We are pleased to announce the production of a feature length documentary film that is centred around the experiences of different generations of Greater Chinese and Sinophone artists and their artistic practices amidst waves of social change, to explore and reflect on the contextualisation of contemporary Chinese society and culture in the past 40 years.

The film is being directed by artist and filmmaker Luka Yuanyuan Yang and her team. Bingfeng Dong is serving as Head of Research, with Alvin Li contributing as Advisor.

SYNOPSIS

The idea of the documentary emerged at the very beginning of the pandemic. When profound changes were brought on to societies across the globe, including the arts and culture sector, we identified an urgent need and agency to document this potentially historical turn with its effects and ramifications. During current shifts within the global stratification, China - which has adopted increasingly strict lockdown policies and border closures - stands like an isolated island, gradually drifting further away from the globalised world. Individuals who identify to any extend with Greater Chinese and Sinophone heritage and culture can feel impacts of these changes, whether based in the region or internationally, due to a shared cultural or ethnic identity.

Like all changes that have taken place in China since the 1980s, the pandemic resembles an accelerated historical process — whether it was the reform and opening-up in the 1980s, the boom of the market economy in the 1990s, the full-scale arrival of the globalisation era after 2008, or the current zero-Covid strategy today. In the wake of unpredictable waves of change, artists tend to gravitate towards taking position as observers and activists of the times.

TEAM

Luka Yuanyuan Yang is a visual artist and filmmaker, and creates visual storytelling through film, photography, artist books and performance. Yang graduated from London College of Communications, University of the Arts London with a BA (hons) in photography. Her work has been exhibited at the Centre for Heritage Arts & Textile, Hong Kong; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; Power Station of Art, Shanghai; Times Art Museum & Times Arts Center Berlin; Chinese American Arts Council, New York and many more.

Yang's work have won awards internationally from organisations such as Art Power 100 (2019); Asian Cultural Council (2017); Huayu Youth Award (2016); Rencontres d’Arles (2015); Magenta Foundation(2013); Three Shadows Tierney Fellowship (2012)

Her short film ‘Coby and Stephen are in Love’ screened at multiple international film festivals such as Atlanta Film Festival, Camden International Film Festival, Asian American International Film Festival and Women Make Waves. In 2021, the film was published on The New Yorker. Her first feature 'Women’s World' has attracted widespread attention nationally and abroad, and has won awards and praise in the industry section of Pingyao International Film Festival, Doc Edge Documentary Festival, CNEX, Shanyi International Women’s Film Festival. The film will be released in 2023.

Bingfeng Dong is a curator, critic and producer based in Beijing. Dong currently holds the position of Academic Director at Xie Zilong Photography Museum and is a Research Fellow at the School of Inter-media Art at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou. Since 2005, Dong has served as Curator at Guangdong Museum of Art and UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Deputy Director at Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Art Director of Li Xianting’s Film Fund, and Academic Director of OCAT Institute. In 2013, Dong was awarded the CCAA Chinese Contemporary Art Critic Award. In 2015, he was awarded the Chinese Contemporary Art Critic Award by Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. In 2017, he was recipient of the Robert H.N.Ho Family Foundation Greater China Research Grant.

Alvin Li is a curator and writer. He currently serves as Adjunct Curator, Greater China, supported by the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation, at Tate; and a contributing editor of frieze magazine. He has curated exhibitions at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; ParaSite, Hong Kong; chi K11 Art Museum, Shanghai; and Antenna Space, Shanghai, among others. Li’s writing on contemporary art and culture has appeared in monographs and anthologies published by the New Museum, New York; Dancing Foxes Press; MIT Press; and Sternberg Press. In 2015 he co-founded CINEMQ, an independent, non-profit film and publishing platform dedicated to Chinese and East Asian independent queer film productions.