Category Archives: china

Beijing’s WEAR Journal… and My First Comic

Posted on October 17, 2012 by AXM

WEAR Journal, published and produced by HomeShop Beijing, is now out! I have a four-page graphic essay which I developed with the amazing art historian Orianna Cacchione, who’s posing above. Here’s more about the journal’s theme this year: WEAR journal finally arrives to its third issue in spartan outfit: double-pleated, DIY and pretty much naked. Following [...]

Signing Off From Bird’s Nest: Ai Weiwei in English

Posted on September 26, 2012 by AXM

Some two years ago, in the spring of 2010, Jennifer Ng and I founded Bird’s Nest: Ai Weiwei in English, with a great deal of help from a number of volunteer designers and translators (including our brilliant anonymous designer Fat Sun who set up the two-column format). What started as an experiment in collaborative translation [...]

The Cultural and Social Value of Memes

Posted on September 5, 2012 by AXM

There’s a new article in The Atlantic looking at China’s political and social memes, and I’m quoted alongside fellow internet culture researchers Cole Stryker and Kate Miltner: “Because of the strictures on speech in China, memes tend to be a really effective way to spread a political message,” An Xiao Mina, artist, meme expert and [...]

On Hoodies and Sunglasses: Memes Engage in Social and Political Issues

Posted on July 14, 2012 by AXM

I have a new essay out in The Atlantic looking at the remarkable parallels between the Trayvon Martin hoodie meme and the Chen Guangcheng sunglasses meme, which arose independently in their respective internets: From the outset, the stories of Trayvon Martin and Chen Guangcheng couldn’t have seemed more different. One, a young black man shot [...]

More on China’s Internet: In Defense of Memes Defending Themselves

Posted on June 13, 2012 by AXM

Political memes have been on my mind as of late. It started with ROFLCon at MIT and moved on to more discussions, Skype chats and journal entries. And I’ve just returned from the Personal Democracy Forum at NYU. Been a bit of a whirlwind as I travel around the country but seeing as I’ve lived [...]

Talking about social media art in China

Posted on October 20, 2011 by AXM

Two social media-related events these past few weeks in Beijing. I’ve spoken about social media art and done social media art in a few countries now, but China always presents the most potent site for exploration. I gave a talk at the Maker’s Carnival, a festival of making in partnership with UNESCO, Qinghua University, Shanghai [...]