Remment Lucas Koolhaas is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He is often cited as a representative of Deconstructivism and is the author of ‘Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan’. Koolhaas studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Koolhaas is the founding partner of OMA, and of its research-oriented counterpart AMO based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. In 2005, he co-founded Volume Magazine together with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman.
Tung Chee-hwa, GBM is a Shanghai-born Hong Kong businessman and politician. He was the first Chief Executive of Hong Kong upon the transfer of sovereignty on 1 July 1997 to 12 March 2005. He is currently a vice-chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
In politics, soft power is the ability to attract and co-opt, rather than coerce. In other words, soft power involves shaping the preferences of others through appeal and attraction. A defining feature of soft power is that it is non-coercive; the currency of soft power includes culture, political values, and foreign policies. Recently, the term has also been used in changing and influencing social and public opinion through relatively less transparent channels and lobbying through powerful political and non-political organizations, and through economic influence. In 2012 Joseph Nye of Harvard University explained that with soft power, "the best propaganda is not propaganda", further explaining that during the Information Age, "credibility is the scarcest resource".
Gao Xingjian is a Chinese émigré novelist, playwright, and critic who in 2000 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity." He is also a noted translator, screenwriter, stage director, and a celebrated painter. In 1998, Gao was granted French citizenship.
The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is a Dutch architectural firm based in Rotterdam, founded in 1975 by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and Greek architect Elia Zenghelis, along with Madelon Vriesendorp and Zoe Zenghelis.
Giulietto Chiesa was an Italian journalist, author, lecturer and politician.
Sui Jianguo, professor and ex-chairman of the Department of Sculpture in Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, is a contemporary Chinese artist.
The Art Newspaper is a monthly print publication, with daily updates online, founded in 1990 and based in London and New York City. It is published by Umberto Allemandi & Co. Publishing Ltd and is based on an original concept by the Turin publisher, Umberto Allemandi, who founded the first monthly newspaper, Il Giornale dell'Arte, in 1983. The concept is to cover news of the visual arts as they are affected by international politics and economics, developments in law, tax, the art market, the environment and official cultural policy. The publication is fed by a network of sister editions, with around fifty correspondents in over thirty countries. In addition to London and New York City, the network has editorial offices in Turin, Paris, Moscow, Beijing and Tel-Aviv.
Oskaras Koršunovas is a Lithuanian theatre director.
Gu Su is a Chinese liberal political philosopher and was professor of Philosophy and Law at Nanjing University, China. After graduating from Nanjing University, he studied at Duke University between 1983 and 1986. After then he taught at Nanjing university as a faculty member. His main work is Essential Ideas of Liberalism, published in China and Taiwan several times, introducing main ideas of liberalism and their implications to Chinese political and social practice. He has edited a series of books and written many articles in the national press, newspapers, magazines and journals on political and legal issues. He was a Liberal Arts Fellow at Harvard Law School, and a visiting scholar at both the London School of Economics and the University of Melbourne. He is member of editorial Board of the journal NanoEthics.
Frédéric Martel is a French writer, researcher and journalist. His most famous pieces of work are The Pink and the Black, Homosexuals in France since 1968, Mainstream, "Smart" and De la culture en Amérique, a book about cultural policies and industries in the United States, which was featured on the cover of the New York Times art section in 2006. NYT's journalist Alan Riding wrote : "In Culture in America, a 622-page tome weighty with information, Martel challenges the conventional view in France that (French) culture financed and organized by the government is entirely good and that (American) culture shaped by market forces is necessarily bad".
Liu Bolin is an artist born in China's Shandong province. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Shandong College of Arts in 1995 and his Master of Fine Arts from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 2001. His work has been exhibited in museums around the world. Also known as, Liu Bolin's most popular works are from his "Hiding in the City" series; photographic works that began as performance art in 2005.
Beijing Hyundai Motor Co., Ltd. is an automobile manufacturing company headquartered in Shunyi, Beijing, China, and a joint-venture between BAIC Motor and Hyundai Motor Company. Established in 2002, it manufactures in Shunyi District, a satellite city of Beijing, producing Hyundai-branded automobiles for the Chinese market.
Laurent Buson, also known as Lohan, is a French actor, martial artist, action choreographer and film producer.
Yves Pépin is a creator of multimedia shows and large-scale events including the multi-awarded Eiffel Tower Millennium Show. In the course of his career, Pépin's projects have been honored with many awards; an outstanding personal honor was received in 2006, when his peers in the Themed Entertainment Association, the international association for creators of compelling places and experiences, presented him with the prestigious TEA Thea Award for a Lifetime of Distinguished Achievements.
Zheng Lianjie is a Chinese contemporary artist, active in performance art, installation, photography,contemporary ink and video art. Zheng Lianjie is a representative figure in Chinese contemporary art. He is part of a generation of artists who grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution and in the 1980s turned from traditional forms of painting to installation art and performance-based work
Vasoon Animation is a privately owned Chinese animation studio established in Beijing, 1992.
Diana Lui is a Franco-Belgian artist, photographer and filmmaker of Chinese origin. Diana Lui is best known for her large format photographic portraits of today's growing hybrid generation of multicultural and multiethnic individuals.
ECA2 is a French Event production company located in Paris specialized in creation, design and production of multimedia shows and large-scale events. ECA2 is member of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions and also the Themed Entertainment Association. In 2016 the company has fifteen permanent employees, and is headed by Jean-Christophe Canizares. Depending on the project, ECA2 hires up to a hundred specialists, including architects, project management, technical director, sound designer, lighting designer, and art direction. Since more than thirty years, ECA2 has created and produced projects in France, China, Singapore, Mexico and around the world.
Cao Fei is a Chinese multimedia artist born in Guangzhou. Cao's work, which includes video, performance, and digital media, examines the daily life of Chinese citizens born after the Cultural Revolution. Some of her work is owned and displayed by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
