Curator Wei Wei Shannon visited New York City from May 15 to 19. During her trip, she visited many potential New York participants for the 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism \ Architecture, including: Liz Diller from Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto from Reiser+Umemoto, Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano from LOT-EK, Thomas Leeser from Leeser Architecture, Dan Wood from Work Architecture Company, Joseph Grima from Storefront for Art and Architecture and Jeffrey Johnson from Columbia University.

Wei Wei also visited the Center for Architecture in New York and met Olympia Kazi, director of the Institute for Urban Design, Andrew Gluckman, co-founder of People’s Architecture, to discuss the possible collaborations regarding the press conference and related events of the Biennale in New York City this November

At 2:00pm, May 22, 2009, Ou Ning made a presentation of the curatorial plan of 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism \ Architecture themed City Mobilisation to a number of young architects in Beijing Institute of Architectural Design. BIADUFo Studio organised the event.

The academic committee of 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Architecture \ Urbanism held the second meeting on April 25 in Shenzhen. Attendees included Wang Wei Jen, Bi Xuefeng, Yin Shuangxi, Wang Mingxian, Meng Yan, Lu Hong, Bernard Lim, Ivan Fu, Alvin Yip, Huang Weiwen (Biennale committee representative), the curatorial team, committee office staff, and some invited guests. The meeting was moderated by Sun Zhenhua, manager of Shenzhen Public Art Center. Chief curator Ou Ning reported on the current state of curatorial schedule, and two of our four curators — Pauline Yao and Wei Wei Shannon — introduced some of the tentative participants of the exhibition. Liang Jingyu, the exhibition designer, briefed us on his ideas about the spatial design. The academic committee responded to the presentations and has generated a lot of valuable comments and suggestions.

In the afternoon of the 25th, Ou, Yao, Shannon, Liang and Professor Feng Jiang from the School of Architecture, South China University of Technology went to survey the Civic Square — the main exhibition venue of the Biennale.

On April 26, 2009, the curatorial team and the committee office had an all-day meeting on several other topics, including the design of the Biennale's online platform, how to integrate various resources and to create viable marketing strategies, and the necessity of setting up a local research team. Liang went to meet with some local exhibition companies, and the team figured out the difference of function of the curatorial team (which is based in Beijing) and the committee office (in Shenzhen). Some potential Biennale participants also presented their initial proposals.

Beijing, April 20, 2009 — Ou Ning, the Chief Curator of 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism \ Architecture, joins the jury of this year’s Benesse Prize at the 53rd Venice Biennale.

Initiated by the Benesse Corporation in 1995, Benesse Prize is awarded to young artists who are opening new horizons outside the current paradigm with an experimental spirit. All the artists and works in the Biennale, including those in each pavilion and the special exhibitions, are open for consideration. The judging process is executed separately from the official judging, and a new jury group is organized for each Prize. Besides Ou Ning, this year’s jury consists of Hans Ulrich Obrist (Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programs, Director of International Projects, Serpentine Gallery), Tom Eccles (Executive director, Centre for Curatorial Studies), and Fram Kitagawa (General Director of Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial).

Past recipients of the Benesse Prize include Cai Guo-Qiang, Alexandros Psychoulis, Olafur Eliasson, Janet Cardiff, Georges Bures Miller, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Tacita Dean and Adel Abdessmed.

The Benesse Prize is a part of “NAOSHIMA: Art and Architecture Projects in the Seto Inland Sea” to be presented by Naoshima Fukutake Art Museum Foundation this June at the Venice Biennale. The event consists of a symposium, exhibition, the annual awarding of the Benesse Prize, and an overview of the latest projects by Tadao Ando, Kazuyo Sejima, and Ryue Nishizawa in the Seto Inland Sea area.

The symposium this year will be conducted on June 3, with theme of “how to revitalize the Naoshima and the Seto Inland Sea region by creating a cultural sphere based on architecture and art”. Guest speakers include architects Tadao Ando, Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa, and Hiroshi Sambuichi, as well as Soichiro Fukutake — the Chairman and CEO of Benesse Corporation. Francesco Dal Co, one of Italy's most prominent architectural historians, will be moderating the discussion.

The exhibition, which aims at a retrospective of the art projects in the Naoshima and the Seto Inland Sea area in the past twenty years, will run through June 7 to June 21. In addition to learning about art and architecture, visitors to the exhibition will have a chance to experience the area through the natural environment and local culture on the islands.

In the past editions, one of the features of the Benesse Prize was that the artist was chosen based on the understanding that he/she would be considered to create a commissioned work in Naoshima. Last time, the possible site for the commission was extended to Echigo-Tsumari. This year, it would be further extended to the seven islands in the Seto Inland Sea as part of the Setouchi International Art Festival, which will be launched in July 2010.

Click here to download the original press release by Benesse Corporation.

April 14-16, Ou Ning, Kong Yan and Xu Yijing went to Yi County in Anhui province to visit potential venues for Asia Ruralism conference, which is proposed as one of the pre-Biennale symposia in September .

From 3:00pm to 6:00pm, April 8, 2009, some architects and architectural jounalists from Beijing gathered at Beijing Angle Modern Art Gallery for a brainstorming meeting of the Biennale.

On March 17, 2009, the Shenzhen Public Art Centre officially changed its old name 'Shenzhen Sculpture Institute' to the current one on the naming ceremony. The Centre, which will serve as the operational unit for the Biennale, is the first state-level institution in China to include the term 'public art' in its name.

On March 16, 2009, the Biennale's Shenzhen office organised the first media briefing. Chief curator Ou Ning presented the theme and preliminary ideas to the press. A Q&A session ensued.

Hong Kong West Kowloon Waterfront Promenade.

Shenzhen Civic Square.

The underground exhibition space of the Civic Square.

The Civic Square was chosen as the main exhibition site for the Biennale. The Hong Kong West Kowloon Waterfront Promenade was recommended by the Biennale's Hong Kong committee as the main Hong Kong site. The chief curator Ou Ning spent three days from March 14 to 16 investigating the main sites and many of the tentative satellite sites, including Shenzhen Shatoujiao, Luohu Creative Culture Plaza, Shenzhen International Trade Building, Luohu Custom, Dongmen, MIXC, Shun Hing Square, Yuanling, CITIC Plaza, Gangxia, Shekou and Shenzhen University.

At 7:00pm, March 14, 2009, thirty or so Shenzhen architects and artists got together in the office of Urbanus Architecture and Design, nurturing ideas for the Biennale.

At 10:00am, March 14, 2009, Ou Ning had a meeting with the Hong Kong committee of the Biennale at Hong Kong Institute of Architects, Causeway Bay. The Hong Kong committee consists of three parties: Hong Kong Institute of Architects, Hong Kong Institute of Planners and Hong Kong Designers Association.

Click here to read Chief Curator Ou Ning's introductory essay about these photos, and don't miss Demery, Jr.'s Flickr page.

At 11:00am, February 12, 2009, the committee of 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Architecture \ Urbanism held the first work meeting. Attendees include Yan Xiaopei and Huang Guoqiang, being the vice mayor and the vice secretary-general of Shenzhen Municipal Government respectively, and other committee members representing Shenzhen's Planning Bureau, Culture Bureau, Fiscal Bureau, Propaganda Bureau, Shenzhen Media Group and Shenzhen University.

During the meeting, first, the office of the Biennale made a retrospective and summary of the 2007 Biennale and a report on the planning of the 2009 Biennale. Then, the committee made the decisions on several important issues including the exhibition sites and the budget of the Biennale, the cooperation between Shenzhen and Hong Kong and the new institution of the academic commission.

January 13, 2009, the Shenzhen and Hong Kong committees of the 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Architecture \ Urbanism, represented by Huang Weiwen, Sun Zhenhua, Kong Yan, Ivan Fu, Alice Yeung and Alvin Yip, held the first preliminary meeting with Ou Ning, chief curator of the Biennale in Shenzhen Planning Bureau. The meeting went over the issues such as the model of cooperation between Shenzhen and Hong Kong and the exhibition sites, theme, content and execution proposal of the Biennale.

BEIJING, January 10, 2009—After months of discussion and evaluation, the committee of Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism \ Architecture has selected Ou Ning as the chief curator for its third installment, due to be launched at the end of 2009 in Shenzhen, the coastal city in the South China known as the forefront of China’s economic reform, and the neighbouring Hong Kong.

Presented by the Shenzhen Municipal Government and produced by the city’s Planning Bureau and Culture Bureau, the Biennale is currently the only urbanism \ architecture-themed international biennale in China. The first two installments—curated by Yung Ho Chang, head of MIT’s Department of Architecture in 2005, and Ma Qingyun, dean of the University of South California School of Architecture in 2007—have focused respectively on the theme of ‘City: Open Door!’ and ‘COER: City of Expiration and Regeneration’. The 2007 exhibition was also extended beyond Shenzhen and was presented innovatively as a ‘Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale’. More than 200 architects, designers, artists and scholars were invited during the two exhibitions, which have established the Biennale as an once-every-two-year feast for the international scene of urbanism and architecture.

Taking ‘City Mobilisation’ as the curatorial point of departure, Ou is aiming at an exhibition that’s more accessible and engaging, while retaining the cutting-edge nature of its predecessors. The primary aim is to investigate the mode of operation and the organisation of social life in the context of contemporary urbanity. Large-scale symposia, conversation programmes and workshops promise to offer active platforms for stimulative thinking and discourse generating. An international team consisting of five curators from Europe, America and Asia will be working together with Ou to ensure the geographical diversity of the exhibition line-up. All exhibitions will be taking place in unconventional venues—which include important landmarks from different period of the two cities, for which multiple site-specific projects will be commissioned and carried out. The Biennale will also involve several retrospectives of individual architects, so as to complement the group-exhibition practice familiar to the international biennale circus and to offer in-depth case studies. Finally, as an attempt to stretch the concept of architecture exhibition beyond diagrams and mock-ups, a special ‘Architecture Tour’ programme will be prepared for the audience—who will be invited to register on the Biennale’s website for various architecture-oriented tours designed by travel agencies specifically for the exhibition—so that they can go to different Chinese cities to experience selected architecture projects by local and international architects.

Ou Ning’s cultural practices encompass multiple disciplines. As a curator, Ou Ning initiated the Get It Louder exhibition which tours in the major cities of China every two years and has become an important platform for young and innovative artists and designers from around the world. He’s also the commissioned curator of the sound art section in China Power Station, an exhibition presented by the Serpentine Gallery at London's legendary Battersea Power Station and then travelled to Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo and MUDAM, Luxembourg. As an artist, Ou is known for his involvement in urban research and his archive and documentary projects such as San Yuan Li (participant of the 50th Biennale di Venezia in 2003) and Da Zha Lan, sponsored by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes. He is a frequent contributor of various magazines, books and exhibition catalogues and has lectured around the world. In the late 1990s, he founded U-thèque, an independent film and video society. Later, he launched Alternative Archive, his personal studio as well as a platform for alternative cultural activities. He’s currently based in Beijing, China and is the Director of Shao Foundation, a non-profit organisation focused on cultural production and social engineering.

2009-1-10
E-flux publishes the first press release of 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism \ Architecture.

2009-1-4
Ou Ning and Kong Yan from the Biennale committee office meet in Beijing.

2008-12-30
Ou Ning, Zak Kyes and the design duo ‘Xiaomage + Chengzi’ meet up in Beijing to discuss the visual design of the Biennale.

2008-12-21
Ou Ning meets Biljana Ciric in Shanghai.

2008-12-16
Ou Ning meets Hans Ulrich Obrist at the office of Serpentine Gallery in London for cooperation possibilities on the academic conferences of the Biennale.

2008-12-16
Ou Ning visits the headquarter of Zaha Hadid Architects in London and talks with its vice director Woody Yao and exhibition coordinator Manon Janssen about collaboration on the Biennale.

2008-12-14
Ou Ning meets Beatrice Galilee and Zak Kyes in London to build the curatorial team of the Biennale.

2008-12-13
The representatives of the Shenzhen and Hong Kong committees of the Biennale meet in the office of Hong Kong Institute of Architects for collaboration issues.

2008-11-24
Ou Ning meets Pauline Yao in Beijing.

2008-11-21

Southern Metropolis Daily first reported the appointment of Ou Ning as the chief curator of the Biennale.

2008-11-20
Ou Ning meets with Rem Koolhaas, looking for collaboration on the academic conferences of the Biennale.

2008-11-16
Ou Ning meets with Jim Hollington, the director of British Council Guangzhou for collaboration possibilities.

2008-11-11
Ou Ning meets with Huang Weiwen from the Biennale committee secretariat and Kong Yan from the Biennale committee office and inspects the exhibition sites in Shenzhen.

2008-10-27
The Biennale committee issues the official commission certificate of preliminary curatorial work to Ou Ning.

2008-10-18
Ou Ning and Kong Yan from the Biennale committee office meet in Beijing.

2008-08-15
The three curator nominees, Jang Jun, Du Juan and Ou Ning are invited to present their curatorial proposals to the Biennale academic committee in Shenzhen. Ou Ning’s proposal ‘City Mobilisation’ stands out as the top choice by winning the most votes of the ballot on the very day.

2008-07-23
The Biennale academic committee called an impromptu conference to have a preliminary selection of proposals and candidates for the Biennale curator appointment. Three candidates are nominated and get the interviews.

2008-05-17
The representatives of the Biennale committees from Shenzhen and Hong Kong meet in Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Urban Planning to summarise the achievements of the 2007 edition of the Biennale.

2008-01-31
The committee of Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism \ Architecture launches open recruitment for the curator of the 2009 installment of the Biennale.