Traumatic Bonding: An Interdisciplinary Discussion about State Stockholm Syndrome
Wednesday, July 20, 6pm–8pm, 2022
Online on Zoom
A panel discussion co-presented by the Art Museum, the University of Toronto, and the Critical Digital Methods Institute, a research group affiliated with the Department of Arts, Culture & Media at the University of Toronto Scarborough.
Artist Miao Ying calls her relationship with our highly censored digital environments a form of “Stockholm syndrome,” a condition in which hostages develop a psychological alliance—a traumatic bonding, in her words—with their captors. In Miao’s exhibition A Field Guide to Ideology, she humorously unpacks the architecture of this paradoxical condition by collaging digital rhetoric and fabricating counterfeit ideology. Taking Miao’s work as a point of departure, this panel brings together scholars in Psychology and Media Studies—Paul Bloom and Yi Gu, respectively—in discussion with the artist. Together, they will explore the complex, often contradictory, human emotions and collective psyche induced by the contemporary digital sphere, in McLuhan’s words, “the psychic and social consequences of technologies.” Moderated by Yan Wu, curator of Miao Ying: A Field Guide to Ideology.
Trans Asia Photography Re-Launch
May 26, 10–11:30am, 2022 (online)
Join leading experts, curators, and photographers in the virtual re-launch of Trans Asia Photography, the world’s first and only open access journal devoted to research on Asian photography.
Established more than a decade ago, the journal has moved its base to Toronto and relaunches this year with a new publishers, Duke UP, and new editors, Thy Phu, Deepali Dewan, and Yi Gu.
A roundtable with the editorial team at Trans Asia Photography, as part of the 2022 Sydney Asian Art Series.
About this event
This is an online event. You will receive a Zoom link upon registration.
TRANS ASIA PHOTOGRAPHY
A Roundtable with Thy Phu, Yi Gu, and Deepali Dewan
The current editorial team of Trans Asia Photography will reflect on the past, present and future of this important publication, and its role in mediating the unstable concepts of 'Asia' and 'photography'.
Art History of Socialist China: A State-of-the-Field Discussion
Online workshop on Zoom, Friday and Saturday, 18 and 19 June 2021, 2 pm CEST
Organizer: Juliane Noth, Kunstgeschichtliches Seminar, Universität Hamburg
In recent years, scholars of Maoist China have increasingly explored the use of images, displays, and other visual materials and how they were deployed for political ends. What remains largely absent from these studies are, paradoxically, the visual and aesthetic qualities of the images and media in question, their agency and that of their creators, and thus the possibility that they might offer ambiguous and multilayered readings. Art historians on the other hand, who are trained to analyze and interpret images, have shown more interest in art-specific discourses and how individual artists responded to given tasks or settings on a formal or iconographical level. Indeed, the assumption that images produced in Maoist China possessed a lot of political, but very little artistic value might be one reason why a comparatively small number of art-historical studies have been written on Chinese art from the period between 1949 and 1979. It is only recently that several new studies have begun to more fully assess the complexity of artistic production between political exigencies and aesthetic choices. In this workshop, we will discuss methodological issues and case studies which allow us to seek new perspectives on the image production of that period as well as the relation between art, propaganda, and visual culture in a broader sense.
For the access link please register per e-mail: arthistorysocialistchina.kunst@uni-hamburg.de
Programme and abstracts: https://www.kulturwissenschaften.uni-hamburg.de/ks/ueber-das-institut/art-history-socialist-china-program.pdf