Report on GAFA Artists’ Perspectives on Nanting Village and Its Residents：
The overarching finding is a pervasive sense of transactional coexistence marked by functional convenience and a significant social and cultural divide with the native villagers.
For most artists, Nanting serves a purely practical purpose: an affordable, convenient, and well-located “nest” or “birdhouse” close to campus. It provides essential services, housing, and a familiar community of fellow students and migrant shopkeepers. This relationship is fundamentally economic; artists are consumers of village services, and many perceive the native villagers as viewing them primarily as economic assets—”tools for making money”—rather than as community members.
Social integration with native villagers is exceptionally limited. Interactions are typically superficial, confined to brief, polite transactions with shopkeepers or landlords. Numerous artists reported a palpable sense of exclusivity and xenophobia from the native population, often attributed to strong, inward-looking clan structures and a distinct local identity (e.g., identifying as Panyu rather than Guangzhou citizens). This divide was starkly exposed during a village-enforced pandemic lockdown, which ignited direct conflict between residents and locals. A clear linguistic hierarchy exists, where speaking the local dialect yields slightly better treatment than speaking Mandarin or being from outside Guangdong.
Attempts at artistic engagement or community-oriented projects are often met with distrust, indifference, or outright rejection. Artists described how installations meant to improve public spaces were later dismantled by villagers. Efforts to interact creatively, such as offering free services in exchange for participation in an art project, were frequently misinterpreted and met with suspicion from older locals. This underscores a deep mutual lack of understanding.
Most artists consciously separate their artistic practice from their life in Nanting. The village is a source of material for a few, but rarely direct inspiration. Many feel their art forms (e.g., painting, installation) are already “marginalized” or “outdated” and fail to resonate or even register with a public whose daily visual and informational diet is dominated by short-form video and other digital media. This creates a sense of artistic irrelevance within the village context.
While some express a theoretical openness to collaboration, a strong hesitancy prevails. Barriers include the perceived effort of bridging the conceptual gap, fear of cultural insensitivity, and the practical challenge of merging vastly different creative processes and skillsets. Consequently, genuine co-creation is deemed extremely rare. Ultimately, Nanting remains a place to live near, but not truly with, its original community. The relationship is one of parallel existence, defined more by economic necessity and functional proximity than by meaningful cultural or social exchange.
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