Exposition Benoît VERMANDER (peintures) – LIANG Zhun (photographies) 

Le musée municipal Xuhui, Shanghai, accueille du 24 octobre au 10 novembre 2014 une exposition de Benoît Vermander (France) et Liang Zhun (Chine), intitulée « Entre ville et mont (見山‧畫城) ». Le dialogue entre les peintures de Benoît Vermander et les photographies de Liang Zhun – les unes et les autres confrontant condition urbaines et populations montagnardes du sud-ouest de la Chine - ouvrent sur d'autres confrontations : celle entre la « tradition » chinoise, et des modernités éclatées ; celles entre un regard ancré dans les grandes terres du sud-ouest et une esthétique du passage, de la fluidité ; celle entre l'instant photographique et le trait calligraphique.

Juste avant l'inauguration de l'exposition, une table ronde réunit au musée Xuhui des professeurs du département de philosophie de Fudan et des artistes de différentes nationalité habitant à Shanghai autour du thème : « L'œil et le trait. Qu'est-ce qu'une esthétique inter-culturelle ? » L'apport d'auteurs tels que Merleau-Ponty et Henri Michaux fera l'objet d'une attention spéciale.

Inauguration: Vendredi 24 octobre 2014, 16h
DATES : 24 octobre 2014 – 10 novembre 2014
Lieu : Xuhui Art Museum, Shanghai 1411 Huaihai Middle Rd, Xuhui, Shanghai, Chine

The Mountain is looking at the City spreading. The City tries to rise but just spreads. Building after building, a forest of concrete, steel and glass; how small it looks when you take altitude and see it from above- from the height of a peak!

The stream of the Danshui river was bringing me a peaceful melody, waves were biting the shore softly, but, stream inside the stream, slightly blurring the mirror of the water, I could hear a confusing tumult, news from the world struggling in the distance to spill a shot of truth at me:

"When the soldier was being interrogated, all 16 surveillance cameras stopped working. This is absolutely normal. It happens all the time in the army, the cameras are old. This is a banal accident"

“A photograph is not only an image, an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stencilled off the real”

~Susan Sontag

I like to shoot boring things; and this makes the act of photographing a wedding quite difficult, because I need to capture touching moments. This is not entirely my problem, but is rather related to the fact that emotions in weddings are always expressed in similar ways, so after attending two or three you become tired.

After capturing and presenting the atmosphere at night in the Huaguang community - one of the last mainlanders village left in central Taipei-, here are the voices and faces of its last residents. This old community retains the mood and traditions of old Times. Its inhabitants, civil servants from the ministry of Justice, mainlanders' families and others Taiwanese, have been living here for more than 50 years. By the end of 2012, this community will be demolished to give way to a financial center called "Taipei Wall Street". The residents are claiming for Justice and decent solutions.

Photographing people's spirituality is not an easy task - first you need to gain trust of the people you want to photograph and often even that will not be enough, as spiritual practices are for many something too personal, or sometimes sacred, to be shown. I attempted nevertheless and made a collection that shows diversity of Taiwanese spiritual and religious life, and although it is not even close to fully show the abundance of spirituality on the island, it does provide a glimpse of it. I omitted some of the biggest religious groups in Taiwan in order to show spirituality in Taiwan in a new light. Further, I treat this collection as a beginning of a bigger and long lasting project of photographing religious and spiritual life in Taiwan.

Dada Kaladharananda showing a yoga posture in Ananda Marga center in Taipei

Professor Shi Mingzong – coach of Shida basketball team talks to his players
during a yoga session in Ananda Marga center in Taipei. His son also participates in exercises

Shida basketball team doing yoga exercises

Shida basketball team doing yoga exercises

Muslims during prayer time in Grand Mosque in Taipei

Fridays are the only days when muslims can come to the Grand Mosque
to buy halal meat imported from Australia and New Zeland

The canteen in Grand Mosque also offers halal zongzi

Relaxing in the mosque after prayer

Pilgrims to Baishatun kneeling for hours to receive Mazu’s blessing

Early morning during Baishatun Mazu pilgrimage

Mourners watch how a coffin with their deceased relative is being cremated. With assistance of a buddhist monk

A collection of flower essence in a New Age bookstore next to NTU main gate

A todler with his grandmother on the grounds of the neat Mormon temple in Taipei

Postcards with pictures from the LDS temple sold in a shop near the temple in Taipei

Wednesday bible reading and experience sharing group
in the Catholic Sacred Heart Church in Taipei - lead by American nun and the parish priest

Bible in front of one of the members of the Wednesday group

Eclectic public cemetery in Taipei

Jay Caffin – a spiritual healer who now lives and practices in Kaohsiung

Photography and editing by Witold Chudy (Photo no.1: Graves of Italian missionaries to Yunnan)

Photo no. 13 (flower essence) by Cerise Phiv

The Huaguang community (華光社區) is one of the last mainlander villages left in central Taipei. This old community retains the mood and traditions of old times. Its inhabitants, civil servants from the Ministry of Justice, mainlander families and others Taiwanese, have been living here for more than 50 years. By the end of 2012, this community will be demolished to give way to a financial centre called "Taipei Wall Street". Inhabitants are calling for justice and decent relocation solutions. Through this documentary, a collection of nocturnal colors photography, the presence of the inhabitants is suggested but not shown outright, their anger and frustration is just acknowledged but not emphasized. The wall and windows, the alleys and the vegetation, where you can feel the sweat of their existence, are all photographed by night to underlie the unreal mood that will follow the demolition. No digital retouchings have been made to the photos; all shot with a Kodak Ektar Chrome 100.

I have travelled many times to Liangshan Prefecture, home of Sichuan’s Yi minority. Reporting on festivals in Zhaojue, Puge or Meigu counties, I have taken countless photographs and made many Yi friends, whom I like to visit each time I am back in Liangshan.

It was only during the summer of 2006, however, that I went to Yanyuan County, in the western corner of the prefecture. I was accompanying a French scholar, Benoit Vermander, to Yangjuan village. Yangjuan has more or less become a household name in Liangshan and Chengdu, as a school has been built there thanks to the efforts of Benoit, Professor Stevan Harrell (University of Washington in Seattle) and many friends from Chengdu and other parts of China. Not only does Yangjuan enjoy the benefits of a good primary school, it has also embarked on a variety of experiments: summer educational courses, hydraulic works, sheep rearing and following the lives of young migrant workers… Most of these experiments are small-scale, which is actually an advantage because it allows for trial and error, involvement of the villagers, and potential duplication in other places… Even if the experience remains limited in scope, Yangjuan is a kind of social laboratory.

In fact, “Yangjuan” is not the official name of the place. This community is officially part of Baiwu Township, in the north-central part of Yanyuan County. The area is beautiful, with streams and cliffs, fields of buckwheat, corn and sunflowers. There are mountains on all sides, rich with forests of Yunnan Pine and hundreds of species of plants. Sheep, goats, horses, cattle and pigs graze in the pastures. However, I know that in wintertime, things are different. Everything is barren, water is sorely lacking, people are cold, malnourished and often sick without reliable medical care. Development is needed, but local people must be the actors of the development process.

What made summer of 2006 so special was also that Benoit was not alone this year. He came with his younger sister, his brother in law and their four children (7 to 13 years old); all of them arriving directly from France. Going to Yangjuan when this is your first trip to China is most certainly not a banal experience!

These pictures document this extraordinary summer at a remote village in Liangshan, where friends come together every summer, to forge a tiny part of a better future…

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The photographs gathered here gives testimony to a world with no equivalent. The Barge wall, 53 kilometers away from the district township, is located between a mountain and the sacred waters from which emerges the Yalong River. Started in 1640, repeatedly repaired and expanded since then, the wall now extends over a length of 1.7 kilometer, and its height ranges between two and three meters. The majority of stones that adorn the building are Mani stones (or simply "manis"), which are so called because they are carved with the famous mantra “om ma ni padme hum” ("the mantra of the six syllables" or “drug yi ge pa” in Tibetan). But the Barge wall also comprises more than three thousand stones decorated with representations of Buddhist deities, and about seven thousand stones inlaid with various sutras.

As to the "funeral city" of Songge, it is composed of a wall nine feet high surrounding an accumulation of stupas, through which the visitor circulates as in a maze after having entered through a back door. Its wall (which extends 73 meters from west to east and 47 meters from north to south) is also composed of Mani stones, sutras carved in stone and a sacred iconography, among which the few scholars who have been able to come there are able to identify representations of King Gesar and thirty-General of the State of Ling of which he was the overlord. At the very center of this construction stands a well, the depth of which has not been probed. The construction of this "city" began around the eleventh or twelfth century. It is probably a kind of memorial for the heroes fallen during the wars fought by King Gesar. The epic sings the repentance finally shown by the uncle of King Gesar, his hardened opponent, after he had killed several heroes. The funeral city would then have been built as a sign of atonement.

Nomadic tribes still live in the area. They bring along with them sacred vessels and erect a “portable temple” in a tent wherever they have decided to camp. The whole region is marked by such extremes of hardship, poetry and faith…

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Besides a renowned temple and the ruins of another one, the township proper has not much to offer the passer-by. But its surroundings are full of stunning human and natural wonders. One of them might well be Napa village, about 12 km from the township. It is in the middle of a natural reserve, set up by the government in 1980. There are 41 families, farmers and hunters, totaling a little less than 300 inhabitants, whose houses are grouped together. A gate signals the entry to the village. The lake below it is called “Napa Sea” and is renowned for the back-neck cranes that spend the winter there. It is not even a lake actually, but rather a depression, totally filled with water during the rainy season.

The primary school in Napa village stops at the third grade. Volunteers, coming mainly from Shanghai, have been offering summer courses for a few years already. Whenever possible, teachers supported by outside funding try to offer courses during the year, so that children may get a more advanced education. The same volunteers’ team also offers physical check-ups and other services aimed at local, sustainable development.

Ascending the mountains that surround the village, visitors can discover the enchantment of Tibetan forests and pasture. Now more open to the outside world and mastering the Mandarin language, young villagers act as guides, slowly developing an “eco-tourism” from below. Still, the life is far from being rosy: young girls are still carrying heavy loads of wood in prevision of the harsh winter months. Though eco-tourism is on the rise, the illegal cutting of trees occurs on a large scale. Paradoxically, it is even on the rise, because of the boom on constructions in traditional Tibetan style coming from the rise in tourism activities. Like in the whole of southwest China, the model of development is still debated, and a choice has to be made between rapid enrichment and the preservation of resources that prove to be rare and precious, even in the privileged natural environment of Shangri-la.

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Chen Bo-I, aka 'The King of the ruins' doesn’t necessarily come across as glamorous as his nickname sounds. Currently, working on his PhD in Hydraulic and Ocean Engineering, a most realistic and practical trade, yet beyond his advanced studies in man-made structures on the ocean, he is also avid reader of the fascinating marks of history left on landbased structures. In the interview below he tells us how he got into this underground culture, how he works with the ruins in his photography and what he values about these decaying remains.

Hongmaogang Juancun (紅毛港眷村)

Why is this world...why is it so messed up? Because of typhoons, because of rains, those types of things, and floods, and mudslides, that's what normally causes it. But this is all caused by ships, and excavators. Why do they have to destroy our homes?

A young boy and resident of the Hongmaogang Community before it was destroyed - speaking in the documentary film Homeless (紅毛港：家變)

 

In 2005 Chen Po-I (Bibi) started shooting some fishing villages or military dependents’ village where intensive city regeneration was underway.

 

Hongmaogang community, lying off the coast of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan was perhaps the best example of a juancun or military dependants’ village, a phenomenon unique to Taiwan. These juancun are particular to Taiwan in that they were made for the families of KMT soldiers who had come over from the mainland following the civil war . They were built as temporary settlements, since the prevailing idea at the time was that Taiwan was a temporary base for re-conquering of mainland China, thus the houses were put together with great haste, there were no regulations on how they were built and as such impulsive building of extensions and additions was the norm. This allowed a very natural human feeling to develop in the area. Eventually however, juancun residents would begin recieving notice that they were too leave the buildings, the moment residents have left the excavators get demolishing. Bibi, tries to get there first - like he did to take these photographs at Hongmaogang.

 

In 1968, Hongmaogang was declared land for building a port. However at the time they didn't have the funds to move all the people and instead time was frozen as the government declared new building or work on their current houses was banned. This strategy was not enough to suppress the residents will to build and throughout the 1970's the residents did all their building at night, while the police were off duty, so as not to be discovered. It was often the case that on waking up in the morning, a house would expanded a metre or two. It wasn't until 1986 that this provoked a government response in which they took aerial photos and stated that from then on the residents buildings were not allowed to change from the way they were captured in the aerial photos. Eventually in 2004 the government had sufficient funds and began moving the residents. In 2008 as the government evacuated the final inhabitants of the harbour, Chen Po-I took to action to make sure that there would always remain a poetic memory of the Hongmaogang Settlement, where for him life stories were the traces engraved in the walls. He also brought these photos together as part of his exhibition 'Outlook', giving the community the chance to share in these memories.

Walking the wires

On a more sober note one of the raiders nonetheless reminds us of the dangers of visiting ruins. The majority of these buildings are uninhabited and unkempt, some of them are as the name suggests, in ruins - states of devastation, with pieces of metal, wood, glass and sometimes even needles littering the floor, others are private property and guests are unwelcome. Be careful and aware when inside and only go into ruins with unlocked doors. If you listen to this advice however, everyone can be touched by the poetry of these ruins.

Adrien Roger is a young French photographer living in Shanghai. He is featured this month on the virtual art gallery: Ipagine.com. He comments and explains his series entitled "sleeping people in Shanghai"  (Watch it here.)

"I was born in the suburb of Paris, and I live now in Shanghai. I always liked cameras but I realized rather late that it could not be a job. I started working in a studio specialized in fashion, and, at the same time, I did some traveling, mainly in Africa.