A Study on the Commercial Promotion Mode of Contemporary Young Artists in China Taking Art Nova 100 as an Example

Nowadays, young artists have increasingly become a significant part of the art market in China since there has been a recent emergence of China\u27s art market. Therefore, their personal growth and development would greatly impact the future of art market. With the support of relevant economic and political policies from the government, China has initiated many innovative characterized business modes of cultivating young artists. By looking at Art Nova 100, a quite typical art project of recent years in China, this paper firstly deals with the actual living situation of contemporary young Chinese artist together with considerations for specific historical background. Then it offers a thorough analysis regarding background as well as operational and promotional modes of the project from multiple perspectives. At last, the paper talks about present deficiencies of the project and proposes for domestic art development in the future by suggesting the necessity of learning from successful foreign commercial cultivation mode of young artists. Research on commercial training mode of young artists serves as an essential part when it comes to improving domestic art market environment. However, real growth in the art industry cannot be achieved overnight and demands joint efforts from all parties of art managers, young artists and collectors

Micro-blogging Contesting Modernities: Producing and Remembering Public Events in Contemporary Chinese Social Media Platforms

How does journalism empower citizens through reporting and remembering news events, as they take shape in the era of social media in a society where the state power penetrates every aspect of social life and freedom of expression is not legally guaranteed? This inquiry is implemented through looking at the contemporary Chinese context, examining three sets of tensions that capture the characteristics of social media platforms: control/resistance, past/present, and global/local. It analyzes journalism and its reliance on collective memory in social media, by considering social media as an important venue where journalism interacts with other sets of discourses in a tradition of absolute state power. My study shows that in China, a society that enjoys a limited free flow of information, journalism uses social media platforms to mobilize symbolic resources for online activism targeting the Party-state system. These symbolic resources mainly derive from the past, both inside and beyond the Chinese context, leading to a debate of different versions of modernity in China. This is a study that spans three years along with the development of Sina Weibo (now Weibo), a micro-blogging service provided by Sina.com, one of the major Chinese portal websites. I argue that social media complicate the landscape of journalism, by taking a balancing position between market interests and political safety. In particular, micro-blogging has blurred the conventional distinction between professional and citizen journalism. Instead, the institutional and personal journalistic practices are working together contest censorship via social media platforms. Social media opens up spaces for journalists and ordinary citizens to rewrite history, and to use various resources provided by the past to criticize the present Party-state system and struggle for journalistic freedom. The global-local exchange of news and memory via social media platforms brings about a new version of Chinese identity, competing with the version promoted by the Party-state in contemporary social transition, and urging a thorough political reform to reach the goal of a civilized nation. Social media, as shown in the case of Weibo, reflect the conflicting views of China\u27s route to modernity--the debate between Chinese characteristics and universal values, which produces the meanings of a modern Chinese nation and raises the relevance of citizenship. This conflict is situated in the complexities of historical and contemporary social transitions and China\u27s dilemma in the embracing of a global world

A History of Boundaries: Redefining the Bordering Process

Societies throughout time and space have shaped their interactions with each other and their environments by forming boundaries. The function of boundaries, constructed through the process of bordering shape whether boundaries exhibit monologic or dialogic qualities. Boundaries expressed as enacted or discursive depending on their relations with others. Current scholarships use boundaries and bordering inconsistently, or as simplified monoliths. In order to overcome imprecise definitions, the study tests a set of theories by Denis Cosgrove, Etienne Balibar, Erin Williams, Harvey Starr, and G. Dale Thomas about geographic knowledge, periphery, and proximity. The theories are challenged or confirmed through analyzing their relevance found in the writings of historians, philosophers, and explorers found in ancient history, eighteenth century, and twentieth century. The study establishes boundaries and bordering as possible units of analysis using theory sets for historians that reveal how societies project and shape their identities across space and time