Beijing Project n.00 Alessandro Rolandi 李山

This is the pilot project carried out by Alessandro Rolandi from April to October 2010 at the Bernard Controls factory in Beijing, during the first informal six-month investigation that led, in 2011, to the creation of the Social Sensibility R&D Department. What follows is his original introduction and method.

“The Chinese expression suibian can be translated as ‘as you like’, ‘as you please’. Its importance lies in the fact that, even if China does not seem a place where you are often allowed to do as you please, there is in fact room for this kind of situation. This space is secretly stolen with cunning, concealed or rebelliously claimed, but it is hardly ever given or allowed directly. Working for six months in close contact with the workers of Bernard Controls China, I tried to offer them a number of physical and mental situations, within the factory routine, in which they could apply the suibian attitude.

“The instructions, one a month, were these. First month: you have a small blue booklet that you can fill with any thoughts, poems, stories, lines, songs, ideas or opinions you wish to express and communicate to a foreign artist (me). Second month: after looking together at books about artworks, you can draw a project for a work of your own – sculpture, film, photograph, painting, installation… song. Third month: suibian performance. In the factory, during working hours, each person (or two or more, if they wish to work together) has thirty minutes to stop their task and, using anything from the factory and the working routine, create a small event, an action, an object or a display, following the intuition of the moment.”

The thirty-minute performances, filmed by Alessandro Rolandi: a worker makes a sculpture with grease and metal parts; a worker paints an image with the airbrush he uses every day; a worker paints himself with the airbrush; two workers use a very delicate measuring instrument to create a poetic image with a piece of red tape stuck on a turning engine; a worker creates a rhythmic movement by lifting the performance artist Megumi Shimizu with his pallet truck; a worker does a 180-degree stunt with a pallet truck; a worker asks to move her desk outside to feel the sunlight directly on her skin; a worker declares he has built a mechanical model of a car from leftover factory parts; a worker writes a welcome message with screws and other parts.

Videos: Non-productive actions on the assembly line (Suibian, part 3) · Hands, a video by Alessandro Rolandi exploring the rhythm of the assembly line