Initiated in 1999, and begun in 2002, the Long March Project is a complex, multi-platform, international arts organization and ongoing art project, that can be simultaneously considered a curatorial lab; a publishing house; an artistic collection; a meeting place; a gallery space; a consultancy; a commissioning and production atelier; artistic facilitator; and author. From a critical distance, all of these avenues of production aim to provocatively construct, and in turn renew, presumed action and thinking concerning ‘contemporary art’.

China’s revolutionist “Long March” (1934–36) provides the metaphorical framework and discursive line of enquiry for the creation of a range of different Long March Projects in China and abroad. In 2002, this monumental 6000-mile journey was physically re-traced by founder and initiator, Lu Jie, alongside Qiu Zhijie who co-curated this first project titled ‘A Walking Visual Display’, with the involvement of local and international artists, writers, and theorists, Returning to Beijing, Lu Jie formed ‘Long March Space’ which supports an ongoing exploration by ‘Long Marchers’ across various geographies, discussing ideas of revolutionary memory in a local context, and collaborating with participants from around the world to reinterpret historical consciousness and develop new ways of perceiving political, social, economical, and cultural realities.

The ongoing journey of the Long March Project can be conceived as:

1. a process of movement through space, time, or thought without a fixed beginning or end, involving multiple transformations
2. a methodology which stresses adaptation to local and temporal circumstances, focused on artistic, social and educative activities that are designed to interrogate contemporary visual economies
3. an artistic intervention, operating on a national and international platform, in collaboration with artists and an increasing range of public, private and independent arts organizations and individuals.

The Long March Project is a constantly changing, mobile entity that seeks to challenge and move beyond fixed definitions of artistic practice between local and international, individual and collective, in the creation of new forms of production and consumption that are encouraged and allowed to interact.