Urbanism and Biennials in Hong Kong: Enigma of Documentation: DSC_4117x

DSC_4117x, originally uploaded by uhohphoto.

The otherness of places far away strangely stops being estranging as soon as the images their spectacular events supply pass over the threshold of aesthetic expectations to claim for themselves the same amount of cultural autonomy as more travelled locations on the international map of cultural exchanges do in order to bring the pieces of event institutions, everyday documentation and discursive supports into a configuration surprisingly close and far to sensibilities of global, and one hopes, audiences that seek to connect to emergent global cities, such as Hong Kong is, through their enigmatic aura.

Lightlines Drawing Speed Curves: 武汉 / Wuhan Street Warehouse

武汉 / wuhan street warehouse, originally uploaded by shanghaisoundbites.

Had it been a banquet table the pile of boxes must have been a heap of steaming white rice, hauling poles would be chop-sticks left standing in the plate as one turns to add soy sauce, and the warehouse box would be a hot-pot giving off smells of spices, freshly boiled meat and a specialty bouillon, the residential block in the background would be a bar across the floor where one could get salads and add-ons, the consumer of this delicious visual feast would still, however, be in the same position marveling across the lush table of what only in imagination becomes itself: cars speeding by fast enough to leave curves of light to be registered by the camera only.

Architectural Skeleton of Urban Unconscios: 重庆 / Chongqing Rising ...

重庆 / chongqing rising ..., originally uploaded by shanghaisoundbites.

Almost toylike playfulness with which the beams of the scaffolding draw their grid structure in the air hovering above the facades that as if made out of gingerbread with a caramel glazing give the perspective shattering thrust of the high-rises in the background an aura of felicitous unreality that an architectural vision reaching beyond appearances into the carrying forces of what constitutes urban space bring an urban unconscious about just as other cities, such as Chicago, that based on engineering, planning and transportation made themselves a name seemingly overnight must have carried a remainder of their bygone, miracle-like appearance on the map in the far corners of collective consciousness.

Graffiti Art on the Sidelines of Urban Text: New Wall - Urban 上海 ／ Shanghai

new wall - urban 上海 ／ shanghai, originally uploaded by shanghaisoundbites.

It is not just the proportions of the picture space that might have graced by its mixture of colours and lines museum walls that draw attention, but also the shades of green, brown and black that lend to this involuntary urban frame for, save for its emplacement in Shanghai, anonymous graffiti art that create an effect of a splash of lights washing across the image surface, as if soaring buildings were pulling out of the space around them the roots of everyday imagination cropping up on the vertical sidelines of otherwise mundane walkways.

A Space with a View on the Interplay between Nature and Architecture: Park Hotel - YMCA - Grand Theatre - Shanghai, China - 中国 上海

Park Hotel - YMCA - Grand Theatre - Shanghai, China - 中国 上海, originally uploaded by meckleychina.

What must feel like an age away, a photo taken somewhere close to the middle of the past decade in this city, still does not fail to mesmerise with its proportional perspective, receding brand names, and soaring landmarks that are as likely to tell the story of anywhere as of somewhere where they were embedded into a camera-shutters stopping moment as the picture taker shifted the LCD screen to see the original behind its freely framed portrayal stitching the green mass of the city park with the architectural echo of skyscrapers surrounding the central part of New York.

Iconicity of the City in the Reflection of Seventh Shanghai Biennale 第 七届上海双年展 - (31)

第七届上海双年展 - (31), originally uploaded by Sun Peng.

It is this distance from works on display, to the extent one can tell them from the urban context surrounding them, that pulls urban space and its lived qualities into the orbit of media existence that art biennials develop over time of their repetition and becoming forms of cultural regularity and landscape that ephemeral events contribute not only to their mapping but also to their creation in a transition from the material to the abstract.

A Sepia Take on 2008 Shanghai Biennale: Mise-en-Abyme of Screens

, originally uploaded by vAns☮.

Shining screen at the back of the room floats among shades of visitors to what should be, according to the subscript, the 7th Shanghai Biennale, I assume, for Contemporary Art thus pulling this globalizing city on a visual map that hides behind stock photography from the event that refers more to the photographer than to the goings on of the event that waits for its further embedding in the streams of secondary reflection and perception.

Year's Threshold Photos from Afar: Shanghai: New Year's Eve

Shanghai: New Year's Eve, originally uploaded by elkie v7.1.

Suddenly finding myself confronted with this transitional day from one year that has already slipped behind me into the past and the new year, or even a new decade, that has rushed to be upon me, or even a collective us, I look for distant shores and nightly skylines that might still carry a whiff of fireworks that have for a few brief moments marked the magic moment of the break of the New Year onto our collective consciousness as the earth turned and as the petards went off hour after hour, time zone after time zone around the globe.