Silvia Robin Ederer

… beijingIloveyou …

During the first month, I was out and about every minute to explore the city together with my colleagues. We went to each and every exhibition, each and every museum, to Tiananmen Square, to the Great Wall, had a beer in the centre in the evening, tried all kinds of dishes (including, indeed, pigeons, veal oesophagus, duck hearts, pork skin soup, etc.), strolled through Caochangdi and the 798 Art District, and did not let a day go by without having heard or seen something new.

For the most part, people in Beijing are very open and helpful so that, in spite of below-zero temperatures, I found it virtually impossible not to feel fine. They are not only very open-minded, but also very pragmatic: no matter where you come from, how old you are or which colour your skin has – they just “wanna get it done”. This attitude immediately generated an enormous flow giving priority to motion and doing over everything else – wonderful! No fuss, no hassle, but simply oriented to solutions and always in motion...

During a bus ride, the driver suddenly started to swear loudly. We all turned around and saw that huge clouds of smoke billowed out of the bus. The bus stopped and all passengers got out. What was remarkable about it was that none of the passengers started ranting. They did not even grumble, but just got off and waited for the next bus.

Some other time when I was in the middle of my work, the following happened: The doorbell rang. I opened the door – I was covered by paint, my glasses were misplaced. With a smile on his face, a young Asian handed a relatively big, heavy cubic parcel over to me. I put it down in my apartment and – as usual when I wanted to understand what was going on – got out my smart phone to decipher the characters on the parcel: “...northern musk deer, 812 dead bodies of Zhong Wang seven districts in quarter...” After thinking for a moment, it was clear that the deliverer rang the wrong bell or played a prank with a lot of black humour on me by handing over to me the urn with the ashes of a man who had lived a few floors above me.

From mid-February on, my exploration drive abruptly turned into a materialisation drive because the Austrian cultural attaché – Mr. Arnold Obermayr – suggested that I should arrange an exhibition at the Austrian embassy in Beijing, which I did with great pleasure. A theme was quickly found – <maslow’s dream> – , I wrote a text on the exhibition and, in my function as curator, I invited colleagues, designed the invitation and produced five works for the exhibition myself – veni, vidi, laboro... our collaboration was enriching for me and I am extremely happy to have made this experience. Much of it has found its way into my practice here, in slow Austria. Thank you, it was a great pleasure for me – and hopefully for everybody else, too...

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