SHANGHAI PROGRESS REPORT
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
On the plus side we’ve managed to get the bulk of the content complete, shipped to Shanghai and, crucially, through Chinese customs.
We were particularly concerned about exporting an artwork by the artist Susie Freeman. To those in the know it’s a searing critique of the UK drugs industry. To the uneducated it’s a cushion decorated with drugs. For the record, it’s actually decorated with empty capsules and NO DRUGS WHATSOEVER. But it’s a nicety that could have been lost on an over-zealous customs official.
On the minus side, the ZED pavilion is far from finished. Luke and Jake, who have been dispatched to Shanghai, are struggling to install our exhibition in what is effectively a building site. By way of light relief – and a little extra challenge – we have set them a Shanghai Shopping challenge; a shopping list of essential outstanding content which includes, amongst other things:
small lifelike birds which move and twitter in response to human movement
realistic fruit and vegetables made from coloured paper
five lumps of coal
Meanwhile, our bank has inadvertently paid our Chinese contactors in Japanese, as opposed to Chinese, currency, an error that means that they’ve been paid less than 10 per cent of the agreed fee. It’s a mistake that anyone could make. Though not, one would have thought, a prominent international bank.
I am LOVING reading, listening, watching Supergroup in Shanghai. SusieX