Opinion
Chinese Artists to Host a North Korean Film Festival
You likely won't hear about it on the festival circuit, but one of the most exclusive international venues can be found in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.
AX Mina
AX Mina is an artist and culture writer exploring contemporary spirituality, technology and other sundry topics. She co-produces Five and Nine, a podcast about magic, work, and economic justice, and serves on the board of the Rabkin Foundation.
Opinion
Reflecting China's Missing Lakes
LOS ANGELES — That Chinese cities are incredibly polluted is a fact that any visitor to the country must accept. From dead pigs in the water to brown in the skies, pollution is both backdrop and foreground to contemporary Chinese life.
Opinion
Photos About Mental Health
Maybe there's something to Lana Del Rey's "Summertime Sadness" song: summer can sometimes be an intense, heavy season, so perhaps that is why two recent articles have been dipping their toes into the pool of complex emotion that is contemporary life.
Opinion
What Happens When Literature Enters the Public Domain?
"Work that fails to enter a canon — literary, historical, or otherwise — tends to languish on the dustier shelves of college libraries. Digitization allows a new generation of scholars to look at them with fresh regard."
Art
Situationist Cycling Through LA's Nighttime Streets
LOS ANGELES — The City of Angels is famously opaque to the average visitor. Unlike New York, the vibe of Los Angeles doesn't reveal itself immediately after you step out of the subway. It doesn't even reveal itself after a few months.
Opinion
Images Worth a Dozen Words
SAN FRANCISCO — Recently, I stumbled upon the Descriptive Camera, a project by artist Matt Richardson that harkens back to the days when we could simply describe an image without showing it.
Opinion
Mountains and Oceans of Trash
SAN FRANCISCO — Pollution and health have been on the Chinese mind as of late. From dead pigs in Shanghai to tips for avoiding bad air in Beijing, a clean environment can be difficult to find. Smog and water pollution have become a feature of China's urban landscape, creating a hazard not just for C
Opinion
Creative Success vs. Personal Relationships — Who Wins?
SAN FRANCISCO — Many artists I know are incredibly ambitious. They want to be the best, the most effective artist they can be. And if they move to a large city with a supportive gallery and museum system, they can turn that ambition into career success.
Opinion
Remembering Art's Role in Social Change
SAN FRANCISCO — Just as design is often seen as an afterthought for new technologies, art is often seen as superfluous to the more quantifiable work behind social change and the rhetorical and charismatic qualities of change leaders.
Art
Residencies and Radio: New Opportunities to Explore China's Art Scene
SAN FRANCISCO — As interest in China grows, so does interest in its art scene. And while I've met countless artists in the US who have wanted to travel to China, the barriers to access remain high, due to language, culture, and cost.
Art
The Social Ties That Unbind
Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of commissioned essays for The World’s First Tumblr Art Symposium on Saturday, March 9, 2013. When I sent my first email in the 1990s, the internet was just beginning to hit the mainstream. The idea that we would use the internet to talk to friends we kn
Art
The Art of Gaming in the Context of Contemporary Art
LOS ANGELES — Games are everywhere these days. We keep them in our phones, our computers, our television sets. Where once we could content ourselves with a small selection of board games and a pack of cards, we now have a myriad of games at our fingertips, ready to download or purchase at a moment's