Art, philosophy, music

I went up to the opening of this year's TimeOut 'Affordable Art Fair' in the Dashanzi art district yesterday evening. It was mostly a steaming pile, I'm sorry to say........ although I did quite like Guo Qipeng's grotesque porcelain babies, posing with rifles, toy tanks, soldier's helmets, binoculars, their angry visages and tiny penises such an apt metaphor for the swaggering impotence and insecurity of the government here (well, that's how I read them anyway - but I would, wouldn't I?). I was also rather tempted by Martin Barnes' playful send-ups of the Olympic fuwa mascots (I have some fridge stickers of this series already, but I think I might perhaps get a full-size print of one of them as well - genuinely affordable!): I particularly like the cutesy panda BeiBei rendered as a typical lao beijingren street-corner philosopher: pot-bellied, chain-smoking, red-nosed, stoked up on Tsingtao beer (although I really feel it ought to be be Yanjing) and erguotou.

I was reminded that a year or so ago a similar art exhibition visit prompted me to mention The Crash Test Dummies' song 'When I go out with artists'. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a decent version of that available on YouTube (only this - a good live performance, but with very low volume on the sound)...... so here instead is the video for their hit, 'God Shuffled His Feet' - a track I was tempted to mention at The Chairman's philosophy evening the other day.