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This book traces the intersections between the growing controversies revolving around the Anthropocene on the one hand, and artistic and curatorial practices situated in the Sinophone world on the other. Exploring the relevance and multiple relations of both concepts as mediated in specific aesthetic, visual, and performative practices, and affiliated understandings of the planetary, seven academic case studies, supplemented by four conversations with emergent and senior curators, map the Sinophonecene . Accounting for the transcultural entanglements of different ontologies humans, plants, animals, as well as technoid beings and being aware of Man s epistemological conditions and limits, the recent concept helps to think through global issues of habitability and interspecies relationships with regard to the particular world of Chinese contemporary art. Eschewing essentialist, nationalist, civilizational, and human-centric notions of Chineseness in favor of more worlded approaches, the multi-vocal chapters also contribute to bridging existent divides between area specialists, art historians, artists, curators and educators, who are engaged in the field.
List of contents
1. Tracing Environmental and Cohabitational Perspectives in Chinese Art and Querying the Sinophonecene .- Part I. Habitability as Question and Praxis: How Does the Sinophonecene Matter?.- 2. The Sinophonecene in More-than-Asian Studies: Planetarity, Habitability, and the Cosmopublic.- 3. Tong Wenmin: A Walking Forest.- 4. The Sensation of Time in China s Urbanizing Environments as Captured by Sponge Gourd Collective s Video Works.- 5. Responding to Environmental Destruction through Contemporary Shanshui Art: Li Huayi s Uninhabited Landscapes and Yang Yongliang s Overpopulated Cityscapes.- 6. The Virtual Grass is Always Greener Nature in Contemporary Media Art from the Sinophone Region.- 7. Have You Seen a Subhuman Cry? How the Films Extractions (Theo Jean Cuthand, 2019) and Eme Cosmos (Mia Yu, 2024) Explore Cosmotechnical Worldings in Canada and China.- 8. Contemporary Art in the Sinophonecene: Artistic Criticality, Defamiliarization and the Traces of Syncretic Confucianism.- Part II. Curating (with) Inhabitants Inhabiting (with) Curators: Conditions, Perspectives, Challenges.- 9. Introduction: Co-constituting, Mediating and Querying the Sinophonecene through Curatorial Practice.- 10. Conversing with ZONG Xiao about Metamorphic Ecosphere .- 11. Conversing with Mia YU about Fossil Sunlight, Sedimentary Bodies .- 12. Conversing with GONG Jow-Jiun about Wild Rhizome .- 13. Conversing with Bettina FREIMANN about Clear River Calm Sea .
About the author
Franziska Koch
is Senior Lecturer (akademische Oberrätin) in the fields of art history and transcultural studies at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany.
Nora Wölfing
is an academic researcher, curator and writer specialized in contemporary art from the Sinophone Region. She is pursuing her doctoral studies at Freie Universität Berlin.
Cila Brosius
is an independent German-American curator, based in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Summary
This book traces the intersections between the growing controversies revolving around the Anthropocene on the one hand, and artistic and curatorial practices situated in the Sinophone world on the other. Exploring the relevance and multiple relations of both concepts as mediated in specific aesthetic, visual, and performative practices, and affiliated understandings of the planetary, seven academic case studies, supplemented by four conversations with emergent and senior curators, map the “Sinophonecene”. Accounting for the transcultural entanglements of different ontologies—humans, plants, animals, as well as technoid beings—and being aware of Man’s epistemological conditions and limits, the recent concept helps to think through global issues of habitability and interspecies relationships with regard to the particular world of Chinese contemporary art. Eschewing essentialist, nationalist, civilizational, and human-centric notions of “Chineseness” in favor of more “worlded” approaches, the multi-vocal chapters also contribute to bridging existent divides between area specialists, art historians, artists, curators and educators, who are engaged in the field.
