Utopia in Practice

This book is a collection of texts on one of China's boldest social experiments in recent years: the rural reconstruction project in Bishan. The Bishan Project (2011-2016) was a rural reconstruction project in a small village Bishan, Anhui Province, China. The writings describe and criticize the social problems caused by China's over-loading urbanization process and starts a a contemporary agrarianism and agritopianism discourse to resist the modernism and developmentalism doctrine which dominated China for more than a century, answering a global desire for the theory and action of the alternative social solution for today's environmental and political crises.This practical utopian commune project ran for 6 years and caused a national debate on rural issues in China, when it was invited to be exhibited and presented abroad. This collection of writing will be of interest to artists, China scholars, architects, and the culturalcommunity at large. Ou Ning is director of documentaries San Yuan Li and Meishi Street, chief curator of 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, jury member of 8th Benesse Prize at 53rd Venice Biennale, member of Asian Art Council at Guggenheim Museum, founding chief editor of literary journal Chutzpah!, founder of Bishan Project, visiting professor of GSAPP, Columbia University and research fellow of Center for Arts, Design and Social Research in Boston, USA.

Auteur
Ou Ning is director of documentaries San Yuan Li and Meishi Street, chief curator of 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, jury member of 8th Benesse Prize at 53rd Venice Biennale, member of Asian Art Council at Guggenheim Museum, founding chief editor of literary journal Chutzpah!, founder of Bishan Project, visiting professor of GSAPP, Columbia University and research fellow of Center for Arts, Design and Social Research in Boston, USA.

Contenu

CONTENTS

Prologue

Night Play

Introduction

Utopia in Practice

Rural Youth

My Self-Urbanised Story

Nostalgia Survey

Letter to My Mother

Huizhou Fieldwork

From Nonplaces to Places

Revisiting Bishan

Blueprint

Anarchist and Ruralism

The Possibility of Rural Revival The Agrarian Home and It's Reconstruction

Bishan Harvestival

Go Bush!

Reality and History

Beijing's Climate Politics

What Wukan Means

The Cultivators: Rural Reconstructionists in China

Yixian International Festival

The Urban-Rural Interactions

Field of Hope

Deep Plowing

Heart-following Houses The Benevolent Mind

The Documentation of Local Life

Controversy and Introspection

Symbolic Boundary, Distinction and Othering

The Organic Intellectuals

Informal Life Politics

Cultural Production and Placemaking

School of Tillers

Beat the Land

Timekeepers

Memoir in Southern Anhui

New Commons

The Crisis and Experiment of the Commons

The Commons of Common Spaces

Agriculture, Craftsmanship and Education

The Food Politics

Renaissance of Craftsmanship?

Children's Sense of Reality

City and Countryside

After City Failed

Countryside as Countryside

The Utopian Dream

Autonomy: Utopia or Realpolitik You're Too Shy to Talk about Utopia

The Discourse of Utopia in the Post-Mao Era

Postscript

Aftershock

Epilogue

Large Rat

Appendix

The Chronology of Bishan Project