Projects tagged "East Asia"

How Song Dong's "Waste Not" Elicited Much Sympathy
Practitioner:
Song Dong, Zhao Xiangyuan(Song Dong's mother)
Date:
Jan 1 2005
Song Dong's Waste Not consisted of a single installation comprising over 10,000 commonplace, domestic items of daily life that had been used and amassed by the artist’s mother (Zhao Xiangyuan) over fifty years.
At Frieze, Do Ho Suh and Brother Eul Ho Suh Explore Intergenerational Legacies in Korean Art
Practitioner:
Suh Se Ok
Date:
Sep 6 2024
South Korean artist Do Ho Suh is internationally known for his ghostly, diaphanous architecture and fabric-made objects, which create imaginary spaces that are physically present yet impossible to inhabit. His large-scale, immersive, but impermanent installations serve as “acts of memorialization,” exploring themes of identity, home, and the tension between personal and public space.
Kurokawa Cup: prank and protest against immunity of top Japanese prosecutor
Practitioner:
A group of citizens in Japan
Date:
May 30 2020
Kurokawa Cup is a protest against former head Tokyo prosecutor Hiromu Kurokawa's de facto immunity after he had played mahjong for money, which is an illegal act in Japan.
"Dying to Survive": A Movie on Generic Drugs
Practitioner:
Director Muye Wen (文牧野）, Yong Lu (陆勇)
Date:
Aug 7 2019
The screen portrayal of a cancer sufferer whose illegal import of foreign medicines into China spurred national policy changes has become a box-office smash as audiences flock to a rare Chinese film on a hot-button issue. Dying To Survive is based on Lu Yong, who was arrested in 2013 after illegally importing a generic cancer drug in a case that sparked public debate about high medical costs.
Artist's self record of a Chinese marriage market
Practitioner:
Yingguang Guo
Date:
Aug 1 2015
A photography project on China's marriage market has recently reignited the debate about marriage in China, and the phenomenon of women deemed too old to marry, or "leftover women" in the country.
White Paper Revolution in Nanjing University of Communication
Practitioner:
Students from Nanjing University of Communication
Date:
Nov 26 2022
Direct Cause: The event that on November 24, several people died in a fire in a residential building in Urumqi, Xinjiang province, due to delayed disaster relief due to the COVID-19 lockdown policy in China, and the indifference of the government towards the incident and the block of message. Primary Cause: The three-year-long lockdown policy and the government’s excessive control over speech and thought led to social discontent.
‘Stand by Her’: a compaign fight period poverty in China
Practitioner:
Students and Teachers
Date:
Jan 1 2024
HONG KONG — It started when a single box of free sanitary pads appeared in a middle school classroom in October. Then a plastic container with pads was attached to the walls of four bathrooms in a university in Shanghai. By Monday, boxes and bags of individually wrapped pads had popped up outside bathrooms in at least 338 schools and colleges across China. Each carried a version of the same instructions: “Take one, then put one back later.
Rare protests against China’s ‘zero covid’ policy erupt across country
Practitioner:
Lily Kuo, The Washington Post
Date:
Nov 27 2022
Protests erupted in cities and on campuses across China this weekend as frustrated and outraged citizens took to the streets in a stunning wave of demonstrations against the government’s “zero covid” policy and the leaders enforcing it.
OurGoods Trade School
Practitioner:
Rich Watts, Louise Ma, OurGoods
Date:
Jan 1 2010
Trade School is a self-organised, alternative learning space that runs on barter. It was started in 2010 in New York’s Lower East Side by Rich Watts, Louise Ma, and Caroline Woolard of OurGoods.org, a creative barter network. Over 800 students participated in 76 single-session classes during 35 days. Anyone can teach a class, and students sign up by agreeing to meet the barter requests of teachers.
menstrual pad mutual aid boxes
Practitioner:
Chinese University Students
Date:
Oct 30 2020
Since 2020, university students across China have launched a grassroots initiative to combat menstrual stigma by placing “menstrual pad mutual aid boxes” in campus restrooms. These boxes, often accompanied by signs reading “Take one if you need it, donate if you can,” provide free sanitary pads to anyone caught off guard by their period—offering both practical relief and a symbolic challenge to the cultural silence surrounding menstruation.
TikTok's teen communists are reclaiming the hammer and sickle
Practitioner:
TikTok's Gen Z Users
Date:
Feb 11 2021
20-year-old Ilyssa, from New York, sees communism as the only viable alternative, one that will improve the societal issues we currently face. “From a young age, I was very aware of the stark class differences that existed,” she says. “I grew up with a single mother in a very poor family.
'Alchemy' Series Spearheads Conversations on Sustainable Art
Practitioner:
Choi Jeong Hwa
Date:
Dec 18 2018
For one artist, the ugly and the beautiful are equivalent concepts. In 2018, designer and artist Choi Jeong Hwa featured an exhibition titled 'Alchemy' at The Artling where he uses recycled and non-biodegradable materials in his work that he has been collecting for 30 years, such as household trash, glass, and steel. 'Dandelion' is one of his masterpieces installed in the outdoors in Seoul, South Korea.
600 Days of Sanitary Pad Mutual Help Boxes in Universities: Stagnation, Perseverance, and Exploration
Practitioner:
Chinese University Students
Date:
Jun 13 2020
From October to December 2020, Chinese university students nationwide launched a viral movement to install “menstrual pad mutual aid boxes” in women’s restrooms—free, wall-mounted containers stocked with disposable pads on a take-one, replace-one basis. Nearly 250 campuses joined within weeks. Some sustained their boxes for over a year, while others saw them vanish after bureaucratic pushback, logistical hurdles, or dwindling volunteer resources.
Beijing Sitong Bridge protest
Practitioner:
Peng Lifa
Date:
Oct 13 2022
The Beijing Sitong Bridge protest was a protest in China during the prelude to the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Rose Boy
Practitioner:
Singer Jolin Tsai
Date:
Dec 26 2018
“Rose Boy” (玫瑰少年) refers to Yeh Yung-chih, a 15-year-old junior high school student in Taiwan who died on April 20, 2000, after years of bullying due to his non-conforming gender expression. Though the official cause of death was ruled accidental—he allegedly slipped in a school bathroom—the circumstances surrounding his death, including prior complaints from his mother about repeated verbal and physical harassment, drew widespread public attention.
Environmental protection is the greatest religion, says Chinese artist
Practitioner:
Yuan Xikun
Date:
Aug 8 2014
By a pond inside one of the entrances to Beijing’s Chaoyang Park lies a cluster of one and two storey red pyramid-shaped buildings. Sculptures of Gandhi and Lincoln and other famous figures sit in the quiet woods nearby. This is Yuan Xikun’s Jin Tai Art Museum.
Buses in Seoul install 'comfort women' statues to honour former sex slaves
Practitioner:
Dong-A Transit bus company
Date:
Aug 7 2017
Buses serving several routes in central Seoul have acquired a new and highly controversial passenger: a barefoot “comfort woman”, wearing a traditional hanbok dress with her hands resting on her knees.
For Warmth
Practitioner:
Thich Nhat Hanh as featured at onbeing.org
Date:
Apr 1 2016
Thich Nhat Hanh reads his poem "For Warmth" in Vietnamese, Krista Tippett reads the translation in English, excerpted from the episode "Mindfulness, Suffering, and Engaged Buddhism."
The masked artist protesters in a polluted city of China
Practitioner:
Artists in Chengdu
Date:
Nov 11 2016
In the south-western city of Chengdu, by all accounts a city on the edge coping with heavy pollution but also with authorities scrambling to put a lid on simmering discontent. That night police detained a number of artists who managed to stage a silent demonstration, while wearing face masks.
My World Is In Your Blindspot
Practitioner:
Tenzing Rigdol
Date:
Jul 1 2014
This is a series of paintings reflecting the struggle and sacrifices made by the Tibetan people for independence. The author is Tenzing Rigdol, who is a Tibetan and influenced a lot by the Dalai Lama and traditional Tibetan culture. The paintings are full of Tibetan cultural elements. For instance, the characters created in the paintings are Tibetan monks, who are the typical representatives of their culture.
In China, Myths of Social Cohesion
Practitioner:
Chinese Government
Date:
Aug 18 2014
KASHGAR, China — They come for the camel rides, the chance to dress up like a conquering Qing dynasty soldier or to take selfies in front of one of the most historic Islamic shrines in Xinjiang, the sprawling region in China’s far northwest.
Protest in Inner Mongolia against CCP's Mandarin-only Education
Practitioner:
Ethnic Mongolians in China
Date:
Sep 1 2020
Thousands of ethnic Mongolians have protested across northern China in opposition to Beijing plans to replace the Mongolian language with Chinese in some school subjects.
Xincun
Practitioner:
Birdhead(Song Tao& Ji Weiyu)
Date:
Jan 1 2010
Song Tao and Ji Weiyu, established their collaborative named Birdhead in 2004. Both natives of Shanghai, their work is deeply rooted in their hometown and its evolution amid China’s growth into a global power. The duo takes diaristic snapshots, highlighting their everyday lives in the quickly changing city.
For China’s Halloween of Discontent, He Went as a Surveillance Camera
Practitioner:
Wenxin Fan, Rachel Liang, Shen Lu, WSJ
Date:
Nov 1 2023
Several nights of Halloween celebration in Shanghai provided a vivid, if indirect, commentary this week on the malaise gripping the world’s second-largest economy.
Remembering
Practitioner:
Ai Weiwei
Date:
Sep 10 2008
In 2009, the dissident artist created a work to honour the thousands of children who died in the Sichuan earthquake. He recalls how the project, Remembering, angered China’s rulers – and changed his career for ever This is an edited extract from The Start podcast

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