Olympic Model Protest
The IHT reports: "Beijing will permit public protests inside three designated city parks during next month's Olympic Games, but demonstrators must first obtain permits from the local police and also abide by Chinese laws that usually make it nearly impossible to legally picket over politically charged issues. The arrangement announced Wednesday marks a break from normal practice in China's authoritarian political system and seems loosely modeled after protest zones created at previous Games and at many recent international political gatherings that have attracted large numbers of protesters. Liu Shaowu, director of security for Beijing's Olympics organizing committee, said Ritan Park, Beijing World Park and Purple Bamboo Park would be designated for protesters during the Games and that the approval process would be regulated by Beijing's public security bureau." It's not the control of public protest that is strange here, but one of the designated sites. The World Park is a model village which features 106 of the most famous landmarks from 14 countries and regions around the world. On one hand, this might seem a bizarre means of both trivialising and poilicing public protest by placing it in a what is essentially a global theme park. But perhaps there is something more to the idea of protest in a model village. After all, in places which like to think of themselves as 'free' the very same issue of control of public gathering is wrapped up the guise of security concerns. For UK readers, you might not be able to protest outside Downing Street, or in Parliament Square, but imagine a scenario where you could find yourself protesting outside a miniature simulation of these places. Perhaps, a media park delivering perfectly posed imagery for the nightly news - a protestors equivalent of Capricorn 1 - in which the moon landing is faked in an earth bound studio. Thus protestors in the World Park might embark on a range of varied protests: against whaling outside the Katzura Imperial Villa, or against the invasion of Iraq outside the White House - allowing the global stage of the Olympics to be used to address a whole range of global issues. Single-issue politics has never been so convenient! In the same spirit of simulated environments for protest, somebody missed a trick this year by failing to organise a May '68 convention at Paris, Las Vegas. Perhaps the operators of the World Park might like to invest in these figures from German model railway supply company, Preiser. That the World Park has already embedded alternative narratives is something explored in Zhang Ke Jias 2004 film 'The World The synopsis: "The World" is a theme park on the outskirts of Beijing, sixteen kilometers from the Chinese capital, designed around scaled representations of the world's famous landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower or the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The site is seen here not from the visitors' point of view but through the eyes of a few of its staff, lonely people, communicating poorly, a bit disillusioned with life, glittering for the tourists but dull and restricted as far as they are concerned. We meet, among others, pretty young dancer Tao and Taisheng, a security guard who is fond of her but not of personal commitment..."' which, according to IMDb is "An exploration on the impact of urbanization and globalization on a traditional culture".
Posted by anothersam at July 26, 2008 2:27 PM.
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More Scenes In Cartoon Deserta
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The Best New Building In London
Book Review: The Infrastructural City
The Michael Jackson Monument Design Competition
Now Showing: John Baldessari Sings Sol LeWitt
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Absurd Car Crashes: A Eulogy for J.G. Ballard
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This Concrete 'O': On Serotonin, the M25, and the Motorik Picturesque
Church of the Literal Narrative
Philadelphias Floating Architecture
Now Viewing: Married To The Eiffel Tower
Le Corbusiers Image Hoard: Poeme Electronique
Giant American Signs: Original Learning from Las Vegas Footage
Giant Soviet Signs Cut Into Forests
Bricks Melted Into Icicles: Napalm Decorative
C-Labs 'Unfriendly Skies' & 'Bootleg' Volume
2 The Lighthouse: Self Storage & Architectural Hallucinations
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Viva Sectional Cinematography!
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Geography in Bad, Festive Drag.
Simulations of Industry: High Tech Architecture and Thatcherism
From The Factory to the Allotment: Tony Wilson, Urbanist
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Ruburb-ric: The Ecologies of the Farnsworth House
Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham Redux
Acts of Un-Building: Timelapse Demolitions
Yard Filth: Next Years Hot Look
Stonehenge: A Black Hole At The Heart Of British Architecture
The Popemobile: Mechanised Robes & Motorised Architecture
The Secret Language of Surface
Information Fields: Agriculture as Media
My Bloody Valentine: Sound as Substance
A Cubist Copse: Gehrys Serpentine Pavilion
Spouting Off: Some Thoughts On The Fountainhead
Form Follows Dysfunction: Bad Construction & The Morality of Detail
Vintage Tradeshow Surrealism: International Grune Woche
Moving Houses: Buildings In Motion
Desktop Study: The Strange World of Sports Studio Design
Married to the Eiffel Tower: More Objectum Sexuals
60 Years of The Crazy Horse Memorial
Married to the Berlin Wall: "The Best and Sexiest Wall Ever Existed!"
Inflatable Icebergs: Sublimated Guilt Has Never Been So Fun
The Cinderella Effect: Phantom Architectures of Illumination
Two Deaths and a Retirement: The Strange Shape of British Architecture
If London Were Like New York: Antique Schizo-Manhattanism
If London Were Like Venice: Antique Geo-Poetic Speculations and Hydro-Fantasy
41 Hours in an Elevator: The Movie
NASA: Mapping the Moon with Sport
Lemon Squeezy: Design Tendencies after the Juicy Salif
The Nihilistic Beauty of Weapons Arranged in Patterns
Dogs: Britains Greatest Design Obsession
Detroit Sucks: The Motor Shows Last Gasp
Authentic Replicas: Football and the Franchising of Place
Folk Football: Landscape, Space and Abstraction
A Wishing Well with a Fat Up Pipe
The Camoufluers and the Day-Glo Battleship
Pseudoccino: Instant Coffee Foam
Blown Up: More Inflatable Military Stuff
On Christmas Trees, Folk Forests and Staples Office Supplies
Hampton Courts Shrouded Sculptures
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The Ghost of Christmas Futurism
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Kim Jong II, The Great Architect
Place Faking: Instant Heritage for the Thames Gateway
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Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham
In Search of Britains Vehicular History
Scary Suburbanism: Why Horror is at Home in the Suburbs
I Like Your Manifesto, Lets Put it to the Test-o
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Hollow Inside: Starbucks Foam and the Rise of Ambiguous Materials
Revisions to the Architecture of Hell
Crufts: Dogs, Design and Aesthetic Genetics
Eos Airlines: Executive Bubbles over the Atlantic
Google Earths Vertiginous Mapping
Church of the Ascension and Descension
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Reading Lines: Skateboarding and Public Space
Chris Cornish: Prototyping History
The Most Visited Location in the UK
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2000 Years of Non Stop Nostalgia. Or How Half Timbering Made Me Whole Again.
Backpeddling into the Future: The Historical-Futurism of British Architecture
Miss Selfridges' Feeling for Fake Snow. The Oxford St. Lights and Why We Need Artificial Winter
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Jeff Koons, Rem Koolhaas, Hans Ulrich Obrist at the Serpentine
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Imperfect Pitch - Football, Space and Landscape
Product Placement: Making the Impossible Possible
Suburban Growth: Matthew Moores Field of Dreams
Perfect Sound Forever: The Secret Function of High End Stereos
A Little Light Product Placement
Some Advice To A Young Designer
Useless Proclamations for a Beautiful City
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The Psychotic Utopia of the Suburbs and the Suburbanisation of War.
In a Lonely Place - Under Construction
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Football Pitch: Best of British
The First Cut is the Cheapest - Blenheim Palace: pop architecture that goes for the jugular
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Interview: Jeremy Deller & Alan Kane
An Incredible Smell of Roasting Coffee
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Everything Counts - The Sound of Geography Collapsing.
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