Utopia in Practice: Bishan Project and Rural Reconstruction

ISBN-13: 9789811557903 / Angielski / Twarda / 2020 / 442 str.

Ning Ou

Spis treści

CONTENTS

 

 

Prologue

 

Night Play

 

Introduction

 

Utopia in Practice

 

Rural Youth

 

My Self-Urbanised Story

Nostalgia Survey

Letter to My Mother

 

Huizhou Fieldwork

 

From Nonplaces to Places

Revisiting Bishan

 

Blueprint

 

Anarchist and Ruralism

The Possibility of Rural Revival

The Agrarian Home and It’s Reconstruction

 

Bishan Harvestival

 

Go Bush!

 

Reality and History

 

Beijing’s Climate Politics

What Wukan Means

The Cultivators: Rural Reconstructionists in China

 

Yixian International Festival

 

The Urban-Rural Interactions

Field of Hope

 

Deep Plowing

 

Heart-following Houses

The Benevolent Mind

The Documentation of Local Life

 

Controversy and Introspection

 

Symbolic Boundary, Distinction and Othering

The Organic Intellectuals

Informal Life Politics

Cultural Production and Placemaking

 

School of Tillers

 

Beat the Land

Timekeepers

Memoir in Southern Anhui

 

New Commons

 

The Crisis and Experiment of the Commons

The “Commons” of Common Spaces

 

Agriculture, Craftsmanship and Education

 

The Food Politics

Renaissance of Craftsmanship?

Children’s Sense of Reality

 

City and Countryside

 

After City “Failed”

Countryside as Countryside

 

The Utopian Dream

 

Autonomy: Utopia or Realpolitik

You’re Too Shy to Talk about Utopia

The Discourse of Utopia in the Post-Mao Era

 

Postscript

 

Aftershock

 

Epilogue

 

Large Rat

 

Appendix

 

The Chronology of Bishan Project

O autorze

Ou Ning is director of documentaries San Yuan Li and Meishi Street, chief curator of 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, jury member of 8th Benesse Prize at 53rd Venice Biennale, member of Asian Art Council at Guggenheim Museum, founding chief editor of literary journal Chutzpah!, founder of Bishan Project, visiting professor of GSAPP, Columbia University and research fellow of Center for Arts, Design and Social Research in Boston, USA.

Blurb

This book is a collection of texts on one of China's boldest social experiments in recent years: the rural reconstruction project in Bishan. The Bishan Project (2011-2016) was a rural reconstruction project in a small village Bishan, Anhui Province, China.

The writings describe and criticize the social problems caused by China’s over-loading urbanization process and starts a a contemporary agrarianism and agritopianism discourse to resist the modernism and developmentalism doctrine which dominated China for more than a century, answering a global desire for the theory and action of the alternative social solution for today’s environmental and political crises.This practical utopian commune project ran for 6 years and caused a national debate on rural issues in China, when it was invited to be exhibited and presented abroad. 

This collection of writing will be of interest to artists, China scholars, architects, and the cultural community at large.

Ou Ning is director of documentaries San Yuan Li and Meishi Street, chief curator of 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, jury member of 8th Benesse Prize at 53rd Venice Biennale, member of Asian Art Council at Guggenheim Museum, founding chief editor of literary journal Chutzpah!, founder of Bishan Project, visiting professor of GSAPP, Columbia University and research fellow of Center for Arts, Design and Social Research in Boston, USA.