%0 Journal Article
%T Place
%A Meiqin Wang
%J China Information
%@ 1741-590X
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0920203X17749433
%X In the past decade, socially engaged artistic practices have become a growing trend in China, embraced not only by contemporary art circles but also by broad intellectual communities. In this article, I explore this under-studied trend by looking at the practices of a number of art professionals who engage themselves with place-making in different rural villages against the backdrop of a rapidly declining countryside which has resulted from China¡¯s top¨Cdown, GDP-driven urbanization and social development. Mainstream place-making, led by government in collaboration with private developers, has been primarily concerned with a good business environment in order to attract the highly mobile elite class or realize a quick return from speculative development. Place-making led by art professionals, on the contrary, aims to revitalize the deprived countryside through art and cultural activities, foster the growth of place-specific civic spaces, and accentuate the participation of local, grass-roots populations as well as the collaboration of urban intellectuals from various backgrounds. I argue that the efforts of these art professionals not only provide critical reflections and bottom¨Cup alternatives to the dominant social developmental discourse, but also activate and expand the potential of art as an agent of social intervention, community building, and cultural change
%K creative place-making
%K socially engaged art
%K bottom¨Cup alternatives
%K civic space
%K rural reconstruction through art
%K infrastructures of resonance
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0920203X17749433