Object-act-ivities (1989) was a performance work at the Sheung Wan Civic Centre that attempted to create a space of mourning following the crackdown of the Tiananmen Square protests. The work brought together practitioners from the visual arts, literature, and dance, including Choi Yan Chi, Leung Ping Kwan (Ye Si), Mui Cheuk Yin, and Yau Ching.
In 2006 and 2016, the artist and scholar Linda Chiu Han Lai attempted to reconstruct Object-act-ivities using notational methods, including chronological classification, textual transcription, live gaming, and improvised automatic writings. For this talk, Lai addresses the purposes and limits of these remembrances, and proposes ways by which incomplete and fragmentary documentation can be used to reflect on one’s relationship with historical events.
Professor Stephen Chan Ching Kiu will offer a response based on his extensive work on moving images, performance, and identity narratives.
This talk stems from AAA’s Out of Context Research Project, which focuses on the art ecology of Hong Kong during the 1980s. It also forms part of The Fugitive Image, a series of events initiated by the Department of Cultural Studies of Lingnan University, which investigates the circumstances under which images conceal and reveal their latent content.
Following this talk, the Department of Cultural Studies of Lingnan University hosts Linda Lai’s workshop Objects and Stories: Remembrance and Narration of the Past at Ho Sin Hang Building 109, Lingnan University, from 3 to 6 pm on 29 November. The event is conducted in Cantonese. It is free of charge and open to the public with registration. To register, please click here.
Free and open to the public with registration.
Linda Chiu Han Lai is a Hong Kong–based artist and Associate Professor at the City University of Hong Kong’s School of Creative Media. Lai is also the founder of the Writing Machine Collective, a research-based new media art group, and the Floating Projects, an artist collective and site for interdisciplinary and intermedia art experiments. She participated in various international art and film events, including the International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen; Open City London Documentary Festival; LOOP, Barcelona; Rencontres Internationales, Paris and Berlin; Shanghai Biennale; and also in experimental film and video festivals in Seoul, Taipei, Macao, Kuala Lumpur, and Hong Kong. Twenty-six of her video works are archived at the Video Bureau in Guangzhou and Beijing.
Stephen Chan Ching Kiu is a professor of cultural studies at Lingnan University, and was the founding director of its BA Cultural Studies programme in 1999. He writes extensively on Hong Kong culture, film, identity narratives and performance, and also serves as Chair of the Association for Cultural Studies.
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