Reviews and post-scripts after the shiny mud ball:

After the workshop we couldn’t stop doing moni, and once arrived home we were keeping doing them with any kind of powder we found around. That our best result, a home-made-moni with sugar, salt and flour… the technique to use your whole body is actually working, look at the size of it!

Thank you Marcella and Stefano!

We’re rounding up Also Space² tonight with a film by LI Ning documenting his own life as a young theatre director, followed by more experimental eats (testing out the tako-less ball!) brought to you by Emi UEMURA, Elaine W. HO and WANG Fang, employee of C-Space. The film starts at 16.00 and runs for approximately 3 hours. Cooking together thereafter. Hope to see you.

above photo: from Michael Yuen’s lecture number 2 on “Cities”, amidst preparations for a chain letter dinner.

Artist: Liu Ding

Work Title: In “Also Space”

Time: 12.30-2.30pm, May 12, 2010

Venue: C-Space, Beijing

Participants: Liu Ding (artist), Tang Xin (Art Director of Taikang Space), Carol Yinghua Lu (moderator)

This is a non-public conversation between Liu Ding and Tang Xin, Art Director of Taikang Space. This conversation is Liu Ding’s work entitled “In ‘Also Space’”, which is his contribution to the exhibition “Also Space”. Conversations that take place within a specific context and engage players and practitioners in the art world in non-public and informal exchanges of opinions are the latest focus of Liu Ding’s practice.

This conversation isn’t an interview in which the artist would throw questions at another practitioner, neither is it a debate of opposite opinions. This is an opportunity for mutual inspirations, clashes of ideas and in-depth exchanges. It’s where we share our understandings of and perspectives on our work as creative agents and participants in the art world, our shared contexts and environments.

“Also Space” is a proposal taking into account the various formats of organizations in the art world such as spaces and exhibitions. What it addresses is that if the formats of spaces, exhibitions and other forms of organizations that we usually see and know existing in the art industry have been accepted arbitrarily and unconsciously as rules, orders, standards and levels of judgments, can we still propose other forms of organizations within the grids of such rules and standards. Yet “Also Space” shouldn’t be trapped within a role of simply being a proposal in opposition to such a condition,which is a functionalist way of working. What it tries to be is an autonomous mechanism and method that can be self-reflective, self-corrected and self-growing through developing within an extension of period and being a self-organization that grows with ongoing additions of participants, artworks, projects and opinions.

In light of the exhibition concept of “Also Space”, Liu Ding has invited Tang Xin, the art director of Taikang Space that is adjacent to C-Space for the conversation. He started the dialogue by sharing with her the idea of Also Space but extend the discussion to cover the following aspects:

• The changing identity and ways of organizations of Taikang Space and its contexts
• The current forms of organization of Taikang Space
• The curatorial and creative practice that has arisen within such a format of organization
• The uncertainty, plasticity and questionable nature of history and value system by specifically discussing Taikang Space’s focus on photography
• The differences of impacts and values different contexts and forms of organizations could have on creating, presenting and interpreting artworks

Artist: Liu Ding

Work Title: In “Also Space”

Time: Between May 1 and 16, 2010

Materials: A non-public conversation between Liu Ding and the director of an independent art space adjacent to C-Space during the exhibition between May 1 and 16, 2010. The discussion will touch upon issues concerning rules, orders, values and standards based on which we operate; sound recording, chairs, table, glasses.

The topics set forth during these kinds of meditative acts allow for a gentle interplay between a free flow of thought and teacherly instruction, the affectionate chastising of others’ work and the occasional bite of lovers: “You can stop talking now.” Interludes of silence are comfortable moments of concentration, the hands in motion while we think round thoughts. It was a round-a-bout way to discuss contemporary art and value creation, another chuckle over the money that we’re missing and the reverberations of Ms. Lu’s comment that Also Space² lay some far outside from “what’s going on”. But it is an understandable inconspicuousness to position oneself also, in addition, alternative, marginal. This externality to the core—-what had been a very critical moment in the historicising of Chinese contemporary art this past week—-left us feeling insecure, slight. But why? It was his premise from the beginning that these should not be hierarchical estimations, and rather, we had been discussing art and democracy, art and anarchy. Perhaps these things are not so far off from panel discussions of the sort, but we seek form from our politics, like the organisation of ever smaller grains of mud and sand. So small that they reflect light on their surfaces. Shiny mud balls. Value and importance are self-created entities, perhaps overdetermined, like the roundness of a mud ball made smooth and glossy by caring hands.

At the end of the workshop she came to treasure the imperfectness of her sphere and its mottled terrain, but its shine gave her that comparative sense of pride with which all our notions of value and capitalist competition are based. No matter. In the end she gave it up, placing it carefully it in the wire basket with all the less fortunate attempts.

photos by 何颖雅 Elaine W. Ho and Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga

Maria Kley:

• package Philadelphia cheese (200gr)
• small package of yogurt
• 1 shredded piece of garlic

mix it with a fork

enjoy it with Taco chips or baguette or…!!

Lucio Castro:

Portobello Mushroom Pizzas.
Serves 4 elegant people. Enchanting appetizer.

Ingredients:

• 4 Big Portobello Mushrooms
• 1 Big Organic red tomato
• 1 Big Organic Green tomato (otherwise, red will do just fine)
• Raw unpasteurized cheese of choice (mozzarella works best, but they all do, hey after all, it’s cheese!)
• Basil Leaves
• cloves of garlic
• Salt
• Fresh Ground pepper
• 1 big organic Red Onion
• 3 tablespoons of butter (one ice-cube would be the perfetc size)
• Fresh thyme
• Fresh chives
• Olive Oil

How to prepare it:

• Chop the garlic in tiny pieces (the size of an average back mole)
• Chop the onions and tomatoes in a slightly bigger size (the size of the eyeball of a newborn baby)
• Melt the butter in a pan.
• Add the garlic for 1 minute.
• Add the onions for 2 minutes and season with salt, ground pepper, and the king of spices: my dear THYME (fun fact: the salt will make the onion release it’s water and get softer. Without salt, the onion will “fry” and get crispy, but in this case we surely don’t want that).
• Add the tomatoes and mix everything over medium-low heat, for like 15-20 minutes.
• Keep above mixture cooking until it becomes less watery and more like a thick sauce.
• Meanwhile, wash the mushrooms, pat them dry with a paper towel, drizzle them with oil, salt and pepper and place them on a pan face up in the oven (350 degrees). Keep them there for like 15 minutes, until they get soft and juicy. Ah yes.
• Then take them out of the oven, place the saucy mixture from the pan inside each mushroom and top with cheese.
• Put them back in the oven for 5 more minutes.
• When the cheese is melted, take them out of the oven and sprinkle them with the diced chives and then the fresh basil leaves.
• Enjoy too much.

Toby Lee:

you will need:

white rice
one egg
soy sauce
kimchi or pickles

take a bowl of white rice. fry an egg and put it on the rice. pour some soy sauce on the egg and then take a spoon and cut up the egg and mash it all together with the rice and the soy sauce. add more soy sauce if you want it saltier. eat the eggy-soy-rice with kimchi or some kind of pickles. dill pickles are really good with it.

Asuka Yamaguchi:

エミさん

こんにちは。はじめまして。
elaineから回ってきたメールのレシピです。
この場合、英語で書いたほうがいいのでしょうか…

tofu omelette
1. scramble 2 eggs in the bowl.
2. squeeze the water from tofu(about 150g) and crash roughly in your hand.
3. add 2 to 1, salt , milk or cooking wine (you can also add other
ingredients: black papper, ginger, cheese….etc,
4. cook them in the pan with oil.

豆腐オムレツです。ふわふわして美味しく、ボリュームもあります。

elaineのhomeshopのサイトでエミさんの弁当プロジェクトのこと読みました。
私もお弁当を作って売ってみたいなぁ…と半分冗談のようなことを考えていたの
で、興味深いです。日本でも、お弁当を持って仕事に行ってる人って少ないと思
います。

では、また。
レシピ楽しんで下さい。

山口明香

Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga:

take one box of ‘digestive’ or other similar crackers and try to crack them in tiny pieces. you can add some walnuts if you like, also in small pieces. melt one piece of butter and mix it all together. put it in a shallow mold and try to create a flat, solid layer. take one package of philadelphia cheese (or similar) and one yoghurt and stir them together until you get a nice mix. pour the mix on top of the solid layer and create another layer. put them away in the freezer or fridge for a few hours. before you want to serve it take it out and add a layer of jam – maybe wild berries or forest fruit..

not that secret, but very easy to make, and very oishi…

Anouchka van Driel & Jasmina van Driel:

best and simplest mum & sister duo chocolate mousse recipe:

for four people:

75 grams dark chocolate (a regular brand would be best, not the ones with high percentages of cocoa as this recipe counts on the sweetness of the chocolate for its sugar rush)
3 eggs

break the eggs and separate the egg whites from the egg yolks
beat the egg whites till they are stiff
in a separate bowl beat the yolks until fluffy
melt the chocolate (in the microwave or au bain marie)
let the chocolate cool slightly before mixing into the egg yolks, mix until smooth
then slowly mix this into the beaten egg whites with a wooden spoon or spatula
when all is mixed nicely pour into a large bowl or individual cups/bowls and leave to stiffen in the fridge for three hours

increase the ingredient quantity for more people accordingly

enjoy!

———————

Fluffy yet rich chocolate mousse for 4 people:

Ingredients:
- 4 eggs
- 100 grams of dark chocolate (preferably with a cocoa content of at least 60% but as long as its dark chocolate without ay milk it’s ok)
- electric or hand whisk

Method:
1.Seperate the egg white and egg yolks carefully (it’s important here to ensure no egg yolk mixes with the white)
2. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fluffy
3. Melt the chocolate carefully on low heat (it burns easily, so low heat and constant stirring is necessary) or “au bain marie”, which means hanging one pan over another that contains boiling water and melting the chocolate through the heat of the boiling water
4. Mix the egg yolks with the chocolate either by stirring quickly with a spoon or using the electric mixer
5. Carefully “fold” the chocolate mixture into the whipped egg whites adding one spoonful at a time (preferably using a metal, large spoon), continue until all of the chocolate has been mixed into the egg white completely (it is important to do this carefully and slowly so as to ensure the mixture stays fluffy, so do not stirr too fast).
6. Either chill the mixture in a large bowl in the fridge for at least 4-5 hours or transfer to smaller bowls, so that chilling time is reduced.

Enjoy, it’s very nice in combination with fresh strawberries and some mint leaves.

below: A few of the proud participants from workshop number 1.

06 May

• 18.30h, ‘Cities’ lecture no. 1, Michael YUEN
• 20.00h, Corpus Callosum (2002) film screening, Michael SNOW

07 May

• 14.00h, ‘How to make Moni-Moni-Moni’ workshop, Elaine W. HO
• 19.00h, ‘Cities’ lecture no. 2, Michael YUEN
• 20.00h, ‘Chainletter dinner’, Michael YUEN/Elaine W. HO/Emi UEMURA

Proudhon’s language is compelling. A certain euphoria pulses in me when I read these lines. I feel proud to share such lofty ambitions of openness, of welcoming inclusion. But, there is something missing. Six years prior, Proudhon had published Qu’est-ce que la propriété to which, with a beautiful twist, he answered La propriété, c’est le vol (What is property? answer: Property is theft.) Yet, there is a subtle of logic missing–the subtle we might expect to find lacking in the man often referred to as the first to call himself an anarchist.

After some time passes, I to realise I wholeheartedly disagree with Proudhon. Striding for openness is an interest I share with Proudhon. And, It is through openness that life bring new experiences, new imaginations are brought forward, new directions are sought. Openness is only useful when we know how to close. Sitting in a bar in Australia, a intellectual man once told me: one keeps the door open as long as possible, and at the last possible moment close it to move on. I enjoy this image of the abstract practice of thinking.

Reading the great authors of love, we might believe that life’s great decisions are a tussle between the heart and the mind, between instinct and logic. But, the instinct of the heart can pull in two directions at once. These are the hardest decisions. And, finally a door does close. And, finally there is pain. And, one can only leave the door open as long as possible knowing closing doors is the most difficult and important part of openness.