Featuring special guest Régine Debatty (we-make-money-not-art) in Rotterdam, the independent producer Hu Fei and the media expert Gino_Yu in Hangzhou, CREATIVITY 2.0 will bring together leading independent bloggers to present their work and discuss the rise of the blog as an open medium of expression in establishing and supporting unrestricted forms of dialogue and community, both in the sense of cultural enterprise and artistic practice.

Recently, and during the past year in particular, it has become increasingly popular to use the new tools and expanded online facilities that weblogs provide in order to create new social identities, define cultural practices and create active communities beyond the physical constraints of urban or national structures. This is especially the case in countries such as the People’s Republic of China in which a new ‘middle landscape’ of an increasingly affluent and mobile citizenry has zealously and enthusiastically attuned to the latest in global technology and telecommunications. Forming a significant part of the ‘Web 2.0’ phenomenon Blogs pick up the faded myth of the Internet as a user generated space of exchange with both cultural and commercial repercussions.

Associated online tools and services such as, YouTube, Biku, Flickr and del.icio.us augment the omnipresence of Blogs into complex global communities of users linked via an infinite number of personal backgrounds, interests and goals and create new forms of social, cultural, artistic and economic networks. In areas where traditional forms of monitoring and control of information is pervasive the complexity and diversity of blogging’s reach drives the creation of new platforms and forms of expression. Blogs brought to life by anyone anytime are now creating a blogosphere rapidly replacing traditional information structures by unifying in cross-media frameworks the same mechanisms of text and visual tagging, cross-referencing of information, and opinion gathering established with the Internet over a decade ago. But how do these structures originate, who do they serve, and how are the bloggers covered by ‘traditional’ or local media? Beyond global entertainment and free-for-all journalism can Blogs instill new cultural identities and open up new zones of dialogue and critique? Can they lead to cultural and artistic production per se, or drown in parody and hasty mash-ups during their authors’ 5 minute bursts of fame?