I launched a site today. It's the first site I've designed and points in the direction of other upcoming projects.
Posted via web from Josh Feola
Showing posts with label Beijing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beijing. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
在北京
Someone once told me if you live in China for a week you can write a book about it; if you live there for a month, a magazine article; and after a year you struggle to form a sentence. So I better get on it before I'm at a loss for words.
I've been here for a week that's felt like a month. I landed at 5 am last Tuesday and in the proceeding 12 hours I passed swine flu inspection (twice), got a physical, attended job orientation, opened a bank account, and applied for a work visa. In the days since I've taken care of such trivialities as finding a place to live. I also have a bicycle.
This past Saturday I attempted to build my social network in a single day:
First I went to an opening at Three Shadows, a photography gallery in Caochangdi. The building is angular and Ai Weiwei constructed. I was actually really impressed by the curation, they make a conscious effort to do interesting things with the medium, like stack old filmstrip-looking things in corners against walls. I really liked these lightboxes containing photographs of miniature stage sets (above). Since my soon-to-be roommate Rosa Tu will be working at Three Shadows this summer I'll probably make it out there a few times.
Next I jumped a cab to Beijing's incumbent artistic hotbed, 798. I went to an opening for Kafkanistan, a Kafkaesque interpretation of tourism in Afghanistan. The exhibit came complete with mockup passports, photo opportunities with fake uzis and Afghani dress, and an inescapable Vice Guide to Travel vibe (read: Edgy Hipsters Do the Third World). Definitely a heavy American Apparel aesthetic that I was not feeling, much better was this exhibit of abstract acrylic paintings by Chinese artist Hu Shengping in the adjacent gallery. The highlight of Kafkanistan was a typewriter and of the 798 jaunt in general was these dinos and some cool graffiti, which I heard was made to order immediately before the Olympics:
Next was the ironic Texas barbecue, which was even more ironically (actually not) held on the roof of an Irish bar. Met the ex-pat network there then unfortunately rolled solo to see Mobb Deep. Bizarre on all counts.
Mobb Deep was of course short the incarcerated (but no less prodigious) Prodigy, but Havoc and well named fill-in Big Noyd played a few classics. By a few I mean two. Then a not so subtle segue to 21st century Deep. I left after the 50th g-unit shoutout.
So, that more or less catches me up. Of course there's an infinite surplus of tiny things that have happened I could write about. The last week has been dizzying and I've barely had time to decompress. More to the point, I'm in kind of an identity crisis with this blog. Sporadically traveling has been my MO for so long that I don't know how to write about staying still. I may need to repurpose this space. One idea I've had is to collaborate with other certified American friends in major world capitals. The result of that idea is a new blog called Megalopoli. In the mean time I'm going to get some food and learn how to use Grass GIS.
josh
I've been here for a week that's felt like a month. I landed at 5 am last Tuesday and in the proceeding 12 hours I passed swine flu inspection (twice), got a physical, attended job orientation, opened a bank account, and applied for a work visa. In the days since I've taken care of such trivialities as finding a place to live. I also have a bicycle.
This past Saturday I attempted to build my social network in a single day:
First I went to an opening at Three Shadows, a photography gallery in Caochangdi. The building is angular and Ai Weiwei constructed. I was actually really impressed by the curation, they make a conscious effort to do interesting things with the medium, like stack old filmstrip-looking things in corners against walls. I really liked these lightboxes containing photographs of miniature stage sets (above). Since my soon-to-be roommate Rosa Tu will be working at Three Shadows this summer I'll probably make it out there a few times.
Next I jumped a cab to Beijing's incumbent artistic hotbed, 798. I went to an opening for Kafkanistan, a Kafkaesque interpretation of tourism in Afghanistan. The exhibit came complete with mockup passports, photo opportunities with fake uzis and Afghani dress, and an inescapable Vice Guide to Travel vibe (read: Edgy Hipsters Do the Third World). Definitely a heavy American Apparel aesthetic that I was not feeling, much better was this exhibit of abstract acrylic paintings by Chinese artist Hu Shengping in the adjacent gallery. The highlight of Kafkanistan was a typewriter and of the 798 jaunt in general was these dinos and some cool graffiti, which I heard was made to order immediately before the Olympics:
Next was the ironic Texas barbecue, which was even more ironically (actually not) held on the roof of an Irish bar. Met the ex-pat network there then unfortunately rolled solo to see Mobb Deep. Bizarre on all counts.
Mobb Deep was of course short the incarcerated (but no less prodigious) Prodigy, but Havoc and well named fill-in Big Noyd played a few classics. By a few I mean two. Then a not so subtle segue to 21st century Deep. I left after the 50th g-unit shoutout.
So, that more or less catches me up. Of course there's an infinite surplus of tiny things that have happened I could write about. The last week has been dizzying and I've barely had time to decompress. More to the point, I'm in kind of an identity crisis with this blog. Sporadically traveling has been my MO for so long that I don't know how to write about staying still. I may need to repurpose this space. One idea I've had is to collaborate with other certified American friends in major world capitals. The result of that idea is a new blog called Megalopoli. In the mean time I'm going to get some food and learn how to use Grass GIS.
josh
Sunday, June 14, 2009
On this road pt 2
Road trip:
Drove through the South to move my sister out of her old and into her new apartment in Savannah, Ga. Unfortunately the trip was rather under-documented on my end, with the exception of my requested pit stop at the Georgia Guidestones, an azimuthally aligned monolithic entity shrouded in New Age conspiracy speculation and reactionary religious retaliation. A massive mantra in multiple languages (which at points sounds borderline eugenic) situated on a small hill in provincial Elberton, Ga, self-proclaimed granite capital of the world. An anomalous monument.
So, I got a job in China that basically looks like this. I'll be working at a software startup for the next two years. I'm relocating to Beijing in 10 hours. I was just reading this post from my last China pre-departure, it's funny how my life makes these circles. For my last night in the USA I visited some friends in Los Angeles' Chinatown. And I've just been invited to a Texas themed party in Beijing. Ha.
-Josh
Drove through the South to move my sister out of her old and into her new apartment in Savannah, Ga. Unfortunately the trip was rather under-documented on my end, with the exception of my requested pit stop at the Georgia Guidestones, an azimuthally aligned monolithic entity shrouded in New Age conspiracy speculation and reactionary religious retaliation. A massive mantra in multiple languages (which at points sounds borderline eugenic) situated on a small hill in provincial Elberton, Ga, self-proclaimed granite capital of the world. An anomalous monument.
So, I got a job in China that basically looks like this. I'll be working at a software startup for the next two years. I'm relocating to Beijing in 10 hours. I was just reading this post from my last China pre-departure, it's funny how my life makes these circles. For my last night in the USA I visited some friends in Los Angeles' Chinatown. And I've just been invited to a Texas themed party in Beijing. Ha.
-Josh
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