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Questions to keep thinking about
Mao Jian is a professor at East China Normal University.
Mao Jian: In 2021, I continue to watch films since 1949, and I am also thinking about the legacy and problems of socialist films, and the part involving Shanghai is my focus.
Huang Xiaofeng is a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and vice dean of the School of Humanities.
Huang Xiaofeng: The issues I am concerned about in 2021 are also reflected in my research, and one of the bigger questions is how to reflect on classic works. This may not be a new problem, as there are already ways to reflect on the classics and rethink ancient works of art. But reflection still needs methods and angles, not generalizations and a big hat for classics. So I want to uncover the classics from the basic level of painting images, layer by layer, so as to gain a new understanding, that is, to return to the simple image system of the work itself for research.
For example, I did several studies in 2021, about the Collection of the Palace Museum and the "You Chun Tu" written by Zhan Ziqian of the Sui Dynasty, and the "Sketching Rare Bird Diagram" made by the Collection of the Palace Museum and handed down to the five generations of Huang Xiao. Reflecting on the classics will make us better think about how the ancient classics and today can collide in the context of the current technical conditions and updated knowledge.
Dong Bingfeng, curator, is a researcher at the School of Cross-Media Arts of the China Academy of Fine Arts.
Dong Bingfeng: Art and Society. Or rather, how today's artistic practices are more closely involved in social and cultural issues and convey more effective public values.
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Books to watch
Mao Jian: The Beast and the Sovereign, just published (volume 1), by Derrida and translated by Wang Qin. In fact, I would like to say that the "Spiritual Translation Series" launched by Northwest University Press, edited by Chen Yue and Xu Ye, translated by the Academic Dream Team, and launched by Northwest University Press, needs to be well discussed and read intensively, such as the books of Althusser that they continue to translate. Althusser insisted that "in the whole social formation, the priority of the lower building to the superstructure" and "in the class struggle, the priority of anti-exploitation over anti-oppression" can be truly embraced if these can constitute the consensus of governance in the twenty-first century. The importance of this series of translations is bound to continue into the next century, so there is no reason not to go to this century.
The Beast and the Sovereign (Volume 1), by Jacques Derrida [France], translated by Qin Wang, edition: Northwestern University Press, December 2021
Huang Xiaofeng: I think that the current research on ancient Japanese art has not received enough attention to a certain extent, whether it is the research of Japanese scholars or European and American scholars. For example, in 2021 I read several books by Timon Screech, a scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Timon Screech studies the history of Japanese art from the perspective of social history, such as the relationship between Japanese art and the West in the Edo period, how to understand love in ukiyo-e, and so on. The angle is novel and inspires me a lot. His works have been published since the 1990s, and to this day, he has written a lot of books, but there are very few domestic translations.
Works by Timon Screech
Dong Bingfeng: Benjamin Bratton's True Revenge. The most timely and challenging writing during the global pandemic.