Rachele Maistrello

Rachele Maistrello

Residence Time:

2019.9.22-10.21

Rachele Maistrello

Opening 19.10, starting at 4 pm

19.10. – 27.10.19

I: project space,Banqiao Hutong 10

Green Diamond is a company existed in Beijing between 1995 and mid-1999, whose headquarters were located in the Economic and Technological Development Zone on Jinghai Road. GD was a factory of highly sophisticated hi-tech technology, whose aim was the development of refined microchips in diamond powder, called “GD sensors”, capable of provoking in the human body sensations and feelings related to nature. Through a series of gestures, combined with sensors implanted in precise parts of the body and the use of virtual contact lenses and ultrasounds waves, the user of “Green Diamond” would be able to experience sensations such as the heat of the sun on their skin or feel fresh air blowing in their faces.

 

Since 2018, Rachele Maistrello, thanks to Li JianPing (李建平), who was employed in the factory between 1994 and 1999, has worked to collect allavailable documents to reconstruct what happen in this company, although is still impossible to find any final proof to its existence.

Between 1998 and 1999, the company employed Gao Yue (高跃), one of the most promising acrobats of the school of acrobatic art in Beijing, which had the task of testing thesensors and working on the new “Green Diamond” gestures.

For about nine months, Gao Yue and Li JianPing had a relationship, which resulted in Li JianPing collecting most of their conversations and a bigger number of documents from Gao Yue’s working process.

When Li JianPing left the company, all company emails and all kinds of web documents were immediately deleted, both online and on his computer. Li JianPing, however, had kept several printed mails, videos and photographs to build a small book for Gao Yue to commemorate their first anniversiary, which became the foundation for the research into the history of Green Diamond. Thanks to a recent reevaluation of the documents, Li JianPing’s archive is now available to the public.

 

Rachele Maistrello presents at I: project space for the first time a series of original documents from Li Jian Ping’s personal archive (analogue photographs, paper documents). The “Green Diamond website” contains a rich collection of Li JianPing’s most significant videos and a series of “graphics design wallpaper” reconstructed from the original materials.

Some videos and there construction of the “Green Diamond” slogans have been reconstructed in collaboration with the workers of Bernard Control Factory, a company located in Jinghai Road, not far from the original headquarters of Green Diamond Factory. The recreation of the “Green Diamond gestures” have been possible through the efforts of Wu Shuqing, a current emplyee of Bernard Control Factory.

If anyone has further information or materials they want to share about the “Green Diamond Factory”, please reach out to Rachele Maistrello, Li JianPing or write to I: project space.

This research was made during Rachele Maistrello’s residency at I: project space (2018), at Inside-Out Art Museum (2019), the collaboration with Social Sensibility Department curated by Alessandro Rolandi and has been supported over the years by NTCM e l’arte and with the generous support of MOVIN’UP SPETTACOLO – PERFORMING ARTS2018/2019 promoted by Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities (MiBAC) -General Directorate for Performing Arts and Association for the Circuit of the Young Italian Artists (GAI) together with Association Young Italian Artists of Emilia-Romagna (GA/ER).

This project would have been impossible without Scarlett Jang and the help of Terry Wang and Hailun Zhou.

Special thanks to: Kiki Liu (+ Chris and Kiki’s dogs), Xiaoyao Xu and the whole family of I: project space.

supported by:

For more information about I: project space, please go to: 

www.yi-projectspace.org

Opening hours by appointment, please contact us 

via mail: contact@yi-projectspace.org 

or phone: 152-1085-2620  / 185-1362-9712

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