NIHAO, SHANGHAI! Conference：Shanghai Project Inaugural Event

　　Date:

　　December 12 – 13, 2015 (Saturday and Sunday)

　　Conference Venue:

　　Pudong Library

　　Auditorium 1, First Floor

　　No. 88, Qiancheng Road

　　Pudong District, Shanghai　China

　　Shanghai Project

　　The Shanghai Project is a hybridized international arts festival that brings together

　　mixed teams of culture and arts practitioners from both Shanghai and abroad and from

　　various fields—including contemporary art, film, literature, architecture, design,

　　performance, and education. The ideas and methods generated from these teams of

　　researchers will form the basis for exhibitions, performances, lecture series, and

　　publications projects to be held across the city from September 5 – November 13,

　　2016.

　　The Shanghai Project is also a cultural forum through which the inhabitants of

　　Shanghai can speak to and participate in, cultivating a healthy and creative cultural

　　milieu. In particular, this first edition of the Shanghai Project will be launched to

　　develop a network of institutions, independent spaces, collectives, and individual

　　creators, to function as an inclusive platform making connections and initiating

　　projects.

　　Nihao, Shanghai! International Conference

　　The Shanghai Project will hold its inaugural event, Nihao, Shanghai! an international

　　conference, at the Pudong Library on December 12 – 13. Co-organized with

　　Shanghai University, the conference proposes an examination of the city from

　　different points of entry: from the daily lives of its citizens to cinematic, literary and

　　popular representations of Shanghai old and new; from the rapid emergence of

　　museums and cultural institutions to the architectural, social, and demographic

　　transformations of the city; and from the production of art and design to new forms of

　　urban spectacle. The conference is organized into four panels, scheduled over two

　　days: The City in Myth and History, Who is the Audience?, Culture State/State of

　　Culture, and City as Image.

　　The title of the conference, Nihao, Shanghai! is derived from the Hanyu Pinyin, or

　　official phonetic transcription, of the greeting 你好, 上海! or "Hello, Shanghai!".

　　This conference will serve as both greeting and welcome, first to the residents of

　　Shanghai, and second to our international guests, to explore and engage in the artistic

　　heartbeat of this city. In the same way that ‘Nihao, Shanghai!’ is neither English nor

　　Mandarin Chinese, the conference is planned as a mutually legible middle ground that

　　highlights Shanghai Project's intended role as a nexus connecting the varied publics

　　of Shanghai with existing cultural infrastructure both at home and abroad. Hosted by

　　the new Pudong Library, one such cultural infrastructure, Nihao, Shanghai! will be

　　free and open to the public, two essential components for enlisting the city's

　　inhabitants in Shanghai's recent creative renaissance.

　　Planned as the first in-depth conversation initiated by the Shanghai Project, we have

　　invited a broad spectrum of speakers, from visual artists, writers, and architects, to

　　educators, scholars, critics, and curators. Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-director of the

　　Serpentine Galleries, will deliver the keynote for City as Image and moderate the

　　panel on The City in Myth and History. Also speaking on the topic will be Sue Anne

　　Tay,writer and documentary photographer behind ShanghaiStreetStories.com. The

　　British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoorand Larys Frogier, Director of Rockbund Art

　　Museum, will examine the various publics of Shanghai in Who is the Audience?, a

　　panel moderated by writer and curator, Carol Yinghua Lu. And curator, arts writer,

　　and Executive Director of OCAT Xi’an, Karen Smith, will participate in the panel on

　　Culture State/State of Culture, along with Professor of East Asian Studies and

　　Comparative Literature at NYU, Zhang Xudong.

　　The discussions generated from these four panels will set the ground for a yearlong

　　investigation of Shanghai in preparation for the opening of Shanghai Project in

　　September 2016.

　　NIHAO, SHANGHAI!Conference Schedule

　　Saturday, December 12

　　09:00-09:30 Registration

　　09:30-10:00 Opening Remarks by Yongwoo Lee(President of the Shanghai Project, Executive

　　Director of the Shanghai Himalayas Museum) and Wang Dawei(Dean, Fine Art Academy, Shanghai

　　University)

　　Session 1:The City in Myth and History(10:00-13:10)

　　Modern cities tend to get swept up in novel development practices and trends leaving few

　　material traces of their own past. At the same time, the large movements of people accompanying

　　these transformations exacerbate such erasures as new groups of inhabitants are consistently

　　introduced to the city and brought into novel juxtapositions with older constituencies, all the while

　　suspending social and cultural identities of city dwellers in a state of constant flux.

　　In this panel we would like to closely examine this most recent iteration of the

　　reconstruction of the memory of Shanghai in myth and history. Shanghai appears to be a place

　　where multiple memories of the past are activated. But how are these memories activated, how are

　　they produced and transformed with time, and what are the mediums that inflect this process?

　　How are such recollections embellished by iconic literary and cinematic representations, rhythms

　　of everyday life, or even traumatic historical events? Lastly, why does it appear that the rapid

　　transformation of the city in the past 25 years creates as many versions of the past to rival visions

　　of the future? And can they be represented by any single mode of expression, whether idealized,

　　romantic, fictional or factual?

　　10:00-10:30 Keynote by Norman Klein(Professor, CalArts, Los Angeles)

　　10:30-11:50 Presentations by

　　• 10:30-10:50 Francesca Tarocco(NYU Shanghai, co-founder and co-director Shanghai

　　Studies Society)

　　• 10:50- 11:10 Zhu Dake(Professor, Institute of Cultural Criticism, Tongji University,

　　Shanghai)

　　• 11:10-11:30 Sue Anne Tay (writer and documentary photographer behind

　　ShanghaiStreetStories.com)

　　• 11:30-11:50 Gu Jun (Professor,School of Sociology and Political Science, Shanghai

　　University)

　　11:50-12:50 Discussion led by Moderator: Hans Ulrich Obrist(Co-director of the Serpentine

　　Galleries, London)

　　12:50- 13:10 Q & A

　　Session 2:Who Is the Audience?(15:30-18:00)

　　‘Public’ refers to a shared identity or collective interest and the resulting claim to

　　inclusiveness; further it implies a forum for popular participation as a means to recognize, define

　　or contest such understandings, identities, values and interests. When considering the engagement

　　of a public, one must look to the metrics publics use to identify themselves, the rhetoric employed

　　to deliver and mediate information between audience and material, and the tools needed to

　　measure levels of engagement, ultimately determining the efficacy of mediated programming.

　　With the constant renewal of Chinese urbanscapes and the fluctuating populations that inhabit

　　cosmopolitan metropolises like Shanghai, what does it mean to develop cultural programming

　　whereby the participation is conscientious of the cultural needs of the diverse publics?

　　Unlike majority of the world’s largest metropolises that are established as political or

　　manufacturing centers, Shanghai is known for its trade-driven economy, and its role both as a hub

　　for China and a gateway between the East and West. Given Shanghai’s demographic diversity and

　　the constant transience of “outsiders” (i.e. migrants, commuters and foreigners), a singular

　　“public” does not give an accurate depiction of the “real” city with a population that surpasses 24

　　million. In light of the city’s spatial, politico-economic, and migratory history, what are the other

　　identities and characteristics that comprise Shanghai's publics?

　　15:30-16:00 Keynote by Anish Kapoor(Artist)

　　16:00-16:40 Presentations by

　　• 16:00-16:20 Larys Frogier(Director of the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai)

　　• 16:20- 16:40 Zhang Pingjie(Artist, curator and critic)

　　16:40- 17:40 Discussion led by Moderator: Carol Yinghua Lu(Researcher, writer and curator;

　　contributing editor for Frieze magazine)

　　17:40- 18:00 Q & A

　　Sunday, December 13

　　09:30-10:00 Registration

　　Session 3: City as Image(10:00-12:50)

　　Although the strict definition of a city lies in the lines and forms of its buildings and streets,

　　the city extends beyond its physical manifestation and encompasses the perception of both its

　　community and its culture. In the tightly packed limits of the world's megacities, a supposed state

　　of disorder reflects the city's potentiality and possibility for the future. Despite the anonymity of

　　life in a global city, a megacity's inhabitants are empowered by the outsized impact their actions

　　can have on the city and the world at large.

　　This conference session will explore the ways in which image, spectacle and chaos intersect

　　in the context of Shanghai. The city is often identified with a stylized and glamorized past

　　reflecting an impression of the city held not perhaps by Shanghainese residents, but by foreigners

　　encountering the city. However, upon declaring Shanghai’s ambition for growth, the construction

　　of a spectacle-laden cityscape both created and re-enforced Shanghai's global future. Are

　　modernity and spectacle mutually dependent? How and in what ways is Shanghai's modernity

　　perceived as reflecting a vision of a singularly Chinese modernity? How does the Chinese

　　manifestation of spectacle both speak to and not speak to the Western understanding of it?

　　10:00-10:30 Keynote by Hans Ulrich Obrist(Co-director of the Serpentine Galleries, London)

　　10:30-11:10 Presentations by

　　• 10:30-10:50 MAP Office(multidisciplinary platform devised by Laurent Gutierrez and

　　Valérie Portefaix, HK)

　　• 10:50-11:10 Ling Min(Professor, Fine Arts Academy, Shanghai University)

　　• 11:10-11:30 Marysia Lewandowska(Artist in Residence, Asia Art Archive, HK)

　　11:30- 12:30 Discussion led by Moderator: Yu Ting(Deputy Director, Urban Design Institute,

　　Shanghai Xian Dai Architectural Design Group )

　　12:30-12:50 Q & A

　　Session 4:Culture State/State of Culture(14:30-17:20)

　　The “culture state” and “state [of] culture” are twin concepts that are mutually determinant.

　　While “culture state” denotes the project of building a society through the arts, beliefs, customs,

　　and other modes of human expression, the “state [of] culture” points to the conditions and

　　development of cultural infrastructure such as institutions, individual producers, and supporting

　　organizations. The two concepts together connote the coupling of political-ideological interests

　　with economic-industrial motivations of the state in promoting cultural production.

　　Shanghai, in this current “post-Expo” phase of development, aims to establish the city as

　　China’s cultural capital and as a global cultural metropolis on par with London, Paris, and New

　　York. Concerted cultural development, evidenced by a burgeoning ecology of museums, theaters,

　　festivals, culture complexes and industry clusters, intends to signal that the city has “arrived” as a

　　global metropolis in the 21st century.

　　What are the material and immaterial conditions necessary to foster a healthy

　　creative/cultural milieu? Have economic liberalization and global integration also opened spaces

　　for new forms of cultural production? How might Shanghai reconcile its planning driven approach

　　with alternative forms of cultural activity as they develop art-engaged publics? Although this

　　“state [of] culture” may be happening worldwide, what is unique about Shanghai’s situation?

　　14:30-15:00 Keynote by Zhang Xudong(Professor of East Asian Studies, Comparative Literature,

　　NYU; Professor, School of Humanities, Peking University)

　　15:00-16:00 Presentations by

　　• 15:00-15:20 Ben Wood(Architect, Studio Shanghai)

　　• 15:20- 15:40 Ying Zhou(Architect, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETHZ)

　　15:40- 16:40 Discussion led by Moderator: Karen Smith(Executive Director of OCAT Xi'an)

　　16:40-17:00 Q & A

　　17:00-17:15 Closing Remarks