Xiao Liu, East Asia Media Ecologies Lecuture

The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University presents a talk with Xiao Liu that will examine the plastic aesthetic of new Chinese cinema in the context of the information wave of 1980s China.

Information Wave and Cinema Reinvented in 1980s China
Xiao Liu, Postdoctoral Fellow, Brown University

Xiao Liu will examine the plastic aesthetic of new Chinese cinema in the context of the information wave of 1980s China. The futurist visions of new information technology and the effort to bring cinema into the “information age” generated a new aesthetic divorced from socialist realism and social realism, and inspired innovative explorations of the plasticity of cinema. This plasticity adumbrated the aesthetics often associated with digital media, bringing forth a post-socialist subject who is able to constantly adapt himself to the ever-shifting information flows of the market.

Xiao Liu works on media theory and media history, with a focus on digital media and information technology in contemporary China. She has written and published on parody videos, post-socialist blockbusters and network aesthetics. Her current book project, “Information Fantasies: Culture and Media in Post-Mao China,” examines the cybernetic and information discourses in post-Mao 1980s, as well as the transformed media practices and aesthetics in the context of the rising information economy. After her one-year postdoctoral research at Brown University, she will start her assistant professorship at McGill University in fall, 2014.

Sponsored by East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies