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15/1/2004

Documenting China

Bates College, Lewiston

Contemporary Photography and Social Change

Thanks to support from a foundation dedicated to deepening undergraduate understanding and appreciation of Asia, Bates College is dedicating the third week of January 2004 to programs that reflect the cultural wealth and diversity of that continent, particularly China.

Supported by the Freeman Foundation, Asia Week at Bates -- actually 11 days -- includes a concert of Chinese music, photographic exhibitions documenting China, a lecture on Japanese garden design and an Asian film festival.

Asia Week begins at 5 p.m. Friday, Jan. 16, with a lecture and opening reception for the Bates College Museum of Art exhibition Documenting China: Contemporary Photography and Social Change. Showcasing the work of seven Chinese photographers, this nationally significant exhibition examines the impacts of urbanization and industrialization in that rapidly modernizing land.

The show was curated by Gu Zheng, an expert in documentary photography and associate professor of journalism at Fudan University, Shanghai. Gu, who will spend the winter semester at Bates on a teaching residency, discusses the show in the 7 p.m. lecture in Room 104, Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

The Synergy Fund co-sponsors the exhibition, which runs through March 28. For summer 2004, the exhibition goes to the China Institute in New York City.

Also starting Jan. 16, and continuing through the month, are two exhibitions of student photographs of China in the Chase Hall Gallery, Campus Avenue, and the Ronj, Bates' student-run coffeehouse, 32 Frye St. The images are taken from a body of work by the two dozen students who spent the 2003 Bates College Fall Semester in Nanjing. The students worked briefly with Professor Gu in Shanghai on ways to most effectively photograph their experiences in China.

Next, The Eye: The 2004 Bates College Festival of Contemporary Asian Cinema runs between 6 and 10 p.m. from Tuesday, Jan. 20, through Friday, Jan. 23. The first screening takes place in the Benjamin Mays Center, Russell Street, and the remainder in Olin Arts Center, Room 104.

Here's the festival schedule:

Jan. 20: The Eye (Thailand, 2002, horror), The Vertical Ray of the Sun (Vietnam, 2000, romantic comedy);

Jan. 21: Spirited Away (Japan, 2001, animé), Double Agent (South Korea, 2003, action);

Jan. 22: The Wind Will Carry Us (Iran, 1999, drama), The Road Home (China, 2001, romance);

Jan. 23: Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (India, 2003, musical).

Chris Berry, festival curator and associate professor of film studies at the University of California, Berkeley, leads discussions of the films for the first two evenings, joined by John Yu Zou, professor of Chinese at Bates. Zou leads the discussion the final two evenings.

The student organization Sangai Asia co-sponsors the series. For more information call 207-786-6195.

The Zheng: A Concert of Classical Chinese Music, featuring two renowned musicians from Beijing, starts at 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 24, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. The performers are Tian Qing, a musicologist and multi-instrumentalist, and Zhang Shan, a virtuoso on the zither-like stringed instrument called the zheng. The musicians offer a pre-concert lecture in the concert hall at 4 p.m.

The program explores diverse classical forms from courtly music to melodies from the autonomous Central Asian region of Uighur. One of China's foremost music scholars, Tian Qing is a leading authority on Buddhist music. A master of classical Chinese instruments, he has lectured and performed extensively in Asia and Europe. The Bates concert marks his first visit to the United States.

Zhang, a winner of numerous awards, has performed often as a soloist since 1989 and is known for her precise but bold interpretations of classical material. The zheng, dating back 2,500 years, has more than 20 strings spanning an unfretted wooden body. It has a haunting vocal quality obtained by bending the pitch of the plucked strings.

The concert concludes the 2003-04 Bates College Concert Series. Admission is $8 for the general public and $5 for seniors and students. For reservations and concert series information, call 207-786-6135.

Finally, in the Mays Center at 7 p.m. Monday, Jan. 26, David Slawson offers the slide lecture Creating Japanese Gardens Inspired by Native Scenery. Slawson, a Cleveland-based designer, is the author of the influential book Secret Teachings in the Art of Japanese Gardens (Kodansha, 1987). Part of a three-day residency at the college, Slawson's talk is sponsored by the Freeman and Tanaka Funds for the Study of East Asia and by the Department of German, Russian and East Asian Languages and Literatures. For information call 207-786-6255.

Based in New York City and Stowe, Vt., the Freeman Foundation's support for Asian programming at Bates dates back two years. In December 2001, as part of its initiative for expanding undergraduate Asian studies nationwide, the foundation granted the college $400,000 over a four-year span. The grant supports faculty and faculty-student research, travel, curriculum development and materials acquisition at Bates.
"Freeman funds have supported almost two dozen research opportunities for faculty and students, and a dozen events connecting students with scholars and artists from Asia," says Judith Head, a learning associate in the dean of the faculty's office at Bates. "The foundation has enriched the scholarship and curriculum and helped make the study of Asia a hot topic at Bates."

The foundation "has enabled the college to expand its offerings in Asian studies across a broad spectrum," Head says. Since 2001, 10 courses have been added, a slide collection of thousands of Asian images has been amassed and the college library has begun collecting Chinese classical music. She adds, "In addition, students and faculty have traveled to Asia to build the bonds of friendship and learning that the foundation nurtures."

-Doug Hubley, Office of Communications and Media Relations

All events except the Jan. 24 concert are open to the public at no charge.

Image: From the exhibition "Documenting China," Jiang Jian's "Zhao Lanying, 74, Hui County, Henan" (1997)

Bates College
Lewiston, Maine 04240 USA
207-786-6255 (General Information)

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