the Beijinger

Forgive me, I’ve been less on top of artsy news this week because I’ve been too busy trolling the internet at odd hours to keep up with this Jeremy Lin business. Yes, I am the world’s most intermittent basketball fan. But that’s beside the point. There are actually quite a few exciting things going on this week, like Capital M Literary Festival tickets going on sale, great indie films, a blind movie-watching experience and your last chance at several art exhibits! Click through for more.

For one of China’s most well-known contemporary artists, Lin Tianmiao certainly is cagey about her artistic process. When I sat down with her at her home studio in Songzhuang and began asking about her new exhibit at the Beijing Center for the Arts (BCA), entitled “The Same,” she claimed that she “just came up with a title” after finishing her works, simply because “every exhibit needs one.” Whether she’s being coy or just evasive, this comment clashes with the BCA’s own website, which explains that the name is meant to remind us how “everything looks the same if you watch at a distance; and nothing may be the same if you get closer.”

It’s a little early, but in America, halls were being decked before Thanksgiving, so I think we’re OK getting a peek at the gifts tucked away in the closet. Just yesterday The Bookworm had their Christmas Carol reading, and this week we’ve got more to look forward to: a solar Christmas tree installation at the Opposite House, a screening of It’s a Wonderful Life complete with mulled wine, and the unwrapping of tons of new exhibits.

As we head into the National Day celebrations, we’ve got more design exhibits to see, indie films ranging from dark to inspiring to laugh-out-loud funny, photography workshops and more to look forward to. That’s if you’re not already committed to creating a nest in your couch, from which you will watch as many new episodes of your fave TV shows as possible (if only Walking Dead were starting just a few weeks earlier …)

Hope you’re stocked up on energy drinks. This week, we’ve got The Bookworm’s Explore Festival kicking off, the Beijing Fringe Festival with some arresting avant-garde theater, more new art openings and exciting news about erotic ballet and Chinese art collectors taking over the world. Gulp.

It's shaping up to be an active week for Beijing's art lovers (or the art curious), film watchers and the like. Saturday, Electric Shadows hosts a bike-in outdoor film screening at the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, we've got five art hikes for you to try out in our brand-spankin' new August issue, and theaters are abuzz with the imminent release of the final film in the Harry Potter franchise.

David Quammen has a gift not many people do: the ability to understand scientific writing. What makes Quammen special though, is he then turns all that jargon into words that are comprehensible, compelling explanations of complicated ideas. The bridge he builds between the scientific community and the rest of us is a facinating one to cross, and lucky for us, he's coming to visit!

No, not old-school like Sugarhill Gang. In this case, we’re referring to a pre-camera type of photography called cyanotype, also known as a blueprint. Back in the late 1800s, it was the imprint method of choice for engineers and the like; now it’s almost extinct. But artist Zhang Dali is bringing it back to document the life around him in Heiqiao Village, outside the Fifth Ring Road.

Zhang is best known within the Chinese contemporary canon as the man who brought street art to China, with the spray paint outlines of his cartoonish silhouette peppered throughout the city’s demolition zones in the ’90s. He’s since moved on to other projects: sculptures of migrant construction workers printed with serial numbers and strung upside down, photos of more migrant workers overlaid with modern sociopolitical slogans, and of course his latest cyanotype works, called “World’s Shadows,” on show this month at Pekin Fine Arts. We sat down with the artist and his wife Patrizia Galli at his studio to learn more about his journey and his latest art practice.

Well, it might have a chance if it’s made by Stanley Kubrick, but other than that … ? If you really want to make the call, you’ll have to go to Taiwan, where they’ll be screening the alleged first ever 3-dimensional porn film (a remake of Hong Kong’s 1991 Sex and Zen) in theaters. According to Asian gossip site MayDaily, Chinese mainland tour groups are already planning tour packages to the island with a happy ending – a screening of the new film.

Also, the Guardian and other news sites are buzzing about the WTO’s demands for China to lift its foreign film quota, which currently stands at a paltry 20 films a year (and even then, foreign films already make up 45% of box office revenues). Not sure about you, but I was kind of enjoying the East-West cooperation that’s been happening as a result of the quota – like Kevin Spacey and Christian Bale signing on for Chinese flicks. And even if the quota is lifted, which seems unlikely, we doubt Sex and Zen will make it into theaters…