Littmann Kulturprojekte

since 2009

Chinetik, Museum Tinguely, Basel 2009

Is the Chinese tricycle a means of transport or an ethnographic object of everyday use? Is it a stage for art or is it a work of art itself?

Involved Artists:

Daniele Buetti (IT), Wang Guangyi (CN), Ulrike Schröter (DE), Peter Kogler (AT), Robert Rauschenberg (US), Guillaume Bijl (BE), Stephen Craig (IE), Peter Knapp (CH), Franz Burkhardt (DE), Thomas Virnich (DE), Job Koelewijn (NL), Michael Vessa (US), Xiao Yu (CN), Mu Bo Yan (CN), Gao Lei (CN)

The Project

Is the Chinese tricycle a means of transport or an ethnographic object of everyday use? Is it a stage for art or is it a work of art itself? Is the tricycle a symbol that links imperial China (rickshaws and hand-drawn goods carts) and the industrialized nation that became the world’s largest exporter of goods in 2008? The group art project Chinetik (China and movement/kinetics = Chinetik) challenges a traditional European mindset with regard to East Asia. Forty tricycles, loaded as well as unloaded, were bought by Littmann Kulturprojekte on the streets of Beijing, the capital of the Communist People’s Republic of China. While the loaded tricycles were left in their original state, the unloaded ones with their empty cargo area were given to artists from China, Western Europe and North America as objects to work on. The interplay of art and the object of everyday use has generated a novel dialogue between East and West.

(Project in progress)