Right People Wrong Timing

[https://architecture.sherwin.com.cn/media/large/907_WHSL03070024.jpg]

Guide questions for Right People, Wrong Timing:

When, why and who started HomeShop?

Who were the key people and what were their backgrounds?

How did the founding members meet?

What was their motivations of starting HomeShop?

Were they involved in other spaces, initiatives or collectives before?

Where they all from the same neighbourhood/country/city/school?

What is the meaning of the name HomeShop? Why was it chosen?

Where was HomeShop located?

How important was the location to HomeShop's motivations and goals?

What was the dynamic between HomeShop and its surroundings?

Did HomeShop work with the community and its immediate neighbours?

What particular communities/audience did HomeShop address?

What is HomeShop goals, mission and philosophy? What did it set out to achieve by starting?

What did HomeShop do to achieve its goals? Did it succeed or fail or both or neither - how and why?

How was HomeShop supported? How was it economically sustained? Were there membership contributions?

What was happening in the cultural scene at that time of HomeShop s operations? How did HomeShop contribute to this scene?

What were the main activities of HomeShop?

What were some of HomeShop's most important projects/events?

Can you name some and how they affected the artists, local cultural community or larger international context?

How did the social and cultural scene change in HomeShop s home city/base of operations over the years? How did HomeShop and its members address these changes?

What were the most important challenges that HomeShop faced during the time it was operating? How did HomeShop address these challenges?

When and why did HomeShop close?

What were the important events and decisions that lead to its closure?

What happened after the closure?

What are the other members or friends/colleagues/close associates doing now after HomeShop closed?

Looking back now, what is HomeShop s contributions to the local and larger cultural landscape?

What is the legacy of HomeShop What are some of the important lessons we can learn from this space/initiative?

—Overview

HomeShop crystallized in 2008 from less formalized, ongoing conversations and practices shared between a few people, namely Elaine W. Ho, Ouyang Xiao and Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga, and neighbor Qu Yizhen. At that time, the space was truly Elaine's home in a very small quasi-shopfront in the old residential alleyways of central Beijing, and it served for collaborations between, and next to, visitors and neighbors.

There were several impetuses which led to HomeShop: one, the disappointment in the insularity of what was being promoted as worthy art in the confined arts districts; two, interest in public private dynamics of the urban environment of Beijing in transition; and more immediately, a number of events in 2008—the Sichuan earthquake, riots in Tibet and the Beijing Olympics—which created a triangulated media spectacle spurring our reaction, analysis and critique.

In 2010, the dynamic of welcoming friends and others into a collaborative dialogue resulted in the expansion of the space into a larger, more public-facing shopfront a few blocks away. From this point, several other people became involved, including Michael Eddy and Emi Uemura, Wang Chenchen and Orianna Cachionne. Gradually, this group of people, coming from art, design, philosophy or serendipity, would form an organizing group over the 3 further years of this larger HomeShop project.

HomeShop grew out of a desire to explore different modes of self-organised economic and artistic production, different ways of living and working together. One notable aspect of this group of people was the diversity of backgrounds and interests. We could say that it was roughly half local Chinese and half folks born elsewhere, and that there was no central goal of the project according to any particular discipline. Rather, the courtyard hosted a plurality of interests within, and the shopfront was a frame for relations with the surrounding neighborhood, and it was this mixture and a sense of openness that proved to be the most singular characteristic of HomeShop. The Beijing art scene's tendency to cluster in outlying ex-industrial districts and their focus on commercial values comprised the context that HomeShop as a project and an art space was responding to. The pressures of the Chinese context on critical and free speech meant that publicness had to be pursued through other, private means.

The lack of any funding or institutional affiliation were facts that structured how the space was run. Studio rental and coworking (which had not yet become established as a business model in Beijing) were therefore means to financial independence of HomeShop but also a way to involve more people into the daily activities of the space. Other services were offered—such as design work, photocopying, translation, language courses, dog walking—in order to effect a means of sustainability, but these were mostly playful ways to get in touch with neighbors and passersby, and not a functional or successful business model. Financial instability was almost a permanent feature of HomeShop's organizing meetings, although ironically just before the space closed in 2013 the situation improved. HomeShop rarely if ever charged anyone to join in any of its public activities, aside from a series of small-scale dinner events.

Much of the public who attended HomeShop events came through seeing social media announcements, a large portion of them young people simply interested in art and culture, but there was an emphasis on having the space's neighbors involved whenever possible, and learning from them. It is difficult to say, beyond the warm personal relations that were built, to what extent the neighbors valued HomeShop as an initiative. However, this is in keeping with a city in continuous transformation, where people and small businesses come and go, and where unannounced official government decisions and commercial real estate developments (the latter by necessity enforced by the former) result in the sudden disappearance of tenants or the razing of whole neighborhoods. But it is also debatable whether they were looking for art, and HomeShop's greyzone approach probably seemed too un-institutional to give the impression it would last very long.

—Activities, practices, events

HomeShop maintained several layers of activities, very little of which was really traditional exhibitions. Participatory events started back at HomeShop's earlier location, as did the practice of self-publication. For instance, the 2008 Beijing Olympics and their effects on the city and its people spurred a series of neighborhood games, research and watch parties whose documentation and parallel texts were then gathered in the first edition ("Games") of 《穿》*Wear*, HomeShop's journal. This approach of organizing events into gradually unfolding series as "documentary gestures" was carried over in the newer space, as well as in two more editions of 《穿》*Wear* (#2 "Cultural Exchange; #3 "Ballsy") and other publications. Publishing practices welcomed large numbers of contributors with diverse backgrounds, an aspect that was specifically engaged in HomeShop's newspaper projects. A makeshift silkscreen exposure unit was set up in the boiler room, and was used to print three editions of "Beiertiao Leaks", an investigative broadsheet whose concept was that all reporting, illustrating, layout, printing and distribution would be carried out by numerous HomeShop friends and visitors within the course of a day. The temporal dimension of newspapers was explored in other projects realized when HomeShop was invited to contribute as an artist group to external exhibitions. The "Yellowside Daily" was a predictive newspaper produced for the exhibition "A Museum That is Not" for the Guangzhou Times Museum in 2011. All the stories in the newspaper, which was delivered at night but dated for the next day, were then carried out over the course of the following 24 hours in the manner of a script. Another newspaper project took the group exhibition "Greenbox" it was part of (at a development outside Hangzhou) as the object of critique for articles on every other work in the show, printed and available for the opening. In these external projects where HomeShop was something of a collaborative "author," attempts were made to recreate how HomeShop behaved at home, meaning ideas and roles were shared and further opened to other contributors if possible, and the focus was outward toward the surroundings.
Aside from such more punctual events, the daily rhythms of living and working together kept the space very busy. Everything from meals together, rooftop gardening, reading groups, screenings, sound performances, and hosting other events like the Continental Drift China, generated various scales of participation and production in the space. (more on public? to better explain it as a space, also physical layout)

—Challenges

As discussed above, making rent was the biggest practical challenge facing HomeShop. Several rounds of discussions on alternative models occurred over the years. Some ideas included affiliations with other international (Western) institutions like schools or residency programs, HomeShop's own potential visitors program, language school, rental of the shopfront space, and even conversion into café-style business (that last line of thought was born of the desperation of an expiring lease, when rent would be raised threefold). These ideas would have changed HomeShop to such a large degree that it would have been unrecognizable, and as a collaborative project, consenus was missing for any of these solutions.
This preference to let the whole thing end instead of adapting shows that in the end, the mutual desire to continue working together was complicated and equally important as a challenge. When so much physical, financial, creative and emotional energy is expended on an experiment like this, the stakes for collaboration are high. The diversity of interests swirling around the space, which made HomeShop singular, was predicated on a willingness to work together through differences. When people drifted apart, the shared project became vulnerable to breakdown. It's a familiar story to many self-initiated spaces.

—Effects (of space; what other local spaces emerged around this time/exist now?)

—Aftermath (what are folks doing?)

—Lessons

Since the sum of HomeShop was built organically over time and through the personal desires of the participants, it is hard to point to structural lessons to draw from its experience. If one of the primary values and generators of activity was HomeShop's openness, every decision to attribute roles and further define the rules and the mandate was potentially a step toward greater institutionalization. However, the separation of the personalities from the entity is necessary for spaces to have long lives and stability. It is more a choice that has to be weighed in each case rather than a rule of thumb when undertaking a space. It should be pointed out, however, that HomeShop was not merely following the whims of the geniuses who were organizing under the name. It was responding to real, shared needs among many people in the city. If those needs for community and an alternative to all sorts of rat races were not exactly measured in terms of money, then youth, idealism or maybe integrity could be blamed for the lack of realism.
> []Not exactly sure about how to put this.

—reference materials

There were several impetuses which led to HomeShop: one, the disappointment in the insularity of what was being promoted as worthy art in the confined arts districts; two, interest in public private dynamics of the urban environment of Beijing in transition; and more immediately, a number of events in 2008—the Sichuan earthquake, riots in Tibet and the Beijing Olympics—which created a triangulated media spectacle spurring our reaction, analysis and critique.

origins (from GDR interview)
It's true that a particular story of origin becomes default in its reiterations, something like the refinement of an initial improvisation in object theater, though without an end performance. Elaine has often used the phrase zírán érrán (literally "nature, and then natural," to mean something like "following nature," or "spontaneously") when describing those initial conditions and impetuses that shaped HomeShop's beginnings in 2008. But maybe that is not a complete answer, without pointing out that nature is filled with routine, performativity, and the taking of shortcuts for ease. The multiplicity of origins is much more honest, but often it's too big and banal a volume to narrate, especially in an interview scenario.
We have a story of a conversation between Elaine and Xiao [Ouyang] in June of 2008, we have one of Fotini [Lazaridou-Hatzigoga] and Elaine trolling all ends of the city in search of cheap materials to renovate and move into the new space in 2010, and we have the story of fortuitously meeting and beginning to work with Cici [Wang] in 2011 (hers is the only one that does not begin from the stock story of "friendship" and "having fun"—of course very fundamental and natural forms of "origin," but perhaps obvious ones that do not need to be retold). More importantly, though, the practical uses of origins also beg, in a certain manner, larger questions of affinity and "how to keep the thing together" that imply process and growth over origins. In this sense, "origins" are negotiated between the different actors involved, and an "opening" insinuates a multiplicity of understandings of where origin begins, about the space that creates the possibility for special types of encounters and numerous starting points, and the real conditions these reflect. To think about the confluence of these encounters tells another story, one about those things that get reworked through being brought in and changed; it belies the much more interesting process of relay that develops over time. And in a way, this self-reflexivity comes much closer to what is meant by the "documentary gesture" as a relational form of documentary practice.

Goals
HomeShop grew out of a desire to explore different modes of self-organised economic and artistic production, different ways of living and working together. There were not any clearly articulated goals, and everyone involved came in with their own desires and intentions. As we have written elsewhere, the space and its window front were used as the beginning points from which to examine ways of relaying between public and private, the commercial, and pure exchange as such. In that context, HomeShop served as an open platform that facilitated multiple unexpected encounters and encouraged a different kind of engagement among the people using and visiting the space, and with the surrounding neighbourhood.

How was it internally organised?
As the name implies, HomeShop was initially premised upon the juxtaposed relationship between a private space (Elaine's flat) and a ‘public’ space (a store, not public in the sense of property but in the sense of open to visitors; or an art and community space). Activities were either self-initiated by the people involved, or sometimes newcomers and interested parties would propose activities. In its second phase, HomeShop was co-organised by a group of seven people who would meet regularly, exchange ideas and take collective decisions on daily practical things, upcoming projects, events that we were asked to host, as well as the general direction of the project. Each person would contribute to HomeShop according to their own interests, availability, and abilities, but different attempts were made throughout the years to resolve problems and/or establish certain infrastructures or habits that would encourage the sharing of responsibility and labour.
There was not much formal organisation per se, but we would constantly experiment with how to establish a relatively porous structure that would allow and encourage participation while also protecting and nourishing the processes and activities that were already in place.

day-to-day reality?
People inhabited different parts of the space (front room, one of the three small studios, the larger co-working space, the kitchen, the courtyard, the rooftop garden) and were engaged in different activities. There were often daily moments of collective meals and casual chitchat. People worked independently and sometimes collaboratively preparing for a certain project, visitors would come by for specific activities and events, passersby would come in and inquire about the space, a friend would visit for lunch. Except for the days when an event or project or workshop would take place, HomeShop served on most days as a space where people could live and work together, each according to their own rhythms and somehow also in resonance with others in the community.

unlikely connections (from GDR interview)
There is a certain entitled posture and gait of many visitors who come in to shop. When you tell them that there is nothing for sale, the way of approaching the space changes, and they are either embarrassed and walk out or get curious to understand more. The "unlikely connections" happen in the midst of that, probably somewhere in between 缘分 yuanfen [fate], affinities, and serendipity. Above we already mentioned Cici whose first visit here to attend a sound performance has grown into collaboration on a more involved organizational level, and there are other stories, from Abu—a recent college graduate who used to work in the neighbourhood and now comes by regularly to hang out or share a meal together—to Lukáš, an 80-year-old Shanghainese man who speaks Czech and smiles most slyly when he talks about politics.
On the other hand, language (and by this, we don't only mean ethnic/national language, but also genres of language such as philosophical/theoretical/artistic) disallows general participation in certain activities, like the Happy Friends Reading Club (we read mostly English texts) or the Continental Drift project (largely a more theoretical discourse). But it is inevitable and natural that certain specific agendas may in effect rule out other publics and audiences.
On an everyday level, there is a form of interaction with the neighbors you mention, who periodically come into the space and check in on what is happening, but it’s hard to say whether they feel like audience or participants. The differences between us are enough reason to keep questioning our formats and ways of expressing, but there are also small and cumulative ways to exchange common points that already exist.
For particular public workshops or events we have hosted, organizers and participants bring along their own publics, which juxtaposed with the demographic devices of online participation, manifest some unpredictable but still relatively consistent groups of young culture-hungry people ("文艺青年"). But even in the activities that we could say speak the most broadly appealing dialects on a citywide level, like the involvement of some of us here in the Country Fair farmers market, food events, public screenings, the Ten Thousand Item Treasury Library (with minor, but diverse participation), or the WaoBao! swap meet, there is always a disjuncture as there is often an overlap.
The publications and certain activities on the blog are works and representations to show processes otherwise hard to picture, and though it is harder to say where these end up, because of format and means of distribution we can presume there is some acquaintance with a community of art books and/or artistic discourse.
At the same time, we are ourselves a public, in our somewhat varied backgrounds, the relative porosity of our structure (compared to other institutions) and the small experiments in presentation and performances that make up the space here. But if only this, then maybe the occasional claims of being “closed” would be merited. These claims are interesting to consider for a moment, though, as they show differing understandings of what an “audience” or a “public” is. Especially in the context of Beijing, this idea of public sphere is more of a question to be rethought and tempted, rather than a place or activity that we can assume to be there.
From all of these varying "publics", a fractured community emerges. And sometimes it isn’t even consciously sought after, but comes about as an effect of the various formats that our activities take as well as the networks that form through self-funding and the odd jobs that many of us take on as individuals to achieve this.

impact on the local community
This is always hard to assess from the inside, and especially for those of us that are no longer in Beijing. But the sporadic reunions that some of us have with one another, or with former neighbours in the hutong, feel nostalgic and meaningful in the personal way that give us confidence that our efforts have been important to some people. As one example, the upcoming publication (commissioned by 《同时 Companion》magazine, an initiative of 黄边站 HB Station in Guangzhou) features contributions from four former participants (not organisers) of HomeShop, and it is an attempt to collect a few late reflections in light of the fact that many connections have meandered into different forms and are not well-documented. It is in fact Feng Junhua's (editor of Companion and co-proprietor of the community space Soeng Joeng Toi also in Guangzhou) stated intention to credit HomeShop in this way for having been influential to a certain generation of practitioners in China interested in social practice. Also, the 《附录Appendix》 publication published at the time of the space's closing brought together 43 parallel moments gathered from those who have been close to HomeShop over the years and in passing.

Why did it shut down, eventually?
The initial impetus for beginning the very long and emotional discussions of whether or not and how to continue HomeShop was the very concrete fact of our leasing contract for the space ending and the owner asking for three times as much rent to renew the lease. Paying that amount was of course not an option, so it sparked many many discussions and brainstormings for other possibilities, including finding a new space, rent sharing, commercial initiatives that would be able to sustain the higher rent, grants, etc.
At the same time, there were several co-organisers leaving Beijing at this time, and the affinities and possibilities for collaboration that the project was always premised on would almost certainly change radically with any of the above options [had already changed radically], and we decided together (by vote) that any continuities that would happen did not need to carry over the HomeShop name with them.