Spectacle and Excess in Global Chinese Performance

FAIN: FEL-281761-22

Tarryn Li-Min Chun
University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN 46556-4635)

Research and writing leading to a book about spectacle, excess, and Chinese performance in the 21st century, including the recent use of digital technologies for aesthetics, state ideology, and global dissemination.

This project explores how spectacle and excess have come to characterize an important new genre of Chinese performance in the 21st century. It examines recent theatrical productions and large-scale events such as the 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony, tourist performances, and multimedia stage adaptations of science fiction and internet novels, and shows how these performances rely on digital technologies in the service of innovative aesthetics, state ideology, and to reach more global audiences through mass media. These characteristics enable live performance to create utopian fantasies of national history, cultural identity, and technological progress for a range of viewers, as well as realist and dystopian critiques of such fantasies. Such performances also participate in broader changes in world theatre, wherein the use of multimedia onstage is fast becoming a global vernacular and reconfiguring the nature of live performance.

Associated Products

“Spectacular Erudition: Classicist Aesthetics and Poetics in Digitally Enhanced Sinophone Performance.” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Spectacular Erudition: Classicist Aesthetics and Poetics in Digitally Enhanced Sinophone Performance.”
Author: Tarryn Li-Min Chun
Abstract: This paper investigates the ways in which digitally enhanced Sinophone performance mobilizes classicist aesthetics and poetics to connect local literary topoi to a broader shared sense of “Chineseness” among audience members. Since the early 2000s, the popularity of Zhang Yimou’s “Impressions Series” has led to the growth of large-scale tourist performances at destinations in the PRC such as West Lake in Hangzhou, Wutai Mountain in Shanxi Province, and Dunhuang in Gansu Province—locations that also feature prominently in classical poetry, Buddhist religious practice, and the Chinese national imaginary. These elaborate shows simultaneously capitalize on the latest advancements in spectacular performance technologies and engage more deeply with the Chinese literary tradition, often literalizing well-known poetic images or even literally overlaying the stage with projected Chinese characters. Examination of these live performances therefore enables us to reconsider the relationship between classicism and cutting-edge technology, materiality and immateriality, topos and “text” in the digital age.
Date: 06/10/2022
Conference Name: Harvard-Frankfurt-Lingnan Symposium on “Classicism in Digital Times: Textual Production as Cultural Remembrance in the Sinophone Cyberspace."

Holograms, Drones, and Extra-Dimensionality: Staging Science Fiction through The Three-Body Problem.” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Holograms, Drones, and Extra-Dimensionality: Staging Science Fiction through The Three-Body Problem.”
Author: Tarryn Li-Min Chun
Abstract: This paper examines the layering of material and immaterial technologies in the 2016 stage adaptation of Liu Cixin’s sci-fi best-seller The Three Body Problem, with particular attention to how onstage technologies such as drones, holograms, and animated projections extend and interrogate the play/novel’s diegetic engagement with video games, quantum physics, and extra-dimensionality.
Date: 07/29/2022

"Surface Classicism in Large-scale Multimedia Tourist Performance in the PRC" (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: "Surface Classicism in Large-scale Multimedia Tourist Performance in the PRC"
Author: Tarryn Li-Min Chun
Abstract: This paper investigates the ways in which digitally enhanced tourist performance in the PRC mobilize classicist aesthetics and poetics to connect classical literary topoi to a broader shared sense of Chinese culture among audience members. Since the early 2000s, the popularity of Zhang Yimou’s “Impressions Series” has led to the growth of large-scale performances at destinations such as West Lake in Hangzhou, Wutai Mountain in Shanxi Province, and Dunhuang in Gansu Province—locations that also feature prominently in classical poetry, Buddhist religious practice, and the Chinese national imaginary. These elaborate shows capitalize on the latest advancements in spectacular performance technologies and engage with the Chinese literary tradition, often literalizing well-known poetic images and literally overlaying the stage with Chinese characters, landscape paintings, and photographic images. Digital technologies transform live performance into a projection surface, yet in doing so also project a form of classicism that seems only skin deep. Building on the theoretical work of media studies scholars Giuliana Bruno, Audrey Yue, and others, this paper explores the “surface tensions” inherent in these works. It argues that while critiques of the superficiality of large-scale performance remain valid, that very superficiality (as well as its rootedness in digital technologies) is also instrumental in enabling classicism to resonate with broader audiences. Examination of surface classicism in popular performances therefore allows us to reconsider the relationship between classicism and cutting-edge technology, materiality and immateriality, liveness and mediation in the digital age.
Date: 03/17/2023
Conference Name: Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference

Surface Classicism: Aesthetics, Poetics, and Remediation in Digitally Enhanced Chinese Performance (Article)
Title: Surface Classicism: Aesthetics, Poetics, and Remediation in Digitally Enhanced Chinese Performance
Author: Tarryn Li-Min Chun
Abstract: This paper examines digital classicism in contemporary Chinese performance through a case study of an excerpt of the dance-drama Zhici qinglü (Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting) performed at the 2022 CCTV Spring Festival Gala. It argues that the mobilization of digital performance technologies in Zhici qinglü and other contemporary large-scale performance in the PRC generates what might be termed “surface classicism”—an engagement with the past that sublimates elements of classical art, literature, imagery, and tropes into the realm of digitally enhanced visuality. Such remediations lend themselves to critiques of superficiality and inauthenticity, but this article argues that the ubiquity of surface classicism in contemporary culture in fact creates new networks of relationality among remediations of classical poetics and imagery. Ultimately, the mediation of both live performance and spectacular performance technologies in contemporary, digitally enhanced performance works to establish classicist poetics and imagery as a core element of shared contemporary Chinese culture and may even engender new, more accessible modes of classical erudition.
Year: 2024
Primary URL: https://www.dukeupress.edu/prism
Primary URL Description: Journal homepage
Access Model: Subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature
Publisher: Duke University Press

Surface Classicism and Large-scale Multimedia Tourist Performance in the PRC (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Surface Classicism and Large-scale Multimedia Tourist Performance in the PRC
Abstract: This talk investigates the ways in which digitally enhanced tourist performance in the PRC mobilize classicist aesthetics and poetics to connect classical literary topoi to a broader shared sense of Chinese culture among audience members. Since the early 2000s, the popularity of Zhang Yimou’s “Impressions Series” has led to the growth of large-scale performances at destinations such as West Lake in Hangzhou, Wutai Mountain in Shanxi Province, and Dunhuang in Gansu Province—locations that also feature prominently in classical poetry, Buddhist religious practice, and the Chinese national imaginary. These elaborate shows capitalize on the latest advancements in spectacular performance technologies and engage with the Chinese literary tradition, often literalizing well-known poetic images and literally overlaying the stage with Chinese characters, landscape paintings, and photographic images. Digital technologies transform live performance into a projection surface, yet in doing so also project a form of classicism that seems only skin deep. Building on the theoretical work of media studies scholars Giuliana Bruno, Audrey Yue, and others, this talk will explore the “surface tensions” inherent in these works. It argues that while critiques of the superficiality of large-scale performance remain valid, that very superficiality (as well as its rootedness in digital technologies) is also instrumental in enabling classicism to resonate with broader audiences. Examination of surface classicism in popular performances therefore allows us to reconsider the relationship between classicism and cutting-edge technology, materiality and immateriality, liveness and mediation in the digital age.
Author: Tarryn Li-Min Chun
Date: 10/27/2022
Location: Virtual Talk (for Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main)
Primary URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR9F0JqzvWw
Primary URL Description: Recording of virtual talk

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