Event Details

WHAT: Open All the Buddha Boxes: Beijing's Underground Music Scene 1997-2019 - an online presentation by comic book artist Krish Raghav followed by Q&A with attendees.


WHEN: Wednesday, May 10 at 7:30 pm Beijing Time


MORE ABOUT THE EVENT: "What if the entire history of 20th century alternative music - from rock'n'roll and punk to new wave and all-night raves - happened in a single place over a single generation?"


Like 1970s Manchester, No Wave New York and Berlin before the fall of the Wall, Beijing's music scene from the mid 90s onwards, which had everything from riot grrl punk to dissonant psychedelic rock, was unparalleled โ€“ a phenomenal, inventive underground that absorbed and reinvented many forms of contemporary music.


Using the scene as its key example, and featuring playlists, resources, and comic book pages, this talk will introduce "Open all the Buddha Boxes", a forthcoming comic book about Beijing music between 1999 and 2019, make the case for "amateur" and DIY artistic productions as a parallax window into contemporary China, and argue for comics and zines as uniquely positioned to catalog the nuances of digitally mediated life.


HOW MUCH: This online event is free for members of RASBJ; RMB 50 for members of RAS branches; and a special "try out RASBJ" rate of RMB 50 for non-members. Interested in becoming a RASBJ member? Please sign up at https://rasbj.org/membership/


HOW TO JOIN THE EVENT: Please click "Register" or "I Will Attend" and follow the instructions. After successful registration you'll receive a confirmation email with a link to join the event. If you seem not to have received it, please check your spam folder. Members of partner RAS branches: Please register at least 72 hours in advance to allow time for membership verification. You will receive several emails from RASBJ: one confirming receipt of your registration request, another requesting payment, and a third confirming your registration, with a link to join the event. Please check your spam folder to ensure you see all RASBJ emails. If you encounter difficulties paying with WeChat Pay, you may wish to try Alipay instead.

Speakers

  • Krish Raghav (Comic Book Artist)

    Krish Raghav

    Comic Book Artist

    https://www.krishcat.com

    Krish Raghav is a comic book artist based in Amsterdam. He is the co-founder of Chaoyang Trap, an experimental newsletter about everyday life on the Chinese internet. Based in Beijing for a decade, he was part of the founding team of the Concrete & Grass Music Festival in Shanghai, and worked for Split Works, one of China's oldest independent music promoters.

    Krish was a 2019 Macdowell Literature Fellow, a 2020 Yaddo Non FIction fellow, and his drawings have appeared in Tank Magazine, The New Yorker, Real Life, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Topic, BBC, and Buzzfeed.

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