A Shanghai MoCA

Green Fields of Despair, originally uploaded by timbeckenham.

It is tough hitting middle-age in SH. Especially if you're in your twenties.

Recently, in conversation with my friends, I've bemoaned a lack of variety in the expat life in Shanghai. Besides the usual, day to day routine life matters, it appears that any free time is quickly allocated to be spent either at home with a DVD, hopping from one bar or restaurant and so forth, or just popping around to someone's place for a quiet time & a chat. Yeah I know it is the good life, but figuratively speaking, anyone's palette would quickly get sick of Wagyu Beef with a red-wine jus reduction each and every weeknight.

Our general plan B involves interactive pursuits. However I'm finding the prospect of traditional "Let's spice things up!" alternatives like ten-pin bowling at the Orden Alley on Hengshan Road, or karaoke at CashBox don't inspire the buzz that I'm missing.

So, I decided to recast my eye over some of Shanghai's offerings, and resolved myself to fully explore some of the alternative options for entertainment in this fair city.

Last Friday, I met up with Adam and we hit Shanghai's Museum of Contemporary Art located inside People's Square Park. The museum is currently exhibiting the chock full of wank words stereotypically titled "MoCA Envisage -- Entry Gate:Chinese Aesthetics of Heterogeneity".

One of my favourite quotes from the exhibition's foreword is as follows...

The standards of living that the neo-literati of today's China have cultivated in this digital environment are a concentration and hybridization of aesthetic senses both ancient and contemporary, Chinese and foreign, all of which have in turn metamorphosed into a heterogeneous neo-aesthetics.

This Aussie yobbo's personal view is apart from a few beautiful pieces, I found the art work to be quite underwhelming. Many of installations showed a high level of technical skill, but few pieces elicited some thought in me the viewer. Maybe I'm too much of a "just the facts ma'am" type of guy, but IMHO, most of the displays were a bit kitschy and superficial. But at RMB20 a head, it is a cheap way to figure out some type of opinion on this yourself.

As usual, I've posted a few more photos of my trip to MoCA on my Flickr page.