“Silk Road” refers to the great trade routes that originated in China and spread westward across Central and South Asia, the Middle East, and into Mediterranean Europe.
The Silk Road also provides several metaphors within a 21st-century diasporic context. As a historic transportation hub and trading center, we consider Chicago to be the Capital of the North American Silk Road; a dynamic convergence of waterways, land bridges, peoples, and innovation. In a similar vein, the internet represents today’s global Silk Road, a technological ecosystem of ideas, stories, information, and beliefs.
We embrace the Silk Road as a living heritage and a model of the anti-colonial and anti-Orientalist politics that define our company’s aesthetic and worldview. May its legacy continue to thrive and evolve at Silk Road Rising.