Animation as a Way of Seeing

[Online Lecture] Animation as a Way of Seeing: The Afterlife of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, organized by University of Hong Kong, University Museum and Art Gallery
University of Hong Kong – Lecture Series on Contemporary and Modern Chinese Art, University Museum and Art Gallery (2022/3)

Event Details

UMAG Lecture Series (2022/3): Re-examining Modernity and Contemporaneity through Chinese Art
Animation as a Way of Seeing: The Afterlife of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy

Date: Thursday 31 March 2022
Time: 2:00–3:00pm HKT (7:00–8:00am BST / 30 March 11:00pm–31 March 0:00am PDT)

Abstract
This lecture traces the afterlife of Chinese painting and calligraphy on the animation screen. We will bring into the critical spotlight Xu Bing’s 2012 animated video, “The Character of Characters” (Hanzi de xingge), which remediates Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322)’s painting and calligraphy. The new possibilities afforded by calligraphic animation are negotiated through a series of oscillations between image and text, spatiality and temporality, and diegetic and nondiegetic conventions. The dialogue that takes place between shu (books, written characters, and the act of writing) and the computer enables us to seek, pinpoint, and scrutinize a powerful intermedial creativity and its implications in an age of global media mix. We will pose a counter-historical question: has animation, as a way of seeing, always been with us, even before animation was invented?

Speaker
Dr. Panpan Yang is a lecturer (UK equivalent of assistant professor) in the Department of the History of Art and Archaeology at SOAS University of London. She received her Ph.D. in 2020 from the University of Chicago. She is currently completing her first book on the history of Chinese animation from the 1920s to the present, with a focus on animation’s encounters with other artforms, including photography, painting, and calligraphy. Concurrently, she is working on a second book project on the calligraphic imagination in contemporary Chinese art and emergent media.

Discussant
Prof. Mia Yinxing Liu, Associate Professor in the Visual Studies department at California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA
Date/Time: 31/03/2022 14:00-15:00
Venue: Online on Zoom
Language: English

Registration Instruction

REGISTRATION LINK: 

https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=80072

Registration is open from 10/01/2022 00:00(HKT) to 25/03/2022 00:00(HKT) on a first-come-first-served basis. The registration quota for this event is 100. Registrants will be placed on a waiting list if the registration quota is reached.

A Zoom link will be sent to you three days before the event.

To prepare for the lecture, please use the Zoom desktop client or mobile app to join the event. You may download the software here: https://zoom.us/support/download. Please ensure your software is up-to-date with the latest version.

Posted by: Shuo Hua huashuo@connect.hku.hk

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