By Lee Chun Fung
11-17 JUN 2018
MAS ART&SOCIETY
@ ZURICH UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS (ZhdK)
Content
This module provides an overview of the dynamic of art and cultural activism throughout East Asia in the past 20 years. It draws attention to the urban problems behind it and, it provides insight into the possible urban change in the near future. Since the 1990s, an era of globalization and Neoliberalism after the end of the Cold War, East Asia have experienced waves of social and economic transformations as well as rapid urban developments accordingly. This results in urban problems such as social inequality, break down of traditional community living, weakened local identity and threats toward the environment.
Concurrently, since early 2000, movements against globalization and developmentalism are budding in various cities in East Asia. A trend is that activists in East Asia develop strategies of resistance from art and cultural perspectives. At the same time, a trans-border exchange network is built among the activist scenes in East Asia region.
In this module, the relation of art and activism in the context of East Asia will be discussed. Thereby, we also draw attention to similarities and differences of art and activism in these regions. Furthermore, we examine the possibilities of trans-border activism and a further understanding of East Asia from that particular perspective.
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Objectives
This programme hopes to provide a scope to examine the cultural politics in East Asia, and its complex relations of geopolitics within this region, as well as the role of art/ artist/ agent intervening in this changing process. We hope to explore these questions from the problematic of inter-local approach, such that a perspective of inter-linking the common social problems could be built up, hence possibilities to go across the borders through intellectual exchange. At the same time, we hope to learn the experience directly from the practitioners in this region, and to review the latest development in East Asia social context from their artistic practice.
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Course details
1. Introduction: Politics of Imagining East Asia
2. Cultural Politics of Hong Kong in the Transition of Decolonisation and Globalization
3. Art of Urban Resistance in the Era of Global Gentrification
4. Autonomous Space and Youth Culture Movement
5. Trauma, Memory Politic & Cold War Remnants
6. Beyond the Spectacle -- Crisis of Art & Democracy
7. Final Project Presentation
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Format
Seminar & Lecture
