Stepping into the Space between Art and Perception at Shanghai Art Museum 2006 Biennale -- HyperDesign

Shanghai Art Museum 2006 Biennale -- HyperDesign, originally uploaded by meckleychina.

What art biennials can do, as they become globally prevalent form of connecting between urban culture and urban space, comes closer to formulation as one looks at this fluorescent wall that cuts silhouettes at the edges of exhibition visitors who in their turn change the pattern that the picture captures as it takes the space before the artwork into a wide focus gaining in depth at exactly the interface between the urban space that lets audience in and the urban culture that travels around the globe, sprouts in a grass roots manner in creative quarters, and becomes occasionally encased in museum-like settings of biennial shows.

Digital Mise-En-Abyme of Beatriz Milhazes' Work - Shanghai Art Museum 2006 Biennale -- HyperDesign - 上海 中国

Beatriz Milhazes - Shanghai Art Museum 2006 Biennale -- HyperDesign - 上海 中国, originally uploaded by meckleychina.

As we look but do not see the picture an exhibition visitor takes of Milhazes' work at the 2006 art museum biennale in Shanghai, it looks that each take that Internet interfaces allow to have of it rather than remaining anonymous and ephemeral, as the moments of live contemplation in museums are, becomes concrete and always already reproduced as this image is at my blog that does it, however, with digital perfection of a copy without the original that the picture not necessarily is, once its social and cultural positioning in the lived spaces of the art biennial is taken into consideration.

An Urban Transition in Perspective: Warehouse - Waima Rd - Shanghai, China - 中国 上海

Warehouse - Waima Rd - Shanghai, China - 中国 上海, originally uploaded by meckleychina.

It is hard to refrain from feeling haunted by the spectres of modernism and avant-garde that this round and elongated shape of a warehouse evokes as it goes from the here and now of the camera shutters consigning what they see to electronic memory of social networking, image sharing and blogosphere into the future of urban change that its blinded windows can hardly see.

Urban Spaces in Shanghai: Near M50 - Shanghai, China - 中国 上海

Near M50 - Shanghai, China - 中国 上海, originally uploaded by meckleychina.

From commonplace to art imagery, the visions of urban districts springing seemingly overnight all over Shanghai do join into a visually questioning assemblage the strands of modernism, postmodernism and their international combinations with something complexly different that this photographed stare into a receding perspective brings into the art spaces of aesthetic regard.

Skyscrapers Shooting into the Sky Off the River Banks in Shanghai

* / shanghai, china., originally uploaded by YENTHEN.

Sparkling in the subdued sun, these far away skyscraper hulks remind of perfume bottles strayed upon a counter of a big box store that they strangely resemble. It feels I only need to stretch my hand into the picture to get an immediate sensation of their smell and shape a moment after.

A Vertical Perspective on Clay-Coloured Water and Clouds in Shanghai

DSC_4007-, originally uploaded by YENTHEN.

There are three thirds that split this picture on a vertical axis that lets feathery clouds above form a layer upon Shanghai's horizon losing itself in the misty distance just as river goes from a wider span on the first plan of the bottom third of the picture to almost double down in its size as it moves on to the second third of the picture surface.

A Veiw of River Water Surface in Shanghai, China

shanghai, china., originally uploaded by YENTHEN.

The sense of space above, below and beyond makes me feel I am positively flying in-between.

A Shopping Avenue Through a Long Exposure in Shanghai, China

Shanghai China, originally uploaded by flickrgao.

I am not sure what comes over me when I look at this shopping district avenue that opens up on a reassuringly blue sky, an inevitable golden arches logo, and an exotically appealing spire or two in the horizon. Ghostly imprints of passers-by flit past the camera slow to take its picture. Does it invite to walk into one of the shopping malls that feel to be within a walking distance from this spot? Do I want to go around the corner as a Benjamin's or Kracauer's flaneur would? Would a language or cultural barrier be an insuperable obstacle to be not lost in translation, as one would in Tokyo of the same film title?

CHINA - Shanghai - Night view on Waitan

CHINA - Shanghai - Night view on Waitan, originally uploaded by Franck - フランク - 法兰克.

It is hardly possible to hold oneself back from excitement upon realization of what collaboration opportunities on-line tools open for the space between a picture and a text. There is this sense of hovering above a complex landscape that waits to be captured in a description that would pull essential structures out of, would shed narrative light on its overshadowed corners, and would detach the invisible layers of perception that make up the richness of a picture. There always seems to be more data than time and opportunity to analyze them. This digital variation on a visual experience of flanerie makes what Proust or Benjamin would wish to have at their disposal. This, namely, could be an ability to jot down their observations in a reversal of a pictorial process from scenes of urban life to a representation in the direction of a simulacrum of representation that goes from a visual picture of urban life to its verbal representation without original immediately facing it.