homeland Security - why I am not a terrorist - video stills and movie

Bicycling Hong Kong - a risky return of the repressed video stills and movie

Kai Tak International Airport - the good use of an airport as a private playground - video stills and movie

Installation views - Artist Commune, Hong Kong

ARTIST COMMUNE - HONG KONG - April - May 2005

ARTIST COMMUNE is a non-for-profit organization and run by artists. It is a badly financed but wonderful oasis of creative productions admist rampant capitalism and manic construction. Artist Commune is located in a former cattle depot with barely any significant ajustments (unlike what we know from other places where money transformed former industrial or agricultural sites into splendid museums). This arssenal of a lose association of non-for-profit galleries, artist studios and other creative grass root organisations is somehow kept on a financial shoe strings by the Hong Kong city government. It looked to me that most money went into security - though there wasn't much need for it. At all times, there are several securit guards with routine partrols by police who walk the relative ssmall complex in quasi-formations. This over-policing becomes at one point suspecious and one wonders whether they protect these artists and small creative (mostly media) firms or try to control and intimidate them. In any case, this formal security theater that was repeated daily at nearly any hour of the day.

In spite of minamal funding and quite some inconveniences I had a wonderful and productive time thanks to the director, Gum Cheng and his team as well as thanks to the help of the curator of my exhbition, Mie Iwatsuki.