Since our opening, many avatars are making the trip to RMB City – no entry visa required!

Over at Virtual Underworld, one such traveler has recently posted about RMB City, saying: “Its not a ‘mirror world’, and truthfully it is hard to describe.” All in all, we’d have to agree – descriptions are difficult, best you visit for yourself… (read more)

(more…)

Sometimes things just connect. The other day I was reminded of this line from part of T.S. Eliot‘s Four Quartets:

“the still point of the turning world”

I have always been particularly drawn to the People’s Observation Wheel in RMB City, and when I thought about this phrase again it clicked for me. Though the City Hall appears to be the main center for RMB City, it seems the wheel might be an important fulcrum as well. I then remembered the phrase “Axis Mundi”, and how nearly all world cultures have their own version of this. The still point that connects heaven and earth. The eternal, unchanging center of a swirling chaos.

The first mayor of RMB City Ulisigg Cisse (RL: ULi Sigg) gave RMB ‘s citizens his first value, this mayor who claimed that “I would certainly be an excellent mayor, but I am born lazy” and thinks that an Utopia should be “Sinoswisszurichbeijing – situated in the Alps but with Chinese food, and no avatar with more than one vote”, surely will make alterations to RMB. It is exciting to see what RMB City will look like after his three-month term of office. This value is a little step for the changes of our city, what ‘s up next?

As one of the RMB members, I am expecting our mayors to fulfil his/her responsobility (probably in a way that I have never seen, although repetition is a mutation too):

– Hold a “Town Hall Meeting” in City Hall on a monthly basis, listen to the needs from the RMB citizens

– Select two noteworthy residents and visitors of RMB City as “Honored Citizens” every month

– Make a new rule for his/ her successor

– Make a visit to a specific venue in RMB City and make an offering there that will be kept through his/ her term of office

– Arrange at least one event at the place where SL feng shui master Huang He (SL: Queenshoe Voom) suggested

Mayor! Jia You!

From RMB City

We are now counting down… Amidst all the chaos, late this evening I found myself suddenly in a quiet moment, alone in the presence of only the jumping carp and flying swans, and the majestic wheel turning above it all. It was an instant of such surreal beauty that it made me remember again why this project is so special.

Tomorrow we will welcome you. We can hardly wait.

(more…)

“Today I had lunch with friend who knows the concept of RMB City. He just got the RMB City opening announcement today. He was so excited! He said he could not believe that this project has been realized, after one year since I first told him this project. He thought it was only a joke. I told him: ‘You should trust us and we would go forwards to do it when we said so!’

Yes, it has been one year, the imagination of RMB city finally is closer and closer to share with others. Even though there are so many changes in the process of building up the city, and it will still keep changing, we learned so much from this and keep changing our perspectives with the world in the process of encountering this project. We shape and are shaped by this unspeakable WORLD.”

– Freeway Mayo (RL: Zhang Wei), CEO of RMB City

Though it was a good 14 hours before the SLT New Year, RMB City Team rang in 2009 at the Beijing Mini-Marathon held at “the shop” of Vitamin Creative Space in Beijing.

(Marathon Man: Hans Ulrich Obrist interviewing Cao Fei, translation by Venus Lau)

This series of interviews by Hans Ulrich Obrist featured Cao Fei as one of the first conversations, where she discussed the latest progress of RMB City in the context of her own work, as images of RMB played on the wall. RMB Team Member Venus Lau (Nokan Vlodovic) translated, and continued to work her linguistic magic for several hours into the night and into the next year!

We’re now in the count-down to the grand opening on January 10th, which will almost be a *new* new year for the city itself…

More pictures and information about the marathon below.

Battery City: A Post-Olympic Beijing Mini Marathon is the continuation of Marathon events conceived by Hans Ulrich Obrist which have been taking place at the Serpentine Gallery Pavilions since 2006. Through interviews conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist and group discussion conducted by Jiang Jun, chief editor of Urban China, the Beijing Mini Marathon seeks to map the most pressing concerns of the minds of Chinese artists, architects, writers, and intellectuals at this moment, and to re-generate energy for future development within the Chinese context.

Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews: Ai Weiwei, Cao Fei, Zhang Anding, Xiao He, Zhang Da, Dai Zhikang, Wang Jianwei, Jia Zhangke, Jiang Jun, Ma Yansong, Yangjiang Group, Zak Kyes, Yan Jun.

Sound Performance: Yan Jun THE STETHOSCOPE
Calligraphy creation: Yangjiang Group (Zheng Guogu, Chen Zaiyan, Sun Qinglin)
Media Partner: Urban China Magazine
Translator: Venus
Stenography: Ruize Stenography Company
Supported by: Subjam, Zak Group

Time: 31 Dec 2008 2pm – 4am 1 Jan 2009
Venue: the shop Jianwai SOHO West Area Tower15 B1-1503

Recently RMB City Office had a visit from Speedism, the Belgium-based visual artist/ architect duo of Julian Friedauer and Pieterjan Ginckels. During their brief stay in Beijing, the pair had created one of their trademark “Speed Trips” – a surreal bus journey around the city with a group of other curious explorers, stopping at unusual places (from a baroque castle to artist Xu Bing’s workshop to a secret village) and getting a speedy montage view of the urban landscape.

Later they stopped by RMB City to share their creative process with our team, and discuss various possibilities for perhaps “speed-tripping” through a more virtual city in the future…

Speedism will also be participating in the Performatik festival next month, where RMB City will have a new project debuting as well (more on that to come). Happy tripping, Speedism!