At present, Cantocore.com is an archive of the two shows, Cantocore Free On Board in San Francisco, and Cantocore: Import/Export in Guangzhou, China. Please contact us if you have any questions about the projects or doing future projects.
We are still recovering from the great Cantocore Free On Board opening at Mission 17 last Friday. JD sent me a few pictures to post up. If you have some, please do post links in the comments or send to me.
We will have some lovely studio shots coming up this week to show off the work. If you are in San Francisco, the show is up for 2 months until April 18. Also, there is an artist talk at Mission 17 from 4 – 6 PM on April 18.
The installation of projects at Mission 17 is nearing completion and we want to send a big announcement across the lands. If you are in San Francisco this Friday, please do come to the opening of Cantocore: Free On Board. Also, please note that this is 1 of 2 shows. The other show at Mission 17 is imPOSSIBLE! 8 Chinese Artists Engage Absurdity, in conjunction with The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery.
Both imPOSSIBLE! and Cantocore open on Friday night from 6 until 9 PM. Please come on out! If you’d like to track this on Facebook, be our guest!
Cantocore: Free On Board opens next week in SF. Here is the flier Mission 17 printed up which is inspired by the original that Asem and Pierre came up with for Cantocore in Guangzhou:
Cantocore: Free on Board (Flier)
Also, here is a static image anyone can use to help promote the show:
Guy Overfelt, one of the artists in the show, created an event on Facebook which you should join and share with others.
Lu wrote over on her blog about Cantocore being featured in the magazine she works for, Art Map:
《艺术地图》2008年10月刊特别报道- PDF
文章内容PDF下载
Go check out her blog posting in Chinese at her site with more writing about the subject.
Here is the document:
Thanks to Heather and Boing Boing for posting up about Guy’s cool piece. Also, thanks for the quote of my text 
Here is the post:
Transmedia artist Guy Overfelt created this massive inflatable “smoke” installation for the Cantocore Export Guangzhou show in China a couple months ago. It follows the thread of Overfelt’s previous Inflatable Trans-AM. From the description of the piece, titled “Untitled” (Up in Smoke):This time the inflatable Smoke is fabricated in Guangzhou, factory direct. Beyond Paul McCarthy-like reductive shapes coming off the assembly line or the Chinese Olympic team leaving the others’ in the dust, the simple shape raises questions about what these factories are pumping out in Guangzhou.
Guy Overfelt’s inflatable smoke (Thanks, Heather Sparks!)
More photos are on Cantocore Photo Album
 |
 |
Huangpu Village Project Group (Wang Ge, Deer Fang and more), video installation, 2008
黄埔村录像计划小组（王铬和方鹿等） 黄埔村录像计划 录像装置 2008
 |
JD Beltran, Downtown Mirror, video installation, 2008
JD Beltran, 城市镜， 录像装置，2008
 |
 |
Kathrine Worel， Domestic Bliss, single channel video and photos, 2008
Kathrine Worel 家庭福佑 单频道录像和照片 2008
 |
 |
Zhou Tao, One Day, single channel video and photos, 2007
周滔 某一天 单频道录像和照片 2007
 |
 |
David Johnson, Made In China, Installation, 2008
David Johnson 中国制造 装置 2008
 |
 |
Lin Fangsuo, Exploitation, video Installation, 2007
林芳所 剥削 录像装置 2007
 |
 |
 |
Lin Fang Suo and Deer Fang, 林芳所和方鹿
 |
Deer Fang, Pierre Picard and Huang Xiaopeng 方鹿、石头和黄小鹏
 |
Cao Zhiling，Jon Phillips, Deer Fang, Qiu Qiu, Pierre Picard
曹芷玲, 方力中，方鹿，邱丘，石头
 |
Feng, 阿峰
Above is the full PDF of the show booklet. The physical copies are running low, so if you want to print this out, please go ahead! All the content is available for your use as long as you link back to this booklet and/or this post.
Inside the booklet are short paragraphs about each work, bios for all participating artists, and then the show statements by myself and Woo Jay. All the text is also in English and Chinese. The show statements are soon to be published along with interviews about the project in Art Map magazine.
I presented in Kansas City this last friday and made a larger write-up on my website. Here is the slide deck I used which has a bunch of Cantocore Import photos:
Here is the basic 6th grader breakdown of my presentation:
Oh, and I forgot to give a summary of my talk last night: I build remix communities which make systems for producing objects. Currently, I’m making cultural remixes.
It took a big journey for me to attempt to get to the Cantocore Export opening last night in Guangzhou. I made it in at 11:45 PM to find only a handful of friends at the Ping Pong Bar and I got to see some quick pictures of what I missed. Well, I tried to get to the opening, and let’s just say I got back in time! 
Anyway, Lu and I are going to the exhibition today to take some pictures today and will get them posted up here shortly. I’m very interested to see how the show came out since I’ve been AWOL in USA for last couple of weeks and Lu has been an editor at Art Map in Beijing while teaching at CAFA’s experimental video lab.
I just updated all the artist pages, projects, about page with Woo Jay’s exhibition statement and a big huge thanks to all contributors on the credits page.
And, don’t sit down too long, the 2nd half of the show, Cantocore Export, opens this Sunday, September 21 from 8 – 10 PM in Guangzhou at Ping Pong Space (see right-hand sidebar for address). Artists include JD. Beltran, Lin Fang Suo 林芳所, Huang Pu Village Video Group 黄埔村项目小组, Kathrine Worel, Zhou Tao 周滔, and David Johnson.
Following the opening, the Stardusted video screening is then from 11 PM until midnight in the Ping Pong Bar.
Here is a snippet of Woo Jay’s writing, Reconsidering Daily Experience in English.
Globalization and pluralism as concepts are quickly becoming clichés. The Chinese contemporary art trend has developed so rapidly that it has almost caught up with its international counterparts much like the huge trade surplus in Sino-US trade. Why do we then still invite seven San Francisco-based artists to come to Canton and make a “deficit trade” through exchange? Since 1849, when the first batch of “Mai Ju Chai” (Contracted Labors) from Taishan, Siyi and Zhongshan landed in San Francisco, did any city in the world mean so much to Canton. At the same time, Bruce Lee and Chinatown, two of the biggest symbols of San Francisco Chinese ethnicity, had become the condensed imagination for Americans to conceptualize how a modern China might look.
And the intro paragraph in Chinese:
在全球化、多元主义这些概念快成陈词滥调，中国当代艺术的走向，迅猛得都快赶上中美贸易领域的巨大顺差时，我们为什么还要邀请七位旧金山的艺术家来中国做一次“逆差型”的交流呢？自第一批台山、四邑和中山的“卖猪仔”在1894年登陆旧金山以来，全世界也许没有哪一座城市和广东如此咫尺天涯。而旧金山的李小龙和唐人街也成为了美国对于现代中国的浓缩想象。当我那些中山和四邑来的远亲，讲述着他们的旧金山表亲时，口气轻松得仿佛只是家长里短，而大洋彼岸的金门桥对我来说，却依然陌生而又遥远。直到有天在上海新天地和一个来自旧金山的年轻ABC喝酒，听着他用比我更标准的粤语，和更更标准的带着粤语口音的英语聊天时，我才突然捕捉到了一丝真正从旧金山飘来的湿濡气息。
