The Artist-in-Residency program is organized by DKUNST Art on Campus curated by prof. Zairong Xiang, co-sponsored by the Division of Arts and Humanities and the Humanities Research Center.
On Tuesday April 11th, internationally renowned artist Ho Rui An will give a public lecture on his artistic practice; together with his collaborator Zian Chen they will also introduce their current research project titled “Drawing the Lines: Politics and Technology in China’s Industrial History.” Students will have opportunity to join their team as research assistants. Curious about how artists do research and what is a “research-based artistic practice”? Interested in the history of textile industry in our own Yangtze River Delta region? Join us on Monday!
Time: 3:45 to 5:50 Tuesday, April 11th 2023
Location: AB 3107
Biographies
Ho Rui An is an artist and writer working in the intersections of contemporary art, cinema, performance and theory. Across the mediums of lecture, essay and film, his research examines systems of governance in a global age. He has presented projects at the Bangkok Art Biennale; Asian Art Biennial; Gwangju Biennale; Jakarta Biennale; Sharjah Biennial; Kochi-Muziris Biennale; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Kunsthalle Wien; Singapore Art Museum; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; and Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media, Japan. In 2019, he was awarded the International Film Critics’ (FIPRESCI) Prize at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany. In 2018, he was a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.
Zian Chen collaborates with artists and writers to develop alternative frameworks for thinking and speculation. He is one of the founding members of Pailang Museum of Settler Selves (2022–), an editor-in-residence for Compost in ICA NYU Shanghai (2021–2022), as well as one of the editors for Made in Public (2022) and Arrow Factory: The Last Five Years (2020). He has also curated Production Fever 2008: Study Materials in Nida Art Colony, Nida (2022). In 2020–21, he was one of the founding editors for Heichi Magazine, an online journal for contemporary art published weekly in Chinese and English.
PROGRAM
PART I: Ho Rui An’s Artist Talk (3:45 – 4:45 pm)
Title: Ways of (Not) Seeing “the Economy”
In recent years, the projects of Ho Rui An have sought to understand what it means to observe the thing we call “the economy”. Through works that have examined such seemingly abstract and expansive phenomena as financial capitalism and the so-called socialist market economy in Reform-era China, his artistic practice seeks to produce knowledge and make arguments that returns them to the body. This presentation explores the ways that economic abstractions come to be embodied and proposes embodied modes of observation that question what it is exactly we talk about when we talk about “the economy”.
PART II: Presentation of the Research-based Art Project at DKU (5:00 – 5:50 pm) Title: Drawing the Lines: Politics and Technology in China’s Industrial History
Since 2018, Ho Rui An and Zian Chen have collaborated across various projects researching the material networks and geopolitical imaginaries that have animated the regions of East and Southeast Asia. Expanding the narrative developed in Ho’s recent film, Lining (2021), which examines the rise and decline of the textile industry in Hong Kong, their residency at Duke Kunshan focuses on the development of the industry within the Yangtze River Delta before its displacement to Hong Kong in the late 1940s as well as the subsequent “return” of industrial capitalism to the mainland following the launch of China’s economic reforms.
In this presentation, they will share their preliminary observations gathered from their ongoing archival and field research. In considering the shifting historical relations between labor, technology, and capital in China, they identified a recurrent theme especially present in the textile industry: the politicization and depoliticization of technology. From the import of Western machinery as a means of national salvation in the early twentieth century to Maoist-era experiments in collapsing the distinction between manual and technical labor to the restructuring of state-owned enterprises under the pressures of technological displacement during the Reform era, the lines of politics and technology continually meet and part along a historical trajectory that has culminated in China’s deeply unsettled postsocialist condition.
The speakers will also share details for an open call for participants to join their research between August and September this year.
Lining (2021), Ho Rui An, 4K video (Courtesy of the Artist)
You are cordially invited to attend the TSL Brown Bag Lunch Research Talk by Dr. Zhang Tong on Rubric Co-construction in EAP Classrooms: Student and Instructor Perceptions.
Date/Time: Friday, March 31, 12pm, (China Standard Time). Location: IB 2025 or Zoom (Remote attendees will receive the Zoom link via email.)
Co-constructing rubrics has been suggested as an effective strategy to support English Language Learners (ELLs) in self-assessment and metacognitive development. However, implementing rubric co-construction in EAP classrooms can be challenging and time-consuming for college students and instructors. This study aims to explore student and instructor perceptions of rubric co-construction in first-year college writing classrooms. Sixteen Chinese first-year students and their instructors participated in semi-structured interviews to discuss their experiences with the rubric co-construction process. Thematic analysis of the interview data revealed that both students and instructors perceived benefits from rubric co-construction, including increased transparency, support for self-regulation and metacognitive activities, and enhanced formative use of rubrics. However, the findings also unveiled pedagogical concerns related to the features of first-year ELLs in college. The data further suggested that instructors negotiated between institutional expectations and their teaching practices and beliefs. This study offers insights into implementing teacher-student rubric co-construction in EAP teaching contexts and provides implications for instructors and curriculum designers.
Religion+Archeology, with Kent Cao and Scott MacEachern
Date/Time: April 4, 6:00-7:30pm Location: DKU Water Pavilion*Snacks and drinks provided! Join us!
The Tuesday Night Conversation Series, Religion+X., hosted by Religion+ research group of the Humanities Research Center at Duke Kunshan University, will take place every Tuesday from 6:30pm-8pm and feature DKU religious studies professors James Miller, Tommaso Tesei and Ben Van Overmeire in informal conversation with other DKU professors on a wide range of topics. Snacks and drinks will be provided, and students are warmly invited to join in the conversation with the professors. Events are planned to be in person, but may be moved online in accordance with Covid policies.
See the line-up for the coming weeks: https://sites.duke.edu/dkuhumanities/religion-group-announces-tuesday-night-conversation-series/
This talk was a part of the HRC’s Religion+ event series, held in-person on the DKU campus. Each event connects a topic to religion, and faculty are invited to speak on their work and/or ideas about the intersection of the topics.
This event brought Prof. Bryce Beemer, Prof. Titas Chakraborty, and Prof. Tommaso Tesei together for a conversation about the role of religion in the formation, development, and behaviors of empires throughout history. (more…)
Date/Time: March 28th, 5:30pm Zoom ID: 954 6231 1016 Guest Speaker: Hendrik Wagenaar and Barbara Prainsack
Abstract: The Covid-19 pandemic has starkly revealed the fault lines in the current, neoliberal political-economic order. While we are obviously not the ones to have noticed this, our take on the problem differs in a number of important ways from the usual political economy analyses. The aim of the book is to provide an evidence-based, practically feasible, vision of a more sustainable and more just political economic order. We use utopian imagination as a systematic method (Levitas 2013). Specifically, the purpose of the book is twofold: 1) to provide the ideas and vocabulary for a different narrative of a better society, and 2) to suggest concrete solutions, each one of them grounded in practical experience and/or scientific evidence.
Religion+Animals, with Ben Van Overmeire and Claudia Nisa
Date/Time: March 28, 6:00-7:30pm Location: DKU Water Pavilion*Snacks and drinks provided! Join us!
The Tuesday Night Conversation Series, Religion+X., hosted by Religion+ research group of the Humanities Research Center at Duke Kunshan University, will take place every Tuesday from 6:30pm-8pm and feature DKU religious studies professors James Miller, Tommaso Tesei and Ben Van Overmeire in informal conversation with other DKU professors on a wide range of topics. Snacks and drinks will be provided, and students are warmly invited to join in the conversation with the professors. Events are planned to be in person, but may be moved online in accordance with Covid policies.
See the line-up for the coming weeks: https://sites.duke.edu/dkuhumanities/religion-group-announces-tuesday-night-conversation-series/
Religion+Aliens, with Ben Van Overmeire and James Miller
Date/Time: March 21, 6:00-7:30pm Location: DKU Water Pavilion*Snacks and drinks provided! Join us!
The Tuesday Night Conversation Series, Religion+X., hosted by Religion+ research group of the Humanities Research Center at Duke Kunshan University, will take place every Tuesday from 6:30pm-8pm and feature DKU religious studies professors James Miller, Tommaso Tesei and Ben Van Overmeire in informal conversation with other DKU professors on a wide range of topics. Snacks and drinks will be provided, and students are warmly invited to join in the conversation with the professors. Events are planned to be in person, but may be moved online in accordance with Covid policies.
See the line-up for the coming weeks: https://sites.duke.edu/dkuhumanities/religion-group-announces-tuesday-night-conversation-series/
The Religion+ research group at Duke Kunshan University is pleased to announce its Tuesday Night Conversation Series, Religion+X.
In session 4 these will take place at the earlier time of 6pm-730pm and feature DKU religious studies professors James Miller, Tommaso Tesei and Ben Van Overmeire in informal conversation with other DKU professors on a wide range of topics. Snacks and drinks will be provided, and students are warmly invited to join in the conversation with the professors. Events are planned to be in person, but may be moved online in accordance with Covid policies.
This event was hosted by HRC’s Citizenship Lab. The Citizenship Lab seeks to understand the transformation of citizenship and the ways in which citizenship is expressed through ecological, temporal, and spatial terms. The full event can be viewed here.
Dr. Nick Kelly and Professor Marcus Foth from the Queensland University of Technology joined Professor Robin Rodd from Duke Kunshan’s Citizenship Lab on March 9th to discuss the role of the metaverse in the politics of climate change. Based on their article published in The Conversation, the two began by explaining Tuvalu’s attempt to save their nation that has turned towards metaverse technologies.(more…)
