「千里之行，始於足下。」《老子．第六四章》
The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath your feet. (Laozi, Tao Te Ching 6:4)
towards in-between nature-culture...
Walking Along the River... on the road... in the city..... :
a practice-based research (Pbr) on MOVing image
Rationale
Our cityscape is saturated with all kinds of text and images from analog to digital. For examples Pop Art successfully received gigantic artistic success during 60s that was demonstrated as social influences and documentations by appropriating a ton of images from mass media, advertising, and popular culture material as mechanical produced and mass transmitted as Andy Warhol (b. 1928-1987) or Barbara Kruger (b. 1945). Now contemporary art is not only to upgrade the human value and develop their potentiality, but most importantly it is rather to develop an effective and efficient-text-image-transmitted metropolitan city, such as New York, London, Beijing, and Hong Kong etc. It would finally be claimed as “global economics” or “global contemporary” (Belting, 2013).
Andy Tam (MA, MEd, ARPS)
PhD Researcher
Dept. of Fine Art, Kingston School of Art
Contemporary Art Research Centre (CARC)
Kingston University London
In the time of upheaval of information and globalization, the development of city has basically changed in its nature, organization, and function. The birth of “imperialism of taste” (Harvey, 1989) creates new ways of the very hierarchy of values and significance. Signs, data, information, imagery, styles, systems of rapid, highly conventionalized communication characterize the lifeblood of the Mega cities with the “Massive Circulation of Images” (Nail, 2019). This new value undermines to the “monotony of universal modernism’s vision of the world”, which is generally perceived as positivistic, techno-centric, and rationalistic. Modernism identifies with the belief in linear progress, absolute truths, the rational planning of ideal social orders, and the standardization of knowledge and production.
Areas of Research Interest
Moving Image, Practice-based Art Research, Video Art, New Media, Installation and Performance, Visual Culture, Curatorship and Exhibition, Architecture and Urban Development, Arts Education, Contemporary Chinese Art
Contribution to Knowledge in the field of Contemporary Art
The PhD research continuously and positively contributes to the distinct knowledge by exploring the field of contemporary art, especially in new hybrid moving image forms (Manovich, 2006), via theoretical contribution (extensive readings & research on relevant theories & artists as Secondary Research) and practical contribution (production of art work focused on MOVing-image making as Primary Research)/ methodology contribution (implementation on PbR via contextualization of creative and theoretical elements), and updates extensive definitions of MOVing-image (including a critical stance, building or expanding on existing practices). The emergence and resurgence of the Chinese Classic Scroll painting to MOVing-image (Old versus New) would be further examined that experiment in-between the aspects of Nature vs Culture, Landscape vs Cityscape and Walkscape vs Imagescape, and Videoscape (MOVing-image making).
“On the Road/ In the City…” (Walkscape & Cityscape as Culture oriented) interrogates on Cosmopolitan Urbanism that are inspired from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957), and de Certeau’s Walking in the City (1984) that develop a controversial platform as critical documentation for Modernization and Urbanization in term of walkscape (Careri, 2002) and cityscape. It involves an objective-nature-rural-life to a subjective-culture-urban-experience that exemplifies to scholarly interrogation of Dualisms/ Dichotomies “Walking Along…-On…-In…” as the preposition of NatureCultures (as Human vs Non-human) or Nature/Culture on biocultural and sociocultural contexts