Call for Papers
“The Art of Transculturality: New Frontiers in Postsocialist
China’s Avant-garde and Urban Culture”
Deadline for submission of title and abstract (350 words): 15 December 2015. Please attach a short biographical note.
Conference dates: 27-29 July 2016
Convenors: Prof Daria Berg and Dr Giorgio Strafella
Venue: University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland
Abstract
This workshop aims to explore innovative ways of looking at the dynamics of transculturality in postsocialist China’s avant-garde and urban culture by bringing together artists, writers, art curators and scholars. Avant-garde literature and art today exist at the margins of China’s officially ordained culture.
Transcultural trends transform China’s local culture in the age of globalisation. In twenty-first century China the new media — in particular Web 2.0 — offer an emerging public sphere that challenges the mechanisms of government censorship, allowing transcultural trends across China’s virtual frontiers. Web-based discourses traverse the borderlines between China’s officially ordained culture, the globalising world, and Chinese vernacular culture.
China’s new generation of avant-garde writers and artists push the boundaries of vernacular culture. They appropriate artistic and literary languages from the post/modern Western avant-garde movements to reflect on reform-era China’s transformation and the Maoist heritage.
The papers will investigate such forms of transculturality in avant-garde Chinese literature and art, focussing in particular on performance and conceptual art. Participants will look critically at the processes of appropriation of transcultural trends and the interpretation of avant-garde languages in contemporary China. During the workshop Chinese avant-garde artists will present and discuss their artistic production and methods. The workshop will shed new light on the transcultural trends and proactive interaction with non-Chinese communities and histories in China’s avant-garde literature and art.
We invite paper proposals on topics relating to China such as:
- Avant-garde literature and art
- Politics and culture of postsocialism
- Transculturality
- Art criticism and theory
- Reception of avant-garde art and writing
- Curating avant-garde art
- Publishing avant-garde literature
- Experimental art and literature
- Literary and artistic communities
- Performance art
- Conceptual art
- Online literature
- Art and the Web
- Art and globalisation
- New urban culture
- Clash and cooperation between the avant-garde and the state
- Literature, art and dissent
- Mao and the avant-garde
- Popular culture and the avant-garde
Papers will be submitted to an international peer-reviewed publication. For this purpose, we expect participants to give us first refusal on their papers.
Contact: Dr Giorgio Strafella, giorgio.strafella@unisg.ch