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Inter-area/Border Crossing
Katherine Mezur
Freie Universität Berlin, United States
Katherine Mezur
Freie Universität Berlin, United States
Yatin Lin
Taipei National University of the Arts, Taiwan (Republic of China)
Minwoo (Minu) Park
University of California, Irvine, United States
Haeree Choi
The Graduate School of Performing Arts
Ewha Womans University, Republic of Korea
Katherine Mezur
Freie Universität Berlin, United States
Tarryn Li-Min Chun
University of Notre Dame, United States
This panel dives directly into this moment of pandemic, protest, planetary degradation, and human crisis through the examination of convergence within and across contemporary performing and media arts and artists, who interact across "Asias." With the COVID-19 virus revealing the absurdity of borders and the danger of supremacist culturalisms and nationalisms, artists, artworks, and new media have moved faster and in greater numbers to "distant" and online experiments and critical discussions of art-making in a new normal beyond any one culture. As the virus spreads globally, the separateness of a mono-identity-culture breaks down with this sharing of a deadly illness. However, operating against the pandemic's revelation of global vulnerability, governments, here, Korea, China, Japan, and Taiwan, take pride in their "special" way of protecting their citizens. These regressive messages reflect separatist strategies. In contrast, performing and media artists from Korea, Taiwan, China, and Japan reveal much more futuristic, dynamic, and productive "PostAsia" methodologies where content, techniques, and critical thinking drive the artists' focus on issues. These methods operate now in the networked media of popular culture, like Instagram, facebook or YouTube, and international performance and film festivals. Our panelists suggest that when artists deploy media with art-making, they create radical activist acts of PostAsia convergence cultures. We crossover film, performance, and social media to work though these questions: What can we do beyond this COVID-19 moment? Do these artists' acts accelerate and propel us into a realm of radical heritage? While we valorize the local can we deploy an Asian-futurist vision? Can we create a diverse PostAsia to collectivize alternative futures through these creative acts?
Paper Presenter: Yatin Lin – Taipei National University of the Arts
Paper Presenter: Minwoo (Minu) Park – University of California, Irvine
Paper Presenter: Haeree Choi – Ewha Womans University
Paper Presenter: Katherine Mezur – Freie Universität Berlin