On April 16th, the opening ceremony of the "Xiayuan Art Life Season" was held in Xiayuan Village, Xingshou Town, Changping District. Without publicity, on the opening day of the art season, this small village was crowded with thousands.
Since 1995, a number of artists have successively entered the Lower Garden, and at that time, the relationship between artists and the countryside was more that artists needed more space for creation and living.
Previously, artists only made art in their own studios, and the objects of communication were basically between artists and artists. In June 2018, the Xiayuan Art Life Festival was officially launched, and the artists and villagers had a tangible interaction.
Supermarkets, restaurants, bars, village roads hardened, circuit expansion, broadband installation... In addition to the improvement of hardware, the cultural life of the villagers is also improving, and with the east wind of the "Xiayuan Art Life Season", the larger blueprint of Xiayuan Village is expected to become a reality. In Xiayuan Village, from the initial artist needing the village, to the current artist and the village blending with each other, the practice of art entering the countryside is being staged.
On April 14, in Xiayuan Village, on a 200-meter wall in the village, artists and peasant painters in the village jointly completed dozens of wall paintings with different story contents. Beijing News reporter Chen Jie photographed
The artist enters the village
Xiayuan Village, a humble village in Xingshou Town, Changping District, 50 kilometers away from downtown Beijing, the area of Shangyuan Xiayuan was the emperor's orchard during the Qing Dynasty, Xiayuan Village produced apricots and persimmons, and Shangyuan Village produced apples. Initially, most of the artists who came to the Xiayuan area were looking for a cheap and good creative environment and exhibition space.
In the mid-1990s, the unique landscape of this place attracted artist Wang Jianzhong to set up a studio here.
A year later, Wang Huaxiang, a teacher at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, also established an "enclave art workshop" in Xiayuan Village to do art examination training. Subsequently, more than a dozen teachers of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, such as Qian Shaowu, Tian Shixin, Sun Jiabao, and Wang Shaojun, successively lived and created works in Xiayuan Village.
From the very beginning, Xiayuan Village was a spontaneous formation of an art community by some artists who had already achieved fame, which is a clear difference from other art villages. In 2000, the famous sculptor Qian Shaowu inscribed "Xiayuan Artist Village".
For the initial impression of the countryside, Tian Shixin's wife Li Mengyu once painted a number of village scene sketches, in the picture, at that time, there were not so many cars, there were not so many houses, there was no courtyard wall on the side of the village, everywhere was a cloud of apricot blossoms and the shade cast by Xinjiang Yang, the rural space was large, and the walking was particularly painful.
In 2002, the post-70s oil painter Han Yong came to Xiayuan when he was still a graduate student at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and it has been 20 years now. He remembered that when he first came to the village, he had to fetch water outside the house, and there was only one water pipe in a yard, which could be used casually in the summer, and when he used it in the winter, he had to open the valve on the ground first, and then open the faucet.
It is said that there is a big difference between urban and rural life, but Han Yong remembers that most of the villagers in Xiayuan Village have long since stopped cultivating land or farming, and there is only a small amount of self-reserved land in the village. But it is also different from the urban-rural interface, and there is no large flow of people here. In the past 20 years, the students who participated in the art examination training have gone, but most of the artists he is familiar with are still there, and young artists continue to enter.
On April 7, in the Xiayuan Art and Culture Square under construction, the sculpture being installed was the landscape sculpture "Into the Fruit Interior" by young artist Liu Tian. Beijing News reporter Chen Jie photographed
Artists and villagers
"Making sculptures is easy to disturb neighbors", Xie Yuning and her sculptor husband Guo Donglai after 85 have always wanted to find a different place from the city. In 2018, Xie Yuning began to take care of the studio of her teacher, Wang Shaojun, a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. As an artist who entered the village very late, Xie Yuning found that the inheritance of the Central American system in Xiayuan Village has reached the fourth generation, and there are also three generations of villagers who have been influenced by art.
"At first, we were very rusty with each other, but slowly we got along, which made us feel very stable." Xie Yuning said that artists and villagers can live together, and everyone guards a world. After all, the urban and rural life here is very close, the villagers have begun to pursue some spiritual improvement, and the artists have the heart to return to the countryside, in fact, the two are a mutual existence.
After coming to the village, many of Xie Yuning's works are painted with surrounding things, stray cats, almond trees and apricot blossoms, which she decorated with glaze color on the utensils, named "Apricot Fu", and planned the next step to launch art derivatives in the art life season of Xiayuan.
Guo Donglai often picks up tree branches with a sense of shape in the village and then applies these to sculptures. Picking up too much, Chen Deming, a villager who made wood carvings, would deliberately give the branches trimmed from his yard to Guo Donglai to keep, telling him, "I can't use the materials for you, and you can't use them for me."
Chen Deming once went to the courtyard of the sculptor Tian Shixin to do carpentry work, and through "stealing teachers" and pointing, he is now also engaged in wood carving and root carving.
Friction and contradictions, of course, will also exist. For example, the open space at the entrance of the studio is piled with garbage and waste collected by villagers; The car was parked under the wall of the villager's house, and it was also possible that the villagers painted it without proper communication. Artists are reluctant to use money to solve problems, because if they satisfy one family, there may be others to continue to "claim", no head.
Guo Donglai felt that we should treat the problems between neighbors with a calm mind, after all, this village has been inhabited by villagers for generations, and we must pay some price when we enter the space where they live. What's more, when encountering an emergency such as sewer maintenance, as soon as I called for help, the uncle in the village quickly helped solve it.
The arrival of the artists brought about a clear change in the village. For more than two decades, there have been fewer apricot blossoms and trees, more houses, small courtyards, more public spaces, and even parking has become a problem. Walking around the village, you can see some villagers renovating their houses within the scope of the policy and renting them out to artists.
In the view of Feng Zhiguang, secretary of the party branch and director of the village committee of Xiayuan Village, the arrival of the artist has benefited the village, the appearance of the village has been improved, the rent and employment are steadily rising, and more than 80% of the villagers have rental income.
The artist came, and also let the old people and children see the world, like painting, making sculptures, looking no longer fresh. Sculptor Zheng Yukui regularly teaches the village's elderly university students to pinch pottery; Villager Wang Baozhu and his wife picked up the paintbrush early and insisted on painting for more than ten years, and dozens of them were bought and collected; Chen Yongzhong, the deputy secretary of the village, liked to draw, and there were many children in the village who entered the art academy.
Sun Jiabao, a professor and doctoral supervisor of the Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts who lives in Xiayuan, feels that artists need villages, but for a long time, artists have not contributed enough to the villages, and the communication channels between art life and society are still single and shallow.
On March 27, Zheng Zhiyan, a resident artist, painted a wall on the outer wall of a resident's home. Beijing News reporter Chen Jie photographed
Can art empower the countryside?
There are more than 150 villagers in Xiayuan Village, less than 500 people, most of the young and middle-aged people have entered the city, the rest are mostly elderly, and the youngest is more than 50 years old. However, today's Xiayuan Village has laid a strong brand as an "artist village", and there are more than 80 artists living here for a long time.
The following garden village radiates around the center, and there are a total of more than 200 artists living in this area.
In Xie Yuning's view, "Xiayuan is not a social village for artists, but a place where artists live, whether it is the older generation, or middle-aged and young people, everyone is quietly doing things in the studio, not doing business."
Xie Yuning said that Xiayuan is a working world, and there will be a sense of presence that is different from that of an art museum. You see not only the fruits of art, but also the creative process and the environment in which it was created. But if you're just an ordinary tourist, when you first arrive at Xiayuan Village, you can't see neither the villagers nor the artist and his studio.
From 2016 to 2017, the artist Shen Jianjun (net name Kuroko), who lived in Xiayuan Village, made more than 10 exhibitions in his space, which pulled the artists of the entire village together, and through this public display activity, the artists and the small society of Xiayuan Village began to embark on an interactive relationship.
In January 2020, a video log recording the Xiayuan Art Village, "Come, Xiayuan Village", was published, one of the main creators is Sun Yiming, a post-90s girl who returned from Paris, she strives to use the most authentic, most prosaic, almost New Wave style lens language to record the lives of all the artists, art practitioners and villagers in the Garden Village, and how to make art truly change the countryside. Sun Yiming has made 90 episodes in a row, but due to financial reasons, only 20 episodes have been broadcast so far.
The video log mentions that "art empowers the countryside" is a common concern of both culture and rural areas, and if the artist does not live in the countryside, he will not be able to make in-depth understanding and change of rural society, economy and environment; However, living in the countryside, artists have to face various problems such as aesthetic differences, interpersonal relations, and high rents, making it difficult for the "art village" to be sustained for a long time.
On April 14, in front of a landscape sculpture in xiayuan art and culture square, greeners worked to level the ground in preparation for planting trees and grass. Beijing News reporter Chen Jie photographed
Mutual needs
Is there a better solution for the common revitalization of art and the countryside?
Feng Zhiguang said that Xiayuan Village is 1.2 square kilometers, in addition to cultural resources, there is no other industry, the villagers have three sources of income: going to the city to work, rent, and a small number of public welfare jobs in the village. From the earliest rent of a yard of 1800 yuan a year to the present 60,000 or 70,000, rent is one of the main sources of income for villagers in Xiayuan Village, and the current per capita annual income of the village is 20,000-30,000 yuan. The village of Xiayuan is seriously aging, and it is not realistic to send industry to the village and increase skills to the villagers.
Feng Zhiguang thought of the artists in the village, and frankly, how to let the artists lead the villagers to earn money.
Lao La's and Feng Zhiguang's ideas coincided. Lao La, formerly known as Zhao Feng, is a curator of art activities and has lived in Xiayuan for 15 years. Lao La said that he thinks about the same problem from the perspective of the social attributes of art, "At first, artists needed villages, and now artists and villages need each other."
Xiayuan Village now has 1 restaurant and 1 bar. But this is all the artist's own opening, "the people found that the traffic has nothing to do with me, people come to consume exhibitions and art, and contradictions appear." Lao La said that the people are very realistic and recognize the results of earning money. How can there be a real connection between art and the countryside, and what practices and actions should be done? It became a goal that Feng Zhiguang and Lao La wanted to solve together.
After communication and consultation with the artists, Feng Zhiguang decided to take the art and culture market as the main line of future development of the village, build a regional market sales platform with art and culture as the theme, and take the development of boutique homestays and art derivatives as the first step to strengthen the collective economy of the village.
With this idea, Feng Zhiguang began to work on the development plan of Xiayuan Village, where artists do art activities, art experiences to drain the flow, and develop art derivatives; The village comes to do the service, homestay, catering and other services (greening, security, cleaning, etc.).
Through the democratic decision-making of party branches, village committees and villagers' representatives, Xiayuan Village established Beijing Xiayuan Culture and Art Development Co., Ltd., which is owned by all villagers, and organized the excavation of village resources. This is a limited liability company, wholly owned by the Xiayuan Joint Stock Economic Cooperative in Xingshou Town, Changping District, Beijing.
In 2020, Beijing Xiayuan Kanpu Cultural Tourism Project Development Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Kanpu Company), jointly funded by Beijing Xiayuan Culture and Art Development Co., Ltd., individual artists stationed in the village and individual villagers, was established, which is responsible for excavating high-quality artist resources and empowering the countryside.
Feng Zhiguang said that such a mechanism, with clear property rights relations and clear responsibilities, can effectively prevent the loss of collective assets or the engulfment of private enterprises. In the cooperation, the people of Xiayuan Village will not drive away the artists to do it themselves because they have made money, and the artists do not have the idea of making money from my intangible assets to share with the locals.
According to the plan, the village collective company wants to develop homestays, but it is not good to let the people vacate the whole hospital and then go to rent a house. With the lessons learned from other villages, Feng Zhiguang called on villagers to take out their own idle rooms and cooperate with the village company, so that the villagers will not lose their homes, and the idle rooms can also make money, and the annual income of a room may be a courtyard's rent for one year, which is a new way to revitalize the idle homestead assets of the people. The elderly who have idle houses in the village can no longer reach out and ask their children for money, and truly realize the support of the elderly.
In terms of specific distribution, for example, after the villagers take out the idle houses to make homestays for the village collective company, two-thirds of the income goes to the villagers, and one-third of the income is the village collective income.
On March 28, in Xiayuan Village, the painter Wan Jiyuan created a huge oil painting "Bull Market" in his studio. Beijing News reporter Chen Jie photographed
From art festivals to art seasons
The Xiayuan Art Life Festival, which began in 2018, is considered to be a starting point for the interaction between artists and villagers.
Sun Yiming also believes that the future artistic development concept of Xiayuan Village was gradually revealed after the holding of the Xiayuan Art Life Festival in 2018.
In June 2018, the Xiayuan Art And Life Festival was officially launched, and the organizer was the Xiayuan Village Committee. The organizers are Kanpu Space, Song Yuzhe Studio, Tang Yao Studio, etc. Judging from the videos taken at that time, the artist and the villagers sang and danced, painted together, made sculptures, and played African drums, and the atmosphere was warm and cheerful.
Wang Shaojun, deputy secretary of the party committee and sculptor of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, said that the real penetration of art into the rural people is not the effect that can be achieved by making an exhibition in a big city, nor is it the result of commercial operations, which is an effect of cultural infiltration into this land in the past 30 years.
According to the overall arrangement of Changping District to create a cultural tourism integration consumption innovation demonstration zone, the "Xiayuan Art Life Festival" that began on April 16 this year was upgraded to the "Xiayuan Art Life Season", which lasted for three months, and was used as a sub-venue of the cultural tourism consumption season in the whole district, the organizers are the Changping District Culture and Tourism Bureau, the Xingshou Town Government of Changping District, and the Xiayuan Village Committee is the organizer.
Feng Zhiguang said that the 2018 Xiayuan Art Festival did not have studios open, no public space, and no consumption, although it was quite meaningful, introducing the artists in Xiayuan, but the festival dispersed as soon as it was over, and did not really express the art transformation of the countryside. This year's art life season will focus on empowering the people's agricultural and sideline products, "with the help of some good ideas of our artists to improve its added value, the future development is not only agriculture, our basic education, etc., can give us a collective income."
Lao La, the curator of the art life season, said that the artist is a recruitment invitation system, painting, sculpture, music, dance and other art plates and art camp experience projects to be on June, will be interspersed with each other in the 4 seasons of the year or natural time period (monthly or weekly), the main content can be divided into art and culture content and life consumption content, each activity can choose different plates as a single main content, other plates assist, "like a magic cube, more fun."
At the opening ceremony of the "Xiayuan Art Life Season" on April 16, the village was crowded, with children in the village sliding along the newly paved silky asphalt, villagers pushing strollers or riding bicycles to watch the show, and some lying on the grass with the sound of drums in the sun.
On the newly lawned Xiayuan Cultural Square, a huge mirrored sphere sculpture stands. In the woods not far away, there are Sun Jiabao's "Lao Tzu" and Wang Shaojun's "Crossing Kunlun" sculptures.
More than 20 artists and villagers jointly created more than 200 square meters of wall paintings that reflect the life of the lower garden. Shangyuan village artist Zheng Zhiyan's strawberries, apples, rabbits, cats and dogs also painted the walls of the villagers' homes.
Liu Bin, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, and Bai Lin, deputy mayor of Changping District, attended the opening ceremony. Wei Youwen, a member of the propaganda committee of the xingshou town party committee, said that the town will pay close attention to the benign interaction between the artist group and the villagers in Xiayuan Village, and with the help of the gathering advantages and influence of the artist group, encourage the artist group in Xiayuan Village to integrate into the village planning, cultural and creative tourism, and the construction of rural civilization, so as to upgrade the rural industrial structure, improve the spiritual outlook of farmers, and drive the local people to increase their income and become rich.
On March 22, Feng Zhiguang, secretary of the party branch and village director of Xiayuan Village, learned about the progress of wall painting in the art season in the village. Beijing News reporter Chen Jie photographed
Rush head
According to the statistics of the "Xiayuan Art Life Season" activity execution company and Beijing Xiayuan Kanpu Cultural Tourism Project Development Co., Ltd., on the opening day of the Xiayuan Art Life Season, 60 stalls in the Art Life Market sold various art consumer goods such as handmade porcelain and prints for 6 hours and strawberries and other agricultural products from the Art Life Supermarket for nearly 300,000 yuan. The embarrassing thing is that although the stalls are free, most of these stalls are set up by artists in and around the village or villagers in neighboring villages, and the participation of villagers in Xiayuan Village is not high.
After the opening of the art life season in Xiayuan Village, Feng Zhiguang felt that this stimulated some villagers. In one example, the next day, some villagers approached him and asked if the village committee could organize the villagers to go to the scene of the art life season to do business, selling buns, pancakes, and wild vegetables. "The villagers themselves can't pull down their faces to do business, and they need the village committee to take the lead." And then there's the villagers who think, "Once a week or once a month, we can do business for a long time."
Feng Zhiguang said that Xiayuan is a natural village and has not been affected by commerce, but this time it must have been affected, whether it is village cadres or villagers.
He felt that it was a good thing for the villagers to make demands on the village committee, which showed that they did not want to lie down and earn rent as before, and the villagers felt that the rent would rise by at least 20% after a holiday, and now they are eager to intervene in the development and future of the village.
Feng Zhiguang plans to make a try after a while, "in the name of the village collective company to invest 10,000 yuan to steam buns, if you earn in the art season, all the money earned is distributed to everyone, even if each person gets one or two hundred, so that the people can see that making buns make money, so that the villagers can see the actual development direction."
Feng Zhiguang said that next, the village collective company plans to build a catering department, an environmental protection department, a homestay department, a maintenance department, a service company, etc., "to let everyone know that not only can rent a house to make money, but also to do homestay catering and other services can also make money", Feng Zhiguang said, "Just use the steamed bun thing to shake the people of Xiayuan Village to agree that in the future we will invest in doing things, build art districts, build art museums, and Xiayuan Village can really become a Cultural and Art Consumption Village in Beijing." ”
Feng Zhiguang said, "Only the art life season has earned money this year, and other projects, such as homestay projects, will everyone join, and can understand that only cooperation can make it bigger." But at this time, the village collective company has to be screened, your room is not suitable, your home hygiene is not clean, and the model of increasing the threshold can be truly promoted."
"Next, Xiayuan has this condition to do a museum group or an art museum group, as long as the conditions allow, there will be a head, and I can solve the problem of influential artists staying here."
Hu Nan, deputy director of the Changping District Culture and Tourism Bureau, told reporters that the District Cultural and Tourism Bureau encourages farmers and artists to interact benignly and develop together. Realizing the standardized development of the village and empowering the revitalization of the countryside with the cultural tourism industry will become the only way for the development of Xiayuan Village.
Beijing News reporter Liu Min Editor Hu Jie Proofreader Yang Xuli