Cantocore: Free On Board Statement

Jon Phillips

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.

Cantocore Import/Export Statements

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• Cantocore Import/Export, English, Chinese , Jon Phillips
• Reconsidering Daily Experience, English, Chinese, Woo Jay

Cantocore Import/Export

Jon Phillips

The Cantocore Import/Export exhibition examines, through applied art practice, the relationship between import and export of culture between Guangzhou and San Francisco by asking a simple phrase: Are you Cantocore? Guangzhou, also called Canton, is the third most populous city in China and its province, Guangdong, is a major manufacturer of textiles and electronics for export to the United States. San Francisco has the largest import of Chinese immigrants of any US city, primarily from the Guangdong province. Chinese immigrants also created the largest Chinatown in North America in San Francisco. However, understanding the conceptual framework of Cantocore is not limited to geographic divisions, nor reductive dichotomies driven by post-colonial stereotypes such as East vs. West, nor Olympic nationalism pridefully paramount in China vs. US “non-political” sports matches. Cantocore is the reality of life versus the theory set forth by jurisdictions where people live.

Originally, the San Francisco-based Chinese-American band “Say Bok Gwai,” roughly translated “dead white demon” in Cantonese, coined the term “Cantocore” to describe their own musical genre that juxtaposes hardcore metal and punk with Cantonese vocals in blasted 30 second sonic increments. This rapid fire short attention span is at the core of contemporary Cantonese culture. It doesn’t dwell – it does. People don’t wait for roads to finish, or for the latest movie showing overseas to come to the cinema; they buy it. Workers don’t look for a bed when its time to take a nap, or complain about the hot weather. Guys just take their shirts off, families play badminton in the streets for fun, or a mom will fit all three of her kids onto a bicycle to get somewhere – its faster that way! Cantocore is living around the guidelines set in place by some one.

With the projected trajectory of China’s GDP approximating the United States in year 2030, there is rapid increase of international interest in the political, social and economic condition of China. It is impossible to understand the real effects of this growth and the black swans this growth will generate simply through the guise of economic analysis. Rather, traditional analytical techniques must be augmented with qualitative research to attempt to understand what is happening with China’s growth. This is already happening with large contemporary art exhibitions internal to China such as the upcoming 3rd Guangzhou Triennial and Shanghai Biennials dissecting the impact of globalization, Chinese identity, the evolution of political structures, and how this dynamic culture is changing. Similarly, the rise of post-industrial zones used by Chinese artists such as Beijing’s Da Shan Zi (798) and Shanghai’s Moganshan Lu then being commercialized by international galleries are indicators of the rise of contemporary art, particularly in Northern China. Cantocore is a call for participation for practioners internationally to directly investigate, through art practice, what is happening in the South of China in a way that is not clustered nor so easily commercialized-to-death, but is uniquely Cantocore.

San Francisco has developed in a similar way to the United States like Guangzhou has to China. It is neither the heart of the art world like New York City, nor is it the trendy with superflat palm-tree powered artwork being pumped out like Los Angeles. Similar to Guangzhou, San Francisco is situated as one of the commercial areas far from the seat of political power in the United States. This has helped it to be on the fringe of culture, legal precedent, and progressive commerce over the last 40 years since the revolutionary year of 1968. In San Francisco there were peace protests against the US military’s involvement in the Vietnam War incubating the cultural preparations for the Summer of Love all which pushed San Francisco even further to the most experimental edges of American Culture. During the same year in China, youth were still encouraged to be rebels until December of 1968 when Mao Zedong sent the youth to be re-educated in the countryside in the “Up to the mountains and down to the villages” movement. Because of much of this upheaval, new waves of people from the south of China migrated to Western United States, taking culture and style with them. Cantocore is concerned with how these different cultures have come together, are similar and different.

As a framework, Cantocore is the flow and change of imported and exported culture and materials globally from the Pearl River Delta region. With Guangzhou’s production emphasis and irregular enforcement of laws, the creative value of any one gesture is amplified or discarded in a Darwin-like way where styles are replicated and modified in blistering succession. Factories churn out various qualities of goods for both export and local sale allowing all income levels of people in the region to participate in global brands. Thus, people who live in Canton more easily adapt to new trends in technology and fashion. All forms of sales are available. From conventional malls with high-end pristine commodified temples are well lit, to thousands of middle-grade shops surrounding the malls, all the way down to street pirate DVD peddlers, if you want something you can get it.

Similarly in San Francisco, if one wants the latest movies, or software, there is ample services to get whatever one wants. And, since San Francisco has such a large Chinatown and Mexican Mission district full of immigrant-owned shops, inexpensive Made-in-China goods are had alongside the international style that dominates the financial centers of the city.

The artists in the Cantocore exhibition were tasked with creating projects which explore import and export, materially and conceptually. Practically, how can one’s artwork be actualized either through fabrication locally in Guangzhou or imported from San Francisco? Guidelines for the creation of the work were left alone since modern strategies for creating artwork such as remaking, remixing, interpreting, pirating, translating, copying, and appropriating content, already espouse the Cantocore style. After the proposals were received from invited artists, curation of works took place based upon the processes, scope, location of artists and available resources to constitute this first Cantocore dialogue.

Cantocore Guangzhou is divided into two halves. The first part of the show, “Import,” features Chinese and American artists including Deer Fang’s video installation “News Reenactment” of remade small scenarios from news in the public and Misa Inaoka’s Made-in-China community editable toy modifications. Setting a backdrop for the first-half of the show, Huang Xiaopeng’ large scale slogan banner looms in the background allowing all to observe the addition of meanings from translated signs. Jon Phillips’ “Artonomics” Chinese-government-themed screen displays real-time statistics about the Chinese condition. Other artists works include Justin Hoover’s “100 Performances.” This work enlists a few Chinese actors and actresses to follow the scripts from 100 San Francisco-based artists’ two minutes performances during the show opening. Sculptural works include David Johnson’s “Made In China” highlighting the contents of shipping through cardboard boxes and Guy Overfelt’s returned-to-China life-sized inflatable American Trans-Am. Also, there will be a video screening titled “Stardusted” curated by Clark Buckner selected from M17 (Mission 17) Video Archive, highlighting video works specific to the themes of this exhibition.

The second part of the Cantocore show, “Export,” features major installations such as JD. Beltran’s “Downtown Mirror” projection of jumbo-jet airplane fly-overs and Katherine Worel’s “Domestic Bliss” reviewing the whimsical American interest with Buddhism. Local Guangzhou artist Hu Xiangqian at the second opening is set to perform as his “black” rapper persona with a live band. Meanwhile, Lin Fang Suo’s installation uses fruits to investigate the idea of “exploitation”. Zhou Tao performed and documented his daily routine in a shopping mall. The second half also features an on-going collaborative project called the Huangpu Village Video Project led by Wang Ge, Deer Fang and students from both Sun Yat-Sen University and Guangzhou Art Academy. This installation presents documentation and studying of the Huangpu village, a former trade village near a harbor now caught in the middle of increasing urban growth on the outskirts of Guangzhou.

These two halves of the show highlight that import and export of culture, like material trade, is in a constant state of consumption and recirculation. This is the first major exhibition of the Cantocore project and is opened up to critique and analysis during the show in order to inform the next version of this project as is exported to San Francisco in winter 2008.

硬核广州－ 进出/出口

展览陈述

“ 硬核广州－进口/出口”展览通过艺术实践检验联系着广州和旧金山的进出口文化， 并提出这样的问题：你是硬核广州人吗？广州是中国第三大人口城市，其省会广东省是主要出口美国纺织品和电子产品的生产地。同时旧金山是主要“进口”中国移民的美国城市。这些移民也主要来自广东地区。中国移民也在旧金山建立了北美最大的唐人街。然而，理解“硬核广州”的概念框架不能仅仅局限于地理上的分界，也不应做简单后殖民的分裂模式：东方和西方，或国家主义至上的奥林匹克中的中国对美国，所谓“非政治化的比赛”。“硬核广州”是生活的现实与人们生活管辖区内理论的对抗。

“硬核广州”一词来源于旧金山华裔乐队“死白鬼”。他们创造了“硬核广州”一名词来描述他们的音乐流派，他们用广东话演绎硬核摇滚和朋克音乐，三十秒钟爆破式的的短曲。这种火爆和暂时的注意力持续也是当代广州文化的核心。它不在于持久，而在于行动。人们无须等待道路维修的最终完成，或最新的电影在影院上演；到了午睡时刻工人们连床都不用找；大人小孩在大街上打羽毛球；一个骑单车的大妈可以把三个小孩都载上车。硬核广州是生活在别人设下的规范的周围。

随着2030年中国国民总值将达到美国水平的预算轨道，中国的政治，社会和经济状况越来越得到国际的关注。但是经济分析是无法真正理解这种增长和增长所带来的不可预知性的。相反传统的分析技术必须加入大量的研究项目来试图理解中国的发展。这已经发生在许多中国国内的大型当代艺术展，如即将到来的第三届广州三年展和第七届上海双年展。这些展览剖析全球化的影响，中国的身份，政治格局的演变和中国这一有活力的文化正在如何改变。相似的后工业艺术区的兴起，北京的大山子和上海的莫干山路。这些先由艺术家介入，后由国际画廊实现商业化的地区，是当代艺术特别是在中国北方兴起的见证。硬核广州希望邀请国际文化实践者一同直接参与探讨中国南方广东地区应该实现什么样的艺术发展模式，一种非轻易走向商业死路，并且属于广州的一种模式。

旧金山在美国有着相似的发展道路。它不是像纽约一般的艺术心脏，也不是像洛山机一般的艺术时髦之地。更类似于广州，旧金山坐落于远离政治权利中心的商业地区。这使它在1968年后的40年来成为了文化的边缘地，立法改革的先驱和先进的贸易地。1969年旧金山有过大型反对美国军队参与越南战争和平示威活动，这也孵化了把旧金山推向美国实验文化前沿的“夏日之爱”聚会。同年于中国，年青人被鼓励成为造反者，直至1968年12月的上山下乡再教育运动。由于中国几次兴起的运动促成了新一批的中国南方移民移居美国西部，这批移民也带着他们的文化，习惯和风格移居到了美国。硬核广州项目关切的是这些不同的文化如何走到了一起，它们的相似和不同之处。

作为一个理论框架，硬核广州是关于来自珠三角地区的全球进出口文化和物质的流向和改变。广州的生产重点和执法的非规性，至使任何一个人的创造性的姿态都得到了放大或达尔文式的被淘汰。各种风格被泡沫般不断地复制和修改。工厂为出口和本地销售搅拌出不同质量的产品，同时这也使地区中不同消费层次的人们参与到全球品牌中。因此居住在广州地区的人们更容易适应科技和时尚的新潮流。各种形式的销售都可以找得到，从传统的灯火辉煌的大商场，售卖正牌的殿堂，到成千中等档次的大商场周边的小店铺，到街上的DVD小贩，只要你想要的都能找到。

相似在旧金山，那儿有充足的服务可以满足你得到最新电影和软件的需求。而且旧金山的唐人街和墨西哥人为主的Mission区域密布了各种移民经营的商店，价格便宜的“中国制造”产品与城市金融中心的国际风格肩并肩。

硬核广州展览中的艺术家从观念上和物质上探讨进/出口文化。如何通过广州本地制作，或从旧金山进口来实现艺术计划。当代艺术策略中的重做，重混，演绎，翻版，翻译，复制和挪用也充分体验了“硬核广州”的风格。在我们收到邀请艺术家的计划书后，我们根据作品的实施过程，规模和资源来构成这第一次的“硬核广州 ”对话。

硬核广州展览由两部份组成。第一部份的“进口”主要有方鹿的“新闻重演”录像装置，在公共空间重做了三件新闻中的小情节, Misako Inaoka 的中国制造的改造玩具。展览的背景是黄小鹏的大型标语，作品邀请观者思考这个翻译标语中额外添加的涵义。Jon Phillips的 Artonomics 是政府办公室形式的LED屏幕，实时播放着关于中国状况的数字。其他艺术家包括Justin Hoover的“100个行为”，这个作品雇佣几个中国演员在开幕式当天重新表演旧金山艺术家的两分钟行为。David Johnson的装置强调了“运输”的意义；Guy Overfelt的原大充气美国跑车通过展览又回到了作品物件的生产地。届时我们将会有Clark Buckner策划的录像放映活动“星尘”。录像作品主要从Mission 17的M17录像档案中挑选，主要介绍与本次展览主题有关的旧金山艺术家录像作品。

在硬核广州的第二部分“出口”，主要装置有JD. Beltran的“城市镜”，普通客机在城市上空飞过的影片；Katherine Worel的“家庭福佑”幽默地在美国人身上映射佛教信仰；广州艺术家胡向前将用他黑人歌手的形象为做第二部份展览做开幕行为；林芳所用水果来和我们探讨 “剥削”的概念；周滔在商场中实现并纪录了他一天的日常行为。这部份的展览还包括“黄埔村录像计划”，一个由王铬和方鹿带领，由20多名广州中山大学学生和广州美术学生制作的录像装置，展现了一个昔日繁荣的古进出口贸易海港村，今日却处于城市化的困境中。

这两部份的展览突出的进出口文化，正如物质贸易一般正在持续地被消耗和再循环。硬核广州希望通过展览发起更多的讨论和分析，并为接下来我们“出口”到旧金山版本的展览提供参考。

Reconsidering Daily Experience

Woo Jay

Globalization and pluralism as concepts are quickly becoming clichés. The Chinese contemporary art trend has developed so rapidly that it has almost caught up with its international counterparts much like the huge trade surplus in Sino-US trade. Why do we then still invite seven San Francisco-based artists to come to Canton and make a “deficit trade” through exchange? Since 1849, when the first batch of “Mai Ju Chai” (Contracted Labors) from Taishan, Siyi and Zhongshan landed in San Francisco, did any city in the world mean so much to Canton. At the same time, Bruce Lee and Chinatown, two of the biggest symbols of San Francisco Chinese ethnicity, had become the condensed imagination for Americans to conceptualize how a modern China might look.

When my distant relatives from Zhongshan and Siyi talked about their cousins in San Francisco, it sounded just like neighborhood gossip. But, the Golden Bridge still seemed so unfamiliar and distant. Until I met and drank with a young ABC (American Born Chinese) at Xin Tiandi in Shanghai and listened to him use more standard Cantonese and English with a heavier cantonese accent than myself, did I catch a slight humid breath from San Francisco.

Guangzhou and San Francisco are cities both well known for their openness and mixed styles. They are so far away, yet so close. They mirror each other as reflected by their similar features. Cantocore Import/Export reconsiders the relationship between these two regions with a seemingly clear-cut definition. The project tries to discover multi-dimensional meanings including political, cultural and social significance from a two-dimensional economic pattern. Eleven artists and one project team show us their concepts from the source of their intuition and perception to create a legerity, portability and lightness. The projects are separated out from daily life, but beyond life experiences. They push us to reexamine our daily patterns and objects. How and to what degree are they generated, circulated and consumed in our economic and social systems in unknown ways?

Cantocore artist Misako Inaoka, remakes toys from China. Perhaps this behavior for her is only a pure personal experience as she said she “observe[s] the physical and social environment in detail, to find hidden beauty and peculiarity.” But for the rest of us, it seems to open up an alternative fate for Chinese toys past the more recent trade war this year with the United States. David Johnson’s California-shaped crate opened pandora’s box about the true fate of commodities. The crate was opened before it arrived, but why are we still haunted by the muted light emanating from the crate? Huang Xiaopeng’s banner acts like his past huge propaganda posters. After the solemn multiple translations of printed words in his posters’ text, a pataphysics emerges. Inside Kathrine Worel’s photo and video installation, we find figures who seems like characters from the movie “The Big Lebowski.” Kathrine leads us from a negative to a mutative level of the multicolored American dream. She presents to us how the Buddist deity Tara, imported from India, uses her hand gestures to realize a conceptual conspiracy with the style of Valie Export’s videos.

Guy Overfelt fabricates some huge inflatable smoke clouds which were virtually created from the burnout by his American muscle car. The sculpture, like a real body, is huge. The spectacle confuses people about its real weight. Is it light or heavy? Is it a spectacle or junk? These juxtaposed binary concepts make people realize the paradox of our consumer culture.

The overflow of Neo-liberal economies is one of the most important representations from the pursuit of productive profit changing into investment profit. From GDP to GNP to stock markets, we exist by ubiquitous abstract exponents. Jon Phillips’ LED signboard is full of these charts and strange abstract numbers that reflect how the array of nothingness invades our real life. Also, Lin Fangsuo and Zhou Tao, two Canton-based video artists, open the door of social criticism and activate the terminal consumer nightmare. In Lin Fangsuo’s “Exploitation,” the background music by Offenbach boils while tomatoes, pomegranates and pimientos are squeezed with a piece of glass pressed by one’s ass or foot. The indignation for “the bottom oppress bottom” speaks for itself. Zhou Tao’s video work, “One day,” adopts a kind of “translational motion” by tactfully moving daily actions into a shopping mall. A shocking consumerism comes forth by reducing dramatic efforts greatly. And, JD. Beltran’s airplanes take off in image, but upon closer inspection are read as another clear remark on today’s “spectacle society.”

As a non-homogenous exhibion, we are not willing to show the audience an alternative illustrated manual about import/export with real things. Rather, the participating artists open up a discussion about the relationship of communities in different ways. Deer Fang’s video installation reenacts three small news events which took place in public space. This six-channel video installation requires the audience to monitor three trivial daily events through staged reenactments. In another work, “Huang Pu Village,” a collaborative project formed by Wang Ge, Deer Fang and more than 20 students from Sun Yat-sen University and Guangzhou Fine Arts Academy, the real Huang Pu Village’s changing history is examined. The village used to be an import/export harbor a long time ago and now is just a simple community. Also, Justin Hoover’s two channel video installation, is created from the live acting of 10 performances during the show opening. This staged scene reproduces the spirit of Bay Area experimental art in history and is renewed as experimental art in Guangzhou.

Cantocore Import/Export reconnects the two related regions, Guangzhou and San Francisco. This show sets aside the reporting forms, hassle from customs and the reviews by trade bureaus by using video, performance, shipping crates and cheap toys to reconsider the bountiful results from the business of trading.

日常经验的重新审视

吴捷

在全球化、多元主义这些概念快成陈词滥调，中国当代艺术的走向，迅猛得都快赶上中美贸易领域的巨大顺差时，我们为什么还要邀请七位旧金山的艺术家来中国做一次“逆差型”的交流呢？自第一批台山、四邑和中山的“卖猪仔”在1894年登陆旧金山以来，全世界也许没有哪一座城市和广东如此咫尺天涯。而旧金山的李小龙和唐人街也成为了美国对于现代中国的浓缩想象。当我那些中山和四邑来的远亲，讲述着他们的旧金山表亲时，口气轻松得仿佛只是家长里短，而大洋彼岸的金门桥对我来说，却依然陌生而又遥远。直到有天在上海新天地和一个来自旧金山的年轻ABC喝酒，听着他用比我更标准的粤语，和更更标准的带着粤语口音的英语聊天时，我才突然捕捉到了一丝真正从旧金山飘来的湿濡气息。

广州和旧金山，两座同样以开放和混合风格著称的城市，既远且近，它们互为镜像般折射着各自的容貌。进口/出口要在一个主题貌似明确的定义中，重新考量两个区域间的关联，在双向度的经济格局中寻找出多维度的政治、文化和社会意义，十一位艺术家和一个项目团队的作品向我们呈现了一种从直觉和自我感受出发的创作理念：轻巧、便携、不凝重，从日常出发，却又超越日常经验。让我们在毫无准备的情况下，重新审视日常物件以及它们的变体是在何种程度和如何在我们的经济和社会体系中产生、流通和被最终使用的。

MisakoInaoka将中国出口美国的玩具进行重组的行为，对她来讲，也许只是一次“仔细观察物质和社会环境，以发掘中间隐藏的美与奇异之处”的纯粹个人体验过程，但在我们看来，却像是在告示之前发生的中国玩具出口贸易事件中玩具们的另类命运。DavidO.Johnson设计的加州地形板条箱，打开了一个关于商品命运真相的潘多拉之盒，箱子在抵达之前已被开启，然而隐约的霓虹蓝光何以仍然让人心驰神迷？黄小鹏的标语一如既往，“由于帝国的，扩充……”
貌似庄重肃穆的标语文本，在多重转译之后，露出了皇帝新装似的无稽和可笑。Kathrine Worel那些仿似“The Big Lebowski”般的人物造型，带着我们穿越底片，进入斑斓美国梦的变异层面，让我们看到从印度进口的度母手势是如何神秘地与ValieExport式的影像风格达成观念的共谋。GuyOverfelt“中国制造”的充气汽车尾气烟雾，体型巨大，以至无法让人感知它的真正重量，轻/重，景观/无用，这些并置而又相反的概念让人意识到消费文化怪诞的二律悖论。新自由主义经济主张的全面扩张，其中重要的一项表现就是通过对生产性利润的追求，转向对投资性利润的追求，随处可见的就是我们对股市行情、证券交易以及五花八门的抽象指数的关注，Jon Phillips的LED二级管显示牌布满各种图表和指数，从GDP到GNP，从股价到汇率，反映了无物之阵是如何开始实体性地入侵我们的日常生活。控诉性的表达则来自林芳所和周滔，两位来自广东的视频/录像艺术家用各自不同的视野打开社会学批判和终端消费的梦魇之门。林芳所的“剥削”用玻璃板、屁股或是穿着凉鞋的脚，在奥芬巴赫雄壮的音乐声中，狠命踏碎一个个画着笑脸的番茄、石榴和圆椒，一种“底层压迫底层”激愤不言而喻。周滔的影像作品“某一天”，采用一种完全平移的手法，将每日的吃喝拉撒挪到某家“好X多”，对戏剧性的极度消减，却反而获得一幅令人震惊消费图景。而JD.Beltran的飞机起降特写，则是我们今天消费“景观社会”的另一个清晰注解。

作为一个并不同质化的展览，我们不想提供一本关于进/出口贸易，伴有另类实物图解说明的参观手册，参与展览的艺术家还以各自不同的手法展开关于社团/组群之间人与人关系的探讨。方鹿的录像装置是在公共空间重做了三件新闻中的小情节，以“重做”为创作语言，六频道的电视的装置让观众“监控”了三件无关紧要的事件。另外在“黄埔村录像”项目中，由王铬、方鹿和20多名中山大学和广州美院学生组成的工作组，采用了田野作业的方法考察了古进出口贸易港口村黄埔的变迁历史，和其中的社区生存状况。而Justin Hoover的双频录象装置则采用了一种更为staging的手法来再现美国湾区实验艺术文化精神和今天广州实验艺术的两厢对照。

“硬核广州-进口/出口”重新连接广州/旧金山两个关联区域，抛开来自海关或贸易局的报表数据，用影像、行为、被打开的板条箱和廉价玩具，重新评估商业领域的累累硕果。