organized networks - mobile research labs, beijing 2007 + 2008 blogs http://orgnets.net/blog en Labour, Migration, Creative Industries, Risk http://orgnets.net/urban_china/neilson <p>(forthcoming in <a href="http://orgnets.net/urbanchina">special issue</a> of <a href="http://www.urbanchina.com.cn/">Urban China</a>)</p> <p><strong>By <a href="http://orgnets.net/user/3">Brett Neilson</strong></a></p> <p><a href="http://orgnets.net/urban_china/neilson">read more</a></p> http://orgnets.net/urban_china/neilson#comments Thu, 28 Aug 2008 03:57:42 +0000 admin 506 at http://orgnets.net Urban China: Counter-Mapping Creative Industries Issue http://orgnets.net/urbanchina <p><strong><a href="http://www.urbanchina.com.cn">Urban China</a> – October 2008 issue<br /> Counter-Mapping the Creative Industries</strong></p> <p>Edited by Ned Rossiter, Bert de Muynck, Mónica Carriço</p> <p>Bi-lingual: Chinese/English for international distribution/readership</p> <p><strong>Overview</strong><br /> This issue of Urban China is framed around an experimental research platform that sought to conduct a <a href="http://orgnets.net/projects/ci_laboratory/overview">counter-mapping of Beijing’s creative industries</a> in the summer of 2007. With a prehistory in Australia during the early nineties and the ‘Creative Nation’ policy agenda of the Paul Keating led Labor government, the creative industries became formalized as a policy discourse in the UK during the early years of the Blair government.</p> <p><a href="http://orgnets.net/urbanchina">read more</a></p> http://orgnets.net/urbanchina#comments Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:00:18 +0000 admin 503 at http://orgnets.net A Hierarchy of Networks?, or, Geo-Culturally Differentiated Networks and the Limits of Collaboration http://orgnets.net/node/502 <p>Earlier this year the <a href="http://www.edu-factory.org">edu-factory</a> organizers invited me to comment on the passage from <a href="http://www.edu-factory.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=category&amp;sectionid=7&amp;id=18&amp;Itemid=40">hierarchisation to autonomous institutions</a>. Indeed, I think it appropriate to maintain the connection between hierarchy and autonomy. This constitutive tension is apparent in the political economy and social-technical dimensions of both open source and proprietary software that provides the architecture for communicative relations. And it manifests on multiple fronts in the modalities of organization that attend the creation of autonomous spaces and times of radical or alternative research and education projects, experiments and agendas. There is no absolute autonomy, but rather a complex field of forces and relations that hold the potential for partial autonomy, or 'the difference which makes a difference' (Bateson).</p> <p><a href="http://orgnets.net/node/502">read more</a></p> http://orgnets.net/node/502#comments Tue, 27 May 2008 05:34:20 +0000 Ned Rossiter 502 at http://orgnets.net The challenge of working at the time of network: Interview by Il Manifesto with Ned Rossiter http://orgnets.net/node/490 <p>Alessandro Delfanti and Ned Rossiter, ‘La sfida del lavoro al tempo della rete [The challenge of working at the time of network: Interview with Ned Rossiter]’, <a href="http://www.ilmanifesto.it">Il Manifesto</a>, 1 May, 2008. Italian version available <a href="http://www.ilmanifesto.it/argomenti-settimana/articolo_43169543799d495da0c8deecbdea8c2d.html">here</a>.</p> <p><strong>Alessandro Delfanti:</strong> What's the best way to rebuild labour organizations in the network society? The anti-globalisation movement (a network-based movement) is dead and unions are incapable to intercept the needs of precarious and cognitive workers ...</p> <p><a href="http://orgnets.net/node/490">read more</a></p> http://orgnets.net/node/490#comments Sat, 10 May 2008 03:06:15 +0000 Ned Rossiter 490 at http://orgnets.net Social Inequalities in China, or, Crisis for Europe? http://orgnets.net/node/489 <p>Readers in the West have for some time now associated the economic ascendancy of China with a proliferation of social conflicts and ongoing abuse of human rights. For those on both the Left and Right there is a logic of affirmation about such tensions: state-capitalism is at its authoritarian worst in China. </p> <p>For the Left, social conflict registers as the condition or symptom of intense economic transformation. This grafts nicely with well-rehearsed humanist, if not Marxian formulations, on the inequalities inherent to capitalism. The Right, meanwhile, cannot quite reconcile the fact that increasingly open markets do not equate with the emergence of liberal democracy.</p> <p><a href="http://orgnets.net/node/489">read more</a></p> http://orgnets.net/node/489#comments Tue, 04 Mar 2008 06:10:51 +0000 Ned Rossiter 489 at http://orgnets.net Event: background to Yuanmingyuan artist village http://orgnets.net/node/428 <p>A walk down memory lane, Sunday July 22, 2007, from 3pm on</p> <p><cite>"With all its treasures, Notre Dame is no match for Yuanmingyuan, that enormous and magnificent museum in the East."</cite><br /> Victor Hugo</p> <p>The following short-cut through the history of Yuanmingyuan and its role in the landscape of the Beijing artist village's is completely made up of information featured on other websites. Links to those websites can be found at the bottom of the post.</p> <p>This collection serves as the background for the bei-ci excursion through Yuanmingyuan (Garden of Gardens) with <a href="http://orgnets.net/user/18">Jiang Jun</a> (editor-in-chief Urban china Magazine) on Sunday July 22, 2007.</p> <p><a href="http://www.orgnets.net/node/388">more info on the event</a></p> <p><strong>Yuanmingyuan Artist Village</strong></p> <p><strong>18th century</strong></p> <p><a href="http://orgnets.net/node/428">read more</a></p> http://orgnets.net/node/428#comments Sat, 21 Jul 2007 09:12:19 +0000 bert de muynck 428 at http://orgnets.net Interfering lines of different cities http://orgnets.net/node/343 <p><strong>By Shveta Sarda</strong></p> <p>We are a gathering. It's evening now. Imagine, a man walks through this<br /> gathering with an axe. It's evening, and a man walks through the<br /> gathering with a wheel barrow. And then, again, in this evening, a man<br /> walks past with a spade.</p> <p>All three have different searches.<br /> All three will find different things in this same location.<br /> All three will have different ways in which they search.<br /> All three will be perceived differently.<br /> All three will find themselves in a different set of relationships.<br /> All three will find their image amongst those who behold them is different.</p> <p>One will chop, one will gather, one will dig. Seeing the three<br /> implements pass, we who watch them will have a different image of what<br /> our tomorrow will bring. The sounds that accompany these images will<br /> give different senses about the approach of tomorrow.</p> <p>All of us live in different cities. Cities in which we carry with us</p> <p><a href="http://orgnets.net/node/343">read more</a></p> http://orgnets.net/node/343#comments Fri, 06 Jul 2007 05:18:50 +0000 admin 343 at http://orgnets.net Constructing The Real (E)state of Chinese Contemporary Art http://orgnets.net/node/342 <p><strong>Relections on 798, in 2004</strong></p> <p><strong>By Thomas J. Berghuis</strong></p> <p>That night in May my taxi cut through the traffic on Beijing's fourth ring road. I was on my way back from Tongxian driving towards the direction of Dashanzi. All around me it was pitch dark, which allowed me to contemplate the art scene without having to look at the way in which, almost overnight, the rest of the city is reconstructing itself into becoming an international commercial platform. I asked myself: What is it that makes Dashanzi so important as an art district? My thoughts wondered off in the night.</p> <p><a href="http://orgnets.net/node/342">read more</a></p> http://orgnets.net/node/342#comments Fri, 06 Jul 2007 05:17:16 +0000 admin 342 at http://orgnets.net Three topics related to Cultural, Economic and Urban Geographies of Beijing's Creative Industries http://orgnets.net/node/341 <p><strong>By Danny Butt</strong></p> <p><strong>1) Can you manufacture a creative cluster?</strong></p> <p>In the West, one of the challenges of creative cluster development is<br /> the level to which governmental initiatives can develop creative<br /> ecologies. Historically, creative clusters have developed informally<br /> - artists begin the process of gentrification by moving into areas of<br /> cheaper rent and with the space to set up studios. During the 60s-80s<br /> the prime locations for artists were in the inner city, which had<br /> been evacuated by the middle-classes who were in the suburbs. The<br /> development of the creative industries has allowed some creative<br /> practitioners to stay, but the incursion of other people keen to<br /> enjoy the newly gentrified "creative environment" price out low-<br /> income artists.</p> <p>Perhaps the trajectory of 798 is similar to this logic, but there<br /> seems to be a range of different approaches to art village</p> <p><a href="http://orgnets.net/node/341">read more</a></p> http://orgnets.net/node/341#comments Fri, 06 Jul 2007 05:14:31 +0000 admin 341 at http://orgnets.net Harmonious Society and Creative Society http://orgnets.net/node/340 <p><strong>By Shaun Chang</strong></p> <p>Having achieved spectacular economic growth in the last decade based on a<br /> manufacturing-driven economy, the Chinese Party of Communist is slowly<br /> shifting its focus from economic growth to issues of social injustice<br /> brought about by economic reforms. Former CPC leader Deng Xiaoping said<br /> that the reforms can allow some people to become rich first. The government<br /> is now facing growing anxiety from those who were left behind. Therefore,<br /> the CPC has initiated a nationwide campaign to ‘Construct a Socialistic<br /> Harmonious Society,’ hoping to cope with the growing gap between the rich<br /> and poor. The internet has turned into a platform where social inequity can<br /> be revealed by internet users through chat rooms or blogs, which can then<br /> be picked up by traditional media. </p> <p>Since the economic reforms and opening-up policies of 1978, China has<br /> witnessed dramatic changes in many areas. But the development of cultural</p> <p><a href="http://orgnets.net/node/340">read more</a></p> http://orgnets.net/node/340#comments Fri, 06 Jul 2007 05:12:15 +0000 admin 340 at http://orgnets.net