
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.