[ISEA2011] Panel: Stephanie Rothen­berg (moderator) – @China, Virtually Speaking: A Virtual Roundtable Discussion on Emergent Practices in China

Panel Statement

Chair Per­son: Stephanie Rothen­berg

Pre­sen­ters:

  1. Michael Eddy, Elaine Ho & Emi Ue­mura – Home­Shop
  2. Liu Yan & Aaa­jiao (Xu Wenkai) – Xin­dan­wei: Work­space, Cre­ative Net­work and Com­mu­nity
  3. Defne Ayas – Asym­me­tries in the Con­trol of In­for­ma­tion and Ideas
  4. Xi­aoy­ing Juli­ette Yuan – Cu­rat­ing New Media Art in China: A Cre­ative Ap­proach from Within
  5. Sheng Jie (gogoj) – SHAN Stu­dio

“@China, Vir­tu­ally Speak­ing” lever­ages on­line and vir­tual plat­forms to bring to­gether a group of ge­o­graph­i­cally dis­persed art and de­sign col­lec­tives and in­di­vid­u­als through­out China to re­flect on the topic of “open source”. In this vir­tual round table dis­cus­sion, pan­elists will ad­dress how no­tions of  “open source” are being trans­lated and ap­plied cross-cul­tur­ally to gen­er­ate new mod­els of cul­tural pro­duc­tion and so­cial prac­tice within the po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic bound­aries of China. For par­tic­i­pants not phys­i­cally pre­sent at the con­fer­ence, the di­a­logue will be en­abled through a live stream of Skype video and the vir­tual en­vi­ron­ment of Sec­ond Life.

The art and de­sign col­lec­tives in­vited to par­tic­i­pate on this panel are all chal­leng­ing the lim­i­ta­tions of what has be­come a highly com­mer­cial­ized art mar­ket and cor­po­ra­tized cre­ative in­dus­try in China through their cul­ti­va­tion of col­lab­o­ra­tive al­ter­na­tive spaces and un­con­ven­tional ex­hi­bi­tion and dis­cur­sive plat­forms. Pan­elists will dis­cuss how new tech­nolo­gies are being uti­lized and the ways in which par­tic­i­pa­tory and sit­u­a­tional modes of art and de­sign pro­duc­tion are being en­gaged mak­ing way for more emer­gent forms of prac­tice in both rural and urban lo­ca­tions.

Ques­tions the panel will ad­dress in­clude: What strate­gies are cul­tural pro­duc­ers em­ploy­ing to move be­yond the red door of on­line media cen­sor­ship? What is the re­la­tion­ship and in­ter­fac­ing of al­ter­na­tive spaces to local and in­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ties? What is the im­pact of these al­ter­na­tive spaces and pro­duc­tion mod­els on the Chi­nese art world and cre­ative in­dus­tries?

Part of the dis­cus­sion will also in­clude a re­port back from the 2011 Con­ti­nen­tal Drift in China that sev­eral of the pan­elists and the Chair will have par­tic­i­pated in over the sum­mer. This ex­per­i­men­tal re­search-based trip across China co-fa­cil­i­tated by Brian Holmes and Claire Pen­te­cost ex­am­ines the geopo­lit­i­cal trans­for­ma­tions of the coun­try through the lens of ur­ban­ism/ru­ral­ism.

  • Stephanie Rothen­berg  [ISEA2011 provided no biographical information]