Shanghai Dreaming, Holding an Urban Gold Card
Duration: 08.09.2008 – 16.11.2008
Location: Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai
Participants: The citizens of Shanghai
Visitors: People on the street and people who visited the exhibition
Number of Events: 1
September 2, 2008 
Jeanne Van Heeswijk started with her Shanghai’s city map, part of her participating artwork, Shanghai Dreaming-Holding an Urban Gold Card. In the face of the rapid urban developent and changing social society she asked citizens of Shanghai where they would like to be in five years and mapped the dreams and progress that individuals see in their lives.
This collection of migrant workers’ stories form a map of Shanghai based on a web of mobility by which the fulfilment of your dream generates change in the city. Personal symbols of progress are extracted from these stories to demonstrate the power of the productive individual. Symbols of dreams of fortune arising out of migrant workers’ personal initiatives form a new shared language. These symbols where printed as gold silhouettes on red T-shirts, for which the ‘Fortune’ brand is being specially established. These T-shirts where distributed to street vendors who sell ‘Gucci’ and ‘Prada’ to take on ‘Fortune’ as an extra brand. Calling out ‘Gucci, Prada, Fortune!’ they sell the T-shirts to passers-by to encourage them to follow their personal desire paths. In their daily movements the people wearing the T-shirts become walking gold cards, a flow of information on how to make progress. It is a tale of private initiative following its own dreams of progress that will be broadcast in the public space, an image of the city whose face is formed by the collective force of a mobile and adaptable community.
In her installation for the 7th Shanghai Biennale Jeanne van Heeswijk presented her research as a topographic image and a collage of stories an a large size photograph of an unofficial performance that took place before the show opened in People‘s Park adjacent to the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art.
<a href="http://www.dmovies.net/shanghai7/index.html" target="_blank"><b>Link to movie</b></a>
<a href="http://www.presentprojects.com/werk/index.php?/in-samenwerking-met/shanghai-dreaming-t-shirts/" target="_blank"><b>See all the t-shirts</b></a>
2008, Shanghaiwww.shanghaibiennale.com |