Yang Fudong and Asian Art in a Global Context: The Politics of Precarity
| Dates: | 18 March 2014 |
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| Times: | 14:00 - 15:30 |
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| What is it: | Lecture |
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| Organiser: | School of Arts, Languages and Cultures |
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| Who is it for: | Adults, Alumni, Current University students, General public, University staff |
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| Speaker: | Chris Berry |
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Theorists of globalization argue that precarity characterizes the condition of post-Fordist flexible labour. They argue about whether this is simply vulnerability to exploitation or a risk-based mixture of threat and opportunity. What about artists exhibiting in the transnational art world, or “artscape,” as I call it? And given that this artscape remains dominated by Western curators, collectors and galleries, what about non-Western artists? Taking as my primary example the Chinese moving image artist Yang Fudong, I argue that he has learnt to develop a new cinema of gesture that appeals to the artscape, but at the price of pastiche and self-orientalism. However, the seeming mystery of this work is also simultaneously a provocative exploration of the precarious condition of the contemporary Chinese intellectual class, including artists like himself.
Speaker
Chris Berry
Role: Professor of Film Studies
Organisation: Kings College, London
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6.211
University Place
Manchester
