150027 SE The Art of Protest: Activism and Resistance in Sinophone Cultures (2024W)

This seminar examines practices and representations of protest in Sinophone cultures. It combines the cultural analysis of protest and of protest cultures as expressive artistic articulations with the analysis of cultural and artistic production generated during and in response to significant historical events, protest actions, and social movements in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan to explore the intersections between contentious politics, art activism, and cultural resistance.

On the one hand, the seminar will address the relationship between protest and performance as a central aspect in the analysis of protest as artistic expression and, conversely, of the artistic expressions of protest. Selected critical readings will be presented to explore the notion of protest as performance, drawing attention to the use of the language and strategies of performance in the theory and practice of protest and its embodied dimensions: movements, scenes, repertoires, actions, actors, scripts, improvisational tactics, elements of ritual, carnival and other performative features.

On the other hand, the seminar will explore the symbolic politics of representation, narrative, aesthetics and visual imagery associated with contemporary histories of protest and socio-politically engaged art. Selected documentaries, feature films, literary works, theatre productions and other media and creative practices such as visual and performance art, photography, and music will be discussed and compared.

Other key aspects will be the relationship between protest movements and cultural memory –looking at issues of witnessing and testimony, memorialisation and memory activism, documentary and archival practices – and the formation of collective identities shaped by both direct political participation and participatory modes of creative production and reception.

Additional points of discussion will include the technologies of protest, protest in digital spaces, the impact of digital online media on protest cultures, the role of humour and satire in protest actions, and others.

By the end of the seminar, students will have acquired a comprehensive understanding of the cultures and arts of protest in the contemporary Sinosphere, also in relation to global protest aesthetics and repertoires. They will have familiarised themselves with relevant theories and methods of textual and visual analysis, and developed critical tools for analysing protest practices and their cultural and artistic manifestations.