the space is located in the changning district, which was formerly an industrial area reconfigured through creative clusters; xindanwei is housed in what was once a shanghai plastic mold factory. in 2008 the complex was turned into a creative space by 'creative chief' song bo. this is a form of urban regeneration and development that is increasingly common in shanghai. the industrial aesthetic remains, however, and is put to use to accentuate the stripped back, informal and networked environment that the space advertises.
liu yan is the ceo behind xindanwei, which she opened in mid 2009 with two friends, chen xu and xu wenkai (aaajiao). all three come from creative, cultural and consultational backgrounds, whether as researchers, bloggers, programmers, artists or cultural entrepreneurs. liu yan has a creative commons sticker on her computer and she describes herself, chen xu and aaajiao as 'independent thinkers, not attached to any political powers'. this is perhaps reflected in the way that the space was set up, with the three operating as coworkers rather than in a hierarchical formation. liu yan explained that it took around six months for them to discover their roles in the organisation; she is passionate about event organising, she plans the content of events and enjoys narrating the stories of xindanwei, so took on the role of spokeswoman and ceo. when i asked her how much she works she laughed and replied that her job is 24 hours a day. she works after she has put her children to bed and often finds that even though she would love to spend more time in the school community she often has to cancel the commitments she makes there. at the same time she makes sure not to book work events for more than 2 nights a week.
she sees the key social skills required for her job as having charisma - 'when you say something people really have to feel it' - and being a good listener - listening to other's suggestions, putting others 'on stage' and letting them take charge. in other words, she is well trained in soft skills. aaajiao, she said, 'doesn't like talking to strangers', he spends alot of time on his computer, so he acts as the web maintainer and designer. chen xu is careful with money and always pays attention to the financial aspects of their ideas, so she takes over the financial and administrative duties. these roles, says liu yan, formed naturally according to desire and talent, although there was no way to avoid conflicts and misunderstandings during the process of navigating eachothers capacities and interests.
according to liu yan, their need to establish a space like xindanwei came from an exhaustion of large scale, financially oriented cultural projects. with the boom in creative and cultural industries, the majority of such projects are employed for propaganda and commerce in china. in reaction to this, xindanwei was set up to be small, intimate and not purely commercially driven. the founders see it as a 'social enterprise' rather than a corporation or non-profit, and it acts as a locale to facilitate a community for the fragmented industries of creative immaterial production: design, visual art, writing, architecture, amongst others. here the meaning of social enterprise becomes clear, socially driven organisations that use market strategies and structures to achieve a social goal.
there are four different categories of users of the space: full time, part time, random and contact. for 2000rmb/ month, full time users can enjoy the 'security' of biometric recognition - fingerprint scanning to allow for differential access. it is unclear whether this kind of surveillance is benign or not, given the local context. according to liu yan the space is open to anyone to use, and a range of people go there for meetings, talks, debates and events, from professionals to what she describes as 'activists'. being predicated on principles of knowledge and idea sharing, the hope is that the space will spark new connections between people, modes of exchange and reciprocities. indeed, the cofounders set up xindanwei as a space for 'dialogue'; as a platform to offer people 'space...to let them explore abit more and think again about ideas and get connected with others and inspired by others and maybe mix them up with other ideas to become a bigger idea'. the aim is to generate collaboration, models of coworking counter to the hierarchies of conventional labour structures, and to encourage 'innovative' social and professional developments.
yet there is a certain ambivalence around the space to do with its organisation and its model. liu yan is candid about its operation. when we spoke about the intersections between culture and commerce, she recounted a story concerning the model they desired. a meeting was held with supporters of the space to gauge their opinions. half of the group recommended the discourse around coworking and collaboration be dropped to limit confusion in favour of positioning the space as a service or business centre. the other half recognised the 'competitive advantage' of the space being its uniqueness and its distinction from conventional models. here this difference is what allows xindanwei to fill a niche in the market. liu yan says such spaces are almost non-existent in shanghai and this is why it attracts interesting discussion and debate not found elsewhere.
from its classification as a social enterprise, to its emphasis on social networking it is obvious that xindanwei predominantly deals in the production of social and cultural relations. its mode is one of affective entrepreneurialism, under the rubric of sharing and the common, echoing a particular brand of californian liberalism. but the usual questions used to critically analyse such spaces to do with statist and commercial complicities seem too clumsy to fruitfully apply here. the processes of labour on which such spaces run are not hidden. if anything they are celebrated. this is an hub for hyper connectivity, freelance innovation, 'sharism', with a 'social agenda'. it is doing something which verges on radical in that this social agenda is ostensibly its driving force, with its dedication to coworking and open knowledge production – practices that have been understood in autonomist traditions as the social production of value. at the same time, there is a concern with political critique. 'i would never position us as politically correct or as an activist organisation as its very risky' says liu yan, 'if you really want to do something in china you better avoid those words'. xindanwei navigates these different discourses and agendas.
much of this has to do with shanghai, one might suspect. 'shanghainese also have an opinion toward the political system here in china but this is a commercial city and those voices are not so loud', explains liu yan. 'i wouldn’t say that shanghai is politically indifferent, its just those people compared to the west are still quite small. i mean this is quite normal when you have a country that’s been censored for a long time and has a planned economy and people don’t really have too much of a sense of expressing ideas but it's coming, definitely. if you check twitter you have many followers from shanghai and every day they are talking about politics'.
while the immediate questions about complicities, collusions and agendas may be inappropriate given the regimes and systems of this city, the circuits of production playing out at xindanwei require a careful and tactical dismantling. moreover the question needs to be asked, in a city with such a strong history of surveillance, statism, censorship and now economic growth, what does it mean to be politically and culturally subversive? and it's only in this context that xindanwei can be understood.
