Urban China #33 | Creative China

UC#33 on the news stands (click for more) | 2009
UC#33 on the news stands (click for more) | 2009
Counter-Mapping Creative Industries | UC#33 cover
Counter-Mapping Creative Industries | UC#33 cover

As a result off the Transdisciplinary Research on Creative Industries in Beijing (2007), Mónica Carriço, Bert de Muynck and Ned Rossiter guest-edited Urban China#33 (January, 2009). The special issue was designed by Hendrik-Jan Grievink.

The magazine is in Chinese with select texts published in English. All texts in English plus section screen shots are online available at the OrgNets-website.

It may be possible to order copies from here, though the issue has sold rapidly and is in limited supply. For detailed information on how to order this issue, see our UC#33 ordering page.

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

About UC#33

This issue of Urban China Magazine sets out to critique and redefine the idea and practice of ‘mapping’ the creative industries. Foregrounding the experimental process of collaborative constitution, we are interested in the multiple idioms of expression that make creative industries intelligible beyond the blandness of policy discourse. Activist researchers, artists and writers in Europe, Brazil and India have been particularly inventive in combining collaborative techniques of production with social-political critique via media of communication. We see this work as part of the prehistory and global dialogue around how to create new spaces and transdisciplinary knowledges able to negotiate the complexities and politics that attend the economization of culture.

Counter-Mapping Creative Industries | UC#33 Introduction
Counter-Mapping Creative Industries | UC#33 Introduction

Transdisciplinary Research on Creative Industries in Beijing (2007)

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). Through collaborative practices of self-organization, one of the primary aims is to create a ‘counter-mapping’ of creative industries in Beijing.

Counter-Mapping Creative Industries | UC#33 Import Cultures / Export Innovations
Counter-Mapping Creative Industries | UC#33 Import Cultures / Export Innovations

As part of Urban China#33, Bert de Muynck | MovingCities published “How Foreign Architects became International Architects”, a text exploring the curious case of the notorious Beijing’s Gang of Five Foreign Architects (Rem Koolhaas, Steven Holl, Paul Andreu, Herzog & de Meuron and Norman Foster) in contrast to the even more curious case of the Hundred International Architects (Ordos100).

Urban China #33 | Contents

Prologue: Creative China (extract)
Jiang Jun and Kuang Xiaoming

Network of Contributors

Creative Industries Timeline

Introduction: Counter-Mapping Creative Industries in Beijing
Ned Rossiter

Collusion and Collision of Cities within Cities
Shveta Sarda

SECTION 1: NETWORK ECOLOGIES OF CREATIVE WASTE (Introduction)
Soenke Zehle

Creative Industries or Wasteful Ones?
Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller

Network Ecologies: Documenting Depletion, Exhausting Exposure
Soenke Zehle

SECTION 2: INFORMATION GEOGRAPHIES VS. CREATIVE CLUSTERS (Introduction)
Ned Rossiter

Every Morning and One Day
Ni Weifeng

Can You Manufacture a Creative Cluster?
Danny Butt

Creative Clusters: Out of Nowhere?
Michael Keane

Demographics, Scale and Business Models for Chinese Internet Companies
Piet Walraven

Holes in the Net? State Rescaling, Creative Control and the Dispersion of Power
Xuefei Ren

Frida V. in Beijing and OpenStreetMap’s First Leaps in Beijing
Luka Frelih

OrgNets + OpenStreetMap Presents: Beijing Bicycle Tour
Umi

SECTION 3: MIGRANT NETWORKS AND SERVICE LABOUR (Introduction)
Brett Neilson

Labour, Migration, Creative Industries, Risk
Brett Neilson

Migrant Workers, Collaborative Research and Spatial Pressures: An Interview with Meng Yue
Ned Rossiter and Meng Yue

Inverting the Cultural Map: Peripheral Geographies of Beijing’s Creative Production
Adrian Blackwell

SECTION 4: CENTRALITY OF REAL-ESTATE SPECULATION FOR CREATIVE ECONOMIES (Introduction)
Ned Rossiter

Cultural Heritage Map of Beijing
Carla Nayton / Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center (CHP)

Constructing The Real (E)state of Chinese Contemporary Art: Reflections on 798, in 2004
Thomas J. Berghuis

SECTION 5: IMPORT CULTURES / EXPORT INNOVATIONS IN ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN (Introduction)
Bert de Muynck

How Foreign Architects became International Architects: A Case Study of China’s Creative Construction Agenda
Bert de Muynck

An Architecture of Mediation
David Brown

Mapping Architectural Practice in Beijing
Hao Dong and Binke Lenhardt / crossboundaries

Moving Towards a Creative Society
Shaun Chang

SECTION 6: ARTIST VILLAGES AND MARKET ENGINEERING (Introduction)
Bert de Muynck

The Art of Keys: Profit and Loss in the Art Village Industry
Adrian Hornsby and Neville Mars

Other Kinds of Ambitions: From Artist Villages to Art Districts
Alexander Pasternack

BORDERLINE Moving Images 2007
Beatrice Leanza / Borderline

HomeShop Series Number One: Games 2008 Off the Map
Elaine Wing-ah Ho / HomeShop

Beijing’s Art Districts: From Creative Hubs to Entertainment Centres
Manuela Lietti

Detours and Developments in Beijing’s Music Scene
Leo de Boisgisson

The Uncertain Aesthetics of Contemporary Chinese Visual Culture
Paul Gladston

Is there Really Space for Creativity?
Lothar Spree and Davide Quadrio

SECTION 7: POLICY
Creative China, Managerial Innovation, Global Brands: An Interview with John Howkins
Urban China and John Howkins

Creative Industries with Chinese Characteristics: An Interview with Professor Zhang Jingcheng
Urban China and Zhang Jingcheng

SECTION 8: CREATIVE PORTRAITS

Distribution

Links

(back to movingcities projects page)

via via

spatial agency:
Established in 2007 by Bert de Muynck and Mónica Carriço, movingcities is a think tank based in Beijing Shanghai whose work focuses on how the practices of architecture and urbanism affect the city.

Their name is a reaction to the influential 'Shrinking Cities' project, which they critiqued for an over emphasis on just one part of a larger phenomenon. In contrast they see contemporary urbanity as being in constant flux and speak of city-regions that incorporate shrinking and expanding, rural and urban.

Their work takes the form of projects, writings and collaborations as well as interviews. (...)

Their projects take the form of embedded research on the city, usually carried out in collaboration with other architects."

creative cities:
Mov­ing­Cit­ies is an inde­pend­ent research organ­iz­a­tion based in China

archiblog:
MovingCities is a blog investigating the role that architecture and urbanism play in shaping the contemporary city. MovingCities features urban research, critical architectural investigations and publications. MovingCities operates from Beijing Shanghai, China.

snowball architecture:
Bert de Muynck is the other half of MovingCities, a Shanghai based duo of “shrinks in the urban debate” as him and his partner Mónica Carriço like to describe their practice. MovingCities are also the curators of Snowball Shanghai – Event on Finnish Architecture to be organised in Shanghai this March.