EASGSU Film Talk Series: Archiving Wuhan: Recomposing Vernacular Sound and Space:

When and Where

Thursday, September 21, 2023 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Virtual Event

Speakers

Chris Zhongtian Yuan, Artist
Dr. Yi Gu, Associate Professor, Department of Arts, Culture and Media, University of Toronto
Moderator: Jiaqi Wang, (Ph.D. Student, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto

Description

Archiving Wuhan: Recomposing Vernacular Sound and Space: Conversation on Wuhan Punk and other short films
 

This virtual event takes place on Zoom. Click here to register for the Zoom link.

Film Introduction

Using archive material and digital animation, Wuhan Punk (2020) ruminates on the disappearance of Mai Dian, the charismatic frontman of Wuhan punk group Si Dou Le. Narrated in Wuhan dialect, 'Wuhan Punk' searches for memory and resistance. The project also reveals the lost footage of an interview that the artist did with Mai back in 2010, as part of the artist's very first video work.

Panelists:

Chris Zhongtian Yuan, Artist

Chris Zhongtian Yuan (b.1988, Wuhan) is an artist based in London. Drawing from DIY music, Punk experimental filmmaking and vernacular architecture, Yuan's work examines existing structures of power that have shaped everyday, affective and institutional spaces. Recent and forthcoming solo presentations include: Reading International, Reading (2023); Macalline Art Center, Beijing (2023); V.O Curations, London (2022); The Courtauld Institute of Art, London (2021); 1815, K11, Wuhan (2020). Recent group exhibitions, performances and screenings include: International Film Festival Rotterdam (2023); Today Art Museum (2023); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022); Somerset House, London (2022); Surplus Space, Wuhan (2022); Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2021); Videoex, Zurich (2021); York Art Gallery, York (2020); Venice Architecture Biennale Greek Pavilion, Venice (2018) among others. 

Dr. Yi Gu, Associate Professor, Department of Arts, Culture and Media, University of Toronto

Dr. Gu is an associate professor of modern and contemporary art and visual culture, with a focus on Asia, especially China. Her research interests include cold war visual culture and post-socialist art, comparative media studies, Chinese photography history and contemporary photography in Asia, politics of aesthetics, data visualization, and visual methodologies across disciplines. Her book Chinese Ways of Seeing and Open-Air Painting (Harvard University Press Asia Center, 2020) points out an ocular turn of China’s twentieth century as a foundation for a revisionist history of modern Chinese art. She is currently completing a manuscript on socialist data visualization and China's contemporary Digital Countryside initiative. She is a co-editor of open-access academic journal Trans Asia Photography and a convening member of the research project “Recalibrating Postwar Chinese Art: Digital Humanities and Alternative Archives.”

Moderator: Jiaqi Wang, Ph.D. Student, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto

This event is hosted by the East Asian Studies Graduate Student Union. Part of the The Fantastical and the Real: 2023 EASGSU Film Talk Series