Photo: Long March Project

Lu Jie is curator of the Long March Project, an ongoing series of exhibits, performances, discourses and workshops designed to "interrogate Chinese visual culture and revolutionary memory." Initiated in 1999, the Long March is simultaneously a metaphor, a campaign, and a complex art project. Participants include over 300 artists, theorists, and art activists from both China and abroad who use, as a geographic and discursive framework, the historical Long March, Mao Zedong’s infamous 6000-mile retreat during 1934-1936..

According to Lu Jie, "Today, China is on a new Long March road to development, bringing about rapid changes in both geographical and social landscapes, as well as contemporary artistic expression. Our new Long March looks for a new approach to contemporary art - using China as a platform. The Long March is a movement through space, time or thought without a fixed beginning or end, stressing adaptation to local and temporal circumstances, and overcoming seemingly insurmountable setbacks. Participants work together with local communities to create a new set of experiences and ideas for art, exploring the relationship between individual and collective, and between theory and practice."

The Long March Project travels along three parallel and interrelated journeys - in various localities, in international exhibitions, and in the project’s Beijing space. The Long March Space in Beijing, the primary base of operation, serves as the leading platform for linking local and international activities, holding regular exhibitions, lectures, and symposiums, and hosting artist residency programs, publishing, collection development, and the project’s archives. Projects staged along the Long March road have included 800 Meters Under with leading artist Yang Shaobin in China’s coal mining region engaging with socialist memory and the ruins of industrial society, and the Yan’an Project, a 3 month program in Yan’an, featuring interventions by leading Chinese and international artists including Cai Guo-Qiang. These local projects are linked internationally through numerous Long March exhibitions abroad, including Chinatown which was featured as the China presentation at the 2005 Yokohama Triennale, the 27th Sao Paulo Biennale and the Asia Pacific Triennale, Brisbane, Australia.

www.longmarchspace.com

Previous Next Close	Exhibited at the Long March Space, Beijing, Yang Shaobin’s project explores the cultural effects of collectivism during the 1960s - 1970s, including the emergence of art production teams among workers in various state industries. Previous Next Close	A revolutionary site of the Chinese Communist Party, Yan-an is the site of a series of Long March research projects and discussions examining the effects of globalization on Chinese cultural development. Previous Next Close	The Long March curatorial plan for Kunming included workshops in Jiangwhutang, the first Western Style military school in China, and exhibitions of new media and sound art in artist Luo Xu’s private museum and studio. Previous Next Close	Buildings from the Xinsheng region affected by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam Reservoir were torn down, rebuilt and exhibited in the Long March Space, recreating a scene from the nightlife of the small street. Previous Next Close	An ongoing "survey of the county's 180,000 people that use an understanding of the art form of paper-cuttings…to gain deeper insight into the relationship between contemporary art and public space." Installation view from 27th Sao Paulo Biennale, Sao Paulo Previous Next Close
Qin Ga Miniature of Long March, Site 18 – Hongyuan Photo: Long March Space	Yang Shaobin 800 Meters Under, 2006 Photo: Long March Project	Yan’an Project : Zunyi International Symposium, 2002 Photo: Long March Project	The Long March Team in Kunming, Kunming, 2002 Photo: Long March Project	Chen Qiulin Migration-Xinshengchang No. 275, No. 277 Xinsheng Town, 2006 Photo: Long March Project	Yanchuan Papercutting Survey, 2006 Photo: Long March Project