Working in response to a new city for four weeks is not a long time, especially a city the scale of Shanghai. I came here with the intention of continuing some of the strands of my practice that I have been working with over the past 2 years - namely the Traces of movement that are documented in the limited edition catalogue produced to coincide with this residency.
Prior to leaving for Shanghai, I had re-read the essay by Henri Lefebrve: "Rhythmanalysis of Mediterranean cities", which discusses how Mediterranean cities operate under a rhythm related to the sun, whilst oceanic cities have a rhythm that reflects the tides. The work produced during this residency tries to understand the rhythm of Shanghai, how people move through it, what affects it's rhythm?
My inability to read the language here has led to me being more aware of the presence of visual and physical nudges that affect the rhythm of the movement of people within the city. Despite it's huge population, there is a steady rhythm to the place, meaning that I rarely felt overcome by large numbers of people. I put this down to the visual and physical guides to smooth the rhythm; directional arrows and barriers in the metro system keep people flowing in the right directions, there is a natural tendency to keep to the right of a pavement, and red traffic lights are optional if you are a motorcyclist - all of these things contribute to my impression that Shanghai's rhythm is a smooth, flowing one.
As I've tried to make sense of this rhythm, I have collected visual material, I have catalogued it into manageable categories and then started to re-present those collections. Over the four weeks this has resulted in a series of collages, drawings, a proposal for a digital interactive work and a video work in progress.
That means that this exhibition is a series of starting points - initial responses and threads that I look forward to developing into fully fledged works over the next months.
Claire Weetman, November 2012.