http://www.artreview.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1474022%3ABlogPost%3A147624
http://www.island6.org
It's a familiar story in any city in the world: artists are at the vanguard of gentrification, turning once drab or dangerous neighbourhoods into the next real estate honey pot, with prices eventually rising beyond the reach of those who brought the honey in the first place. Shanghai is currently suffering from a particularly virulent and violent strain of gentrification – a second wave in fact, fuelled by 2010 Expo-induced real estate speculation, the rapid demolition of low-rent warehouse space for malls and apartments, and the government's imposition of pricey 'Creative Clusters'.
Shanghai boasts a good number of fairly centrally located art hubs: 696 Weihai Lu, Moganshan Lu (also called M50) and the city's original 'art street', Taikang Lu – where the few remaining galleries are engulfed in a sea of boutiques. M50, the heir apparent to Taikang Lu, is now also facing steep increases in rent and an influx of fancy new shops, foretastes of art-flight to the suburbs – and beyond.
Shanghai seems to be following Beijing's model of far flung artist communities, but while many Beijingers own their own cars, Shanghai has yet to catch the auto bug. Newer developments such as Wuwei Creative Space or Number Five Fiber Factory, a former textile manufacturing compound, are a good 20 km from the city centre by expressway and take an hour and a half to reach by public transportation – a pilgrimage that is enough to test the devotion of even the most fervent art lovers. This creeping 'suburbification' puts Shanghai's art scene in danger of becoming more of an exchange between gallery and collector, rather than a dialogue with the greater public.
Shanghai's most renowned art compound, M50, nestled snugly in a bend of the wiggling Suzhou Creek, was a textile factory until 1999 when galleries such as BizART, ShanghART, Eastlink and ArtSEA Gallery moved into units in the buildings, along with artists such as Ding Yi and Zhou Tiehai moved in. Back then, the property owners charged $0.08 per square metre per day, which worked out to a bargain $255 a month for a 100 square metre space. In the past five years though, ArtSEA for one has seen its rent more than double, and most spaces now rent for $0.34 – 0.57. There are rumours of another hike this summer, which would take rents to around $3,000. That would be a 1,076 per cent increase in the space of five years. Though certain prestige tenants like painter Ding Yi still enjoy preferential rates, the latecomers, who are already paying $0.34-0.57, are getting worried.
M50 is at the centre of a complex web of real estate manoeuvring. Butting up against the back of M50 compound is another group of buildings, M120, also owned by the M50 people but managed by another group. In M120 stands the old Foo Sing Flour Mill, a gorgeous, four storey brick and beam structure isolated in scrubland, which is home to the collective Island6. Across the Suzhou Creek lies a massive residential compound called Brilliant City, and the investors are in desperate need of tenants for their scores of empty units. In an attempt to increase the desirability of the neighbourhood, the planners claimed the old flour mill across the river, and began work on plans to enclose it in a glass dome and construct a park – all to create a better view for their tenants. "They say they are building a museum but it was just to get us out of the space," says Thomas Charveriat, Island6's founder. "If it was going to be a museum, I would be very happy to go as it is for the good of everyone, but they are turning it into a park" – and Brilliant City already has parks in abundance.
Construction workers began to move in, built dormitories and even barricaded the entrance to Island6 with a corrugated steel fence that Charveriat had to drive his car through one night just to get out. When word got out that Island6 was being harassed out of its lease, several tenants at Moganshan got spooked and inquired about other spaces in the city. Ironically, artists who find M50 too expensive are moving to Brilliant City, which is offering unfinished apartments for around $450. In the past few years the artists Song Tao, Shi Yong and Liang Yue have all set up shop in the soulless apartment blocks.
Those looking for more character have gone to what many think will be the next M50, 696 Weihai Lu. The space, originally a private residence, has had numerous incarnations as an opium den, weapons factory and car parts warehouse, and is now home to around 30 studios and a couple or three galleries. But like Taikang Lu and M50, its fate is uncertain. The property was under the influence of former Shanghai party secretary, Chen Liangyu, who is currently under house arrest, and since Chen is no longer in the picture, the management will only sign leases for two years. On top of this, its downtown location makes it a key target for developers.
Such was the fate of the ddm Warehouse and Aura Gallery, two keystones of the Shanghai contemporary art scene. They were housed in large warehouse on Dongdaming Lu, north of the Bund, but recently the whole neighbourhood was demolished. Aura moved to a warehouse on Yangshupu Lu in the northeastern district of Yangpu, a good 45-minute taxi ride from downtown – a space so far off the map that only serious collectors would make the trek.
The problem is compounded by the upcoming 2010 Expo, for which large neighborhoods along Huangpu River are also being demolished. Nearly 20,000 households and businesses are on the move and looking for cheap rent. The 5.3 sq km Expo park area was home to a number of steel plants and warehouses, all of which are now looking for new space.
Adding to the real estate crunch is the Shanghai Creative Industry Centre, which has developed 75 mixed-use compounds, or 'Creative Clusters', since 2005. Though these clusters receive tax incentives, these newly renovated factory spaces offer little in the way of cheap rent. They cater mostly to design, architecture and advertising firms, and eat up low rent space downtown. Clusters such as Red Town (Shanghai Sculpture Space) and 1933, a strikingly converted abattoir, feature a mixture of everything from architecture firms to nightclubs. They are renting out studio and gallery space for $1.70-2.30, which works out to $6,857 for a 100 square metre space. "That might be okay for New York, where the market is more developed and you have a steady stream of buyers, but not for Shanghai", says Guido Mologni, an Italian art advisor who has been searching for the past six months for a gallery space.
At the same time landlords are hesitant to sign long-term contracts in the event that prices rise even further. As Island6 experienced, a contract offers little protection. Landlords frequently renege and the legal system which is intertwined with the government and the developers does little to protect the rights of tenants. For a small gallery with a short-term contract and renovation costs, the artists on show have to help them recoup those costs. "With a year contract and a month of renovation, what kind of art are you going to show there? You are not going to show anything out of the ordinary, not one young artist. It's not good for contemporary in art in Shanghai", says Charveriat.
Experimental art in China has little in the way of a support network: there are few foundations, and the largest funding body, the Shanghai Cultural Development Foundation, invests mostly in either commercially successful, non-controversial artists or bringing big name boxed shows of western artists to Shanghai.
The real estate situation has become so precarious that Charveriat thought of housing his gallery in a boat, the kind that usually ferries tourists up the Huangpu. Sadly the owners were asking an astronomical rent. Perhaps Charveriat and all the others should build themselves an ark, one where they could live unmolested by the tempests of the market and the whims of the government.
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