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Lovely Shanghai Music May 2006 The special show of Team 404 featuring Birgit Hein and Martin Schoene venue 2F, Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art. Art Bank Space (Building 28, 199 Fang Dian Road Pudong New Area) Shanghai, China Article CHINA DAILY Sounds of synthesis Rose Longhurst Shanghai_Star page04 2006-6-1 With the recent visit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and an influx of German architects redesigning much of Shanghai, the relationship between Germany and China has been making the daily news. While not grabbing the headlines in the same way as the German-designed Maglev, a project under way in a gallery in Pudong also aims to promote communication between the two countries. The Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art (Zendai MOMA) is tucked away in a cosmopolitan complex that could be anywhere in the world (home to American diners and Indian restaurants). But the Zendai MOMA is anything but bland. Hosting exhibitions of fiercely contemporary works by artists from around the globe, this weekend the Zendai has been filled with the sound of "Lovely Shanghai Music ", an exhibition which fuses visual art and music. Musicians from Shanghai have been invited to the Zendai in order to find inspiration from artworks drawn from all over the world, gathered by a group of artists from Germany. Founded and mentored by Swiss artist John Armleder, Team 404 consists of a rolling membership of art students who have chosen their projects collectively. One of Team 404's members, Dennis Federson, explained the concept behind Lovely Shanghai Music. "We invited over 200 artists from all over the world to send us an A4 piece of paper with forms of notational script on it," he explained. Artists who participated included the Egyptian artist Basim Magdy and students of Birgit Hein at the Braunshweig School of Art, who provided experimental films for the project. Partially due to Armleder's international renown, contacts were found from every continent, and Team 404 used their initiative to spread the word further. Dennis described the process as being like "a virus or spam mail, that spreads quickly all over the world." A similar technique was used to find musicians to score the pieces in Shanghai, as word of mouth and Internet networking proved an excellent means of finding contributors. Shanghai's most infamous "noise" band, Torturing Nurse, provided a soundtrack to one of the works. Nathan Hall, an artist and musician based in Shanghai, found inspiration from the artworks for an improvisation on the Chinese "qing." He spoke about whether it is possible to view art and music holistically. "Art and music are separate entities, but when they do cross it creates this symbiotic relationship." The positive attributes of such an open collective exhibition were described by Dennis: "One of our motivations was to bring people together and give people a platform to communicate. So people meet here, talk together and play music together, and we get to meet all the local artists. It's all about building networks." By building this forum for expression between Germany and Shanghai using works from artists located all over the globe, "Lovely Shanghai Music" is very representative of modern Shanghai. Another member of Team 404, Xu Qu, said that although this type of event may be unusual in China, the Chinese people are very interested in the project. By staging "Lovely Shanghai Music" in the Zendai, he feels that the collective has made something "new and never old, a project that is very contemporary." Photos Zendai Moma Katja Beneke ''LOVELY S MUSIC''