I’ve just returned from a ten day trip to China, where I was leading a current group of MA students from the Courtauld on a study visit to Shanghai. I’ve been teaching the students as a visiting lecturer on the MA course ‘(RE)made in China: Appropriation, subversion and transformation in contemporary Art’, so the main focus of the visit was to enable them to visit artists’ studios, museums and art galleries and apply the skills and learning they’ve hopefully absorbed over the last few months to an analysis of the objects, exhibitions and images we were privileged to see during our visit.
We visited over twenty exhibitions in various venues and art districts throughout the city and over the coming weeks, I hope to share some of the highlights of the visit on this blog. Several exhibitions were of particular interest given my current research on digital culture, most notably Y世代之歌 ‘The Ballad of Generation Y’ currently on display at OCAT, Shanghai, as well as 亞洲當代藝術空間 A+ Contemporary‘s show 模型演进’Evolution of Model’.
I came back to the UK to attend a three day conference devoted to ‘Digital Culture in Contemporary China, Hong Kong and Taiwan’. The conference starts tomorrow and features a very distinguished line up of excellent speakers, who will be addressing issues ranging from digital activism and internet literature to virtual cinema, screen culture and digital archiving. I was very fortunate to receive an invite to present some of my current research on digital art and will be giving a paper on Miao Ying and the rise of ‘Chinternet Ugly’ on Friday afternoon. I have included the conference programme below and will write a more detailed post on the proceedings next week.
DIGITAL CULTURE IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA,
TAIWAN AND HONG KONG
China Centre and Wadham College, Oxford
December 17-19, 2015
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
Thursday December 17th
Lecture Theatre 1, China Centre
9.00am Introductory remarks
Margaret Hillenbrand
9.15am-10.45am Panel 1: Digital Activism
Chair: Heather Inwood
9.15am-9.45am
Jing Wang, MIT:
“Activists as Makers: NGO2.0 & Tech4Good”
9.45am-10.15am
Jia Tan, Hong Kong Baptist University:
“Aesthetics of Queer Becoming: Comrade Yue and Chinese Community-Based Documentaries Online”
10.15am-10.45am
Questions
10.45am-11.15am
COFFEE
11.15am-12.45pm Panel 2: Digital City
Chair: Luke Robinson
11.15am-11.45am
Yomi Braester, University of Washington:
“The City as Found Footage”
11.45am-12.15pm
Chris Berry, King’s College, London:
“Museum as Theme Park: The Screen Culture of the Shanghai Museum of Science and Technology”
12.15pm-12.45pm
Questions
12.45pm-2pm
LUNCH
Wordsworth Tea Room, China Centre
2pm-3.30pm Panel 3: Digital Technologies
Chair: Chris Berry
2pm-2.30pm
Wendy Larson, University of Oregon:
“The Glistening City-Orb: Flash Animation in Jia Zhangke’s The World”
2.30pm-3pm
Luke Robinson, University of Sussex:
“Digital Cinema on East Asia’s Periphery: Midi Z’s ‘Burma Trilogy’”
3pm-3.30pm
Questions
3.30pm-4pm
COFFEE
4pm-4.30pm Special Presentation: Digital Archiving
Kuei-fen Chiu, National Chung-hsing University:
“The Taiwan Literature Archives: Notes on an Experimental Digital Literary History”
4.30pm-5pm
Questions
Friday, December 18th
Lecture Theatre 1, China Centre
9.30am-11am Panel 4: Digital Cinema
Chair: Michel Hockx
9.30am-10am
Jason McGrath, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities:
“Suppositionality, Virtuality, and Chinese Cinema”
10am-10.30am
Song Hwee Lim:
“Can Poetics Break Bricks?”
10.30am-11am
Questions
11am-11.30am
COFFEE
11.30am-1.00pm Panel 5: Digital Restraints
Chair: Ros Holmes
11.30am-12pm
Michel Hockx, SOAS:
“The Bottom Line Revisited – Chinese Internet Literature and Moral Censorship in the Xi Era
12pm-12.30pm
Laikwan Pang, Chinese University of Hong Kong:
“Aesthetics of Appearance: Documentary Footages of the Umbrella Movement
12.30pm-1.00pm
Questions
1.00pm-2.30pm
LUNCH
Wordsworth Tea Room, China Centre
2.30pm-4pm Panel 6: Digital Art
Chair: Luke Robinson
2.30pm-3pm
Margaret Hillenbrand, University of Oxford:
“Digital Haunting”
3pm-3.30pm
Ros Holmes, University of Oxford:
“Miao Ying, Net Art and ‘Chinternet’ Aesthetics”
3.30pm-4pm
Questions
4pm-4.30pm
COFFEE
Saturday, December 19th
Lecture Theatre 1, China Centre
9.30am-11am Panel 7: Digital Time
Chair: Annie Hongping Nie
9.30am-10am
Xiao Liu, McGill University:
“A Game of Time: Video Game, Time Travel and Cinema in the Era of Algorithm”
10am-10.30am
Kwai-Cheung Lo, Hong Kong Baptist University:
“From Coevalness to Multiple Chronos and Back: Temporalizing Inter-Ethnic Online Articulations in Digital China”
10.30am-11am
Questions
11am-11.30am
COFFEE
11.30am-1pm Panel 8: Digital Returns
Chair: Elisabeth Forster
11.30am-12pm
Carlos Rojas, Duke University:
“Dream of the Red Chamber Internet Fan Fiction and Literary Canonicity”
12pm-12.30pm
Heather Inwood, University of Manchester:
“Similar, Familiar and Old: The Aesthetics of Repetition in Digital Chinese Culture”
12.30pm-1pm
Questions
Concluding remarks
This conference has been generously supported by the following sponsors:
British Inter-University China Centre
Oxford University China Centre
