This article is the first in a series of articles that explore Marc Jones’s past projects, how to get involved in his latest endeavors and his current work with the Beijing International Music Festival.
The Beijing International Music Festival (BIMF) is Marc Jones’s masterwork. It has grown since its inception in 2005 into a true international festival. In 2014, the festival will be held at the Beijing National Stadium, aka “The Bird’s Nest” for the Olympics, and will feature three special guests: Midori Goto, Evelyn Glennie and Dong-Suk Kang. The festival’s debut season will also include performances by James Wood and the Art of Time Ensemble, as well as an all-Beijing student lineup.
The BIMF is a true fusion of East and West: it was created by Jones to showcase international talent on China’s biggest stage, but with a focus on new works for the Chinese audience. The project is an interdisciplinary collaboration between Mr. Jones, renowned Chinese composer Lei Liang, whose music has been recognized with multiple awards by the Ministry of Culture of China, including “The Hundred Flowers Award” (2010), and media artist Li Xinmo. Mr. Jones serves as Artistic Director; Ms. Liang serves as Artistic Advisor
The new work of Marc Jones, the artist who brought us The Trompe Loeil series, opens in Beijing this week.
The show is titled A Morning with Marc Jones in Beijing and will be on display from March 22 to April 5.
The exhibition brings together sculpture, photography and drawing to explore the relationship between humanity and architecture.
A Morning with Marc Jones in Beijing is a collaborative project between Marc Jones and Beijing-based architects Xing Zhiyu and Qiu Xiaofei of Public Architecture, who have designed the space for the exhibition.
With A Morning with Marc Jones in Beijing, the artist explores how architectural spaces can change our perception, how what we see changes our own understanding of self.
This blog is designed to serve as a repository for past projects, as well as a platform for new ones. I am currently working on an immersive VR project, based on the concept of shared dreaming with Chinese characteristics. The following are some of my past projects that may interest you…
Marc Jones’s Blog
For the past five years, Marc Jones has been working as a freelancer in Beijing. He established his creative agency, “The Art”, in 2006 and has worked with clients such as Nike, Lexus, Ford and Microsoft. Marc’s company is an example of how an independent creative can be successful within the Chinese marketplace. In this blog we will be looking at Marc’s history of successes, failures and learnings to give you an insight into what it takes to operate successfully in China.
Tao Xu
I had the privilege of meeting Marc Jones in Beijing at the beginning of September 2009. He was giving a short presentation on his book, Urban Explorers: The Secret World of Scouting’s Hidden Cities , and having a talk with college students. Marc is one of the first explorers who has gained international recognition for his work through publication and lecture tours. His numerous projects include explorations of abandoned spaces in Germany, Poland, Italy, Ghana, China, and many more countries.
It is my great honor to present to you this interview with Marc Jones with the hope that it might give you some insights into how he has been able to accomplish so much in such a short period of time.
Marc Jones is an American artist who has lived in China since 1993. He has had over 20 solo exhibitions in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu. Jones was a visiting lecturer at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing from 2005-06, and is a former associate professor of art at Ohio University.
For more than 20 years Jones has been working on large-scale public art projects all over the world, including the United States, Canada, Mexico and Brazil.
His piece “The Cloud”, located in Cincinnati’s Fountain Square, incorporates solar energy and a cooling system that uses evaporative cooling. It was the first work of its kind to be used as public art in Cincinnati.
Ai Weiwei first met Marc Jones in 1999 when he was invited by Jones to contribute to a show called “Inner Views” at the BOCA Gallery in Shanghai. The two have maintained an ongoing friendship for years, having worked together on several art projects including Ai Weiwei’s “Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads” and his Serpentine Pavilion in London. In 2011 they collaborated on “The Sun”, a public sculpture project that involved thousands of volunteers from around the world producing ceramic components for a series of honeycomb-like sculptures that will be assembled into
His friend and longtime collaborator, the company’s founder Marc Jones, recalls the early days of venture capital as an industry with a lot of “dumb money.”
“It was very much about greed. It was all about ‘I want to make money.’ You had a lot of people who came in without any due diligence or motivation to actually build companies,” Jones said. “They were just looking for a quick flip.”
This attitude has changed dramatically over time, he said, as more venture firms have learned to place bets on companies that will produce long-term value. For example, in 1996, after co-founding China’s first venture capital firm, TMT Investments (now Sequoia Capital China), Jones began scouting out investment opportunities in China’s rapidly developing technology sector. He soon found one in an unassuming Chinese software company called Tencent.
Marc and his team at Sequoia Capital China took a chance and invested US$20 million in the company that year. Now the business is valued at US$150 billion….
