I am getting onto a plane for Australia in a few hours. This is my first time heading down under – very excited. This Friday evening Carriageworks, a huge art and cultural center in Sydney, is going to present a program on my Sound Kapital project. I am giving a short talk around 6PM followed by a performance at 8PM by three amazing bands from Beijing: Nova Heart, AV Okubo/AV大久保, and Xiao He/小河. An extended selection of my work documenting the underground music scene in Beijing will also be projected during the concert. It should be an awesome evening all around. Check out the links to Carriageworks above for ticket information and videos below for previews of the bands.

This is the second of a series of posts detailing the bourgeois practices of nouveau-riche, communist-heritage pilgrims who possess expectations and consumer desires that seem at odd with the core ideologies of the founding fathers of the Chinese Revolution. Armed with cash and a new sense of leisure, most of these fledgling tourists first make their way to Shaoshan/韶山, the birthplace of Mao Zedong. A slew of “red” products and trinkets are available around every corner even in the face of sincere reverence for founding Chinese Communist Party leaders that borderlines on idolization. Elderly tourists kowtow to statues of Mao Zedong while company retreats sing “red” songs and pledge oaths. These blind followers make easy prey for egregious tourist traps such as the Shao Yue Palace Maoist Family History Show, where attendants usher punters into Mao Zedong veneration halls, hand out lucky ornaments, ask them to bow to a Mao Zedong statue three times and then try to charge them for the “blessed” ornaments. Some estimate the value of the entire “red” industry at $1.5 billion dollars and Mao Zedong’s hometown is at the epicenter. Also check out the last post in the series on “The Defense of Yan’an” reenactment.

I always like to brag about Beijing being the center of the music universe in China. It is rather hard to dispute. The only band that throws a wrench in my argument is Duck Fight Goose. Hailing from Shanghai, they are one of the best bands in China, hands down. Their new album Sports, recently released by Maybe Mars, should put them more on the map not only domestically but hopefully internationally. I love the math and prog rock influences and genuinely feel it could be a breakout album. Han Han, the lead singer and general impresario, is taking the band in a wide array of directions. Their live performances are also extremely tight – check out footage from the Sports album release party at D-22 below. So, onwards and upwards with Duck Fight Goose, and may they continue to instigate a renaissance of sorts in Shanghai.

It is with great pleasure to announce that a photograph from the Happy Magic Water Park series is in this month’s issue of National Geographic. I have been meeting with editors at the renowned magazine for over a year, and although it’s just a double-page spread, getting into National Geographic was one of those markers I set for myself a long time ago and definitely dreamed about as a kid. Hopefully it will lead to a full feature with them in the future. Also, fellow INSTITUTE photographer Richard Mosse has a spread from his amazing series Infra, which Aperture just published as a monograph. In celebration, I returned to my Happy Magic Water Park material and pulled out some photographs that I have never shown before. Check them out below.

I just completed a Domus Mixtape for Beijing. You can hear it over at Domus or on SoundCloud. I drew exclusively from Maybe Mars and Modern Sky for the music as well as a live recording of Zhang Shouwang/张守望 of White+ and Carsick Cars fame. There is a lot more music out there in China, of course, but this is definitely some of my favorite material. Sort of the soundtrack to my life over the past four years. Below is the accompanying text, track list and some portraits of the performers included on the mixtape from Sound Kapital:

The hardest part of the day in Beijing is getting out of bed. Gazing across a smoggy skyline and watching the hectic traffic below is reason enough to hide under the covers for a few more hours. It is a dystopia – maybe even a nightmare. That is why I embrace the night. The sky remains a muted black, and I can seek out sparks of life in the darker recesses of the city. Beijing’s mutating urban landscape can only be matched by its shifting artistic climate, especially in the realm of sound. Desperation breeds discontent, and voices are emerging to express it. Every weekend features full billings at a growing number of performance spaces across Beijing: dive bars near the universities, small coffee houses hidden amongst the hutongs, larger concert halls in defunct government buildings, or experimental enclaves adjoining fish farms on the outer edges of the city. Beijing’s erratic social landscape is now molded by the Internet and mobile phones instead of more closely controlled media channels such as television and radio. Those with idiosyncratic tastes readily connect with each other and access an exponentially broader realm of music from both home and abroad as they continue to pick apart the past fifty years of western pop, rock, jazz, punk, electronic, and experimental music with increased vigor. The performers on this mixtape constitute a formidable new wave of artists striving to expand their creative limits in an autonomous and compelling fashion. Even though it is too early to tell what may come of the innovative strides made by these musicians, there is no doubt that they will continue to break ground within Beijing’s nascent artistic landscape, helping to push the boundaries of an already expanding realm of independent thought and musical expression in China. In the end the city resists description. Outside the smoke-choked bars everything is layered in a fine coat of dust. Whole neighborhoods disappear and find their way deep into your lungs. That’s the problem. The city gets inside you – fills you to the brim – consumed by a monstrous flow of people and infrastructure. It’s savage but enticing. Six million people flocked here over the past ten years and half a million are expected each year for the foreseeable future. The implosion is just beginning. The nebulous heart of the middle kingdom skips along to ever irregular beats.

Tracks:

01. My Great Location - Rebuilding the Rights of Statues/重塑雕像的权利

02. Some Surprises Come Too Soon - P.K. 14

03. No. 6 Space Ship - AV Okubo/AV大久保

04. Sand Hammer - Hedgehog/刺猬

05. Sunday Girl - Ourself Beside Me

06. Flu - Snapline

07. You Can Listen You Can Talk - Carsick Cars

08. Golden Gate - Duck Fight Goose/鸭打鹅乐队

09. This Side Down - The Offset Spectacle/憬观：像同叠

10. To Die - Soviet Pop/苏维埃·波普

11. The Earthquake - 24 Hour/24小时

12. Hospital - Guai Li/怪力

13. Beijing is Not My Home - Demerit/过失

14. Intro/Outro/Transitions - Zhang Shouwang/张守望 live at D-22 on November 22, 2011

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting Ai Weiwei in his studio to take portraits for Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list where he appeared at #18 in the rankings. He was very amiable and open to me directing him about his compound where I posed him with some of his favorite cats. Ai Weiwei is all over the news again. After a short period of silence following an 81-day incarceration, he continues to lash out at authorities and decry the trumped-up charges of tax evasion brought against him in an attempt to silence his outspoken criticisms. A recent Newsweek piece he penned where he related Beijing to a “nightmare” was especially noteworthy. This renewed vigor and boldness seem in large part due to the outpouring of support shown by anonymous Chinese donors who rallied behind him to raise $1.4 million to challenge his huge tax bill which he refers to as ransom money. Other admirers are finding more brazen outlets to show support by posting nude photos of themselves online in defense of other spurious pornography charges brought against Ai Weiwei for a set of revealing self portraits released on the Internet. To make things even more controversial, high profile figures are weighing in on the situation, including Taiwan’s president Ma Ying-jeou who visited his current exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. It’s all quite a mess, but I am sure Ai Weiwei is pleased with himself for creating an even larger fuss than before his arrest – another great case of censorship backfiring in the face of the Chinese state.

In a crazy sense I think the political space in China has truly transformed Ai Weiwei’s life into an interdisciplinary work of art or a “social performance” as he calls it. His invocation of the Chinese state’s ire came through a combination of critical sculptures, writings, photographs, videos and installations. While these separate pieces might not be interdisciplinary in nature, they have brought about a dynamic where every action or utterance of Ai Weiwei becomes performative in nature and open to intense analysis by journalists, officials, police and, increasingly so, the general public. His identity remains at the center and activates all of these mediums of expression, especially through the Internet which exponentially magnifies his impact. In a statistical sense, Ai Weiwei is not well known in China. Still, he is making waves where it counts and China’s intelligentsia is taking note. These are the people fashioning the new China, and his stand against censorship and political suppression is singular. By tapping into a populist sentiment with his donation drive, he is putting officials even more on edge. It’s a very crucial moment for Ai Weiwei right now. There is still a very distinct possibility he might disappear again.

In other Ai Weiwei news, my friend Alison Klayman’s documentary, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, is set to premiere at the Sundance Festival in January. Check out the trailer and her appearance on the Colbert Report. It is very timely and should be a great film.

I’m sorry I’m so late with posting these clippings, but I have been traveling a lot recently. Last month Time Magazine featured my photographs from The Ordos Real Estate Bubble: An Empty Chinese Metropolis series in a piece on China’s precarious real estate market. Property prices have been skyrocketing over the past three years thanks to mass speculation by developers and government support of infrastructure development. For some time it was easily one of the best investments in the country and people would camp out on streets in order to buy apartments in especially hot markets in Shanghai and Sanya. Now it seems like the tide is finally going to turn. The real question is whether or not there is going to be a soft or hard landing for property prices. The China real estate sector might be most important financial market in the global economy, and a sudden pop would send international markets into a downward spiral. I don’t think this is going to happen, but people are starting to wake up and realize how overheated housing and commercial markets are in major urban centers. Many of these newfangled luxury developments remain empty and prices are starting to drop. It’s going to be interesting to see how this story unfolds over the next few months.

After a four-year, $380 million refurbishment, the National Museum of China finally opened its doors to the public as the largest exhibition space on the planet, beating out both the Louvre in Paris and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Even though now touted as one of the world’s premiere cultural institutions, it has failed to impress either international or domestic visitors with it’s shrill depiction of the history of the Chinese Communist Party in its centerpiece “The Road of Rejuvenation” exhibition. Key epochs such as the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution are left out of its glossy displays and poorly translated placards. Still, such a propagandistic history of modern China was expected in the first place. What really shocked many visitors was the blatant commercialization of the National Museum of China within its first two design exhibitions: “Louis Vuitton Voyages” and “Bulgari: 125 Years of Italian Magnificence.” Museum directors claim such exhibitions are revitalizing interest in the space, but it is more a sellout at the heart of the nation a stone’s throw from Mao Zedong’s tomb. Critics remain baffled as to how such a key cultural institution could blatantly promote such crass consumerism, especially surrounding the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party which was also linked to an exhibition of historical paintings adjacent to vintage Louis Vuitton trunks and sparkling Bulgari jewels. Such opulent items stand counter to the core ideologies of the founding fathers of the Chinese Communist Party celebrated a short distance away, as well as the core mission of the museum itself that is purportedly dedicated to promoting Chinese culture instead of foreign luxury brands. These photographs juxtapose the “The Road of Rejuvenation” and “Masterpieces of Modern Chinese Fine Arts” exhibitions advocating the socialist roots of the Chinese Communist Party with the champagne-fueled openings of the “Louis Vuitton Voyages” and “Bulgari: 125 Years of Italian Magnificence” exhibitions. Such paradoxes stand at the center of the Chinese Communist Party’s attempts to rectify its embrace of rampant free-market consumerism with its socialist heritage.

I was very fortunate to be approached by fellow MFA student, and established artist, Mathias Kessler to participate in a group show celebrating the opening of ME Contemporary‘s new and expanded space in Copenhagen. He was looking to pair up his Cueva de Charles Brewer photographs with some of my own for the exhibition. After some consideration it became apparent that my Happy Magic Water Park series would work particularly well, not just because of its artificial cave nature, but also because it reacts well with the beautiful orange hues of Mathias’ prints. Here is what the gallery had to say:

“Mathias Kessler has, in recent years, been using his camera to record nature from remote areas the average person rarely reaches. By relating to modern man’s domination over nature, the artist portrays areas that in the media are doomed to be infinitesimal: the icebergs, and areas where no man, certainly not modern, have actually been and where nature in its own right is far superior. In one such instance, lie these giant caves whose only access is from Mount Tepui’s vertical hillside. As a counterpart to these enormous, almost mythical caves, Kessler has invited photographer Matthew Niederhauser, whose recent projects investigate modern China, to exhibit photos of the Happy Magic Water Cube, Beijing Water Cube Water Park. The meeting between the artificially staged water park with its eerie blue color and Kessler´s earth-colored cave photos creates a new reality that in an interesting and unintentional manner serves to reinforce their own story.”

I really wish I could be out there to see the exhibit. Apparently one of our sets already sold. If you are anywhere near Copenhagen please check it out and let me know what you think. Thanks again to Mathias for including me as well. Hopefully it will be the first of more collaborations.