Ou Ning was born in Guangdong, China in 1969. He now lives and works in Beijing. As an activist, he founded U-theque (1999-2004), an independent film and video organization, and Bishan Commune (from 2011), an intellectual group devoted to rural reconstruction movement in China. As a publisher, he is known for his seminal book New Sound of Beijing (1997) and his literary bimonthly journal Chutzpah! (from 2011). As a curator, he initiated the biennial exhibition Get It Louder (2005, 2007, 2010), curated the sound project “Awakening Battersea” (2006) as part of the China Power Station exhibitions, co-organized by the Serpentine Gallery and the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art. He was the chief curator of the 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture; he also curated “The Solutions: Design and Social Engineering” for the 2011 Chengdu Biennale and co-curated Liu Xiaodong’s Hotan Project with Hou Hanru in 2012 and 2013. As an artist, he is known for urban research projects such as San Yuan Li (2003), commissioned by the 50th Venice Biennale, and Meishi Street (2006), commissioned by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes.He is a frequent contributor to various magazines, books and exhibition catalogues and has lectured around the world. He was a jury member of the 8th Benesse Prize at the 53rd Venice Biennale(2009), Yokohama International Media Art Festival (2009), the 22nd Milan Asian, African and Latin American Film Festival (2012). He just published Young Asia: The Emergence of the Post-Cold War Generation, a special issue of Modern Weekly with Modern Media Group in China, focused on the young talents of art, film, design, architecture, music, technology and activism from Japan, South Korea, India, Iran, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and the Greater China area.