Entries tagged with China

“Avant-Garde Counter-Ideology:
The Example of Ai Wei-wei”

“Ideology”
Humanities Center Fall Symposium
McGregor Conference Center
Wayne State University
14 October 2016

Alina Klin
Kai Xu
Elizabeth Stoycheff
Jeffrey Horner
Elena Past
Eun-Jung Kim
Anne Duggan
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Event 51: I Met (ACLA)

American Comparative Literature Association
Seattle, 26–29 March 2015
(after On Kawara)

renee hoogland
Anjuli Raza Kolb
Marjorie Levinson
Jonathan Stalling
Nick Admussen
Jinyi Chu
Jacob Edmond
Paul Manfredi
Florian Wagner
Yang Zi
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Tracking the Chinese Avant-Gardes: Literary and Visual
Organizers: Barrett Watten, Wayne State University
Jonathan Stalling, University of Oklahoma
Jacob Edmond, University of Otago

American Comparative Literature Association
Seattle, 26–29 March 2015; stream B (10:30–12:10)
Dashpoint, Seattle Sheraton

The past thirty-five years has witnessed the phenomenal growth of numerous avant-garde art and poetry movements in China, from the 1979 Stars exhibition and Misty School of poetry to the present. This seminar will survey the formal innovations, historical development, and cultural logics of the Chinese avant-gardes, working across genres and disciplines in doing so. It will present examples of formally innovative and culturally provocative art, from its period of emergence after the Cultural Revolution in the 80s to the traumatic break that occurred with the events of the June 4/Tiananmen Square movement to periods of growth and dispersion in the 90s and global recognition in the 00s. How have Chinese avant-gardes developed, dispersed, changed, been absorbed—what are their influences, accomplishments, contradictions, historical mission? How are the Chinese avant-gardes global; how do they respond to or resist globalization; how do they reflect, affirm, or critique China’s role in the global order? How are the Chinese avant-gardes a moment of cultural translation or hybridity between Chinese and Western/avant-garde aesthetics, philosophy, and/or politics (including gender)? How were emergent forms of transnational art, such as Conceptual Art or Concrete Poetry, interpreted in China? How do the Chinese avant-gardes negotiate the visual/verbal interface between pinyin and roman characters as a part of its task? And finally, what does the emergence of the Chinese avant-gardes, in their specific historical and cultural conditions, mean for the theory of the avant-garde, given its Eurocentric historical basis?

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China

Ancient Chinese Ceramics Gallery. Museum catalogue. Shanghai: Shanghai Museum, n.d.
Chen Haiwen, ed. Old Industries in Shanghai. Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, 2010.
Childhood Friends Getting Fat: Moving Image of Liu Xiaodong, 1984-2014. Exhibition guide. Shanghai: Minsheng Art Museum, 2014.
Chinese Calligraphy Gallery. Museum catalogue. Shanghai: Shanghai Museum, n.d.
Huang Yan. Yan Ink: Ink Research Series. Exhibition guide. Shanghai: Leo Gallery, 2014.
Huang Yaping. Sun Yat-Sen in Shanghai. Trans. Pan Qin. Shanghai: Shanghai Century Publishing Co., 2010.
Köppel-Yang, Martina, ed. Advance through Retreat. Exhibition guide. Shanghai: Rockbund Art Museum, 2014.
Li Dong. Beginner’s Chinese Dictionary. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2004.
Ming Yang Pei, ed. Chinese Propaganda Poster Collection. Shanghai: Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center, 2013.
Shanghai Lady Postcards. Shanghai: Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center, n.d.
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Soong Ching-ling’s Soviet sedan. Photo: BW

From 24 June to 2 July 2014, I was in Shanghai, attending an academic/arts conference and seeing as much of the city as possible when not otherwise engaged. The meetings took place at Shanghai Jiao Tong University; jiao tong means “transportation” but is the equivalent of “polytechnic.” Many of the early technical universities in China were concerned with various forms of transportation. In the case of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the major focus was maritime engineering; there is a massive rusted iron anchor in a courtyard between classroom buildings where there might be the statue of a humanist or political figure in another context. Shanghai, of course, is built on maritime traffic on the Yangtze River, the scale of which was evident in the massive materiality of the anchor. There were many such confrontations with massive scale in Shanghai, from its population of 23 million to the waves of public housing and corporate building that extend outward in all directions to its burgeoning infrastructure, particularly elevated highways and metro system. Jiao tong seems to have been an important concept. Now, it is being reinterpreted to include more liberal forms of scholarship, as witness the arts and humanities program that was our host. A canny citation of Confucian scripture permits this broader, more inclusive reading.

*****

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ASAP 6 (Association for the Study
     of the Arts of the Present)
Shanghai Jiao Tong University

27–29 June 2014
(after On Kawara)

Brian McHale
Esther Gottlieb
James Steintrager
Jonathan Eburne
Matthew Hart
Amy Elias
Liu Kang
Wang Ning
Jacob Edmond
Earl Jackson, Jr.
Yu-Chieh Lee
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Ai Wei-wei, Moon Chest, 2008. Photo: BW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ASAP 6 (Association for the Study
     of the Arts of the Present)
Shanghai Jiao Tong University

27–29 June 2014 [here]

Regions of Avant-Garde Practice: Asia
Jacob Edmond, “Critical Translation”
Earl Jackson, Jr., “‘Asia’ from Variable Proximities”
Barrett Watten, “Negative Globality in the Chinese
Avant-Garde”
11:30 AM–1:00 PM, Friday, 27 June

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