The group installation “City of Questions, City of Stuff” occupied a brave little storefront space inside the Anshun Road small commodities market for two weeks in August. The busy passageway provided a dynamic laboratory for civic engagement and aesthetic commentary, not to mention marketing. How could passers-by be enticed to compose questions about waste and add them to the wall? Some anecdotes convey the overall experience of serendipitous success.
Day 1: For the opening ceremony, a small group of friends and passers-by gathered at noon to stomp jauntily on top of biodegradable packaging cushions, causing them to explode with great report. Mr. Zhou, who operates the household goods store opposite, regarded the activity across from him with quiet detachment. When the call went out for someone to inscribe the title of the installation on the entry banner, however, he stepped forward, picked up the brush and with large competent strokes wrote out “问物之城” (“City of Questions, City of Stuff”). When prompted for a question, he added: “这个展览本身的垃圾如何处理” （”What are you going to do with the garbage left over from this exhibit?”), and then sat back down among his cornucopia of dust pans, cleaning fluids, kitchen implements and other wares to await the next customer.
Day 6: Standing in the shop doorway in the early morning was like being a rock at the stream’s edge– prominent enough to cause a ripple in the current, and occasionally to catch something passing by. A middle-aged woman in a polka-dot shirt glanced over and paused in mid-stride. “What is going on here?” she asked. She began to move off when I responded to her question, then paused again and came closer. She did this hesitating dance a few more times until she and I were in light conversation, talking about her work as a schoolteacher, her opinions of the various artworks, her lingering puzzlement. A couple going by paused to listen, then joined in the conversation. Another man stepped into the shop and interjected that “art is something common people don’t understand.” He owns a factory that exports plastic brooms. The others wrote their questions about waste on the wall and departed. Eventually the factory owner, tired of declaiming about art, added his own question to the wall: “How do you deal with visual junk?”. He offered some parting advice, waved farewell, and I returned to my position by the doorway.
Day 12: On the final day of the installation each of the artists came by in the afternoon to collect their artworks. Wang Yuhong was there, whose work consisted of a discarded mailbox enclosing an audio player playing the ringing bell of an informal waste collector on his rounds. “Noise pollution is also a kind of waste,” she reflected. Later, Robin and I hailed a waste collector and his cart to help return the construction rubble used as pedestals for the artworks to the nearby demolition site. A guard ran up and demanded payment. “But it’s just rubble from this big pile,” we protested. He dug his feet in and gestured with his fingers “how much will you pay me?” After more wrangling Wang Yuhong arrived on the scene and answered the man’s question with a pack of cigarettes. Afterwards the waste collector pedaled off, to ring his bell through the neighborhoods as the smoke curled away into the atmosphere from the guard’s lips, and we swept up the last of the debris from the floor and dropped it into the dustbin.
Managing the proliferation of waste entails above all a search for creative ways of thriving. Questions posed in dialogue are a heartening sign that this search is underway. Click here to view a few of the questions posed in the “shop”, and if you’re feeling inspired please add your own!