Irina Botea Bucan (b. Romania) has developed a symbiotic artist-educator-researcher methodological framework that consistently questions dominant socio-political ideas and centralizes human and non-human agency as a vehicle for meaning. Choosing to act in diverse contexts, such as: academic institutions, alternative galleries, museums, art biennials, ]ilm festivals and generic community centers; she is currently focusing on the de-centralization of cultural discourses and the possibility of sustaining creative differentiation that arguably exists outside of a dominant hegemonic system of values and critique. Since 2013 she has been collaborating with Jon Dean, and currently she is faculty at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and pursuing a PhD at Goldsmiths University in London. Solo and group shows include: 55th Venice Biennale, International Film Festival Rotterdam, New Museum, New York; MUSAC (Museum of Contemporary Art of Castilia and Leon); Pompidou Centre, Paris; National Gallery Jeu de Paume, Paris; Kunsthalle Winterthur; Reina So]ia National Museum, Madrid; Gwangju Biennale; 51st Venice Biennale; Prague Biennale; Kunstforum Vienna; Foksal Gallery, Warsaw; Argos Center for Art and Media, Brussels; MNAC (National Museum of Contemporary Art), Bucharest; Museum of Contemporary Art, Szczecin, Poland; Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowki Castle, Warsaw.

Jon Dean (b. UK) has been active in the overlapping ]ields of community-based participatory arts and adult education for over thirty years. A diverse and extensive professional career has witnessed Jon developing and delivering community arts, experiential learning, and cultural programmes across the UK, Romania, and beyond… At the core of these various activities, Jon has consistently embedded the idea that community arts is an aesthetic methodology rooted in differentiated and negotiated strategies designed to place participants at the very core of creative expression and artistic production. Ultimately, a process of personal, social, and critical engagement structured to create a living cultural democracy. Working in collaboration with Irina Botea Bucan, Jon’s projects have been recently shown in Inkubator, Jogja; Columbia University; European Academy of Participation, Amsterdam; Institute for Advanced Studies, CEU, Budapest; ZKM, Karlsruhe; University of Arts, Budapest; Camargue Residency, Cassis; Millikin University; OSA, Budapest; Fundata, Timișoara, Bucharest; Sonic Futures - Bacau, Simultan Festival; Loop, Barcelona; Art Encounters Biennial, Timisoara; NTU - CCA Singapore; La Kunsthalle Mulhouse; Phillips Museum of Art; NoNation, Chicago; Young Artists’ Gallery, Budapest; University of Johannesburg.

Yuan Fuca is a writer and curator based in Beijing, Boston, and New York City. She currently serves as the Associate Program Director for China at KADIST. Yuan’s curatorial research and practice have been supported by institutions including Para Site (Hong Kong), the Japan Foundation, the Korea Foundation, the Asia Society, the Asian Cultural Council, Maxim Gorki Theater, New Century Art Foundation, and the De Ying Foundation. From 2019 to 2022, she was the founding Artistic Director of the Macalline Center of Art in Beijing. Between 2016 and 2019, she co-founded and directed Salt Projects, a non-pro]it art space in Beijing that served as a site for exchange and experimentation among emerging artists and practitioners.Yuan is also the founding editor of Heichi Magazine, an online bilingual publishing platform. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Artnews, BOMB, Flash Art, Frieze, Texte zur Kunst, The New York Times T Magazine, and Yishu.

Geng Jun is a ]ilm director, screenwriter and producer. His feature ]ilm Barbecue was shortlisted for the New Perspectives of Festival des 3 Continents Nantes and the Bright Future section of International Film Festival Rotterdam (2004); Youth was shortlisted for the main competition of Rome International Film Festival (2008); The Hammer and Sickle are Sleeping won the Golden Horse Award for Best Short Film (2014); Free and Easy won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Cinematic Vision at Sundance Film Festival, and was nominated for the 54th Golden Horse Award of Best Feature Film and Best Director (2017); Manchurian Tiger won the Golden Goblet Award for the Best Feature Film at the 24th Shanghai International Film Festival (2021); Bel Ami won the 61st Golden Horse Award for Best Actor, Best Photography, Best Editing, and the Best Film Voted by the Audience (2024).

Gu Tao is an award-winning ethnographic and documentary ]ilmmaker. He was born in 1970 in Inner Mongolia, China, at the base of the Great Xing’an Mountains. His ]ilms have been screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival among others. Gu graduated in 1995 from Inner Mongolia Art College with a major of oil painting.When he was a child, his father Gu Deqing was an ethnographer and photographer, who had his time and energy on documenting the nomadic tribes in the mountains near their home. In 2005, Gu Tao began following in his father’s footsteps, traveling back to Great Xing’an Mountains to make a documentary about its original residents, the Ewenki people. Gu Tao’s focus, however, was different from his father’s, as he saw the way of life that had been severely limited by governmental intrusion and environmental destruction since the 1970s when his father on work. He paid attention to the dying traditions of life, and focused on how marginalized groups are adapting to the modern world. Over the years, Gu Tao has completed many documentaries on the living condition of ethnic minorities in contemporary Northeast China, which include Aoluguya, Aoluguya (2007), Yuguo and His Mother (2010), The Last Moose of Aoluguya (2013), and Lost Mountain (2014).

He Ping, Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the School of Literature, Nanjing Normal University, is an established literary critic, his literary criticism and research have been published in many outlets. He serves as the Vice President of Chinese Fiction Institution, the Chief Editor of Literary Community Book Series and Witness Literary Collection; and co-organized the Shanghai-Nanjing B-City Literature Workshop with Jin Li of Fudan University since 2017. He hosted the column Huacheng Focus for Huacheng literary magazine from 2017 to 2022 and initiated the public lecture program Art and Literature Forum for artists and writers in 2023.

Haeju Kim is a Senior Curator and Head of Residencies at Singapore Art Museum. Haeju has experience curating numerous contemporary art exhibitions and performance programs across various disciplines, with an emphasis on the body, time, and memory as key elements. Her work also engages with topics such as ecological perspectives, locality, and its planetary connections. She co-curated Asia Art Biennial 2024 in Taiwan and curated Singapore Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024. She was the Artistic Director for Busan Biennale 2022: We, on the Rising Wave, and previously was the Deputy Director at Art Sonje Center 2017-2021. At Art Sonje Center, Haeju curated group exhibition Transposition (2021), Dust, Clay, Stone (2020), The Island of the Colorblind (2019) and solo exhibitions by artists such as Koki Tanaka (2020) Hwayeon Nam (2020), Donghee Koo (2019) and Lee Kit (2019) among others. Other exhibitions curated by Kim include two solo exhibitions by Shitamichi Motoyuki and Manon de Boer at Kunsthal Aarhus in Denmark in 2022, as well as Moving/Image, a three-chapter exhibition and performance programme that was presented at Seoul Art Space Mullae (2016), ARKO Art Center (2017) and Seoul Museum of Art (2020). Currently, she is serving as the guest curator for the Roppongi Crossing show at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, which will open in December 2025, and is conducting a research project at the Singapore Art Museum that explores artists' works by employing archiving as a method.

Li Jiaqi, founder of Northeast Asia Art Archive (NAAA), based in New York and Beijing.

Based in Fushun, Li Yong lives and works within a city often de]ined—within dominant discourses—as situated along a linear timeline of modernity shaped by the rise and gradual decline of energy extraction. While such extraction implies depletion and breakdown, Li instead perceives a latent re-aggregation of energy within the very ruins it has left behind. These energies, generated in what Li calls "ruin time", emerge as a vital force—a convergence of human, non-human, and land-based entanglements. In the pauses and absences of external forces that once drove modernization, "ruin time" reveals itself. For years, Li has remained embedded in these ruinous landscapes, using photography, as well as video, writing, and installation, to sense and engage with these hidden energies.

Liang Chen was born in Dandong, Liaoning, China in 1987. He graduated with a degree of Bachelor of Architecture from Jilin Architecture University. From 2011 to 2015, as a former associate and senior project architect at Vector Architects, he completed projects including Aranya Seashore Library. In 2017, Liang established his independent architecture and art studio Aleph-Liangchen (www.aleph-liangchen.com). His representative architectural projects include Singer House and Inner]low Gallery. His solo exhibitions include 1976/2020, DRC No.12, Beijing (2020); Liang Chen: Aleph, A4 Art Museum, Chengdu (2019). As a curator, Liang's curatorial practices include Space Discipline, OCAT, Shanghai(2020); From Antung to Dandong, Wind H Art Center, Beijing (2022); Edges as the Center, G Museum, Nanjing(2023); Endless Annotation, Yalu River Art Museum,Dandong(2023-).

Liu Chuanhong was born in Changchun, Jilin Province in 1975. He currently works and lives in Changchun and Lin County, Henan Province. He works on painting, writing, photography and ]ilm. His works start from his personal experience and delve into complex histories, then participate the histories through constructing ]ictional narratives.

Born in 1978 in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, Liu Yan received a B.A. and M.A. in Literature from Sichuan University and a Ph.D. in Literature from Peking University between 1997 and 2008. Currently a Professor at the School of Chinese Language and Literature, University of International Business and Economics. Publications include History, Memory, Production: A Cultural Study of the Old Industrial Base in Northeast China, Contemporary North: A Study on the Historical Experience and Contemporary Cultural Production of the Old Industrial Base in Northeast China, among others.

Li Zhiji is a professor and the dean of School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Jilin Jianzhu University. He is a national first-class registered architect, Changbai Mountain Skillmaster, Jilin Provincial Schoolmaster, Changchun Model Worker and member of the Changchun Municipal Decision-making Advisory Committee. He also serves as the vice president of Jilin Architectural History and Heritage Preservation Society, the vice president of Jilin Historical Sites Preservation Association, and the deputy director of the Historical Preservation Committee of Changchun Urban and Rural Planning Committee. He has been engaged in theoretical research, teaching and engineering practice of architectural history and cultural heritage preservation for a long time.

Aki Onda is an artist, composer, and curator currently based in Mito, Japan, after living in New York for two decades. His works are often catalyzed by and structured around memories—personal, collective, historical—such as his widely-known project, Cassette Memories (2004–ongoing), drawn from three decades of ]ield recordings. Crossing genres, Onda has been active internationally in art, ]ilm, music and performance, and his artistic collaborators include Michael Snow, Ken Jacobs, Raha Raissnia, Paul Clipson, Ho Tzu Nyen, Loren Connors, David Toop and Akio Suzuki. Onda have presented their work at The Kitchen, MoMA, MoMA P.S.1, Blank Forms, REDCAT, Toronto Biennual of Art, documenta 14, Louvre Museum, Pompidou Center, Palais de Tokyo, Fondation Cartier, Argos, Bozar, ICA London, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Nam June Paik Art Center and many others.

Ou Ning is an artist, curator, and writer. His practices in different periods encompass literature, music, film, art, design, architecture, urban research, utopian study, rural reconstruction, and geographical soundscape. He is the director of two documentaries, San Yuan Li (2003) and Meishi Street (2006); the Chief Curator of the Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (2009); the founding Editor-in-Chief of the literary bimonthly Chutzpah! (2010-2014); and the initiator and practitioner of the Bishan Project (2011-2016). He taught at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation of Columbia University in 2016-2017 and has been a researcher at the Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research (CAD+SR, Boston and Helsinki) since 2019. He moved to New York in 2022, and initiated the ISOGLOSS Collective in 2024, which will launch a multilingual online magazine for cultural and artistic criticism, ISOGLOSS Review,  in 2025.

Pan He, trans-citied ]laneur, ex-bookshopkeeper, constant participant of 44 Monthly & Theater, member of Manchufeierizi

Forestry University with a degree in Forestry and holds the title of Senior Engineer. Since 1977, Piao has been engaged in research on wildlife ecology and conservation at the Changbai Mountain National Nature Reserve. His work primarily focuses on ecological issues arising from human and natural disturbances. Piao has led eight major research projects on topics such as endangered species conservation, the relationship between wildlife and seed resources, animal habitats, population dynamics, and road ecology, and has contributed to over ten additional research initiatives. He has published more than 50 academic papers, including four in SCI-indexed journals, and contributed to nine academic books. Piao is also an active science communicator, having published over 60 popular science articles in magazines such as Forests and Humans, Chinese National Geography, Knowledge is Power, and Global Junior Geography. His science publications include In Search of Shadows in the Forest: Wildlife Observation Notes, River Notes, Forest Notes, and Tundra Traces.

Kyong Park is professor at the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego (since 2007) and was the founding director of Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York (1982–1998), the International Center for Urban Ecology in Detroit (1998–2001), and the Centrala Foundation for Future Cities in Rotterdam (2005–2006). He was a curator of Gwangju Biennale (1997) and the Artistic Director and Chief Curator of the Anyang Public Art Project 2010 (2009–2010) in South Korea. His solo exhibitions include Kyong Park: New Silk Road at the Museo de Arte Contemporàneo de Castilla y Leó n in Spain (2009–2010) and Imagining New Eurasia, a sequence of three research art exhibitions, commissioned by and exhibited at the Asia Culture Center in Gwangju, South Korea (2015–2018). His recent project is a series of collaborations under collectives called CiViChon, with the exhibition City in a Village at Vienna Biennale for Change (2021), CiViChon 2.0, with the exhibition Nomadic Forums for Future Communities at the Ob/Scene Festival in South Korea (2022). He was a co-curator of the Korean Pavilion for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, and its exhibition “2086: Together How?”

Ryu Hankil is a computer musician, improviser and writer based in Seoul.He explores sounds outside of music with a conspiratorial view of music and all the conventions associated with it. Through the speculative capacity of sonic thinking, he considers the possibility of how sound can function as a different system of perception, and how it can radically and completely reorganize today's reality.

https://linktr.ee/hankil.ryu

Song Nianshen is professor of the Institute of Advanced Studies, and the Department of History, School of Humanities, Tsinghua University. His research and teaching focus on late imperial and modern China, with special interest in China's ethnic frontiers, East Asian trans-regional networks, historical geography, urban studies, and historical geography. Dr. Song is the author of several monographies, including: Making Borders in Modern East Asia: The Tumen River Demarcation, 1881–1919 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Zhizao Yazhou (Mapping Asia, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2024) and Faxian Dongya (Discovering East Asia, New Star Press, 2024). His journal articles have appeared in The American Historical Review, The Journal of Asian Studies, Inner Asia, Geopolitics, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Research, The Chinese Journal of International Politics, Dushu (Reading), Kaifang Shidai (Open Times), Xinshixue (New History) among others.

Stylus is a printing of]ice to produce banknotes for Deng Tiehmei's anti-Japanese army (commonly known as Deng ticket).Later, Stylus became a piece of paper silently kept in the register of industrial and commercial households in Antung in the early years of liberation (1950). In 668 A.D., the Tang Dynasty set up the Protectorate General to Pacify the East (Andong Duhufu). In 1876 A.D., the Qing Dynasty kept the old name and set up Antung Prefecture. In 1965 A.D., for the sake of Sino-North Korean friendship, its name was changed from Antung to Dandong, though the folk preferred to call its original name. So those who loved Antung got together and founded a studio named Stylus. Later, the Journal of Antung History Images was published, marking a journey to collect and tell the story of Antung.

Born in 1984 in Xi’an, Sun Haiting is an architect, photographer, currently based in Beijing. As an architect, Sun focus on architecture design and heritage preservation. As a photographer, he focuses on the relationship between humans and the living environment. His photographic works pay attention to the daily lives from a calm, non-instantaneous perspective, showcasing their poetic, extraordinary, and even extraordinary qualities, exploring the boundaries between daily life and spectacles.

Wang Tuo (b. 1984, Changchun, China) interweaves historical facts, cultural archives, ]iction and mythology into speculative narratives. Through ]ilm, performance, painting, and drawing, his work is a powerful examination of modern Chinese and East Asian history. The multidimensional chronologies he constructs, interspersed with conspicuous and hidden clues, expose the underlying historical and cultural forces at work within society. Embracing a uniquely Chinese hauntology, Wang proposes “pan-shamanization” as an entry point to unravel the suppressed and untreated memories of 20th century China and East Asia. Through historical inquiry, Wang’s works, often unsettling and dramatic, disentangle collective unconsciousness and historical traumas. Wang has recent solo shows at K21, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; UCCA, Beijing; Present Company, New York; Salt Project, Beijing; Taikang Space, Beijing, and recent group shows at M+ Museum, Hong Kong, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Julia Stoschek Collection, Dü sseldorf; Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden; Queens Museum, New York; Kino der Kunst, Munich; Zarya Center for Contemporary Art, Vladivostok; Incheon Art Platform; Power Station of Art, Shanghai; OCAT, Shenzhen & Shanghai; Times Museum, Guangzhou; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung. Wang Tuo was an Artist in Residence at the Queens Museum, New York from 2015 to 2017. Wang Tuo was awarded a research residency at KADIST San Francisco as part of the OCAT x KADIST Media Artist Prize 2020. Wang Tuo won the Sigg Prize 2023, and in 2024, Wang is the recipient of the K21 Global Art Award.

Brian Kuan Wood is a writer based in New York, and an editor of e-flux's book series and monthly journal. Since 2015 he has taught at the MA Curatorial Practice program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he was Director of Research from 2017 to 2022. He has taught and lectured at Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Inside Out Museum in Beijing, and China Art Academy in Hangzhou, among other places. He recently edited Natascha Sadr Haghighian's relearning bearing witness (2021), Yuk Hui's Art and Cosmotechnics (2021), as well as the 2017 Sharjah Biennial publication Tamawuj (with Amal Issa, Omar Berrada, and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie), the Taipei Biennial 2012 catalog Modern Monsters: Death and Life of Fiction (with Anselm Franke), and Selected Maria Lind Writing (2010). With Freya Chou and Reem Shadid he curated the 2023 Taipei Biennial “Small World”.

Yan Jun, a musician and poet based in Beijing.

He works on experimental music and improvised music. He uses noise, field recording, body and concept as materials. Sometimes he goes to audience's home for playing a plastic bag.

“I wish I was a piece of field recording.”

yanjun.org

Born in 1994 in Qiqihar, Heilongjiang Province, Yang Zhihan is the recipient of numerous literary honors, including the People’s Literature Newcomer Award, Mao Dun Literature Newcomer Award, Chinese-language Youth Writer Award, Huacheng Literature Award, Ding Ling Literature Award, Dajia Literature Award, Zhongshan Star Annual Young Writer Award, and the Blancpain-Imaginist Literary Prize. Yang has published several short story collections, including A Block of Solid Ice, After Dusk, and Fishing Alone.

Mia Yu is a curator, art historian and artist-filmmaker. Her research-based practice examines the complex relationship between extractive landscape, infrastructure and eco-politics. Her creative work involves extensive field research centered around energy extraction and energy transition in Asia. Mia Yu combines images, folklores, cosmologies, dreams, poetry, and performances to construct speculative mythology and poetics about energy. Her Fushun Trilogy, consisting of three films and a performance, has been exhibited at Goethe Institut, Times Museum and CAFA Art Museum. She has curated exhibitions including “Fossil Sunlight, Sedimentary Bodies”, “A Darkness Shimmering in the Light”, “Counterpoints: Focus China”, “2021 OCAT Biennale: Resonances of One Hundred Things”, “Ecological Entanglements from Northeast China” and “From Vladivostok to Xishuangbanna”. Mia Yu has lectured about her work at Harvard University, University College of London, Cornell University, University of Toronto, Peking University, The Courtauld Institute of Art and Goldsmiths. Mia Yu has published essays in ARTMargin, Afterall, Artforum, Art Review Oxford, LEAP and Art Monthly. Her films are in the collection of Seatle Art Museum and University of Washington library.

Photography Artist & Independent Curator. Zeng Han was born in Guangdong, 1974. He got BA degree in International Journalism, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 1997 and graduated from the artist residency program Photo Global, School of Visaul Arts, New York, 2009. He has been exhibiting internationally at photo festival and Biennial l in China U.S.A France Germany Australia etc. since 2000, and his works are collected widely includes Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; M+ Art Museum, Hongkong and many others. As a curator, He had curated Guangzhou Image Triennial 2017, Singapore International Photo Festival 2012, etc. He had got some awards, include: The Best curator Award of The 2011 3rd Dali International Photography Festival; Top 20 Chinese New Contemporary Photographer Award in 2011 The Best Young Chinese Photographer of 2006 Award; 2005, The Best curator Award of The 1st Lianzhou International Photography Festival in 2005.

FeiFan Zhang is an artist and photographer whose work examines how human intentions often result in irreconcilable functions as oddly experienced spaces in the changing urban landscape. She received her MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago, and BA in English Literature from Beijing International Studies University in Beijing, China, where she was born and raised. Her No Man's Land series has appeared in solo and group exhibitions, as well as digital and printed publications internationally, including Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL), Midwest Center for Photography (Wichita, KS), Kerb Journal by Department of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia), Boston Society of Architects (BSA) Space (Boston, MA), Wedge Projects (Chicago, IL), Subjectively Objective (Detroit, MI), ArtSlant (US), and Urbanautica Institute Annual Awards (US), among others. She received the Kunpeng Award from the 2022 China Young Photographer Promotional Plan at 2022 Pingyao International Photography Festival (Pingyao, Shanxi, China). Her professional practice extends into cultural and arts initiatives, currently serving as Director of Operations at Northeast Asia Art Archive (NAAA) .

Zhang Meng is a film director, screenwriter, and producer. His debut feature film, Lucky Dog (2004), was selected for the New Perspectives of the Festival des 3 Continents Nantes and the Bright Future section at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, earning him the Best New Director Award at the 9th Chinese Film Media Awards and establishing his position in the industry. His self-written and directed film The Piano in a Factory became a representative work, receiving nominations for Best Director and Best Feature Film at both the Golden Rooster Awards and the Golden Horse Awards, and winning the Outstanding New Director Award at the 14th Huabiao Film Awards. His film Victory received the Jury Grand Prix at the 17th Shanghai International Film Festival, further demonstrating his artistic depth. Other acclaimed works include Everything Grows and On the Balcony, both of which were well received by audiences.

Zhang Wenzhi, born in Dalian, China in 1993. He is currently based between Beijing and Dalian. Zhang Wenzhi creates collagesque ink paintings which interweave Chinese modern history, folklore, popular science, and archival materials. Using his hometown as an entry point, Zhang spotlights the convoluted history of Northeast China, particularly the period dating to the late Qing Dynasty, delineating the repercussions of the past in the present. In Zhang's paintings, these auspicious creatures are juxtaposed against a vast landscape where historical and mythological motifs are nestled within industrial infrastructures, bearing witness to the region's ever-unfolding changes and complex historical tapestry.

Zhang Xianmin is a producer, director, curator, writer and actor, active across many areas of the film industry. As a Professor at the Beijing Film Academy, Zhang teaches screen writing and documentary filmmaking and occasionally French cinema and absurdist theatre. Zhang has produced and co-produced many features, including Old Dog (Pema Tseden, 2011), River Road (Li Ruijun, 2014), Kaili Blues (Bi Gan, 2016), to name a few. His acting credits include Rain Clouds Over Wushan (Zhang Ming, 1996), Summer Palace (Lou Ye, 2006), Missing and Raised from Dust (Gan Xiao’er 2007), which he also wrote. Zhang has also been a juror at more than a dozen international film festivals and served as Jury President of One Foundation Video Festival in 2012 and 2013. He organizes and programmes the China Independent Film Festival (CIFF) and Chinese indie cinema events around the world.

Born in 1981 in Yantai, Shandong, China, Zhang Xiao graduated from the Department of Architecture and Design at Yantai University in 2005. He was a photojournalist for Chongqing Morning Post before 2009. Zhang won the Robert Gardner Fellow in Photography of Harvard University in 2018 and the Three Shadows Photography Award in 2010 with They series. He also received the second Hou Dengke Documentary Photography Award in 2009, The Photography Talent Award (France) in 2010 and the Prix HSBC pour la Photographie in 2011 with Coastline series. Zhang’s solo and group exhibitions, include “Shehuo”, Harvard University Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology; “The World in 2015” and “Civilization: The Way We Live Now”(Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing); “Unfamiliar Familiarities”(Fotostiftung Schweiz ,Winterthur, Switzerland); “Photoquai”(Quai Branly Museum, Paris); “Apple”(Lianzhou Photography Museum, Guangdong); “Social Geography: Ten Journeys with a Camera”(Shanghai Centre of Photography); “Photography and Video Experiments in Southwestern China since 2000”(A4 Art Museum, Chengdu); “The Farm” (chi k11 Art Space, Shenyang), etc. Zhang currently lives and works in Chengdu city, Sichuan province, China.

Zhou Haicheng was born in 1968 in the Wangou Forestry Bureau of Jilin Province. He relocated with family to the Changbai Mountain Nature Reserve Administration in 1980, enlisted in the military in 1985. Upon returning to civilian life in 1989, Zhou joined the Baishan Management Station of CMNRA, had the good fortune of meeting mentor Zong Zhanjiang, who introduced him to the fundamentals of plant science. In 2000, Zhou transferred to the Toudao Management Station. In 2005, he joined a long-term forest ecosystem survey and restoration initiative led by the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Zhou was appointed as a field instructor for graduate research internships at the School of Forestry, Beijing Forestry University in 2008, and since 2007, has supported Professor Zhu Weihong’s Wetland Research Center at Yanbian University with plant identification work. Between 2009 and 2017, Zhou contributed to multiple biodiversity monitoring and pest management initiatives at the Changbai Mountain Reserve, including research on the eight-toothed spruce bark beetle (Ips typographus), larch caterpillar infestations, and the deployment of infrared camera traps for wildlife monitoring. In 2017, Zhou was invited to support species identi]ication for Professor He Nianpeng’s research on Korean pine functional traits at Northeast Forestry University. In 2024, he was appointed as a field instructor by the Wetland Research Center at Yanbian University.

Lee Ambrozy is a writer, translator, art historian, and curator specialized in Chinese art and archaeology. She has produced dozens of catalogs and publications, taught and lectured across the US and China, and collaborated with galleries and museums across China, including in Taiwan. Former editor at Artforum International's Chinese and English language websites, she was editor of Inside the White Cube: Artforum Fifty years of Art Criticism (Sanlian Books, 2017) and editor/translator of Ai Weiwei's Blog (MIT Press, 2011). She studied Mandarin at Peking University, holds an M.A. in twentieth century art history from Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts, and is currently finishing her doctoral degree at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, researching motifs from nature and their uses in Tang-Song painting & material culture.

With a group of colleagues, AN Tairan co-founded and co-edits Tangent Essays, an independent publishing platform that periodically features writings about architecture. He is a Postgraduate Research Associate at Princeton University, where he received a PhD in Architecture in 2024.

Alec Ash is a writer and editor focused on China, where he lived from 2008–2022. He is a Senior Fellow at Asia Society in New York, where he edits China Books Review. He is the author of Wish Lanterns (Picador, 2016, a BBC Book of the Week) about the lives of young Chinese people, and The Mountains Are High (Scribe, 2024), a memoir about city escapees moving to rural China.

Ash was born in England, and studied English literature at Oxford University, before moving to Beijing. He has written for The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic and elsewhere, and was a stringer for The Economist and The Sunday Times of London. He was editor of the China Channel at Los Angeles Review of Books, contributing author to the book of reportage Chinese Characters, and co-editor of the anthology While We’re Here.

Aurelia Dochnal is a film and arts researcher working on socialist and postsocialist cinema history in China and Eastern Europe. She edited the translingual and crosscultural magazine  China Hands  at Yale University, focusing on poetry, translation, and photography. She has been awarded scholarships from Ecole Normale Superieure, Beijing University, and Yale University. She is originally from Warsaw, Poland and now lives in New York City.

DONG Yuxiang is an art, educational, and social worker. He is currently a Lecturer at the Department of Art and Art History in the University of Miami. His current practices and research are driven by the contradiction between ethnography in the Anthropocene and the speculation of object-oriented ontology.

Yuan Fuca is a writer, curator, and researcher based in Beijing and Boston. She is the Associate Program Director for China at Kadist.

Yuan Fuca’s curatorial research and practice have received support from institutions such as Hong Kong's Para Site, the Japan Foundation, the Korea Foundation, the Asia Society, the Asian Cultural Council, Berlin's Maxim Gorki Theater, the New Century Art Foundation, and the De Ying Foundation. From 2016 to 2019, she co-founded and managed Salt Projects, a non-profit art space in Beijing that served as a hub for action and exchange among young artists and practitioners. In 2019, she joined the Macalline Art Center as the founding Artistic Director, shaping the institution’s initial programs and development direction.

Yuan is also a founding editor of Heichi Magazine, a bilingual digital publishing platform. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, ARTnews, BOMB, Flash Art, Frieze, Texte zur Kunst, New York Times T Magazine, Yishu, among other art platforms.

Michael graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Royal College of Art, London. Currently based in New York and Beijing, he is an independent curator and co-founder/editor-in-chief of te editions. His practice focuses on the intersections of contemporary art and the humanities.

Banyi Huang (they/them, b. Beijing) is a multimedia artist and writer based in Brooklyn, New York. Their work combines digital worldbuilding, text, installation, and performance to stage queer reenactments of Chinese mythologies and folklore. With a B.A. and M.A. in art history from Williams College and Columbia University, Banyi was an artist-in-residence at BRIClab; and a member at the Art and Code Track at NEW INC.

Their work has been shown at DEMO 2024 (presented by NEW INC), Wagner Mendoça Award Exhibition, the Shisanwu LLC Warehouse, Smack Mellon, Accent Sisters, Abrons Art Center, The Soto Velez Clemente Center, Special Special, and Artist’s Space (all New York). Screenings of their work include the New Museum, the Taiwan Film and Audio Institute (Taipei), Wonderville (NY), and the Flat Earth Festival (Seydisfjordur, Iceland). Banyi has also contributed writings to The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, Frieze, Spike Art, ArtAsiaPacific, Artforum China, Performa Magazine, among others.

Cindy Ziyun Huang is a London-based writer, editor and translator. Her writings about art have been published by art magazines including ArtReview. Her creative writings can be found in literary magazines such as Sine Theta Magazine and Tiny Molecules. She was commissioned by London Short Film Festival 2024 as its Emerging Writer. She also reviewed the 2024 programme of Queer East as one of its Emerging Critics. She co-edits Qilu Criticism, an independent online forum formed in 2021 to expand spaces for critical discussions on contemporary art in Chinese.

Jiaoyang Li is a poet and interdisciplinary artist based in New York City. Her work has been showcased/performed at New York Live Arts Center, Here Art Center, New Ohio Theatre, Chashama Gallery, Mana Contemporary, the Immigration Artist Biennial, Performa Biennial, Whitman’s Birthplace Museum, Asian American Writers Workshop, New York Public Library,  Jiaoyang has received grants and support from PEN America, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the British Council, Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, among others.  Her practices explore the nuances of text and visual materials and facilitate dialogues and translations through sound, visual, and tactile materials. It often delves into the puppetry, video games, movement, and drag performances,  often lost in the wearable and the weary, the transience and uncertainty. Jiaoyang and her work have been featured by T Magazine China, Art Forum China, Hyperallergic, Life Magazine, LA Review of Books, E-flux and elsewhere.  Jiaoyang is the co-founder of  Accent Sisters.

Ricky Ruihong Li is a writer, editor, and researcher. He co-founded Workshop for Environmental Technik (WET), a group dedicated to the experimental study of architecture and environmental politics. His writings have appeared in magazines and journals, including PIN-UP, Concerning Contemporary, and November. His research has been exhibited at 80WSE Gallery, New York University. He has taught and served critic at Pratt Institute, Columbia University, and Parsons School of Design. He receives degrees from Columbia University and Pratt Institute. 

Li lives and works in Zhuhai and New York. 

Weitian Liu was born in 1995 in Suzhou, China. He is a writer, editor and critic based in London, where he undertakes his doctoral studies, funded through the Asymmetry Art Foundation PhD scholarship, in the Advanced Practices program at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a member of the Society of the Friends of the Text. He co-edits Qilu Criticism. His writing has appeared in Qilu Criticism, ArtReview, Artforum China, among other publications.

LIU Zheng is a critic and newspaper editor based in Canton. He is the author of Travelling Books and two collections of essays and reviews (in Chinese). He selected and translated André Gide's Journals into Chinese. His reviews has appeared in the Shanghai Book Review of Books and Dushu(Reading) Monthly. He has been the recipient of  the One-way Street Bookstore Award for Criticism(2020).

Young Researcher of the School of Philosophy in Fudan University.

His recent curated exhibitions include “Frontier: Re-assessment of Post-Globalisation Politics”(2017- 2018), “Assembling” (2018), “River flowing without a Beacon, 1979” (2019) , “Corner Square Montage” (2019), and “Muses, Yu Gong and Compasses” (2020). His academic essays are published in Literature & Art Studies  and Art Research. Recent publications include Social Changes in the Painting Theory of Huang Binhong 1907-1954 (2018)  and “Poetic Justice” (2019). Lu was also the grantee of Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Greater China Research Grant in 2015; and the Recipient of the Yishu Award for Writing on Contemporary Chinese Art in 2016. He received fellowship grant from Asia Cultural Council (ACC) and was the recipient of 6th Chinese Contemporary Art Critic Award(CCAA) in 2017. He was the Recipient of the Award of Art(AAC) Chinese Contemporary Art Curator Award.

Mu Qian holds a doctorate in ethnomusicology (SOAS, University of London) and is an editor at Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale, a non-for-profit organization based in New York. He is also the translator of the Chinese edition of Alan Merriam's The Anthropology of Music. His research has been published in international journals such as Imago Musicae, the European Journal of Musicology, and Central Asian Survey, as well as in edited volumes like The Routledge Companion to Ethics and Research in Ethnomusicology. Mu has lectured at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Royal Holloway, University of London, and the International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden, Netherlands). 

Besides his academic work, Mu dedicates himself to reviving traditional music by curating concerts, giving lectures, and producing CDs. Everyone listen close—Wanp-Wanp Jangl Kap, a CD he recorded and produced of the polyphonic songs of southwestern China’s Dong/Kam people, was selected by the Transglobal World Music Chart as the Best Asia & Pacific album of 2019–2020. Mu hosts serial radio shows on BBC to introduce traditional music and contributes to magazines such as Songlines and Folklife, and is the founder of the WeChat official account/video channel Shengyin Shi (History of Sound).

Dr. Nie Xiaoyi writes about contemporary art and her personal life, researches curatorial practices, edits, and curates within and beyond the art industry. Aiming to broaden the discourse and praxis of curating, she is exploring how to “mobilise”(cedong) and the role of art in this process—to which her Ph.D. thesis at the Royal College of Art has led her. She co-edits Qilu Criticism, and is one of the 2024–2025 Curatorial Fellows of De Ying Foundation. From 2022 to 2024, She was the Senior Editor of ArtReview’s Chinese edition and LEAP. In 2021, she participated in the research project “Three Contested Sites — The Worldly Fables of the Long 1990s” initiated by Times Museum (Guangzhou). In 2020 she was awarded the IAAC-UK’s Emerging Art Writer Fellowship. She has contributed to institutional programmes at OCAT Research Institute, Gasworks, and Jimei-Arles Photography Festival. She has presented at the Institute of International Visual Arts, Freie Universität Berlin, Chinese Academy of Arts, Centre for Chinese Visual Arts. Besides industry magazines and mass media outlets, she has also published on academic platforms such as Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Education and Annual of Contemporary Art in China.  

OU Ning is an artist, curator, and writer. His practices in different periods encompass literature, music, film, art, design, architecture, urban research, utopian study, rural reconstruction, and geographical soundscape. He is the director of two documentaries, San Yuan Li (2003) and Meishi Street (2006); the Chief Curator of the Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (2009); the founding Editor-in-Chief of the literary bimonthly Chutzpah! (2010-2014); and the initiator and practitioner of the Bishan Project (2011-2016). He taught at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation of Columbia University in 2016-2017 and has been a researcher at the Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research (CAD+SR, Boston and Helsinki) since 2019. He moved to New York in 2022, and initiated the ISOGLOSS Collective in 2024, which will launch a multilingual online magazine for cultural and artistic criticism, ISOGLOSS Review,  in 2025.

Yanhan is a curator currently based in New York. She previously worked in the Research and Curatorial Department of Guangdong Museum of Art and has contributed to numerous projects, including the 3rd Guangzhou Triennial (2008), Guangzhou International Photography Biennial (2009), Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (2011), Chengdu Biennale (2011), Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival (2016), and the GSS Project (2020 to present).

In 2014, she joined the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in the United States, further exploring the intersection of contemporary art and other fields. She has also served as a translator and contributing writer for art media platforms such as LEAP and Art Trade Journal, as well as organized and edited publications for various exhibitions in China and abroad.

In 2021, her project Tracing the Elephant was nominated for the Jimei x Arles Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image. Starting in 2024, she serves as the Art Director of NextG Art Group in New York.

Kechun graduated from the Royal College of Art, London. She is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of te editions; the recipient of the "Emerging Curators Project 2021" award. Her articles have been published in ARTFORUM China and The Art Newspaper.  

Danielle Shang is an art historian, writer, and exhibition organizer in Los Angeles. She serves as the Overseas Artistic Director of the Shanghai-based Cc Art Foundation, where she has shaped the collection and program since 2016, focusing on the Global South and the Asian diaspora. She is also the cofounder of the AAPI Arts Network in Los Angeles and the annual symposium Voices of the Diaspora at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Her research examines the impact of globalization, urban renewal, social change, and class restructuring on art-making and the narrative of art history.

Shang has organized exhibitions featuring artists such as Minerva Cuevas, Amalia Pica, Simphiwe Ndzube, Julian Abraham “Togar,” and Chen Zhou, among many others. She has been a guest lecturer and speaker at institutions including the Hammer Museum, USC, UCLA, and Sotheby’s Institute of Art, as well as at venues across Asia. Her contributions to monographs and catalogs include writings for artists such as Huma Bhabha, Minerva Cuevas, Brooklin Soumahoro, Amir Fallah, Liu Wei, and Qiu Xiaofei. Her articles and essays have been published in The Art Newspaper, Mousse, Heichi, Artforum, ArtAsiaPacific, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, LEAP, and more.

Writer, primarily focusing on music reviews, interviews, and fiction. Currently dedicated to running a cultural foundation that supports Asian folk musicians and ethnomusicology scholars, publishes ethnomusicological records and related research, and works on preserving traditional Asian cultures.

b Tam has been the Curator and Director of Exhibitions at the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) since 2011. He organized the 2024 exhibition “Magazine Fever: Gen X Asian American Periodicals.” In 2018, he co-curated “The Moon Represents My Heart: Music, Memory and Belonging.” In 2016 Tam co-curated “Sour, Sweet, Bitter, Spicy: Stories of Chinese Food and Identity in America,” which featured a video installation and ceramics that defined Chinese food in America. He also co-curated “Waves of Identity: 35 Years of Archiving,” an exhibition that explored the construction of Chinese American identity through MOCA’s archival materials. In 2012 he curated “America through a Chinese Lens,” which surveyed photographs of America by contemporary artists and non-professional photographers of Chinese descent. 

Tam has previously served as the Associate Curator at Exit Art and the Acting Associate Curator at the Queens Museum of Art. While at Exit Art, he curated "New Mirrors: Painting in a Transparent World"; and co-curated "Summer Mixtape Volume 1," an exhibition exploring the role of pop music in the work of emerging artists. In 2007, Tam curated "A Jamaica, Queens Thing," about the intersection between hip hop and the crack cocaine epidemic. He has also curated solo exhibitions with artists Lee Mingwei, Rafael Sanchez and Regina Jose Galindo, and has worked on historical exhibitions about urban planner Robert Moses and alternative art spaces in New York. 

Tam was born in Hong Kong and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He studied at San Jose State University and earned a masters in fine arts from the School of Visual Arts, New York.

Matt Turner is the author of three full collections of poetry, and three chapbooks. The translator of Lu Xun’s Weeds, he is also co-translator of work by Ou Ning, Yan Jun, Wu Jinglian and others. His reviews and essays can be found in Cha, Heichi, Hyperallergic and other places. He lives in New York City.

Chris Wan Feng (b. 1982) is a Hong Kong-based writer, editor, and independent curator whose work engages with Hong Kong as both a subject and method. His research, writing, criticism, and curatorial projects explore the interplay between locality and art ecosystems, with a particular focus on the modernity and contemporary trajectories of Chinese migratory histories. As a contributor to prominent art publications such as ArtForum, ArtReview, and Ocula, Chris Wan Feng brings critical insights into contemporary art and cultural contexts. In 2020, he founded Daoju (www.daoju.art), a nonprofit art writing platform dedicated to Hong Kong contemporary art. This initiative has become a significant force in advancing art criticism in Hong Kong, fostering dialogues within the local and regional art scene.

Lin Wang is an artist primarily focused on photography and bookmaking, with additional explorations in performance art and installation. Her practice is deeply influenced by the concept of interactivity, with the process of her work often likened to assembling a tangram. Squeeze Sour comprises two main components: the first focuses on distribution, exploring innovative ways to circulate photo books worldwide and expand their reach; the second, linlin Plum, is a project dedicated to pushing the boundaries of "what can be called an artist's book" and "who has the authority to create one."

Xin Wang is a New York-based art historian and Curatorial Director at Pace Gallery. Currently finishing a PhD dissertation on Soviet Hauntology at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, she held curatorial and educational positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art, and received the Warhol Foundation’s Arts Writers Grant in 2021. 

Publications such as “Asian Futurism and the Non-Other” have been widely circulated, translated and taught in university curriculums. An appointed faculty at Yale University’s MFA program in Photography since 2021, she served as the curator of the 4th art and technology themed biennial program—titled “To Your Eternity”—at Beijing’s Today Art Museum in fall 2023. Her upcoming publications include “Machine Envy” in the book Machine Decision is Not Final: China and the History and Future of Artificial Intelligence (Urbanomic and NYU Shanghai), and “Dance as Socialist World-Building” in Afterall Journal (issue 57).

Xueli Wang writes about art and film from Asia and its diasporas. Her articles have appeared in Artforum, Aperture, and Art in America, among other publications. She is currently completing a PhD at Yale.

Xiaoyu Weng (sh-ih-ow-y-uu w-eh-ng) is a Shanghai born and New York based writer and curator. Taking an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach, her practice focuses on the impact of globalization, the convergence of art, science, and technology, and emerging ecological and environmental transformations through the lens of feminism, identity, and decolonization. In close collaborations with artists, researchers and philosophers, her work creates syncretic and hybrid contexts and platforms to foreground their practices. With extensive knowledge of the international art scene and a keen sense of new discourses in contemporary art, she has a track record of organizing groundbreaking and trend-making programs that push the boundaries of traditional artistic genre. From institutional positions to independent projects, Weng has worked with over 300 artists and practitioners, collaborated with over 50 organizations to organize exhibitions and programs across all continents, and written and published numerous essays on contemporary art, visual culture, and curatorial practice.

Kevin Wu is a slashie based in New York,  received his MA in Curatorial Studies from the School of Visual Arts and his BA in Art History and Visual Art from Columbia College. Besides his day-job in the sustainability field, he works as a translator, writer, and independent curator. He is currently invested in research topics such as science fiction, futurism, and hauntology.

Xu Kuangzhi is a Ph.D. candidate at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA). His research focuses on the history of art criticism and modern Chinese art history. He founded the online platform KONGBAI in 2013, dedicating himself to searching, collecting, translating, publishing, and circulating Western art historical texts and critiques. His essays and reviews appear in academic journals such as Art Observatory, Journal of Art Theory and Art History, Journal of  Aesthetic Education, and World Art.

yan jun, born in lanzhou. based in beijing. as a musician he works with field recording, noise, body, voice and concert. he writes poetry and essays on music.

he has participated daad artist residency in 2016-2017. as a poet he has attended international poetry festivals in rotterdam and berlin. he is the founder of a mini label called sub jam.

he was an online columnist for the wire magazine. he was an editor on board of lmj magazine. his recent books include “berlin reflections “ (daad) and “a few dreams” (shanghai wenyi). he once was a music critic till 20 years ago. 

“i wish i was a piece of field recording.”

yanjun.org

Zijing Yu, 2nd-year PhD student of Film and Media Studies, Yale University.

Lu is a New York based artist born in Xi’an, China. She creates intimate experiences that reenact memories and dream states; and attempt to visualize the transference of existing knowledge and cognitive experiences, to tell stories in the form of installations incorporating ceramics and video; she also works collaboratively that engage the public in explorations about the relativity and ambiguity of relationships. Lu’s recent film A Girl Sings Along Without Knowing the Words, a documentary film essay, was screened at Royal Queen dim sum restaurant in Flushing, Queens; and another documentary film See you At the Park, Notes On Smiley, screened at Metrograph, New York.

Lu  received her MFA in Fine Arts and MS in Art History from Pratt Institute and holds a BA degree in Economics from Xi’an JiaoTong University. Founder of Wildman Clab ( HuaiErDeMan Clab), member of P_______Lub (Painting Club), and co-founder of Chinatown Basketball Club. Lu’s Recent exhibitions include public space in Flushing, New York, Yve Yang Gallery, Art Lot Brooklyn, Pearl River Mart, Yeh Art Gallery, Underdonk, Latitude Gallery, The Clemente Soto Vélez, Present Company, Special Special, NARS Foundation, Museum of Chinese in America, A.I.R Gallery, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Korean Culture Center, Xi’an Academy of Fine Art. Lu has given artist talks, lectures and public programs nationally and internationally. 

Annie Jieping Zhang is Nieman Fellow 2024 in Harvard University. She founded Matters Lab, a decentralized social media platform; Nowhere Bookstore, a network of bookstores in overseas Chinese community. She also co-founded and was the editor-in-chief of Initium Media. She previously worked as an editor at City Magazine; columnist for the New York Times (Chinese edition); and as a reporter for Asia Week. The Society of Publishers in Asia named Zhang Journalist of the Year in 2010 and presented her with other a number of awards for her reporting and commentary. She is now working on her new book.

ZHANG Xianmin is a producer, director, curator, writer and actor, active across many areas of the film industry. As a Professor at the Beijing Film Academy, ZHANG teaches screen writing and documentary filmmaking and occasionally French cinema and absurdist theatre. ZHANG has produced and co-produced many features, including Old Dog (Pema Tseden, 2011), River Road(Li Ruijun, 2014), Kaili Blues (Bi Gan, 2016), to name a few.His acting credits include Rain Clouds Over Wushan (Zhang Ming, 1996), Summer Palace (Lou Ye, 2006), Missing and Raised from Dust (Gan Xiao’er 2007), which he also wrote. ZHANG has also been a juror at more than a dozen international film festivals and served as Jury President of One Foundation Video Festival in 2012 and 2013.  He organizes and programmes the China Independent Film Festival (CIFF) and Chinese indie cinema events around the world.

ZHAO Dayong started independent filmmaking in 2004, his first documentary Street Life, premiered at the Vienna Film Festival in 2006. In 2009, his second documentary Ghost Town premiered at the New York Film Festival, was selected for competition at the Torino Film Festival and named one of the Top 10 Best Documentaries of the Year by The New York Times in 2010. It was later screened in art-house cinemas across the United States.

In 2009, his documentary on Africans living in Guangzhou Homebound was selected for the Rotterdam Film Festival. In 2010, his first feature film, The High Life, was shortlisted in the Hong Kong Film Festival and won a Silver Award and the FIPRESCI Prize. The film also won the Werner Fassbinder Prize and the FIPRESCI Jury Prize in the Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival and was shortlisted in the Nantes Film Festival. 

In 2013, his feature film Shadow Days premiered as the opening film in the Berlinale Forum section and was shortlisted for the Hong Kong Film Festival and Japan’s FMX Film Festival, winning the Jury Prize and other awards. The film was theatrically released in French-speaking regions in 2014.

In 2020, ZHAO finished The Buried City with support from the French CNC Film Fund but has not yet been released. He also finished One Says No, co-produced by German and Luxembourg national film funds, which was selected for the 2020 Prague Documentary Film Festival and the 2021 FLEFF Film Festival in New York.

Zhong Gang, founder and editor in chief of ARTDBL. He began his career in media in 2005 and possesses working experience in New Express, Nanfang Metropolis Daily and Nbweekly. In July 2017, ARTDBL was founded as a media platform for contemporary art in Shenzhen. Following the principle of “rooted locally and speaking independently”, ARTDBL has become the most influential platform for art reviews in the south of China.

Na Zhong is the co-founder of Accent Accent. A fiction writer and literary translator, she has received support from the MacDowell Fellowship, the Center for Fiction Fellowship, and the Tin House Workshop. Her work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, swamp pink, Guernica, and more.