January 24, 5-7 pm, KIASMA Seminar Room

Li Zhenhua: Curator on the Turn

Dong Bingfeng: Independent Film Movements in China

In the talk Curator on the Turn: Restudy the System of Art, Relocate the Position Li Zhenhua will reflect on the developments in contemporary art practices through recent social and geopolitical changes in China. Dong will focus on the changes through the Independent Film Movements in China. “In the past twenty years, there was no doubt that “Independent Film Movement” played an important role in the process of Chinese modernisation. On the one hand, independent films are rooted in the core needs of autonomic creation，rejecting the will of authority or commercial considerations. On the other hand, the creations of independent films are closely related to the issues in the process of social development. In 2012, four independent film festivals in China were forced to close by the government”, Dong states.

Li Zhenhua is a multi-media artist, curator and producer specialised in media art and culture. He has worked with Chinese as well as international contemporary art since 1996, among others with the artist Yang Fudong. His curatorial projects among others include the first international new media art festival MAAP in Beijing Millennium Museum in 2002, the onedotzero moving image festival in Beijing Today Art Museum in 2004, Synthetic Time: Media Art China 2008 at NAMOC (National Art Museum of China).

Dong Bingfeng is the Director of the Chinese Archive of Independent Film and Documentary CIFA, owned by IAC Foundation. Currently he is working on a publication project with Boris Groys and e-flux. His curatorial projects include: Das Kapital Neulesen – Annäherungen an Marx in Film, Kunst und Theater; Museum on Paper (Iberia Center for Contemporary Art); FATART 2010 (Modernsky Entertainment and Today Art Museum); Looking through Film: Traces of Cinema and Self-Constructs in Contemporary Art (OCT Contemporary Art Terminal); From Polar Region to Tie Xi Qu (Guangdong Museum of Art).

The curators are in residency at HIAP as part of the Urban Agents programme curated by Marita Muukkonen. The third Urban Agents curator invited by HIAP is Ana Yao, who works for the Times Art Museum in Beijing. The long term aim of the programme is to develop projects in China and in Hong Kong in collaboration with Finnish artists. The programme is funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture.

The event is part of the series of discussions and debates HIAP Talks: Public Matters.