Professor Liu Yi, co-founder of the "M50 Lane Plan" and public art curator, mentioned that the park is located in the first bay of Suzhou Creek, and the history of the local textile industry and the accumulation of art and design culture after the transformation can gradually become the "urban IP" of Shanghai's industrial historical and cultural heritage. Through public art, design co-creation, teaching incubation, and the "Lane Hall Project" dedicates the aesthetic experience of "new local culture" brought by Shanghai textile industry civilization to the public.
preface:
M50, the textile industry historical and cultural heritage in the center of Shanghai. Longtang, a term with local characteristics of Shanghai. The two met here, not a coincidence, but the content traceability and spatial style of the "M50 Lane Project" public art creation plan.
Public art is "pan-media", and various art form languages are curated and used in specific themes and fields. Public art is "local", it closely connects the local humanistic context and genes, and is "tailor-made" for the here and now and the public. Public art is "public", art that serves the public, it is the work of establishing a social ideal place in the name of art, and public art under the guidance of the government is the artistic welfare of the people.
Today, the practice of public art has shifted from urban blocks to community co-construction and renewal. M50 is an "art community" that integrates old factories such as artist studios, galleries, art institutions, design brand stores, cafe restaurants and so on. Soft activities intervene to establish interaction with public relations, open public spaces as a place for young forces to practice art, and rich co-creation planning to link community residents, tourists and art creators.
The "M50 Lane Plan" is located in the public walkway of Building 4 (original textile department workshop), covering 6 sections: 1. Under the influence of cyberpunk, hip art, game and animation aesthetics, the public art exhibition responds to the textile knowledge and visual outlook in history with the creation of different media such as new media, murals, participatory art, light installation, sound, animation, and network art. 2. "Lane Classroom", with art and design universities, textile museums and M50 local residents tour group in the lane to carry out teaching linkage. 3. "Lane Hall Public Art Competition" encourages students to practice and incubate with the creation of emerging artists. 4. "Lane Co-creation" invites the public to participate in creation through activities, so that the public can become the main body of art creators. 5. "Lane Library Co-construction Plan", collect albums and reading materials from M50 art centers, galleries and artists' studios, and build areas where tourists and the public can stay, rest and read in the lanes. 6. "Lane Hall Market" will invite amateurs of all ages, professions and multi-levels to cooperate with lifestyle experts.
Public art has the functions of shaping a harmonious society, inspiring creative talents, preserving historical memory, beautifying public spaces, and driving regional economies. The "M50 Lane Plan" is also aiming at a series of practices and discussions.
Co-founder of the "M50 Lane Plan" and public art curator: Liu Yi
January 2022
M50 "Lane Plan" – six elements
1. Under the influence of cyberpunk, hip art, game and animation aesthetics, the "Lane Hall Weaving Knowledge" public art exhibition responds to the textile knowledge and visual outlook in history with the creation of different media such as new media, murals, participatory art, light installation, sound, animation, and network art.
（A/C）
Textile Tools (Student Award-Winning Works)
Students: Dai Huimin, Lu Jingyu (Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts)
Material: screen printing, screen
Instructor: Liu Yi
Contents: This work starts from the background textile factory of M50, with textile as the theme and the form of a poster hanging painting. The background of the work uses the weaving method of textile silk to express the texture of the cloth. The silhouettes of textile tools extracted from the main body include shuttles, hand spinning wheels, warp cars, weft cars, threads, etc., reflecting the theme of textiles. The expressive style of pixel painting and the brilliant saturated colors are also quite childlike, and the huge range of works makes its patterns directly enter the audience's field of vision, giving people a strong visual impact.
（B）
"M50 Tour Co-creation Device"
Author: 61CREATIVE
Material: cloth, wool, wood
Creative content: A map of the M50 park is drawn on a wooden board, and the location of the viewing spots and art studios in the park is marked by screws. In the grooves under the planks are placed some wool threads, which visitors can take and wrap around the screws to paint.
This is an art co-created by the audience and the author, everyone is both a viewer of the work and a creator of the work of art, everyone has an artistic exchange on a wooden board, and everyone's thoughts are intertwined like wisps of wool, completing the collision of art. After the audience completes the interaction with this co-creation installation, it will also present a new, colorful M50 map to the next viewer, and in the process of continuous updating, each viewer will see a different M50.
(D)
Textile Glory
Author: Liu Yi, Barry, Zhang Siyu, Zhou Chuping, Ma Jiali
Materials: neon hose, acrylic, photo cloth, wooden picture frame, spotlight
Creative content: The author extracted some graphic elements from the textile industry business plates in old Shanghai, combined the awards, trophies, posters and other images of the original textile factory of the M50, and made some shining light signs with neon hoses and transparent acrylic plastic plates. These signs will be hung from the ceiling of the entire corridor, adding brilliant colors to the entire corridor.
Since the lighting of the entire promenade is not good, the lighting installation can add a lot of color to the promenade. Cyberpunk-style neon installations are presented in the familiar old-fashioned trophy shapes, giving people a sense of interlacing time and space through history, and it is also a passionate collision of retro and future. There is not only this one hanging device on the entire promenade, but also many posters, signs and other items interspersed in it, and various art forms are combined over the corridor to give people a wonderful aesthetic experience.
(E)
"Shuttle"
Author: 61CREATIVE, Chen Jiayi, Xia Haoyang
Materials: lamp, mechanical shaft, acrylic
Creation content: When people mention textiles, it is easy to think of shuttles, but what is in the shuttle, few people know. The author of this work uses a wall painting to paint a shuttle, in the middle of the shuttle placed a fluorescent long belt roller, the belt is printed with the outline of Shanghai, implying that "there is Shanghai in the shuttle", expressing a subtle euphemism for attachment.
(F/M)
Weaving a Vertical Thread (Student's Award-Winning Work)
Students: Li Yanlong, Gao Guangjin (Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts)
Material: neon, acrylic
Instructor: Liu Yi
Creative content: The different forms of textile machines in the whole work allow the contemporary public who are almost detached from hand textiles to see the development history of textile machines, and also tell the change process of textile factories along the way, and the addition of lighting makes the works have a feeling of the textile future.
（G）
"Window - Rocket Water Tower"
Author: 61CREATIVE, ZHANG Siyu, LI Jiaxi, ZHENG Chaowen (Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai University)
Materials: Lightbox, Window Frame, H5 Animation
Creation Content: In the fast lane of the times, the old water tower of the textile factory seems to have undergone a wonderful change. In the author's wonderful mind, it is an astronaut who drives a rocket water tower to the wider universe. Although we often reminisce about the past with old photos, our pace with the times will never stop.
"Window - Dock Adventures"
Author: 61CREATIVE, Barry, Zhou Chuping
Material: light box, window frame
Creative content: The Suzhou Creek pier in the old photo tells a silent past, the author boldly added neon elements to it, and the shining neon ribbon and yarn planet floated over the old Suzhou Creek pier, giving people a strong sense of time and space collision, so that the Suzhou Creek in the black and white photos has a more gorgeous sense of the future.
"Window - Textile Factory Band"
Author: 61CREATIVE, Barry
Materials: light box, window frame, screen
Creative Content:
Through the old wooden window, we can see the working textile women, their hands flying up and down in the cotton thread, as if playing a brisk song. They created all kinds of cotton cloth in their hands and played the music of development for the times.
（I）
Impressions of Cloth Tickets (Student-Winning Works)
Student: Li Tong (Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts)
Material: Sticker
In the era of the planned economy, everyone had to rely on cloth tickets to buy cloth to make clothes, so textile workers were also deeply associated with cloth tickets. The author uses cloth tickets to stitch together the silhouettes of two textile workers, which record the hard work of a generation, and its dissipation also witnesses the development of China's light industry. This work is not only a silhouette of the two workers, but also a silhouette of the times in the depths of the M50.
(J)
"The Woolly Cat" (student award-winning work)
Student: Guo Xunyi (Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts)
Material: Acrylic
This work combines the three forms of a yarn ball, a cat and a sewing machine, and the kitten plays with the hairball, reflecting the shape of the sewing machine behind it. The shape of the sewing machine reflects the epitome of the original m50 textile factory, and the kittens playing with the ball also bring vitality to the 4a aisle.
（K）
Time m50
Author: 61CREATIVE, Chen Jiayi
Materials: mirror, sticker
The M50 mirror of the times as a punching mirror for handsome men and women, the mirror surface is designed as the effect of the magazine cover, as long as the tourists are close to the mirror, pick up the mobile phone to take a selfie, you can get a magazine cover full of the sense of the times. The mirror surface is plastered with slogans full of textile factory elements such as "model worker" and "best stopper", allowing visitors to experience the feeling of being the cover of textile factory weekly. All visitors need to do is pick up their phones to take photos and share them with their fingers. The interesting text around the mirror is not only an emphasis on the textile factory, but also reflects the local nature of art. Like "Yarn Game in the Metaverse", it also followed the trend, combining this work with the current trend to form a new style of retro trend.
(S)
Stitching (student-winning work)
Students: Zhu Junyao, Cheng Nuo (Shanghai Vocational College of Arts and Crafts)
Instructors: Liu Yi, Zhu Dahuang
Hand sewing is the skill of every clever woman in the past, and it also represents the predecessor of the M50 - the skill of the textile factory. With the baptism of time, the walls inside the old lane have natural cracks appeared on the walls. Combining sewing, yarn and cracks, the artist cleverly conceived the idea of stitching the cracks on the wall with painted yarn. It not only echoes the historical background of the M50 Creative Park, but also shows it to the visitors in this intuitive and easy-to-understand way. The work combines both fun and locality, and it takes no brick or tile to bring both textiles and art to life.
（M）
The Shape of Textiles
Author: Wang Jiaxiang
Material: Flag
The work uses several major textile factories in Shanghai as a source of inspiration for its creation. The silhouette forms of the main textile factories in Shanghai are expressed in a general way, converted into a graphic language, and the positive and negative shapes are used to process the shapes of the textile factories as negative and combined with the lane space. Layers of weaving fabrics are cut into silhouettes of each textile factory, and they are staggered and hung in the alley. Visitors can walk through the alley through the negative space of the textile factory silhouette, which can not only see the fantastic linkage of the major textile factories in Shanghai, but also feel immersed in the scene.
(N)
"Camera" (student award-winning work)
Student: Guo Yuchen (Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts)
At the end of the passage, there is a small exit leading to the outside, and the author has made this small passage into the style of the camera frame, subtly connecting the two spaces inside and outside. When a person walks into the aisle, the person becomes a frame scene, which is also a scene in the eyes of other audiences. The sense of space in the work is added to the sense of scale brought by the activities of people, which gives the visitor a more comprehensive and three-dimensional aesthetic feeling.
2. "Lane Classroom", with art and design universities, textile museums and M50 local residents tour group in the lane to carry out teaching linkage.
3. M50 "Lane Hall Public Art Competition" encourages students to practice and incubate with the creation of emerging artists.
4. "Lane Co-creation" invites the public to participate in creation through activities, so that the public can become the main body of art creators.
5. "Lane Library Co-construction Plan", collect albums and reading materials from M50 art centers, galleries and artists' studios, and build areas where tourists and the public can stay, rest and read in the lanes.
6. "Lane Hall Market" will invite amateurs of all ages, professions and multi-levels to cooperate with lifestyle experts.
Co-sponsor of the M50 "Lane Plan"
Public art curator
Liu Yi
Artist, university professor, public art curator
Fellow, IPA International Public Art Association. Director of Shanghai Creative Design Workers Association. He is a member of Shanghai Artists Association. Founder of 61CREATIVE. Former head of public art major and associate professor of Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts. External expert of Product Design College of Shanghai Vocational College of Arts and Crafts. Visiting Professor, School of Fine Arts and Design, Jimei University. Instructor of the "Bauhaus Classroom 2.0" course at the Cultural and Educational Section of the German Consulate General in Shanghai. Tutor of the workshop "Historical Heritage and Public Art" at the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences, Germany. Future Lab Art & Design Innovation Future Education Expo Workshop Instructor.
Consultant, NOTCH Nordic Chinese Arts Festival. Executive Design Leader of Sculpture at Shanghai World Expo Center. Head of the invitation exhibition "Shanghai Redesign" of Shanghai Art and Design Exhibition. Curator of Xintiandi "Lumiéres China Light and Shadow China" Light Art Festival. Curator of "Design Gas Station" and "Design Domain Movement" of Shanghai Art and Design Exhibition. Researcher of the Shanghai Seed Shanghai Project Public Art Program. Judge, Shanghai Student Design Art Competition. "The Practice of the Professional Education Model of Art Implantation in Medical Space and Exploration" won the second prize of the Shanghai Municipal Teaching Achievement Award. Instructor of basf material innovation workshop in Germany. Japan npo S-AIR is a resident invited artist. Artists-in-residence at Fosun Art Center. Artist-in-residence of A4 Art Museum in Luhu, Chengdu.
Through painting, sculpture, installation, video, performance and other forms of creation, he explores the topics and relationships between body and space, spirit and matter, individual and public, and the locality and sense of withdrawal of culture. His unique style of classical shapes and contemporary colors in his day-to-day digital paintings on mobile phones interprets his curiosity about life as well as his mythical imagination, personal memories and life experiences. It looks like a child's hand graffiti, but it strongly reveals the life experience of adult individuals, so that the audience has a strong sense of involvement. At the same time, he is interested in the narrative relationship between digital media, material materials and creative themes, and a large number of graphic or spatial art works have emerged in the context of daily life and social scene.
M50 Creative Park
M50 Creative Park, located at No. 50 Moganshan Road on the peninsula on the south bank of the Suzhou River, formerly known as Shanghai Chunming Textile Factory, is now a well-known cultural and artistic park and an important national industrial building in Shanghai.
It is the only remaining and most complete textile factory on the banks of the Suzhou River, consisting of more than 50 industrial buildings from various historical periods, condensing the history of the development of Shanghai's urban and industrial civilization from the end of the 19th century to the 1930s, and witnessing the transformation of national industry. ( Yu Wei)