Lecture Series Outline

The five-session lecture series on Chinese contemporary art will include:

Session One:
– brainstorming more ideas for this course
• Video presentation: A film by Lana Jokel entitled “Chinese contemporary art goes to NYC” (2004).
– Assigning book readings
• Topic: Landmark architecture and artists’ emotions
Signature architecture as a performative site for retracing collective memory and generating individual reflection.

Session Two:
• Topic: Landmark architecture and artists’ emotions (cont’d)
Signature architecture as a performative site for retracing collective memory and generating individual reflection (cont’d).
• Documentary Film: Project 798: New Art in New China, by Lucius C. Kuert
• Topics: Traditional motifs and artists' dreams
Traditional architecture as a commemorative site for recollecting the past history and responding to the ongoing drastic transformation.

Session Three:
• Staged photography and artist vision 
    Urban architecture as a back-drop set for artists narratives of ongoing social changes, reflections on past stories, dreams and
• Video: The Genius of Photography (BBC program disc two)
• Topic: Straight photography
A typological method to take straight shoots of urban changes discussing about the disruption both to the past and to the future.

Session Four:
• Abstract and minimalist art
painters who focus on lines, grids, squares, circles and other shapes like constructing Marquette, abstract and surreal from reality.
• Ready-mades/large installations
• Massive scale of jigsaw pieces building up an empire for episodes of stores from life to create their hallucination to their own childhood and longing for peace.
• Movie: The Rising Tide: Documentary on Chinese contemporary art by Robert Adano (2006)

Session Five
• Artist films, 3-D, cartoon manipulation, web, and etc
• Summarize and wrap up: discussing what we want to know more and answer more questions. We can invite some art critics and artists to meet the students.