By Zhangtong Cheng, Junior Project Manager of Art-Science

The cultural industries have suffered greatly due to restrained social gathering since the Covid-19 outbreak. However, along with the challenges, the Covid-19 has also motivated the transformation of traditional cultural industries, and the digitization of cultural activities is becoming a new trend. To promote the recovery of cultural industries as well as to accelerate international cooperation, the Yangtze River Delta International Cultural Industries Expo (YRDICIE) opened as planned and adopted a hybrid format combining on-site and online exhibitions.

This is the first time for Switzerland to present at the YRDICIE. Creative Hub Switzerland, together with swissnex China has organized a Swiss Pavilion at the “Overseas Elite Sections” of the Expo to showcase six Swiss startups from product design, esports, and art business. During the four-day exhibition, the startups not only introduced their product and concept through live broadcasting but also joined the online matchmaking sessions to better connect with the Chinese market.

The Swiss Pavilion consisted of one on-site Bring Your Own Masks (BYOM) exhibition by Hyperaktive and five booths introducing Bananatex, Streax, iazzu, Laure Gremion Design Studio, and Christian Spiess Product Design respectively. The Bring Your Own Masks (BYOM) project presented 36 pieces of 3D printed prototypes of masks. The pure white models enriched the exhibition with a futuristic sense. Initiated by HyperAktiv.li, this project aims to offer a cultural response to the Covid-19 situation. Apart from demonstrating avant-garde Swiss design, the project also showcases designers' free interpretations by encouraging them to break technical, material, or industrial reality constraints. Meanwhile, BYOM is also offering a virtual exhibition where the global audience can enjoy the original designs.

On November 19th, swissnex China organized an online Café des Sciences lecture: Creative Switzerland to present the six startups with an interactive Q&A session. The lecture was also live streamed at the YRDICIE site. Both the online audience and onsite visitors showed great interest in the startups and actively participated in the Q&A session.

You can find the recording of the Café des Sciences lecture here.

Onsite visitors @YRDICIE watching live streaming of the Café des Sciences lecture: Creative Switzerland — Onsite visitors @YRDICIE watching live streaming of the Café des Sciences lecture: *Creative Switzerland*

Besides Hyperaktive.li., Banatex, Laure Gremion Design Studio, and Christian Spiess Product Design also focus on design. By sharing their distinctive design experience, they gave the audience a taste of the Swiss design culture.

Bananatex is derived from the backpack brand QWSTION. The team’s constant search for sustainable solutions led to the development of Bananatex, which dedicates to implementing a textile (r)evolution. Using the world’s first technical fabric made entirely from Banana plants (abaca). Bananatex specializes in manufacturing banana fabric bags with practical design.

Laure Gremion and Christian Spiess run their independent design studios. Laure Gremion is regularly called upon using all types of materials and manufacturing techniques. Using objects such as luminaires, bird feeders, garden wheelbarrow, she always aims for a new angle which will make us smile, dream altogether being functional and rather technical. She has already gained experience in working with Chinese designers when she was developing a rain collector for garden use called Ting with Chenya Wang from Tsinghua University. Christian Spiess emphasizes cultural interaction in creating interesting design works. He highlighted the durability, functionality, and timelessness of Swiss design value and conveyed his intention of collaborating with Chinese partners.

As for iazzu and Streax, they demonstrated the application of high tech to the cultural industries.

By adopting Augmented Reality in art transactions, iazzu provides an App for the art ecosystem, where people can see artworks and try them on different settings on smart phones. Its vision is to re-think the use of smartphones as engagement rather than distraction and to help art institutions reach new audiences. Its mission is to create a seamless, enjoyable experience for those buying and selling art.

Streax introduced its 100% mobile esport platform and its special business model targeting both players and brands. Aiming at making eSports truly accessible to anyone and turning an advertisement into an experience, Streax provides fully mobile esport service for both players and brands anytime, anywhere.

The matchmaking session was held on November 20th. Each startup has exchanged with five local companies from relevant business domains. Some of the local companies are also exhibitors at the YRDICIE. Both sides were satisfied with this online matchmaking format during this special time. All the companies are positive for further communications after the matchmaking session. About 30% of the local companies showed strong intention for collaboration in near future. From the Swiss side, many leads emerged from the discussions, which will be followed up in the coming weeks.

We’re glad that by joining the YRDICIE, the Swiss cultural industries gained visibility in China, and Swiss entrepreneurs were able to establish contacts with the Chinese Market.