Past Event
Marking the 50th Anniversary of the Cultural Revolution, Making the New World: the Arts of China’s Cultural Revolution, is a two-day international conference programmed by the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA) at Birmingham City University in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery.
Inviting researchers, artists, designers, curators and practitioners at all stages of their careers worldwide to reassess the significance of the arts and culture of the Cultural Revolution, the 9th CCVA Annual Conference reflects upon their impacts on everyday life in China within socio-political, cultural and global contexts.
Speakers include Craig Clunas, Chris Berry and Harriet Evans. Convened by Joshua Jiang.
The Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA) at Birmingham City University aims to foster new understandings and perspectives of Chinese contemporary arts, design, media and visual culture through interdisciplinary practices and theoretical studies.
£30/£25 conc (2 days)
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£17.50/£14.50 conc (1 day)
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In the summer of 1966, Mao’s Cultural Revolution reached its climax across the country in the pursuit of ‘a new world’ freed from the ‘Four Olds’ – ‘old ideas, culture, customs and old habits of the exploiting classes’. This period has often been referred to as a ‘cultural desert’ and has been absent from Chinese art history. However, the Chinese Cultural Revolution has produced some of the most significant cultural products of the twentieth century China. It has covered all fields of creative practice – from public sculpture to painting and performance; from calligraphy to printmaking; from ceramics to fashion and textiles; from furniture and product design to architecture.
Today, when revisiting the Cultural Revolution half of a century later, what kind of new aesthetics, ideologies and culture have been shaped through the visual, audio, performative and immersive experiences of that time? What were the relationships between artists and audiences, between makers, disseminators and participants? Finally, what are the cultural impacts of the arts of the Cultural Revolution on contemporary art, design and creative practices, as well as on everyday experience within and beyond China?
11.00-11.20 Registration
11.20-11.30 Welcome
11.30-12.15 Richard King
Cultural Policy for A Heroic Age: the Summary
12.15-12.30 Q&A
12.30-13.30 Break
Panel one
13.30-13.50 Minerva Inwald
The Socialist Art Palace: early Cultural Revolution art exhibitions
13.50-14.10 Wang Gerui
Ambivalence in Li Keran’s Jinggang Mountain: negotiating artistic agency and state obligation during the Cultural Revolution
14.10-14.30 Vivian Li
Becoming A Model Artwork: the Rent Collection Courtyard
14.30-14.50 Christine Ho
Between Arts and Mass Criticism: perceiving the beautiful through Cultural Revolution audiences
14.50-15.30 Panel discussion chaired by Craig Clunas
15.30-16.00 Break
Panel two
16.00-16.20 Corey Schultz
The Maoist Peasant Figure and Its Affective Importance in Contemporary Chinese Visual Culture
16.20-16.40 Zhang Li
Agender Performance: aesthetic discipline of heroines in the Cultural Revolution
16.40-17.00 Linda Pittwood
Wearing Mao’s Trousers: the methods and consequences of ‘ungendering’ the body during the Chinese Cultural Revolution
17.00-17.30 Panel discussion chaired by Harriet Evans
11.00-11.20 Registration
11.20-11.30 Welcome
11.30-12.15 A conversation with painter Shen Jiawei
12.15-12.30 Q&A
12.30-13.30 Break
Panel three
13.30-13.50 Martin Mulloy
Photography and the Cultural Revolution
13.50-14.10 Andreas Steen
Propaganda on Shellac, Vinyl and Plastic: the politics of record production during the Cultural Revolution in China
14.10-14.30 Eldon Pei
The Atom Bomb Is A Celluloid Tiger
14.30-14.50 Wang Rujie
Image-Music-Text: the rhetoric of the arts from the Cultural Revolution
14.50-15.30 Panel discussion chaired by Jiang Jiehong
15.30-16.00 Break
Panel four
16.00-16.20 Mark Nash & Rosalind Delmar
Screen Theory and the Cultural Revolution Cinema
16.20-16.40 Yawen Ludden
From Model Opera to Model Society: Jiang Qing, Yu Huiyong, and Yangbanxi
16.40-17.30 Panel discussion chaired Chris Berry
