Booming under the banner of art | Ordos Art Museum ( de )
Capital 06, Guide China, 2008-02
The Ordos 100 urban construction project starts with the inauguration of a museum for contemporary art in the Mongolian desert
Before history can be written, it must be made. After China woke up from the decreed rigidity of the Cultural Revolution and the Party declared “individual success” and “wealth” to be desirable phenomena in the new China that is setting its sights firmly on the future, people like the Mongolian entrepreneur and art collector Cai Jiang are no longer content with just being economically successful. Cultural commitment and participation in forming one’s immediate environment have become a matter of prestige in China as well. So it was Cai’s initiative that started the Ordos 100 urban construction project with the opening of the Ordos Art Museum last August. The master plan for the city which is going to develop around it is being implemented by artist Ai Weiwei who ever since his contribution to the newly built Beijing Olympic Stadium has emerged as an architect in his own right.
A new spot on the “Map of Art and Culture”
Ordos, slightly less than two hours by plane from Beijing, is a prefecture-level city in the southwest of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The collective name for the surrounding landscape, which is mainly steppe and desert, is the Ordos Plateau; the city itself was previously several parts of the district of Dongsheng. The region is famous for its rich resources in coal and natural gas, and while the economic boom as well as rising living standards are quite noticeable, Ordos up to now has not been a point of reference for international cultural tourism. But that should change, thinks Cai Jiang.
Even until a few years ago questions of urban development were exclusively decided by the party exerting its influence on the public institutions, but in the case of Ordos 100 it is the vision and financial clout of a single person that became the driving force behind the construction of a city complex planned for 30,000 inhabitants. Up to one hundred planners—among them the British-Iraqi deconstructivist architect Zaha Hadid and Canon Design from Shanghai—have been challenged to hand in designs adding a multicultural flair. Ai Weiwei placed the preselection of architects into the hands of the renowned Swiss firm of Herzog & de Meuron. The first of the 150 individually designed villas, one hotel, a business center, a university for media, architecture and design, and even an opera house are already in the concrete planning stage. “Mongolia has a long tradition”, Cai explains his personal motivation. “Most of its temples were destroyed, however, and the legendary grasslands on the Ordos plateau, so characteristic for Mongolia, have deteriorated to sand desert after decades of overgrazing. And even the typical nomadic ways, which I have still known myself, are becoming more and more of a vanishing lifestyle. With Ordos 100 I want to put Mongolia on the ‘Map of Art and Culture’ so it can gain importance again on a new turf, as it were.” This is no doubt an audacious move but it also begs the question as to what is original in this place which so far exists almost only in the imagination. Experience shows that too much globalization invariably runs the risk of a lack of national contours.
The Chinese middle classes and contemporary art
Virtually anything one may say about China’s current situation has a short half-life. While only in the 1990s it was agreed that Chinese collectors and museums alike had little interest in the art of the post-Mao era, the collecting activity of the mine owner and cattle rancher Cai Jiang indicates a changing trend in this respect. That the Ordos 100 project is a lot more than an investment aimed at generating profits is shown by Cai’s decision to set off the architectural undertaking by the construction of a museum for contemporary art. “The art of our times is an important part of my life”, he tells me while we drive out to his ranch. “Most of my friends are artists. Often I buy a work for very personal reasons—because I want to support a painter who is still unknown, for instance, or because it reminds me of something that is important to me.” Therefore Cai’s ever growing collection now comprises both established Chinese names such as Xu Bing, Fang Lijun, Wang Guangyi and Cai Guoqiang and some Western artists, but also the works of traditional Mongolian painters. For the opening exhibition of the Ordos Art Museum, he asked gallery owner Alexander Ochs from Berlin and his Chinese partner Tian Yuan to set up a show from his stocks. Under the title Arrogance and Romance, newly acquired pieces, e.g., by Jörg Immendorf and Stephan Balkenhol met with their Chinese contemporaries. “The Ordos Art Museum is meant to characterize the new profile of the city of Ordos”, says Cai Jiang. “I want to build a counterpart to nearby Baotou, which is one of China’s most important industrial locations. Ordos should attract visitors from all over the world.”
After a two-hour drive over bumpy roads with a never ending line of coal-carrying trucks we arrive at Cai Jiang’s ranch on the Ordos plateau where he keeps 2000 Australian milking cows. With a self-assured gesture he points at the biogas unit made in Germany. “The dairy industry is a heavily expanding market in China. But I am also concerned with the quality of the milk. It is my aim to meet Western environment-friendly standards.” During the afternoon teatime that follows he has his interpreter ask us whether we understand the parallels between his art collection, Ordos 100 and his ranch. Yes, indeed, we understood that the times when China preferred isolation from the West and sought its force more in the inward-looking perspective are definitely over.
A snake in the desert: the Ordos Art Museum
From the planning stage to the topping-out ceremony, the Ordos Art Museum with its 2700 square meters of floorspace took no more than seven months. While the artist-in-residence tract next to the museum was designed under the direction of Ai Weiwei in the Beijing style of traditional courtyard houses, Cai got the still rather unknown woman architect Xu Tiantian for planning the museum proper. The snakelike building winding in the desert sand, made from gray natural stone and having large glass faces opening the vista to the surrounding landscape, is meant to resemble a viper. A newly built road meanders up to the striking construction. The winding paths inside the museum convey an air of exhilaration as well. A closer look at technical details, however, reveals the speed at which they had worked toward the opening ceremony—a characteristic phenomenon in China, alas. Fully aware of the problem, Cai is already looking into solutions, for the ventilation system, among other things. “What’s more important is that the museum was built in the first place, isn’t it? Also I wanted to give this young architect her first big opportunity. Everything else will be improved until it is perfect.” At this point we see the difference between the Western and the Chinese approach. Instead of years of planning, assessments and obtaining permits, in China they set to work immediately. Here something of an intercultural mutual approach might have quite a constructive effect.
Between respect and irritation
So how do the heterogeneous images of this journey fit together? At Cai Jiang’s home, the guests going in and out are surrounded by contemporary art, relics of ancient China, a huge portrait of Mao, photographs that show Cai shaking Hu Jintao’s hand, and a library that is stocked with everything from international art volumes to architecture magazines and publications on interior decoration. We meet a German who supervises the construction of a steel plant in Baotou, the Swiss citizen Erich Disherens and his Chinese wife, both of whom just recently founded the EXH architecture company in Shanghai and are just here to present their design for a villa for Ordos 100, a little later some Chinese friends arrive, and Beijing artist Yang Shaobin is on the telephone. The table is laden with countless dishes, and “gan bei”, the Chinese toast that means “bottoms up!”, is repeated like a mantra. Whether the “Ordos 100” project will reveal itself to be the urban design implementation of the “harmonious society” that is currently so heavily promoted everywhere in China, or a hybrid parallel world, is enormously difficult to imagine right now.
Erstveröffentlichung: Capital 06, Guide China
Translation: Werner Richter
