Emerging Interpretations
Image and Society at a Crossroads: The 1988 Chinese Art Debate and the Future of Chinese Art
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yifan Wu
This paper approaches the theme “Image in Society” from the “reverse perspective” through an examination of the resistance and discontent voiced by numerous Chinese artists and art critics in 1988 against the humanistic concerns with societal changes that had characterized the ’85 New Wave. 1988 marked a watershed moment in Chinese art discourse in which heated arguments were exchanged around the extent to which art, principally paintings and prints, should depart from serving social functions. A close reading of articles published in important art newspapers in China of the time reveals that this nationwide debate was not merely split into two polarized factions on the basis of “for or against,” but instead constituted a holistic and multifaceted reappraisal of the contemporary status of Chinese art. Archival research demonstrates that this crucial debate consisted of a number of related themes: the legacies of post-Cultural Revolution art, the role of a “purified” artistic language in diversifying the art scene following a period dominated by socially-engaged art, the relativism of aesthetic judgment, and the experience of absurdity and moral disorder in Chinese society at large in the late 1980s. When considered within a wider historical context, this debate emerges as a key example of the abiding concern with the tension of form and social content in contemporary Chinese art.
Beyond Visual Narcissism - Toward a Phenomenology of the Image: Merleau-Ponty’s Path from Mirror Experience to Image Experience
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yixuan Liu
In digital culture, individuals increasingly rely on visual self-representation to affirm identity; this image-mediated narcissism often intensifies rather than alleviates their anxiety and insecurity. Despite endless production and editing of personal images, self-satisfaction remains unreachable. This tension is typically attributed to the externalization of subjectivity into visual form--a process estranging the self from its lived experience. Psychoanalytic interpretations trace it to the mirrored formation of the “ideal ego,” which entails a misrecognition between the specular image and the subject of vision. However, such accounts remain confined within representationalist assumptions that overlook the generative structure of image experience. This paper develops Merleau-Ponty’s latent phenomenology of the image to address this limitation. Beginning with his analysis of “mirror experience,” the argument traces through “mirror phenomena” and “the reversibility of the flesh,” culminating in an ontological understanding of “image experience.” Within this framework, the image is neither a copy nor a symbolic referent, but a sensuous event--an intertwining of perception and the world--through which meaning emerges via ambiguous spatio-temporal genesis. Thus, this reframes the image as an event of genesis rather than “narcissistic projection,” challenging the Platonic mimesis. Ultimately, this paper shows Merleau-Ponty’s account of the image allows for a co-institutional mode of narcissism: one grounded not in affirming the self via a fantasized specular projection, but in an affective co-birth with the world. This framework displaces image-induced anxiety by grounding visibility in embodied participation, opening onto a more authentic mode of self-affection--one mediated by the image as an event of non-fantasized self-love.
Fragments, Soundscapes and AI: Toward an Ecological Approach to Sound and Image
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Azadeh Nilchiani
Listening, field recording, and soundscape composition contribute to developing an ecological understanding of the world through sound. Rooted in the work of R. Murray Schafer and Pierre Mariétan, and extended by artists, composers, and researchers such as Hildegard Westerkamp, Barry Truax, and Bernie Krause, this approach not only preserves traces of our sonic environment but also provides ever-evolving compositional material. The capture and recombination of sonic fragments, central to this practice, resonate with Lev Manovich’s concept of the “aesthetics of fragments” in the field of visual media. By extending this idea to sound, we examine how artificial intelligence can generate new forms of auditory memory and reshape composition rooted in environmental listening. Methodologically, this presentation combines theoretical reflection with the analysis of selected soundscape-based AI works, alongside an ongoing practice-based research project entitled “Le Monde en fragments”, which employs AI-assisted soundscape recomposition using environmental field recordings and generative models. As Manovich suggests, AI allows fragmented cultural materials, often excluded or forgotten, to resurface. We argue that this use of AI supports renewed creative approaches while contributing to the preservation and reinterpretation of sonic heritage. Drawing a parallel with visual media, we focus on how AI enables a more fluid, dynamic, and less rigid form of memory. Applied to sound, this fosters an open, generative ecosystem where auditory memory becomes more accessible, flexible, and responsive to ecological and cultural change.
