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VCS Graduate Conference

2009 Visual and Cultural Studies Conference

University of Rochester

Spectacle East Asia : Translocation, Publicity, and Counterpublics

April 10-11, 2009

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 21 st 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 spectacles, such as public demonstrations, cyber space, film, video, performance, and other cultural practices.

Friday, April 10, 2009
Hubbell Auditorium, Hutchison Hall

17:00
Introductory Address by Barbara J. London
Associate Curator, Department of Media, Museum of Modern Art , New York  

18:00
Screening
Video Artworks by Chen Chieh-jen, Gao Shiqiang, Sangdon Kim, Kwak Duck-jun, Minouk Lim, Mixrice, and Zheng Bo
Program curated by Sohl Lee, University of Rochester

20:00
Opening Reception

Saturday, April 11, 2009  
Gowen Room, Wilson Commons

9:00
Breakfast

10:00
Keynote Address by Okwui Enwezor
Dean of Academic Affairs, San Francisco Art Institute
Artistic Director, 2008 Gwangju Biennale
Politics of Spectacle: The Gwangju Biennale and the Asian Century  

11:30
Panel I: Reimagining the Object of Art

Karin Oen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Spectacle of Experimental Art Before and After the Boom

Rika Hiro, University of Southern California
Between Presence and Absence of Video Earth’s What is Photography?

Yu Jin Hwang, Korean Cultural Service, New York
Institutions: Production, Presentation, and Promotion of Asian Contemporary Art

13:00
Lunch

14:00  
Panel II: Visualizing Citizenship

Jeehey Kim, Graduate Center , City University of New York
Beasts of No Nation: Study on the Documentary in the Age of Terrorism through Song Hwan (Repatriation)

Qian Hua Ge, University of Rochester
Battling for the Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD) in Cyber Space

Hyejong Yoo, Cornell University
A Barricade of Shipping Containers in Central Seoul : The 'Playground' for the Candlelight Protesters in 2008 Korea

15:30
Coffee Break

16:00
Panel III: Alternative Cultures

Gwendoline Farrelly, Graduate Center , City University of New York
A Call to Action! Social Participation in Postwar Japanese Art

Bo Zheng, University of Rochester
Is Socially Engaged Art Possible in China ?

Caitlin Bruce, Northwestern University
Public Surfaces Beyond the Great Wall: Communication and Graffiti Culture in China

18:00
Closing Reception

Barbara London is Associate Curator in the Department of Media at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and founder of the institution's video program and collection. Since the 1970s she has tracked media art and has organized more than 120 related exhibitions at MoMA, including one-person shows of early mavericks such as Laurie Anderson, Joan Jonas, Nam June Paik, and Bill Viola. This past winter, she presented at the museum the group exhibition and film series "Looking at Music." Her essays and criticism have appeared in Artforum, ModernPainters, Art Asia Pacific, Leonardo, and elsewhere. Her research and curatorial engagement with East Asia has continued since the 1970s.

Okwui Enwezor is Dean of Academic Affairs and Senior Vice President at San Francisco Art Institute and Adjunct Curator at the International Center of Photography in New York . As a globally renowned curator, he 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. Among his books are Reading the Contemporary: African Art, from Theory to the Marketplace (MIT Press, Cambridge and INIVA, London ) and Mega Exhibitions: Antinomies of a Transnational Global Form (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich ). He is a recipient of awards and grants from Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, International Art Critics Association, and Peter Norton Curatorial Award.      

Sponsors: Global East Asia Humanities Project, Graduate Organizing Group, Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies, Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African American Studies, Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, Film and Media Studies Program, Department of Art and Art History, Department of History, Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies, and Department of Anthropology.

All events are free and open to public.  

For more information and registration, please visit:   http://www.rochester.edu/College/humanities/projects/index?gea&conference

Previous conference proceedings have been published in (In)Visible Culture.

  • Previous Conferences:
  • April 6-7, 2007—Archive of the Future/Future of the Archive
  • April 8-9, 2005—Public Displays of Affection
  • April 4-5, 2003—Casting Doubt
  • March 17-18, 2001—Theory and Practice
  • March 26-27, 1999—Subjects of Culture
  • March 27-28, 1998—Interrogating Subcultures
  • April 7-8, 1995—Mining the Field/Filling the Blanks: Cultural Studies and the New Art Histories