Author Description

The emotional history of Shanghai that this book reports on is only a fraction of the amazing energy that the end of the 1990s brought to the city, and which echoed and reverberated throughout Asia as a great awakening of cities and projects. It was a general movement of people and groups looking to define what art, cultural involvement, political engagement, and social unrest meant at the time.? - Vigy Jin, Davide Quadrio, Xu Zhen. This publication is the first result of The Post-1998 Shanghai Contemporary Art Archive Research Project, launched by Vigy Jin, Davide Quadrio, and Xu Zhen - founders of the nonprofit space BizArt - to sort through the history of Shanghai?s artistic development from 1998 to 2012. The book represents an important opportunity to explore the actors and the organizations who took part, the production of works, the beginning of the digital revolution, and other projects that shared the aim of having one?s voice heard. Texts by Vigy Jin, Lu Mingjun, Philippe Pirotte, Davide Quadrio, Zhao Yao, Xu Zhen, and Yang Zhenzhong are accompanied by an archival chapter documenting events, exhibitions, and projects organized by BizArt from 1998 to 2012.