Spectacle and the city - urbanity in popular culture and art in East Asia

04/06/2010 - 09:00

4 - 5 June 2010

Amsterdam, the Netherlands

IIAS/ASCA Seminar One

Convenors: Dr Jeroen de Kloet, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis and Lena Scheen, Leiden Institute for Area Studies

Venue: 
Bushuis / Oost-Indisch Huis
Room: VOC-zaal
Kloveniersburgwal 48
1012 CX  Amsterdam

Asia’s explosive process of urbanization forced all eyes on the subject of the city. Accordingly, the city has become a recurrent theme in popular culture and art, and –more interestingly – these cultural responses are at the same time interventions, they play themselves a role in the transformation of the cities they reflect. This seminar explores the production of urbanity in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, through popular culture and art, zooming in on three themes: spectacularity (cosmopolitanism, sense of longing), particularity (locality, sense of belonging), and urban experiences (mental and sensory).

First, spectacularity. Guy Debord writes of the society of spectacle, driven by the forces of (global) capitalism. In particular Asian cities are often turned into spectacular sites, for example during mega events like the Olympic Games of Beijing in 2008 What did the Olympics do to Beijing? And how is Olympic Beijing, in turn, represented if not contested in art and popular culture?

Second, particularity. Following Saskia Sassen, cities, rather than nation-states, give people a sense of place and belonging. Yet, the Asian city seems to be in a perpetual state of reconstruction, rendering the production of locality – to coin a phrase by Arjun Appadurai – as something that is always in flux. What role does popular culture and art play in these processes? What modes of representation involve what kind of articulations of place, and how does this differ over different media genres; ranging from music, cinema, television, visual art, dance, to fashion?

Third, urban experiences. Asia’s demolition craze means a constant disappearance of familiar physical surroundings and appearance of new urban forms, which have a profound psychological and even sensory impact on the city’s inhabitants. What are the aesthetic responses to this process of overall disruption in both individual and collective experience? How do cities come to operate as 'sensory machines’, and how are our five senses produced, marked, regulated, challenged and repressed in today's Asian cityscapes?

Please click here for the programme.

There is no registration fee.

For further information & registration
Ms Martina van den Haak, m.c.van.den.haak@iias.nl or +31 71 5273317.