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Category Archives: China

GUH People: Ettore Santi

Posted on by sarahhwang@berkeley.edu
Filed under: Art, Art+Village+City, China

Ettore Santi is a doctoral candidate in the Architecture department at UC Berkeley. He recently recieved a 2020 Mellon Dissertation Research Fellowship for his dissertation on "Designing a Land Revolution: The Corporate Reinvention of China's Rural Environment." Ettore received the Graduate Certificate in Global Urban Humanities in 2018 and took ARCH 209/RHETOR 250 Art+Village+City in the Pearl River Delta GUH studio course co-taught by Margaret Crawford (Architecture) and Winnie Wong (Rhetoric) in 2015, which was formative to his research development.

How were you first introduced to the Global Urban Humanities Initiative and what made you want to join?

Before becoming a graduate student at CED, I was conducting research about rural and urban villages in China as a visiting scholar in the architecture department at Berkeley. By a lucky coincidence, that semester Margaret Crawford and Winnie Wong were offering the Global Urban Humanities research studio Art+Village+City in the Pearl River Delta, which included a two-week study trip to southern China. I immediately signed up for the class.

At that point, I was not yet aware of the wonderful and diverse group of students I was about to join: the studio formed a collaborative atmosphere, in which we could all learn from our different academic backgrounds such as art practice, anthropology, Southeast Asian studies, and more. During the summer, we worked collectively to turn the research into an exhibit that we displayed at Wurster Gallery and the Shanghai Biennale. The studio made me realize how the Global Urban Humanities constituted a generative platform where I could develop my scholarship in a rich and interdisciplinary setting. As soon as I started the Ph.D., I signed up for the certificate. 

Tell us how you came up with your current dissertation topic on rural design in China. How did your GUH courses and/or activities help formulate your research?

I always found “the rural” to be a fascinating kind of space, perhaps because I grew up in rural Italy. During my undergraduate and graduate studies in architecture, I noticed that rurality was often associated with emptiness and backwardness as opposed to modern, vibrant cities. This contrasted with my own experience, in which rural areas were sites of intense “urban life.” I saw crowds of rural residents moving at high speed across dense infrastructural networks to catch up with the pressures of daily businesses, or gathering for an “aperitivo” in newly developed rural suburbs.

Similarly, when I was in China as a graduate student and later as a designer, I saw how architects were reconceiving rural areas to accommodate spaces for high-tech food production or rural leisure for the urban middle-class. The studio “Art+Village+City in the Pearl River Delta” enabled me to further explore these dynamics and formulate my research questions. Other classes offered by the initiative, such as Teresa Caldeira (City Planning) and Shannon Jackson’s (Performance Studies) seminar The City, Arts, and Public Space (CYPLAN 291/THEATER 266.1) helped me connect these questions to broader theorization efforts in urban studies and situate my potential contributions to the literature. 

Do you have a memorable moment as a GUH student that you would like to share?

Yes! The opening night of the exhibit Art-Village+City at Wurster gallery was quite memorable. We had been working so hard in the last weeks to meet the opening deadline, and the last few days had been exhausting. When I saw a line of people forming outside of the Wurster gallery, I started getting very nervous. But then, as the huge crowd started wandering around the exhibition spaces, I realized that visitors were getting curious and passionate about the collages, dioramas, videos, and the other materials we had prepared. Only then I was able to relax and enjoy the evening. Certainly, the lychee martini cocktails arranged for the opening helped… those were excellent, too! 

Tell us one thing you're reading, listening to, watching that is helping you get through this pandemic.

I am reading a great book entitled The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing. The book follows the story of the Matsutake, a Japanese mushroom variety growing very rapidly in degraded landscapes, such as deforestation lands, toxic swamps, or radioactive territories. The book shows how people left behind by these de-industrialization processes found in the mushroom a way to self-emancipate, for example by becoming pickers, traders, or informally engaging in the transnational Matsutake market. I found this work very powerful for coping with the pandemic. Not only did it make me further think about the devastating effects of the economy on the human-environment balance - an aspect that certainly relates to the pandemic. More importantly, I love how the book tells a story about the opportunities that can pop out in the many holes of capitalist extractivity. I found this perspective somehow reassuring.

What is one thing you want to do once the shelter-in-place policy is lifted?

First, I’ll do what most of us are secretly looking forward to: get a haircut! And then, I would love to go somewhere very warm with my partner, Heming. Perhaps by the sea. I want to lie under the sun for hours and enjoy that feeling of strong heat broken by the breeze. I think somewhere like Sicily would work. And while I’m in Italy, I could go hug my family, too. 


Trace Evidence: An Art Exhibition and Panel Discussion at Minnesota Street Project

Posted on by sarahhwang@berkeley.edu

Trace Evidence Curated by Annie Malcolm and Rachelle Reichert Exhibition September 8th – 29th Opening event + Panel: September 11, 2018 Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco Trace Evidence is an exhibition and a panel discussion at Minnesota Street Project, in partnership with SFMOMA Public Dialogue, in which the curators—2019 GUH Fellow Annie Malcolm and artist Rachelle Reichert—will convene visual artists from China and the U.S. who are considering issues of environmental change focused on China. Trace Evidence will take place in San Francisco in September 2018, during the Global Climate Action Summit, and is formally affiliated with GCAS.  The curators…


Nevertheless, She Persisted: Women and Land Rights in China

Posted on by Tina Novero
Filed under: Art+Village+City, China

  By Susan Moffat, Project Director, Global Urban Humanities Initiative The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China promises women equal rights. But in reality, many women have to petition for years to secure equal legal rights to their village lands. Their dogged persistence is a striking example of the way quiet, long-term activism can bring about changes to people’s “right to the city,” said Lanchih Po at a recent talk sponsored by the Global Urban Humanities Initiative at UC Berkeley. “Their activism is not photogenic,” said Po, an associate adjunct professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at UC Berkeley,…


Art, Politics & the City in Mexico and China: Exhibit(ion)s and Publications

Posted on by Genise Choy

The Art, Politics & the City in Mexico and China symposium took place on October 23, 2015. This wide-ranging interdisciplinary symposium examined art, commerce, politics, violence, history, and urban space on both sides of the Pacific. Creative artists and scholars explored contemporary performance, film, art, and activism in Mexico City from the Revolution to today. The event also featured an exhibition on current art and urbanism in China’s dynamic Pearl River Delta (Art+Village+City) and research on contemporary Shanghai by a team from the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative was presented in a video-based exhibit. In addition, new UC Berkeley publications and…


Art+Village+City: Post-Travel Update

Posted on by Genise Choy
Filed under: Art, Art+Village+City, China

Art+Village+City in the Pearl River Delta is one of two interdisciplinary courses being sponsored by the Global Urban Humanities Initiative in Spring 2015. Students in this research studio are utilizing a variety of research methods from interviews to video documentation to explore the ongoing evolution of relationships between urban and rural spaces and people, and the emerging role of the arts in China’s Pearl River Delta. From March 18th to April 3rd, the students and faculty of the Art+Village+City in the Pearl River Delta Studio visited the three mega cities of the Pearl River Delta: Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou.…


Art+Village+City: On Video as a Method and What Constitutes a “Site”

Posted on by Genise Choy

Art+Village+City in the Pearl River Delta is one of two interdisciplinary courses being sponsored by the Global Urban Humanities Initiative in Spring 2015. Students in this research studio are utilizing a variety of research methods from interviews to video documentation to explore the ongoing evolution of relationships between urban and rural spaces and people, and the emerging role of the arts in China’s Pearl River Delta. The research studio paired up in teams and produced 7 short videos depicting a “Chinese” site. These sites were the Pacific East Mall in El Cerrito, Oakland’s Chinatown, San Francisco’s Chinatown, and two dollar-stores…


Art+Village+City: Video Presentations

Posted on by Genise Choy

Art+Village+City in the Pearl River Delta is one of two interdisciplinary courses being sponsored by the Global Urban Humanities Initiative in Spring 2015. Students in this research studio are utilizing a variety of research methods from interviews to video documentation to explore the ongoing evolution of relationships between urban and rural spaces and people, and the emerging role of the arts in China’s Pearl River Delta. Students paired up to create videos of places related to China and the Chinese diaspora throughout the Bay Area. Here is José Figueroa's watercolor documentation of the in-class presentations! We'll be posting one of…


An Example of Data Reshaping Daily Life in China

Posted on by Genise Choy

As part of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative Colloquium called Reading Cities, Sensing Cities we have asked students and visitors to write responses to each of the weekly guest lectures. September 25, 2014 Sensing San Leandro: Capturing Cityscapes Through Sensors Greg Niemeyer (Art Practice) and Ron Rael (Architecture and Art Practice) Presentation available here. Video of the conversation available here. Niemeyer and Rael discussed how using sensors to collect data allow “reality-based” decisions about places to be made, using projects that they and their students have undertaken in San Leandro as examples. by Mengyuan Jin At a time of increasing data–orientation,…


Thoughts on Urban Villages by a Native of Guanghzhou

Posted on by Susan Moffat

As part of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative Colloquium called Reading Cities, Sensing Cities, we have asked students and visitors to write responses to each of the weekly guest lectures.  On August 28, 2014, Prof. Margaret Crawford (Architecture) gave a presentation on her continuing research on urban villages in the Pearl River Delta—independent jurisdictions that are being swallowed up physically and administratively by large cities. Along with Asst. Prof. Winnie Wong (Rhetoric), she will be teaching a studio course on the Pearl River Delta in Spring 2015. Her presentation is available here. Video of the first portion of her presentation is available…


Questions of Autonomy in Guangdong Urban Art Villages

Posted on by Susan Moffat

As part of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative Colloquium called Reading Cities, Sensing Cities, we have asked students and visitors to write responses to each of the weekly guest lectures.  On August 28, Prof. Margaret Crawford (Architecture) gave a presentation on her continuing research on urban villages in the Pearl River Delta--independent jurisdictions that are being swallowed up physically and administratively by large cities. Along with Asst. Prof. Winnie Wong (Rhetoric), she will be teaching a studio course on the Pearl River Delta in Spring 2015. Her presentation is available here. Video of the first portion of her presentation is available here. By…