New Media and the Documentary Impulse

This workshop will explore the possibilities and problems represented by new and alternative modes of documentary work, including digital, on-line, and sonic media.

The “New Media in China” Colloquia are a year-long series of programs sponsored by the Luce Foundation that will bring outstanding scholars, visual artists, writers, and documentarians from around the world to address various aspects of media in China, from the emergence of new media in early China, to modern print culture, the impact of the internet on journalism, and the use of new media to document contemporary social and cultural transformations.

In recent years, documentary has emerged as one of the most artistically vibrant, and socially engaged forms of cultural production, on both sides of the Taiwan straits.  Drawing on the expertise of several of the most innovative documentarians currently working in contemporary China and Taiwan, this workshop will explore the possibilities and problems represented by new and alternative modes of documentary work, including digital, on-line, and sonic media.  We will chart the emergence and significance of a powerful documentary impulse in contemporary China across various media, ask how new media might differ from old media, how artists can utilize new forms of ‘small-screen’ visuality, and how a medium such as sound recording might provide a means of registering the profound social and spatial changes of recent years. The workshop will feature screenings of new documentary work by Mickey Chen, as well as urban soundscape installations by artists Yan Jun and Dajuin Yao at the Berkeley Art Museum.