Improvised Notes: Reconstructing the Self and Community Across Boundaries, China
Founded and initiated by Boosen (Cai Boxuan), Escape Arts Club is a cultural collective working across Southeast Asia, focusing on mobility, local culture, and community-based artistic practice. Rooted in on-the-ground engagement, the collective brings together artists, writers, filmmakers, musicians, designers, and cultural practitioners to explore how culture is lived, shared, and continuously reshaped in everyday contexts.
This programme brings together a diverse group of guests whose practices span curating, independent publishing, filmmaking, illustration, visual design, music, writing, city walks, and community education. Rather than fixed disciplines or formal presentations, the event emphasises conversation, sharing, and exchange — allowing different voices, experiences, and ways of working to coexist within the same space.
Participants include curator Jiang Shan, independent filmmaker and art educator Chen Jianhang, illustrator Wu Hangsheng, visual designer 3in (Liu), filmmaker Lin Qianzhi, city walk guide and history enthusiast Huang Xiadong, writer and storyteller A Dong, sculptor Li Shudan, independent musician Chen Ruiling, creative duo Happened on Tuesday, poet and thinker Ajuanite, and other cultural practitioners working across disciplines and regions.
Through talks, informal sharing, artistic discussion, and collective reflection, the programme seeks to foreground lived experience, local knowledge, and creative practice as forms of cultural understanding. It offers a space where personal narratives intersect with broader questions of place, identity, and community — not from a central or dominant position, but from the margins, in motion, and in dialogue.