january 20, 2006 [...] So, Gridskippertells us about this photographer named Ellen Jong. Like all of us, she urinates every day. Unlike most of us, she gets photographed doing it … all over the world. The fruits of her labor are now available in a hardcover coffee table book entitled Pees on Earth: A Pissin’ Mission. The book comes out in May — you can pre-order it from Amazon. Why are we telling you this? Is Shanghaiist consumed by bizarre Bitter Moon-esque fetishes? Not as far as you know. It’s just that at least one of Jong’s photos was taken in Shanghai, a city where every person with a camera has at least one photo of a person pissing in public. We used to shake our heads at this practice … but now we know it’s art! [...]

http://www.shanghaiist.com/archives/2006/01/20/woman_pisses_in.php

october 2005 […] In early 2004, photographer Hu Yang began documenting the lives of ordinary Shanghai residents. He originally planned to include 100 households in his survey, but over the course of the year 500 families allowed him to interview and photograph them in their homes. Unlike the New York Times’ Faces of Shanghai slideshow, which focused on the middle class consumer culture, Shanghai Living covers Shanghai residents from a surprisingly wide range of backgrounds. From poor migrant workers to expats to billionaires, nearly all of Shanghai is represented.
While Hu Yang says he hoped to demonstrate some of Shanghai’s social problems, such as the gap between the rich and the poor, he presents his work without editorializing. Every photo could stand alone as a candid family portrait, and taken as a whole the exhibit allows visitors to draw their own conclusions. […]

http://www.shanghaiist.com/archives/art/index.php

19. september, 2005 [...] Im April 2005, kurz nach der Eröffnung der Weltausstellung in Aichi, Japan, setzte sich der Japan-Schweizer Roger Walch zusammen mit seinem Kameramann Jörg Bühler aus Rorschach drei Wochen in die japanische Partnerstadt der Schweiz, Shinshiro ab.

In dieser alten Kulturstadt der Präfektur Aichi zeichnete er im Auftrag der Expo 2005 für einen Dokumentarfilm-Wettbewerb den Alltag, die Kultur und den internationalen Austausch der Stadt mit der Schweiz auf.

Mitte September ist er von der Expo-Jury für diesen Dok-Film mit 100'000 Yen (1150 Franken) und einem Sachpreis, dem Friendship-Preis, ausgezeichnet worden.

...Walch, seit 1998 in Japan ansässig, unterrichte seit sieben Jahren deutsch an japanischen Universitäten und weiss, dass das Wissen über die Schweiz in Japan grosse Lücken aufweist.

Während die japanischen Studenten bei Ländern wie Deutschland und Österreich immerhin noch Namen wie Beethoven und Mozart assoziieren, sagt Walch, fallen ihnen im Fall der Schweiz höchstens Heidi oder die Neutralität ein.

...Das Thema galt den" Beziehungen zwischen dem jeweiligen Heimatland des Regisseurs und der jeweiligen Partnerstadt in Japan", im Fall der Schweiz Shinshiro.

...Der Jury gehörten neben dem bekannten japanischen Regisseur und Schauspieler Okuda Eiji und der Schauspielerin Takeshita Keiko, die beide aus Aichi stammen, auch der englische Regisseur John Williams an.

...Wie wichtig die Auszeichnung der Schweizer Dokumentarfilms ist, zeigt der Umstand, dass diesen 20- bis 30-minütigen Filmen laut den Organisatoren in Japan in möglichst allen Landesmedien viel Platz eingeräumt wird.

...21 Regisseure bewarben sich dabei mit jeweils halbstündigen Dok-Filmen über die Freundschaft ihres jeweiligen Landes mit ihrer Partnerstadt in der Präfektur Aichi.

...Walch lebt seit 1998 in Japan, ist Musiker, Video- und Film-Regisseur mit Sprach- und Kultur-Lehraufträgen an Universitäten. [...]

http://www.swissinfo.org/sde/swissinfo.html?siteSect=201&sid=6092198&cKey=1127133005000

Artist, 1962 born in Shanghai, lives and works in Shanghai, China

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Student, lives and works in Haywards Heath country, U.K.

Photographer, lives and works in Hongkong, China

My main medium is photography. Most of the images I produce are of Hong Kong, the city where I live, or of other cities that I know reasonably well, such as Macau or Shanghai. For the most part my images are discovered rather than deliberately stalked down, since I tend to take photos in the course of my normal trajectories through the city instead of setting out to document in a more programmatic way. I tend to photograph that which is familiar or close at hand, localities and situations where I am an inhabitant or participant rather than those to which I feel an outsider. I refuse the rhetoric of truthfulness and objectivity that photography of a documentary nature often claims, and deliberately produce images that declare a certain allegiance or reveal a specific personal viewpoint. I enjoy the way photography allows me to shift between the private and the public, between a biographic mode and a more socially engaged one, although in the end the city and its transformations becomes the main subject of my images, rather than their author.

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Artist, lives and works in Hongkong, China

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Artist, lives and works in London, U.K.

Born in Calcutta and educated in Iran and England, Ansuman Biswas has an international artistic practice spanning from music, writing, performance, to installation and video. His theme and core focus is the comparative study of ancient Indian philosophy and present day science.

I am particularly interested in critiquing the notion of objectivity in science. The pursuit of objectivity has hi-jacked modern scientific methodology to the exclusion of lived experience and has led to a blinding fragmentation in modern culture. I believe that there exists a methodology which holds conscious experience, emotion and compassion within the realm of scientific enquiry without sacrificing precision or rigour. My work is a practical attempt to examine this state of affairs and to discern the shape of a possible future practice – one that pays as much attention to our fears and desires as to our ideas. This work seems to me to be imperative now since the engine of scientific curiosity, steered by the voracious logic of global capital, is catastrophically degrading the biosphere.

My work is informed by a comparative study of mainstream Western science, and some of those influences at its fringes such as Goethe, phenomenology and non-Western cosmologies. In particular my inspiration and technique is founded in the ancient Indian practice of vipassana – a fully realized scientific methodology.

Artist, lives and works in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Artist, lives and works in Hoi-An, Vietnam

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