rejon.org is Jon Phillips.

Last week we did a press barrage for the upcoming Cantocore show in Guangzhou, China! I know a lot of you are spread all throughout the globe, but nonetheless, I hope that anyone in the region can make it for the big September 5th Opening! It will be fantastic.

I wrote the exhibition text, have been coordinating fabrication, and somewhere in the midst trying to finish my project for the exhibition. We are up late right now finishing some projects and the publication is coming along nicely for the last minute print deadline for tomorrow Here is a sampling of the press text which you can read in full at cantocore.com:

Today the Cantocore Project and Ping Pong Space announced the upcoming contemporary art show, Cantocore: Import/Export in Guangzhou, China during September 2008. This initial show features contemporary artists from San Francisco and Guangzhou producing artwork around the more detailed relationship between import and export of culture and materials between Guangzhou, China and San Francisco. This first part of the Cantocore exhibition, Import, begins with an opening on Friday, September 5 from 8 PM at the brand new Ping Pong Space in Guangzhou, China. The show continues until Tuesday, September 16 with gallery hours of 2:00 PM until 10:00 PM daily. The second part of the show, Export, opens Sunday, September 21 at 8 PM until 10 PM when a special video screening developed by San Francisco’s Mission 17 titled “Stardusted” will be presented at the Ping Pong Bar from 10 PM until 11PM. The second half, Export, continues daily until Saturday, October 4 with daily hours from 2:00 PM to 10:00 PM.

The Cantocore Import/Export exhibition examines, through applied art practice, the relationship between import and export of culture between Guangzhou and San Francisco by asking a simple phrase: Are you Cantocore? Guangzhou, also called Canton, is the third most populous city in China and its province, Guangdong, is a major manufacturer of textiles and electronics for export to the United States. San Francisco has the largest import of Chinese immigrants of any US city, primarily from the Guangdong province. Chinese immigrants also created the largest Chinatown in North America in San Francisco. However, understanding the conceptual framework of Cantocore is not limited to geographic divisions, nor reductive dichotomies driven by post-colonial stereotypes such as East vs. West, nor Olympic nationalism pridefully paramount in China vs. US “non-political” sports matches. Cantocore is the reality of life versus the theory set forth by jurisdictions where people live.

The artists in the Cantocore exhibition were tasked with creating projects which explore import and export, materially and conceptually. Practically, how can one’s artwork be actualized either through fabrication locally in Guangzhou or imported from San Francisco? Guidelines for the creation of the work were left alone since modern strategies for creating artwork such as remaking, remixing, interpreting, pirating, translating, copying, and appropriating content, already espouse the Cantocore style. After the proposals were received from invited artists, curation of works took place based upon the processes, scope, location of artists and available resources to constitute this first Cantocore dialogue.

Curation for this show has been a group effort by Deer Fang, Justin Hoover, and Jon Phillips from the Cantocore Project and Wu Jay from Ping Pong Space (PPS). Layout and Design for the show is done by Pierre Picard (PPS) while wordsmithing has been handled by Nikita Choi (PPS), Jon Phillips and Deer Fang.

Exhibition Venue

#60 Xian Lie Dong Heng Lu Ping Pong Space, Guangzhou

Cantocore Import
September 6th - 26th, 2008
Opening: Friday, September 5th, 8PM – 10 PM.
Drinks after at Ping Pong Bar.

Cantocore Export
September 22nd - October 2nd, 2008
Opening: Sunday, September 21st, 8PM - 10PM

Video Screening “Stardusted” at Ping Pong Bar

September 21st 2008, 10PM – 11PM

Regular Gallery Hours
Tuesday - Sunday 2 PM – 10 PM
Gallery Closed on Monday

Ping Pong Bar Open Everyday

Also, we just updated some images of works for the show. Here is a sampling of the full post over at Cantocore.com.

For all you needing images out there, we have just up pushed out images for David Johnson who will be exhibiting a work titled “Made in China” and Guy Overfelt who is getting some magic smoke fabricated.

Guy Overfelt's Untitled (Up in Smoke) Sketch

Please check out the press section to help blog and promote this show!

I have cool wife! Check out this documentation of her project on display now at McBean Gallery at SFAI in recently sunny San Francisco. The show is totally free and interesting.

Adam has helped me document the installation in the Walter & McBean Galleries. This is part of the exhibition “We Remember the Sun”, on view from now till Sept 19th. Documentation video-taped by Adam Barczak.

This documentation footage is quite great and feels like some type of 3d model rendering or something. Speaking of which my cousin, Brad Phillips, is here this week working on pulling together his resume, doing some 3d modeling of upcoming projects, and generally hanging out. Great to have him here!

I’m bummed out! Due to my Creative Commons responsibilities next Wednesday, I can’t physically get to my wife’s art opening next Wednesday. So, I will try to drive as many people as possible to the show. Please do go if you are in the San Francisco Bay Area! Its free and will be great! I will get to the after-party as soon as I can physically drive back from Creative Commons “Future of CC” night event which several of you are going to attend.

Check out Lu’s big installation:

My latest project “Don’t Talk About Politic” is being installed in “We Remember the Sun” exhibition, a group show in the Walter & McBean Galleries. Opening is this coming Wednesday, exhibition on view through September.

“Don’t Talk about Politic” is a two channel video installation. Proposed plan is as image followed, as well as exhibition statement written by Mary Ellyn Johnson. I have been working on this in the past several weeks. And I found out that if you use NTSC video camera to shoot video in a lighted studio in a PAL country, then your video will be possibly have flickering all through it. What a lesson! Luckily I am able to eliminate this unexpected effect because it was shot in a blue screen studio. I am very excited to see when all is installed. And it should be an interesting show!

Some Video stills:

We Remember the Sun
Exhibition of Work by Fifteen Bay Area Artists
—Live Musical Performance at Opening Reception

Walter and McBean Galleries
San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI)

800 Chestnut Street, San Francisco, CA 94133

Opening reception:  Wednesday, 18 June 2008, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
Cost: Free and open to the public
Exhibition Dates:  19 June–13 September 2008
Images: High-resolution digital images available
Press Contact: Bob Gamboa, (415) 749-4507, bgamboa@sfai.edu
We Remember the Sun, an Exhibition by Fifteen California Artists,
Opens at  SFAI on 18 June 2008

Here are the directions to SFAI.

There are many reasons why I am spending half of my time in China now including:

• My wife and her family are from China (Guangzhou specifically)
• Community and Business Development opportunities for Creative Commons and Open Source in Asia, China in particular
• The contemporary art and web startup scene is exploding in China
• China has the most number (>210 M) of people online and the longest overall average time spent online: “Chinese Internet users log an average of 2 billion hours online each week, while the figure for US Internet users stands at 129 million.”
• The dollar, pound and euro still stretches further here, at least for the next few years

And, CEO Ito (ok, just Joi, no longer Chairman Ito just posted a nice chart showing approximate growth of GDP where China will eclipse the US in approximately 2030. Diversify your investment friends and push hard on reforms in china on the evironment and lowering the transaction cost on several economic barriers and IMO, decreasing the number of dropped and/or reset packets on the internet. Finally, the GFW needs to be turned off. Imagine 210M+ internet users all fittting through a huge (tiny) bottleneck of filters…it is a horrible barrier to efficient business transactions.

Lu is about to post some interesting things about the anti-CNN movement coming out of China post-bad-Western-press cropping.