China, Beijing, hyper-speed changes and cultural reactions are all the focus of an innovative new cross-arts project that will be showcased in one of Germany's premier museums next spring.

The German-funded "Beijing Case: A Culture of High Speed Urbanism" is aimed at throwing a global spotlight on the rapid-fire evolution of Chinese megacities and cultural mutations created here during 25 years of stunning economic growth.

"Ever since the beginning of economic reform in China in the late 1970s, there has been breath-taking change in the area of urbanization," says project head Nora Sausmikat. Sausmikat is known as an expert on Chinese culture and cities.

"The world's most populous country is in the middle of radical modernization, which produces deep social change. This is being reflected in art and architecture, and in the spaces available to make or showcase art in Beijing," she adds.

Gregor Jansen, curator of the Beijing Case study/exhibition, says it involves a dozen German and Chinese artists, writers and filmmakers creating a kaleidoscope of impressions of the Chinese capital. A catalogue and tri-lingual (Chinese, English and German) magazine created for the exhibition feature "very private, almost intimate references to the rush of change in modern Beijing," he says. Jansen is a department head at the cutting-edge ZKM Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, which will host the exhibition next May.

These varying visions range from panoramas of the titanic army of cranes now transforming the city to close-ups on a Chinese punk costumed in a Sex Pistols t-shirt or an image of Christ holding a blue Earth orb that adorns a Wangfujing cathedral. Artists who have spread out across Beijing over the last four months have been armed in their explorations with digital, video or traditional cameras, paint brushes or simple sound recorders. They will play back their findings in cinema, photographs, silk-screen paintings, print and/or cyberspace.

Jansen says he was eager to help organize the Beijing Case study because the Chinese capital is becoming "the most interesting city in the world!"

He adds that as Beijing morphs into a megalopolis, its cultural changes are being given new spins by "the focus on the 2008 Olympiad and by the interplay of history and the future" as the city etches out a new identity for itself.

Better understanding

The German Federal Cultural Foundation, along with the Goethe-Institute in Beijing, created and funded the Beijing arts study as the second in a trio of exhibitions on dynamic megacities across the planet. Beijing's successes in sculpting out a new urban image as it becomes a major cultural and world centre could be held up as a global model.

Sausmikat says the project also is aimed at creating a cross-continental web of understanding between Europe and China.

"Relatively few Westerners know anything about contemporary Chinese culture," she explains. To fill this gigantic gap in cross-cultural knowledge, the Beijing Case study will "investigate the cultural changes of Beijing's urban transformation, and the results will be presented in Germany and China."

The works of some of the Beijing Case artists can be viewed at the Guangzhou Triennial art exhibition, currently at the Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou.

The entire project is being showcased on an English and Chinese website, www.beijingcase.org, designed for the study.

When the artists and their works move to the German ZKM Centre for Art and Media, fans worldwide can follow them via the center's cyber-platform at www.zkm.de.

Curator Chaos Y. Chen, who helped organize the Beijing Case project, says it is expanding the frontiers of making art in China and showcasing it for a global audience. "This is a very new trend to use transnational groups of artists and writers to explore megacities and the future of art in China."

She says that Beijing is becoming a worldwide magnet for cultural creatives, and adds "a new epoch is unfolding in China in step with the revolution of urbanization."

Chen also says the coalition of German and Chinese artists in the Beijing Case project, along with their artworks, will be tapped to help divine the future of megacities and art in the new century.

"Visionary artists often start depicting new eras before writers or scientists can," she says.

Thomas Bayrle, a long-time lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Frankfurt and follower of post-revolutionary China, is developing a series of silk-screen paintings that depict both Beijing's past and its potential future.

As he weaves the Chinese characters for "Heaven" or "Power" into black-and-white camera-like images of Tibetan Buddhist pilgrims or Chinese idealists, Bayrle spins stories that move backward and forward in time.

Bayrle says that, a generation ago, he was a close follower of the "cultural revolution," and drew a wealth of pro-proletarian symbols from the radical movement of 1966-76 to produce artworks in faraway Germany. "At that time, we knew nothing of the cultural revolution's violence and reality," he says.

Yet since visiting Beijing in the mid-1990s, and now as part of the Beijing Case group, Bayrle has begun painting pro-pacifist works that feature Sun Yat-sen, whose ideals, he says, "could lead a reunified China through the new century."

Similarly, he says, Buddhist notions on harmony and on spiritual perfection that flicker through his Tibetan images could lend new energy to China's ongoing rise as a cultural world power.

Writer's perspective

In contrast with these monochrome still lives of China, German author Ingo Niermann creates an ever-changing montage of urban Beijing by juxtaposing written snapshots of pop-punks, political pundits or Western sojourners in the Chinese capital.

Niermann, part of Germany's new wave of writers, grabbed the literary limelight with a recent book on the rise and decline of east German entrepreneurs following the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The young Berlin-based writer says he wanted to join the Beijing Case group in part because he was "attracted by Beijing as the capital of the biggest country that ever existed."

Since touching down in Beijing four months ago, Niermann and his Chinese collaborators have already turned out a fantastic, single-issue magazine titled "Eins," or "One."

In the magazine, which morphs from German to Chinese to English, Niermann pans his spotlight across a series of characters. Book shelved between interviews with a Chinese punk-pulp writer and a government think-tank head is a dialog with Shannon, a young Western photographer who has lived in Beijing for several years.

He quotes Shannon as saying: "I cannot think of a better place to be at this moment in human history (China) is growing faster than any civilization. What took America 50, 60 years is taking China five or 10 years. It's just fascinating. People who had 10 years ago never heard of a thing called rock music six, seven years later they are bobbing their heads to the likes of Paul Oakenfold up at the Great Wall."

Niermann says he intends to expand "Eins" into a book, which will initially be published in Germany.

Fellow writer Xi Chuan, who is focusing on the history and future of religion as part of the Beijing Case project, says he also wants to convert his discoveries into a book. Xi says that although thousands of Buddhist, Taoist or Confucian temples have been lost to cultural revolutionary zealots or market-driven modernization over the past decades, there might be a new spiritual trend on the horizon.

These days, "sometimes the government will ask a property developer to restore a nearby temple as part of a larger project," Xi says.

He says as certain scholars call on the people to revive parts of traditional Chinese culture, many books on Taoism and Buddhism are appearing in bookstores. "More and more people are becoming interested in Buddhism or Taoism, and more people are beginning to practice some form of religion," Xi says.

He adds that as Beijing rushes to create a post-modern identity, it should pause to reflect on the spiritual dimensions of China's ancient civilization: "In order to liberate the future, we first have to liberate the past."

Curator Jansen says all the images and ideas on the Chinese capital's rush into the future produced by the Beijing Case artists will be woven into a cross-continental catalogue to be unveiled at the ZKM exhibition next spring.

(China Daily November 25, 2005)