Copie de : In the chinese city
Perspectives on the transmutations of an empire
|
In August the 2008 Olympic Games will be taking place in Peking, followed in 2010 by the World Expo Shanghai.
These two cities have undergone an architectural and urban metamorphosis that is unprecedented in the planet’s history for its size and timescale. A movement that has touched the whole of China and fundamentally changed the lives of hundreds of millions of inhabitants.It is to this urban China that Cité de l’architecture & du patrimoine dedicates the exhibition In the chinese city. First of its kind, it aspires to provide the keys towards understanding a phenomenon often overshadowed by a vision of tourism, a form of economic anxiety, a form of innocence and finally faced with the mechanisms at work in the Middle Kingdom.
It is a living, teeming, surprising China that will be on display from june to september 2008, on around 2,000 square metres, in the Cité’s temporary exhibition and topical galleries at the Palais de Chaillot. The Cité has entrusted the exhibition’s organisation to Frédéric Edelman, journalist at Le Monde, in collaboration with Françoise Ged, head of the Observatoire de l’Architecture de la Chine Contemporaine (OACC). Frédéric Edelmann has accompanied the Observatoire for the past ten years in its research projects on the city, its architecture and heritage, in liaison with the country’s top universities. The scenography was developed by Catalan architect Enric Masip.
The exhibition, a general outline of which was proposed by Frédéric Edelmann, takes its inspiration from a sentence in the book Across by Austrian author Peter Handke: close your eyes and the black of the letters will reveal the lights of the city. It is divided schematically into three parts:
The first one illustrates the history of urban China and its acceleration into the 20th century up until its metamorphosis over the past ten years.
The second makes it possible to explore 6 cities, 6 megalopolises, known - such as Shanghai and Peking, famous - such as Suzhou and Xi’an, or unknown - such as the conurbation that stretches from Guangzhou to Shenzhen in the Pearl River Delta. Lastly, the city to make everyone’s head spin - Chongqing close to the huge Three Gorges dam.
Freely accessible in the Cité’s topical galleries, a third part, called Positions, evokes the work of some fifteen architects reprensentative of the young Chinese architecture through forty or so remarkable achievements produced between 2003 and 2008. The latter come as a counterpoint to the major achievements of contemporary Peking entrusted for the most part to well-known foreign signatures (Koolhaas, Herzog and De Meuron, Foster, Andreu…).
Produced jointly with the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), this exhibition will display several major pieces. Some are loaned by Chinese institutions, in particular a scale-model of Peking’s Institute of Urbanism, which until now had never left China, together with construction models loaned by the university of Tongji, in Shanghai, or the National Bureau of Cultural Assets. Others come from French public collections, such as the Guimet and Cernuschi museums (Paris), the Musée Départemental Albert Kahn (Boulogne-Billancourt), or private collections (Dautresme, Fava,…). A vast majority of the photographs helping to illustrate the wording of this urban epic come to us from Chinese photographers and are for the most part unknown to the public. Lastly, the close collaboration with CCCB has made it possible to give a major cinematographic dimension to the whole event. Film-maker Jia Zhangke, Golden Lion at the 2006 Venice Film Festival for the film Still life, has orchestrated the work of 4 of his colleagues on as many cities that are symbolic of the contemporary metamorphosis. And the teams from CCCB have made available to the project their expertise in the area of film and audiovisual assembly.
The exhibition In the chinese City will be on display from 4 november 2008 to 22 February 2009 at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB). Positions will be on display at the Collegi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya (COAC) starting on 4 November 2008.
|
|
Details
ADRESSE
Cité de l'architecture & du patrimoine
Galeries d'expositions temporaires et Galerie d'actualité
Palais de Chaillot
1 place du Trocadéro
75116 Paris
PARTNERS
Connaissance des arts
Metro
Elle décoration
France 2
France Info
CBS Outdoor
Useful information
PRICES
Paying admission (Full rate: 8 € / Reduced rate: 5 €) - free for under 12 s
In the Chinese city. Perspectives on the transmutations of an empire from 18 June to 19 september 2008
Temporary exhibition galleries
1 place du Trocadero, 75116 Paris
Open every day from 11h to 19h. Late night on Thursday until 21h – Closed on Tuesday.
Positions, Portrait of a new generation of Chinese architects from 18 June to 7
Topical galleries
1 place du Trocadero or 7 avenue Albert de Mun, 75116 Paris
Open every day from 11h to 19h. Late night on Thursday until 21h – Closed on Tuesday.
Free admission
Around the exhibition
The exhibition is accompanied by the publication of two catalogues:
"In the Chinese city. Perspectives on the transmutations of an empire"
Joint publication Cité de l’architecture & du patrimoine / Actar 2008
"Positions, Portrait of a new generation of Chinese architects"
Joint publication Cité de l’architecture & du patrimoine / Actar 2008Editorial coordination: Yves Kirchner
|
|
CLOSE
