The police have taken over the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. They are rehearsing for an official event to happen later in the day and many of the biennale's outdoor installations at Shenzhen's massive Civic Square have been temporarily closed off to the public for the occasion.
 
Ou Ning, the biennale's curator, is standing in the square watching thousands of police officers and soldiers march in.

"I've been taking photos of the police standing in front of the exhibits," says Ou, dressed in black, standing unassumingly on the side of the square. "It's quite funny to see."

Ou lived in Shenzhen for a decade before moving to Guangzhou and eventually Beijing. More than any other Chinese city, he says, people in Shenzhen are eager for political reform. He sees the next step in Shenzhen's evolution as becoming a political testing ground for the rest of China and he wants this year's biennale to heighten awareness of Shenzhen's political role through the use of "public" space.

This is the first time a public arts event, let alone one that is so populist in its inclinations, has taken place in Shenzhen's Civic Square. Elsewhere in Shenzhen, Ou has put installations in the middle of shopping malls, creating two biennale sub-sites on Shenzhenwan Avenue and the Yitian Holiday Plaza.


"I don't like museums or galleries," says Ou. "I decided to bring the exhibitions to public spaces like shopping malls, that way the exhibitions can go beyond the art community and contact ordinary people."
 
It's the Civic Centre venue that has the most significance to Ou as he aims to co-opt official space for public use. He deliberately spread the installations out so that people would be forced to walk around the entire centre, occupying the whole space, from the enormous square at its south side to the construction site for Shenzhen's new contemporary art museum on its north end.

Everything is new: the Civic Centre was built just a few years ago, and most of Shenzhen dates back only to the 1980s, after it was declared an experimental free-market zone by the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. Now, nearly three decades after Deng's era, Ou knows that Shenzhen is ready to move on.

"After people get rich, or become middle-class, they become conscious of some political issues," Ou says. "The Shenzhen Special Economic Zone is already finished; is it possible for Shenzhen to become a 'special political zone'? I chose the Civic Square for the biennale, to start the conversation about this.
 
"Now in China there's a new political model. People participate in politics not just for the state but for themselves as well. I would like to use the biennale to mobilize the people to use their public space and to engage them and to get them to think more about the city, politics and their rights as citizens."

Look out for our post later today about the highlights of the Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\ Architecture and see all program details at www.szhkbiennale.org