Global Urban Humanities/Future Histories Lab

Instructors: Margaret Crawford (Architecture) and Winnie Wong (Rhetoric)

GSI: Abingo Wu

Term: Spring 2015

Course #: Architecture 209 / Rhetoric 250

Why Read This Case Study?

South China’s Pearl River Delta has long been home to thriving ‘art villages’ – quasi-autonomous local jurisdictions that control their own land – whose economies are anchored by practicing artists producing replica oil paintings for sale around the world. Although the expanding metropolitan Shanghai has enveloped these villages over time, they have maintained their identities and economies based on art reproduction and global markets sales. 

The graduate research studio, Art+Village+City, was led by Professor of Architecture Margaret Crawford and Professor of Rhetoric and History of Art Winnie Wong. The studio included students from a variety of disciplines including anthropology, Asian and East Asian studies, art history, art practice, architecture, city planning and landscape architecture. Students thus came to the course with a wide range of expertise and theoretical perspectives, creating an ideal environment for learning across disciplines. 

Using a range of research methods, the studio examined the historical development of art villages, their current political and economic circumstances, and how their arts-based village economies have shaped the local cultures and built environments over time. Students delved into the history and social organization of art villages, screened interviews with artists from art villages held by the Asia Art Archive, and produced videos of a local Chinese site, East Pacific Mall in Oakland. They were introduced to ethnographic methods and the use of photography in field work. Students then spent two weeks traveling to Hong Kong, and then into the Pearl River Delta, exploring such urban art villages as Dafen, Baishizhou, and Xiaozhou, as well as experimental art spaces Vitamin Creative Space and Handshake 302. Returning to Berkeley, they worked with SHIMURAbros (as researchers at Studio Olafur Eliasson), Sascha Pohle, Jing Wen, and José Figueroa to create an outstanding exhibit in Bauer-Wurster Gallery which then traveled to Shanghai.