China – Between Past and Future

Between Past and Future. New Photography and Video from China
Exhibition
24.03.-14.05.2006

Between Past and Future. New Photography and Video from China shows the most innovative photographic and video works by Chinese artists from the past ten years. Whereas photography primarily served propagandistic purposes during the first thirty years of the People’s Republic of China, following the Cultural Revolution of 1976 and the death of Mao Tse-tung it gradually provided an opening for individual artistic expression. Since the mid 1990s, this particular art scene has established itself as an experimental avant-garde.

Youth Programme
MemoryScape and The Dream of the Red Chamber
01.04. - 14.05.2006

Which influences shape a society’s cultural memory? And who decides what is to be part of that memory and what isn’t? How do the various elements of our collective memory reappear in various art forms? Two creative projects with workshops and presentations for school classes deal with these questions.

Cultural Memory
International Symposium
24.03.-26.03.2006

At opening weekend, there will be a 3-day conference. It is envisaged as an introductory forum for discussing and contemplating key aspects of the theme Cultural Memory in China. All of China’s contemporary art productions inevitably touch on this theme, because all artistic work, whether it involves the production of pictures, music, opera, philosophy or writing, inevitably involves a debate with subliminally present traditions.

Stories and Remembered History
Readings
26.03.-25.04.2006

The China - Between Past and Future literary programme invites Chinese authors from various regions of the world to present their contribution to the thematic, stylistic and biographical diversity of contemporary Chinese literature at the House of World Cultures.

Opera Programme
24.03.-10.05.2006

The unique Chinese art form of Xiqu, Chinese opera, is the focal point of China – Between the Past and the Present. No other art form dominates China’s image abroad like its opera. No other art form has been handed down at such a high cultural level or been politically instrumentalised to the same extent. People are still fascinated by opera performers, their techniques and their abilities. A broadly based discussion has unfolded over the rediscovery of the traditions of the various forms of opera in China.

You Have No Choice
Music Programme
02.04.-03.04.2006

The idea and title of the music programme are based on the novel You Have No Choice by Liu Sola, singer, composer, author and curator of this project. In this book, which attracted great attention in China, Liu Sola portrays her final-year class at the conservatory in Beijing. This class produced the most prominent composers of contemporary Chinese music.

Celluloid Revolutions
Film Series
27.04.–14.05.2006

A century of Chinese film: from the silent-film classics of the 1930s to the ‘New Wave’ that appeared after the Cultural Revolution and the recent productions shown at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.