2018年美国亚洲研究年会 | 媒介研究专题

Unreconciled Memories: Oral Histories of the Cultural Revolution

3/22/2018

7:30 PM - 9:30 PM

Location: Washington Room 4, Exhibit Level

It has been over half a century since the launch of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in China and people who have experienced it are now aged and aging, yet no consensus has been reached about its origin, consequences, and aftermath. Instead, nostalgia and amnesia in contemporary China threaten to bury the truth of this notorious historical event. Responding to the urgency of saving memories, the East Asian Library at the University of Pittsburgh launched a CR/10 (Cultural Revolution/10 minutes) Project in late 2016, collecting short interviews of people from different ages, professions, family backgrounds, and geographical locations that bring to light a multitude of narratives and perspectives about the memories of the Cultural Revolution. The ongoing CR/10 project is the first digital archive on the subject that will be used for teaching and research. This innovative and interdisciplinary roundtable will revolve around the screening of selected CR/10 interviews, followed by discussions among scholars in history, literature, sociology, and information science regarding the crystalline memories of the Cultural Revolution. Discussants have begun receiving recordings of the interviews, while subtitling in English and editing proceed. Discussants will bring their own expertise to comment on the significance of the CR/10 project in particular, and oral history in general. For instance, Rongqian Ma (Library) will demonstrate how the digital archive in the library will help teaching and research and preserve memories of the Cultural Revolution; Paul Pickowicz (History) will incorporate his own filmed interviews on the subject to question the simplified victimization narrative and class-based interpretation to uncover the complex nature of his historical event; and Guobin Yang (Sociology) will discuss how the CR/10 project sheds light on the meanings of revolutionary tradition and political culture for the Cultural Revolution generation as well as the powerful influences of this political culture on their behavior in the Red Guard movement. As a whole, this roundtable discussion will address the crisis of memory and explore various perspectives, methodologies, and ways of collaborating to deal with controversial histories such as that of the Cultural Revolution.

Season of Image Politics: Japanese Visual Media in 1968

3/24/2018

8:30 AM - 10:30 AM

Location: Thurgood Marshall North, Mezzanine

The student and labor protests of 1968 were a global movement, stretching from Paris to Tokyo, New York to Prague. Japan’s experience of this turbulent era-- what Yuriko Furuhata termed the “season of image politics”-- is reflected in its rich history of visual media, including film, television, visual art, theatre, and photography. Through figures such as filmmakers Oshima Nagisa, Suzuki Seijun, Hani Susumu, and Wakamatsu Koji, photographer Nakahira Takuma and graphic designer Yokoo Tadanori, 1968 came to index not only student and labor movements, but a mode of thought. This interdisciplinary panel investigates how visual media bear witness to 1968 as a major global event, a locus of human rights struggles, and a definitive moment in the history of film, television, and other media.   Will Carroll investigates differing interpretations of the controversial filmmaker Suzuki Seijun in 1968, as either a champion of the New Left, or an esoteric formalist. Julia Alekseyeva delves into two tendencies-- serious Brechtian alienation or comedic playfulness-- dominating the multidisciplinary projects of the Art Theatre Guild. Finally, Takuya Tsunoda analyzes several television programs of the 1960s, including animation and televisual tourism, which highlight a new way of thinking about 1968 as a new media moment. The 50th anniversary of 1968 allows us to place this immensely fruitful and turbulent year into context with the contemporary age. In so doing, this panel will illuminate 1968 Japan as both a historical event, and a mode of thought-- at times contradictory, but no less radical and revolutionary.

Presentations:

• 8:30 AM - 10:30 AM The "Group of Eight" and 1968: The Suzuki Seijun Incident Revisited

• 8:30 AM - 10:30 AM The Art Theatre Guild in 1968: From Estrangement to Alienation

• 8:30 AM - 10:30 AM The Movement-Televisual Image: The Media Space Circa 1968 in Japan

The 2016/17 Candlelight Protests and a New Culture of Korean Democracy

3/24/2018

10:45 AM - 12:45 PM

Location: Jefferson, Mezzanine Level

Sponsored By Committee on Korean Studies, NEAC

Although protest culture is nothing new in modern Korea, the 2016/17 Candlelight Protests, through which the history of democratic participation in Korea as well as in the world indelibly changed, were unprecedented in scope and outcome. These rallies not only resulted in the impeachment and removal of President Park Geun-hye, but more importantly they demonstrated the remarkable growth of civil society and reaffirmed the power of art to engage politics, mobilize people, and bring fulfillment.

Our panel examines this event through the lens of cultural production. In particular, we explore the ways writers, artists, photographers, filmmakers, and other actors were involved in making a new culture of protest, which both built upon and diverged from previous democratic movements in Korea. Broadly, we explore the relationship between political protest and art to show not only that the protests advanced art, but how art became the basis of a political protest emerging from the people themselves.

Each panelist explores a different medium to consider the multimedia effect of the Candlelight Protests. Young-Pyo Seo begins with an interpretive overview of the Candlelight Protests’ origins, achievements, and shortfalls. Jung-hwan Cheon examines new media’s role in generating new subjectivities and a theoretical understanding of cultural politics. Mai Inaba surveys the visual art produced at and for the Protests in the context of the longer history of the Minjung (People’s) Art Movement. And Woohyung Chon analyzes two documentary films on the protests that capture the emergence of multiple subjectivities as well as a new political aesthetics.

Presentations:

• 10:45 AM - 12:45 PM Artistic Production at the 2016/17 Kwanghwamun Square: New Prospects in Korean Minjung Art

• 10:45 AM - 12:45 PM Aspiring for Change: An Interpretation of the 2016/17 Candlelight Protests

• 10:45 AM - 12:45 PM Carnivalesque Protest: The New Political Aesthetics of South Korean Documentary Films

• 10:45 AM - 12:45 PM Toward a New Understanding of the Cultural Politics of the 2016/17 Candlelight Protests: Multiple Subjectivities and New Media

Asian Arts and Resistance: Defiant Subjects and their Disobedient Objects

3/24/2018

10:45 AM - 12:45 PM

Location: Washington Room 3, Exhibit Level

All across Asia artists, writers, musicians, dramatists, and architects have used their expressive capacities, and now increasingly new media - to critique the status quo, political regimes, and social establishments. At the same time, states and other powerful patrons regularly use and support expressive forms to celebrate and legitimate their own authority. Scholars in numerous disciplines, time periods, and areas of Asia are currently examining these complex relationships between artistic expression and political power. This panel brings together artists from Hong Kong, Myanmar, Cambodia and India, who through urban space installations, photographs, sculptures and films have created unique, discursive and imaginative spaces where art collapses into political discourses. This panel on the multiple and simultaneous uses of art as personal expression, political analysis, and social critique will provide a unique venue for the exploration of these relationships today.

Old Story, New Imaginations: Transmedial Representation of the Past in Revolutionary China, 1920s-1960s

3/24/2018

3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Location: Virginia Suite B, Lobby Level

Representations of history underwent dramatic changes with the development of new media and China’s revolutionary demands since the turn of the twentieth century. Knowledge of the past was constantly reappropriated and repackaged through transmedial circulations in response to nation building and the modernization process. In what way did the medium challenge, limit or liberate historical imaginations? This panel explores representations of the past across visual and literary media, highlighting the interconnectedness among various forms of historical narratives throughout different stages of revolution in China from the 1920s to the 1960s.

The papers in this panel investigate visual, theatrical, cinematic, textual works to illuminate the creativity and fluidity in the interplay between media in representing the past. Stephanie Su’s analysis of Li Yishi’s history painting elaborates the cinematic quality of Li’s work, which was concurrent with the emerging history films in the late 1920s, as demonstrated in Yan Yuqian’s paper. Li’s visual representation stimulated public debates on historical authenticity, particularly from Lu Xun, who also “retold” ancient stories. Satoru Hashimoto’s discussion on Old Stories Retold reveals Lu Xun’s attempt at using the modern medium of fiction, particularly its rhetoric of irony, to make sense of historical rupture at China’s modernization. Yan Yuqian’s case study canvasses the connections between cinema and drama, which was transformed again in wartime China. Wang Pu’s paper probes into the appropriation of antiquity for socialist agenda, arguing that the transmutability of allegorical-anachronistic energies indicates that media were a site of crisis and mediation during the Cultural Revolution.

Presentations:

• 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM Between Stage and Screen: Performing the Past in Wartime China

• 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM Irony, Allegory, and Modernity: Rereading Lu Xun’s Old Stories Retold

• 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM Sensuous Pasts: Transmedial Relationship and Historical Imagination in the 1920s-1930s

• 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM The Transmediality of Anachronism: Reconsidering the Rewriting of Antiquity in Revolutionary China

Playable Asia: The Politics of Playable Media in Networked Asia

3/24/2018

3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Location: Hoover, Mezzanine Level

This innovative workshop has two objectives: 1) to introduce participants to the roles of playable media, in the context of this panel defined as videogames and virtual/augmented reality environments/platforms in Asian socio-political cultures; 2) to promote the creation and recognition of playable media as critical scholarship and powerful research and pedagogical tools. This workshop will introduce the audience to a combination of lightning talk presentation styles as well as hands-on demos of augmented reality around one single theme: the politics of playable media in networked Asia.

Given the development of digital infrastructures across various regions of Asia, playable media has shown significant potential to be used as a medium for political expressions, from the utilization of “newsgames” (Bogost, Ferrari, Schweizer, 2010) in anti-corruption campaigns in Indonesia; to Chinese artists such as Feng Mengbo who us online gaming platforms. Playable media offer a novel way to approach archival research in Asian contexts. Through its focus on innovative and interdisciplinary approach, this workshop demonstrates the impact of playable media in shaping contemporary public lives and the interconnectedness between politics, cultural and artistic productions, and new media circulation in contemporary Asia.

It consists of three presentations/hands-on demonstrations: the first presentation examines the politics of playable media in Indonesia through the genre of “newsgames,” a broad body of work produced at the intersection of video games and journalism. The second presentation examines Cao Fei’s 2017 BMW Art Car that invites users to interact with her work through gaming platforms (augmented and virtual reality) leveraging digital media to critique the contemporary moment. The third presentation deals with the requirements of software emulation and digital preservation inherent in the study of these digital media works.  Digital assets require careful decisions about their capture, preservation, storage, and emulation in order to be available to scholars. Best practices and workflows will be discussed. This panel also encourages alternative formats for participating (e.g. video conference), especially for participants who have restrictions in traveling to the conference in real life.

The Art of Heritage: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Approaches

3/25/2018

8:30 AM - 10:30 AM

Location: Harding, Mezzanine Level

Sponsored By Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures

In their recent book, Matsuda and Mengoni questioned the applicability of the concept of ‘cultural heritage’ in East Asian contexts. From UNESCO World Heritage to local heritage initiatives (for example the Japan Heritage or ‘Nihon isan’ programme promoting cultural tourism in the lead-up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics), however, the ‘stuff’ of heritage across Asia is being scrutinised on an unprecedented scale, with new generations of ‘heritage practitioners’ being trained up, while politicians and other activists in some countries are openly hostile towards traditional curators and approaches to managing the heritage (I am thinking here of David Atkinson’s interventions in Japan). This panel addresses issues that lead to potential confrontations at disciplinary boundaries with much of what falls within the rubric of ‘cultural heritage’ cross-cutting traditional academic fields including history, art, art history, architectural history, conservation, and museology, adding into the mix cultural politics and soft diplomacy, the economics of tourism, environmental concerns and digital humanities. At the same time, the narratives involved in heritage are often necessarily transnational: the specific agendas of national state parties notwithstanding, the evaluation of World Heritage nominations depends on the demonstration of Outstanding Universal Value; and shared concerns with the preservation and interpretation of heritage assets at the local level can provide new frameworks for engagement, comparison and cooperation by diverse communities. Presentations in the panel will consider these concerns through a series of specific case studies.

Presentations:

• 8:30 AM - 10:30 AM East Asian Heritage Outside East Asia: Authenticity and Transnationality of East Asian Gardens

• 8:30 AM - 10:30 AM From Archaeological Site Preservation Movements to the Conservation of Cultural Heritage and Landscapes in Japan: Preservation of What, for Whom, for How Long and at What Cost?

• 8:30 AM - 10:30 AM Japaneseness in Japanese Heritage

• 8:30 AM - 10:30 AM World Heritage and Grass Roots: Glocalising Heritage Discourse in East Asia