INSTANT HUTONG [Marcella Campa, Stefano Avesani]

Instant Hutong is an art project created to record as well as draw people’s attention onto traditional patterns of neighbourhoods, courtyards and lanes in Beijing, all of which are threatened by construction development. This work explores both spatial and social aspects of the traditional Hutong urban tissue and the community of people living in it. It is organized as a series of art pieces and installations on the border between art, social investigation and urban research with the aim of generating and stimulating an open debate. The work currently involves issues such as density, gentrification, human relationships and the concept of physical space, as well as property speculation and the fast pace disappearance of the sense of community and identity. These issues are expressed through merging the social sphere with the aesthetic one. The Hutong Districts in Beijing used to form a large continuous tissue built of one storey courtyard houses (Siheyuan) which filled the spaces in-between the alleys (Hutong in the local language). The buildings forming each Siheyuan are organized in a sequence of courts. The spaces of Siheyuan have proven very adaptable to changes during different historical periods. In the past 60 years, following the strategy of redistribution of dwellings, houses that had originally been occupied by one single family, were then assigned to several nuclei. Due to the changes in living conditions, a singular new concept of living has developed among the Hutong Districts, the distinctive traits of which are density, capability of adaptation, neighborhood relationships and a “street-oriented” lifestyle. Following the recent extensive demolitions, such Hutong culture is nowadays undergoing the risk of destruction. The Instant Hutong project aims at increasing the awareness of such distinctive culture, offering new ways of looking at the Hutong districts while actively involving its inhabitants to be part of the project and interact with it during the public events organized inside the courtyards and adjacent lanes.

MARCELLA CAMPA and STEFANO AVESANI have been interested in the urban growth of Chinese cities and their transformation since 2003. In 2005 they co-edited the n.78 monographic issue of the international magazine AREA about Chinese contemporary visual art and architecture. They have been awarded with the international Archiprix prize in Glasgow for a double coordinated project for historical districts in downtown Beijing and Shanghai. They moved to China in October 2005 and started working on the Instant Hutong project. Since 2007 their work took part in several exhibitions in China and abroad. Marcella Campa has been chosen to receive the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant for year 2010. Marcella and Stefano currently live and work in Beijing.