The University of Pittsburgh Humanities Center will host Ellen Larson and her talk "All Water Has A Perfect Memory: Video Temporalities of Chen Qiulin" on November 5.
Contemporary Chinese artist Chen Qiulin’s (b. 1975) video projects are inspired by her own personal anamnesis, emotions, and autobiographical connection to space and place. Her slow, meandering video landscapes reflect temporalities seeping in nostalgia; lamenting the irrevocable loss of the physical structures and natural environment that have shaped her childhood memories. Chen came of age in the small Sichuan city of Wanxian, near Chongqing. Like millions of others, her homeland was demolished in advancement of the Three Gorges Dam Project (1994-2012). Through a combination of documentary and surrealist dreamlike aesthetics, Chen’s spatially subjective temporalities reveal particular Chinese notions of time, evoking historical legacies of regional traditions and forms of nostalgia which function as a fluid placeholder for memory. Chen engages both post-industrial and natural landscapes to construct her moving image narratives, all which respond to China’s rapid urbanization during the early 2000s within the Yangzi River region.The onlinei discussion will run from 12:30 to 2:00 pm and is free and open to the public.
Discussion will focus on a dissertation chapter to be circulated prior to the colloquium.