While still exercising my avatar in SL (my current mission now and for the next few days is learning how to gesticulate) I came across a sentence of a novel I’m reading in my RL which struck me because of its perfect definition of ‘heterotopy’:

‘We want here, we want now, we want the Island, but we also want magic. We want our Visitors to feel that they passed through a mirror –regarding this Carrollian reference I’ve also posted a pic of me in a SL Alice’s Wonderland– that they have left their own worlds and entered a new one, different yet strangely familiar, where things are not done as in other parts of the inhabited planet, but as if in a rare dream’ (Julian Barnes, England England, 2008, London: Vintage, p.120) www.julianbarnes.com

This is a science fictional novel about the construction of a giant amusement park that duplicates the tourist spots of England and should represent the authentic ‘Englishness’ of the country. It is an enjoyable book, a discussion and parody on the invention of cultural tradition and on the questionable notion of historical authenticity.
Does RMBCity with its symbolical buildings and spots represent the authentic ‘Chineseness’ of the Republic, should it actually do it, how does it connect to real China and how more constructed than reality is it (if it is at all)? I leave all these questions open to discussion and in the meantime go back to my new SL clumsy attempts of gesticulation.

Last Saturday (Beijing Time), RMB City’s new mayor AlanLau Nirvana (RL: Alan Lau) gave his speech about his STIMULUS PACKAGE :

“The time for talk is over, the time for action is now”
The RMB City Stimulus Package

To the people of RMB City. Thank you for choosing me as your second Mayor. We have a huge task ahead of us. That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. This isn’t some abstract debate. Thousands are losing their jobs, people are not spending, and our streets and buildings are deserted. Excess and greed have taken us here. There is a sapping of confidence across our land; fear that our decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.
We must now act on a broad stimulus package to bring prosperity back to RMB City and its avatar citizens. We need to create a harmonious society, where new collaborative programs will stimulate our citizen’s minds, and where fast growth will be complemented by slow dreams.
The time for talk is over. The time for action is now! Let us learn our lesson: continue your excesses, not on borrowing and spending, but on dreams and ideas instead!
The stimulus package I am proposing has 3 parts: create jobs, offer aid to those who need it the most, and stimulate the minds of our fellow avatar citizens.

Job creation. The idea is simple: let’s put our citizens to work doing the work that RMB City needs to get done. I am calling on all bankers, hedge fund managers, and those who lost their jobs in the crisis, to come join me in constructing new monuments and recreating our ancestor’s grandeurs. Think big! And add to the already impressive cityscape of RMB City. Senators, I ask that you approve the funding to support this much-needed infrastructure spending.
Financial/housing aid. We need to offer immediate relief for struggling avatars under the crisis. Today, I signed a memorandum requesting the People’s Bank to give out Linden dollar to support those in need. This is part of the TARP program that I have outlined before in my campaign. Each citizen is entitled to L$10. We want you to go spend in SL, and stimulate the economy! In return, we ask that you tell us how you will spend the money, so that we understand your desires, hopes, and dreams, so we can plan for a better city in the future for you.
The housing bubble in SL has prevented many from building their own homes. Openspaces price has gone by 50%. And Mainland remains prohibitively expensive for many. We at RMB City welcome you to come set up your homes in People’s Neo Village, where you can take temporary refuge.

Mind stimulus. Our citizens’ minds are no less creative and are not yearning for less than when this crisis began. We need to keep our fellow citizens engaged, and let tourists see RMB City as SL’s leading creative and cultural hub. I am calling on SL’s best performers to come show your talent in our city. I propose to follow through on the plan laid out by our first Mayor, UliSigg Cisse, to host the “RMB City Super Avatar” contest. Come, and we will offer RMB City as your theatrical stage to show us your best to millions in SL.

Inaction is not an option that is acceptable to me and it’s certainly not acceptable to the people of RMB City – not on jobs, not on aid to those who need it, not on mind stimulus; not at this critical moment.
So I am calling on all Senators to rise to this moment. No plan is perfect. But the scale and the scope of this plan is the right one. Today, we begin in earnest the work of making sure the world we leave our next generation of avatars is just a little bit better than the one we inhibit today.
We have duties to ourselves, our city and the world; duties that are challenging but that define our character. This is the price and the promise of citizenship.
I am eager to work with all of you as we stand up to meet the challenge. That’s what the people of RMB City are looking for. That’s what I believe we can deliver to our avatar citizens, and the generation to come in the future. Thank you.

It may sound like an inconclusive generalization but I am almost sure that anybody, if given the possibility, would take the chance of experiencing a new birth, exploring ‘another world’, making up a new existence and exerting the power of controlling every single aspect of a new life.

My immediate thoughts when I first entered the heterotopical, virtual space of Second Life and RMBCity went to all the complicated academic literary issues I studied in the past (Foucault’s essay on ‘heterotopy’, utopianism and science-fictional studies etc.etc.).

As a new intern for RMBCity project I am now exploring, honestly for the first time (maybe second?) the immense virtual place of SL and I am now starting to realize how much fun it can be and at the same time how complicated it actually is to re-enact my second birth in a new unknown world (I don’t really have memories about my first one!).

I therefore set aside all my philosophical queries for a while and instead concentrate on far more down-to-earth subjects like learning how to walk, jump or speak (I’m almost sure the extremely diabolical deus ex machina behind SL intentionally meant every initial step in this world to be terribly difficult to learn, so as to re-create the actual troubles a newly born real creature suffers!).

After a while spent in my original homeland I immediately feel the curiosity to teleport my avatar, my alter-ego, my second-me (is it maybe more real, I am wondering, than my real-me…?) to RMBCity and magically find myself in the central City Hall (teleporting, compared to other more ‘realistic’ actions is surprisingly very easy to perform) and WOW!…..imagine my surprise when I find myself in this surreal cosmo-Chinese land surrounded by jumping fishes, Beijing architectural symbols dangling in the sky, ‘dream umbrellas’ and many other stimulating and magical situations! I cannot trust my eyes! I’ve finally found a place where I can give vent to my creative dreams. In this place you can refresh your imagination and get to think on a different, maybe higher and more ambitious level, Dante already wrote about that many centuries ago (and here, I’m sorry but both my literary and my national background come to the fore!) in the marvelous Ulysses-canto (Inferno, Canto XXVI): you must overcome your own limits and keep on pushing forward your own goals in order to get knowledge, and I think this new world of RMBCity may be the ideal place to start my virtual explorative journey.

‘Consider your breed;/ you were not made to live like beasts,/ but to follow virtue and knowledge’!

Bye

Just came across a beautiful night-shot of RMB City by the venerable Bettina Tizzy, founder of Not Possible in Real Life and long-term friend and advisor to RMB City project… We were honored to also have Bettina’s presence (in a beautiful Eshi Otawara dress) at the Mayor’s speech this morning!

As a still relatively new SL citizen, I was shocked to know that there is capital control in SL, just like in RL. As an avatar, I can only buy US$25 worth of credit in my first 3 days, and up to $250 in my first week. Once you reach the first month anniversary, your limit goes up to $5,000 every day, which is quite enough, but still a lot less than if you are a “business user”. Once I max out on buying credit in my SL account, I can only exchange that amount into Linden dollar after 24 hours. Oddly enough, the same capital control applies “twice”, so every RL dollar to Linden dollar transaction takes 48 hours.

This is not too different from transfer HK dollar to RMB – I can exchange up to RMB 20,000 every day, and can only transfer up to RMB 80,000 to my Chinese bank account (which must be under my own name) in a day. So it takes literally forever to move money from HK to China!

Capital control in SL is to “prevent fraud” (according to the SL website), especially protecting the new and uninitiated. Capital control in RL, for RMB at least, prevents excess liquidity and currency speculation, for a currency that is still not freely traded, hence protecting it from unwanted volatility – and preventing it from reaching its “true value” – as most think the RMB should appreciate a lot more from current level?!

So, another case of SL not too different from RL.

Fun fact: there is Renminbi (RMB) before there is People’s Republic of China!

On April 18, 2009, RMB City inaugurated its second Mayor, AlanLau Nirvana (RL: Alan Lau), in a ceremony featuring RMB City founder China Tracy, and historic first Mayor UliSigg Cisse (RL: Uli Sigg).

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While UCCA was still installing Navin Rawanchaikul’s new exhibition “Super China!”last week, I was strolling through the lobby and caught a quick glimpse of the large sculptural piece in progress in the main hall. Also entitled “Super China!,” it’s a Monopoly-like game that can be played in real-life by visitors throughout the exhibition’s run. It’s described as “an interactive board game where visitors can choose from a number of roles and win in the high-stakes field of contemporary art. Medals and trophies will be awarded to the winners at the end of the show.”

Each of the little squares represent notable figures, events, or phenomena in the world of Chinese contemporary art. Imagine our surprise when we spotted this one…

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CONSTRUCTING RELATIONSHIPS

a conversation with Markus Miessen
People’s Monthly, Issue 1
People’s Monthly: What does RMB City mean to you?

Markus Miessen: It presents us with a parallel reality. Although it is a virtual space, I would not call it a virtual reality. As a space, it exists in real time, produced in the non-virtual world, through an interface that allows for a reality that transcends the physical boundaries that our everyday world consists of.

PM: In SL, the state of PLAY is the crucial drive/ right for avatars, instead of survival in a society, or gravity as the Earth’s law. What do you think about how this affects virtual architecture?

MM: I am not sure whether ‘play’ is the right term here. I agree that the fact that it is a parallel reality turns the in-between, the communication between the two realities, into something playful. An avatar is a computer user’s representation of himself/herself or alter ego, a construct of the real, an interface and embodiment of the user. In this sense it is not too different from using a phone or sending an E-Mail. Now, one could argue that the difference lies in the memory of the system, the factor of growth, the factor of a history. Whereas most telephone conversations, SMS or E-Mails tend to be two-way conversations (between two individuals), SL builds up a visual and physical memory in a non-physical reality. It is not too different from building up a collection or an archive — of art, books, objects or dinge (“things”) of sorts — but this one can be accessed, altered, and interacted with in a completely different way. The question, however, is: what is really at stake here? I think that SL, if used smartly, like in your case, can become a test-bed for politics on various scales. On the other hand, if used as a simple game-tool — an interfacing facilitating the ‘state of play’ as you call it — it can easily become as banal as Facebook.

PM: What do you think is the biggest challenge to an SL architect? For real-life (RL) architects, how do essential parts of RL’s structure (such as physics, natural disasters, environmental problems, political concerns, and economic limitations) affect things like visual style, scale, and usage?

MM: Architecture is the constructing of relationships: spatial, social, and political. A wall can separate, but a wall can also unite. A single sentence, spoken out or typed into one’s keyboard can produce the same effects though. I wouldn’t necessarily distinguish between structures or architecture in reality and in SL, other than in terms of urgencies, scales of effect and economies. A disaster in SL is manageable; in the real world it is often not.

PM: What are the meanings of “to build/construct” and “building/construction” in SL?

MM: There are many different kinds and notions in regards to the act of building and construction, the most obvious one being the construction of physical structures that are both haptic and visible. There is also the construction and successive act of building up knowledge, constructing discourse, facilitating interfaces and the implementation of social spaces for physical and non-physical interaction. The only species of building that SL does not comply with is the one of haptic structures.

PM: What is unique about constructing a city, compared to an object or a building? If you can easily drag your building into your pocket (inventory), delete or remove it; or if you can fabricate your identity, education or lifestyle, how would this affect the rationality and order in city planning?

MM: I think a city cannot be consciously constructed. It is the long-term result of several professional, non-professional and everyday practices. The reading of a city, although the result of a multitude of historic and contemporary authors, is always personal. Therefore, there is never a singular New York, but countless New Yorks, there is never a picture-postcard of Beijing, but many diverse and conflicting narratives, sometimes hugely public, sometimes inherently private.

PM: In your opinion, how could SL architects inspire RL architects?

MM: Architects, urban planners and any other professionals and non-professionals that are engaged in spatial practice can learn from the interactive everyday qualities of SL. The interaction between individuals is essentially the driving force for the production of space. Any wall, any piece of physical matter places, tends to be a negotiation within a field of social and political forces.

PM: The last yet very basic question is: what do architecture and architects mean in RL nowadays?

MM: I would not make that distinction and I hope that, one day, your distinction becomes meaningless.

Markus Miessen

Architect, researcher and writer migrating between London, Berlin and Zurich. In 2002, he set up Studio Miessen, a platform for spatial strategy and critical cultural analysis. As an architect, Miessen is partner of the Berlin-based architectural firm nOffice. He is the author and editor of several books including Space of Uncertainty (Müller + Busmann, 2002), Did Someone Say Participate? An Atlas of Spatial Practice (MIT Press, 2006), With Without – Spatial Products, Practices and Politics in the Middle East (Bidoun, 2007), The Violence of Participation (Sternberg Press, 2007), and East Coast Europe (Sternberg Press, 2008). He has been teaching at the Architectural Association since 2004 and is the Director of its nomadic Winter School Middle East, which he initiated in Dubai. He has lectured widely, including at Columbia, MIT and the Berlage Institute, and is currently a Visiting Professor in Shiraz (Iran) and a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths, elaborating on his thesis regarding the Uninvited Outsider.

www.studiomiessen.com
www.noffice.eu

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As Mayor UliSigg Cisse is about to finish his three-month term as Mayor of RMB City, he has been kind enough to give us one more value for RMB Citizens…

“Do not commit but intelligent mistakes!”

We invite all RMB Citizens to share their favorite intelligent mistakes in the comments, or provide your own alternate value slogan… More details coming soon about our next Mayor and the upcoming inauguration!

It seems that feng shui is more controversial than ever…

In late March, China’s State Administration of Radio, Film, and TV released new regulations about prohibited content in online videos. Point #6 reads: “Promotion of palm-reading, fortune-telling, fengshui, divination, exorcism, and other feudal superstitious activity.”

And just a few days ago, there was a heated debate on an English-language news program on CCTV 9, regarding the cancellation of a feng shui-related class at a university. Video here.Blissfully oblivious to this, Huang He’s feng shui swans just keep flying in RMB City… Video here.

Qi of RMB City from rmbcity on Vimeo.