Exhibition_Lecture on "Circumgyration"

Lecture on "Circumgyration"

  • Opening Lecture: 17/03/2016 19:00-21:00
  • Venue: Art Hub, NCCU Art & Culture Center
  • Host: Kuo Li-hsin (Associate Professor of Department of Radio & Television, NCCU)
  • Speakers: Wang Sheng-Hung (Art critic), Chen Kuan-hsing (Professor of Graduate Institute for Social Research and Cultural Studies, Chiao Tung University) & Chen Chin-pao (Artist)

 

Chen Chin-pao began working on this project in 2001 while working as a teacher at Denkong Elementary School. The project applies reenactment as strategy to reproduce the "unofficial" experiences of elementary school students on campus. It was one of the few projects in Taiwan that applied a "directorial" means for leading a photographic project back then. In 2009, the Denkong project expanded to include school memories from students and parents written or drawn on A4 worksheets, which were then directed and photographed. This reenactment later became what is known as "Circumgyration Project".

Circumgyration began at Denkong Elementary School and later expanded abroad to Yokohama, Japan, Ansan, Korea, and Shanghai, China in Northeast Asia.

Circumgyration as a contemporary photographic art exhibition certainly goes beyond "traditional" understanding and practice toward photography for its innovative approach and scope across Northeast Asia.

This photography lecture uses approaches from the fields of art criticism and cultural studies to indicate the significance behind this contemporary art exhibition.

 

Wang Sheng-Hung

Wang Sheng-Hung is an art critic and lecturer at Taipei National University of the Arts in the Department of Fine Arts. For many years he has played an important role in the Taiwan art scene as a writer and critic. His main interests are contemporary Taiwanese conceptual art practice, performance art, contemporary painting, and is gradually expanding to the topics of biennales, anti-war movements, anti-war films, contemporary photography, performance art installations, and others. His article can be found in such art journals as Artouch, Artist Magazine,Artitude, ACT, Contemporary Art and in numerous museum catalogs and publications. In 2009, Wang Sheng-Hung received the National Culture and Arts Foundation Art Critic Award and in 2015 he was awarded the Top Critic Prize at the ninth annual Taipei Digital Art Festival.

 

 

Chen Chin-pao

Chen Chin-pao has focused on different aspects of photography since the very beginning of his career. It was a series of documentary portraiture, A Moment of Beauty: Betel Nut Girls, to get him to be noticed. He then works on different projects:Circumgyration deals with "pseudo memory" by taking fragments of memories from elementary school students and parents, then have students to stage and to "reenact" the scenes of memory. Heaven on Earth is a project of social landscape to photograph juxtaposed shrines, houses and graves and depict Taiwan as a land shared by gods, humans and ghosts. His latest ongoing project, Ordinary Household, is dedicated to depict contemporary Taiwanese domestic life. Chen was awarded The Overseas Photographer Award of The 26th Higashikawa Award at 2008. He lives and works in New Taipei City, Taiwan.

 

 


Chen Kuan-hsing

Chen Kuan-hsing is Professor in the Graduate Institute for Social Research and Cultural Studies, Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, and has held visiting professorships at universities in Korea, China, Japan, Singapore, the U.S. and Hong Kong. He has edited volumes in Chinese and English, including Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (1996) andTrajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (1998), Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Reader (2007), Cultural Studies in Taiwan(2000) and The Partha Chatterjee Seminar--Locating Political Society (2000), Chinese Revolution Reconsidered: Mizoguchi's Mode of Thought (2010), Paik Naik-chung: Division System and National Literature (2010), Chen Yingzhen: Thought and Literature (2011). His recent publication is Asia as Method—Towards De-imperialization (2010). Founding chair of Taiwan's Cultural Studies Association, founding member of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society (and its Consortium), and a core member of the Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies, he is a co-editor of the journal, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies: Movements and Renjian Thought Review (mandarin Chinese). In recent years, he has been involved in the West Heavens project on India-China dialogues on social thought and in establishing the Inter-Asia School to launch the Modern Asian Thought project.

 

 

Kuo Li-hsin

Kuo Li-hsin is an art critic and NCCU associate professor in the Department of Radio and Television. His works includeRewriting Photography and True Questioning: The Political and Apolitical Nature of Documentary and other books.