On the eve of the JUE Festival, its organizers and a host of people involved (plus City Weekend's rock music authority, Dan Shapiro) weigh in on the state of the arts in Shanghai

By Nick Taylor

The JUE Festival comes to Shanghai this month, heralding two weeks of music and art events at a string of venues across the city. Highlights include sets by Japanese synth-punk freakazoids Trippple Nippple, indie crush object St. Vincent and Dutch rockabilly Dead Elvis and His One Man Grave (see full JUE listings in the Art and Nightlife events sections). But more than just an excuse for a party, JUE was set up to help local creative types find a voice and show off their talent. We sat down with some of the people behind the festival and asked them whether Shanghai is finally finding its arty side and shaking off its image as a creative wasteland.

Archie Hamilton: Head of music promotion company Split Works
Martin Kemble: Owner of gallery Art Labor
Sophia Wang: Marketer for live music venue Yuyintang
Sean Leow: Co-founder and CEO of Neocha and NeochaEDGE
Nini Sum: Artist and founder of Idle Beats printing studio


City Weekend: This city is often maligned for having less of an artistic culture than Beijing. Is this fair?

Archie: Shanghai is a creative city but a number of things stand in the way of its creative output. Here there is obviously a need to use every bit of time to create a financial future rather than experimenting with art and music.

In the West we’re lucky because we have a choice. I had three years at uni paid by the state. I knew if I flunked out I could go on the dole. That isn’t the case here. However, Beijing faces the same problems and manages to be a much more creative city.

There does seem to be a lack of creative get-up-and-go in Shanghai kids, especially when there isn’t a financial goal. There seems to be a lack of excitement or interest in doing something creative just for the love of creating.

Nini: It’s financial pressure. In Shanghai, more than Beijing, success is measured in financial terms and it’s very hard to make any money, let alone a lot of money, from creative work. I work eight hours a day to earn money to live, and then I go home and work on my paintings. On weekends I work in my screen-printing studio. Many Shanghai kids have a lot of talent, whether it’s in fine art, music, design, fashion or film, but they have to make a living like everyone else, and not many people are willing to support artists in Shanghai by buying their work unless they are established and it's seen as an investment.

Sophia: I work full-time at Yuyintang, but it’s rare that young people in Shanghai can earn enough money with a job in the music industry. People can’t see their future, so they pick safe routes, but it’s not like Shanghai has no creative people.

Lately I’ve seen a lot of young Shanghai bands coming through. The Shanghai rock scene is comparable to Beijing now. I’m not saying all our bands are good, but they’re enthusiastic and willing to try, which means Shanghai is a creative city.

Dan: It’s not about Shanghai or Beijing. If you’re a creative person then it’s your natural compulsion– you’re going to do it regardless. But here art is so much in the periphery compared to other types of success. Everyone wants to succeed, and success in a creative field is much harder than success in business.

Most local kids are looking forward and keeping their eye on the prize. But its not like Shanghai lacks creativity. Maybe art is not prized enough to draw the sort of talent that it takes to succeed.

CW: So you’re saying Shanghai has its fair share of artistic people, but its traditional focus on making money means talented young people put their creative energies elsewhere?

Archie: That’s right.

Sean: Shanghai lacks the infrastructure to nurture young artists and graphic designers. The local government said last year that we should go out and get creative to boost Shanghai’s creative industry, but it doesn’t work like that.

In most other countries there is a freelance market for commercial art–graphic designers, graphic artists, illustrators–so you can earn money as a freelancer and still have time to make your own stuff. That doesn’t exist in Shanghai.

There are 10 or 20 freelancers in the whole country who can make enough money. That’s what NeochaEDGE is trying to do: we’re opening an avenue where artists can do commercial stuff for part of the time so they can live and eat and pay their rent.

Nini: That’s what we want to do with the printmaking workshop: connect young artists and designers with buyers so they can earn some money from their work and build from there.

CW: But all this sounds like a China-wide problem, so why does Shanghai have such a bad rap?

Archie: Fashions will always be created in Beijing, no matter what happens in Shanghai. The real trends, the real fashions will always come out of Beijing because it’s less materialistic than Shanghai.

Shanghai is the most money-oriented city I’ve lived in. Everything is dollars and cents here, whereas Beijing is a political city. However, in the past two years I’ve see something happening in Shanghai. Up until a few years ago it was cool to go to a club and dance to a crap DJ and drink whisky.

Now, off the back of Beijing and the attention the Beijing bands have been getting in the mainstream press, something has changed.

Martin: The media plays a big part in making a creative lifestyle more attractive.

"There are more creative people in China than any other country in the world, guaranteed." – Archie Hamilton

Archie: In developed markets–in Japan and the West–the media is so competitive that it has to find an edge. Magazines highlight artists and bands and make them look cool, so talented kids want that recognition, too. The media is only just starting to do that here.

Martin: I used to be very pro-Beijing and thought that Shanghai lacked its own scene, but now Shanghai is coming into its own. It’s simplistic to say Shanghai is not a creative city. There’s always been a super cool, creative bunch of people here, since the '50s, probably, but they haven’t been visible.

In Shanghai’s environment, the people who do take risks are highly visible. I’m thinking of artists like Ai Weiwei, who had a show called “F*ck Off” in Shanghai in 2000. In those days there were not that many people who would have done that.

CW: Shanghai is an international city and one that people across China flock to. The people who are making art and music in Shanghai now–are they Shanghainese?

Sean: The most talented people coming through in the visual arts–graphic designers, graphic artists, illustrators–are typically people who have moved to Shanghai, not local Shanghainese.

Martin: I agree.

Sean: Changsha, Qingdao, Nanjing, Wuhan. I’m talking about young people who grew up in a fairly normal family in those cities. They’re smart. They had a good education and went to university, but they have a much more independent spirit than many Shanghainese kids, and they’re willing to blaze their own trail, to risk failure.

No one can say there aren’t creative people living in Shanghai because we find new great people all the time, whether it’s by trawling through blogs or people submitting their own work, or people being recommended to us. There’s lots of good stuff out there, but, strangely, not much of it is Shanghainese.

Archie: It’s a scary thing to step out of your peer group and your parents’ lifestyle. And perhaps it’s harder to make that step in Shanghai, which is such a materialistic city. But you’ve got the creative talent in Shanghai, there’s no doubt.

Whenever anyone tells me that creativity here is derivative or lacking, I think it’s bullsh*t. There are more creative people in China than any other country in the world, guaranteed, because it’s a numbers game. The psychology and the education system don’t lend themselves to creativity and free thinking, but there are creative people here, they just don’t have a voice yet.

CW: How does JUE fit into this?

Archie: I grew up in Edinburgh, where I was lucky enough to experience the Edinburgh festival. That isn’t just on a few stages over a weekend, it’s a month with thousands of events, from spoken word to punk concerts to art to theater. It has the whole cultural spectrum and it’s urban–it’s in the middle of a city.

We wanted to do something like that–a cultural period every year that anybody could get involved in. We’re not making money from the events. We wanted to set up a bursary program to fund artists and musicians to come to Shanghai and put on a show. We tried to get sponsors interested but no one picked it up, I don’t know why.

The idea was to offer out chunks of money to artists from across China. We’d give them ¥30,000 to come to Shanghai and rent a small venue to play a gig or put up an installation or whatever they wanted to do. Next year we’ll get that done.

CW: How did the rest of you get involved?

Martin We were contacted by Split Works because the artists we show fit into the JUE idea–young, energetic and interested in crossover projects that mix music and art. There are a lot of galleries in, say, New York which would put on live bands. Same thing in London and Vancouver, but no one does it here.

We’ve just opened a new space and we’re going to do unplugged-style concerts there. Maybe bands that come into town can play a more arty, quirky show in our space.

Sophia: Yuyintang is the oldest venue in Shanghai to have this kind of show so it suits JUE very well. We just want to promote bands and this type of music in Shanghai. It’s before the Expo, fortunately, which means we can go ahead with this type of thing. Hopefully we can still have some small shows during the Expo, but there are rumors that we’ll have to close.

"This is China's century and it's beyond our imaginations where it's going to go." –Martin Kemble

Archie: Sophia and the guys at Yuyintang are doing an incredible job of incubating local talent, giving it a place to practice, to make money, to hang out. But everyone here is doing something to help Shanghai get creative.

Sean has set up a forum where he can link creative people together, like a creative dating shop. Nini’s doing something outward facing, asking people to come and discover their artistic side. Martin has set up a gallery space and now a second space where the weird crazy shit is going to happen.

Martin: It will be a bit crazy.

Archie: Dan’s influencing people in how they grow a mean beard and play cock-rock guitar. And we’re trying to set up festivals where people can join in, where the barriers to entry are not high and the communication is simple.

I didn’t want to rap up everyone, but it’s super cool, it’s amazing what everyone is doing, and everyone is sacrificing something to do what they do and I can see the results already. This city is waking up and getting more experimental.

CW: The consensus seems to be that the city’s brimming with creative types–they just need to man up and realize that doodling and playing bass in a rock band is cooler than earning cash exporting valves and rubber tubing.

Martin: It’s going to come for sure, once the tractor beams of negativity and government censorship chills out a bit, and once the cultural pressures ease off and make it less terrifying for young people in Shanghai to take a risk.

Archie: In a generation’s time it will have changed, because the next generation of Shanghainese kids will not be born in a time of privation.

Martin: Shanghai might be 10 years away from where it’s going, but this is China’s century and it’s beyond our imaginations where it’s going to go.

Maybe Shanghai’s defining artistic moment is 10 or 20 years from now, but it won’t be rock music as we know it or art as we know it, it will be a totally different type of artistic endeavor they don’t even have a name for yet, and that will be the defining moment of Shanghai in its new epoch.

Archie: It’s coming. It is coming, I guarantee it.

Feeling inspired? Express your creative side in Nini Sum's printmaking studio

Want to print your own T-shirts? Got some ideas for poster designs? If so, get down to the Idle Beats printmaking studio on March 13 for Nini Sum’s free workshop, as part of the JUE Festival. “I opened the screen-printing studio last year,” Sum says. “As far as I know, it’s the first artist-oriented, hand-made, screen-printing studio in town. In the U.S. and Europe there are a lot of these places, but very few in China.”

Screen printing is a fast, inexpensive way to get your designs from paper to products. It’s easy to do in small numbers and with Sum on hand to guide you through the process, you can learn the basics in an afternoon. “In Shanghai, the fine art world is already developed,” she says. “The art in town is very expensive, and then there’s the lowend commercial design stuff. We’re trying to create something in between–real art that is affordable, like ¥100 to ¥300 for limited edition prints.”

Sum mostly works on T-shirts and posters, but one of Idle Beat’s first projects was a series of slip-mats created with Neocha. The studio is open to everyone. “We’re trying to open the process so anyone can come down and print their own art. We also sell our art online and are always looking out for cool artists to help them sell their wares.”

Since these artists do not have to conform to the approval systems of big clothing companies, they are able to express their true creative voices, Sum says. “They have the freedom to design incredibly unique art that is both affordable and difficult to pass up. We want to help local artists earn enough money to support themselves in their creative endeavors.”

Find it: NeochaEDGE x Idle Beats Screen Printing Workshop. Numbered, limited edition T-shirts and prints can also be bought at http://idlebeats.com/en-US/