Hasta La Ideas

Our interview with Li Daiguo on the band’s experimental mix of tradition and ceremony

One of the most interesting phenomena to hit Chinese avant-garde music is The Tea Rockers Quintet—a tea ceremony performed by master Lao Gu and accompanied by the all-stars of Chinese contemporary music: contemporary folk singer Xiao He, China’s top noise artist Yan Jun, academic guqin player Wu Na and the young and talented instrumentalist, Li Daiguo. Together they create a mesmerizing blend of traditional instruments, vocalisms, noise music, and harmonious movement.

We recently had the chance to talk with Li Daiguo (aka Douglas Lee)—the ensemble’s eclectic musician and gifted solo performer—just before the release of their first album “Ceremony.”

How was the idea of the Tea Rockers Quintet born?

Yan Jun was invited to participate in a Swiss cultural/arts festival in 2010 and he put us together for two shows that went well. That was probably the catalyst for making us decide that this is a long-term project. Before that, we were all friends and had played together in various formations as duos and trios etc., but nothing regular like the Tea Rockers had become.

You have different styles and backgrounds, how do you work together?

We all love new music, different kinds of Chinese traditional music, improvisation, nature and each other. Finding the right blend is a matter of mutual listening and enjoying each others’ sounds. Musicians are often regularly getting new ideas or developing new skills and techniques, so it’s really important to improvise together to listen to who a person is and what they are saying at that moment and not be stuck in some image you have of their identity or who they should be based on your past experiences with them.

You started playing piano and violin when you were five years old. Where does your passion for music come from?

I trained in different kinds of classical music for years before I realized it was a form of expression that really works for me. It has become an important practice for me, and one of the guiding things in my life because it is such an integral part of how I keep learning more about my body and consciousness and other important things.

In your work you’ve been exploring several music traditions from all over the world—what contributed the most to shape your own style?

Western classical music and the classical musics of the erhu and pipa were huge influences early on in terms of technique. Later I studied bluegrass, played a lot of heavy metal, and was getting into different kinds of new music. Aesthetically I am really touched by so many different sounds, but I would say in recent years I have been influenced most by Shona music of Zimbabwe and different music from Mali. Of course I am still practicing 5-8 hours a day, so my ideas and techniques are still developing.

You grew up in Oklahoma and you studied in San Diego, why did you decide to leave the U.S. and come back to China?

Since I was young and was interested in erhu and other things about Chinese tradition, I was attracted to the idea of coming to China to live. My father is a pretty spiritual person and is really interested in Daoism and Buddhism, and that had some influence on me for sure. By the time I moved to Sichuan in 2004 I was already very interested in different kinds of spiritual practices, so one of the things in my mind in coming was to get closer to some of those traditions. When I arrived and stayed for a year there were so many doors opened and so many possible roads to go down I just decided to stay and eventually built my life here.

Released on 4 April 2012, The Tea Rockers Quintet’s debut album “Ceremony” is now available through Amazon and iTunes.

Mongolian sartorialists and military simplicity in an avant-garde collection

Decoster Concept is a new design project created by Ziggy Chen (Chinese: Chen Xiang), a well-known fashion designer from Shanghai and founder of Decoster. Decoster Concept is a high level, conceptual label launched in the second half of 2011. The creative research behind the project, the attentive selection of fabrics and the limited number of pieces for each garment make Decoster Concept one of the most exclusive brands in China.

In a new, dark, warehouse-like space in Beijing’s North Village, contemporary minimalism is mixed with different sources of inspiration: Inner-Mongolia’s desolate, windy grasslands and sartorial culture meet the austerity of military uniforms. Monks, herders, soldiers—all icons of a strict simplicity that breaks the often baroque standards of commonplace Chinese style. Colors disappear and give way to a game of light and darkness that recalls the concept of taoist duality and interdependency.

At the same time, in the lines and carefree look of the garments lies the concept of traveling, wandering to remote lands and the inspiring power of vast empty places. This trend to simplicity and a specific inclination to fine craftsmanship seems to be the key elements of what could be the future of Chinese style, a style with ancient roots that has been covered by a century of turmoil and by decades of frenzied development.

See more of Decoster Concept in their SS12 Collection runway show.

Decoster Concept

224/2F No.6 Building

123 Nong, Xingye Rd

Luwan District (xintiandi), Shanghai

and

NLG-01, 02, North Village

No.11 Sanlitun Road

Chaoyang District, Beijing

Lucie & Simon nous propose de découvrir leur série de photographies appelée “Silent World”. En effaçant des clichés de grandes places de New York et Paris ou encore en Chine et Italie tout signe de circulation et de vie, le rendu à découvrir en images et vidéos impressionne.

Previously on Fubiz

• Winkler + Noah Photography
• New Works by Li Wei
• Brice Portolano

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Slideshow: this museum in Xinjin, China, by Japanese architects Kengo Kuma and Associates appears to be screened by rows of floating tiles.

The traditional local tiles are in fact stretched tautly around the building on wire strings, shading the glazed exterior from direct sunlight.

Located at the entrance to a holy Taoist site, the Xinjin Zhi Museum accommodates religious exhibitions within a continuous gallery that spirals up through three floors.

The building’s staggered frame is constructed from concrete and angles in different directions to create a series of pointed edges and cantilevers.

Pools of water surround the museum, some of which are contained behind the tiled screens.

Other recent projects by Kengo Kuma and Associates include a ceramics showroom and a Starbucks coffee shop – see them both and more here.

Here’s some more text from the architects:

Xinjin Zhi Museum

This pavilion is located at the foot of Laojunshan mountain in Xinjin, to usher in the people to the holy place of Taoism, while the building itself shows the essence of Taoism through its space and exhibitions.

The tile used for façade is made of local material and worked on in a traditional method of this region, to pay tribute to Taoism that emphasizes on nature and balance. Tile is hung and floated in the air by wire to be released from its weight (and gain lightness). Clad in breathing façade of particles, the architecture is merged into its surrounding nature.

The façade for the south is divided into top and bottom and staggered in different angles. This idea is to respond to two different levels of the pond in front and the street at the back, and avoid direct confrontation with the massive building in the south.

For the east side, a large single tile screen is vertically twisted to correspond with the dynamism of the road in front. The façade for the north side is static and flat, which faces the pedestrians’ square. Thus the tile screen transforms itself from face to face, and wraps up the building like a single cloth.

Taking advantage of the varied levels in the architecture’s surroundings, the flow is planned to lead people from the front to the back, motion to stillness, like a stroll type of garden.

The exhibition space inside is planned spiral moving from darkness to light. From the upper floor a paramount view of Laoujunshan can be enjoyed. Direct sunlight is blocked by the tile, and the interior of the building is covered with gentle light with beautiful particle-like shade.

Project name: Xinjin Zhi Museum
Client: Fantasia group

Location: Cheng du, china
Principal use: Museum

Site area: 2,580 sqm
Building Area: 787 sqm

Total floor area: 2,353 sqm
Stories: 3 stories, 1 basement

Design: Kengo Kuma & Associates
Structural engineers: Oak Structural Design Office

Mechanical engineers: P.T.Morimura & Associates,LTD
Design period: 2008 October – 2009 December

Construction period: 2010 January – 2011 December
Structural: Reinforced concrete, partly steel flame

Concrete walls twist up through the interior of this tea house and library that Shanghai architects Archi-Union have constructed in the backyard of their studio.

Constructed from timber-formed concrete, the two-storey building has a glass facade.

A triangular first-floor balcony projects from this facade and wraps around the branches of an existing tree.

The contorted concrete walls inside the building conceal a lounge and reading room behind the ground-floor tea room, plus a staircase leading to the library above.

Other interesting projects from Shanghai include an MC Escher-inspired clothes store and a cave-like bar – see all our stories about Shanghai here.

Photography is by Zhonghai Shen.

Here’s some more from the architects:

Tea House, J-Office

The Tea House, located in the backyard of Archi-Union’s J-office, is constructed from the salvaged parts of the original warehouse’s collapsed roof. The site was extremely constricted with walls on three sides, and with only one side facing towards an open space that contains a pool. The space was further restricted by a mature tree. The design tries to embody harmony by integrating enclosure and openness, delightful space and logical construction and other complicated relations. This building reacts to the site’s environment; the plan layout is a logically obscure quadrilateral, thus maximizing the amount of space. It is divided into three parts. A covered public area is formed towards the open space with the pool, with an enclosed tea house at ground level and library on the first floor where a small triangular balcony extends around the existing tree. Other more private spaces exist such as a lounge, reading room and service room which are arranged towards the rear of the building; a delightful transitional space was created to connect the public space and the private spaces.

The transitional space was designed around a twisted nonlinear hexahedron staircase, which connects the functional spaces. The stair resolves the vertical transportation issue from the tea house and the library and provides an inner courtyard near the reading room for viewing the existing tree. The space was designed to bring a new experience to an ordinary functional space. Linear space suddenly changes into an expressive form, surging from the tea house then transforming into a tranquil space for the library on the floor above, making the reading room a special place to sit.

The volume is a three-dimensional irregular shape which is impossible to be understood through plans. The twisting shape was designed by scripting in Grasshopper an algorithmic plug-in for Rhino. However such a shape is difficult to translate into quantifiable information for guiding construction. The constraints of manual construction obliged us to invent solutions at the time of construction to realize the advanced digital design with local low-tech construction techniques. Firstly we abstracted the structural skeleton which was subsequently scanned with digital software. This curved shape was then recalculated through interlacing straight lines; these lines were then formed into ruled surfaces filling the void. The spacing was set to the dimension of timber, thus the digital ‘setting out’ could be easily translated into a manually constructible shape.

A 1:1 timber framework was produced by following the same logic as the digital model; a subdivided timber shuttering covered this framework to create a curved formwork. The formwork was built through a series of upper and lower layers according to the construction sequence. The casting was almost the same as ordinary concrete casting, reinforced with re-bars following the straight lines of the ruled surface. Concrete casting after the reinforced bar was completed by manual labor and the final physical effect was achieved. The traces of the timber formwork remained imprinted on the poured concrete after construction, with quality defects such as bubbles, adhesive failures and re-bar exposure present due to the manual construction – defects, however, that are obscured by the unique curved shape. Although there are errors of in the formwork, planning and manual casting the combination of digital design and low-tech manual construction provided a great opportunity to study the possibilities of digital architecture.

Location: No. 1436 Jungong Road, Yangpu District, Shanghai
Area: approx 300 sqm
Design: March, 2010 – August, 2010
Construction: August, 2010 – May, 2011
Architect: Archi-Union Architects
Chief Designer: Philip F. Yuan
Design Team: Alex Han, Fuzi He