Visualising Chinese Borders in the 21st Century

Alongside Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art in Manchester, and Community Museum Project with Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hong Kong, Castlefield Gallery is delighted to be a partner venue of Culture, Capital & Communication: Visualising Chinese Borders in the 21st, a new international network of academics, curators and artists from Britain, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.

The Principal Investigator, Dr Beccy Kennedy,  is based at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Co-investigator, Dr Ming Turne, works at the Institute of Creative Industries Design at National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan.

A series of five research laboratories and symposia will take place over a 17 month period at these venues, with a summative conference at Manchester Metropolitan University in spring 2016.

The aim of the network is to produce a cross-disciplinary and multi-institutional body of research on the topic of the effects of border crossings upon art and design practice in Greater China by fulfilling the following objectives:

1.To interrogate the differences between the promotion, communication, theoretical content and production of art and design practices in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong working under OCTS (One Country, Two Systems) via recorded laboratory based research, discursive exchange and research papers delivered at the symposium.

2.To endeavour to frame these differences, discursively, within the context of late-Communist and capitalist modes of production and metaphorical border crossings.

3.To interrogate cultural differences both experienced and produced in relation to Chinese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong artists through laboratory based archival research, visual presentations and discussion.

4. To identify artists who have crossed borders between mainland China, Taiwan and/or Hong Kong and to analyse their productive outputs through knowledge exchange and by using visual and information resources at the Art Gallery based venues (Castlefield Gallery and CFCCA) and the university libraries (MMU, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and National Cheng Kung University).

5. To collate the research findings into qualitative datasets about artists from these regions to be placed on the MMU online archive repository (http://www.e-space.mmu.ac.uk/e-space/).

6. To traverse disciplinary and international boundaries between the professions, practices and histories of art and design, generating laboratory discussion, a symposium on the topic (at MMU) and a new transnational and cross-institutional, networked community on Chinese Cultural Border crossings.

7.To use the network to plan publications and further symposia and/or an exhibition on the subject.