As cultural contact zones, cities throughout Asia are shaping and being shaped by global, regional and national flows that are implicated in the unravelling of ‘traditional’ social contracts. New forms of economic production, migration, and a growing leisure and consumer society, for example, are said to erode institutions such as ‘the family’. Yet the emerging subjectivities from within this urban flux are precarious, marked by asymmetrical power relations reflecting moral panics centred on discourses of ‘westernisation’ and associated perceptions of transgressions of normative gendered comportment.

The ‘single’ woman is one such subjectivity that has come to signify cultural change, demanding recognition and access to the city, as well as re-versioning what concepts such as ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ mean. Singleness can stem from various acts of stepping outside the ‘family’, including delaying marriage, choosing never to marry, divorce, being widowed, being single in the city when moving across it at particular times of day or night, being unrecognised by the state because of sexual preference, or being alone in her aspirations and desires. This idea of singleness is increasingly visible within the media landscape that acts not only as a mirror but as a catalyst for its emergence.

This international workshop seeks to interrogate this contested notion of singleness in the city, focusing on Delhi and Shanghai. Through presentations, panel discussions, performance and film screenings, it will highlight that gendered imaginaries of emancipation are contested in the light of a variety of cultural practices that impact the multiple life-worlds of women and cities that invite, produce and restrict singleness. Speakers from a range of disciplinary backgrounds (geography, architecture, anthropology, cultural studies and s

 Shanghai Workshop – Report|||

Workshop concept note|||

Programme|||

Keynote by Josephine HO, National Central University, Chungli (Taiwan):

“Sex and Women in the Metropolis: A Communitarian/Narrative View”

Concern over rapid social change in China tends to descend upon the great number of women who, enabled by life in the city, have ranged out of their embeddedness in traditional marriage and family structures. Easily transmuted to mistresses or sluts who are said to bring havoc to peaceful coupledom and feminine virtues, or passionately converted to consumerism and Westernisation that allegedly further erodes China’s professed ascetic socialism, the so-called “surplus women” are visibly problematised. Yet, defenders/sympathisers of the surplus women often converge with the critics on embracing a similarly liberal/libertarian view of the autonomy and choice that the women exercise. In this talk, I aim to call for a communitarian/narrative conception of self that may bring forth a more complex understanding of women living in the city.

About the speaker

Josephine Ho is one of the foremost feminist sex-radical scholars in East Asia and writes extensively and provocatively on many cutting-edge issues, spearheading sex-positive views in the region on female sexuality, gender/sexuality education, queer studies, sex-work studies, and transgenderism. Her present interest of research has to do with sexual nonconformity under global governance. She founded and continues to head the Center for the Study of Sexualities at National Central University, Taiwan (http://sex.ncu.edu.tw), widely-known for its social activism and intellectual stamina.

Keynote by Fran MARTIN, The University of Melbourne (Australia):

“Precarious Autonomy: Chinese Women Students (Re)negotiating Gender through Educational Mobility”

In China’s large cities, as in many other societies in East Asia, recent decades have been marked by unmarried women’s increasing levels of education and strong workforce participation; the average age of first marriage has also been rising. For well-resourced women, increasingly, one’s twenties become a time in which one can develop projects of the self, from beauty and fashion consumption, to post-traditional sexual expression, to tourism and educational travel. A slew of neologisms has been spawned to refer to the growing cohort of unmarried, middle-class, late-twenties women; these range from the outright derogatory (败犬; 剩女) to the affirmative and celebratory (轻熟女; 盛女). But what is the actual social experience of women in this much-discussed category? How do they negotiate the manifold contradictions of their situation, which is characterised by a radical disjuncture between pop-cultural celebrations of their supposed freedom, on one hand, and intense social anxieties over their elaboration of non-marital adult femininities, on the other?

This paper draws on an in-process research project in order to advance an investigation of these questions. Based on a longitudinal study that is currently in its beginning stages, my paper examines educational travel to Australia by young women from China –– who now form a marginal majority of Chinese international students in Australia, echoing the feminisation of educational travel from East Asia as a whole. In China, young urban women increasingly see international educational travel as part of a self-scripted life project directed toward realising dreams of wealth, freedom and individual happiness. However, my interviews with 15 such students in Melbourne in 2012 reveal that such a mobile self-making project stands in fundamental tension with influential gender discourses within China that frame adult women’s social role as one of caregiving within the family, and assume that women should and will marry before age thirty to reorient toward this role. The young, well-resourced urban women whose bodies materially comprise China’s female knowledge diaspora are thus located at a point of turbulent confluence between conflicting conceptions of possible and desirable female personhood. In a strong sense, their ascribed gender identity interrupts the autonomous self-making project of which their overseas study is seen as a part. I will conclude the paper with some speculations on the resources that may become available to these young women, as a result of their experiences of overseas study, for contesting the normative gender expectations that threaten to interrupt their self-making projects.

About the speaker

Fran Martin’s best-known research focuses on television, film, literature, Internet culture and other forms of cultural production and social life in the contemporary Sinophone world (The People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Chinese diaspora). Martin’s research over the past fifteen years has focused on the transformations being wrought on concepts, practices and experiences of gender and sexuality as a result of cultural and media globalisation. Fran has several years’ experience studying, teaching and researching in PR China and Taiwan, and her current research project, funded by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, focuses on the experience of women students from the People’s Republic of China undertaking higher education in Australia, especially their negotiations of gendered selfhood and cultural identity. Fran’s publications include Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia (co-edited with C. Berry and A. Yue, Duke UP, 2003); Backward Glances: Contemporary Chinese Cultures and the Female Homoerotic Imaginary (Duke UP, 2010); Situating Sexualities: Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction, Film and Public Culture (Hong Kong UP, 2003); Angelwings: Contemporary Queer Fiction from Taiwan (Hawaii UP, 2003); AsiaPacifiQueer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities (co-edited with P. Jackson, M. McLelland and A. Yue, Illinois UP, 2008);  and Embodied Modernities: Corporeality, Representation and Chinese Cultures (co-edited with LN Heinrich, Hawaii UP, 2006). Martin is Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Leta Hong FINCHER, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Hong Kong SAR, China):

“Single Chinese Women Subverting the ‘Shengnü’ Label”

In China, the derogatory term “leftover” woman or shengnü is widely used to describe an urban, professional female in her late twenties or older who is still single. Many urban Chinese women express anxiety about becoming a shengnü if they are not married by their late twenties. And many marry quickly – often within several months of meeting a man – specifically to avoid being designated “leftover.” The intense pressure to marry comes from parents, relatives, colleagues and the state media, which has since 2007 often referred to a “crisis” in growing numbers of educated women who “cannot find a husband.” At the same time, the political space for organised feminist activism in 2014 has contracted, with women’s rights NGOs risking harassment and closure by the authorities if they become too influential. Given the difficulties of organised feminist advocacy, how can urban women resist entrenched patriarchal norms? This presentation explores the different ways in which women in cities such as Shanghai act on an individual level to empower themselves, from linguistically subverting the shengnü label to fighting against stigma and embracing the freedom of being single. It explores the possibility that more and more urban Chinese women may make a deliberate choice to reject the institution of marriage in an effort to maximise their individual liberty and economic independence.

About the speaker

Leta Hong Fincher is the first American to receive a Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at Tsinghua University in Beijing. An award-winning journalist, her research on gender and China’s urban property market has been cited in many news organisations, including The Economist, New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, BBC and CNN. Dr. Hong Fincher received her master’s degree in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and her bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University. She is now teaching at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in the Division of Social Science.

Melissa BUTCHER, Birkbeck College (University of London) (until March 2015: The Open University):

“Being Single – Approaching Autonomy, Respectability and Precarity”

The focus on public space draws in the spatial dimension of singleness, linking this to contemporary models of urban redevelopment, as well as the different qualities and ways in which urban spaces impact on and reflect how (single) women move through and dwell in cities. In doing so this paper highlights the interconnections between women’s use of urban space in India and China and dominant models of neo-liberal economic production that favour a discourse of independence and agency, but that also generates conditions of precarity. Secondly, the analysis draws in the realm of the cultural, tracing the inevitable shift in subjectivity under conditions of neoliberal economics (reflexive, autonomous, modern, individual versus traditional, collective, family oriented). Using tropes such as ‘respectability’, we argue that women are adopting cultural frameworks that seek to balance the demands of the ‘global city’ and the need for the body of the woman to maintain notions of ‘tradition’ embedded within cultural identity.

About the speaker

Melissa Butcher is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography, the Open University. Her research examines the intersections between globalisation and contested urban space, youth and urban cultures, questions of identity and belonging, and the deployment of intercultural competencies to manage cultural change. Butcher is currently leading two research projects, Hackney as Home (ESRC), and Creating the ‘New’ Asian Woman (EU HERA). Her recent publications include: New Perspectives in International Development (ed. with T. Papaioannou, Bloomsbury 2013); Managing Cultural Change: Reclaiming Synchronicity in a Mobile World (Ashgate 2011), and Dissent and Cultural Resistance in Asia’s Cities (ed. with S. Velayutham, Routledge 2009).

Lena SCHEEN, New York University Shanghai (China):

“Shanghai Lalas and Leftover Ladies: An Ethnographic Study of Female Professionals”

Battling the ‘problem’ of an estimated 40 million bachelors looking for a wife, the Chinese government has been initiating various policies and campaigns to encourage women to get married. But in spite of all its efforts, official statistics show the number of unmarried women and divorcees only increasing at an accelerated pace. The main target of the government’s campaigns are urban single women professionals, derogatively referred to as shengnü (literally ‘leftover ladies’). In Shanghai alone, the number of unmarried women doubled between 2000 and 2010, a rise closely connected with the emergence of lala (lesbian, bisexual, and transgender-identified women) communities.

Drawing upon preliminary ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Shanghai, this paper will analyse the diverse and mutually illuminating experiences of lala and shengnü professional women. It will focus on women in leading positions, self-employed women, and freelancers. Preserving their independence, domestically and in the workplace, these women encounter the cultural contradictions of capitalist, post-reform China on both a personal and professional level, raising all kinds of questions:

What escape routes, if any, from the constraints of China’s heteronormative, patriarchal society have these women discovered? What are their tactics of resistance against gender stereotyping and parental and state expectations? In what ways does their nonconformist status inform their work practice? Considering that Shanghai is commonly regarded as China’s most ‘cosmopolitan’ global city, what can the lives of these Shanghai women tell us about contemporary Chinese society as a whole and its future?

About the speaker

Lena Scheen is Assistant Professor at New York University Shanghai (NYU Shanghai). Her research explores the social and mental impact of urban transformation, focusing on cultural production in Shanghai. Her publications include the monograph Shanghai: Literary Imaginings of a City in Transformation (Amsterdam UP, in production) and the edited volume Spectacle and the City: Chinese Urbanities in Popular Culture and Art (with Jeroen de Kloet, Amsterdam UP, 2013).

WU Xiaoyan & CAI Luoyi:

“Another Source of Power: Love and Desire Liberated from Shame —— VAGINA MONOLOGUES in China”

With the booming of China’s economy, women’s social status nowadays in China is by no means at an equivalent advancing level. On the contrary, under the rapid growth of economy, the oppression upon women has even been intensified. In urban areas, single women over 28 are strongly criticised by mainstream media as “leftover women.” Likewise in the education section, college entrance-exam admission scores for female students have been intentionally raised to inhibit their excellence over male counterparts; female victims of sexual harassment are often blamed for their personal fashion preferences; and domestic violence against women frequently lead to malignant criminal offenses. Rural women are by far one of the most neglected and vulnerable groups, suffering from forced abortion, deprivation of land ownership, minimal education opportunity, high female infant mortality rate, etc. However, these everyday problems women face are rarely visible in mainstream media.

Inaudibility equates to invisibility. Hence visibility is the first step towards change.

In 2003, the Chinese version of Vagina Monologues was performed in public in Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou. In the past 10 years, this play has been adapted and performed by many students and people, which makes it the representative of China’s feminist drama and an important platform for gender equality education. In 2012, the brand new China’s Vagina Monologues Yindao Duoyun was performed in front of more than a thousand audiences and has gained enthusiastic responses. In the process of localising Vagina Monologues, we have discovered a feeling that affectively suppresses Chinese women – shame. Self-denial, ingratiation, discrimination, violence, among others that generated by shame are revealed from the real stories recorded and performed in Vagina Monologues. In this talk, we aim to explore how Chinese women negotiate their love and desire powerfully and forcefully by articulating shame in contemporary China.

About the speaker

CAI Luoyi, Feminist Activist, Core Member of the Feminist Cultural Club “Beaver Club” (China)

Cai Luoyi started to participate in the localisation of China’s Vagina Monologues since 2009. She has taken part in performing, script-writing, directing and organising public performances of China’s Vagina Monologues in the past 5 years, which promoted the development of Vagina Monologues in China. At the same time, Cai has also devoted herself to the lesbian movements in China. In 2010, she founded the student drama club of Vagina Monologues at East China Normal University and successfully launched this drama’s public performances in the university. In 2012, she has joined the feminist cultural club “Beaver Club” and participated in the creation and performances of the brand new China’s Vagina Monologues, i.e. Yindao Duoyun in Suzhou and Shanghai.

WU Xiaoyan, Shanghai Institute of Arts (China)

WU Xiaoyan has devoted herself to the localisation of China’s Vagina Monologues since 2005. In the past 10 years, she has taken part in script-writing, directing and organising public performances of China’s Vagina Monologues. At the same time, Wu has also paid close attention to and participated in the lesbian movements in China. In 2012, she founded a feminism cultural club named “the Beaver Club” which successfully performed the brand new China’s Vagina Monologues Yindao Duoyun in Suzhou and Shanghai. In the same year, Wu also launched a feminism anti-sexual harassment movement “I Can Be Coquettish, You Cannot Harass” at subway stations in Shanghai which triggered heated responses from the public.

SHEN Yifei, Fudan University (China):

 “Hot-mom: Motherhood and Feminism in the Process of Individualisation”

Based on the data selected from 967 newspaper articles titled “hot-mom”, this paper traces the emergence, development and generalisation of the word “hot-mom” in the media through keyword coding and type coding methods. The study attempts to explore the impact of the image on motherhood and contemporary women, and the realisation of feminist consciousness. Findings show that the concept of “hot-mom” has been generalised to that of “super-hot mom”. Commercial utilisation has led to the rapid degradation of the meaning of “hot-mom” as an expression of the concept of female subjectivity. As a consequence, it neither emphasises feminism nor motherhood, but simply denotes an entity of consumerism. It is suggested that without any institutional change, women assume more responsibilities and risks as they undergo the change to “live for themselves” in the process of individualisation, which may result in greater oppression of women.

About the speaker

Shen Yifei is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Fudan University, Shanghai, China. She received Ph.D. in sociology from Fudan University. Her books include: Constructed Women: Contemporary Theory on Gender (2005); Gender Mainstreaming in Chinese Policy: Political Participation, Legal Status and Social Security (2008); and iFamily: the Individual Family and State in the Process of Modernity in Urban China (2013). Her research interests include gender, family and NGO. Her professional affiliations include, The Centre for Family Studies, Director (2013.9-), the Socio-cultural Anthropology Research Center, Deputy Director (2007.9-), Women/ Gender Studies and Training Institute, Director of Research Projects (2011.10-), and the Institute for Research on Gender and Development, Fudan University, Deputy Secretary General (2003.5-).

Keynote by Shilpa PHADKE, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai, India):

“I’m Not a Feminist But…! Young Women in Urban India and Gender Politics in a Time of Globalisation”

This paper will engage with young Indian middle-class urban women’s relationship with feminism. Focussing on undergraduate women who have access to higher education and a variety of resources it reflects on the location of a feminist identity and often the disavowal of it. I will simultaneously engage with a brief history of feminism in the last four decades as well as my own trajectory of growing into feminism as well as being an under-graduate in the 1990s, which I argue were a less fraught time to be a feminist.

Teaching in the early 21^st century, I encountered a group of privileged upper-middle class young women in Mumbai for whom equality has come to mean a denial of difference. In a neo-liberal economy, their concerns are increasingly class-focussed and to complicate this context by bringing in gender seems to them to be almost pre-modern. I think through what it means to be a young woman, especially a heterosexual woman, in a context where increasingly being part of a couple is a way of demonstrating desirability. In a context where feminists are seen as undesirable to men, then often feminism as a politics is then far too precarious for many young women to take on.

Based on my own pedagogic experiences and interviews with some young women in Mumbai, I engage with why feminism and being feminist is so fraught in a post globalisation period. In doing so, I reflect on post feminism as an ideology and the ways in which young women are articulating a self image as “independent but not feminist”.

About the speaker

Shilpa Phadke is a sociologist, researcher and pedagogue. She is Assistant Professor at the School of Media and Cultural Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. She has been educated at St. Xavier’s College and SNDT University, TISS, Mumbai, and the University of Cambridge, UK. Her research interests include gender, public space, sexuality, consumption and the middle-classes, sometimes all at one time. More recently she has become interested in questions of feminist mothering and separately concerns around the location of lower class young men on the streets. She publishes both academically and in the mainstream media.

Evie WU, Nvai (China):

“LBT Movement in Shanghai”

This talk will focus on what is Shanghai Nvai, what’s our mission and objective and what we do. Shanghai Nvai’s Missions include the following: Eliminate discrimination against lesbian, bisexual, transexual women; improve women’s influence in LGBT community; promote gender equality and diversity. Started from early 2012, Nvai’s focus of work has been diverted to “raising the awareness of gender equality and opposing the discriminations against LBT people.” We have long-term events, such as Theatre Education Program, LBT themed salon and Oral History and Oral History writing training. In 2012  we were successful on Art and Social Action which had a large impact in China. All of board members and core volunteers are LBT women. The focus groups of our work are general public and women in Shanghai and East China, especially LBT women. The programs we have launched in the past years are: Theatre Education Program; Art and Social Action; LBT Themed Salon; Oral History and Oral History Writing Training; Eliminate Discrimination against Homosexual in Corporate Environment; and Shanghai PRIDE.

About the speaker

Evie Wu is the representative from Shanghai Nvai. Established in 2005, Shanghai Nvai is the first independent grassroots group by and for LBT people in Shanghai. They stand for and work for the rights of women, lesbians, bisexual women, and transexual women,and advocate social equality and diversity.

Sheba CHHACHHI, Independent Artist (Delhi, India):

“Public Intimacies”

How do we think about public art, art activism or even the public sphere itself within instrumentalised image regimes? How do new forms of representation and visual mobility, assertions and interventions from within political movements, as well as insertions by artists/art institutions in the public sphere of the city speak to changing articulations of feminism, and the women’s movement? This presentation examines these questions, amongst others, through the prism of my own work in the city of Delhi, as an activist and chronicler of the women’s movement, from the 1980’s and as an artist making public art interventions from the 2000’s. Located in a wide range of urban spaces – community halls, shanty towns, cultural centres, petrol pumps, libraries, shopping malls and museums, these experiments could yield insights into the modes of address and vocabularies of public art which ask for critical reimagining.

About the speaker

Sheba Chhachhi is a photographer and installation artist. Her works investigate questions of gender, ecology, violence and visual culture, with particular emphasis on the recuperation of cultural memory. Chhachhi began in the 1980s, both activist and photographer, documenting the women’s movement in India. By the 1990s, Chhachhi moved to create collaboratively staged photographs, eventually turning to large photo based multimedia installations. Her photographic work retrieves marginal worlds of women, mendicants, and forgotten forms of labour. In her installations, Chhachhi often draws on premodern thought and visual traditions, interweaving the mythic and the social. She experiments across the spectrum of durational mediums, from pre-cinematic animated lightboxes to virtual reality interactivity, creating immersive environments, and bringing the contemplative into the political in both site-specific public art and independent works. She has exhibited widely in India and internationally, and participated in numerous international biennales, triennales, and museums. Most recently, her work has been presented at Grand Curtis Museum, Belgium, the 9^th Gwangju Biennale, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Greece, Kiran Nadar Museum, Delhi, and Singapore Art Museum, where she was awarded the Juror’s prize for contemporary art in Asia in 2011.

Kevin MAY, NGO Worker (China):

“Gender and Change”

Women represent 70% of the world’s poor people, and gender issues constitute one of the key focuses of my work which essentially concerns poverty reduction and development. We do not treat gender as a separate issue, but instead integrate it into all our work, alongside other factors that produce poverty and inequality in China and beyond. As such, we promote a holistic approach towards gender, poverty and inequality issues. This proves to be a daunting task, different projects face different challenges. In my talk, I aim to present some of our gender-related projects, share our experiences, and eventually reflect upon the role of gender in our poverty reduction work. How do we promote gender equality and the empowerment of women, what are the obstacles and challenges we face, and how do we try to overcome them?

About the speaker

Kevin May is a programme manager of a poverty reduction and development foundation, based in Beijing. His grant making currently focuses on organisations and partnerships that promote the positive influence of China on the poor people of other developing countries in Asia and Africa, especially smallholder farmers, rural women and indigenous people. Prior to that, he worked at an environmental NGO where he supported the development of policies and programmes that promote company transparency, corporate reporting on environmental factors and corporate social responsibility. He received both his master’s degree in law and bachelor’s degree in social work from the University of Hong Kong.

 Shanghai Workshop – Report|||

Workshop Concept Note|||

Abstracts|||

December 4, 2014

5-7pm, Rockbund Art Museum (Downtown Shanghai)

Introduction of the HERA-project and workshop agenda by Prof. Dr. Jeroen de Kloet

Keynote by Josephine HO: “Sex and Women in the Metropolis: A Communitarian/Narrative View”

Discussant: Dr. Yiu Fai CHOW – HERA-member

December 5, 2014

Workshop Venue: Meta-Gallery, Wuyuan Road (former French Concession)

10-11.30am

Keynote by Fran Martin, The University of Melbourne (Australia): “Precarious Autonomy: Chinese Women Students (Re)negotiating Gender through Educational Mobility”

Chair: Melissa Butcher
Discussant: Lucetta Yip Lo KAM, Hong Kong Baptist University (Hong Kong SAR, China)

12-1.30pm

Panel: Shengnü (leftover-women) and ‘New’ Asian Women

Chair: Wayne Modest (Tropenmuseum/Research Centre, Amsterdam)

Leta Hong FINCHER, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Hong Kong SAR, China):“Single Chinese Women Subverting the ‘Shengnü’ Label”

Melissa BUTCHER, Birkbeck College (University of London) (until March 2015: The Open University): “Being Single – Approaching Autonomy, Respectability and Precarity”

Lena SCHEEN, New York University Shanghai (China): “Shanghai Lalas and Leftover Ladies: An Ethnographic Study of Female Professionals”

3-4.30pm

Panel: Love & Desire

Chair: Christiane Brosius

WU Xiaoyan & CAI Luoyi: “Another Source of Power: Love and Desire Liberated from Shame —— VAGINA MONOLOGUES in China”

SHEN Yifei, Fudan University (China): “Hot-mom: Motherhood and Feminism in the Process of Individualisation”

Discussant: Jinzhao LI, Beijing Foreign Studies University (China)

4.45-6.15pm

Screening of the documentary film “Women” by Walker Lee (Shanghai)

December 6, 2014

10-11.30am

Public Keynote Lecture

Shilpa PHADKE, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai, India): “I’m Not a Feminist But…! Young Women in Urban India and Gender Politics in a Time of Globalisation”

Chair: Christiane Brosius
Discussant: Wayne Modest

0-1.30pm

Panel: Art & Activism

Evie WU, Nvai (China): “LBT Movement in Shanghai”

Sheba CHHACHHI, Independent Artist (Delhi, India): “Public Intimacies”

Kevin MAY, NGO Worker (China): “Gender and Change”

Chair: Melissa Butcher

6-8pm, Fei Contemporary Art Centre (FCAC)

Producer: Li Xiaofei

Curator: Chow Yiu Fai

Word of thanks: Christiane Brosius

 Shanghai Workshop – Report|||

Programme|||

Abstracts|||

The rapid reforms in China have resulted in increasing inequalities and disjunctures. While Shanghai is transforming into a global mega-city, like many other big cities in Asia, its dwellers are often confronted with a way of life enabled and disabled by precarity. This precarity is generally perceived to be along the lines of labour and class, characterised in Guy Standing’s term “The Precariat,” or those with short labour contracts and poor working conditions. These can be low skilled jobs, but also the emerging creative class and academic jobs increasingly fall under this rubric. Our focus is particularly on the intersections of such inequalities and disjunctures with gender.

In Precariously Yours we extend the notion of precarity towards the domain of gender, love and sexuality. In particular single women serve as a prism to explore the complexities surrounding precarity, urbanity and class. They are the ones that negotiate the changing gender roles in China, in which we can witness a conservative return of patriarchy, coupled to a perceived crisis of masculinity. For instance, the derogative term shengnü – “leftover women” – gestures towards a group of women whose singlehood at their late 20s seems to be enough to evoke intense stigmatisation and reiteration of societal demands regarding love and family life.

Precariously Yours wonders: How do single women negotiate the multiple expectations and demands that society imposes upon them? What are their tactics of resistance against normative gender roles and expectations? How do they negotiate the gendering of urban space? How to love in a city that never stays the same? How to navigate through the city, as a young woman without getting lost or feeling unsafe? How to imagine the city as a more intimate and fragile space? What is to be lost and gained in remaining a single woman?

Precariously Yours explores these questions through an art exhibition, lectures and public debates. The workshop will particularly zoom in on how tropes like shengnü can be read as imaginations of a “new” Asian femininity, how different modes of loving and desiring are being explored in diverse creative and sexual cultures in Asian cities and how art and activism attempt to intervene in hegemonic understandings of love, gender and sexuality. Precariously Yours engages not only with Shanghai, but also with other Asian cities as to foster a comparative approach and allow reflections upon the lives and hopes of single women in a rapidly changing Asia.

In her work she strives to find an alternative reality, often based on her own sense of nature. Abstraction itself is a meeting between the defined and the undefined – a reduction to uncover a fundamental essence. Simplicity and accessibility are important parameters in creating visual associations and leading an artistic process to a result, which is universal and recognisable.

She seeks inspiration by reflecting on the tension between perception and reality, subject and object, culture and nature, as well as the relationship between the inner and outer world. She also finds fascination in ambiguity and to confront opposing elements, combined with conceptual simplification, material expression and the craft.

In our quest to understand, find scientific proof and absolute answers, we are about to lose something important: our sense of wonderment. In Lise’s visual universe, the wonderment is a driving force in the development of her installations and sculptures.

Her works has been exhibited in “Change and Exchange 6,” Halle 50, Munich, Germany, “Matchmaking at Suzhou Creek,” Shanghai, China, “Talentborse,” Munich, Germany, “Cross Point,” Hennie Onstad Art Center, Oslo, Norway, “Taiga” Elverum museum, Elverum, Norway, “Time,” Krypten Oslo, Norway. Commisions: “Hafslund Energy, Oslo, Norway,” “Elverum College, Elverum, Norway,” “Mølleparken, Oslo, Norway,” “Tabibito, Oslo,Norway,” “Lille Sumo, Oslo, Norway. Grants: Governments grants for young artists, Government grants for artists.

Lise Kolstad Yuen has earlier been living in Shanghai for 6 years. In this period she founded Creek Art Center in Shanghai and Beijing, and was curating and organising exhibitions and international culture exchange events.

Lise YUEN’s Artwork

Make a Wish

An interactive installation reflecting both internal and external conflict, in a period of change in which old ways of life, beliefs and values crumble, whilst the new emerges.

The installation is built as a contemplative scene. It consists of a wishing well in front of a backdrop of copper relief. The copper relief can be viewed as an abstraction of a natural scene as well as giving clear associations to both divine gold as well as earthly riches. The wishing well, a rustic iron barrel filled with black oil, acts like a mirror so you look down at your own reflection. The installation refers to your own personal dreams as well as the wishes’ ambiguity in relation to the spiritual and material wealth.

The viewers can write their wishes on a small piece of paper and hang it on the wall besides the wishing well. The summary of all this personal wishes will stand as a comment to society’s zeitgeist.

My work as exhibited this time is a film in which I tried to revivify an experience of driving on city-highways early in the morning. In fact, none of the experiences is repeatable. All that I can do is approaching what I saw and felt. One early morning, I was driving on the way, trying to get rid of the cumulating gloominess or maybe just physiological depression on impulse by keep driving forward. It was completely unobstructed when I was driving quickly or slowly on the highways of Shanghai in dawn, which made me feel relieved like air bleeding from a balloon. Around 5:17am, street lamps on both sides all went out. The world turned to black, blue and white, buildings seemed like dark tombs in the urban, air became transparent dark blue and the white lines on the roads became stripes of mysterious flowing creatures. I am still not sure if it really existed or it is simply my illusion, because I failed to catch the feeling of that moment again even if I had my camera prepared at that specific time in the next few early mornings. However, I realised that there is no meaning to repeat it, since I have already made a unique new experience when I tried to retrieve the former one mechanically. Therefore, what you are going to see is the new experience itself instead of the old one that I tried to repeat. Hope you would have the patience to wait till the end of this film Driving in the morn kills Desperation, nevertheless if you cannot bear it, I would like to congratulate you for having a good mood at this moment of time while a brain-break is unnecessary.

Started from 2012, The Second Series, as a long lasting series of works on female subject, is realistic, ruthless, yet outstanding with feminine characteristics in humanity.
“The Second” which means hiding behind others and never being the first here represents mediocrity and desolation. “The Second Sex” which means the second sex characteristics or the second humanity here refers to women. As “The Second Sex”, these women possess unique thoughts, confident personal charismata as well as all the weaknesses of human nature. Observing and interpreting them from the perspective of “The Second Sex” is like shuttling from the living room to the bedroom.

The factory girls that I am studying recently are a group that I can observe on the scene. They are ordinary but tenacious. Their lives are neither passionate nor creative. However, they still live earnestly with joys and tears.
I am trying to visualise these groups of women that I have studied in a literary way. I focus on the parts that exist in the humanity, in between the humanity and society as well as the parts that are neglected by the society or that have not been covered up yet in the daily life. The powers that I have been looking for broke through the visual surface, which should not be ignored.

No matter which community you belong to or what kind of attitude you hold; no matter hard or not, this is life.
The works of GUO Qingling have been exhibited in “Reactivation, Fei Contemporary Art Center (Shanghai, China) and Benton Box (Dusseldorf, Germany)”; “They! – Solo Exhibitions by GUO Qingling, PRETTY LAND Gallery, Germany”; “Broken Mirrors, CATTD Gallery, London ,UK”; “FCA-xxx Contemporary Art Exhibition, Fei Contemporary Art Center, Shanghai, China”; “She is sick! – Solo Exhibitions by GUO Qingling, Fei Contemporary Art Center, Shanghai, China”; “High Art From Shanghai, Contemporary Art Exhibition, Triumphal arch, Paris; FALL OUT, H Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand”; “Open Road, The Creek Art Center, Shanghai, China”; “Fei, Fei, Fei, Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China”; “The Contemporary Asian Art Fair, Art Seasons Gallery, Singapore”; “SEAFOOD – GUO Qingling Solo Exhibition, Eastlink Gallery, Shanghai, China”; “99 Exhibition of Young Shanghai Artists, Liu Haisu Art Museum, Shanghai, China”; “The Brilliance of City, Invitational Exhibition of Shanghai, New – Figurative Paintings, Shanghai, China” etc.

GUO Qingling graduated from the Stage Art Department of Shanghai Drama Institute, was born in Henan province and now lives and works in Shanghai. Her works which boast for its strong social practicality and intervention mainly focus on exploring women from different dimensions in life through paintings, videos, installation arts and radio dramas.

For instance, the images of women in the street life created from 1999 to 2002 were saturated with exaggerated outlooks, vibrant colours and vigorous brush-works. The SEAFOOD Series (2002-2005) with liberated style and fluid lines portrayed a group of women constituting the class of consumers who willingly embrace fashion in the urban. The Grey Series (2006-2009) studied the women suffering from physical and mental illnesses. This series appears to be gloomy and depressed. The Second Series (2012-2014) focused on the independent and professional female intellectuals who have made significant contributions. Since 2014, GUO has started to create the images of factory girls from lower class and single women in the cities, which reflects the complex social issues through portraying the anxiety and upset deep inside.

The Artists

Qingling GUO

Yue LIANG

Lise YUEN

Impressions

The workshop ‘Precariously Yours: Gender, Class, and Urbanity in Contemporary Shanghai’ took place between December 4-6 2014 in various locations in Shanghai. In this workshop we have extended the notion of precarity towards the domains of gender, love and sexuality. The topic ‘single women’ served as a prism to explore the complexities which surround precarity, urbanity and class. The HERA SINGLE members and their invited guests aimed at answering the following questions: How do single women negotiate the multiple expectations and demands that society imposes upon them? What are their tactics of resistance against normative gender roles and expectations? How do they negotiate the gendering of urban space? How to love in a city that never stays the same? How to navigate through the city, as a young woman without getting lost or feeling unsafe? How to imagine the city as a more intimate and fragile space? What is to be lost and gained in remaining a single woman?
The workshop zoomed in on how tropes like shengnü (leftover women) can be read as imaginations of a ‘new’ Asian femininity, how different modes of love and desire are explored in diverse creative and sexual cultures in Asian cities, and how art and activism attempt to intervene in hegemonic understandings of love, gender and sexuality.

Here you can download the programme flyer of the SINGLE workshop (Pdf, 0.4 Mb).

 
Further information

– Workshop Concept Note

– Workshop Programme

– Abstracts

Impressions from the Shanghai workshop (December 4-6 2014) and the art exhibition (December 6′, 2014)

photo by Helanonline (?)

In 1996, the Vagina Monologues (VM), an episodic play written by Eve Ensler, was first performed in the Off Broadway Westside Theatre after a limited run at HERE Arts Center in New York City. Since its first Chinese adaptation in 2003 the play has been performed countless times throughout China, becoming representative of the country’s feminist theatre. In their presentation at the “Precariously Yours” workshop, the Shanghainese feminist activists Wu Xiaoyan and Cai Luoyi, described how most of the VM adaptations are performed non-commercially by student drama clubs in universities and grass-roots organisations. While retaining the original’s form of monologues as well as its feminist spirit, the plays are strongly localised drawing on real life stories experienced by Chinese women from different classes and backgrounds. Furthermore, accounts contributed by LBT people are added to the plays in order to raise public awareness on gender and sexual minorities.

Focusing on the production history of VM in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou Wu and Cai’s presentation outlined the process of localisation of the play and its role in Chinese gender and theatre movements. In 2003, the Gender Education Forum at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou performed the first Chinese version of Vagina Monologues. Whereas in its early stages most scripts were translated from the original English version, the later performances of localised VM called, For Vagina’s Sake, were scripted almost entirely in reference to local social issues. In Shanghai, VM was first adapted and performed by Zhihe She (知和社), a students’ gender study club at Fudan University, ten years ago. In the past decade, more versions of localised VM have been performed at different universities. In 2012, the feminist organisation “Beaver Drama Club” (named after the nickname of Simone Beauvoir), was founded and soon launched three performances of a new version of VM named Yindao Duoyun, which received heated responses. In Beijing, the Media Monitor for Women Network (妇女传媒监测网络, a feminist NGO) meanwhile formed a new feminist advocacy group named Bcome (“B” is a homophone for “pussy/vagina” in Chinese) and started to create other scripts for China’s VM. Its version named “The Dao of Vagina” (The Ways/Taoism of Vagina), has been performed regularly since 2013.

For Wu and Cai, the localisation of VM in China offers proof of the feminist drama’s influential role in motivating China’s gender movements in three ways. Firstly in an individual sense, numerous mostly educated, middle class and young Chinese women joined performances of VM, which allowed them to further explore feminist thought. Some of them even felt motivated to become dominant forces in the promotion of feminism in China and organised public campaigns. For instance some activists involved in VM staged their intervention in metro compartments throughout Shanghai. They adopted the slogan “I CAN be Slutty, You CANNOT Harass”, with which they sought to fight against sexual harassment in public, simultaneously forcing the issue of victim blaming into the public arena and highlighting women’s bodily integrity and autonomy. Secondly on a community level, China’s adaptations create an important channel for different groups to make their voices heard by enabling open public discussion on the topics of homosexuality, transgender, sex work and female migrant labours. VM could thereby serve as the first platform for Chinese lesbian communities and feminist gender movements to intersect. Finally, in regards to its role within Chinese society, the VM adaptations have become influential media communicating gender education and feminist practices to the general public. In this way VM contributes to the visibility of feminist content in public and works against a lack of representation or demonisation of feminism in China.

photo by Helanonline

Even though Chinese feminists have been incredibly active in promoting feminism and women’s rights, the country’s social movements find it difficult to gain public traction on account of its current political system. Situating VM as an artistic expression, hence, helps feminists to navigate political risks and enables them to diversify the local gender movements in the face of restrictive and patriarchal state regulations. The VM adaptations’ strong commitment to localisation and its direct engagement with women’s sexual autonomy furthermore contribute to a new language, which not only reframes sexuality in terms of pleasure and sexual expression but also counteracts the marginalisation of sexual minorities. As such these performances emerge as important techniques of resistance and critique challenging dominant accounts of femininity as well as any stigmatisation of female sexuality in contemporary Chinese society.