RMB City

RMB City is a virtual city in the online world of Second Life, planned and developed by Beijing artist Cao Fei (SL: China Tracy). Launched in 2008, and open to the public since January 2009, RMB City is a platform for experimental creative activities, one in which Cao Fei and her collaborators use different mediums to test the boundaries between virtual and physical existence. As a laboratory for investigations in art, design, architecture, literature, cinema, politics, economy, society, and beyond, RMB City is constantly nourished by new and innovative projects, and supported by leading international art institutions and networks. As a model of avant-garde urban planning, it traverses the boundaries between past and future, real and virtual to link China and the cosmopolitan contemporary world.

In 2009, RMB City was a lab for both filmmaking and live theater. Cao Fei’s first documentary film after building RMB City, The Birth of RMB City, took a dreamy and epic look at the city, showing how it was constructed, but also highlighting it’s fragility by depicting an inevitable demise. After this film was completed, she invited different artists to use various mediums to create different live artworks, and those works also became the life of the on-line city. Based on those creative actions, Cao Fei made two films in the video format: People's Limbo and Live in RMB City, both of which became chronicles of human experience in RMB City.

Cao Fei does not only investigate in virtual space however, and in 2009, she traversed boundaries to bring RMB City to the real life space by creating RMB City Opera. This stage performance brought the interaction and tension between real and virtual identities to light in front of an audience, by using both physical and Second Life spaces to set the stage for interaction between actors and avatars.

RMB City in RL (Real-life)

Throughout the “construction process” and actual operation period of RMB City in 2008, the Serpentine Gallery in London displayed its progress in a dedicated physical space. These institution- and individual collector-“managed” buildings in RMB City will hold regularly-changing exhibitions and events open to all Second Life users. The running of RMB City will be extensively documented on its [www.rmbcity.com official website].

A Preview of RMB City

According to Cao Fei, RMB City will include:

• a Ferris wheel rotating on top of the Monument to the People's Heroes
• the water of the Three Gorges reservoir gushing out of the Tian'anmen rostrum
• gigantic planes gliding over terraces in the crevices of the central business district
• aerial super-malls
• water flowing into huge toilets on the container piers of the Pearl River Delta area before traveling through the sewage system into an ocean with floating statues of Mao Zedong.
• the rusted steel structure of the Olympic Stadium aka "Bird's Nest" will be washed in splashes of ocean spray, while an aerial band on a floating sheet of the national flag filled with five-pointed stars makes a deafening noise that shakes Rem Koolhaas' CCTV building, causing it to collapse

RMB City: Selected Exhibitions

• May 12th – Aug 1 2010, 17th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney
• Feb 12 - Apr 28, 2010, "Contemplating the Void", Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
• Jan 22 - Apr 11, 2010, "Utopia Matters: From Brotherhoods to Bauhaus", Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin
• Dec 14 2009-Feb 7, 2010, "NO LAB on Tour", ACA Gallery of the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD), Atlanta
• Nov 25-Dec 19, 2009, "Timelapse", The National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), Beijing
• Nov 17, 2009-Feb 28, 2010, "Breaking Forecast, 8 Key Figures of China’s New Generation of Artists", Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing

Exhibitions of “RMB City Planning”

• Lombard-Fried Projects, New York City (February 29-April 5, 2008)
• Le Plateau, Paris (March 13-25, 2008)
• Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture (January-March 2008)
• Art Basel Miami (December 6 -9, 2007)
• 10th Istanbul Biennale (September 2007)
• Cao Fei/ China Tracy at the 52nd Venice Biennale (June 17, 2007)

Recent RMB City & Cao Fei Press

• “Avatars and Antiheroes. A Guide to Contemporary Chinese Artists.” Claudia Albertini. Kodansha International. Feb 29, 2008.
• “Cao Fei/China Tracy: RMB City Catalogue”, ed. Cao Fei & Hu Fang, Vitamin Creative Space, Feb. 2008.
• “RMB City: Review,” Karen Rosenberg, New York Times, March 21, 2008
• “Flying Avatars Admire the Artwork,” Benjamin Genocchio, New York Times, March 12, 2008
• “The Virtual Muse and her Taxman,” Chin-Chin Yap, Asia Art Pacific, March 2008
• “Cao Fei sets a record price for virtual art?” Nadim Samman, The Art Newspaper, Dec 7 2007

External links

• Official website
• Cao Fei's website
• Vitamincreativespace website
• Second Life website