“Long-term vision is seeing the art in the future.”
Scenes from a Chinese Design Exchange Trip
by Paulette Hurdlik

Scene Three
Technology and Catastrophe

Walking in China is a constant aural, visual, kinetic... negotiation.

The untouched-up street scene below suggests why China has the world’s highest number of annual deaths triggered by air pollution. Beijing was, in a word, gray. Every photo I took had to be color-corrected (fortunately an easy task with iPhoto).

Photo above: Anne Kirby

On May 19, one week after the great Sichuan earthquake, a group of us explored downtown Xian at night. Xian was some 400 miles away from the quake’s epicenter.

Frustrated by our inability to find a single taxi or bus, we walked back to the hotel, passing entire families sleeping on the street (below)! We learned the next morning that the government had text-messaged every resident of the city of Xian warning that there may be a significant aftershock that night. (The government owns the telecom industy, so naturally they had everyone’s number.)

The aftershock didn’t happen, and everyone duly headed off to work the next morning.

Photo above: Jessee Thomas

How would you like it if, say, Dick Cheney, could text his thoughts to you? Personal freedom is definitely restricted in China, but for now, as long as the economy is doing well, the citizens don’t seem to mind.

Designers who went on our trip are responding to the earthquake with posters. Below are examples from (1) Paula Rees & Tim Girvin and (2) HoMan Lee. See all the posters by our group.

Chinese designers are doing the same.

Read Scene Four