At present, Cantocore.com is an archive of the two shows, Cantocore Free On Board in San Francisco, and Cantocore: Import/Export in Guangzhou, China. Please contact us if you have any questions about the projects or doing future projects.

As the grotto posted, Cantocore Free On Board in SFO is closing on April 18, 2009. That means you still have 18 days to see the show, write reviews, and get into the whole project. Here is more from the announcement:

CANTOCORE: FREE ON BOARD AT MISSION 17 CLOSING PARTY APRIL 18

Cantocore: Free On Board is the second installment of a collaborative project, exploring the globalized conditions of contemporary culture, through an exchange specifically between artists from the San Francisco Bay Area and Guangzhou, China.

The collaboration takes its inspiration and its name, “Cantocore,”from the rapid economic, social, and cultural changes currently taking place in Canton province. Hip Hop is thriving, heavy metal music is blasting, and the art market is booming. Over the last 20 years, cities such as Guangzhou, the capital of Canton, have changed from having a uniquely Chinese culture into global cities influenced and informed by diverse forms of representation. During the same period, Chinese artists also have exerted a growing influence on culture across the globe – and perhaps nowhere more than here on the Pacific rim of California, where Chinese Americans have played a central role since its inception. Art and culture is no longer defined by merely national boundaries – if it ever was – and yet cultural differences persist, providing productive tensions, rich with critical and creative possibilities.

Cantocore works to explore these globalized conditions of contemporary culture and the possibilities they present, by cultivating the dialogue specifically between the Bay Area and Guangzhou. Artists involved in the project include, among others, Americans with roots in China, Chinese who have come to study and work in San Francisco, and Americans who have emigrated to China. The first installment of the project, titled Cantocore: Import / Export, took place in September 2008 at the Ping Pong Space in Guangzhou. Cantocore: Free On Board provides the follow-up response.

What common concerns inform these artists work? How does their art nevertheless read differently across the globe? How do the histories and environments of each city inform the aesthetics of the work produced and presented there; and how does the work transcend its geographic origins, drawing aesthetic and conceptual influence from elsewhere?

This exhibition is a collaboration with The Garage Biennale, The Fabricatorz, and Ping Pong Gallery, China. Participating Artists:JD Beltran, Deer Fang, Wang Ge, Misako Inaoka, David O. Johnson, Guy Overfelt, Jon Phillips, Lin Fang Suo, Zhou Tao, Katherine Worel, Huang Xiaopeng.. Curated by Deer Fang, Justin Hoover, Jon Phillips.

Through April 18. Closing party Saturday, April 18, 5 – 7 pm. 2111 Mission Street, Suite 401, San Francisco 94110. Telephone: 415.861.3144. For more information, see http://www.cantocore.com and http://mission17.org/exhibits/upcoming.htm

Tanner Menard looked at the Cantocore project from a distance stating:

I have been reading about Cantocore for a number of days totally obsessed by the complexity of the concepts presented on its site http://cantocore.com/, but it was not until I read the following statement that I was really sold on the idea; ‘Cantocore is the reality of life versus the theory set forth by jurisdictions where people live.’ As an artists who’s personal world view leans towards ontological anarchy, this statement elevates Cantocore from a link on Jon Phillip’s website to the top of the bookmark list on my favorite web browser.

I then waxed poetic about it on my website stating:

When people ask me to explain what exactly Cantocore is, I often dance around the similarities between Guangzhou and San Francisco. Both are at the far extremes from the political centers of power in China and the United States respectively. I also usually talk about the lifestyle of lowered barriers of the 3 P’s: property, privacy, and prices. These combined increase one’s state, or feeling of, personal freedom. However, this concept of the reality of life versus the theory set forth explains exactly how I feel about Cantocore: Just do it! Don’t have a meeting. Don’t make a committee. Don’t whine. Just make your project wherever you are at with what resources you have. Get it off the ground and sort out the pieces as you go.

Please check out the full text of both Tanner’s post and my re-follow-up. Please consider adding your own thoughts as your own review out there on your site, or feel free to blog here or in the comments on this site. We are eager to hear what you think about Cantocore and the latest show on in San Francisco until April 18, Cantocore Free On Board.

Guy uploaded the video of his project fully realized in Guangzhou at Cantocore: Import/Export. For Cantocore FOB, he made a video documenting the installation of this huge structure which you can view in full at Mission 17 right now.

If you want to talk with Guy more about this project, and the process of creating it, please attend the Cantocore FOB Artists Talk this Saturday, February 28 from 4-6 PM.

Come this Saturday, February 28, 4-6pm to Mission17 and join us for drinks and conversation! This program is free and open to the public.

Artists JD Beltran, David Johnson, Guy Overfelt, Jon Phillips, and Kathrine Worel will discuss contemporary art production in the decentralized global economy, with specific emphasis on connections to the conceptual framwork, Cantocore. The discussion will be moderated by curator/artist Justin Hoover.

Please RSVP on the facebook event page.

If you aren’t in San Francisco to see Cantocore Free On Board, then you can’t see the two-channel video installation that features this piece. Below is a web upload of all segments in their entirety.

News Reenactment from Deer Fang on Vimeo.

Read more about Fang Lu’s piece, and check out her personal website while you are at it.

Katie Farrell from Art Slant reviewed Cantocore FOB. The piece starts off by stating:

The most successful work in Cantocore: Free on Board not only investigates the nuanced layers of trade and culture between Guangzhou and San Francisco, but also incorporates translation/mis-translation, authenticity/reproduction, and the copy-of-a-copy-of-a-translation spirit.

Cantocore: Import/Export (2008) was originally curated for Ping Pong Space, a large warehouse space in Guangzhou, China. Curator Jon Phillips invited six San Francisco-based artists and six Guangzhou-based artists to participate [1]. This second, more intimate edition at Mission 17 includes a few scaled down pieces, or in some cases, omits original work by the artists’ choice or by size constraint.

The exhibition opens with Huang Xiaopeng’s What Does “Globalization” Means To You? a wall text piece that stretches the entire hallway. A billboard contained indoors, the piece is too big to digest while remaining still. The viewer must walk back and forth, tracing the text with his body instead of his eye. The result of translating “globalism” from English to Chinese to English is “thanks to the expansion of the empire economic and culture exchanges become possible to the maximum extent and previously isolated civilizations become linked”. A very appropriate opening for Cantocore.

Read the rest of the write-up here.

NOTE: Curation duties for this show go to Justin Hoover and Lu Fang as well.

Cantocore: Free On Board is the second installment of a collaborative project between select artists from San Francisco and Guangzhou, China: David O. Johnson, Fang Lu 方璐, Guy Overfelt, Huang Xiaopeng 黄小鹏, JD Beltran, Jon Phillips, Justin Hoover, Kathrine Worel, Lin Fang Suo 林芳所, Misako Inaoka, Wang Ge 王铬, and Zhou Tao 周滔. The first Cantocore exhibition related import and export of culture between San Francisco and Guangzhou. For Cantocore: Free On Board, some part of each piece from the first show has been shipped from Guangzhou to San Francisco. Cantocore: Free On Board is an unveiling of the artists reactivated and reformatted works for the gallery, Mission 17, in San Francisco.

The collaboration, “Cantocore,” takes its inspiration and name from the rapid economic, social, and cultural changes taking place in Guangzhou, the third most populous city in China. Even in the midst of economic crises, factories are producing, Canto hip-hop is blasting, and the cultural industries are progressing. Over the last 30 years cities such as Guangzhou, the capital of Canton, have rapidly expanded economically and socially. From revolutionary upheavals to becoming industrialized global cities influenced and informed by diverse forms of representation, Chinese artists have exerted a growing influence on culture globally. Perhaps nowhere more than here on the Pacific rim of California have Chinese-Americans, who primarily immigrated from Southern China, played such a crucial role in the state’s inception, particularly in San Francisco. Not only does this city have the largest import of Chinese people of any US city, these immigrants also created the largest Chinatown in North America. However, understanding the conceptual framework of Cantocore is not limited to geographic divisions, nor reductive dichotomies driven by post-colonial stereotypes such as East versus West or Olympic nationalisms. Cantocore is the reality of life versus the theory set forth by jurisdictions where people live.

For Cantocore: Free On Board, the project uses the shipping jargon “free,” or “freight on board.” This technically means the exporter pays for materials being loaded to ship and the rest of a shipment is paid for upon arrival by the importer. In fact, parts of all artwork for this show have been in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with other “Made in China” freight on board destined for San Francisco at some time. In transit, these objects were locked down as cultural artifacts, stored in a type of stasis until arrival. During this time, the concepts and plans for these pieces were in constant motion with the curators and artists. In shipment, cargo is stored potential energy. It is the physical manifestation of aggressive growth and development in China and the buying power of the United States in the midst of economic rebalancing. It is here in-transit, on these cargo ships that these artifacts are free from consumption and production. It is only when they arrive at their destination, Mission 17 in San Francisco, that they are reactivated as cultural objects, connecting with their planned conceptual trajectory.

Cantocore: Free On Board explores this reactivation and reformatting of works, furthering the dialogue between San Francisco and Guangzhou. Artists involved include Americans with roots in China, Chinese who have come to study and work in San Francisco, and Americans who have emigrated to China. Other artists employed Chinese products and fabrication methods to construct their projects and some Chinese artists examined American ideology. The first installment of the project, titled Cantocore: Import/Export, took place in September 2008 at the Ping Pong Space in Guangzhou. Cantocore: Free On Board is the follow-up response.

NOTE: I wrote this to explain “Cantocore” and “Free On Board for the new show context. I originally wrote this on the project wiki. If you’d like to translate this into Chinese or another language, please do on the wiki. This text is also on the about page, along with the original Cantocore: Import/Export text and Woo Jay’s “Reconsidering Daily Experience” piece about the project.

Thanks to Kathrine Worel, one of the featured artists in Cantocore FOB, we have some new shots of the show. Here is a sampling. I’m putting more on artist’s page, and you can visit my flickr page to see more.

You know you want to see more!

We are still recovering from the great Cantocore Free On Board opening at Mission 17 last Friday. JD sent me a few pictures to post up. If you have some, please do post links in the comments or send to me.

We will have some lovely studio shots coming up this week to show off the work. If you are in San Francisco, the show is up for 2 months until April 18. Also, there is an artist talk at Mission 17 from 4 – 6 PM on April 18.