9.45am - Opening Remarks
10.00 - 11.30
First Panel
10.00 - 11.30
First Panel
Linda Pittwood, University of Nottingham
'A message to the future: looking back to find Chinese feminism in contemporary art'
Dr. Colette Balmain, Kingston University
'Women Warriors, Wolves and Witches: constructions of female (a)sexuality in contemporary Chinese cinema'
Ying Tan, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art
'Everyday transformations - a case study into artistic practice of Guan Xiao'
Chaired by Tamara Courage
'A message to the future: looking back to find Chinese feminism in contemporary art'
Dr. Colette Balmain, Kingston University
'Women Warriors, Wolves and Witches: constructions of female (a)sexuality in contemporary Chinese cinema'
Ying Tan, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art
'Everyday transformations - a case study into artistic practice of Guan Xiao'
Chaired by Tamara Courage
11.30 - 12.00 - Refreshments
12:00 - 13.15
Second Panel
12:00 - 13.15
Second Panel
Shu-Yi Lin, Kings College London
'Negotiating Queer Genealogy in the Films of Zero Chou'
Dr Sabrina Qiong Yu, Newcastle University
'Struggle to Survive: Female Independent Filmmakers in Contemporary China'
Chaired by Fraser Elliott
'Negotiating Queer Genealogy in the Films of Zero Chou'
Dr Sabrina Qiong Yu, Newcastle University
'Struggle to Survive: Female Independent Filmmakers in Contemporary China'
Chaired by Fraser Elliott
13.15 - 14.30: Break
14.30
Film Screening - Female Directors
14.30
Film Screening - Female Directors
Free screening of Female Directors, more info here.
15.30: End
SPEAKERS AND ABSTRACTS
Linda Pittwood (University of Nottingham) 'A message to the future: looking back to find Chinese feminism in contemporary art'
Addressing the strand of this event that asks: what are the challenges encountered when moving between academia and the creative industries? This presentation will talk about the apparent disconnect between the latest research on Chinese feminism by Dorothy Ko, Tani E Barlow, Lingzhen Wang and others, and attitudes to the concept of ‘feminism’ by female contemporary artists in China. It will touch on the differences between this situation and, for example, female novelists of the 1980s and 90s whose outputs aligned strongly with the academic women’s studies of the same time period; it will also contrast the contemporary artists’ strategies for developing careers within a male dominated field with the female poets of the Han dynasty to 1911, of whom Kang-i Sun Chang says by participating in a set of stylistic and rhetorical conventions… made themselves into woman writers (1999).
Barlow describes Chinese feminism as discontinuous but accumulative (2006) suggesting something other than the neat progression of ideas promised by a ‘genealogy’ of thought. However, she has identified some of the key theorists whose work combines their critiques of the past and the present with their hopes for a different future for women. These include Ding Ling, Li Xiaojiang and Dai Jinhua. The contemporary artists that reject the label of feminism (both nǚxìng zhǔyì and nǚquan zhǔyì) nevertheless have much to add to a long, transdiciplinary, history of gendered activity and discourse, as well as to the project of researching international (uneven) modernity.
BIOGRAPHY
Linda Pittwood is a PhD candidate at University of Nottingham in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies. Her work investigates Chinese lens media artworks 1984-2014 that take the female body as their subject, using as part of her analytical methodology theorizations of ‘women’ and gender discourse of the 20thc in China. Linda came to the study of Chinese contemporary art after almost 10 years of working in artist-led spaces, art galleries, museums and arts journalism in the UK. She has written for the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art and Modern China Studies as well as for magazines including Art World, Shanghai and artradarjournal.com. Linda’s doctorate is supported by the Midlands3Cities doctoral training partnership and she is supervised by Professor Paul Gladston at University of Nottingham and Professor Joshua Jiang at Birmingham City University.
Colette Balmain (Kingston University) 'Women Warriors, Wolves and Witches: constructions of female (a)sexuality in contemporary Chinese cinema'
In this paper, I explore the mechanisms by which contemporary Chinese fantasy cinema simultaneously inscribes and denies female subjectivity and sexuality in three films: The Four/四大名捕, Gordon Chan and Janet Chun: 2012), The Warrior and the Wolf /狼灾记 (Tian Zhuangzhuang: 2009) and The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom/白发魔女传之明月天国(Jacob Cheung: 2014). While frank expression of female sexuality can be found in Chinese cinema and in particular in the films of Chinese female directors, their work is subject to State censorship and cannot be screened or legally distributed in China, e.g. Longing for the Rain/春梦 (Yang Lina: 2013) and Memories Look at Me/記憶望著我 (Fang Song: 2013) . In male dominated mainstream cinema, female sexuality and agency is dismissed and suppressed by ideological perceptions of appropriate femininity. The discourse of gender equality subsumes female emancipation under the wider banner of class oppression. According to Cui ‘[the] complete erasure of female identity and sexuality enables the political system to sustain its power and film representation to produce political allegories’ (Shuqin Cui, 2003: p. 90).
In The Four, emotionless is the perfect embodiment of female passivity, relying on male technology for agency. In opposition to this, the unnamed woman (played by Maggie Q) in The Warrior and the Wolf has to be tamed into submission and reoriented around dominant ideologies of appropriate femininity. Finally Nian Yishang (Fan Bingbing), the titular character in The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom, is nothing like her earlier counterpart played by Brigitte Lin in Ronny Yu’s The Bride with the White Hair (白发魔女传: 1993), whose assertive sexuality and erotic appeal drove the narrative trajectory and the [female] viewer’s empathetic engagement. In all these cases, female sexuality and agency is co-opted in the service of a national narrative of gender equality which relies on the subjugation of female sexuality and identity.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr Colette Balmain is a Senior Lecturer in Film, Media and Television at Kingston University and is a specialist in Asian cinemas and cultures with a focus on issues of race, gender, sexuality and disability. She is currently finishing a monograph on East Asian Gothic cinema and the second edition of her book on Japanese horror film. She is a reviewer for Gothic Studies and Cinema Journal.
Ying Tan (Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art) 'Everyday transformations - a case study into artistic practice of Guan Xiao'
We have five senses, but we are becoming more and more focused on just seeing and hearing.” Guan Xiao equalises the hierarchies of values found in senses, objects and humans in her work. A democratisation occurs in order to facilitate our understanding of this, as to her, different pieces of matter are comprehensively interrelated. Technology produces a window that propels us into other times and other places, collapsing geography and temporality, resulting in a reality that means that we no longer operate in a singular moment. What we physically see can be transformed as is how we view it. In a time where people actually suffer from a constant “fear of missing out” or “FOMO” syndrome, Guan Xiao’s unique voice, her innate ability to recognise anomalist associations and express her ideas of the transformative nature of objects allow for us to experience all sorts of other virtual realities
BIOGRAPHY
Ying Tan is currently the curator at Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA), where she is in charge of the annual programme of exhibitions, public programme, as well as national and international touring shows. She has curated numerous exhibitions in CFCCA, in addition to many other off-site projects in London and internationally. This includes the co-commission of Haze & Fog with Cao Fei (2013), as well as UK premiers of What Happened in the Year of the Dragon (2014) with Sun Xun and Xu Bing's Book from the Ground (2003-present). She is a visiting lecturer for Christie's Education (UK) and a regular contributor to KALEIDOSCOPE Asia Magazine. She is also on the curatorial faculty for Liverpool Biennial 2016. Other recent projects include: Floating Cinema (UP Projects, London), Asia Triennial Manchester 2014 (UK) as well as Curating each other (Connecting Space, Hong Kong).
Shu-Yi Lin (King’s College London) Negotiating Queer Genealogy in the Films of Zero Chou
Drawing on an analysis of the award-winning Taiwanese director Zero Chou’s queer-themed films, this paper examines the copious formation of queer families represented in her rainbow film series, The Splendid Float, Spider Lilies and The Drifting Flowers. I propose the concept of queer genealogy as a way to understand the LGBTQ familial relationships across cinematic time and space, as represented in Chou’s films.
Chou’s queer-themed films are made against the historical backdrop of the 1987 post-martial law liberation in Taiwan, the subsequent freedom of speech arising from the relaxation of media control, and social movements, including the tongzhi movement. Through close textual analysis, this paper extends existing scholarship on same-sex marriage, queer identity formations, and LGBTQ families, all embedded in the history of democratization in Taiwan in the 1980s, and argues that a structure of feeling, which shifts from sadness to a ‘walk out of sadness’ emerges in Chou’s queer-themed films. While the tongzhi discourse eschewed less privileged subaltern queers in the process of celebrating gay pride, I show that Chou’s queer films were made alongside such historical debates and argue that her queer films embrace tongzhi forward-looking structures of feeling as well as backward-looking memory. This paper concludes that, with a focus on the lives of LGBTQ people living in the subaltern communities, her films embrace the traumatic experiences of LGBTQ people while looking forward to a hopeful future.
BIOGRAPHY
Sophie Shu-Yi Lin worked for Taiwan’s Women Make Waves Film Festival from 1997, and served as the festival director/programmer between 1998-99 and 2007-12. She has also worked as a guest programmer for different festivals, including the Beijing Queer Film Festival in China and the Kaohsiung International Film Festival in Taiwan.
She has served as a jury member at the Seoul International Women’s Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival amongst others.
She is now a PhD candidate in the Department of Film Studies at King’s College London.
Dr Sabrina Qiong Yu (Newcastle University) 'Struggle to Survive: Female Independent Filmmakers in Contemporary China'
BIOGRAPHY
Dr Sabrina Qiong Yu is Senior lecturer in Chinese and Film studies at Newcastle University. She teaches a range of film and media modules and her research and publications focus on Chinese independent film and film festivals, the locality and trans-locality of Chinese-language cinema, gender and sexuality in Chinese media, stardom and performance. Her monograph Jet Li: Chinese Masculinity and Transnational Film Stardom was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2012 and 2015. She has curated a few film festivals in Newcastle in collaboration with indie film festivals or film company in China, and is committed to promoting the exhibition and research of Chinese independent cinema in the UK.
SPEAKERS AND ABSTRACTS
Linda Pittwood (University of Nottingham) 'A message to the future: looking back to find Chinese feminism in contemporary art'
Addressing the strand of this event that asks: what are the challenges encountered when moving between academia and the creative industries? This presentation will talk about the apparent disconnect between the latest research on Chinese feminism by Dorothy Ko, Tani E Barlow, Lingzhen Wang and others, and attitudes to the concept of ‘feminism’ by female contemporary artists in China. It will touch on the differences between this situation and, for example, female novelists of the 1980s and 90s whose outputs aligned strongly with the academic women’s studies of the same time period; it will also contrast the contemporary artists’ strategies for developing careers within a male dominated field with the female poets of the Han dynasty to 1911, of whom Kang-i Sun Chang says by participating in a set of stylistic and rhetorical conventions… made themselves into woman writers (1999).
Barlow describes Chinese feminism as discontinuous but accumulative (2006) suggesting something other than the neat progression of ideas promised by a ‘genealogy’ of thought. However, she has identified some of the key theorists whose work combines their critiques of the past and the present with their hopes for a different future for women. These include Ding Ling, Li Xiaojiang and Dai Jinhua. The contemporary artists that reject the label of feminism (both nǚxìng zhǔyì and nǚquan zhǔyì) nevertheless have much to add to a long, transdiciplinary, history of gendered activity and discourse, as well as to the project of researching international (uneven) modernity.
BIOGRAPHY
Linda Pittwood is a PhD candidate at University of Nottingham in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies. Her work investigates Chinese lens media artworks 1984-2014 that take the female body as their subject, using as part of her analytical methodology theorizations of ‘women’ and gender discourse of the 20thc in China. Linda came to the study of Chinese contemporary art after almost 10 years of working in artist-led spaces, art galleries, museums and arts journalism in the UK. She has written for the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art and Modern China Studies as well as for magazines including Art World, Shanghai and artradarjournal.com. Linda’s doctorate is supported by the Midlands3Cities doctoral training partnership and she is supervised by Professor Paul Gladston at University of Nottingham and Professor Joshua Jiang at Birmingham City University.
Colette Balmain (Kingston University) 'Women Warriors, Wolves and Witches: constructions of female (a)sexuality in contemporary Chinese cinema'
In this paper, I explore the mechanisms by which contemporary Chinese fantasy cinema simultaneously inscribes and denies female subjectivity and sexuality in three films: The Four/四大名捕, Gordon Chan and Janet Chun: 2012), The Warrior and the Wolf /狼灾记 (Tian Zhuangzhuang: 2009) and The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom/白发魔女传之明月天国(Jacob Cheung: 2014). While frank expression of female sexuality can be found in Chinese cinema and in particular in the films of Chinese female directors, their work is subject to State censorship and cannot be screened or legally distributed in China, e.g. Longing for the Rain/春梦 (Yang Lina: 2013) and Memories Look at Me/記憶望著我 (Fang Song: 2013) . In male dominated mainstream cinema, female sexuality and agency is dismissed and suppressed by ideological perceptions of appropriate femininity. The discourse of gender equality subsumes female emancipation under the wider banner of class oppression. According to Cui ‘[the] complete erasure of female identity and sexuality enables the political system to sustain its power and film representation to produce political allegories’ (Shuqin Cui, 2003: p. 90).
In The Four, emotionless is the perfect embodiment of female passivity, relying on male technology for agency. In opposition to this, the unnamed woman (played by Maggie Q) in The Warrior and the Wolf has to be tamed into submission and reoriented around dominant ideologies of appropriate femininity. Finally Nian Yishang (Fan Bingbing), the titular character in The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom, is nothing like her earlier counterpart played by Brigitte Lin in Ronny Yu’s The Bride with the White Hair (白发魔女传: 1993), whose assertive sexuality and erotic appeal drove the narrative trajectory and the [female] viewer’s empathetic engagement. In all these cases, female sexuality and agency is co-opted in the service of a national narrative of gender equality which relies on the subjugation of female sexuality and identity.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr Colette Balmain is a Senior Lecturer in Film, Media and Television at Kingston University and is a specialist in Asian cinemas and cultures with a focus on issues of race, gender, sexuality and disability. She is currently finishing a monograph on East Asian Gothic cinema and the second edition of her book on Japanese horror film. She is a reviewer for Gothic Studies and Cinema Journal.
Ying Tan (Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art) 'Everyday transformations - a case study into artistic practice of Guan Xiao'
We have five senses, but we are becoming more and more focused on just seeing and hearing.” Guan Xiao equalises the hierarchies of values found in senses, objects and humans in her work. A democratisation occurs in order to facilitate our understanding of this, as to her, different pieces of matter are comprehensively interrelated. Technology produces a window that propels us into other times and other places, collapsing geography and temporality, resulting in a reality that means that we no longer operate in a singular moment. What we physically see can be transformed as is how we view it. In a time where people actually suffer from a constant “fear of missing out” or “FOMO” syndrome, Guan Xiao’s unique voice, her innate ability to recognise anomalist associations and express her ideas of the transformative nature of objects allow for us to experience all sorts of other virtual realities
BIOGRAPHY
Ying Tan is currently the curator at Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA), where she is in charge of the annual programme of exhibitions, public programme, as well as national and international touring shows. She has curated numerous exhibitions in CFCCA, in addition to many other off-site projects in London and internationally. This includes the co-commission of Haze & Fog with Cao Fei (2013), as well as UK premiers of What Happened in the Year of the Dragon (2014) with Sun Xun and Xu Bing's Book from the Ground (2003-present). She is a visiting lecturer for Christie's Education (UK) and a regular contributor to KALEIDOSCOPE Asia Magazine. She is also on the curatorial faculty for Liverpool Biennial 2016. Other recent projects include: Floating Cinema (UP Projects, London), Asia Triennial Manchester 2014 (UK) as well as Curating each other (Connecting Space, Hong Kong).
Shu-Yi Lin (King’s College London) Negotiating Queer Genealogy in the Films of Zero Chou
Drawing on an analysis of the award-winning Taiwanese director Zero Chou’s queer-themed films, this paper examines the copious formation of queer families represented in her rainbow film series, The Splendid Float, Spider Lilies and The Drifting Flowers. I propose the concept of queer genealogy as a way to understand the LGBTQ familial relationships across cinematic time and space, as represented in Chou’s films.
Chou’s queer-themed films are made against the historical backdrop of the 1987 post-martial law liberation in Taiwan, the subsequent freedom of speech arising from the relaxation of media control, and social movements, including the tongzhi movement. Through close textual analysis, this paper extends existing scholarship on same-sex marriage, queer identity formations, and LGBTQ families, all embedded in the history of democratization in Taiwan in the 1980s, and argues that a structure of feeling, which shifts from sadness to a ‘walk out of sadness’ emerges in Chou’s queer-themed films. While the tongzhi discourse eschewed less privileged subaltern queers in the process of celebrating gay pride, I show that Chou’s queer films were made alongside such historical debates and argue that her queer films embrace tongzhi forward-looking structures of feeling as well as backward-looking memory. This paper concludes that, with a focus on the lives of LGBTQ people living in the subaltern communities, her films embrace the traumatic experiences of LGBTQ people while looking forward to a hopeful future.
BIOGRAPHY
Sophie Shu-Yi Lin worked for Taiwan’s Women Make Waves Film Festival from 1997, and served as the festival director/programmer between 1998-99 and 2007-12. She has also worked as a guest programmer for different festivals, including the Beijing Queer Film Festival in China and the Kaohsiung International Film Festival in Taiwan.
She has served as a jury member at the Seoul International Women’s Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival amongst others.
She is now a PhD candidate in the Department of Film Studies at King’s College London.
Dr Sabrina Qiong Yu (Newcastle University) 'Struggle to Survive: Female Independent Filmmakers in Contemporary China'
BIOGRAPHY
Dr Sabrina Qiong Yu is Senior lecturer in Chinese and Film studies at Newcastle University. She teaches a range of film and media modules and her research and publications focus on Chinese independent film and film festivals, the locality and trans-locality of Chinese-language cinema, gender and sexuality in Chinese media, stardom and performance. Her monograph Jet Li: Chinese Masculinity and Transnational Film Stardom was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2012 and 2015. She has curated a few film festivals in Newcastle in collaboration with indie film festivals or film company in China, and is committed to promoting the exhibition and research of Chinese independent cinema in the UK.