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• Ai Weiwei The last group of 1001 Chinese guests visiting Kassel and the Documenta 12 in the last weeks, contributing to Ai Weiwei's artistic work Fairytale in the process, have now left, setting out on their journey back to Peking, Shanghai or the Chinese provinces. The visitors are taking with them a wealth of images and experiences, collected during the course of this experimental journey, a journey which has also left its mark on the "hosts" here in Kassel.

• Anime film featured in the Harn’s International Contemporary Art exhibition. The newest film being exhibited, “Ladybirds’ Requiem,” was done by Akino Kondoh, who is part of vibrant young generation working in the realms area of anime, manga and technology. University of Florida News

• “In today’s Japan, people are becoming aware of the importance of mental and spiritual richness that cannot be obtained through material affluence,” explains Misa Shin, Executive Director of Art Fair Tokyo, on the expanding importance of the recently established biennial event. Art Fair Tokyo 2007

• Now in its 12th year, the Haughton International Asian Art Fair, has, since its launch, been widely lauded as the world’s leading Asian art fair and the centerpiece of New York’s annual Asia Week.The Changing Landscape of Asian Art

• Batik Art in Southeast Asia:Tradition and Modernity. As the second installation of the Printmaking Series, this session introduces audiences to the background and practice of batik art in the different art traditions of Southeast Asian countries.To introduce the topic, first speaker Wang Zineng will be speaking on the history of batik art production.Speaking about batik at the Singapore Art Museum

• Emergences & Emergencies, New British Asian Films, Curated by Sukhdev Sandhu. Sukhdev Sandhu teaches at New York University and is the author of London Calling: How Black and Asian Writers Imagined A City (2003), I'll Get My Coat (2005) and Night Haunts: A Journey Across Nocturnal London (2007)Emergences & Emergencies

• The Paradox of Polarity: Contemporary Art from Central Asia with Curator Leeza Ahmady Bose Pacia Gallery, Gallery talk

Featured Artists

Articles from aDocumenta

• Shirin Neshat emphasizes this theme with the technique of showing two or more coordinated films concurrently, creating stark visual contrasts through such motifs as light and dark, black and white, male and female.

• Yang Fudong was born in 1971 in Beijing. He trained as a painter in China Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou. Yang Fudong embarked on a career in the medium of film and video starting in the late 1990s.

• Ai Weiwei is one of the most important presence in contemporary Chinese art. Ai was a member of the early avant garde group in China Stars in 1979. He spent the 1980's in New York City. He established an art center in Beijing where dozens of Chinese contemporary art galleries and artists have emerged, including, Ma Liuming and Zhang Huan. Now, Ai Weiwei is working with the Swiss architects, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron [1] for China's national Olympic stadium due for the 2008 Olympic games.
  

• Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba About ten years ago, the Japanese-Vietnamese got the idea of making art in space, in zero gravity. The idea proved impossible but it evolved into an idea of shooting an underwater video work. The Vietnamese history and identity are tied to water, which is evinced by the references in the folklore of the country. Water also serves as a reminder of boat refugees. The subject has occupied the artist ever since school.
  

• Jun Hasegawa was born in Mie, Japan and studied at Wimbledon School of Art and Goldsmith's College. He lives and works in London.
  

• Do-Ho Suh divides his time between New York, which he tentatively calls home, and Seoul, where he visits family and fabricates works. The constant travel and the juggling of cultures and language have produced a disorientation – a feeling of being neither here nor there, which the artist describes as “transcultural displacement.”

• Yelena & Victor Vorobyev work out of Kazakhstan.