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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20140515T144856Z
DTSTART:20140519T150000Z
DTEND:20140519T163000Z
SUMMARY:Numinous Objects: The Photo-Form in Contemporary China  - Dr. Mar
 garet Hillenbrand
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DESCRIPTION:Dr. Margaret Hillenbrand\, Associate Professor of Modern Chin
 ese\, University of Oxford\n\nNuminous Objects: The Photo-Form in Contem
 porary China \n\nWhat do Lu Chuan’s recent blockbuster Nanjing! Nanjing!
 \, Zhang Xiaogang’s Bloodline series of paintings\, and Wang Anyi’s lite
 rary meditations on Old Shanghai have in common? Apart from the fact tha
 t they are amongst China’s most marketable cultural products in recent y
 ears\, all three belong to a particular category of aesthetic object. Th
 is category is the photo-form\, by which I mean literature\, cinema\, pa
 inting\, sculpture\, art installations\, video games\, graphic art\, and
  online fora which copy\, cannibalize\, re-constitute\, or re-create wel
 l-known historical photographs from China’s modern history. The photo-fo
 rm\, I will argue in this talk\, is an object on the rise\, and on a mis
 sion. Grafting historical photographs onto different material substrates
  (codex\, celluloid\, digital matter\, canvas\, clay\, bronze\, even ash
 )\, the transmedial photo-form in its various guises is creating new pri
 sms and platforms for visualizing China’s past. From the Nanjing Massacr
 e to the Cultural Revolution to the destruction of the built environment
  in China’s major cities\, memories of major events in modern Chinese hi
 story are increasingly being mediated through image-works of this kind. 
 Indeed\, these texts and artefacts are best understood as memory-makers\
 , or even memory-fakers: they help to seed and grow remembrance of the p
 ast for present-day spectators far divided by space and time from the ev
 ents these image-works represent. In this talk\, I will unpick the proce
 ss whereby photo-forms implant memories within the consciousness of the 
 later-born\, using Xu Weixin’s series of photo-paintings\, Chinese Chine
 se Historical Figures 1966-76\, as a case study. The talk will conclude 
 by suggesting that photo-forms such as these are ultimately “numinous ob
 jects”: works that can carve open a channel of spiritual communion betwe
 en spectators today and the people and places of the past.
STATUS:TENTATIVE
TRANSP:TRANSPARENT
CLASS:PUBLIC
LOCATION:A202\, Samuel Alexander Building\, Manchester
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