The Royal Standard
Mr Democracy Closing Weekend

== Featuring Oliver Walker artist talk Sunday 30th November 2.30pm ==

On Sunday 30th November, artist Oliver Walker will give a one-off talk, offering an insight into the processes and ideas behind his project, Mr Democracy, and a chance for visitors to raise questions and discuss issues relating to the work. The talk will include footage, images and anecdotes from the project, which took the artist to China to get a written constitution produced for the UK.

This will also be last chance to purchase a UK Constitution, one of 1000 editions specially manufactured and imported from China, and the last opportunity to see both exhibitions, Mr Democracy and NAVIGATOR, before the gallery closes until the new year.

Final week of the exhibitions: Wed 26th – Sun 30th November 11am – 6pm
Oliver Walker talk: Sun 30th November 2.30pm, refreshments will be served

I called the customs advice line, where you can discuss your goods and how you should classify them. The problem is that HMCE have archaic definitions of art, which don’t cover much of the art produced today. From here

‘original sculptures and statuary, in any material, provided
that they are executed entirely by the artist; sculpture
casts the production of which is limited to eight copies
and supervised by the artist or his successors in title
(Tariff code 9703 00 00)’

Classic! Literally. I guess they think all art should look like Constable, such romantics. Unfortunately they are romantics who decide what is and isn’t art, for tax purposes.

Anyway, I was in luck. Haunch of Venison is a large commercial gallery, and they are currently importing a video work into the country, for which they also have no suitable classification. They have taken their case to court, and the HMCE said that as that decision seemed a similarly unclear classification, they would classify it as the above until this case is cleared. I think we should win, I don’t know how you can deny this is an artwork. Great success for the moment, anyway.

However, I will allow myself a couple a positive reflections. The first came from John O’Shea, a Liverpool based artist who got in touch via Laurence Payot from the Royal Standard, as they’d been talking about the project. He liked the idea that the project uses law as a medium, drawing parallels with his Meat License Proposal project, in which he is trying to introduce a law obliging everyone who wishes to consume meat to get a license to do so. I’m proud and excited about my project and how it’s been realised, but lots of aspects of his project are just great. Through conversations with John about this and other projects he has been working on, I am really excited about the openess he has for the concepts driving the work to change during the development of the project. This seems a real strength to me, and I admire his way of working. But if I hadn’t made this project, I wouldn’t have had these conversations either!

On Saturday came a great accolade. I attended the a discussion on Biennials at the A Foundation, or at least caught the end of it. The discussion came to the relationship between the Biennial (‘official’) and the Independents, a loose collection of ‘off’ projects. JJ Charlesworth (art review) was speaking and said this was funny because in fact the two (or two of the, can’t remember!) the best things he’d seen were at the Ceri Hand gallery and the Royal Standard. I took the opportunity to ask him after and it was the Mr Democracy project that he was referring to. Its always a great boost to hear things like this, still need to make sure more people see it! Unfortunately, he hasn’t written this anywhere yet…

Straight on to the exhibition. The exhibition is at The Royal Standard, an ‘artist-led studio, gallery and social workspace based in Liverpool’. I first visited exhibitions of theirs in Arena studios, and then later in their namesake pub, The Royal Standard. The studio member’s rent subsidizes the rent of the gallery space, and they invigilate the exhibitions for free. They have spent much of the last six months being told they could move in ‘next week’ to a buidling in the ‘Baltic triangle’, near Greenland Street. In the summer they moved into a new building 10 minutes walk north of Moorfields, about 15 minutes walk from Lime Street, and have made the ground floor into an amazing exhibition space, with similar standards as a high end commercial gallery in London (reminded me of Modern Art in Vyner Street). The Royal Standard is run by a team of 6 directors, who between them have a great complementary mix of skills and experiences (writing, organising, exhibition construction). The Arts Council should be greatful for their value for money!

The plan that developed was to rent a container to house the toys outside the gallery. I wanted to hold onto the container in which the goods were to be delivered, but this would have been too expensive. It would also have been too expensive to get the goods delivered directly to Liverpool by sea. At first I was told it wasn’t possible, then Hamilton (who made the ship tracking system) searched and found there were sea routes to Liverpool (via Le Harve). Its not reassuring when googling something provides better information than the people you’re paying to do this (the shipping agents). It was a pleasant suprise to find that renting a container is quite affordable – just £1.50 a day, plus £120 delivery and pick up. The container will house the ship tracking system displayed on a laptop for the first half of the exhibition, in the same space in which the 1000 ‘New Constitutions’ -toys will be held. In a separate room inside the gallery is the 3 screen video installation.

The container mentioned, has arrived!

Photo: Kevin Hunt

For the next 4 weeks it will house the ship tracking system you can see above, until the 1000 dolls arrive.

After Huang Pu, there was not too much too tidy up regarding the toy production and shipping, just exhibition stuff. I had another altercation with the shipping agent unfortunately. Marco explained that actually there is no charge for the frieght in China, its all charged at the destination, hence why it seemed so cheap. He reckoned the final price should have been around half of what I was paying, but I had already seen the quote and handed the goods over, so it was a bit late to haggle now…but worth a try. The shiping agent begged to differ, that it wasn’t worth a try, and after a telephone call in a noisy restaurant, the next email suggested we shouldn’t use them again. Although I had made lots of questions about different quotes (which wastes their time), in the end she had made things stressful by managing to not coordinate a quote which tallied at both ends until late the night before the goods were delivered, after a 6 hour wait in their office, which is pretty bad.

I took a train down to Shenzhen, the city built rather unsubtly on the border with Hong Kong. I say unsubtly because it’s mission is to take Hong Kong as a blueprint for making money. It is literally on the border with Hong Kong – you can walk over the border in the train station and get right on the MTR, Hong Kong’s metro. I was talking with Adrian Wong, and friend in Hong Kong, about capitalism in Hong Kong. In theory Hong Kong practises one of the purest forms of laissez faire free market capitalism of anywhere in the world, yet it has decent free-at-delivery health care, excellent public transport and much social housing (though perhaps not so good). Tax is Hong Kong is negligible, though not at tax-haven rates. This can be afforded because the Hong Kong government acts like a business, letting but never selling the most expensive of all commodities, land. But this struck me as a deviation from the Neo Liberalism developed by Thatcher and Reagon – they sold off everything the state owned for a fraction of what it was worth (something the German government is also planning to do), referred to as selling of the family silver.

Shenzhen is a city of superlatives. As China’s first SEZ (Special Economic Zone) it was here that China experimented with capitalism, or ‘socialism with chinese characteristics’ as they call it. Shenzhen is part of the Pearl River Delta – a collection of cities which make up the biggest manufacturing base in the world.  Shenzhen developed from a fishing village, with a population in 1979 of just 20000, its population has grown to 14million, just 2 million of whom have a permanent address. Funnily enough, in the OCAT there was an exhibition of films made in a factory, this time CCTV type footage above each workers table, coupled with an installation of factory sewing machines in the huge gallery. It could be difficult to fill that space its huge.

My mission in Hong Kong was also to shoot video in a port, although I was able to record more than I’d thought possible in Huang Pu. Asking around hadn’t produced too many suggestions, so I went down to the container base to see what I could see. Its possible to see quite a bit just from the perimeter fence actually, but there were a couple of buildings with trucks whizzing through them (like multi-story car parks) which looked like they should have had better vantage points, although on apporoaching them, I did have a sinking feeling I wasn’t meant to be there, and would have to James Bond-like smuggle myself in. The trick is trying to look like you know where you’re going, or at least what you’re looking for, in place you’ve never entered before. I wandered down some concrete corridors, but all the men leaving had saftey helmuts and hi-vis tabards, so that wasn’t going to work – about turn. I checked the lifts – on the 7th floor there was a canteen, and a 7-11 – that must be kind of public, right? I couldn’t actually order anything because you needed to pay with a card of some sort, so I strolled straight over to a window seat. The workers in there didn’t seem to care, so I slipped my camera out and wedged it against the window, but the windows still weren’t to clear. I had a brainwave – the toilets, they should have a window I can open, and shut myself in, and they did. I had the shock of my life when I heard the door shut and the lights go out, and screamed ‘hello’. Thank goodness someone was still there, who still seemed not to care. The next day I took metro and taxi round Kowloon and Hong Kong island looking for vantage points. I say I took a taxi, a taxi driver persuaded me in broken English that he knew a place with great views of the container base, which it would have been, had it not been obstructed by trees. I didn’t feel completely cheated, but it was a waste of 50HK$ and an hour and a half. The container base is amazing, its just like children’s building blocks, but 100 times the size and the blocks are delivered all over the world; and somewhere in there were my 1000 toys with the new constitution, on their way home.

Our deadline was 11am at the warehouse in Huang Pu, Gaungzhou’s main port. Despite everyone telling me it would be easy to find a truck and driver (man with a big van), we … had some trouble finding a man with a big van. Fearing that one wouldn’t be enough, we got two trucks (Jackson’s friend recommended them for us), and we met them at a metro station. From there we tried to get to the installation factory. I say tried to, we were again struck by the no-maps-no-directions-curse, loosing us valuable time. In the end someone came to meet us on a bike, after a few circles and many phone calls. Arriving at the installation factory I seemed to be in more of a rush than anyone, but Marco got the idea pretty quick. As the boxes started coming downstairs, I went upstairs to pay up. As this wasn’t Marco’s place, we settled using some plastic chairs to count the cash, I’ve never counted to much so fast!

The pressure only increased as we got back on the trucks to speed off to the port. I was concerned about traffic and getting lost, particularly not being able to find our warehouse. Jackson and I were on the phone all the time to each other and Laura from the shipping company. Arriving at Huang Pu, we were told we had to go to a counter to hand in a form, and get another one. I don’t know what people normally do, I can’t imagine many people do so much themselves. The queue at the counter was long and slow, and we noticed that the counter closed at 11:30 for lunch. Lunchtime in China seems to be as strict as France and Italy (used to be), and it also has nap time built-in, I approve. We made it! We were the last ones before the little counter window was slammed shut, that was lucky. We then went off to find our warehouse, 8c. We then discovered that it was closed for lunch, I don’t know why we weren’t told this by Laura beforehand. We unloaded onto pallets next to the warehouse, thankful that it didn’t rain, and paid the drivers. Lunchtime gave me a moment to start some filming – coming in with the goods had given me the opportunity to get right into the port, and it was the container base, cranes and all. I hadn’t known this before, I had thought we might have left our boxes at a warehouse owned by the shipping company, but they were not around.

After lunch the pallets were driven into the warehouse, boxes bouncing around, I don’t know how they are supposed to get to England. They had a piece of string to hold them together. And they were marked with chalk. We’ll see.

The filming opportunities got better still. A little wander round the corner and we were at the waterfront, with the cranes dropping the containers onto barges set for the short ride to Hong Kong, where they will be transferred to bigger cargo ships. Amazing. I still can’t believe we could get in and get so close, what happened to all the Olympic security? One guard told us we weren’t allowed to film, and asked us who we were. It did help that we were customers. We couldn’t really argue that we were lost (we were a long way from our warehouse), but maybe just curious customers. I tried to be discreet, and although he could still see we were there, he never come back. Jackson started to get a bit nervous with the huge cranes moving tonnes of container above our heads and rolling on their train tracks next to us, so we called it a day. Walking out of the container base in search of a bus or taxi, I really felt like I’d done it, the toys were on their way. Thanks Arts Council England, thanks for believing I could do it.

I can’t tell you exactly why I was in the shipping agents office for SIX hours, but it has something to do with the fact that if you change the cost at one end, it changes the cost at the other end too, and this cost is not controlled by the same company. I just wanted, insisted on, a full quote. And they made me wait. There was also a mistake, quite a big one, in that the company here in Guangzhou never actually gave me a quote compatible with a quote from the UK, but never they never noticed this (I should have?!?!). In the end the cost was several hundred pounds more than they had originally quoted.

Meanwhile they’ve been repairing the toys which weren’t right at the factory, and sourcing the new boxes. Marco tells me everything is ready. So we are on time, good.

Marco arrives an hour an a half late, having walked for miles. He’s pissed off with the delivery company, they just told him ‘near the bus station, just go straight’. Indeed, it was straight, but about 2 miles ‘straight’. It has the positive affect of making me realise that this sort of thing happens to everyone here not just me. What is still hard to understand the reaction – there was no acknowledgement by the delivery company that this was wrong, giving him useless directions and making him walk 2 miles.

Anyway, it was another great day being able to see the installation factory. Bear in mind this factory really was just working to complete my order, re-wiring each doll with the new chip, DC socket and switch. They also had to test each one, which I had failed to anticipate – that meant all the time you could hear ‘Consti, constit, Constitution for the United Kingdom of Gre…’!! It was comical, and made complete sense for the project.

I was disappointed to see that the boxes were damaged, with not just scuff and crushes, but holes too, don’t know how that happened. We discussed it with Marco, and I won’t go into the detail, but there was trying to decide who was responsible – the toy factory, the transporters, or the factory that received the goods for not noticing until now. I accepted pretty quickly that we weren’t going to get any more from Mr Shao or Ms Chen (also she was more helpful), so it was up to Marco and me. I offered to go 50 50 on some new boxes, and he agreed, remarkably easy. All a bit silly really – I’m more worried about the booxes being damaged than the toys the boxes are meant to protect. It might have been better to pack all the toys together and have 1000 boxes left flatpacked to be assembled in the UK, in good condition.

We also spent several hours trying out one ‘mainline’ – the power lead connecting all the toys together, so that they could all be run off the mains (saving the need to change batteries). In the end the design was incredibly simple, just a 30cm length of thin wire connected to the next by a connector – the type used to connect a lightbulb wire to the mains wire. There is then a DC socket coming of each of these connectors aswell, which plugs into the toy. At the end of these (100) wires is a mains power convertor. It was exciting to get all the toys laid out and plugged in… but sad to see that it wasn’t going to work. The voice chips went out of sink very quickly, and after less than 10 seconds you couldn’t make out a word. I then tried it with just 2, and even they went out of sink fast, and became inaudible. Marco seemed dissappointed too, which he should – this was a big part of what we had discussed since the start. The electrical engineers had said it would work. I wasn’t at all annoyed really – it just didn’t work. I was much more annoyed that the delivery company had failed to deliver the toys and made Marco walk 2 miles to pick them up.

What was also really different here was spending 4 hours in the factory, recording and then trying to get the mainline working. It was different to be working with Marco, we were trying to solve the problems together, and the people from the factory too, whereas before I’d been more of a customer.

On Friday we called Mr Shao to ask about visiting on Saturday. He said it wouldn’t be worth it, we should come on Monday, then we can stay the night and the toys can come to Gaungzhou the next day. So we called on Monday morning, when he mentioned that in fact the factory is in Shantou, as I said about 250 miles east of Guangzhou – one of the reasons we’d chosen Mr Shaou was that the factory was ‘in Shenzhen’, just one hour down the road on a fast and frequent train journey. So we were pretty pissed off when he casually mentioned that it was in a city 6 fucking hours away. Why do people lie, do they have no scruples? No apolgy, no recognition, nothing. This time I wished he’d spoken English.

We visited the circuit board factory today, where the circuit boards are made, it was amazing. The whole process of anything being made involves an almost infinite number of factories and inductrial processes. Our flash memory is made in another factory (in Taiwan I think), then processed here in the office in Guangzhou. The micro controller is also made in another factory, and they are out on the board in yet other factories. You can also go further down the chain, and the parts and materials (paint, board etc) used in these components are made in other factories. I hope the video turns out well, it was certainly interesting, all the ‘tssst’s and ‘bmmpf’s.

Something has confused me. It seems Marco is more friendly and helpful since we’ve signed the contract, not less interested, as I’d always thought it would be. I thought before the contract they would be keen to secure our business, and after -especially in our case where it should be pretty obvious by now that we’re not big players – start with the excuses, delays and cock ups. But Marco has completely turned a corner, apologising for his English leading to misunderstandings, and quite sweetly checking by text to see if we got to Shantou ok in the evening, and then offering to look up a hotel if we couldn’t find one. It may be because we started chatting about more personal things over the internet, such as degrees and travel. I still can’t quite work if he knows I’m an artist and not a business man. We’ve talked about the ‘exhibition’.

Its 10 pm, so I guess we’re half way. We’re backing into a petrol station, lets see how long we stop.
…
It wasn’t long (enough to buy some food).