a-lla-la-lei IN JIXIANG VILLAGE, 2019

Here is a short introduction to a new group-led interdisciplinary residency that has been named a-lla-la-lei, which is a Naxi greeting, perhaps akin to 你好 or 吃了吗? in Chinese, which seeks to explore convergence points between art and agriculture.

Origins: It refers back to a discussion between Jay Brown, Ernesto Salmeron, Anna Boggon and myself (Petra Johnson) about the challenges of residencies during a one day seminar at Oxford Brookes University in 2008 or 2009. In 2010 Ernesto, Piet Trantl and Jay published a proposal specifically tailored to Lijiang Studio. This proposal is now taking on form. In the course of 2018, constellations between people suddenly begun to gel into a desire to work together over a longer period of time. People already there, some or most of the time: Jixing joined Lijiang Studio full-time, Zhu Ming and Wang Mei, who have taken time out of their professional life as NGO consultant and Waldorf kindergarten teacher in order to pursue Goethean observations, decided to move from their village across the lake to Jixiang Village and in with Mu Chongpei; Li Lisha raised any number of questions about points of divergence between art and agriculture, questions informed by her decision to spend the July residency working on the farm; Qingwa started to work on a book for children on Qilin Dance; the studio begun a co-operation with He Wenzhao who curates a residency program in his parents home in a Ciman village and will be focussing on habitat selection next year.

What we have done so far: Zhu Ming and Petra Johnson begun to explore a text on ancient ways farmers developed for reading the Qi of the earth within their locality. Shuyin who trained as an architect, joined us in October and together with Jixing started to built a test site for this installation.

We are also spreading the word about this residency that seeks to identify convergence points between art and agriculture and we are so amazed and grateful that

Sarah Lewison (artist)

Duskin Drum (artist and educator)

Shuyin Wu (architect)

Jay Brown (founder and host)

Shodekeh Talifero (beatboxer)

Zhihao (performance artist)

George Korsmit & Saskia Janssen (interdisciplinary artists)

Yunwen Huang 黄韵文 (movement artist)

Bochay Drum (landscape archaeologist)

Ben Torpey (farmer)

Ernesto Salmeron (artist)

Bill Wetzel (poet)

Dingyun (interdisciplinary artist)

Jo Naden (sculptor)

Viviana Bernadini (interdisciplinary artist)

Anna Boggon (visual artist)

Zhao Chuan (writer and theatre director)

Wu Meng (theatre and filmmaker)

Olga Merekina (dancer)

John McCowen (musician and composer)

Ricardo Gallo (pianist and composer)

Zhang Meng (Sheng player and composer)

Zhang Yinan (animation artist)

Eliza Bonham-Carter (painter)

Kitamari (dancer)

Francesca Valsecchi (curator)

Selena Kimball (visual artist)

Sipei Lu (curator and writer)

Li Yuejuan (architect/drawings)

Gill Ord (painter)

Kaitlin Rees (poet)

Utsa Hazarika (anthropologist and artist)

Bbbdddppp (artist and writer)

Chen Wanrong (vlogwriter)

Zhuming (scholar)

Petra Johnson (artist)

- all of whom have already done work along these lines in Jixiang Village or worked along complementary lines in other regions are coming to join us and make it happen.

The last residency of the year is an interdisciplinary winter residency:

In Advance of the WinterSolstice

‚In Advance of the Winter Solstice’ brings together Kaitlin Rees, poet from the US (22nd Nov – 22nd Dec), Utsa Hazarika, anthropologist/artist from India (1st Dec – 1st Jan), Bbbdddppp, artist from China (mid Nov-late Nov) with local resident filmmaker He Jixing and vlog writer Chen Wanrong, as well as longterm residents Zhuming (founder of Life Space Studio in Zhengeng Village) and Petra Johnson (resident artist at Lijiang Studio).

The residency is structured into four fluid, overlapping sections

Landings, every detail, no matter how small, matters during the first days.

Groundings is a time of rhythmic alignments when diverging modes of engagement with the location emerge.

‘Findings entails the act and process of searching as well as the outcome, the thing discovered,’ (Girot in Corner, J. 1999; 63)

and finally Foundings as a synthesis of what happened before and a staking out of ground for future events.

In Naxi Culture, the solar/lunar calendar exists in form of a song. This has inspired the tentative subtitle to this residency, ’Singing the landscape’.