陆 正 Zen Lu (born 1977) is an electronic musician, sound artist, and founder of We Play! Records and curator of Neo Sound art collective. He is also the initiator of the cross-cultural music exchange project “ChoP” between China and Poland and an N2 New Media Art Group member. Lu resides and works in Shenzhen, China.
He has participated in various international art and music festivals and exhibitions, including the SAND Festival (Hong Kong), The New Vision Arts Festival (Hong Kong), Clandestino Festival (Sweden), Moving Closer International New Media Festival (Poland), Get it Louder (Beijing), the Urbanism\Architecture Bi-City Biennale of Shenzhen and Hong Kong, Soundreach (Canada), Architecture is Art Festival (Hong Kong), Future Music In Balancity (German Pavilion at Shanghai Expo), the 8th Shanghai Biennale, Beijing International Design Week, German-Chinese Jazz Improvise Meeting Festival, CO-SOUND Performance Festival, Macau BOK Festival, the WRO Media Art Biennale, Shenzhen Times: Shenzhen Contemporary Art Archive Exhibition, Glow Shenzhen, and Topologie of the Real Techne Shenzhen 2023. Institutions where he has performed or exhibited include OCAT Shenzhen, Hua Art Museum, Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning, Centro Cultural de Macau, Stora Teatern in Gothenburg, Poland Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Poland WRO Art Center, Brno House of Arts, Schleifmühlgasse Gallery, and others.
About Project “BYE SICK ZONE”
The Disappearing Village
As the most significant urban village in Shenzhen, Baishizhou is where almost the most extensive and condensed self-built housing resides in the central city of Shenzhen. On a 6-square-kilometer land, approximately 2,527 buildings or 50,473 rental units exist, in which around 140,000 people (peaking at nearly 300,000 at a particular moment) live. For example, a family of three lives together in an under 10 square meter apartment. It is a warren seemingly unorganized but orderly and functional with a second and careful look.
The Shenzhen typical life pattern continues outside of Baishizhou, yet the diverse population residing inside this area constructs the base of this city. Due to rapid urbanization, Baishizhou is now facing demolition and will soon disappear, perhaps only remaining as a part of the city’s history and people’s recalled memories. Baishizhou is a microcosm of contemporary China.
Through visual and mixed-media installation art, Lu recreates the crowded, noisy, yet vibrant and worldly scenes of Baishizhou within a designated space.
FANCY LUO: When did you start paying attention to Baishizhou, and what is your connection with the area?
ZEN LU: It was 2012 when I started paying attention to this area and began work on several onsite audio recordings. I do not tie to this area for any reason – I have never lived there. It is one of the city villages in Shenzhen, known for its intricate migration composition and disorderly living environment. Compared to others, it is more noticeable and recognizable in public due to its geographic location. It has attracted many in the central city due to the convenient transportation, affordable rent, and low-cost living expenses, becoming the first stop for many people who ventured into Shenzhen ten or twenty years ago. Baishizhou has vibrant sound samples characterized by unique social dynamics from field study and recording points of view. That’s what draws me in and inspired my work.
FL: Why did you choose field recordings as your creative methodology?
ZL: It is the method I am most familiar with and skilled at. It is related to my background and identity. In addition to Baishizhou, I have used field recordings for many other projects.
FL: Could you discuss your understanding of this artwork and share your thoughts on art-making practice?
ZL: Due to city urbanization and commercial development, Baishizhou has already begun the process of demolition. For many Shenzhen residents who share connections with it, this is where a vital memory is attached. As physical spaces disappear, many memories and emotions will inevitably fade. Some leave notes of the place through images, videos, or texts – I record it with sound naturally as a local sound artist. Baishizhou contains memories of couples of generations – regardless of whether they leave or stay eventually, it is where immigrants from all over the country gather. Some immigrants settle down and give birth to the next generation. To Shenzhen city, they are the solid foundation of its development, ordinary yet extraordinary. As the demolition progresses, where they go is another complicated social issue. I have always used a discreet approach to onsite recordings, with distance, and to capture veracity.
FL: The font design of “BYE SICK ZONE” is unique. Does the design have any connection to the regional characteristics of Baishizhou?
ZL: In October 2018, I was invited by the British Council to participate in the Musicity project, for which I chose Baishizhou. Because of this project, my field recordings of Baishizhou were transformed into a formal piece of art named BYE SICK ZONE. In May 2019, based on the previous field recordings, I invited Zhao Fei to collaborate on visual creation. Together, we created a video and sound installation, which was selected for the 18th WRO Media Art Biennale. I invited Wang Lingyuan, a talented designer from Shenzhen, to design the end credits font for this artwork. We found a small shop in the village of Baishizhou that specializes in hand-carved signage and used this technique to create the font. The inspiration for the font design comes from the old-fashioned engraved characters commonly seen on the streets of Hong Kong. It is believed that only four craftsmen now possess this skill, and just like Baishizhou, it is gradually disappearing. Designing a font in such a manner holds a sentimental significance and reflects the locality I desired. All these elements are interconnected.
FL: When “BYE SICK ZONE” was exhibited in international art exhibitions, did you receive any exciting feedback from viewers?
ZL: What happened in Baishizhou is highly representative. Thousands of people migrated quickly, which is extremely rare worldwide. It is a microcosm of our era. When exhibited in Wroclaw, Poland, the organizer invited me to share my concept and experience behind this work in a forum. The audience saw the scenes of Baishizhou as normal before its formal demolition and the emergence of empty buildings. However, after understanding the entire project, they were deeply moved. In fact, the Baishizhou story has similarities with Wroclaw, which also experienced a large-scale migration after World War II. However, their reasons were political, while commercial interests primarily drive ours.
Other selected work:
- BETTER LIFE
NOTE:
In September 2010, Isaac Julien edited his nine-screen video installation work Wave into a 55-minute film titled Better Life. This film was selected for screening in the Horizons section of the 67th Venice Film Festival and starred Maggie Cheung and Tao Zhao.
Director Isaac Julien invited Chinese musician Zen Lu and Polish musician Grzegorz Bonjanek to collaborate on the film’s soundtrack. In October 2010, Better Life participated in the 8th Shanghai Biennale as the opening film. Isaac Julien invited Zen Lu and Grzegorz Bojanek to Shanghai to create a brand-new soundtrack for the film on-site.
2. TOPOLOGIE OF REAL TECHNE SHENZHEN
1# performance
New media artist Deng Yuejun has constructed a multidimensional natural landscape through mechanical movement and light. His five pieces of work from different periods overlap and reconfigure within the same space, presenting a surreal mechanical “forest” spectacle. Deng Yuejun draws most of her creative inspiration from nature, which aligns with my long-standing approach to sound art making. I will use the sounds and signals generated in real-time by the movements of her works as the source for the performance, creating a resonance that is in dialogue with her works. From a sonic perspective, I will observe and explore the relationships between humans and machines, society and technology, and technology and ecology within the same time and space.
2# performance
I have chosen the representative work Dialogue (1995) by artist Wang Gongxin, to reconstruct the “dialogue space” through the vibrations of sound and the refraction of light.
*all videos are kindly presented by the artist
