<nettime-ann> [event] Future Perfect @ Cornell: Contemporary Chinese Art and the Question of the Archive

["timothy murray" <tcm1@cornell.edu>]

Future Perfect: Contemporary Chinese Art and the Question of the Archive
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
September, 23-24, 2005.

The Rose Goldsen Lecture Series at Cornell University presents an 
international workshop on art and curating: Future Perfect: 
Contemporary Chinese Art and the Question of the Archive, September, 
23-24, 2005.  This event will gather together renown Chinese artists 
and curators to inaugurate the Cornell Library's Wen Pulin Archive of 
Chinese Avant Garde Art, a joint holding of the Charles W. Wason 
Collection on East Asia and the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art 
in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.

The Wen Pulin Archive of Chinese Avant Garde Art contains some 360 
hours of digital video documenting the history of contemporary 
Chinese art, installation, and performance since 1985.  Organized by 
Thomas Hahn, Curator of the Wason Collection, and Timothy Murray, 
Curator of the Rose Goldsen Archive, the Wen Pulin Archive is a 
unique international resource of video footage of art events, art 
performances, installations, and artist studio tours and interviews 
that traces the history of Chinese culture over this consequential 
twenty year period.   This unique collection, which, due to the 
sensitive nature of its materials, is restricted in use in China, 
will provide students and researchers with previously unseen 
documentation of the important developments in contemporary art in 
China over the past twenty years, the period of China's tremendous 
growth into a major venue of contemporary art and global culture. 
Cornell's acquisition of the Wen Archive marks the first of many 
planned collaborations with the new Dongtai Academy of Arts in 
Beijing, which is directed by its founder, Wen Pulin.

In addition to providing a preview of these materials, open for the 
public viewing in the Wason Collection and Goldsen Archive, Kroch 
Library, the conference provides one of the largest North American 
gatherings of contemporary Chinese artists and curators who work in 
the emergent fields of electronic arts, new media, and mixed media 
performance.  Their aim is to situate their past and current projects 
in terms of the theoretical, social, and political problems posed by 
new archival challenges of digital culture and historical 
transformation.  Similarly the endeavor of archiving so-called 
ephemeral artistic works may require a reconsideration of the aims 
and imperative of the archive itself and related art historical 
research.  To position contemporary Chinese art in the Future Perfect 
will require that the participants reflect on their former work in 
relation to future concerns: to consider "what they will have done" 
(and how it will have been remembered).

Highlights of the weekend include the international premiere of a new 
performance art piece by the artist, Lin Yilin, on Saturday afternoon 
at 4pm, and  a plenary artist presentation by the internationally 
celebrated artist Xu Bing, on Friday afternoon at 4:30pm.  They will 
be joined by the artists, Feng Mengbo and Chen Lingyang from Beijing, 
Du Zhenjun from Paris, Xiaowen Chen from Ithaca, Lin Yan from New 
York as well as curators Barbara London (Museum of Modern Art), Gao 
Minglu (Pittsburgh), and Shin-Yi Yang (Artist Commune, Hong Kong).

Organized by Timothy Murray, Professor of English and Comparative 
Literature, this event is hosted by The Rose Goldsen Lecture Series 
with institutional cosponsorship from the Cornell Library, The 
Society for the Humanities, East Asia Program, College of Art, 
Architecture and Planning, French Studies, Departments of Asian 
Studies, English, Comparative Literature.

For further information, contact Timothy Murray, Director, The Rose 
Goldsen Lecture Series, tcm1@cornell.edu, 607-255-4012.
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