FRANCES KHAN LIN

Song Collective is a venture into the heart of China through a series of snapshots, capturing a disappearing strata of an ancient civilization. As a nation of a billion migrate into cities, as it rapidly industrializes, as it obsesses about Created In China, smart technology, intelligent manufacturing and mass entrepreneurship, it is also breaking away from its majestic past. We offer a different narrative of China, one about a culture of the highest craft, technique, and art, rather than economic might or technology prowess. Making over manufacturing.

​

China is home to the world’s largest community of craftsmen whose voice has gone largely unheard. Our goal is to help preserve and promote the heritage of craft in China by inspiring the world with stories of master artisans, enabling access to crafts that are rare or endangered, and over time, providing craftsmen with access to markets previously inaccessible.

​

We seek to bring the hands back into the forefront of China’s modernizing landscape through quarterly expeditions, weekly and monthly interviews. Through research expeditions, we look back at our heritage, document objects of cultural significance and the people who create them. Through interviews we look into today, delve into the enduring soul’s of makers, their influences and the objects that inspire them.

​

We then tell their stories to the world in the form of written and visual narrative, exhibition, post-expedition series and workshops. If we were writing a book, it would be a mere first paragraph within a tome of work.