A poster for a Chinese high-speed train at the construction site for a bridge over the Mekong River in Laos
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攜帶著詩歌返回俄羅斯—二十世紀俄羅斯僑民詩歌漫談
二十世紀，俄羅斯最具世界性影響的文學現象，或許就是僑民詩歌（或稱“流亡”文學）。自二十年代至七十年代，一大批僑民詩人繼承了自普希金至“白銀時代”文學的優秀傳統，在異國他鄉堅持母語寫作，強大了令人矚目的文學成績。他們因著家園的喪失，疊加了人類的精神失重感，以獨特的詩歌語言，嫻熟的藝術技巧，使自己的作品具體地象征了“內心流亡”的內涵，展示了豐富的想象力和現代人的精神困境，成為二十世紀最具存在論意味的詩歌風景。 READ MORE...
身體作為政治與情感動員的手段在新聞和宣傳之間的宋教仁肖像照片
通過對1913年由國民黨人策劃的宋教仁遺體照片的生產、使用和流通過程的詳細解讀，呈現了國民黨人在新聞與宣傳實踐中展開的各種嘗試、努力和挑戰。在今天看來，這些舉動既是發揮攝影作為彼時先進視覺傳播手段的嘗試，也是克服新聞攝影的局限以及擴大新聞攝影的動員能力的努力。 READ MORE...
布羅茨基的雙語寫作
布羅茨基作為一位俄裔美國詩人，其寫作的最顯明特征之一即雙語寫作，他用俄語寫詩，用英語寫散文，英俄兩種語言是他觀察世界的兩種方式，反過來，這兩種語言及其相互關系也為他的創作提供了源源不斷的張力和動力。 READ MORE...
20世紀東歐和俄蘇移民： 西方人文學科興盛的又一個動力
十月革命之後，二戰到來之前，解凍思潮之後，新思維改革以降，先後開啟四波俄國和東歐移民西方浪潮，移民中有著大量的專業學者、文學藝術家，他們在西方，尤其是在美國的大學獲得重要的學術職位，利用大西洋兩岸各大學的條件優厚的學院制度，在語言學、文學批評、斯拉夫文學和哲學等，做出了巨大貢獻，從而推動人文學科飛速發展。 READ MORE...
Rural Collective China as an Organic Energy Regime
The Maoist development model relied on labor mobilization in agriculture and infrastructure construction, and on non-equivalent exchange between the agricultural and industrial sectors. Throughout the Mao years, the countryside received few modern inputs. Most labor was performed by human and animal muscle rather than by machines. Most fertilizer was organic, laboriously collected and composted from human and animal excrement and other organic matter. Most heating in rural households came from crop residues or firewood collected in the hills. At the same time, the urban-industrial sector transitioned from an organic to a fossil-fuel energy regime, powered by coal and petrol. For about two decades, the government expected the rural-agrarian sector to expand at the same pace as the urban-industrial sector, despite the fact that the countryside had little access to output-boosting fossil fuels. This led, on the one hand, to a rural energy crisis, as the same limited resources of land and organic matter were needed to meet conflicting demands for fuel, fodder, compost, etc. and, on the other hand, to labor intensification at the household level, as women and children were mobilized to fill the gaps resulting from extraction. READ MORE...
CGI and “National Style”: Zhang Yimou’s Shadow
In the history of computer-generated imagery (CGI) in China, as in the much longer history of animation more generally, we find competing and yet intertwined trends toward, on one hand, absorbing technological advances made abroad and “catching up” with the state of the art as determined by others and, on the other, seeking to use those technologies in the service of a distinctively Chinese aesthetic, or even to use the possibilities of animation—particularly its liberation from the limitations of photographic realism—to give new expressions to figures and narratives from Chinese tradition. This paper examines Zhang Yimou’s 2018 martial arts film Shadow (影) as a recent example of how a Chinese aesthetic tradition—in this case ink landscape painting—forms the intermedial inspiration for the film’s visual imagination. However, rather than straightforwardly serving as a soft-power assertion of China’s national strength, Shadow employs the symbolism of the “Supreme Ultimate” from Daoist philosophy to subtly challenge hegemonic military, political, and patriarchal structures of power. READ MORE...
Animation, Collage, and the Afterlife of Images: Found Footage in/as Animation
In this essay I explore the porous boundaries between animation, found footage, and collage, and argue that these seemingly separate genres of the moving image coalesce, under certain circumstances, to form a cohesive discourse on the afterlife of images. In their more self-reflective moments, these genres show how they rely on an assemblage of individual frames, displacing images, so to speak elongating their shadows in time. The post-mortem reassembly of disjointed images may serve as a commentary on the need for medial and historical readjustment and relocation. I look at works as disparate as Recycled (Lei Lei, 2012) The Day of Perpetual Night (Yang Yongliang, 2012), Self-Surveillance (Ai Weiwei, 2012), Same Old, Brand New (Cao Fei, 2015), and Dragonfly Eyes (Xu Bing, 2017). READ MORE...
The Activist and the Queer in Contemporary White Snake Productions
inspired by the Chinese white snake legend, three English-language White Snake projects, ranging from Western opera, digital video, to stage play, energetically engage with issues relevant to minority activism in the United States, enriching our understanding of contemporary White Snake repertoire as vigorously multivalent, constantly regenerating, and profoundly empowering. In the Chinese context, three Chinese-language White Snake productions, ranging from TV drama series, animation film, to TV film with an all-child cast, use images of children and females to challenge a world dominated by adults and males, queering the heteronormative romance in the White Snake story, and presenting a bold celebration of the humanity of the nonhuman. We have a lot to learn from these activist, queer bodies of the snake women hybrids, as they continuously teach us the importance of cultural empathy and the power of radical tolerance. READ MORE...
COVERT HISTORY OF THE US-CHINA COLD WAR
Drawing upon his recently published book Agents of Subversion, John Delury will explore the covert history of the Cold War between the United States and China from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. He will discuss different kinds of Cold War “battlefields”—from New Haven to Hong Kong, Korea to Manchuria—where ideas were weaponized in policy debates as well as clandestine missions. Following the trail of one particular CIA mission into the PRC at the height of the Korean War, Delury will offer a framework for understanding US-China Cold War diplomacy (and the lack thereof) that might offer at least cautionary lessons for the present. READ MORE...
一起抗戰口述歷史: 我是怎樣做口述歷史的
2010年，正當全國各地民間志願者對抗戰老兵的關愛如火如荼的時候，老兵也正在不斷離世。 每個歷史親歷者的離世，就意味著一段歷史的消逝，一個關愛抗戰老兵志願者將鏡頭對準了這群耄耋之年的老人。十幾年來，他耗盡積蓄並四處化緣，獨自一人跨越大江南北、飛越臺灣海峽、橫跨太平洋，用他的鏡頭和話筒，逆時間之流，記錄了137位平均年齡96歲的抗戰老兵，搶救了42000分鐘即將凋謝的記憶，讓更多的人可以有機會瞭解不一樣視角的歷史。 此次，這位堅持了將近14年的民間口述歷史記錄者，將為大家分享他記錄口述歷史的經歷和實際操作經驗。歡迎對口述歷史感興趣的朋友，一起交流探討 READ MORE...