ON-SITE

Collaborating organization: Shangqi Zhiwei Bai was responsible for the visual system, art direction of all six issues, and the overall spatial presentation. The texts, editorial work, and curatorial content were developed by Shangqi.

On-Site was a collaborative publishing project initiated approximately six months before the opening of the 2017 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture. Responding to Nantou Ancient Town and Shenzhen’s ongoing urban transformation, Shangqi organized a continuing body of artistic and curatorial content that was released through six issues of a newspaper titled On-Site. Bai developed the publication’s visual system and art direction, allowing changing subjects, images, and texts to retain a recognizable identity across successive issues.

“On-site” names both the publication and the project’s mode of operation. Rather than waiting for the official opening of the exhibition, the newspapers entered the city gradually throughout the preparation period. Each issue became a provisional presentation of an exhibition that had not yet been completed, allowing artistic content to leave the institutional venue in advance through printing, distribution, reading, and retention.

This method altered the conventional temporal structure in which an exhibition is completed before being opened to the public. The project emerged repeatedly through six publishing moments spread across approximately half a year. What readers encountered was not a retrospective catalogue summarizing a finished exhibition, but a set of temporary records that developed alongside the project and retained the information and decisions of different stages.

At the biennale, Bai transformed the exhibition space into a workshop resembling an underground newspaper printing room. Copies of the six issues covered walls, windows, and ceiling, while printing equipment, paper, ink, and scattered newspapers became part of the installation. The space ceased to function merely as a background for completed printed matter and instead became a site of production, reproduction, and circulation. Visitors encountered not only the newspaper’s content but also the conditions through which that content was manufactured and made public.

The dense repetition of newspapers across the surfaces disrupted the reading order of each individual issue. Headlines, images, paragraphs, and differently coloured papers overlapped, transforming the publication from a portable printed object into a spatial structure surrounding the visitor. Reading took place at two scales: one could approach and examine an individual newspaper or perceive the entire room as a proliferating surface of urban information.

Bai was not the sole author of the project’s texts or curatorial content. Through its visual system, publishing rhythm, and spatial organization, he established shared conditions through which the contributions of different authors and curators could appear together. This distinction is integral to the project. Its significance lies not in subsuming every contribution beneath a single artistic voice, but in treating visual design as an infrastructure capable of holding, connecting, and distributing multiple voices.

On-Site clearly defines Bai’s role within the collaboration. Rather than replacing editorial or curatorial authorship, he uses typography, visual systems, publishing rhythms, and spatial organization to establish shared conditions in which multiple voices can appear. The project thus transforms design from the packaging of a single message into an infrastructure connecting production, circulation, and public access.