Bert de Muynck (BE): 'Creative City in China', lecture

Bert de Muynck

After a three month preliminary research project during May-July 2007 Bert de Muynck, Mónica Carriço and Ned Rossiter guest-edited 'Urban China #33' (called Creative China). Their issue of 'Urban China' set out to critique and redefine the idea and practice of ‘mapping’ the creative industries. De Muynck and his co-editors were mostly interested in the multiple idioms of expression that make creative industries intelligible beyond the blandness of policy discourse.

In 'Reading Room', de Muynck will give an update of his earlier research into the matter, based on his findings of the period between 2008-11, which ranged from ‘counter-mapping’ the creative industries in Beijing to interviews with more than 50 Chinese designers, policy makers and academics connected to China’s creative industries. With a focus on the alternative mapping of the creative industries a series of vectors of research like migrant networks and service labour, eco-politics of creative waste, informational geographies vs. creative clusters, craftsmanship, real-estate speculation and artist villages are identified as elements of a new form of creative engineering of Chinese society.

Bert de Muynck is an architect, writer and co-director of MovingCities, an independent research organisation investigating the role that architecture and urbanism play in shaping the contemporary city. During the past years MovingCities has conducted research, lectures and workshops in China, Israel, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland and Indonesia.

In the past decade Bert de Muynck has lived and worked in Amsterdam (2001-2006), Beijing (2006-2009) and Shanghai (since 2009). Since September 2011 de Muynck has been Assistant Professor at the The University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Architecture, and at the HKU Shanghai Study Center. De Muynck holds an MA in Architectural Engineering (Catholic University Leuven) and a diploma in Cultural Sciences (Free University Brussels). http://movingcities.org

Free entrance / Presentations will be in English / Your registration through [email protected] is appreciated

Language English