About this project, Desmond Lui said: The idea of “Cement Park” originated from a 500 square meter space we got at that time, in West Nanjing Road, Shanghai, which was very big and full of concrete, how to use such a big space? I thought it would be good for performance art! As long as the artists come, there will be works. At that time, I also happened to be very interested in performance art, and wanted to communicate more with other artists. Instead of decorating the space, the existing concrete was the artist’s favorite place to set fires, pour water, or do anything, which added a lot of spontaneity, and the audience would also like the feeling of watching and participating in the scene, so the name “Cement Park” was tailor-made for this space. The name “Cement Park” is tailor-made for this space. The name came to me one day when I was sitting on the toilet. Our city is basically covered by concrete, full of reinforced concrete, and since industrialization the city has been expanding, while the park is a public space where everyone can come; this name has a very post-apocalyptic feeling, which of course came to me after I thought of the name “Cement Park”.
I’m not sure what I’m talking about. Unfortunately, when Hu Jialiang and I got everything ready and decided to do it, the space was no longer available and was rented out. Since we had just rented a villa in Jiading, with a big living room and basement, we decided to do the project in Jiading, even if it was remote, we felt that doing what we wanted to do was the most important thing.In September 2019, when the space went up and the rent went up so much that we couldn’t afford to rent it anymore, we looked for places to do events all over Shanghai, such as the streets, parks, underneath flyovers, abandoned buildings, plazas, and so on, and some spaces invited us to do events, and so on. Some spaces invited us to do activities, so we started a nomadic way until now. This is an open project that emphasizes art practice and communication, focusing on live art creation, performance, theater, performance, sound and other forms of art, encouraging artists to explore more possibilities of art in an open, tolerant, free and improvisational atmosphere.
“After the establishment of Cement Park, the frequency of its LIVEHOUSE events has been almost crazy, with 222 installments implemented so far. The reason for this weekly program is that Shanghai is a very mobile city with a lot of people coming and going, and this frequency allows us to get in touch with as many different artists as possible, both nationally and internationally, and to bring in something new. This program is intended to build a platform for practice, communication and sharing, so that participants can become friends and gradually form an open community. There is no threshold for participation in the event, we usually invite some artists, and the audience who come to participate are encouraged to do the same if they have ideas after seeing the works. Anyone can come to create, explore, have fun and do serious work in a relaxed atmosphere. Many people have never touched or understood performance art before, but after participating in the event, they found that they liked it so much that they started to take the initiative to understand and do it, and then started their own art path.
Cement Park also organizes a variety of events based on real-life contexts. In addition to the annual Cement Park Live Festival, which has been held for five times, in 2020, they organized the “Cement Park LIVE HOUSE-100th Global City Linkage” project in the midst of the epidemic. In 2020, they organized the “Cement Park LIVE HOUSE – 100 phases of global city linkage” project, which united hundreds of artists from 20 cities around the world, including Beijing, Chuxiong, Tokyo, Hangzhou, Hefei, Jiangshan, Jingdezhen, Lisbon, London, Milan, Nanjing, Nanning, Shanghai, Suzhou, Taiyuan, Tangshan, Wuhan, Xi’an, Chongqing, Chicago, and held Cement Park’s 100 phases of activities. 2022, March to June, they organized the “Online artwork collection and release during the Shanghai Silent Seal Period”. From March to June 2022, we organized the “Shanghai Silent Containment Period Online Artwork Collection and Release” event. Works were collected weekly and released online via WeChat Video. During this period, about 100 works were collected, showing different aspects of people’s lives and creations during that special period. 2020, after the beginning of the epidemic, weekly online meetings were organized for the isolation of people at home, and after the end of the quarantine, the online meetings still continued, with a total of 41 online meetings held so far. In the online meetings, artists can share their creations and recent developments with the audience and have in-depth exchanges with them.
2023｜Concrete Park LIVE HOUSE during Epidemic Closure-“That’s World” Project Screenshot
2020｜CONCRETE PARK LIVE HOUSE – 100TH PHASE
In a city as large as Shanghai, the vast majority of individuals are placed in a tightly organized system, passively and helplessly functioning with a set rhythm, and their individual subjectivity is disciplined and suspended. Under these circumstances, the “concrete park”, which is parallel to reality, as a unique cultural phenomenon in urban culture, deserves special attention and respect. Although there are more or less questionable points for improvement, such as unprofessional planning and organization of activities and low standard of most of the works, it cannot be denied that “Cement Park” has enriched the local art ecology, broadened the cognitive experience of the public and injected vitality into the regional culture with its unique and individualistic gesture. “Cement Park” has come all the way to the present day, and in the face of the dilemma of reality and the questioning of the professional field, Lv Desheng has solved it with his usual playful smile. An artist who has participated in Cement Park without washing his feet said at the sharing session, “Many works in Cement Park are garbage, of course, I am also one of the garbage, but I found that garbage is the newest thing in a city, it is easy to stick to diamonds and skyscrapers in the city, they are all things that the system set up to let people stick to them. definitely just stick to the trash.”
On the evening of February 26th, 2023, at UP-ON Upward Performance Art Archive, Lv Desheng shared their work with the theme of “Cement Park —— We are the Performance”, and there were a lot of people from various backgrounds in Chengdu, the discussion and Q&A touched on a lot of vivid topics: how do performance art works need to be “recorded”? How do performance art works need to be “recorded”? Is it important to enter an art museum to make works? What do we think about good work? What is more important, making good work or having fun? Does the possibility of art come from trash? The smell of hormones emanated from all over the place, grassroots energy and genuine enthusiasm were released in the space, and intuitive questions and rational explanations competed with each other at the same table, a long-awaited atmosphere that was gratifying. Originally planned to leave Rong the next day, Lv Desheng, due to the change of visa and smuggling lighters missed two flights. When we met again at the archive, I said, “You’ve been doing more improvisation and less planning. I ended the conversation in Lü Desheng’s style: Is the concrete park important? Very important! It must be done! It’s not really important ……
