By definition a cabinet of curiosities is an encyclopedic collection of objects with almost no categorical boundaries. But there is an exhibition opening soon in Venice that is going to incorporate a thematic "Wunderkammer" revolving around architecture.
Curated by chief architect of CCTN, Bo Hongtao, and the chief architect of Pills, Wang Zigeng, "Steel Home Still", opening in September at the Santa Caterina Church in Venice, looks at the Beijing-based Capital Iron and Steel Corporation (today Shougang Corporation), one of the largest industrial district regeneration projects in the world. The industrial pride of the country and one of China's largest steel companies, Shougang will see its centennial celebration in 2019.
Prior to the 2008 Summer Olympics, the factory was moved out of the city due to concerns over pollutions and relocated with its 90,000 employees in Caofeidian, but the blast furnaces and the cooling towers were left in Beijing as silent memorials.
Beijing is currently preparing for its 2022 Winter Olympics and Chinese planners have launched a project to bring the ruins back to life and give them a new purpose, turning them into the headquarter for China's winter sport ambitions, possibly leaving the building as intact as possible.
While the renovation will be completed in 2019, the exhibition "Steel Home Still" will focus on the past and the future of the Shougang industrial area, documenting its history and the current renewal and transformation driven by an economy devoted to creativity, leisure, and global competitiveness.
For many people in Beijing Shougang's industrial campus remains an abstract concept and the lives of its previous workers invisible to the public and almost forgotten.
The exhibition at the Santa Caterina Church is conceived as a cabinet of curiosities: visitors will discover more about the Capital Steel corporation through a sort of immersive theatrical drama with an architectural theme.
"Through this exhibition, we hope to unveil the micro-histories at the level of individuals and families. Reigniting the collective memories in the legendary factory, we examine the modernization path of China that Shougang represents, and we honor every worker's life and labor along the way," states curator Wang Zigeng.
To do it the organisers broke down disciplinary boundaries between architecture, film and stage set decoration, graphic design, literature, documentary, photography, and multimedia art to make space to a spatial installation divided into sections.
Different rooms - "Dormitory", "Worker’s Club," "Drawing Room," and "Furnace Preparation Room" - allow visitors to discover historical objects collected from Shougang's old factory and revive fragments of the everyday life from Shougang’s collectivist past in the 1980s.
These rooms offer a unique experience to the visitors: they represent cabinets of industrial curiosities where multiple narratives are woven together, thanks to the texts written by novelist Jiang Fangzhou, that become an invisible thread connecting the various spatial experiences.
Secrets are uncovered and multiple points of views are offered, while drama director Shang Lei and multimedia artist Fei Jun offer a multimedia approach to follow the stories.
One of the core spaces remains the "Drawing Room" dedicated to the N. 3 Blast Furnace, the biggest construction in the Capital Steel industrial area: here are displayed a series of process drawings and research models of the CCTN team led by Bo Hongtao (Chief Architect of the No. 3 Blast Furnace Renovation Project), together with historical drawings and drawing tools from the archive.
The other side of the room features instead a large-scale profile model of the N. 3 Blast Furnace, produced by model artist Chen Yijie, a simulation model presenting a series of extreme spatial experiences.
Venice is traditionally linked to China through the travels of its illustrious citizen - merchant and explorer Marco Polo - but this project opens new connections between Beijing and the Marghera industrial site around Venice, creating a global spatial narrative with no boundaries in which the technological and industrial history of China assumes a more human face also thanks to architecture.
"Steel Home Still", Santa Caterina Church, Cannaregio 4924, Venice, Italy, 22nd September - 31st October, 2018
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