Transdisciplinary Research on Creative Industries in Beijing

Mobile Research Laboratory | Beijing, China  [2007]

Coordinators: Ned Rossiter, Bert de Muynck & Mónica Carriço

bei-CI | Mobile Research Laboratory | May-July 2007

bei-CI | Mobile Research Laboratory | May-July 2007

Based on preliminary fieldwork in Beijing in 2005 and 2006 and follow-up discussions at the MyCreativity -convention of international creative industries researchers  [held in Amsterdam, 2006], this project – at orgnets.net – adopts the model of a mobile research laboratory as a framework for collaborative research on the creative industries and media education in Beijing.

This project brings international and Chinese academics together with urban research organisations, artists, curators, media producers and policy-makers in order to undertake trans-disciplinary research on Beijing’s creative industries [bei-ci or Trans-CIB]. Through collaborative practices of self-organization, one of the primary aims is to create a ‘counter-mapping’ of creative industries in Beijing. Unlike the usual mapping documents on the creative industries, which are typically derived from compilations of statistics on economic growth in the sector, this project will produce an alternative map of the creative industries in terms of the following vectors of research:

• migrant networks and service labour

• eco-politics of creative waste

• informational geographies vs. creative clusters

• centrality of real-estate speculation for creative economies

• import cultures & export innovations in architecture and urban design

• artist villages and market engineering

Trans-CIB consisted of seminars, workshops and fieldwork organized around these six vectors.
Check out the orgnets-project website for a full oversight of this research.

Publications

• Creative China, Cutting and Pasting? | an article on architectural copyright published in the MyCreativity-newspaper
• The Rise and Fall of Beijing’s Creative Business District | an article on Beijing, 798, Gaobeidian and the Creative Industries published in Commercial Real Estate in China.

Links

• China East Asia Media New Media
  a site dedicated to research on creative industries focusing on Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. China | East Asia | Media | New Media is a researcher’s network. It came into existence during an international conference at QUT in July 2007. The network is initiated and managed by Michael Keane.
• One World, One Dream: China at the Risk of New Subjectivities
  China’s transformation is becoming the central phenomenon in the emergence of a new, complex and in many ways threatening world society. An essay by Brian Holmes, January 2008.

Future collaboration > Urban China #33

Vitamin creative space - The Shop (image:Jiang Jun) | Beijing, February 2009

Counter-Mapping Creative Industries | UC#33 network of contributors

• Urban China #33 Creative China issue | MovingCities website
• Urban China Magazine | #33 website
• UC#33 out on the news stands >| movingcities | January 2009
  
• Urban China #33 | Project Intro | movingcities | Nov 2008
• OrgNets | organized networks – mobile research labs, Beijing
  orgnets.net & movingcities | 2007 + 2008
• Transdisciplinary Research on Creative Industries in Beijing
  movingcities projects bei-ci | 2007

(back to MovingCities projects-page)