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The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Events
Thursday, 10 February 2022, 16:00Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main
Lecture series »Sinophone Classicism« | online lecture
Markus Nornes (University of Michigan)
»Translating Calligraphy«
Registration and participation
For the Zoom registration link, please click
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About the lecture
Calligraphy and cinema have an intimate relationship in East Asia. Indeed, the ubiquity of the brushed word in cinema is one element that actually ties works in Korean, Japanese and Sinophone Asia together as a regional cinema. On first glance, cinema and calligraphy would appear as radically different art forms. On second glance, they present themselves as sister arts. Both are art forms built from records of the human body moving in (an absent) time and space. How does one adequately subtitle a calligraphic script, attaching the dead letter of Helvetica to a linguistic text whose visual materiality is so spectacularly central to meaning making? How does investigating this very problem lead us to rethinking the nature of the cinematic subtitle, which is very much alive―a truly movable type?
About the speaker
Markus Nornes is Professor of Asian Cinema in both the Department of Film, Television and Media Studies and the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. Most of his work is on Japanese cinema, particularly the documentary tradition. He has published widely on the Japanese pink film, Korean Hallyu, Taiwanese cinema, Chinese film festivals, and film translation. In 2021, his Open Access monograph on calligraphy in East Asian cinema was published: Brushed in Light (University of Michigan Press).
About the lecture series
In recent years, literary and cultural works that evoke the cultural memories of classical Chinese traditions are gaining popularity in the global Sinitic-languages space and cyberspace. From literary to visual culture, from pop music to fashion, from state policies to daily rituals, these classicist articulations present Chineseness as complicated, multifaceted, multilingual, and cross-cultural. They raise important questions on the relevance of Chinese traditions today to China, to global Chinese communities, and to a future of »world literature«—as Goethe envisioned it nearly two centuries ago. In this multiannual lecture series, prominent scholars, writers, and artists will present fascinating case studies from their research or draw upon their aesthetic practices to elaborate on their understanding on these important questions. Such investigations demonstrate the abundant aesthetic and intellectual resources that the vast repertoire of Chinese cultural memories may provide to engage in a dialogue on the present and future of a global culture.
Concept of the lecture series: Zhiyi Yang, Professor of Sinology, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and Goethe Fellow at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften
