Guest: etoy.Zai (Michel Zai), Liu Yan, Gu Ling
Date: 2014-09-13 16:30 ~ 2014-09-13 18:30
Address: Chronuse Art Center (101, Bldg 18, 50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai)
cc 2014 SIMP Project
Date: 16:30-18:30, September 13, 2014
Venue: Chronuse Art Center (101, Bldg 18, 50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai)
Guests: etoy.Zai (Michel Zai), Liu Yan, Gu Ling
Moderator: Art Yan
Language: English (with Chinese translation) and Chinese
Reservation via membership@chronusartcenter.org (please indicate your full name, contact information and the number of reservation).
SIMP Project is originally co-initiated by curator Art Yan and new media artist Wu Juehui in June 2013 in Hangzhou, China. It attends to the ‘Situation’ that today’s original creative work faces in visual and audio art, the two-way ‘Intervention’ between artists or artist groups, the micro-ecology in the field and broad social factors, and the ‘Mapping’ of the information and analysis of the above-mentioned active intervention. And at last, the project aims to form a ‘Perspective’ for future creative work. SIMP Talk Show is the first series ‘entertainment’ program that presented by the project.
For its second season, SIMP Talk Shwo push the probe further to the foundation and sources of creativity today: how could individuals or innovation groups establish (or in-house-sharing) their own structure of the knowledge and skills which support their daily operation? How should they do self-management in the facts of finance, copyrights retention and sharing, also to establish internal order, as well as to build up the external relations, in order to protect their independence and freedom in thinking and action.
This issue, we invited three guests, they are Swiss artist etoy.Zai (Michel Zai), creative leader and social entrepreneur Liu Yan, and also Gu Ling from British Council Shanghai. The entrance to this dialogue is etoy.CORPORATION, an art collective that works in the field between art, technology, and society, which co-founded by Michel Zai. It is actually a corporate sculpture registered as a privately held company. And they never sell isolated art objects, but sells trades, and exchanges parts of itself and its brand: etoy.SHARES represent participation in etoy and the cultural value generated by etoy. Between 1999 to 2000, when multi-billion dollar company eToys.Inc., at that time the biggest online shopping mall for toys, tried to shut down the etoy.BRAND. etoy mobilized nearly 1800 lawyers, hackers, journalists, professors, business people and artists to fight a decentralized, playful war against the corporation, and finally won this so-called TOYWAR… What etoy has experienced and archived is extremely enlightening. But today, how do they look at themself, or what's the new problems or challenges that they are facing now?
About Guests:
etoy.ZAI (Michel Z) is a Swiss artist/professor and one of the co-founders of etoy. He served as CEO of etoy between 1996 and 2009. ZAI holds a master's degree in visual communication from the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. He worked as an anchorman for the Swiss National Television (SF-DRS), and in 1992 he co-founded HIRN-lein, a telephone entertainment company. Beyond his commitment for etoy.CORPORATION, etoy.ZAI works for universities and corporate clients. Between 2003 and 2009 he was professor and head of unit "Media & Interaction Design" at ECAL (University for Art and Design in Lausanne). Currently, Zai became father and leads the preparation work for etoy's first retrospective series in Asia, Europe and the USA. He also prepares a two-year research project for the Academy of Art and Design FHNW in Basel.
Liu Yan, has over 15 years of creative leadership and entrepreneurship experience working in China and the Netherlands. She served as the founder and chief catalyst of Ask Lab, a social enterprise that connects talent and idea's with business challenges through co-creation and experiential learning. Prior to this, She established Xindanwei, a Shanghai based coworking center, international innovation hub and one of the "World Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in China" listed by FastCompany. She is the author of “Coworking Manual” – a book published at App Store under Creative Commons to help entrepreneurs to set up coworking community. She also served as the jury member of Prix Ars Electronica 2011-2012, one of the most premium international award for digital art and community project.
Ling GU, A writer and translator for content and activities related to contemporary art. Now as head of digital arts in British Council China, Shanghai editor for Randian-Online (a bilingual online magazine about contemporary Chinese art). She worked for Rockbund Art Museum as manager of development and communication. Her articles are published on many arts magazines. She translated Curatorial Challenges: Correspondence Between Hou Hanru and Hans Ulrich Obrist (published in 2013). She reads, plays, cooks and enjoying yoga when she's not working. Her blog: linggu.org
About Moderator:
Art Yan, media arts curator and producer. He is now Executive Director of Chronus Art Center, since December 2013.
