Events, East Asian Studies - Wesleyan University

Wednesday, February 06, 2013

12:00 pm - 02:00 pm

Opening Reception: Traces of Life - Seen Through Korean Eyes, 1945-1992

Opening and Gallery Talk: Wednesday, February 6, 2013 at Noon; a luncheon buffet will be served.

"Traces of Life: Seen Through Korean Eyes, 1945-1992" captures the details of Korean people's everyday lives between 1945 and 1992. The exhibition features 27 photographs taken by the first generation of Korean realists, thirteen pioneers whose works evoke nostalgia for a nation in a radical transition from its past. Curator Chang Jae Lee describes the exhibition as a counterpoint to the turbulent history of this period in Korea, featuring "exuberant visual diversity" and "anthropologically important aspects of the nearly forgotten past." Touching and expressive, the photographs show how people used their traditions and humanity to face a new world of independence, industrialization, development and complex political shifts. The exhibition offers a moving visual experience through which to understand and appreciate Korean history, culture, and the arts. The debut of this exhibition at The Korea Society in New York in September 2012 was the first time these black-and-white photographs had been exhibited in the United States. This exhibition is presented by The Korea Society and independent curator Chang Jae Lee with generous loans from the Dong Gang Museum of Photography in Korea and the estates of Kim Kichan and Lee Hyungrok.

FEAS Gallery Room

Wednesday, February 06, 2013

12:00 pm - 04:00 pm

Exhibition: Traces of Life - Seen Through Korean Eyes, 1945-1992

Opening and Gallery Talk: Wednesday, February 6, 2013 at Noon; a luncheon buffet will be served.

"Traces of Life: Seen Through Korean Eyes, 1945-1992" captures the details of Korean people's everyday lives between 1945 and 1992. The exhibition features 27 photographs taken by the first generation of Korean realists, thirteen pioneers whose works evoke nostalgia for a nation in a radical transition from its past. Curator Chang Jae Lee describes the exhibition as a counterpoint to the turbulent history of this period in Korea, featuring "exuberant visual diversity" and "anthropologically important aspects of the nearly forgotten past." Touching and expressive, the photographs show how people used their traditions and humanity to face a new world of independence, industrialization, development and complex political shifts. The exhibition offers a moving visual experience through which to understand and appreciate Korean history, culture, and the arts. The debut of this exhibition at The Korea Society in New York in September 2012 was the first time these black-and-white photographs had been exhibited in the United States. This exhibition is presented by The Korea Society and independent curator Chang Jae Lee with generous loans from the Dong Gang Museum of Photography in Korea and the estates of Kim Kichan and Lee Hyungrok.

Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies Gallery

Thursday, February 07, 2013

04:30 pm - 06:00 pm

FEAS Lecture - Media and Messages: Blurred Visions of Nation and Science in Enzheng Tong's "Death Ray On a Coral Island"

Nathaniel Isaacson, North Carolina State University

Media and Messages: Blurred Visions of Nation and Science in Enzheng Tong's "Death Ray On a Coral Island." China's post-Mao era heralded a decade of renewed vigor in the popular media, through which the nation underwent a collective reassessment of China's relationship to the modern world and its own past. In this context, archaeologist, historian and sf writer Tong Enzheng's (1935-1997) "Death Ray on a Coral Island" (Shanhudao shang de siguang, 1978), was a sensation. The short story was adopted into a film (dir. Zhang Hongmei, 1980) and then into a radio drama, saw numerous incarnations as a pocket-comic, and was most recently reincarnated as a cell-phone video game. I critique this narrative and its multitude of media representations as an expression of China's unsteady relationship with the world at large and its own past through its pondering of the possibility of 'pure science' in the shadow of the atomic bomb. At the same time, the story enacts a critique of the relationship between global capital and scientific inquiry. Materially, I argue that the story's mass-media appeal is symptomatic of the cultural ferment of the 1980s.