If you visit Photoville, the Dumbo Arts Festival, SVA’s MFA Social Documentary program’s Fourth Annual Thesis Showcase, be sure to check out works from artists of Chinese descent.
In addition to Ian Teh whose photographs documenting climate change at the source of the Yellow River are now on view at Photoville, we talked to a few other artists and will have articles and profiles on them soon.
It’s the last weekend to catch Patty Chang and David Kelley’s Flotsam Jetsam at MOMA and Ming-jer Kuo’s Suburban Form, a brilliant view of the organic nature of suburban development, at the Gateway Gallery in Newark, NJ.
The Hou Hsiao-hsien retrospective continues at the Museum of the Moving Image with his tributes to French and Japanese films.
Here’s an excerpt from Flotsam Jetsam:
Waves of Identity, a look at Chinese Americana from the Museum of Chinese in America’s collection, and Chinese American: Exlcusion/Inclusion, an exploration of Chinese in American history, open this week.
You can always look ahead to events beyond the upcoming week by visiting our one-time and short term event and ongoing exhibition calendars. Upcoming events also can be found on listing on the right side of this page. New events and exhibitions are added as they come up.
Let us know if there’s anything we should add to the calendar! If anybody will attend these events and would like to contribute photos or a summary, please email us at beyondchinatown[at]gmail.com.
Be sure to check this site, our Facebook page, or Twitter account regularly for articles and new events. If you’re so inclined, we also send out a weekly newsletter. Sign-up below.
Upcoming Events
1) Dear Deer – Taiwanese artist Yu-ting Feng is an interactive poetry installation that invites YOU to help a deer, suffering from writer’s block, compose a poem. Once complete, your beautiful poem will be captured on a receipt, which you can keep as a reminder of the time when you became a dear poet.
Friday, Sept. 26 6:00pm to 9:00pm
Saturday, Sept. 27 12:00pm to 9:00pm
Sunday, Sept. 28 12:00pm to 6:00pm
DUMBO Arts Festival, 1 Main Street, Festival Lounge, Brooklyn
Free
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2) Shen Wei Dance Arts Studio Showing of Folding – An intimate, informal performance of Folding, about which choreographer Shen Wei says “I was strongly attached to the simple action of folding: of paper, fabric, flesh—anything. Folding combines traditional Tibetan Buddhist Mahakala chants with the ethereal melodies of John Tavener.”
Friday, September 26 6 PM
Paul Taylor Studios, Sam Scripps Studio, 551 Grand Street
Free
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3) Café Lumière, aka Kōhī Jikō (珈琲時光) – Hou is frequently compared to the master Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. In Café Lumière, commissioned for the centenary of Ozu’s birth, Hou addresses that legacy directly. He applies Ozu’s low-angle perspective to this film set in a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past. At the center is Yoko (pop star Yo Hitoto), a writer investigating the life of a Japanese composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry, and has found a kindred spirit in a used-bookstore owner who aids her research. (Museum of the Moving Image)
Preceded by The Electric Princess Picture House (2007, 3 mins.), Hou’s contribution to the 2007 anthology film To Each His Own Cinema. “Unassuming and utterly ecstatic… Café Lumière offers glimpses of ephemeral beauty and the quotidian rendered transcendent through the play of light.” —Amy Taubin, Film Comment
Part of the Also Like Life: The Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien retrospective.
Friday, September 26, 7 PM
Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Avenue, Astoria
Free with museum admission ($12/adults; $9/senior citizens, students; $6/children (3-12))
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4) Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Movie – Films of Fury tells the story of the action genre from its ancient Peking Opera origins to its superhero-powered future, from Enter the Dragon to Kung Fu Panda. With scenes from over 200 martial art movies featuring stars such as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Jet Li, this action-packed documentary reveals the lore behind some of the most exhilarating films ever made. (Museum of the Moving Image)
Friday, September 26, 7 PM
Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Avenue, Astoria
Free with museum admission ($12/adults; $9/senior citizens, students; $6/children (3-12))
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5) The Other Eye: A Film About Liu Dan – Xiaochun Fan’s film about Liu Dan, a ink painter whose work was recently featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s contemporary Chinese art exhibition, Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China. Q&A to follow.
Part of SVA’s MFA Social Documentary program’s Fourth Annual Thesis Showcase.
Friday, September 26, 8 – 9:30 PM
SVA Theatre, 333 W 23rd St
Free
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6) A Chinese American Film – Duo Zhang’s film follows the story of young Chinese international students studying filmmaking in New York City, who decide to make a distinctly archetypical American film themselves. Q&A to follow
Part of SVA’s MFA Social Documentary program’s Fourth Annual Thesis Showcase.
Friday, September 26, 9:30 – 10:30 PM
SVA Theatre, 333 W 23rd St
Free
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7) Celebrate Taiwan @ Grand Central Terminal – Taiwanese art, performances, food and fashion at Grand Central Terminal.
Saturday, September 27, 11 AM – 2 PM
Grand Central Terminal
Free
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8) Dance with Spirit – Shihui Yue follows Chinese New Year preparations of nuo (傩), a 1000-year old traditional dance, in Shanggan China that is gaining popularity among the younger generation. Q&A to follow
Part of SVA’s MFA Social Documentary program’s Fourth Annual Thesis Showcase.
Sunday, September 28, 12 – 1:30 PM
SVA Theatre, 333 W 23rd St
Free
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9) Dissatisfactory Life – Directed by Yao Wang, 45 min. “A documentation of the filmmaker’s grandparents, this film tells the story of the way in which individual destiny has been affected by changing policy and is emblematic of the epitome of modern Chinese history.” Q&A to follow
Part of SVA’s MFA Social Documentary program’s Fourth Annual Thesis Showcase.
Sunday, September 28, 3:45 – 5:15
SVA Theatre, 333 W 23rd St
Free
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10) China: A Lyrical Journey – Mezzo-soprano Yixuan Pang leads a recital and lecture about traditional Chinese folk songs. She will select 10 quintessential Chinese folk songs from different provinces of China to explain and show their historical backgrounds, geographical features, manners and customs, singing style, and language characteristics. She will be joined by duo FJ Music Fusion (Sophia Yang and Jiaju Shen) and tenor Karl Scully.
Sunday, September 28, 4- 5:30 PM
Alumni Hall A, NYU Langone Medical Center, 550 1st Ave
Free
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11) Jen Shyu at the Very Very Threadgill Festival – Shyu is part of 2-day festival curated by Jason Moran, celebrating the work of seminal composer and saxophonist, Henry Threadgill
Sunday, September 28, 4 PM (Talk at 3 PM)
Harlem Stage Gatehouse, 150 Convent Avenue
$35/admission
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12) Flight of the Red Balloon, aka Le voyage du ballon rouge (红气球的旅行 / 紅氣球的旅行) – Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Paris-set tribute to Albert Lamorisse’s 1956 kid’s classic The Red Balloon concerns seven-year-old Simon and his life with mother Suzanne, a performance artist, as they are seen through the eyes of a Chinese student hired as Simon’s nanny. Song Fang, an actual film student, is essentially playing herself, and the free improvisations give the proceedings a winning air of play, appropriate to a movie that features a sentient balloon as Simon’s benevolent companion. “In its unexpected rhythms and visual surprises, its structural innovations and experimental perfs, its creative misunderstandings and its outré syntheses, this is a movie of genius.”—J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
Sunday, September 28, 4:30 – 6:30 PM
Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Avenue Astoria
Free with museum admission ($12/adults; $9/senior citizens, students; $6/children (3-12))
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13) Ghost City – Ordos is close to 7,000 miles from New York City, and is referred to as China’s most infamous “ghost city.” Hearing Ordos termed this way in the mainstream media, the filmmaker travels from New York back to her hometown. Encapsulating the traditional Chinese proverb, “the leaves fall to the root,” this tour through the ghost city examines the influences that valuable real estate has on people and explores the subsequent boom and bust that it delivered.
Part of SVA’s MFA Social Documentary program’s Fourth Annual Thesis Showcase.
Sunday, September 28, 6:30 – 7:30 PM
SVA Theatre, 333 W 23rd St
Free
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14) Inside the Contemporary Chinese Art Market – Ethan Cohen, President and CEO, Ethan Cohen Fine Arts talks about the contemporary Chinese art market in a discussion moderated by Dorothy Ko, Professor of History and Women’s Studies, Barnard College
Wednesday, October 1, 6 PM
International Affairs Building, Room 918, Columbia University
Free
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15) An Art Salon on “Chineseness”: Screening and Conversation featuring Yang Chihung and Agnes Hsu-Tang – In conjunction with the exhibition Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion, the New-York Historical Society presents the American premiere of the Discovery Channel Asia’s groundbreaking series Chineseness with a conversation between featured artist Yang Chihung and host of the series Dr. Agnes Hsu-Tang. The original documentary series examines the idea of a renaissance in Chinese identity through the lives and work of four contemporary Chinese artists and illustrates the different perspectives on the contemporary Chinese consciousness.
Thursday, October 2, 6 – 8:30 PM
6 – 7 PM —View Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion exhibition
7 – 8:30 PM—Screening of Discovery Channel documentary Chineseness episode on artist Yang Chihung followed by discussion
New York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West
Free, but RSVP required
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16) Composer Portraits: Chou Wen-chung – A tribute concert to composer Chou Wen-chung, a pioneer in joining Eastern and Western musical traditions. Born in Yantai, Chou moved to New York to study at Columbia, where he later joined the faculty himself, mentoring important next-generation Chinese composers such as Tan Dun, Bright Sheng, and Zhou Long. He was a lifelong protégé of Edgard Varèse. This Portrait spans from the “frenzied explosions of percussion madness” (New York Times) of Echoes from the Gorge to a string quartet commissioned in response to Bach’s Art of Fugue.
For more information see here. We recently interviewed Professor Chou and will have a profile up soon.
Thursday, October 2, 8 – 10 PM
Miller Theatre at Columbia University
$20 – 30/admission
Confucius Institute Day
Confucius Institutes are non-profit organizations affiliated with China’s Ministry of Education that promote Chinese language (Mandarin!) and culture and are set-up at educational institutions around the world. September 27 is Confucius Institute Day in New York City, and China Institute, Confucius Institute for Business at SUNY, Pace University and SUNY College of Optometry will host various programs related to Chinese culture. You can see the full list of events here, but two that look interesting in addition to the Finding New Realities exhibition mentioned in the exhibitions section below.
Photo Exhibit of Chinese Acupuncture in the United States (1971 – 2011)
10:30 AM – 3 PM
SUNY College of Optometry, 33 W 42nd Street
RSVP requested
Symposium: Hu Shi, Lu Xun and Modern China
3:10 PM – 4:30 PM
Columbia University (no further information)
Ongoing Films and Shows
1) But Always (一生一也) – A romantic drama starring Gao Yuanyuan (高圆圆 / 高圓圓)and Nicolas Tse (谢霆锋 / 謝霆鋒) about two friends from Beijing that reunite and begin a love affair in New York City twenty years later in the 1990s. Plays at AMC Empire 25 in Manhattan.
Exhibitions
We put together available reviews of the current exhibitions in our Exhibition Review Roundup. The exhibitions included in a roundup are marked with an asterisk.
Closing soon:
Xin Song in On Paper/Grand Central at 100 (Grand Central Terminal)
*Flotsam Jetsam (MoMA, 9/28)
Ian Teh: Traces: Navigating the Frontline of Climate Change (Photoville, 9/18 – 9/28)
Ming-jer Kuo in Emerald City (The Gateway Project, Newark’s Pennsylvania Avenue, 7/31 – 10/2 )
Prune Nourry: Terracotta Daughters (China Institute (downtown), 10/4)
Prune Nourry: Imbalance (Rio Grande, 179A Grand Street, 10/4)
Catherine Lan Solo Exhibition (The Center for Arts Education, 10/10)
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Opening and newly added:
Jian-Jun Zhang: Nature (Art Projects International, 9/13 – 10/11)
Li Daiyun, Jennifer Wen Ma and Xin Song in Finding New Realities (Fingesten Gallery, 9/23 – 10/14)
Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion (New York Historical Society, 9/26/14 – 4/19/15)
Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao’s New York: Assembled Realities (Museum of the City of New York, 10/15/14 – 2/15/15)
Let us know if there’s something people need to see.
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Visit the exhibition calendar (http://ow.ly/pxe9o) for details for the following shows below. As always, check the museum or gallery’s website for hours of operation
Xin Song in On Paper/Grand Central at 100 (Grand Central Terminal, 9/14)
*Flotsam Jetsam (MoMA, 9/28)
Prune Nourry: Terracotta Daughters (China Institute (downtown), 10/4)
Prune Nourry: Imbalance (Rio Grande, 179A Grand Street, 10/4)
Catherine Lan Solo Exhibition (The Center for Arts Education, 10/10)
Jian-Jun Zhang: Nature (Art Projects International, 10/11)
James Chan: Human Investigation (Roux Roux Gallery, 10/22)
Cao Fei: LA Town (Lombard Freid Gallery, 10/25)
“If I Want Blue, I Paint with Orange” Xiaowei Chen Solo Exhibition (49B Studios, 10/30)
Li Daiyun: The Grid (Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, 11/1)
Liu Bolin: A Colorful World? (Klein Sun Gallery, 11/1)
Ai Weiwei (Part I) (Chambers Fine Art, 11/1)
Ai Weiwei (Part II) (Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, 11/1)
Zhang Huan: Evoking Tradition (Storm King Art Center, 11/9)
Zhai Liang: “New York is a Big Liar” (Fou Gallery, 11/15)
Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao’s New York: Assembled Realities (Museum of the City of New York, 10/15/14 – 2/15/15)
The Art of the Chinese Album (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 3/29/15)
*Phoenix: Xu Bing at the Cathedral (Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 2015)
Waves of Identity: 35 Years of Archiving (Museum of Chinese in America, 3/1/15)
Memory Prints: The Story World of Philip Chen (Museum of Chinese in America, 3/1/15)
Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion (New York Historical Society, 4/19/15)
Mao’s Golden Mangoes and the Cultural Revolution (China Institute, 4/26/15)
Group Shows
Ming-jer Kuo in Emerald City (The Gateway Project, Newark’s Pennsylvania Avenue, 7/31 – 10/2 )
Ian Teh: Traces: Navigating the Frontline of Climate Change (Photoville, 9/18 – 9/28)
Li Daiyun, Jennifer Wen Ma and Xin Song in Finding New Realities (Fingesten Gallery, 9/23 – 10/14)
Image by Andrew Shiue