Silver city ... Zhan Wang's Urban Landscape - London. Photograph: Jonathan Watts
In the latest of his blogs from the Dashanzi International Art Festival, Jonathan Watts finds China's breakneck urban redevelopment under scrutiny.
Mutability is an eternal artistic theme, but it is hard to imagine any peacetime city in history able to offer as much inspiration on this subject than modern-day Beijing.
This is a capital in the midst of a mad rush into the future. The transformation is vast and fast. Down go neighbourhoods of ancient hutong alleyways and courtyard houses. Up go Olympic stadia, TV towers, airport terminals and other monuments to modernization. Restaurants and bars you eat and drink at one day are piles of rubble the next.
Living amid such a rapidly shifting environment, it is hard to know whether to celebrate, commiserate or simply gaze in awe. If the work on display at the Dashanzi festival is any guide, however, Chinese artists see the changes as more destructive than creative.
The sense of loss is evident at the Constructed Winds exhibition at the Red Gate Gallery where seven artists reflect on the reconstruction of Beijing. The violence of tearing down so many old communities is evident in Wang Jinsong's photographs of the Chinese character chai "demolition" daubed on 100 walls. The hardships faced by those who carry out this brutal transformation is written on the faces of the migrant worker statues by Liang Shuo. But the most poignant piece is Li Gang's Discarded Remnants - a collection of 77 shoes, all cast in bronze from footwear found in the ruins of demolished buildings.
In other galleries, Beijing's construction sites - which often resemble the aftermath of bombing raids - are the setting for much wistful photography. Chen Qiulin's Hometown shows a young woman at an old make-up table - the only object left in one piece in a ruined home. At 706 Space, works by Rong Rong and Inri place a Sino-Japanese couple in a naked embrace among the devastation of an old community. The impact of the pictures is strengthened by the setting - a cavernous old factory with flaking walls, smashed windows and fading slogans from the cultural revolution.
Other artists have a more humorous take on urban development. The two that brought a smile to my face were both at the Long March Space. At first sight, Zhan Wang's Urban Landscape - London, appears to show a gleaming futuristic city of silver. Look closely however and the Thames-side architecture is actually a pile of stainless steel pots and pans - exactly the sort of kitchen implements you might find rusty and battered among the rubble of Beijing's demolition sites.
But the most wonderfully daft critique of humanity's ambitions to conquer the environment is provided by Xu Zhen's Himalaya. Using video, photography and the internet, he "records" an expedition to the top of Everest, where he and his artistic team proceed to lop a 186cm chunk off the top of the world's highest mountain. Cutting nature down to size does not get any more absurd.
~ More blogs from Jonathan at the Dashanzi art festival here.
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