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Lecturer(s)
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Course content
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Course Structure 1. Introduction to the Course: Overview of topics and key concepts; Assessment methods; Research and writing advice for the assessment. 2. Mao Zedong Thought and Maoist Culture: From Yan'an to the Cultural Revolution. Official and underground art and literature of the late socialist era. 3. Humanism and Alienation: The post-Mao shift of the late 1970s-early 1980s. From "Scar Art" (and literature) to "new wave" avant-garde. 4. Pop and Politics: Political Pop and Cynical Realism from the 1990s. The "crisis of the humanist spirit" and the end of utopia. 5. Performance Art, Part 1: Early experiments and collective public action in the 1980s; new media and transmediality; "body art" in the 1990s-2000s. 6. Performance Art, Part 2: Gendered bodies and feminism in art and art criticism. Postsocialist biopolitics and the official reception of "body art". 7. Ruin Aesthetics: Reflections on urbanisation, (re)development and modernisation in the visual arts, literature, and intellectual discourse. 8. Contemporary Chinese Art and Its Global Context: The transcultural creation of "contemporary Chinese art" and its international market, 1990s-2000s. 9. The Artistic Celebrity: cultural entrepreneurship, social media, and the performance of authenticity from Ai Weiwei to Cao Fei. 10. Socially Engaged Art: The artist as critical intellectual, from the city to the countryside. The New Left and the socio-cultural critique of modernisation. 11. Delegated Digital Creativity: Experiments with Artificial Intelligence from ink painting to Science Fiction writing. Conceptual and methodological implications. 12. Concluding Session: Course overview and reflections on the learning experience. Portfolio clinic. Recommended Literature Barmé, Geremie. 1999. In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. Gao, Minglu. 2011. Total Modernity and the Avant-Garde in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Wang, Peggy. 2020. The Future History of Contemporary Chinese Art. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press. Wu Hung, ed. 2010. Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents. New York: MoMA.
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Learning activities and teaching methods
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unspecified
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Learning outcomes
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Course Content By exploring key themes in the culture and politics of contemporary China, the course explores relations and entanglements of artistic languages and intellectual debates from the 1960s until today. The course will examine artistic phenomena and their reception since the Maoist era in connection to contemporaneous socio-political issues, such as the experience and memory of the Cultural Revolution, economic reforms in the cultural sphere, modernisation, urbanisation, and social activism. By doing so, participants will investigate the transcultural flows that intersect in the country's most unorthodox artistic experiments, and their wider implications for the society and politics of today's China. Learning Outcomes Students will have become familiar with the history and key examples of art from contemporary China in relation to its socio-political and cultural context. Students will be able to demonstrate a detailed understanding of key trends, forms and personalities of contemporary Chinese culture in relation to China's history with a focus on the arts, and to critically evaluate and employ relevant sources. Students will have practiced cultural and intercultural competence, including presenting in front of an audience, research and writing team-work, self-organised research, and in-class discussion.
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Prerequisites
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unspecified
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Assessment methods and criteria
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unspecified
Final coursework portfolio (100% of the grade). a. Individual Essay (ca. 2200 words including refs., in the style of a short academic article) on a topic chosen by the student (typically the student will discuss the topic with me before they start writing). Weighted 50 percent of the final mark. b. Group work = Two group presentations/slideshows (or individual presentations if the number of students is too low; ca. 10 slides of content each), one slideshow on a topic assigned by the lecturer and presented in class for formative feedback (30 percent of the mark), one on a topic chosen by the student(s) and not presented in class (20 percent). c. Individual Self-reflection on the learning experience. Not graded for content, but 0.2 points are deducted from the pre-roundup final mark if it's missing.
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Recommended literature
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