Co-organized by Creative Commons China Mainland and Artintern, and with additional support from a number of organizations including Inter Art Center, Hudong wiki, and mash4, the Remix and Share: CC Art Exhibition was open on December 13, 2009 in Inter Art Center, 798 Art Zone, Beijing. More than 200 participants, including artists presenting their works, the media, invited guests from various fields, and the project team and volunteers of CC China Mainland, came to attend the opening ceremony.
The exhibition presents CC-licensed art works from artists across the country. It received so much responses that during just a one month period, more than 200 artists have submitted works in various forms including new media, devices, videos, easel painting, etc. Works presented at the exhibit are from more than 60 artists, selected to match the size of the venue and theme of the event. Some well-known Chinese artists including Cao Fei, Yan Jun, Wu Xiaojun and Liu Wei are also invited to present their CC licensed works at the exhibit.
The opening ceremony started by 3:00 p.m. Opening remarks were then given byProf. Chunyan Wang of Renmin University of China, Project lead of Creative Commons China Mainland,; Mr. Hong Wu, curator of the exhibition and founder of Artintern ; Dr. Kathleen Hartford, Programme Officer of the Ford Foundation; Dr. Haidong Pai, CEO of Hudong.com; Dr. Tyng-Ruey Chuang of Institute of Information Science of Academia Sinica, Project Lead of CC Taiwan; Mr. Escher Tsai, artist and curator from Taiwan and Prof. Yahong Li of Hong Kong University, and other distinguish guests also presented at the opening ceremony. Prof. Chunyan Wang offered welcome remarks and addressed to the audience about the purposes of organizing this exhibition together with the art circle: to start and promote legal share of local art works, to encourage creative activities and to promote creative collaboration. She indicated that the CC licenses are intended to promote the concept of share under a series of reasonable guidelines, and emphasised that the creativity of a society is always based on the abundance of existing knowledge achievements. She also introduced the various promotional activities of CC China Mainland since its establishment. The project is devoted to the promotion of Creative Commons in various fields, including education, science, culture, art, etc. This exhibition has received wide responses from contemporary artists. The acceptance of these licenses by artists illustrated that this flexible copyright option has gained significant recognition in the circle of contemporary art in China.
Curator of the exhibition, Mr. Wu Hong introduced the concept of the event: as the Internet brought about an integration of creative works from all over the world, made available that netizens worldwide spontaneously organize these works to develop new content, the Internet is becoming a knowledge platform with the spirit of “share, remix and reuse – legally”. Everyone is the user and at the same time the contributor. What’s more, the history of human beings witnessed that the development of civilization is based on existing knowledge achievements. In order to protect the interest of innovators and authors, and to promote the advancement of human knowledge properly, with the background of modern contract spirit, the human beings now choose to step to a new era of legally share, remix and reuse.
Professor Kathleen Hartford, Programme Officer of the Ford Foundation explained the significance of a balanced copyright protection by quoting the principles of American copyright law, and emphasised the importance of legal share and reuse as promoted by CC China Mainland. CEO of Hudong.com, one of co-organizers of this event, Dr. Pan Haidong addressed the collaboration between Hudong wiki and CC China Mainland and the distinctive feature of Hudong wiki – the public participation, and its integration with Creative Commons.
In the end, Mr. Zhu Handong, co-curator of the exhibition and project manager of CC China Mainland announced the list of participating artists.
Also, the whole project team of Creative Commons China Mainland presented in the ceremony to extend their gratitude to the artists and the public. Because of a strong recognition of open copyright protection and of legal share of knowledge achievements by the society, the team worked collaboratively with Creative Commoners, devoting themselves to CC promotional works during all off-hours. What’s more, a lot of CC volunteers are also active in this occasion. They have contributed to the preparation, the opening ceremony and the forum. It is the collaborative devotion from volunteers and the project team that ensured the success of this exhibition.
