Call for Papers: ‘When the Shadow Flickers: The Moving Image in Contemporary Chinese Art’

Volume 12, Issue 1, Spring 2025, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art

A Special Issue co-edited by Yang Panpan and Jiang Jiehong

At a time when the moving image has become a ubiquitous presence in museums and galleries in China and the Sinophone world, the studies of the moving image in the sphere of contemporary Chinese art remain surprisingly scarce. The shadow that flickers on the walls of museums and galleries or on other surfaces has transformed what we understand as the art of curating today. In addition, documentary footage shot by Wu Wenguang, Wen Pulin, Chi Xiaoning and others retells the story of contemporary Chinese art.

This special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art makes a radical gesture towards studying the moving image as an art object, as a curatorial method and as a new form of art historical writing. The collaborative, interdisciplinary endeavour participates in – and hopefully contributes to – what Georges Didi-Huberman, speaking of Aby Warburg’s thought, terms ‘an art history turned towards cinema’: ‘to understand the temporality of images, their movements, their “survivals”, their capacity for animation’.

Possible perspectives for proposals include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Case studies of contemporary artists across Greater China and the Chinese diaspora working with the moving image
  • Curating the moving image and the moving image as a curatorial method
  • Documentary in relation to contemporary Chinese art
  • Discourses across Greater China on yingxiang yishu, and its partial semantic overlaps with video art, new media art, and artists’ film
  • Animation as contemporary art
  • Issues of acquisition, preservation and access surrounding the moving image
  • The market of the moving image

Publication Timeline

1 March 2024, abstract due (300 words)

1 November 2024, full manuscript due

Publication: Spring 2025

Please send an abstract, along with a brief bio, in the same file, to Guest Editor Yang Panpan (py6@soas.ac.uk), Principal Editor Jiang Jiehong (joshua.jiang@bcu.ac.uk), and Assistant Editor Lauren Walden (ccva@bcu.ac.uk)