Agenda

Jeroen de Kloet
University of Amsterdam

Bio:
Jeroen de Kloet is Professor of Globalisation Studies at the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Publications include a book with Anthony Fung Youth Cultures in China (Polity 2017), and the edited volumes Boredom, Shanzhai, and Digitization in the Time of Creative China (with Yiu Fai Chow and Lena Scheen, Amsterdam UP 2019) and Trans-Asia as Method: Theory and Practices (with Yiu Fai Chow and Gladys Pak Lei Chong,  Rowman and Littlefield, 2019). Forthcoming in 2024 is the book, co-authored with Yiu Fai Chow and Leonie Schmidt, titled It's My Party – Tatming Pair and the Postcolonial Politics of Popular Music in Hong Kong (Palgrave). See also http://jeroendekloet.nl 

Abstract:
“Visibility is a trap.” Michel Foucault's words have continuously inspired me to question the oft-proclaimed virtues of openness, transparency, and emancipation. To paraphrase Tan Jia (2023), perhaps we should look for ways of hiding, disguising, and masquerading rather than showing and displaying. I like to connect this to Shotwell’s notion of a politics of impurity (2016), which takes complicity and compromise as an ethical point of departure. In my talk, I want to probe into the impure politics of (in)visibility. I will engage with two exhibitions, first, Myth Makers – Spectrosynthesis III in Tai Kwun, Hong Kong (24 December 2022 – 10 April 2023), showcasing queer art from Asia and its diasporas. Second, Beijing-based artist Wang Tuo’s The Second Interrogation, as shown in the Blindspot Gallery in Hong Kong (21 March – 6 May 2023), a video work reflecting the artists “observations and reflections on cultural censorship in the art world in China in recent years” (gallery statement). Both shows not only allow a reflection on the impure politics of (in)visibility; they also attest to a second point I like to make: it is often in the context of limitations and regulations that creative practices can and do unfold.

The seminar is jointly organized by the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities (VeDPH), Department of Humanities (DSU), and the Department of Asian and North African Studies (DSAAM), Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and can be attended either in person or online.

Link for online participation HERE.

For further information: link