agricultural treatise collection
Among agricultural treatises, there’s a great dis-balance between planting and animal husbandry, with the former has a much wider category and richer contents. Within the planting category, comprehensive agricultural treatises did not include flower plantation, and no content related to the forest was recorded; the silk worm and the plantation of mulberries, however, were greatly emphasized, with almost a equal content with all the other agricultural practice. Within the animal husbandry, the flock tending part was of far less content than that of veterinary science. Yuhu WANG “Category of Chinese Agricultural treatises”
exhibition printout
A Subtle Guilt
Which might trace back to the point in history where the knowledge of agriculture departed from other schoolings, and where intellectuals began to perceive education as a way to gain political positions where their goals of improving the life of people can be achieved. May at that time, being not in the farming practice but merely enjoying its productions, being living in the city and respected for their high social status was, somehow, a kind of betrayal. In fact, in the long history ,“scholars" have been seeking ways to compensate: from arguing cases for civilians, promoting social projects, to the many literature works expressing the sympathies for peasants. CASS institute of literature, ZHAO Yuan
critique before the exhibition
New Rustic Countryside
A space coexisting with its complete opposite: its inhabitation increasingly consisting of the noncommittal presence of urbanites in perpetual flow. The space of collective mourning on the death of its culture, its nature, its values. New neo-rural occupants virtuously committed to low-density or no-density, accept it as a refuge for our new spiritual engagements to acting local, driving to second homes hungry for that not found in the city: darkness, isolation, authenticity, the ultimate Kantian sublime ‘back-to-basic’. An existential need for a counterbalance, a space for mental release, for testing and releasing of senses apparently obstructed in urban life. Its backwardness, used as a platform for a global mystification and validation of our supposed origins. Life as wellness. A world increasingly off our radar because of a physical and mental absence while we are in recovery mode – therefore giving immense freedoms to ‘those left’. It could also be considered a new collective space to start from scratch again, specifically to newcomers who fled other worlds.
A space coexisting with its complete opposite: its inhabitation increasingly consisting of the noncommittal presence of urbanites in perpetual flow. The space of collective mourning on the death of its culture, its nature, its values. New neo-rural occupants virtuously committed to low-density or no-density, accept it as a refuge for our new spiritual engagements to acting local, driving to second homes hungry for that not found in the city: darkness, isolation, authenticity, the ultimate Kantian sublime ‘back-to-basic’. An existential need for a counterbalance, a space for mental release, for testing and releasing of senses apparently obstructed in urban life. Its backwardness, used as a platform for a global mystification and validation of our supposed origins. Life as wellness. A world increasingly off our radar because of a physical and mental absence while we are in recovery mode – therefore giving immense freedoms to ‘those left’. It could also be considered a new collective space to start from scratch again, specifically to newcomers who fled other worlds.