September 2012

Crowdsourcing has been around for awhile (this 2006 Wired article nicely lays out the concept). Over the last three years, crowdsourcing has been applied to fundraising with stunning results on Kickstarter and Indiegogo (“Go fund yourself”), and the experiments continue: Loudsauce is a “crowdfunded media buying platform” that encourages the growth of new media buying collectives to support cause-driven campaigns. So it’s not surprising that there would be a Chinese version of Kickstarter. Australia’s got Pozible; Brazil’s got Catarse. It makes sense that different kinds of communities would want their own crowdsourced funding sites because people have different stories about what they’re doing when they’re giving away money. You have to know your crowd to please it enough to support you financially. Those who succeed on these sites have to be experts at working their media and social network contexts (note: it’s hard work).

Last May, Liu Xiaodong and a team of assistants traveled to Hotan, a town in the Xinjiang region of China, where he painted monumental portraits of local Uyghur jade miners while a documentarian filmed the entire process. The project is on view at the Xinjiang International Exhibition Center in Urumqi from August 25 to October 8, and will travel to the Today Art Museum in Beijing in early 2013.

Far East, Up North records five domestic first-class skaters glide in Russian local journey. Short planning by Converse skaters list include domestic skateboard industry five impressive names: Li Zhi Xin, Lo Kam Lok, Huang Jian Feng, Du Ming Gen, Xu Ying. Drove to the ice and snow of neighboring Russia, stepping on four wheels occupation of Eastern Europe’s ancient streets. Winter in Russia is intolerable, and the local residents and the police doesn’t seemed to welcome our skaters to their streets,which made the journey a little bit tough. However, the streets of Russia are almost natural skate field, the exotic slopes made riders excited. In “Far East, north “, the skaters stepping on board jumped from the eleventh level, skate through the Long ramp, dropped naked into the iced lake, and breakthrough some first-time challenges for them… even if the whole scene is freezing winter, it’s still super inspiring to watch.