Panel Statement
Panel: @China, Virtually Speaking: A Virtual Roundtable Discussion on Emergent Practices in China
HomeShop began as a storefront residence and artist initiative in Beijing, 2008. Located in the centre of Beijing on one of its old hutong alleyways, the space and its window front are used as the beginning points from which to examine ways of relaying between public and private, the commercial and pure exchange as such. Artists, designers and thinkers come together via multiple, interwoven series of small-scale activities, interventions and documentary gestures, processes by which HomeShop serves as an open platform to question existing models of economic and artistic production. Daily life, work and the community become explorations of micropolitical possibility, and of working together.
homeshopbeijing.org/blog
- Michael Eddy is a Canadian artist who since 2004 has been living abroad—in Japan, Germany and currently in China. His work has been exhibited throughout North America, Europe and Asia. With a base in photography, he works across various media including performance, paper, writing and installation and frequently in collaboration with others, the most long term of which is the collaborative trio Knowles Eddy Knowles (along with Rob Knowles based in London and Jon Knowles based in Montréal, no relation). He is currently working with HomeShop as a space and as a group of people working across disciplines. From 2008–2010 he worked with Vitamin Creative Space at the shop in Beijing, China, programming and coordinating projects and editing publications. These projects have often dealt with the “daily life” of art works. Michael studied at NSCAD in Canada from 2001 to 2004 and at the Staedelschule in Germany from 2005 to 2008.
- Elaine W. HO, (Beijing) works between the realms of time-based art, urban practice and design, using multiple vocabularies to ask questions about how users and objects intertwine with the micropolitics of everyday life. Often working collaboratively, her videos, installations and other interventions focus on alter-possibilities of an intimate, networked production. One of her current endeavours is HomeShop, a storefront space turned home base for interactions with the local community and the surrounding public space. Via the organisation of collaborative events and workshops, research and field recordings, HomeShop and its independent journal publication WEAR seek to develop an open platform that examines relationality as a tool tied to but outside of other economic modes of production. Elaine is also a frequent contributor at iwishicoulddescribeittoyoubetter.net
- Emi Uemura has been working on the projects and festive spaces where people share (or do not share) experiences, knowledge and food. Often these projects address social and political issues surrounding food production and consumption. Currently she is working on farming and is interested in how it shapes time and application of works. She studied Anthropology in Saint Mary’s University, Canada, and has currently settled in Beijing since 2010.