Throughout the whole semester of the 1st pilot of “Transcultural Collaboration” in autumn 2015 we are having a regular and continuous lecture series framing and defining the program focussing on various aspects of “Transculturality”, which is the core topic of this graduate semester program.
All lectures are open to the public and free of charge.
General content
The economy goes global, and political systems are intertwined worldwide: goods, information, signs, and humans are on the way to (apparent) boundlessness. Trans- and multiculturalism seem to be the order of the day. But what does this “categorical imperative” mean exactly? Are our local or regional orientations obsolete? Are we now always on the road, “in-between”, schizoid and manifold in our identities? How can we gain the skills and the know-how to engage in different cultures, so as to appreciate and to relate to them? These are of course “big” questions. Nevertheless, we aim to discuss the challenge and our desire to embrace this “transculturality” in our personal and institutional work? Is it about knowledge, experience, critique, about friendship, competition, power, and authority? Is it possible – based on our experiences – to “understand” each other? And how can we develop ourselves while experiencing yet another crucial revision of our culture? Is it at all possible to speak of “our” culture?
Participating Lecturers
Jörg Scheller, Curator and Head of BA Photography, Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland
Gina Marchetti, Professor at the Department of Comparative Literature, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Hongjohn Lin, Artist/Curator and Chairperson Fine Arts Department, Taipei National University of the Arts, Taiwan
Frank Vigneron, Director of MA program in Fine Art, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Kenneth Ip Shu Kei, Chair School of Film and Television Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts
Lisa Leung , Deputy Director, Master of Cultural Studies, Lignan University, Hong Kong
Gordon Mathews, Professor of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Ouyang-Yu, Author, Melbourne/Shanghai
… and more to be confirmed
Wednesday, September 09 – 7pm
Cosmopolitan Rhapsody – Transcultural Tendencies in the Music Video Genre
Lecturer: Prof. Jörg Scheller, Curator and Head of BA Photography, Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland
Venue: Connecting Space Hong Kong
In 1995, Lev Manovich wrote: „The genre of music video has been a laboratory“. While Manovich dealt with music videos as a „constantly expanding textbook for digital cinema“, this talk will focus on transcultural aesthetics, symbols, and narratives in the audiovisual laboratories of pop culture – from sophisticated to decidedly non-sophisticated ones, from underground to mainstream, from American heavy metal to Ghanaian gospel porn rap. In place of an overview, the genre itself, this hybrid of various media – film, music, text –, will be portrayed as a genius loci for transculturality.
Tuesday, September 15 – 5:30pm
Transcultural Encounters, Transnational Feminisms: Women Media Activists and the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong
Lecturer: Gina Marchetti, Professor at the Department of Comparative Literature, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Venue: University of Hong Kong, Rm 404, Run Run Shaw Tower
Hong Kong’s 2014 Umbrella Movement, calling for a more open procedure for vetting candidates for its first exercise in universal suffrage in the election of its Chief Executive in 2017, does not have an explicit “feminist” agenda. However, initial research shows that over fifty percent of participants in the movement are female. Although underrepresented in visible leadership roles and in media reports on the demonstrations, women have played an essential part in all aspects of the movement. Moreover, they suffered from sexual harassment by counter-demonstrators intent on intimidating them and infringing on their right to public assembly. As Mirana Sze-to’s preliminary analysis shows, women activists shaped the physical space and quotidian operation of occupying Central, Causeway Bay, and Mongkok in very visible ways—from redecorating public bathrooms and crafting agit-prop artworks to running supplies and operating “democracy” study halls. They drew on various transnational cultural icons and ideas to support their political aims with nods to female artists such as Yoko Ono as well as noticeable ties to global LGBTQ rainbow movements.
During the demonstrations, women media artists took up cameras to record events and document their active participation in the political process. This presentation examines how these filmmakers see themselves as women with cameras observing as well as confronting Hong Kong’s political deadlock in relation to broader questions of the role of women in democratic movements globally. The talk highlights the diversity of the female media artists, coming from North America, Europe, Vietnam, mainland China, and elsewhere, who helped to put the Umbrella Movement on screen for world audiences. Their motion pictures illustrate the transcultural, cosmopolitanism at the root of transnational feminist theory today, and how this plays a critical role in depiction of Hong Kong activism for international audiences.
Thursday, October 01 – 7pm
Imaginary Identity: The Fake Formosan George Psalmanaazaar
Lecturer: Lin Hongjohn, Curator and Professor, Taipei National University of the Arts, Taiwan
Venue: Connecting Space Hong Kong
In 1703 the high society of London there appeared George Psalmanaazaar who claimed himself a Formosan to be abducted by a Christian missionary. In his book, An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa(1704) , described Formosa to be a country of abundant resources, governed by a Japanese ruler. In this fictive book, Formosan people was almost half-naked, only wearing silver plates over their private parts. Horses, camels, and elephants were domesticated for transportation. One of the high peaks of the book was that every year Formosans sacrificed the eldest sons to their gods, and even in the second edition (1705), Formosan were exaggerated as cannibals, who ate those were sacrificed and executed. Being a celebrity of his exotic oriental identity and feted by all the literary and philosophical lions of London, Psalmanaazaar were even invited to teach Formosan in Oxford University. Psalmanaazaar was the beau monde in the celebrities of London.
Psalmanaazaar’s real identity is still unknown today, as much as in his will he still signed with the fictional Taiwanese name. In order to portray as a Formosan, he ate raw meat with various heavy spices. He even lighted candle when he slept to pass for the other that he was actually reading, for Formosans, according to his book, learned knowledge through their sleeps. For 18th century occidental world Ilha Formosa, Taiwan, represents one of the most distant country they can imagine not just geographically but symbolically as well.
Since 2008, Hongjohn Lin has been working on this fake Taiwanese under the title The Museum of George Psalmanazzare, MOGP exhibiting in Rotterdam, Manchester, Shanghai and Taipei. In the 2012 Taipei Biennial as participated artist, the project was presented in a manner much similar to that of museum. Hongjohn Lin links the secrete path between identity and the politics of fantasy, and the other, the real of the local, much as a missing part that is intrinsic to the real Taiwanese. In combining the seemingly impossible fragments of sights and sounds, to link the web of identity politics that linger between the ancient and the contemporary, the truth and falsity to capture the fleeting moment of the perverse, the primitive, the empowered to glance the phantom of history.
Thursday, October 08 – 7pm
Non-essentialist hybridization – Now you see me, now you don’t.
Lecturer: Frank Vigneron, Director of MA program in Fine Art, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Venue: Connecting Space Hong Kong
After a recapitulation of the notions of ‘‘East’’ and ‘‘West’’ in the work of Edward Said and the kind of problems they have generated in the evaluation of art in Hong Kong (illustrated with some examples of two kinds of artwork using concepts and visuals from Euro-America and China), the process of hybridization is then presented as the way in which a culture will transform into something new. The question is therefore to establish what can be called a hybrid. To put it simply, one calls ‘‘hybrid’’ in the cultural realm something that does not yet look ‘‘native.’’ For instance, in present-day China what was still considered to be a hybrid in the arts not so long ago is often identified as more Chinese than ‘‘Western’’ today. A cultural element only stays a hybrid as long as it is seen as such, but its visibility is subject to change. This begs another question: what are the conditions of the visibility of hybridity and through what process does it go before being identified as something ‘‘native’’? Hybridity is in reality a very unstable characteristic, and its presence depends very much on who is looking and how; it is a question of cultural representation and, as a result, cannot be inherent in the object itself. This non-essentialist view of hybridization in the visual arts, presenting itself in the shape of the Deleuzian rhizome, may shed a different light on questions related to differences and similarities between cultures.
following lectures to be announced soon…
Short bios
Jörg Scheller is an art historian, journalist, and musician. He has been tenured lecturer in art history and head of photography at the Zurich University of the Arts since 2012. In 2013, he was the curator of the Salon Suisse at the 55th Venice Art Biennale. From 2009–2012, he was the coordinator of an international research project on the Venice Biennale (focus Eastern/Central Europe) at the Swiss Institute for Art Research, Zurich. In parallel, he was assistant professor at the University of Siegen, Germany (until 2013). Besides, he had teaching assignments at the University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe, at the Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, at the University of Strasbourg, and at the University of Arts in Poznan, Poland (ongoing). In 2011, he was awarded his PhD for a dissertation on the myth of Arnold Schwarzenegger (supported by a scholarship from the German Research Foundation, 2007–209). His research is focused on bodybuilding, exhibition history, and popular culture. Latest book publications: Anything Grows. 15 Essays zur Geschichte, Ästhetik und Bedeutung des Bartes (2014, ed. with Alexander Schwinghammer); Arnold Schwarzenegger oder Die Kunst, ein Leben zu stemmen (2012); No Sports! Zur Ästhetik des Bodybuildings (2010). He is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines such as Die Zeit, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Schweizer Monat, frieze d/e. www.joergscheller.de
Gina Marchetti teaches in the Department of Comparative Literature, University of Hong Kong. Her books include Romance and the „Yellow Peril“: Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction (1993), Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s INFERNAL AFFAIRS The Trilogy (2007), From Tian’anmen to Times Square: Transnational China and the Chinese Diaspora on Global Screens (2006), and The Chinese Diaspora on American Screens: Race, Sex, and Cinema (2012). Information on her project on Hong Kong women filmmakers can be found at https://hkwomenfilmmakers.wordpress.com/.
Hongjohn Lin is an artist, writer and curator. He has participated in exhibitions including the Manchester Asian Triennial 2008, the Rotterdam Film Festival 2008, and the 2012 Taipei Biennial. Lin was curator of the Taiwan Pavilion Atopia, Venice Biennial 2007 and co-curator of 2010 Taipei Binnial (with Tirdad Zolghadr), and participating as an artists in Asian Triennial Manchester(2008), and Guangzhou Biennial 2015. Lin is serving as Professor at the Taipei National University of the Arts where he is Chairperson of the Fine Arts Department.
Frank Vigneron received a Ph.D. in Chinese Art History from the Paris VII University, a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Paris IV Sorbonne University and a Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He joined the Department of Fine Arts, CUHK in 2004, teaching courses on the History of Western Art, the theories of Modernism and Postmodernism in art, and Chinese and Western comparative aesthetics. His research focus is on the history of Chinese painting from the 18th century onwards and on different aspects of contemporary Chinese art seen in a global context. He is also the program director of Master of Arts (Fine Arts). In 2010, he became Chair of the Hong Kong Art School Academic Committee as well as a member of the Hong Kong Art School Council. He is also a member of the International Association of Art Critics Hong Kong. Professor Vigneron is also a practicing artist. He has held several solo exhibitions in Hong Kong and has taken part in local and international exhibitions.