We’re approaching the end of the year and here at Hyperallergic we’d like to provide you with retrospective looks at 2010 as well as some suggestions for how to make 2011 even better for your online art life. To begin with, here are some Twitter picks sure to expand your horizons.
As far as the year in social media goes, Twitter is far and away my choice for a handy source of updates, information and air-testing inside the art world or out. Pretty much anything that you want to know about gets broadcast into your Twitter stream with a good enough group of follows. To the end of blowing up your Twitterverse, I wanted to give you my personal recommendations for ten English-language Twitter follows that will help you keep track of the Chinese contemporary art world.
Having spent some time attempting to understand the art scene in China, I know it’s a pretty daunting prospect, especially without fluent Chinese. Even if they’re not entirely consistent with their updates, these Twitterers will keep you on the up side of events and exhibitions in Beijing and beyond. They are curators, writers, editors, artists and Chinese culture cheerleaders who provide a vital connection between the Chinese art scene and the English-speaking world. Most of all, they’re people worth paying attention to. I hope you find this short list useful!
Catch this whole group of Chinese art follows at the list I created, Chinese Contemporary Art.
Ten Chinese Contemporary Art Twitter Follows:
Samantha Culp (@new_territories)
Critic, journalist, editor and artist Samantha Culp is everywhere around the Chinese art scene, spending time in Shanghai as well as Beijing. Her New Territories project for the “research, development and production of innovative cultural projects.”
Redbox Beijing (@redboxbeijing)
Redbox Beijing is a website and publication that features book reviews, critical conversations, event and exhibition listings, and relevant news about Chinese art and design. Their twitter highlights exhibition reviews and important happenings.
Philip Tinari (@philiptinari)
Philip Tinari is the editor in chief of LEAP magazine, a new bimonthly contemporary art magazine that covers the Chinese art scene with a rigorously attentive and critical, yet fun, perspective. His tweets are pithy statements that pierce the bullshit of many international contemporary art events. He cannot be beat when it comes to reporting from the contemporary art world topiary milieu.
Granite Studio (@GraniteStudio)
Granite Studio is Jeremiah Jenne, a scholar and writer in Beijing researching colonial resistance and collective violence in 19th century China. He also posts less serious stuff than that on his popular blog, and short hits on his Twitter.
Kaiser Kuo (@KaiserKuo)
Kaiser Kuo is pretty much everywhere. A columnist for Beijing’s most popular monthly, communication maven for Baidu, China’s Google, and a metal guitarist in the band Chunqiu, he’s snarky, hilarious, and covers a lot of interesting goings-on on his Twitter.
Robin Peckham (@rpeckham)
Robin Peckham is a writer and critic based in Hong Kong who has written for Artforum online, Redbox Beijing and LEAP magazine and has also been involved in Long March Space and Boers-Li Gallery, two highly-regarded art spaces in Beijing. Check Robin for art news from all over.
Jeremy Goldkorn (@goldkorn)
Jeremy Goldkorn runs Danwei.org, a news and media website based in Beijing. Jeremy covers the Chinese media world, online media and breaking news stories.
Ai Weiwei English (@aiwwenglish)
With @aiwwenglish, new media artist An Xiao and Jennifer Ng translate Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s tweets. An invaluable resource for those without Chinese language skills, reading Ai Weiwei’s Twitter is the most direct way to plug in to the Chinese art scene at all levels. Ai tweets about art projects and holds conversations with peers and admirers alike.
Christopher Adams (@christopheradam)
Christopher Adams is a publisher and designer based in Beijing and Taipei. He works with Creative Commons software engineer Jon Phillips at Fabricatorz, an extremely multivalent and international production firm of projects ranging from open-source speaker design to conferences on internet rights.
Neocha (@neocha)
Neocha Edge is a blog that aggregates (and represents) new Chinese artists. Not limited to fine artists, Neocha collects illustrators, animators, designers and pretty much anyone cool. For those not wanting to keep up on Twitter, the website is a great once-in-a-while stop.
Bonus: Two Twitters for Japanese Culture
Snow Magazine (@snow_mag)
Snow Magazine, founded by Jean Snow, is a Notcot for Japanese art, design and architecture. It is a lovely, clean, minimal website layout that aggregates awesome things. Any hit on the site is sure to come up with something worth looking at. The Twitter is Jean Snow personally sifting through Japanese contemporary culture with a hilarious sense of humor and a targeted sense of what’s significant.
Neojaponisme (@neojaponisme)
Neojaponisme is intense. From in depth cultural critique to post-structural analysis of fashion trends and publication of old-school graphic design bits, this is the best art writing you’re going to get. I fervently wish that every country on Earth had a website as devoted and awesome as Neojaponisme. That’s why you should check it out. Twitter is an extension of the much-wordier blog.
Disclosure: I worked for LEAP magazine in Beijing and continue to contribute columns to the magazine. Stay tuned for more end of the year Top (and Bottom) Tens!
