Qian Cui
Title
Dr.
Last Name
Cui
First name
Qian
Email
qian.cui@unisg.ch
Now showing 1 - 10 of 11
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Item type:Publication, Speaking Truth to Power: China's Artists, Poets and Netizens on the Russo-Ukrainian War, 2022-Present(2024-02-01); When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin felt confident in Xi Jinping’s support, cemented by pledges of a ‘no-limits friendship’. While the world looked to China for a resolution to the crisis, China’s official media touted Russian propaganda in their coverage of the war while censoring Ukrainian news and pro-Ukrainian perspectives. Despite the risks, Chinese artists, poets and netizens have been exploring the new social media as alternative avenues for creativity to express their views, posting visual art and literature such as poetry, painting and photography in support of Ukraine. This talk will analyse selected works to discover how they ‘speak truth to power’. The Euripidean concept of parrhesia, ‘speaking truth to power’—or literally ‘saying everything one has in mind’—denotes freedom of expression, transparency, duty, idle talk and gossip. Foucault (1983) has pointed out that truth-tellers face risk or danger but feel bound by duty to muster the courage and ‘speak truth to power’. Here I argue that China’s vernacular culture draws on its indigenous tradition of parrhesia, celebrating freedom of expression in visual or literary narratives, fuelled by the storytellers’ sense of duty to their country to ‘speak truth to power’. In the time-honoured tradition of the xiaoshuo—originally meaning small talk or gossip—the new artists and authors brave the risks to use social media as vehicles of expression for their indirect yet scathing critiques of power. References Foucault, Michel, Henri-Paul Fruchaud and Daniele Lorenzini, “Discourse and Truth” and “Parresia”, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019.Type:conference lecture - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Speaking Truth to Power: Parrhesia and Perceptions of the Russo-Ukrainian War in Chinese Online Poetry and Visual Narratives, 2022-Present(2024-05-23); When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin felt confident in Xi Jinping’s support, cemented by pledges of a ‘no-limits friendship’. While the world looked to China for a resolution to the crisis, China’s social media touted Russian propaganda in their coverage of the war while censoring Ukrainian news and pro-Ukrainian perspectives. Despite the risks, Chinese artists, poets and netizens have been exploring the new social media as alternative avenues for creativity to express their views, posting visual art and literature such as poetry, painting and photography in support of Ukraine. This talk will analyse selected works to discover how they ‘speak truth to power’. The Euripidean concept of parrhesia, ‘speaking truth to power’—or literally ‘saying everything one has in mind’—denotes freedom of expression, transparency, duty, idle talk and gossip. Foucault (1983) has pointed out that truth-tellers face risk or danger but feel bound by duty to muster the courage and ‘speak truth to power’. Here I argue that China’s vernacular culture draws on its indigenous tradition of parrhesia, celebrating freedom of expression in visual or literary narratives, fuelled by the storytellers’ sense of duty to their country to ‘speak truth to power’. In the time-honoured tradition of the xiaoshuo—originally meaning small talk or gossip—the new artists and authors brave the risks to use social media as vehicles of expression for their indirect yet scathing critiques of power.Type:conference lecture - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, ‘China and the Art of War: Perceptions of the Russo-Ukrainian War in Chinese Online Poetry and Visual Art Narratives, 2022-Present’(2024-08-29); Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022 has rocked our understanding of the geopolitical world order and the role of war in the twenty-first century. China’s official reactions and its relations with Russia have confounded the world. Xi Jinping’s newly pledged ‘no-limits friendship’ with Putin manifested in China’s official media touting Putin’s war propaganda while censoring pro-Ukrainian news. Scholarly debates and global media have dissected the Russo-Ukrainian war from political, economic and social angles, yet few studies analyse Chinese unofficial reactions in popular culture. Chinese cyberspace has become a battleground for contesting discourses from China’s vernacular culture and the officially sanctioned culture of the Party State. This study responds to the urgent need to deepen our understanding of China’s vernacular culture by artistic and cultural perceptions of the war as seen in online poetry and visual art. Using Foucault’s concept of parrhesia (‘speaking truth to power’) with its connotations of freedom of expression, transparency, duty and gossip (Foucault, 1983), this study aims to explore China’s indigenous tradition of a vernacular culture ‘speaking truth to power’ in poetry on Weibo and WeChat and visual art narratives by Cao Fei, Huang Rui, Qi Shaoting, Li Qiang, Deng Kangyan and Badiucao in China and abroad. It will shed new light on how artists and writers brave the risks to go against the Party line and show solidarity with Ukraine, while voicing direct and indirect critiques of autocracy. This paper is jointly authored by Daria Berg and Qian Cui.Type:conference lecture - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, ‘War and the Anthropocene: Chinese Visual and Poetic Narratives, 2022-Present’(2024-11-14); War counts among the Anthropocene’s great discontents, and voicing discontent about war requires great courage. A leaked document reveals that Putin and Xi Jinping had signed an agreement on media mirroring months before their pledges of a ‘no-limits friendship’ at the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022. When Russia attacked Ukraine, China’s social media touted Russian propaganda in their war coverage while censoring Ukrainian news and pro-Ukrainian perspectives. The Euripidean concept of parrhesia, ‘speaking truth to power’—or literally ‘saying everything one has in mind’—denotes freedom of expression, transparency, and duty, but also idle talk and gossip. Foucault (1983) has pointed out that truth-tellers face risk or danger but feel bound by duty to muster the courage and ‘speak truth to power’. Despite the risks, Chinese artists, poets and netizens from China, Hong Kong and the diaspora have voiced their discontent with Xi Jinping’s support of the Russian war by exploring alternative avenues for creativity, posting visual art and poetry on social media in support of Ukraine. This talk will analyse dominant themes in artworks by Cao Fei, Huang Rui, and Badiucao, and poems by Liao Weitang, Deng Kangyan and Xi Yongjun to discover how they ‘speak truth to power’. Here we argue that China’s vernacular culture draws on its indigenous tradition of parrhesia, celebrating freedom of expression in visual or literary narratives, fuelled by the storytellers’ sense of duty to their country to ‘speak truth to power’. The new artists and authors brave the risks of using social media as vehicles of expression for their indirect critiques of power.Type:conference lecture - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Beyond the ‘China Dream’: Re-Imagining Communities in Contemporary Chinese Art and Poetry on the Russo-Ukrainian War(2024-05-27); By examining contemporary Chinese art and poetry on the Russo-Ukrainian War, we endeavor to investigate: • how art and poetry forge bonds across national, racial, ethnic, gender and class divides; and • how these works exhibit commitment to alternative forms of community building beyond the nation, which preoccupies narratives about the war. Works by: # Iverson Rangi, an Indigenous artist from the Taroko (Truku) tribe in Taiwan; # LBWS, a Ukrainian artist group; # Yana, a Ukrainian artist and a friend affiliated to LBWS Taiwanese and Ukrainian wildlife depicted as "party animals"Type:conference lecture - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Beyond the Nation: Re-imagining Communities in Contemporary Chinese Art and Poetry on the Russo-Ukrainian War Zehnte Nachwuchstagung der SAG und SGMOIK 9. May 2024(2024-05-09); By examining contemporary Chinese art and poetry on the Russo-Ukrainian War, we endeavor to investigate: • how art and poetry forge bonds across national, racial, ethnic, gender and class divides; and • how these works exhibit commitment to alternative forms of community building beyond the nation, which preoccupies narratives about the war. Works by: # Iverson Rangi, an Indigenous artist from the Taroko (Truku) tribe in Taiwan; # LBWS, a Ukrainian artist group; # Yana, a Ukrainian artist and a friend affiliated to LBWS Taiwanese and Ukrainian wildlife depicted as "party animals"Type:conference lecture - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Re-imagining Communities in Contemporary Chinese Art and Poetry on the Russo-Ukrainian War(2024-08-30); By examining contemporary Chinese art and poetry on the Russo-Ukrainian War, we endeavor to investigate: • how art and poetry forge bonds across national, racial, ethnic, gender and class divides; and • how these works exhibit commitment to alternative forms of community building beyond the nation, which preoccupies narratives about the war. Works by: # Iverson Rangi, an Indigenous artist from the Taroko (Truku) tribe in Taiwan; # LBWS, a Ukrainian artist group; # Yana, a Ukrainian artist and a friend affiliated to LBWS Taiwanese and Ukrainian wildlife depicted as "party animals"Type:conference lecture - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Art under Lockdown: Artists, Bloggers and the China Nightmare in the time of Covid-19(2024-03-21); When Xi Jinping announced the ‘China Dream’ (Zhongguo meng)—in analogy to the famous American Dream—as socio-political motto of his rule in 2012, he defined the ambiguous concept as the ‘rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’. Over the course of his government, it has become clear that there is not only the one single China Dream propagated by the official media, but many dreams circulating in China’s vernacular cultures as opposed to the officially ordained culture of the Party State. Moreover Xi’s China Dream has become overshadowed by a series of nightmares: The Covid-19 pandemic; the Ukrainian leg of Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative in ruins; and prolonged internal lockdowns entailing public demonstrations demanding Xi’s resignation. Much scholarship and global media have examined the official China Dream, yet few studies have analysed China’s nightmares. This study seeks to redress this shortfall by analysing the nightmares of the Covid-19 pandemic and its lockdowns from the cultural perspective. This study examines bottom-up responses to top-down control measures through the artistic lens, focusing on online visual art narratives by male and female artists and bloggers in China and abroad: Cao Fei, Ye Funa, Hu Yinping, Michael Leung, Hu Jieming, Sun Xun and Ai Weiwei. This study will shed new light on China’s contemporary vernacular culture in the digital age and its visual art narratives on the theme of the China Dream and its nightmares, experimenting with direct and indirect strategies to critique the regime.Type:conference lecture - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Speaking Truth to Power: China's Artists, Poets and Netizens on the Russo-Ukrainian War, 2022-Present(2024-05-08); “Speaking Truth to Power: Parrhesia and Perceptions of the Russo-Ukrainian War in Chinese Online Poetry and Visual Narratives, 2022-Present” Daria Berg & Qian Cui, University of St.Gallen, St.Gallen, Switzerland Abstract SAG Nachwuchstagung, Basel 8-10 May 2024 When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin felt confident in Xi Jinping’s support, cemented by pledges of a ‘no-limits friendship’. While the world looked to China for a resolution to the crisis, China’s official media touted Russian propaganda in their coverage of the war while censoring Ukrainian news and pro-Ukrainian perspectives. Despite the risks, Chinese artists, poets and netizens have been exploring the new social media as alternative avenues for creativity to express their views, posting visual art and literature such as poetry, painting and photography in support of Ukraine. This talk will analyse selected works to discover how they ‘speak truth to power’. The Euripidean concept of parrhesia, ‘speaking truth to power’—or literally ‘saying everything one has in mind’—denotes freedom of expression, transparency, duty, idle talk and gossip. Foucault (1983) has pointed out that truth-tellers face risk or danger but feel bound by duty to muster the courage and ‘speak truth to power’. Here I argue that China’s vernacular culture draws on its indigenous tradition of parrhesia, celebrating freedom of expression in visual or literary narratives, fuelled by the storytellers’ sense of duty to their country to ‘speak truth to power’. In the time-honoured tradition of the xiaoshuo—originally meaning small talk or gossip—the new artists and authors brave the risks to use social media as vehicles of expression for their indirect yet scathing critiques of power. References Foucault, Michel, Henri-Paul Fruchaud and Daniele Lorenzini, “Discourse and Truth” and “Parresia”, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019.Type:conference lecture - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Multi-temporalities and Parallel Spaces: Utopia, Dystopia and Digital Worldbuilding in Chinese Online Alternate History Fiction(2024-11-22); Alternate history fiction (jiakong lishi xiaoshuo 架空历史小说) ranks among the most popular genres of online fiction in China. It constructs utopian and dystopian worlds to explore avenues of alternate history, expressing social critique through metaphors to escape political censorship. Time travel appears as a favorite plot device to set up narrative frames in alternate history fiction, making temporality a crucial narrative tool to connect representations of both perceived reality and imagined utopian and dystopian worlds. Time travel distorts and deconstructs the linear sequence of past, present and future, leading to other forms of temporality such as cyclic time, eternal time and timelessness while remaining rooted in traditional Chinese culture and religion. This paper examines the co-existence of different forms of time in four online fictional narratives: Qing yunian 庆余年 (Joy of Live) by Mao Ni 猫腻; Zhang gongzhu 长公主(The Princess Royal; aka the TV drama Du huanian度华年, The Years of Life) by Mo Shubai 墨书白; Xin Song 新宋 (The New Song Dynasty) by A Yue 阿越; and Lingao qi Ming 临高启明 (Inspiring the Ming Dynasty from the Top) by Chuiniu zhe 吹牛者. They all illustrate how multi-temporal representations of the world in popular fiction use utopian and dystopian visions to reflect on perceived reality. We argue that alternate history fiction manifests Chinese netizens’ nostalgic longings for a glorified past while contributing to digital worldbuilding, providing insights into the dreams, nightmares, self-awareness and social aspirations of China’s younger generations including millennials, Gen Z and Gen Y—the children of the digital revolution. The study aims to enhance our understanding of Chinese popular and vernacular cultures and online literature.Type:conference lecture