Saturday, October 23, 2010

Shanghai Biennale

The decision not to go to the Expo at the crack of dawn was a relatively easy one. It was raining... hard. The prospect of queueing for hours in a typhoon with a million others (last Saturday they broke the record for a day) just did not appeal. The Chinese Pavilion will remain while the others are taken down so at least I can see that some other time.

In any case, there was the Shanghai Biennale to see, which took up all four floors of the Shanghai Art Museum. Some good stuff, not least Isaac Julien's Ten Thousand Waves, a 50 minute piece of sumptuous visual poetry which weaved a ghostly theme between ancient and modern - including the tragic drowning of 23 Chinese cocklepickers in Morecombe Bay in 2004. For this showing, a Chinese/Polish duo calling themselves Chop provided live electronic music (replacing Jah Wobble's earlier version).


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