Para Site is pleased to present a series of summer public programmes comprising of gallery tours, a film screening, and an artist talk taking place alongside That Has Been, and May Be Again, our current exhibition curated by Leo Li Chen and Wu Mo.
The exhibition draws the attention to the collective anxiety and unease in China of the 1990s, following the failure of the student movement in 1989. This period in China appears on the surface to be “fractured”, with previous experiences, political, economic, and everyday, gradually losing their significance. Contemporary artists, who had rapidly accomplished their modernistic transformation in the 1980s, had to seek or create brand new experiences. In the process, the forces of globalization and the internal discussions around “modernism/post-modernism” shaped the tensions connected to the production, mobilization, and institutionalization of art.
A special screening of Summer Palace by acclaimed Chinese director
will take place on Wednesday, July 27th. The film depicts the unsentimental embrace of youthful idealism in the backdrop of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 and the mundanity of postgraduate life. The film is known for being the first Mainland Chinese film to grapple with the memory of the June 4th incident. But rather than showing recollections of the movement, the film focuses on the intimate memories of a young woman seeking desire and satisfaction in endless melancholia. Due to the sensitive issue of the topic, Summer Palace was banned in China and was forbidden to make any new films in China for five years.Refreshments will be served.
Special Screening
Jul 27, 2016 (Wed)
7:00pm
Summer Palace (Yihe Yuan)
| Colour | 2h 38min | Drama |2006 | Mandarin with English subtitles
leaves her home village and starts university in Beijing, where she develops a consuming and compulsive relationship with another student. The student movement of 1989 then ensues and takes a toll on their lives.