February 14, 2019: Ruijun Shen

For the 3rd colloquium of the semester, held on February 14, 2019 (Thursday), we are very pleased to welcome Chinese curator and artist Ruijun Shen, who will give a talk on the topic “Into Nature: my practice as a curator and artist.”

The talk will start at 4:00 pm in M6094 Future Cinema Studio.

Date: February 14, 2019 (Thursday)

Time: 4:00 pm

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: Into Nature: my practice as a curator and artist

Abstract:

Instead of images, Ruijun Shen constructs situations and create experiences in her work. She believes that human beings live in situations where every objects and events are interconnected. Everything can be transformed into something else in order to achieve a dynamic balance. Taking nature as reference, Shen’s work is involved in different media, including painting, drawing, installation and animation. As a curator, Shen has curated many successful exhibitions in China and the U.S.

Chinese garden is a long-term research topic on Shen’s curatorial practice. In this lecture, Shen will introduce her artistic practice as well as her method of taking Chinese garden as an entry point for contemporary curating. Some questions such as the function of art, the way towards professional artist and curator paths, the way of finding the self will be discussed.

Biography:

Ruijun Shen conceptualizes her painting-based practice as a form of extended meditation and a means of processing tensions between time and space in the world around us. Inspired by Confucianism and Tao Chinese philosophy, her work is deeply invested in exploring the various connections that define our everyday. Shen received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has exhibited extensively throughout China as well as internationally.

January 22: Dr. Giorgio Biancorosso

For the second colloquium of the semester, held on January 22, 2019 (Tuesday), we are very pleased to welcome Dr. Giorgio Biancorosso, who will give a talk on the topic “Wong Kar Wai’s Soundtracks or The Filmmaker as Music Bricoleur.”

The talk will start at 4:00 pm in M6094 Future Cinema Studio.

Date: January 22, 2019 (Tuesday)

Time: 4:00 pm

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: Wong Kar Wai’s Soundtracks or The Filmmaker as Music Bricoleur

Abstract:

Composition, we are taught, is the creation from scratch of new sound structures. Yet since time immemorial musicians have repurposed already-existing music into their own work. This practice, referred to as borrowing, blurs the line between composition and performance and forces us to rethink the nature of musical creativity: Is it singular or diffused, individual or communal? Recording, tape and now digital technologies have added new dimensions to musical borrowing. By making it easier to encounter, store and play back vast amounts of repertoire, they have enabled countless people—including non-musicians—to mix and match musics from the most disparate sources. After anthropologist Lévi-Strauss, I call this mode of composition ‘musical bricolage’ and argue that filmmakers are among its most consummate masters. To bear this out, I examine the musical nexus at the heart of Wong Kar Wai’s cinema. Directing films is for Wong a way of channelling creatively the habit of chancing upon, collecting and listening to music in the commercial and artistic entrepôt of Hong Kong. Wong’s use of already-existing music is shaped by the circumstances of his films’ production and reception, his celebrated ‘musical ear’ as well as penchant for ‘poaching’ music from other films (ranging from old Chinese melodramas to European art films). There emerges is a unique modus operandi through which music loses its previous associations and acquires a new and sometimes surprising identity. Far from being instances of citation, homage or allusion, Wong’s musical borrowings are expedient and transformative. The soundtracks to his films chart his transformation from music lover and end-user into bona fide composer or better re-composer of the very repertoires he explores—the filmmaker as music bricoleur.

Biography:

Giorgio Biancorosso (PhD, Princeton, 2001) is the author, most recently, of Situated Listening: The Sound of Absorption in Classical Cinema(Oxford University Press, 2016) and “The Phantom of the Operaand the Performance of Cinema (Opera Quarterly, 34:2-3, 2018). His work on the history and theory of listening practices reflects a long-standing interest in musical aesthetics, film music, and the history of global cinema. Before moving to The University of Hong Kong, where he is now Associate Professor in Music and Director of the Society of Fellows in the Humanities, in 2001-2003 he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Columbia University’s Society of Fellows in the Humanitiesand a Visiting Assistant Professor in Music also at Columbia in 2003-04. Aside from film music, film criticism, and musical aesthetics, his interests include musical dramaturgy and the psychology of music. Biancorosso is also active in Hong Kong as a programmer and curator. He is the Chairman of the Hong Kong New Music Ensembleand a member of the Programme Committee of the Hong Kong Arts Festival. In recognition of his work, HKU awarded him the Outstanding Young Researcher Award in 2009 and the Research Output Prize (Arts) in 2016/17.

January 17, 2019: Jacco Borggreve

For the first colloquium of the semester, held on January 17, 2019 (Thursday), we are very pleased to welcome Netherlands-based new media and performance artist Jacco Borggreve, who will give a talk on the topic“A Grey Dilemma: Artificial Life and Artificial Death.”

The talk will start at 4:00 pm in M6094 Future Cinema Studio.

Date: January 17, 2019 (Thursday)

Time: 4:00 pm

Venue: M6094 Future Cinema Studio, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Topic: A Grey Dilemma: Artificial Life and Artificial Death

Abstract:

As new and emerging technologies seem to act in an increasingly more lifelike manner and humans begin to tinker at the very fundamental of biological life and previously conceived binary states of being are increasingly more blurred or proven false, it is time to rethink our notions of the ontology of life and by extension rethink the concept of death. Using examples from philosophy, mythology, art, popular culture and media theories Borggreve will examine why the current definitions of life will soon prove to be problematic and how we could better prepare for new, artificial and perhaps alien forms of life.

Biography:

Jacco Borggreve is a Netherlands-based new media and performance artist who has used implants, biomedical sensors, data-exhibitionism and automated processing to research the quantified self, data-ontology, death, self, unity and the body. He became national news after using his implant to broadcast his location in a performance that lasted eight months. This performance lead to participation in an ethics committee regarding citizen surveillance and smart-city development for the Dutch government. He was a guest curator for a series of exhibitions in Lil’ Amsterdam Gallery, his work was awarded the Trias Innovationis prize for Art & Science by QAQS. The artist collaborated with the University of Twente on a series of projects regarding citizen participation and multiculturalism. Borggreve is currently involved in research within the faculties of Smart City Research, Smart Textiles and Ambient Intelligence at Saxion University of Applied Sciences where he is leading a course on capacitive relational thinking, supervising a graduation project on the use of EEG systems in Smart City development and furthering his research on performing arts, artificial life and complex system theory.