Spectacle East Asia: Translocation, Publicity, and Counterpublics
The Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies and the Global
East Asia: Media, Popular
Culture, and the Pacific Century Humanities Project at the University
of Rochester invite
submissions for an interdisciplinary graduate conference on Saturday,
April 11, 2009. The
keynote address will be delivered by the curator and critic Okwui
Enwezor. Professor Enwezor is
dean of academic affairs at the San Francisco Art Institute, adjunct
curator at the International
Center of Photography in New York, and has served as the artistic
director of the Second
Johannesburg Biennale in South Africa, Documenta 11 in Kassel,
Germany,the 2nd Biennial of
Seville in Spain, and most recently, the 2008 Gwangju Biennale in South Korea.
In East Asia, the year 2008 was marked by large-scale cultural
spectacles: from the Beijing
Olympics to contemporary art biennales and triennials in Taipei,
Gwangju, Yokohama, Shanghai,
Busan, Seoul, and Guangzhou. Each of these events reflected the local,
national, and global
points of production, dissemination, and reception that characterize
spectacle in East Asia in the
21st century. The various degrees to which nation-states have been
involved in orchestrating
these events and the multifacetedness of public responses to and
experiences of these spectacles
call for a critical examination of the formation of publics and
counterpublics encouraged, if not
produced by, these events. This discussion, we contend, begins from
looking beyond the long-
held binary between oppressive state power and oppositional political
resistance that has come
to obscure the complexity of the various and competing trans-national
cultural and political
agendas advanced in the East Asian public sphere.
This conference aims to expand the traditional understanding of the
public as constituted by
print culture (articulated by Jürgen Habermas and Benedict Anderson,
among others), by
emphasizing "the poetic functions of both language and corporeal
expressivity" in shaping
publics (Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics). The focus on
spaces of performativity—
including but certainly not limited to print culture—as the site from
which publics and
counterpublics arise requires reflection on multiple forms of
spectacle, such as public
demonstrations, cyber space, film, video, performance, and other
cultural practices.
Papers may include a theoretical model for how public and
counterpublic discourses may emerge
in the 21st century and/or analyses on visual and cultural production
that speak to the notion of
spectacle and/or publicity in the sociopolitical, economic, or
cultural contexts of East Asia. The
conference is open but not limited to original scholarship in the
following areas:
· International art biennials, film festivals, and sporting events as
spectacles
· Politics of the spectacle in its local, national, and global contexts
· Public demonstrations as spectacle or counter-spectacle (the May 18
Gwangju Uprising in
South Korea in 1980, the June Fourth Movement in China in 1989, the
candlelight vigil
demonstrations against U.S. beef import in South Korea in 2008, the
protests against the Beijing
Olympic torch relay, etc.)
· Integration of art and activism
· Application of Internet, virtual communities, and new communication
technologies (cell
phone camera, web blogs, youtube, social network service, etc.) in
forming public/counterpublic
spheres
· Issues of techno-nationalism and netizenry
· East Asian subcultures (Otaku, QQ groups, migrant labor literature,
outdoor exercise
gathering, underground church, underground music, Internet Café and
online game cultures, etc.)
· New social classes formed by forces of globalization ("Freeters and
Neets," migrant workers,
etc.)
· "Independent" or "underground" filmmaking and distribution
(documentary films, queer
films, home videos, pornography, etc.)
· Exchange of cultural products within East Asia and current shifts in
their production and
reception (movie or soap drama remakes, cross-media adaptation of
Manga to films, Hallyu the
"Korean Wave," collaboration and co-production among auteurs from
different countries,
transnational funding sources, etc.)
Key words: spectacle, public, counterpublic, transnational identification
The peer-reviewed electronic journal In Visible Culture plans to
publish the conference
proceedings in its Spring 2010 issue (
http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/).
We also encourage artists to send in presentations of art projects
related to these themes. We are
especially interested in video work.
Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words with a CV by January
15th, 2009 to Godfre
Leung and Sohl Lee (gleung_at_mail.rochester.edu and
sohl.lee_at_gmail.com). Authors will be
informed of the organizing committee's decision by February 1st, 2009.
The Spectacle East Asia conference is co-sponsored by the Graduate
Program in Visual and
Cultural Studies and the Global East Asia Humanities Project.
For more information, please visit the Humanities Project website:
http://www.rochester.edu/College/humanities/projects/index?gea&call
--
Yemisi Ogunleye
www.iq4news.com
Head of Communications,
MeCCSA Post-Graduate Network
website: http://www.meccsa.org.uk/pgn/
Media & Communications Dept.,
Birmingham City University,
City North Campus,
Birmingham
B42 2SU
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