We Are Open, Mind Your Steps

Chen Shuyu

The so-called independent art space can be understood as an entity driven by the activities of an individual or a collective working in free will. The output of this entity is a collage that draws from the background and interests of those individuals while expressing possibilities and triggering new thoughts and connections. The intersection of differences, that is in attitudes, in disciplines, in cultural backgrounds, creates uncertainty and confrontation but also unseen potentials.

The life and death of the independent art space in China, is of course not only decided by those who initiate the space with a certain concept and agenda, but also influenced by the space ideology of Chinese cities. The urban space in China are very formally planned but informally used: the public spaces emerge and disappear in a fluid way, depending on the governmental policy that is normally executed in a hard way but also on the users who always want to find the gaps to survive. To run an independent art space is a process, a container for experience of everyday life, event, which reveals the thinking and the feelings of human beings, not as individual but also as the collective. To close down the space without compromise and look for new begins, is one of the ways to resist.