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This book examines how China's new generation of avant-garde writers and artists are pushing the boundaries of vernacular culture, creatively appropriating artistic and literary languages from global cultures to reflect on reform-era China's transformation and the Maoist heritage. It explores the vortex of cultural change from the launch of Deng Xiaoping's reforms in 1978 to Xi Jinping establishing his leadership for life in 2018. The book argues that China's new avant-garde adopt transcultural forms of expression while challenging the official discourse of Xi Jinping's regime, which promotes cultural nationalism and demands that cultural production in China embodies the essence of the "Chinese nation". The topics range from body art, women's poetry and boys' love literature to Tibetan fiction and ceramic art. The book shows how the avant-garde use the new digital media to bypass government censorship, transcending China's virtual frontiers while breaking new ground for an emerging public sphere. Overall, the book provides a rich picture of the nature of China's avant-garde art and literature and the challenges it poses for the Chinese government.
The introduction and chapter 10 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
List of contents
Introduction: The art of transculturality Daria Berg and Giorgio Strafella Part I: The Politics of Transculturality 1. Interrogating transculturality: from avant-garde literature to street art Andrea Riemenschnitter 2. "Words divide, images connect": the politics of language and the language of politics in Xu Bing's Book from the Sky and Book from the Ground Wenny Teo Part II: Collecting the Art of Transculturality 3. How people collect contemporary art: my typology of collecting styles Uli Sigg 4. Confusionism Uli Sigg Part III: The Topography of Transculturality 5. Transculturality in Hong Kong artist Annie Wan's conceptual ceramic art Silvia Fok 6. Tibetan stories with transcultural perspectives and experimental styles: Chinese avant-garde fiction as example Xi Liu 7. Burning words: Deng Dafei's Dark Utopia 2 Cosima Bruno Part IV: The Frontiers of Transculturality 8. Avant-garde 'Boys Love': female fantasy and the new queer discourse in China Xi Tian 9. Avant-garde women's poetry from China: Zhai Yongming and the poetry journal Wings Justyna Jaguscik 10. Stealing the art of pain: Body Art and Zhao Yue's Lattice Giorgio Strafella and Daria Berg
About the author
Daria Berg is Chair Professor of Chinese Culture and Society at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and Head of the Centre for Intercultural Competence at the St. Gallen Institute of Management in Asia, Singapore.
Giorgio Strafella is Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Studies, and Senior Researcher in the "Sinophone Borderlands" project at Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic.
Summary
This book examines how China’s new generation of avant-garde writers and artists are pushing the boundaries of vernacular culture, creatively appropriating artistic and literary languages from global cultures to reflect on reform-era China’s transformation and the Maoist heritage.
