Zhang Nian: Storytelling In Women – Thinking Through an Art Methodology

2023.02.11 Saturday 19:00

Location

2F, The Cloister Apartments, 62 West Fuxing Road, Shanghai

Speaker:Zhang Nian

Time:2023/2/11 19:00-20:30

Can storytelling of women be art? The answer is positive. If art is not concerned with exposing conflicts, then women would have to shapeshift based on their perceptions and to technically reinforce the illusional qualities. Intuitive input and representative output are dominated by visuals, while storytelling propelled by primitive desires goes seamlessly with women’s clamorous nature. The talking woman does not exist. She is invisible and untouchable. She disappears in the walls like a mystic alchemist, disappearing in scenes full of lies. At the fringe, the emergence of the genealogy of memories depends on the technical media that performs the function of saving-simulation. There are resediment, which drift along the thin thread of maternity. There are monsters in every family and every house. The talking woman encounters the “monster” and exposes a situation that is buried deep in women’s consciousness.

About the Speaker

Zhang Nian: Feminist philosopher, professor at the School of Humanities of Tongji University, doctoral supervisor. She has long focused on the resistance and critical research of women's desire, female consciousness, and self-consciousness, and her research areas include feminist theory, political philosophy and aesthetics, and her monographs include "Gender Politics and the State- On the Liberation of Women in China", “Female Trauma on Otological Phobia - From Hegel to Psychoanalysis", “ Hanna Arendt: The Origin of Politics", etc. She is the translator of The Ethics of Sexual Differences.

About the Vortex

Vortex is a long-term project. We will update the content of performance lectures by artists and talks by experts both on- and offline. Following the fundamental approach of connecting local practice, theories, and context, we hope that this nonstandard art venue will become a place of torrents, flux, and confluence.

Macalline Art Center is a practice-oriented site focused on contemporary visual inventions. The Center engages with artists and art groups by building physical and online communities through events and research. The Center is guided by the working processes of artists, constantly re-defining and testing itself and renewing perceptual and cognitive systems in contemporary situations and contexts.