Arts & Communication

Mapping and Taking Academic Turns in Collection History Studies: Reflections on the Issues of the Journal of the History of Collections

Da Zeng — 2023-03-01

This paper translates and collates the contents of all the issues published by the Journal of the History of Collections, one of Oxford University Press Academic Journals, since its inception in 1989. It presents a detailed analysis of changes of article topics or themes in the Journal, based on which this paper demonstrates that the focus of research in this field has undergone three shifts on a decennial basis. By examining collectors’ social identities, motives for collecting, and changes in collection categories, this paper provides important insights into a theoretical framework that sustains the scholarship. It also provides a preliminary overview of current studies on the history of collections in both Chinese and Western academia. This paper seeks to provide some guidance for future explorations of the scholarship.

A montage of small movements

Petra Johnson — 2023-04-20

In 2016, I was invited by musician/composer B6 to devise a participatory work for the recently opened art space Reformer art in Hunan Lu, Shanghai. I had been intrigued by a question posed by human geographer Nigel Thrift: What happens if we look on kindness as a technology rather than an emotion; a way of producing generosity in the body, a positive affective swirl? If we produce maps of spaces in new sensory registers like geographies of kindness, might these “geographies. then leak out into the wider world?”...1 An observation by Mark Twain on the dynamics of rivers, guided my approach to distinguish three motions while exploring kindness in the built environment: turbulences (random acts of kindness), ripples (the effect on us when watching and relating such acts), and finally currents (reassuring myself and my companions that acts of kindness are part of a human undercurrent). With generous technical support from the team, I was able to install a large, circular map that covered a 20-min walking radius of the neighborhood. A projection of wandering ripples programmed to light up the locations where my walking companions had identified an act of kindness slowly changed the focus and purpose of the map toward emphasizing ephemeral moments, moments that energize our affective landscape. As signs of ongoing processes, these moments were not part of determinant systems; instead, they were undeclared yet consequential actions. During Chinese New Year 2017, I revisited the locations that had hosted acts of kindness back in November 2016 and from these reflections – A reading with my feet – The following transcript for a meditative film essay on movement and how it agitates the air; on environments and the incipient; on kindness as technology and kindness as an emotion, emerged. See https://vimeo.com/215920711.

Decoding art communication studies in the age of digital technology: Toward the redefining and reshaping of the medium

Mu Xi — 2022-12-14

The new age of consumption demands that art communication studies be redefined and reshaped. Media and media innovation have been main concerns in the research of art communication. Integration experience is becoming the core of the innovation of new consumption in China, as infrastructure, media content, consumption context, and structure change under the influence of digital scenarios. New forms of media revolutionize art communication media, which are being reshaped in aspects of communication such as form, content, function, and carrier. The reshaping is happening with the development of theories and new forms of business, emergence of new consumption, new technology integration, media integration, and so on. Therefore, the life-changing development of media integration determines the strategic and practical significance of the third media.

An analysis of hybrid music and ethnicity in Quangang Beiguan

Jin Song — 2023-05-15

Quangang Beiguan, widespread in Quangang District, Quanzhou, also spreads to Hui’an County, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and elsewhere. In 2006, it was included in the first batch of representative protection projects inscribed in the National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of China. Taking this paper as a unique showcase for Chinese traditional culture, the translator sticks to the vernacular names with English translations and/or romanization beside. Beiguan consists of two parts: one is qu (“songs”) featuring lyrics, the other pu (“notation”) characterized by purely instrumental music, with a total of more than 200 pieces remaining. Relative to Nanguan (Nanyin, literally meaning “southern pipes”), “Bei” in Beiguan, which means “north” in English, refers to the north of southern Fujian, especially the Jianghuai area. Beiguan’s tunes and many of its musical instruments come from the north, and they are sung in Mandarin Chinese. This is quite strange given that the people of Minnan in Southern Fujian Province only love to speak their own local dialects. Mandarin with a Hokkien accent, coupled with the characteristic local musical instruments in the Minnan region, Beiguan has formed part of local music genres. Beiguan is a near-relative hybrid music mixing the music cultures of adjacent areas within the Han ethnic group.

Wang Yiming: Edges of the inaccessible

Grégory Jouanneau-Damance — 2023-03-06