Art communication and co-creation in the social media age, echoes from China

Starting from the 21st century, new art discourses are being formed with the aim of rethinking the perspective of communication and exchange. These endeavors have manifested new art approaches, such as “relational art,” “participatory art,” “community art,” “socially engaged art”, and so on. While the proliferation of social media has profoundly influenced our daily life, it also challenged our common perception of art practices. Artists are no longer in an “ivory tower” or a “control tower” (McLuhan, 1994). Their roles have now turned into that of a mediator, a connector. The practice of contemporary art has seen what Clair Bishop termed as “the social turn” (Bishop, 2006).
In this paper, I will analyse two recent art projects, Residence and activities by 44 theatre, carried out in mainland China last year, which social media evolved and activated on different level: from serving as the form, providing content and access, all the way to injecting their very spirit, where the ultimate goal of the project became to create a new relevance and a discursive social community with new aesthetics. As I have been involved in these projects myself to different extents as art practitioner and researcher, I will also draw reflections and criticism from my own experience, using auto-ethnographic methods.