Books by Lu Pan
In the early 1990s, Berlin and Shanghai witnessed the dramatic social changes in both national an... more In the early 1990s, Berlin and Shanghai witnessed the dramatic social changes in both national and global contexts. While in 1991 Berlin became the new capital of the reunified Germany, from 1992 Shanghai began to once again play its role as the most powerful engine of economic development in the post-1989 China. This critical moment of history has fundamentally transformed the later development of both cities, above all in terms of urban spatial order. The construction mania in Shanghai and Berlin shares the
similar aspiration of «re-modernizing» themselves. In this sense, the current experience of Shanghai and Berlin informs many of the features of urban modernity in the post-Cold-War era. The book unfolds the complexity of the urban space per se as highly revealing cultural texts. Also this project doesn’t examine the spatial changes in chronological terms, but rather takes the present moment as the temporal standing point of this research. By comparing the memory discourse related to these spatial changes, the book poses the question of how modernity is understood in the matrix of local, national and global power struggles.
This volume of original essays critically examines the intriguing interplays among major actors a... more This volume of original essays critically examines the intriguing interplays among major actors and venues of creative practices in contemporary East Asian cities. Within many exiting literatures on the idea of creative cities and creative clusters, much attention has been focused on its relation to society on a macro level: creative cities are understood through the lens of creative economy, government policy, creative labor market analysis and management, adaptive urban re-development in the postindustrial cities, and strategic urban planning. Moreover, most of them are interested in Western cases and the ideological, cultural, economic, and social backdrops that can hardly be taken for granted for other societies in the non-Western countries. This book offers a corrective to these trends. Its chapters closely investigate specifically East Asian manifestations of the political and aesthetic decisions made, or not made, in the construction and representation of creative cities, with Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Shanghai coming in for special consideration.
A photo-collage of past and present street visuals in Asia, Aestheticizing Public Space explores ... more A photo-collage of past and present street visuals in Asia, Aestheticizing Public Space explores the domestic, regional, and global nexus of East Asian cities through their graffiti, street art, and other visual forms in public space. Attempting to unfold the complex positions of these images in the urban spatial politics of their respective regions, Lu Pan explores how graffiti in East Asia reflects the relationship between aesthetics and politics. The book situates itself in a contested dynamic relationship among human bodies, visual modernity, social or moral norms, styles, and historical experiences and narratives. On a broader level, this book aims to shed light on how aesthetics and politics are mobilized in different contested spaces and media forms, in which the producer and the spectator change and exchange their identities.
Papers by Lu Pan
Architectural creativity is a contested but enlightening idea in the discourse of China’s booming... more Architectural creativity is a contested but enlightening idea in the discourse of China’s booming creative industry. In this paper, three intriguing phenomena with regard to Chinese architectural creations are examined: the popularity of miniature world theme parks since the late 1980s, the mania of replicating life-size buildings or even entire Western townscapes in Chinese urban suburbs since the 2000s, and, most recently, the popular online poll for “the 10 ugliest buildings in China” since 2010. Although they seem unconnected, these three phenomena are projections of the transforming urban imagination in contemporary China. The paper questions the argument about current architectural duplications as “monumental assertions of China's global primacy” (Carlson 2012). The author argues that these endeavors may imply underlying desires of the Chinese public that have been suppressed in the complicated political and economic situations in post-1989 China.
This paper tries to present the parallel existence of a more publicized narrative of the global c... more This paper tries to present the parallel existence of a more publicized narrative of the global creative city of South Korea and the ‘marginal’ stories of self-organized artists and cultural activists. The study will begin with the official presentation of Seoul as a creative city in its application to join the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. Next, by discussing two case studies, ‘Seoul Urban Art Project’ and AGIT in Busan, the paper unfolds the different meanings of urban space created through languages, visual representations and events that happened outside the official narratives. I contend that there is an interesting relativity between the ‘centrality’ and ‘marginality’ of a particular space, city and a kind of market or community that is constantly changing not only with the shifts of subjectivities that tell the stories, but more importantly, with the ways where the spaces and visual tools are actually occupied, used and distributed. All these may prompt a re-contemplation of the concept of ‘creative city’ not just as a progressive modernist project obsessed with creating the new in the future, but also as a horizontally force field, where encounters of energies on various orders of magnitude may also constitute a powerful creative present.
中国现代文学研究丛刊 第6期 1-27页, Jun 2014
本文试图为有关中国现代主义的讨论带来一种新的视角，并借此对现代主义这一概念本身进行反思。文章没有将欧洲的“极盛现代主义”与由启蒙运动和十九世纪文学现实主义来定义的二十世纪早期的中国文学对立起来，... more 本文试图为有关中国现代主义的讨论带来一种新的视角，并借此对现代主义这一概念本身进行反思。文章没有将欧洲的“极盛现代主义”与由启蒙运动和十九世纪文学现实主义来定义的二十世纪早期的中国文学对立起来，而是将鲁迅看作是一位现代主义作家，并且用比较的方法来强调他与欧洲现代主义的共通之处。通过将《阿Q正传》与布菜希特的《四川好人》、卡夫卡的《中国长城建造时》进行比较，本文认为上述作家都将某种对民主的特殊理解视为定义现代性的特征。这种对民主和现代性的理解方式转化成为一种民主的语言交际框架，在此框架下，道德的规范和历史的规律遭到了破坏和质疑，并在文学作品的内部留下了一个“空虚的场所”，而这个场所恰恰与现代民主内部的空洞遥相呼应。
Public Art Dialogue Volume 4, Issue 1, 2014 Special Issue: Murals
This article uses two specific cases of graffiti in contemporary Hong Kong, the “graffiti girl” i... more This article uses two specific cases of graffiti in contemporary Hong Kong, the “graffiti girl” incident and the work of the “King of Kowloon,” to divulge some of the neglected origins of cultural anxieties in Hong Kong. Using Alexandre Kojève's idea of “the end of history” (1980), the article argues that the two cases combine to unfold the real tension and dilemma of Hong Kong today: a tension not only between a “free” Hong Kong versus a totalitarian PRC but, more acutely, a tension between a Hong Kong that believes it is making/experiencing history and a City that has already passed the end of history. The article illustrates this paradox through an exploration into the relationship between graffiti and graffiti artists on the one hand, and the public, cultural institutions and the authorities, on the other hand. The goal of this essay is to show how aesthetic forms mobilize themselves and illuminate Hong Kong's society attitude towards politics.
Writing the War in Asia - A documentary History (U Essex, HKU and U Konstanz)
《文化研究》第十五期, Nov 2013
Considering present-day Shanghai as a palimpsest, or a cityscape of a spectrum of diverse values ... more Considering present-day Shanghai as a palimpsest, or a cityscape of a spectrum of diverse values and elements, this paper tries to understand how nostalgia works in the spatial fabric of Shanghai. In comparison with the ideas that assume that the local as a single end of the power relations in globalization, which is usually conceived as a victim or a tool in either nationalism and global capitalism, I argue that, rather than directly elicit nostalgia as a form of commodity fetishism, globalization provides a lens under which we observe that the historical tension between local and national dichotomies, or more precisely the rival understandings of Chinese modernity, is the intrinsic cause of Shanghai nostalgia.
Continuum, Nov 12, 2013
This paper examines three cases of graffiti production characterized by showing the connections b... more This paper examines three cases of graffiti production characterized by showing the connections between three key ideas (aura, carnival, and publicity) in the context of contemporary China. This paper attempts to construct a paradigm for this particular cultural phenomenon by analysing three cases situated in three different social levels. First, graffiti as artwork, as exhibited by the contemporary artist Zhang Dali, is discussed. Second, sponsorship of graffiti culture by the local government is studied. The last and most controversial topic of discussion is how graffiti's online circulation reflects civil society in China. This paper explores the complex intersection of street culture, public space, and media. In revolving around the questions of what defines graffiti producers and spectators, what can be said about graffiti-writing practices, and who has the ability to speak out, this discussion illustrates the extent to which graffiti can be understood as a means of public communication against the backdrop of, and amid the moments of crisis in, the construction of modern Chinese cities. This paper illustrates how the aesthetics and the politics of representational forms and their intermediality are mobilized in a variety of contested spaces, where producer and spectator change and exchange identities.
European Journal of East Asian Studies, Oct 16, 2013
This paper compares the nostalgia culture of urban space in contemporary Berlin and Shanghai. In ... more This paper compares the nostalgia culture of urban space in contemporary Berlin and Shanghai. In Berlin, the nostalgia for both pre-WWII Berlin space and East Berlin street culture prove attractive. In Shanghai, spaces that associate with the 1930s’ Shanghai bourgeois life win high popularity among the local. Rather than understanding nostalgia in local-global tension, this article argues that the spatial nostalgia in both cities is related to the local resistance to the predominant national narrative in exhibiting competing understandings of modernity.
Online Journal Spaces of Identity, Vol 8, No 1 (2008): Special ›Olympics‹ Issue, The Canadian Center for German and European Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada
Culture Unbound, Volume 4, Article 7, 2012, pp121- 146. Linköping, Sweden Linköpings University Electronic Press
Media Fields Journal, UC Santa Barbara, Issue 5, August, 2012, pp1-14, “Memory, Space and Media"
Book Reviews by Lu Pan
New Frontiers in Asian Scholarship, April 9, 2012, Harvard-Yenching Institute
Conference Presentations by Lu Pan
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Books by Lu Pan
similar aspiration of «re-modernizing» themselves. In this sense, the current experience of Shanghai and Berlin informs many of the features of urban modernity in the post-Cold-War era. The book unfolds the complexity of the urban space per se as highly revealing cultural texts. Also this project doesn’t examine the spatial changes in chronological terms, but rather takes the present moment as the temporal standing point of this research. By comparing the memory discourse related to these spatial changes, the book poses the question of how modernity is understood in the matrix of local, national and global power struggles.
Papers by Lu Pan
Book Reviews by Lu Pan
Conference Presentations by Lu Pan
similar aspiration of «re-modernizing» themselves. In this sense, the current experience of Shanghai and Berlin informs many of the features of urban modernity in the post-Cold-War era. The book unfolds the complexity of the urban space per se as highly revealing cultural texts. Also this project doesn’t examine the spatial changes in chronological terms, but rather takes the present moment as the temporal standing point of this research. By comparing the memory discourse related to these spatial changes, the book poses the question of how modernity is understood in the matrix of local, national and global power struggles.