Research and Other Investigations from China

Counterfeit Paradises in the Media

Counterfeit Paradises is seeing a lot of play this year. So far it was featured in Bloomberg Businessweek in the United States, Wired in the United Kingdom, and Sonntagsblick Magazine in Switzerland. A big Stern feature will also show up in Germany sometime in the coming months. More importantly, I am in the midst of speaking to a number of publishers about a Counterfeit Paradises book. Hopefully more details will become apparent in the near future. Otherwise, check out an updated description of the project as well as an expanded cut here.

Given the choice between a good hell and a counterfeit paradise, what will people choose? Whatever you say, many people will believe that a counterfeit paradise has got to be better than a good hell. Though at first they recognize that the paradise is bogus, they either don’t dare or wish to expose it as such. As time passes, they forget that it’s not real and actually begin to defend it, insisting that it’s the only paradise in existence.” – Chan Koonchung

China’s grand development plan continues to grow at an unrelenting pace. It is undoubtedly the largest infrastructure buildout in the history of mankind. However, too much is at stake to slow down such a gargantuan economic force, even as cracks appear in it across the country. Pollution, relentless traffic, and corruption are now a daily part of urban life. Counterfeit Paradises explores these cracks through the “harmonious” cities and sites of leisure emerging throughout China. Such locations are shaping a greater architecture of materialism that gives rise to unsustainable consumer patterns. A billion more people in China cannot live in the same manner as urbanites in American and Europe. The pooled natural resources of the planet could not bear it. For now the Chinese nouveau riche partake in an imagined space of contentment even as reassuring political rhetoric regarding the trappings of their “modern” lifestyles wears thin. This fantasy plays out in many spaces: newfangled municipal districts, communist heritage sites, amusement parks, cultural institutions, and themed luxury residential developments. They all serve to prop up a consumer paradigm that is increasingly important to the short-term economic growth of China but detrimental to its long-term sustainability. The hopes and dreams of many are woven into such spurious ventures, even if in practice many of them remain underused. These fanciful but alienating terrains are the Counterfeit Paradises of China.

Clippings from the Counterfeit Paradises project investigating urban development and leisure habits in China.

Clippings from the Counterfeit Paradises project investigating urban development and leisure habits in China.

Clippings from the Counterfeit Paradises project investigating urban development and leisure habits in China.

Clippings from the Counterfeit Paradises project investigating urban development and leisure habits in China.

Clippings from the Counterfeit Paradises project investigating urban development and leisure habits in China.

Clippings from the Counterfeit Paradises project investigating urban development and leisure habits in China.

Clippings from the Counterfeit Paradises project investigating urban development and leisure habits in China.

Counterfeit Paradises: Minsk World Aircraft Carrier Theme Park

Tourists pose in front of the Minsk World aircraft carrier theme park.

Chinese nationalism continues to peak with the country’s emerging status as a world power, even if its military technology remains decades behind other nations. In 2012 the People’s Liberation Army christened its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, which in actuality is a retrofitted Soviet aircraft carrier, the Varyag. Right now the Liaoning is still years away from being fully operational. It was only recently that a Chinese-manufactured J-15 fighter jet successfully landed on and took off from the aircraft carrier. In open battle the Liaoning would be a large, rather useless, sitting target, but symbolically it is still very potent. Such ex-Soviet aircraft carriers also see other uses in China, including the Minsk, which is now part of the Minsk World military theme park near Shenzhen. Here Chinese patrons can wander exhibits extolling the prowess of the People’s Liberation Army and indulge in other martial fantasies. It is the perfect place to fantasize about China’s future military potential, especially with all the saber rattling occurring over the Diaoyu Islands.

A couple poses for wedding photographs on the deck of the Minsk World aircraft carrier theme park.

An attendent walks off the Minsk World aircraft carrier theme park.

Tourists inspect the deck of the Minsk World aircraft carrier theme park.

A tourist poses in front of a fake naval backdrop in a hold on the Minsk World aircraft carrier theme park.

An attendent takes a nap in the cafe at the Minsk World aircraft carrier theme park.

Old military aircraft pepper the deck of the Minsk World aircraft carrier theme park.

A stage set up on the deck of the Minsk World aircraft carrier theme park.

Highrises stand along the shoreline across from the Minsk World aircraft carrier theme park.

Visions of Modernity at Fahey/Klein Gallery

Matthew Niederhauser's Visions of Modernity exhibition installed at Fahey/Klein Gallery

It is with great pleasure that I announce the opening of my first solo exhibit at the Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles. The show delves into work from my Visions of Modernity project, exploring the unsustainable nature of urban development and consumerism in China. It also features new pieces printed on tarps that run up to 32 feet in length. I am very excited about the installation. It will be open until October 20, 2012 so please check it out if you are in the Los Angeles area. Here is the press release from the gallery:

MATTHEW NIEDERHAUSER
Visions of Modernity

September 6 through October 20, 2012

The Fahey/Klein Gallery is proud to present Matthew Niederhauser’s unique vision of China’s consumer awakening, Visions of Modernity. Comprised of four distinct series, this extraordinary documenting of Beijing’s rapid social, economic, and technological development in the first decade of the 21st century highlights the unique and idiosyncratic directions of China’s unprecedented growth into, as Niederhauser calls it, China’s “Gilded Age.” As a new capitalist ethos pervades Chinese culture, Niederhauser’s Visions of Modernity documents the complex, fraught, and often-ironic stages of this epic transformation.

“Megablocks,” the first series in the project, examines the formation of a new Beijing surrounding the capitol’s former imperial core, and with it, a new vision of modern China. Megablocks form as huge swaths of land are fashioned into towering apartment high-rises interwoven with malls and public spaces. Once built, they form distinct urban islands, bounded by grand avenues and hemmed in by larger highways. Their imposing and monotonous facades mark an elaborate transformation of social practices that continues to occur at an alarming pace across the city.

As megablocks become the status quo across Beijing, they not only drastically reshape the city, but also the manner in which people consume. In 2006, Ikea opened a massive 430,000 square foot location in Beijing, currently the third largest in the world. Stimulated by the construction boom and the increasingly materialistic nature of today’s China, Beijing proved fertile ground for Ikea’s economical but trendy furnishing. In “Homes,” the second series in Visions, shoppers’ desirous looks and gestures abound as they settle into couches, armchairs, and beds, “living” in Ikea’s numerous showrooms. Each photograph suspends the customers in their appropriated Ikea environments, as if they were in their own residences. Here, newfound nesting habits shaped by megablocks are satisfied.

In the new Beijing economy, no one wants to be a pedestrian, and vehicle purchases in China surpassed the United States for the first time in 2009. The biennial Beijing International Automotive Fair is ground zero for the consumer frenzy and ostentatious materialism of hundreds of thousands of Chinese car enthusiasts. Manufactures gather to capitalize on the seemingly insatiable demand for automobiles. Provocatively styled models strike poses in every booth while eager new consumers clamor to take a seat in their favorite vehicle in the giant exhibition halls. Niederhauser’s “Cars” series epitomizes the praxis of China’s reification and fetishism enabled by the increase of disposable income, opportunity, and a culture of consumption on overdrive.

But ownership is never enough, and acquisition does not quench the consumer drive. After Beijing’s nouveau riche tire of monotonous megablock apartments and endless traffic jams, they need a vacation. While a passport to the monuments and landmark of the world still signal the highest social status and opportunities of wealth, a favorite local travel destination for the upwardly mobile is the Beijing World Park. Tucked into the southwestern corner of the city, the Beijing World Park boasts over a hundred small-scale replicas of famous monuments and buildings from all over the world. The final series of the quartet, “Vacations,” captures staged encounters with objects of “modern” and “civilized” lifestyles, a bizarre artifact of the post-Communist materialism of China’s meteoric expansion.

Ultimately, Beijing serves as a template for China’s cultural ambition, and Visions of Modernity epitomizes the competing moral and cultural directions of the largest emerging capitalist market on the planet. Like many established first-world economies, the nouveau riche of Beijing spend most of their disposable income on homes, cars, and vacations. Niederhauser’s Visions frames the tension of desire and acquisition, the fantasy of consumer capitalism being lived out in the façades of Western imports. While China’s exploding population consolidates into ever increasing urban densities, the corresponding rise in wealth enables acquisition as fantasy fulfillment as a replacement for a culture being subsumed by mass-produced facsimiles of history, normalcy, and tradition. Visions of Modernity engages Beijing’s embrace of the mirage of consumer satisfaction, the quixotic pursuit of happiness through the possession of a never ending barrage of the new, the improved, the modern.

Matthew Niederhauser is an artist, photojournalist, and videographer currently chronicling the massive changes in Chinese culture. His photography has been featured in The New Yorker, National Geographic, New York Magazine, Newsweek, The New York Times, The NYT Magazine, Time, and several important international publications. He continues to develop his documentary projects in China and lives in New York when not abroad. This is his first show at the Fahey/Klein Gallery.

Matthew Niederhauser's Visions of Modernity exhibition installed at Fahey/Klein GalleryMatthew Niederhauser's Visions of Modernity exhibition installed at Fahey/Klein GalleryMatthew Niederhauser's Visions of Modernity exhibition installed at Fahey/Klein Gallery

Matthew Niederhauser's Visions of Modernity exhibition installed at Fahey/Klein GalleryMatthew Niederhauser's Visions of Modernity exhibition installed at Fahey/Klein Gallery
Matthew Niederhauser's Visions of Modernity exhibition installed at Fahey/Klein Gallery

Matthew Niederhauser's Visions of Modernity exhibition installed at Fahey/Klein Gallery