Class Details

Ephemeral Architectures: early performance and video art from China is co-curated by Dr. Ellen Larson and her Fall 2023 Approaches to Contemporary Chinese Art course. Student curators include:

Mayur Bajaj (Philosophy, Public Policy and Statistics)
Derek Chu (4th year, Economics, Philosophy)
Steven Jiao (MAPSS, Statistics)
Eva Jiao (Harris MAPP)
Olivia Lai (3rd year, Art History)
Emily Lin (4th year, Art History, Economics)
Peter Minkoff (4th year, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Economics)
Neil Sashti (4th year, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Biology [minor])
Feifei Wang (MFA, Visual Arts)
Jess Xiong (3rd year, Economics, Philosophy)
Miki Yang (3rd year, Art History, Economics)
Henie Zhang (3rd year, Art History, Creative Writing)
Chloe Zhong (4th year, Art History, Economics)

Digital Collection

The Wu Hung Contemporary Chinese Video Art Archive is available to the UChicago community via CNetID login, including alumni via the LUNA database managed by the Visual Resources Center (VRC). Researchers not affiliated with the University of Chicago are invited to request guest access to the collection by completing this brief form, which will ask for your name, date of birth, and address. Requests for access require approval from IT Services and will be processed in approximately 3 business days.

Through his work with contemporary artists, Wu Hung, Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History and the College, has developed a collection of rare contemporary Chinese art documents saved in their original analog VHS format. These VHS tapes include both seldom and never before seen documents of performance art from the 1990s, exhibition views from groundbreaking exhibitions staged throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, as well as works of early contemporary video art.

In August 2022, Dr. Ellen Larson conducted the initial inventory and cataloging of Professor Wu Hung’s video archive and taught with several of these video materials in her Autumn 2022 iteration of the course, “Approaches to Contemporary Chinese Art.” With support from the Center for East Asian Studies, the VHS tapes were digitized by Media Burn Archive.During Summer 2023, Jiahe Wang, a fourth-year College student majoring in Art History and Economics, worked with Dr. Larson and VRC staff to research and create robust, bilingual metadata records for the collection in LUNA. Students in Dr. Larson’s Autumn 2023 iteration of the course, “Approaches to Contemporary Chinese Art,” utilized the newly digitized and described archive as part of their research for their curatorial and written assignments for this website and the course.

Wu Hung Contemporary Chinese Video Art Archive面对芝加哥大学社区成员以及校友开放使用权限，用户可以通过CNetID直接登录访问，或通过Visual  Resources Center（VRC）管理的LUNA数据库获得使用权限。非隶属于芝加哥大学的研究人员可以通过填写表单提交访问请求，表单将要求申请者提供姓名、出生日期和地址等信息。访问请求需要获得IT部门的批准，我们将在约为3个工作日内处理申请。 

巫鸿教授是芝加哥大学Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History and the College 。巫鸿教授通过与当代艺术家的合作，积累了一份珍稀的当代中国艺术文献档案，这些文献以其原始的VHS格式保存。这些VHS文件包含了1990年代的鲜为人知、前所未见的表演艺术文献、1990年代和2000年代初的重要展览记录、以及早期当代录像艺术作品。 

2022年8月，赖青琳博士对巫鸿教授的视频档案进行了初步清点和编目工作，并在她于2022年秋季开设的“Approaches to Contemporary Chinese Art”课程中初次使用了这些视频材料。随后，在Center for East Asian Studies的支持下，Media Burn Archive对这些VHS磁带进行了数字化处理。在2023年夏季，艺术史和经济学专业的大四学生Jiahe Wang、赖青琳博士以及VRC工作人员进行了进一步研究工作，在LUNA数据库中为该档案馆创建了丰富的双语元数据档案。在赖青琳博士于2023年秋季开设的“Approaches to Contemporary Chinese Art”课程中，学生们初次使用这一崭新的、数字化档案进行研究，完成了策展以及书面作业，呈现于本网站上。