An event called NOTCH art festival seems to have started on 17 September and is announced to go on until 31 October 2011 in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. NOTCH is derived from NOrdic + CHina and should be held for the fifth time this year.
What the event is about and where it takes place is not easy to find out going by its official website http://www.notch11.com/. Considering that the event has received financial support from the various Nordic governments, it is a bit disappointing how hard it is to find out what is going on.
According to the information that is available at various sites describing NOTCH11, the event strives to be a creative & cultural exchange between Scandinavia and China. The festival is dedicated to design, architecture, the media arts and music, along with discussing and predicting where these fields are headed.
Maybe it will only take place in Beijing, and maybe some of the events started already on August 13 if this list of events is anything to go by:
August 13 – September 16, Dashilar field trip – Rediscover Dashilar traces
September 17 – 23, Open Studio Camp (Relay Factory)
September 24, Opening event, media preview (Relay Factory)
September 25 – October 9 Exhibition (Relay Factory)
Here are some more clippings from description of the event:
“Themes of the event are “Socialized Design” and “Recycling Creativity”. Nordic and Chinese designers, architects, artists and geeks will gather in the historic area of Dashilar to ‘dig up’ its cultural resources and implement them in the creation of works aimed at benefiting the neighborhood.”
“NOTCH Art Festival is a cross-cultural experiment featuring cutting-edge design, architecture, media art and music. After its first five-year project launched from 2006 until 2010, NOTCH introduces its second five-year venture in this autumn of 2011, which traces back to the original meaning of NOTCH, “the key moment” in order to explore a new theme, “FEEDBACK”.”
The Danish Embassy’s website confirms that the events is currently taking place with a mentioning of three of the Danish participants.
Danish media artist Jacob Sikker Remin and design duo Hvass & Hannibal are in Beijing as part of the NOTCH11 program during Beijing Design Week.
The trio are working with the local artists, designers and community in the heart of Beijing to make creative installations in an old factory that has been turned into a creative space facing one of Beijing’s traditional Hutong neighboorhoods.
NOTCH Festival, Nordic-Chinese cultural festival, started in 2006, enters into its 6th annual installment with the theme “Feedback” where social resources from the residential area create things that can feedback to the community.
Hvass & Hannibal, consisting of female design duo Nan Na Hvass & Sofie Hannibal, are working with Chinese designer Been to make an “pixel” urban farm installation, bringing urban village culture to the Dashilar area, just South of Tiananmen Square.
Jacob and Beijing Maxpace are working on a painting robot, an dynamic lighting installation called “Light Being” and a DIY open source synthesizer called CFO (Cheap Fat and Open).
Jacob Sikker Remin is a media artist, curator and project leader. JSR is also an inventor, designer and gameboy musician. JSR’s work focuses on the space between people and technology. JSR has exhibited on the Charlottenborg spring exhibition, staged the performance “Copy This Idea” at the State Museum of Art, Denmark
The website of the event itself has this list of artists that are supposed to be involved:
Baltos Kandys (Lithuania) (- that must be the “greater Nordic region”)
Been (China)
Boska (Sweden)
Daidai Roxanne (China)
David A. Garcia (Denmark)
Diana Orving (Sweden)
Elaine W. Ho (China)
Gudrun Kristjansdottir (Iceland)
HAWALINE (China)
HE OU (China)
Hibanana (China)
Hvass & Hannibal (Denmark)
Jón Bjoernsson (Iceland)
Jacob Sikker Remin（JSR） (Denmark)
Jon Bjornsson (Iceland)
Kohib (Norway)
M9° (China)
Markus Schneider (Germany)
Nille Svensson (Sweden)
Qiao Xiaodao (China)
re:PLACE (Germany/China)
Re-light (China)
So Takahashi (Norway)
Sulumi (China)
Testbedstudio (Sweden)
Tuomas Laitinen (Finland)
Zhang Shouwang (China)
Zhao Wen (China)
北京创客空间 (China)
荒岛图书馆 (China)
