A zine showcasing performance, drawing and installation artwork made as a result of the collaboration between Daniel Miller and Qiu Wenqing at the Shangyuan Arts Residency in 2017.

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Shangyuan Art Museum is a museum and art residency in the countryside of the northern Beijing greater metropolitan area. When it was originally inaugurated, it was apparently supported by a large government endowment, gave monetary support to artists and hosted a full curatorial staff. Then, sometime around 2007, a poet in residency published work which was interpreted as critical of the government. As a result, the residency was ransacked, and lost it's funding, power and water supply. As a result, the residency gradually dwindled and all staff except for the chairwoman had to be let go. The website was left as a representation of the previous success of the residency, and very little information was given to artists who applied. 

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When Daniel arrived to take part in the residency in 2017, he was surprised to discover a modern art museum with a massive collection mouldering in what was essentially a post-abandonded building. In this rural corner of Beijing, chinese artists were farming the grounds, making art with what they could and showing works to each other, almost completely without any support or management. Vines and dust were growing into the rooms, where one could still find pinned to the walls, the business cards of the critics, gallerists and preperators who once worked there. Active security cameras, still powered, were strategically placed around the grounds.

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People at the residency were hesitant to discuss the history of the place, and the information above is entirely hearsay and retellings, and the result of snooping around the grounds.

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Qiu Wenqing(邱文青）is a performance artist from Chengdu, China. During their concurrent residency, Daniel and Qiu collaborated deeply in spontaneous movement, bricolage and exploration of the inherent pain and difficulty of the place that they were occupying. Above is the zine created as a documentation of the works they did together in 2017.

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More of 邱文青's work here