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Re-print #2: Shanghai Fax (1996) “Let’s Talk About Money”

Item Details
Artists
Hank Bull, Shi Yong, Ding Yi, Shen Fan, and Zhou Tiehai
Date
2015
Publisher
3-ply
Media Type
Book
Length
61.00
Edition
500
Code
AMA2231

In 1996, Vancouver-based artist Hank Bull collaborated with Shanghai-based artists Shi Yong, Ding Yi, Shen Fan and Zhou Tiehai in the production of a staple-bound, photocopied catalogue, printed in an edition of 500, to accompany the exhibition Shanghai Fax, which took place in Hua Shan College of Art, March 15 – 25 1996. Re-print #2: Shanghai Fax (1996) “Let’s Talk About Money” presents this catalogue in a 1:1 scale reprint.

The Re-print project is a curated series that reintroduces out-of-print artist publications to a contemporary audience. The series also exploits the character of the reprints to insert interventions in public archives: introducing material that was never legally deposited, or reinserting previously archived publications in the form of mediated replications, thereby indexing the originals.

Shanghai Fax, purportedly the first artist-organised international exhibition to be staged in China, took place in the underground bunker gallery of Hua Shan College of Art from March 15 – 25 1996, timed to coincide with the inaugural Shanghai Biennale. Shanghai Fax coalesced an idiosyncratic survey of artistic commentaries, theologies, and personal politics concerning the global economy, its individual affects and its absurdities. It was a low-fi, artist-driven project that mobilised fax works from an unusual constellation of artists: a network of pioneering collaborators in experimental telecommunications art; stars of the nascent Chinese art market; lesser known artists who would later be heralded as the new vanguard of Chinese contemporary art; and a scattering of anonymous contributors and individuals outside the art sphere, including a local real estate agent, whose advertisements of properties currently for sale were diligently added to the exhibition.

  1. Shanghai Fax