• Since we started China Residencies in 2013, at least nine different residencies have closed or gone on hiatus. But just because these residency programs close doesn't mean the artists and projects they hosted cease to exist. We sat down with Constant Dullaart to talk about his time at OCAT in Shenzhen, and about how the company he started as a way to see the inside of a factory now continues to confuse and delight art techies worldwide.
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    • Constant Dullaart: So, what are you going to do with this?
    • China Residencies: I transcribe it, edit it, send it to you, and you say “yes, no, change this” and then we put it online if you feel like it.
    • CD: Ok, cool.

    • CR: So OCAT’s residency program is closed now.
    • CD: Yes, and there were many problems with it. But a good friend is running OCAT now, Venus Lau, and she might want to start it again. 

    • CR: When did you go and who funded your residency?
    • CD: My residency was funded by Mondriaan Fonds in 2012.

  • CR: How did you first hear about the residency? Was it something you were interested in, or were you invited?
    • CD: I was invited to apply since my work deals a lot with technology and they were looking for an artist who’s work made sense in Shenzhen’s context.

    • CR: What was it like there?
    • CD: OCAT is a beautiful area, but it’s also maintained as an expat hub, which was really weird for me. I had nothing to do there and it took me a long time to get into actual Shenzhen. It’s weird, you’re sitting in Starbucks thinking about meeting people who actually working in factories.




  • CR: Once you were there and realized you weren’t interested in this replica of what was at home, how did you figure out how to get out?
  • CD: I tried to negotiate with the institution to get a translator to go into town. The residency was designed for people to hang out in their studio, so they weren’t used to an artist wanting to do research. They were very protective of me, they even held an umbrella over my head. It was very patronising. There was an intern who accompanied me into town, a sixteen-year-old girl, who basically didn’t understand how a grown-up would travel through a city. She was very worried. I would ask her what a sign says, and she would answer “That’s Chinese” and I would go: “Yes, I know, but what does it say?” and then she would go and get someone else. And that person would say: “Oh that says “printers”. That level of control was interesting, and it was awesome to learn about how systems work in different cultures, but I ended up sending her home on my first day. In the end, I could have found my own translator, and then I would have had three productive days instead of wasting three weeks. 

  • CR: Did you run into a lot of logistical difficulties?
  • CD: Some of these stories are anecdotal. There were issues with the fapiao [official receipts], and I had to go to the store six times to get the fapiao right, so I asked them to write it down on a napkin. In the end, I wanted to print a t-shirt saying: “Dear friend, I need a fapiao for this purchase.” But when I asked about where I could get that printed, the staff at OCAT were very embarrassed, you know, about loosing face for the residency. They were worried about having the organisation’s address on the t-shirt, so they said they had to ask the leaders. And they called them “the leaders”, which was also a bit weird. And when they finally tried to get it printed, I wanted 10 t-shirts but they could only take orders of 5,000. I could have just gone and had it done at any spot, but they kept saying it couldn’t be done. And in the end, for the final open studio exhibition, the t-shirts had been delivered but weren’t on display, they kept them in the office because they were afraid to show them. But with Google translate on my phone, I had become friends with the guards -- these guys were usually farmers who’d only been there for a year.

  • CR: And they’re really young too, sometimes just 15.
  • CD: Yeah and they were really funny. We hung out, and I asked them how to find my packages. I managed to bypass the system, and came to the opening wearing this t-shirt. And the director, this super high-powered Party leader, she fucking loved it! She thought it was hilarious. But she is this empowered woman, she can handle that joke, it’s all the people beneath her that would bear the consequences. For me that was a very strong confrontation with how power structures work. But that also means that she introduced me to her husband, a director of Shenzhen Airlines, who arranged for me to get into the Windows of the World theme park before they opened to film — which all happened because I bypassed the other system in order to wear the t-shirt. And then they gave me 50% discounts on flights, and took me to a Party banquet in a fancy hotel, where I found out that the leader of OCAT, who started the area under Deng Xiaoping, was from Indonesia, and he knew all these Dutch songs, since Indonesia used to be a Dutch colony. And everyone was wondering who this overweight white guy who knew all these high-powered people was…

  •  CR: We never visited OCAT because the  program was already on hiatus by the time  we started researching, but residencies we  talk to run the range of artist-run spaces to  commercial galleries to these cooperations  with real estate companies or local  governments. And the latter are always hit or  miss in terms of who ‘gets it’ when it comes to  contemporary art, not always realising that  artists are going to want to break the rules.  And many times they’re staffed by whoever’s  around or someone’s cousin, which creates a  different sense of responsibility for the people  working there. 
  •  CD: The management put a lot of pressure  on the staff. I eventually met a group of other  artists and people who spoke English and  were involved in the tech scene, and that was  really cool, but it took a really long time to get  there. And it took crossing certain social  norms, which was very stressful, especially  as I was there as the envoy from Mondriaan. 

  • CR: Do you feel like you became a sort of representative for all of the Netherlands?
  • CD: Well no, a sort of frustrated test case. At the time, it was horrible. There’s only so many meetings you can sit through, where they say ‘Yes, don’t worry’ and then after the meeting, they hurry up to you to say “Actually, it’s not happening at all.” And after three times, you just go “Well, fuck you guys.”

  • CR: That’s a huge cultural difference. Often times in official settings, when someone says “We’ll do it”, they mean “We’ll try our best” which means things actually might not work out. No one wants to take the responsibly of saying no in front of everyone else. 
  • CD: And then sometimes, they say “yes, we’ll do it” but then they send you a broken thing. Which means they technically did do it…

  • CR: What did you end up doing in Shenzhen, and how did that lead to what you’re doing now with DullTech?
  • CD: This was around the time of that big “This American Life” story about factories in Shenzhen, so many started closing their doors to visitors. I needed to have a business front in order to get in. I had thought of a stupid plan, I wanted to offer translation services for companies that had bad tech manuals, and put little easter eggs in them, but that was impossible. It was a lot easier to make this product, and a lot of people said no, until we finally found a person who was interested. 

  • CR: So this idea started in 2012?
  • CD: Yeah, but it was always a front to get into these factories. I wanted to do as much research as possible when I was there. I also tried to do this project around the Windows of the World, around the Twin Towers there. I wanted to reach the amusement park leaders and tell them that it’s quite painful for tourists to see them still standing, and ask them to take them down. I wanted to hold a ceremony for when they would be removed, with speeches and and a moment silence in the park instead of Celine Dion playing all the time. But all these efforts were on the border of what’s possible because of the power structures in place, so that didn’t work out. But the project that did work was this factory that said “yes”. And when I showed the samples of the product in London, then there were investors interested. And though they later dropped out, it continued to be this sort of joke, DullTech.




  • CR: Dullaart’s actually your real name though, right?
  • CD: Yes, but people always assume that it’s a pseudonym, so I figured, might as well use it. And people keep asking me for it, museums are interested, so I’ll keep playing this out. I thought: "I’ll do a Kickstarter, and it will fail". But the Kickstarter didn’t fail, and now I fucking have to go to the post office to mail these things out.



  • CR: Sorry about that. There’s an Australian artist who also did a residency in China, Alex Gibson, who made a very similar product called Artbox in 2013 that ran off a Raspberry Pi and also crowd-funded it, because he also felt showing digital media work to be frustrating. There’s a few other startups working on the same issue.
  • CD: Oh really?

  • CR: It’s not a huge problem that needs solving, but there are a few people and galleries looking for solutions. So DullTech is definitely a joke, but it can still be useful.
  • CD: It’s pretty cool, I still get a few requests a week for people who want to buy players because it’s cheaper and faster than trying to figure out how to program a Raspberry Pi yourself. But I’m not interested in just being a tech company. I actually see people buying these players as taking part in my artwork.

  • CR: How do you react to the people who would like you to act more like tech company?
  • CD: Some players were bought by a gallery, and when the players arrived, they weren’t working so they wanted their money back. But it’s a Kickstarter campaign, they can’t get their money back because I’ve already spent it. I’m not a big corporation. It’s weird, they’re expecting this kind of service. I do need to give a disclaimer: “This is an actual artwork, it arrives as is.” I’m still trying to run it as well as possible, but I can’t offer a guarantee. I’ll try to fix it or replace it, of course, but there’s no official return policy.

  • CR: Is it pleasant or fun, being a company?
  • CD: Not at all. The whole thing is that I’m outsourcing everything, of course. The result can be so weird that it’s hilarious.

  • CR: Like the Kickstarter video?
  • CD: I spent $200 for that video. And I sent the script with more and more complicated sentences, and they started to get confused and I just loved it. I’m super happy with the result. But dealing with the shipping is a nightmare. 

  • CR: Well if you’re outsourcing everything, there’s other startups that can deal with shipping for you. There’s even other companies that will run your Kickstarters.
  • CD: But it’s expensive, and that gives me even more things to manage, but I might look into it.
  • CR: It feels like these startups are trying to solve smaller and smaller problems, but meanwhile there’s huge problems out there in the world. Everyone is struggling to make the lives of a privileged white man a little more convenient.
  • CD: This whole project became a comment on this concept of efficiency, of how artists are supposed to be similar to corporations. I’m more of the point of view that artists need to study society but also stand outside of it to comment on it and reflect on it from a position that regular people don’t get to experience. This is why we stand outside of society, like a parasite, but it’s also a force that gets celebrated because they get the respect from a lot of people. So I wanted to do this wrong, stupidly, bluntly, clumsily wrong, as an artist to show the materiality of it all. Which is why, sitting at New Inc, with people actually trying to make money with their creative output, I just find that hilarious.

  • CR: Aren’t there other artists there like Hello Velocity, who are also doing it for the efficiency of humorous art-tech?
  • CD: Yeah, I met them, really nice guys, but they are also a web design company.

  • CR: People probably need to pay rent. It’s a strange time for artists who have technical skills and would rather just be artists but need to work for money. 
  • CD: They’re doing interesting stuff, and there’s some good stuff out there but there’s also weird, corporate shit. Whereas you used to be able to arrange a ride-share on Craigslist, now it’s Uber. 

  • CR: And Tindr is the new missed connections. It’s squeezing out every ounce of possible potential profit from something that’s been free. 
  • CD: I read this really interesting article about how technology is taking away all possibilities to resist capitalism when everything is commodified. It also strips away the social aspect of having to be friends with people so you can exchange favors and ideas. That’s one of the themes behind buying all those Instagram followers.

  • CR: It’s almost like giving all those artists a present: “Here, have some more fame.” Not that Ai Weiwei necessarily sells work off Instagram, but it also inadvertently helps you all, since most people don’t realize you can even buy followers, when it’s one of the cheapest things you can do.
  • CD: This is my problem, in the art world, having to deal with journalists or other artists that collaborate with the system and justify that system, while somewhat in the know of it being broken, still continue to write about how great it is and how much money it’s making.




  • CR: It’s fascinating that your front as a corporation kicks in when you’re ask questions about “post-object” or whatever that expects you to answer using a certain kind of artspeak.
  • CD: Yeah [laughs]. I mean, Kickstarter made the project a staff-pick because of that Rhizome article, but it was very self-aware. I come from a privileged position of being able to hire all these people and these factories but instead of self-idolising, it’s to show how these things are actually produced. We sit behind our laptops while other people have to actually manufacture all these things and breathe those fumes. 

  • CR: There was a fascinating Medium post about a startup that turns people’s pictures into paintings that visited those massive-scale painting villages. They found it brilliant that China has already created an efficient and cheap way to get humans to replicated images perfectly. It’s actually one of the best researched article on the phenomenon, but their motivations and conclusions are so nefarious. 
  • CD: It’s hard to fight that. I felt like a horrible tourist down there, I went to Dafen a few times. I also detest the projects that have those people paint themselves. There are so many of these projects, some good, some bad, but I hate that mental approach. 

  • CR: But in a way, giving someone money to do a painting is the same as giving a factory money to make a widget.
  • CD: Well, in the end, I made this thank you video where it says “fucks were given, lulz were had” and then the video makers were confused and said “given were fucks”... and then I had them say “this video was made in Indonesia.” So that’s why the misspellings are in there, but I’m still using the capital, even if it’s a negative capital.

  • CR: And some people might just think your video is weird and your company is shitty.
  • CD: But this is what my artwork has been about for the last ten years: “Oh yeah, so you’re doing this thing with websites. We don’t have a fucking clue how to make a website, so it’s probably irrelevant.” Then “Oh wait, this thing with websites, a lot of people are taking about it, so it’s probably relevant now.” You know what I mean? Institutions don’t always get that it’s part of the performance, part of the work. Like when I made those thousands of fake Facebook profiles. And they ask: “What’s the result?”

  • CR: It’s like young children always asking “why?” But it is quite scary how few people understand how the Internet works given that we use it for everything. And if I hadn’t lived in China, I probably wouldn’t care either, but that got me curious about how websites could be blocked and led me to read more about how VPNs and Tor work and how different countries experience the Internet. If I hadn’t lived with a restricted version of the Internet, I would probably still take it for granted. Maybe that’s why many people don’t care? But how Facebook works affects billions of people. 
  • CD: There’s a true danger to companies like Facebook. They control access to information in poor countries, like what they tried to do in India. I heard a funny argument about how it would be great if these companies set up Internet infrastructure because then we would have continuous electricity and wouldn’t have to deal with black outs. But this is such a trojan horse! It’s going to give so much power to those companies, letting them restrict information or charge outrageous rates.

  • CR: That’s already starting to happen with algorithmically filtered content, and the option to pay to bypass that filtration. 
  • CD: But you don’t have a right, as a Facebook user, to have Facebook work in a certain way. If you want control, you need to build your own RSS feed.

  • CR: Right, they can change the parameters on you all the time. 
  • CD: These kinds of things are actually easier for countries like China to control, because they’re doing it as a state, not as a company. But I found it interesting how people in China understand that they don’t control the Internet, whereas here people will be surprised, for example, that Facebook does that. 


  • CR: Speaking of, what was it like using the Internet in China, as someone who makes work online?
  • CD: I mean, I knew my way. The only thing that was weird was going on Weibo, you needed a passport number. I just talked to a few people and hacked their passport number based on the way the number is structured by region and date of birth to invent a fake one.

  • CR: --or gave them someone else’s! They didn’t have a verification process?
  • CD: Well they don’t have each number, so if it’s similar enough it works. It probably wasn’t even a person, and if they were, they weren’t on Weibo. And of course, I was very paranoid. I tunnelled into my computer at home, I didn’t want to use a commercial VPN service. But once, at a university library, I wanted to show some work that was blocked, but when I went to the website, it wasn’t blocked. They had their own VPN service, so I couldn’t make my point. But otherwise, I felt totally at ease. I was more surprised by people suggesting that I stop using Google in China because it was so unreliable there. One of the most horrible things I saw was the dark drinking game where a big boss from WeChat would try to drink everyone under the table. In that sense, I never experienced any real problems, I was more frustrated by people not wanting to talk about VPNs in public.

  • CR: They’ve done a good job of making sure people don’t know where the line is, and interiorize this need for self-censorship. 
  • CD: You can have private conversations about all this but the problem is that you can’t mention that you talked about these things with certain people in public. But I met some cool people, and some artists that are really out there. Shenzhen is also widely different than Beijing, it felt like the Wild West. There was gambling and all these shopping malls and hustle and bustle, and you also saw people just running their businesses. But then, things are different everywhere, I’m always surprised about how things work here too.

  • CR: Yeah the US isn’t great when it comes to public infrastructure. And every country has a different agenda when it comes to sending artists to China too, some are looking for prestige, or to pave business relations. They all have different criteria, and it’s interesting to see how they approach soft power and cultural diplomacy through the arts. 
  • CD: In that sense, Mondriaan supports people who want to find the limits of the system at the Institute For Provocation in Beijing, but then when the Dutch royal family visits, they don’t always remember to talk about human rights. But as an artist, I’m also supporting that system. I’m this person that gets money to be there, to be shown around at all these different institutions as this white guy to document. I actually made a movie to document all the pictures they took of me. 

  • screenshot of DutchEyes.mp4

  • CR: How did you navigate being brought there as a photo op as well as to work on your own projects?
  • CD: I don’t know. I think that’s just a thing they decided they had to do. But anyway, I felt really weird having to act like there were no people disappearing or that there was freedom of speech. I didn’t like waving this flag or saying “Everything is ok! Come here, they have really nice food.”

  • CR: Since your goal was to infiltrate the factory, what’s it like on the inside?
  • CD: Of course, what they showed me was great. I became much more open to people working sixty hours and six days a week, because I saw how they’re coming from poor peasant villages and just want to make as much money as possible so that they can buy a smartphone to talk to their families and they felt that their lives are improving. I can understand wanting to work as much as possible. So I found it quite hard, it’s hard to be judgemental since I’m coming from such a privileged position. I’m very aware of how I’m not objective. For example, the workers had these bracelets attaching them to the convertor belt. I was shocked, thinking, "they’re chained to the convertor belt?" But it turns out it’s to prevent static electricity from building up, and they can take it off at any moment. In that sense though, Amazon also has terrible working conditions in their warehouses where workers have to clock in to machines and only get three seconds for a bathroom break. 

  • CR: You were clearly expecting to find abuses.
  • CD: Exactly. What kind of light am shining on this? I saw some conditions that were shit of course, but also when I went to Dafen, they were chaining a dog to eat it, and I can’t judge that --who am I to judge? It’s very hard to come in as a foreigner. That ethical superiority is awful. It’s also hard to be there without the language, I feel like I could spend years there and not understand what’s going on.

  • CR: It’s important to always question your perspective. People always ask why we want people to go to China, and the answer is really that we don’t really want people to go there any more than any other place on Earth, but people are interested, so we want them to not go blindly. It’s really about sharing information. There’s so many different ways to do things there, you don’t have to do what the residency organisers want you to do, or what your funders want you to do. 
  • CD: Yeah.

  • CR: What are you up to next? 
  • CD: Well I have to go get this prize. I’ve barely been home this year, I’m looking forward to staying put someday. 

  • This interview was conducted on January 23 by Kira Simon-Kennedy for China Residencies.