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

China Tracy is invited to appear at Tonight Live, a premiere culture and entertainment talk show run by virtual tv channel SLCN in Secondlife (3:30pm on Jan 11, Secondlife time) / 8:30am on Jan 12, Beijing Time). Don’t miss it!

Landmark in secondlife: Tonight Live Studio (51A), Northpoint (177, 117, 33)
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Northpoint/205/140/32.

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

“I dream of breathing underwater and my body filling up with cool, refreshing water instead of blood.”

“My dream symbol — my personal symbol that is in every dream is always a house of some kind
That is why i do my birdhouse installations because for me its all about home I guess.
The other recurrent theme is multiple births.
Well, we have the baby
I am in a swimming pool or a tub or in a grocery store and you pop them out
I give birth to a litters of human babies
There are so many; like puppies or kittens, but they are human”

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!

After almost two years’ gestation, RMB City is going to open its door to the public on 10 Jan, 2009. Apart from the City’s opening ceremony, there will be two highly-anticipated events at that very special day. The first one is a virtual Feng Shui project by young artist Huang He who will bring the ancient Chinese methodology of sptaial use into a virtual space. The second event is the announcement about RMB City’s first mayor.

Download English Press Release here
Download Chinese Press Release here

RMB City is featured in the new issue of Art Asia Pacific, which is also the 15th anniversary of the magazine. Readers can have a look at RMB City through the form of a conceptual “real estate listing,” and get excited for our upcoming opening. Pick it up on newsstands in your city!

01-Smiling Sands

My dream umbrella would be black
– it would contain TIME- Roman Numerals
– numbers would issue from it
– I would travel through time when I flew with it

Their would be old clock faces on the outside of the umbrella

and ideally the umbrella would tick tock like an old grandfather clock