Chen Ronghui (b.1989) is a Chinese photographer based in Shanghai. His work focuses on China's ur... more Chen Ronghui (b.1989) is a Chinese photographer based in Shanghai. His work focuses on China's urbanization and de/industrialization, particularly the issues arising from the position of the individual within their shifting urban environment. While China's drastic urbanization since its 1980s’ economic reform has been examined by various photographers, Chen's “urban landscape” trilogy, completed over the past decade, offers neither a panoramic view of China's urbanization nor close-ups of specific social and environmental issues; rather, it captures China's uneven development in three distinct locations and moments in time: chemical plants outside Hangzhou after an acid spill, Shanghai after the opening of the first Disneyland in mainland China, and the shrinking cities in the northeastern Rust Belt. In this interview, Chen speaks on his transition from photojournalism to art photography, specifically his experiment with large-format photography, as well as the conundrum of depicting social issues while exploring photography as a universal language.
In November 2014, the brutal murder of Hu Yuan’e, a 56-year-old Chinese sex worker living in Bell... more In November 2014, the brutal murder of Hu Yuan’e, a 56-year-old Chinese sex worker living in Belleville, one of the most racially and culturally diverse quarters of Paris, shocked the French public. Hu was part of a rapidly growing group of illegal migrant sex workers in France from China’s northeastern “Rust Belt.”1 In the 1990s, China’s Northeast (dongbei) including Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces, the former bastion of state-owned heavy industry, underwent a massive state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform (guoqigaige) as part of Deng Xiaoping’s “Reform and Opening-up Policy” (gaige kaifang). This resulted in large-scale SOE bankruptcies and some over 35 million SOE workers being laid off (Cai, Park, and Zhao, 2008, 177). Due to the shifting structure of the labor market and persistent gender bias, women’s reemployment was especially challenging.2 Many left the region in search for job opportunities abroad, which at once provided some degree of social and economic mobility and exposed them to exploitation and danger. This study traces the trajectories of women’s outmigration from China’s northeast, through both empirical studies and film analyses, with a special focus on women’s market-driven, illegal migrations to the West as domestic helpers and/or sex workers. Specifically, this article explores the ways in which migrant women, in the face of increasing precarity, negotiate for power and a sense of self identity and community in the daily encounters of their outmigration, with both members of their receiving societies and those back home.
In the 1990s, China’s northeast including Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces, the bastio... more In the 1990s, China’s northeast including Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces, the bastion of state-owned heavy industry, underwent a massive state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform engineered by Deng Xiaoping as part of the “Reform and Opening-up Policy,” which resulted in large-scale SOE bankruptcies and some 30 million blue-collar workers being laid off. 20 years after the reform, China’s northeast, once among the most urbanized regions in the country, has effectively become China’s “Rust Belt.” This article examines the cinematic representations of China’s Rust Belt, specifically in China’s northeast, arguing that cinema plays a crucial role in both capturing and interrogating the emergence of new urban spaces and urban subjects amidst the spatial and ideological reorientations of the reform era. It also investigates the ways in which cinematic representations, through a shifting “system of symbols,” mediate the contradictions in the production of urban spaces, cultural norm...
This chapter explores the representation of time in the films of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai.... more This chapter explores the representation of time in the films of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai. Wong’s films display a strong fascination with temporality, its construction, deconstruction, fragmentation, reconstruction, projection, and retrospection. Memory, nostalgia, and amnesia are recurrent motifs in Wong’s films. His film art embodies the principles of the “time-image” in modern cinema, which is a cinema of fragmentation, self-reflexivity, paradox, double and multiple temporalities, non-linear narrative, and inconclusive endings. Using Gilles Deleuze’s concepts of “movement-image” and “time-image,” the chapter looks at various configurations of time in Wong Kai-wai’s films. It focuses especially on Wong’s informal trilogy: Days of Being Wild (1990), In the Mood for Love (2000), and 2046 (2004), in which Wong uses exemplary time-images to explore problems of time and memory in the changing geopolitical and psychosocial landscapes of Hong Kong, attempting to open up a space for its past to negotiate with its unknown future.
Chen Ronghui (b.1989) is a Chinese photographer based in Shanghai. His work focuses on China's ur... more Chen Ronghui (b.1989) is a Chinese photographer based in Shanghai. His work focuses on China's urbanization and de/industrialization, particularly the issues arising from the position of the individual within their shifting urban environment. While China's drastic urbanization since its 1980s’ economic reform has been examined by various photographers, Chen's “urban landscape” trilogy, completed over the past decade, offers neither a panoramic view of China's urbanization nor close-ups of specific social and environmental issues; rather, it captures China's uneven development in three distinct locations and moments in time: chemical plants outside Hangzhou after an acid spill, Shanghai after the opening of the first Disneyland in mainland China, and the shrinking cities in the northeastern Rust Belt. In this interview, Chen speaks on his transition from photojournalism to art photography, specifically his experiment with large-format photography, as well as the conundrum of depicting social issues while exploring photography as a universal language.
In November 2014, the brutal murder of Hu Yuan’e, a 56-year-old Chinese sex worker living in Bell... more In November 2014, the brutal murder of Hu Yuan’e, a 56-year-old Chinese sex worker living in Belleville, one of the most racially and culturally diverse quarters of Paris, shocked the French public. Hu was part of a rapidly growing group of illegal migrant sex workers in France from China’s northeastern “Rust Belt.”1 In the 1990s, China’s Northeast (dongbei) including Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces, the former bastion of state-owned heavy industry, underwent a massive state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform (guoqigaige) as part of Deng Xiaoping’s “Reform and Opening-up Policy” (gaige kaifang). This resulted in large-scale SOE bankruptcies and some over 35 million SOE workers being laid off (Cai, Park, and Zhao, 2008, 177). Due to the shifting structure of the labor market and persistent gender bias, women’s reemployment was especially challenging.2 Many left the region in search for job opportunities abroad, which at once provided some degree of social and economic mobility and exposed them to exploitation and danger. This study traces the trajectories of women’s outmigration from China’s northeast, through both empirical studies and film analyses, with a special focus on women’s market-driven, illegal migrations to the West as domestic helpers and/or sex workers. Specifically, this article explores the ways in which migrant women, in the face of increasing precarity, negotiate for power and a sense of self identity and community in the daily encounters of their outmigration, with both members of their receiving societies and those back home.
In the 1990s, China’s northeast including Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces, the bastio... more In the 1990s, China’s northeast including Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces, the bastion of state-owned heavy industry, underwent a massive state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform engineered by Deng Xiaoping as part of the “Reform and Opening-up Policy,” which resulted in large-scale SOE bankruptcies and some 30 million blue-collar workers being laid off. 20 years after the reform, China’s northeast, once among the most urbanized regions in the country, has effectively become China’s “Rust Belt.” This article examines the cinematic representations of China’s Rust Belt, specifically in China’s northeast, arguing that cinema plays a crucial role in both capturing and interrogating the emergence of new urban spaces and urban subjects amidst the spatial and ideological reorientations of the reform era. It also investigates the ways in which cinematic representations, through a shifting “system of symbols,” mediate the contradictions in the production of urban spaces, cultural norm...
This chapter explores the representation of time in the films of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai.... more This chapter explores the representation of time in the films of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai. Wong’s films display a strong fascination with temporality, its construction, deconstruction, fragmentation, reconstruction, projection, and retrospection. Memory, nostalgia, and amnesia are recurrent motifs in Wong’s films. His film art embodies the principles of the “time-image” in modern cinema, which is a cinema of fragmentation, self-reflexivity, paradox, double and multiple temporalities, non-linear narrative, and inconclusive endings. Using Gilles Deleuze’s concepts of “movement-image” and “time-image,” the chapter looks at various configurations of time in Wong Kai-wai’s films. It focuses especially on Wong’s informal trilogy: Days of Being Wild (1990), In the Mood for Love (2000), and 2046 (2004), in which Wong uses exemplary time-images to explore problems of time and memory in the changing geopolitical and psychosocial landscapes of Hong Kong, attempting to open up a space for its past to negotiate with its unknown future.
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