Party Like it's 1984!

CH recently spent a delightful evening in the company of the creative powerhouse that is Dyce Productions and HAL Literature. Bubbling with enthusiasm, HAL's chief editor Björn Wahlström, events man Miller Wey and executive producer of Dyce Productions, Bree Harrison shared just some of their exciting plans for next week's launch of HAL's first publication, Party Like it's 1984. They also gave CH a sneak preview of one of the book's short stories by Shanghai-based writer, Ginger wRong Chen…

First things first: introductions. HAL was founded in 2009 by Wahlström and his partner Nathan Fischbacher, whom Morgan over at SmartShanghai met with back in September to discuss their first poetry slam, SLAMHAI, post-pats and the nitty gritty of what the indie publishing house are all about.

Dyce Productions specialize in fine art as entertainment. They were the folks behind October's Artist Battle which saw paintbrush-wielding creatives fight it out at 800Show to create a work of art in just three hours.

The trio's enthusiasm is infectious: they couldn't be more complimentary about each other, and the pairing of the two organizations is similarly, well, complementary. HAL helped out with Dyce's Artist Battle a couple of months back, "They helped with media, Miller was our photographer and Nathan was MC – it was so awesome, we couldn't have done it without them, so we're happy to collaborate on this one too", says Bree. The feeling , it would seen, is mutual: Björn explains that "in terms of new takes on presenting art, there's not a lot of that around [in Shanghai] – I mean of course you can go and just look at something in a gallery on Moganshan Lu, but Dyce are different."

Different they most certainly are, and Bree has a few tricks up her sleeve to make sure HAL's book launch and poetry slam is a night to remember.

Björn gives me the rundown: "The main SLAMHAI event will be from 9pm to 11pm – it'll be a big battle of HAL poets. The prize will be a work by artist Stéfanie Vallée that she'll actually create at the event. I'm not 100% sure what she's doing…." As the conversation swings back towards visual arts, Bree chimes in: "she does this amazing thing where she pours pigments and water colours onto a canvas and then blow dries them before adding more pigments and colours until it turns into this multi-layered gorgeousness, super vibrant and glowing – her works are just beautiful, very abstract and completely stunning".

Miller agrees: "She's a great artist to watch live – at the Artist Battle, all eyes were on her and her painting. There'll be other artists there too – Bree?"

"Yeah, a while back Björn sent me long paragraphs from the stories, and so what I did was chop them down so that these large passages became just phrases… short excerpts. The artists are doing their own interpretations of those. Sometimes less is more. A few words can trigger an image and then you just go with it. It can be hard to come up with original ideas, but if someone gives you a word, or a few words, then it's much easier"

"I think it's the same for writers actually, Björn muses.If you tell someone to write about whatever they want for twenty minutes people will come up with bullshit or with nothing at all. Give someone a direction, though, and they're off!"

Although most of the artists are based here in China, there's one notable international exception explains Bree, "One of the artists, Alison Mealy, is British. I was online one day and I happened to stumble across her work – I emailed her to tell her how much I liked it and we started a dialogue. She's not Shanghai based, but she loved the idea and so I sent her the list of texts and she chose Ginger's. She sent me the piece last night, and it's really outstanding".

The works will be premiered at the book launch next week, and according the organizers will range wildly in interpretation and approach.


'Hour Room' by Alison Mealy. Inspiration for Alison's piece came from a short story by Ginger wRong Chen - read an exclusive extract from the work below

As well as voting for their favorite poets, party-goes can get involved with the goings on by taking part in featured writer Christine Forte's installation, 'Dirty Shanghai Crimes'. The idea is a simple one that has potential for humour, disgust, shame – the whole gamut of emotions. Blank cards will be distributed to the crowds, on which, they will be encouraged to write the most horrible, despicable thing they've ever done in Shanghai which will then be projected onto a huge screen in the venue. "We've done some trials and it looks amazing", says Björn, "some of the stuff people come up with is pretty disturbing though". Miller expands, "Christine has been great – she describes it as like going to the doctor. She's been discreetly collecting secrets and by the time they go up there they'll be sufficiently disconnected from the person, It's a way for people to put stuff out there - some of the stuff you do here, you need a sense of humour about it. A dark sense of humour perhaps, but you can't let it drive you crazy".

But back to the reason for this celebration of Shanghai creativity: the book. Comprising 15 stories by 14 authors, Miller describes it as "not so much about China, but out of China. I think so often creative people come to China and end up doing nothing. They arrive with such high hopes having come to experience the almost wild west that China's supposed to be but they missed out on the gold rush. HAL is an opportunity for people living here to express their experiences creatively. A printed book offers a mouthpiece for that and this is just one of many that we hope to do in the future".

The group hope that as well as striking a chord with readers here in China, the book will be well-received in English speaking nations such as the US, UK and Australia. "It's quite weird in that sense I guess – some of the titles are in Chinese, there's a few Chinese words inserted into the text with no explanation whatsoever, it's perhaps unclear whether names are female or male – the reader has to run with it, accept it as it is, and get out of it what they will. It has to be a balance"

Certainly, the stories do have international appeal, and to an outsider, they will undoubtedly be read as exotic, perhaps even fantastical. Many, though, recount common, shared experiences of foreigners – a beautifully accessible and eloquent interpretation of what so many laowais here already know. Bree agrees: "Yes, I love that about it – I can relate to so many of the things in the book, I've been there myself! For me, someone who's not a writer, it's nice to be able to connect. From the outside though, I guess it will be harder to determine whether the stories are based on something that did actually happen or didn't… some of them have a dream-like quality"

And what of future plans? Is this second Dyce/Hal collaboration the beginning of a long and fruitful art marriage?

Says Björn: "We'll be participating in the literary festival in Chengdu in March. I want to take the poetry slam idea to the provinces and Chengdu is just one of those places. On February 17 we're teaming up with That's Shanghai for an event at Glamour Bar for a night entitled Erotic Fiction Shanghai. The GroupThink workshops will carry on of course. Then there's the JUE Festival…"

Miller takes over, "We're about bringing together creative people and we want to do more of that in the future. For next week's party, we had this idea to release the book and for poets to come along and rock the stage. But what we have is an event that will engage with and involve other parts of the creative community in an interdisciplinary way"

When CH reluctantly takes leave of the exuberant trio, ideas are still flying around, no doubt late into the night. If their event is even half as great as they describe, it will be a night to remember. Creatives unite! Join the dynamic pairing that is HAL and Dyce to partake in a lot of poetry, a healthy dose of art, some great music, a tipple or three, and to generally party like it's 1984.

Party Like It's 1984
Saturday 18 December
8pm til late
River South Arts Centre, 1247 Suzhou Nan Lu
Tickets cost RMB 84 and include a copy of the book and free drink

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CH has been given an exclusive preview of HAL's new book, Party Like it's 1984: Short Stories from the People's Republic of. Here's is an excerpt from Shanghai-based author, Ginger wRong Chen's hOur Room


A'Yong and Mumu stood under a banyan tree across the street from the 365-Night Inn. It has only 20 rooms condensed into three floors. 365 days and nights of sour rain, melting sun and corroding pollution and another 365 nights and days and another has aged the facade's ugly ceramic tiles to a vomitous greenyellow stain. The building is now no better-dressed than the professional beggars playing their street-theatre outside: desperate mothers with hungry children, old couples in tattered rags, blind men with deformed limbs, poor students with cardboard signs strung from their necks pleading another 5 yuan to buy a ticket home. A full-cast of sympathetic characters coaxing their audience to reach into their pockets and extract a coin or two to purchase a moment of peaceful mind.
The 365-Night Inn does not begs for coins. It sells what it has. Rooms. That is what it has. One of the city's most valuable resources. Big signs hang outside the building, calling out in Chinese: "24 hours!", "Hot Water!" and most importantly "Hour rooms". A dirty red plastic carpet lounged outside the door WELLCUM's guests indifferently in renovated English.
Inside, sits a Chinese lady somewhere in her late 50s on a tired brown leather couch, her extravagantly permed hair balanced cautiously on her skull like a rotten cauliflower. She's wearing a white nightie with blue sunflowers and her three-year old grandson is perched on her lap. Four eyes, too young and too old, transfixed to a flickering bluegreen screen. She's munching loudly from a plate of fried watermelon seeds. One for her, one for the little boy.
They're probably watching that Korean TV show about extramarital affairs A'yong thought to himself as he kicked the banyan root by his foot...I wonder how deep they go? He stared at the Cauliflower Lady from the other side of the street. He was squinting. The glasses he had worn since before graduation two years ago now failed to fully correct his eyesight. On bad days he could feel his vision getting worse second by second as he spent hours beyond count in his 'cell', eyes fixated by the tractor beam of the tiny computer screen in his 140x140cm cubicle, surrounded by hundreds men and women his age. All wearing the same knock-off dress-shirts, oversized dress jackets and their greasy hair.
He makes rmb3,000 per month. Not bad compared to his peers, but never enough for anything. Never enough to make an easier life for his parents back in the village in Yun'nan province. Never enough for a 25 yuan cup of coffee at one of the ubiquitous Starbucks popping up in nearly every corner of the city, growing faster than a lettuce in the rich soil of his parents' farmland. Worst of all, never enough for a place for Mumu and him. He shares a room with two other men who also work in the same company. Still living the same dormitory life as he had back in college, though now the room cost four times as much as then.
He turned his head back to Mumu standing there quietly beside him. Her head tilted slightly to the left and with her middle finger she carefully swept her hair behind her right ear. The sunshine shone on her waist-length ebony black hair like moonlight on a 3am sea. But here it was noon.

She nudged him affectionately, "Go."

"Why do I have to go?"

"Because I'm a girl. It's embarrassing."

Silently he agreed, but he argued anyhow, "It's not embarrassing for a man?"

She bit her lower lip looking at him, as though she was searching for the answer in his face. Her hair blew around her face as a shining new BMW raced perilously close past them in the wilfully ignorant driving style of China's nouveau riche.

"Don't bite your lip. I can see teeth marks already" he said as he brushed her hair back behind her ears. "I will go."

***

A'Yong walked into the 365-Night Inn. Cauliflower Lady turned to face him as she cracked another melon seed between her teeth. The sound was like a doorbell announcing his arrival. A'Yong blushed without saying a word. He could feel the nervous heat behind his ears. He hoped she wouldn't notice and this thought just made him more so. He could feel the redness spreading across his face. He looked down to his shoes. Their true colour was no longer distinguishable. He remembered that they were once a satin brown. Now the best way he could describe them was a confused black. He had just got them back yesterday from the middle-aged Henanese street shoe repairman in his neighbourhood. He had performed his magic on A'Yong's worn shoes many times before. It would take a sharp eye to see the new thread holding the worn sole together on the right instep.
As A'Yong stared at his shoes warmly contemplating the repairman's skill he forgot his nerves. They returned suddenly though as his worn-out office shoes were joined by a pair of shiny leather loafers that stalked up confidently next to him and stood proudly on the feet of a forty-something man carrying a black brick-sized hand-bag under his left arm. The man's thinning hair was suspiciously dark and the matte black looked unnatural. No-one knows the true colour of the hair under that charcoal coating...a million shades of white and grey?

"Three hours today." the man's voice boomed confidently.

"Three hours!!!" exclaimed Cauliflower Lady as she rose from the couch. "You must be feeling very fit today. Is it Chinese medicinal soup or Western little blue pills?"

"Hahaha. I feel fit every time I come here. Filled with energy like an eighteen-year-old boy." He winked at the little child sitting in the lady's arms. The boy just stared back at him chewing a melon seed hard in his mouth. "Well, you will understand one day when you are grown up little friend". He reached into his pocked and extracted a lollipop, dangling it in front of the boy's eyes. The child reached out for the candy excitedly, eyes wide. "Exactly! It will be just like candy is to you now." He gave the candy to the child, observing the boy's satisfaction as he sucked hard on the green tea flavoured lollipop. "Well, maybe not as good as the candy". He patted the boy's cheek with an almost fatherly affection.

"Three hours." The cauliflower lady handed the key to the man. "A new girl today?"

"No, not so new," he took the key, "you saw her last time. I want to take a little nap afterward."

She laughed and shook her head. "I can never remember those girls."

"There is no need to remember, is there? To be honest, I can't even remember myself."

He walked towards the stairs and asked without looking back "The same old room?"

"Yes the same one," she confirmed, "room 303."

Seeing the man walking up the stairs, the lady turned to A'Yong and cracked another melon seed in her teeth, "You want a room too?"

"I...ah…" he mumbled as he caught a last glimpse of the man's back disappearing up the stairs, "...I'm thinking…maybe next time." He rushed out of the Inn quickly as if afraid the lady would give chase and lock him up in a dirty hour room if he didn't get out fast enough.


Read the rest of Ginger's story in HAL's new book, Party Like it's 1984, available both on their website and, of course, at their artstravaganza of an event next Saturday.