Panpan Yang to deliver talk hosted by UMAG, University of Hong Kong

8 March 2022

On 31st March 2022, Panpan Yang (SOAS lecturer in the arts and visual cultures of modern China) will deliver an online talk as part of the University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG) 2022/23 lecture series, hosted by the University of Hong Kong. The overarching theme of this lecture series is 'Re-examining Modernity and Contemporaneity through Chinese Art​', and Panpan's lecture - entitled ​'Animation as a Way of Seeing: The Afterlife of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy' - will trace the "afterlife" of Chinese painting and calligraphy on the animation screen.

This lecture will bring into the critical spotlight Xu Bing’s 2012 animated video, The Character of Characters (Hanzi de xingge) , which remediates Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322)’s painting and calligraphy. The new possibilities afforded by calligraphic animation are negotiated through a series of oscillations between image and text, spatiality and temporality, and diegetic and nondiegetic conventions. The dialogue that takes place between shu (books, written characters, and the act of writing) and the computer enables us to seek, pinpoint, and scrutinize a powerful intermedial creativity and its implications in an age of global media mix. The lecture will pose a counter-historical question: has animation, as a way of seeing, always been with us, even before animation was invented? ​

The discussant for this talk will be Professor Mia Yinxing Liu, Associate Professor in the Visual Studies department at California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA.

Date: Thursday 31st March 2022

Time: 2:00–3:00pm HKT (7:00–8:00am BST / 30 March 11:00pm–31 March 0:00am PDT)

Venue: Zoom

Language: English ​

Cost: Free admission. Registration required

Please click here to register.