Kiu-wai Chu
Kiu-wai Chu is Assistant Professor in Environmental Humanities and Chinese Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He earned his PhD in Comparative Literature in University of Hong Kong, his previous degrees from SOAS University of London and University of Cambridge, and postdoctoral fellowships in University of Zurich and Western Sydney University. He is selected a Luce East Asian Fellow 2022-23 at the National Humanities Center, USA.
His research focuses on ecocriticism, environmental humanities, animal studies, and contemporary cinema and visual art, specifically in Chinese and Southeast Asian contexts. His work has appeared in Oxford Bibliographies; books such as Transnational Ecocinema; Animated Landscapes, Ecomedia: Key Issues; The Palgrave Handbook of Asian Cinema; Cli-fi: A Companion, Chinese Environmental Humanities, and journals Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture; Journal of Chinese Cinemas; Journal of Chinese Governance; Asian Cinema; photographies; Screen and elsewhere.
He is a Living Lexicon Editor of journal Environmental Humanities (Duke University Press), and editorial board member of journals Media+Environment (University of California Press), Journal of Environmental Media (Intellect Books), and the book series "Green Media" (Amsterdam University Press) and "African and Asian Anthropocene: Studies in the Environmental Humanities" (Brill).
He is an Executive Council Member-at-large of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE-US) (2021-23). He is also a member of the Asian Cinema Research (ACR Lab).
His research focuses on ecocriticism, environmental humanities, animal studies, and contemporary cinema and visual art, specifically in Chinese and Southeast Asian contexts. His work has appeared in Oxford Bibliographies; books such as Transnational Ecocinema; Animated Landscapes, Ecomedia: Key Issues; The Palgrave Handbook of Asian Cinema; Cli-fi: A Companion, Chinese Environmental Humanities, and journals Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture; Journal of Chinese Cinemas; Journal of Chinese Governance; Asian Cinema; photographies; Screen and elsewhere.
He is a Living Lexicon Editor of journal Environmental Humanities (Duke University Press), and editorial board member of journals Media+Environment (University of California Press), Journal of Environmental Media (Intellect Books), and the book series "Green Media" (Amsterdam University Press) and "African and Asian Anthropocene: Studies in the Environmental Humanities" (Brill).
He is an Executive Council Member-at-large of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE-US) (2021-23). He is also a member of the Asian Cinema Research (ACR Lab).
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Book Chapters by Kiu-wai Chu
By focusing on its speciesist representations and difference between whimsical interspecific romance and “eco-empathy,” this chapter examines why The Mermaid, as a commercial film with an environmental message, falls short in various aspects to cultivate better viewers’ ecocritical awareness and convey more effective messages in promoting planetary healing. Drawing from recent ecocritical works on affective ecologies (Choy 2011; Weik von Mossner 2017) and corporeal connections between humans, nonhuman animals and the environment/watercapes, from pink dolphins in Sha Lo Wan to the mythical mermaids in Stephen Chow’s comedy film, this chapter explores the extent in which mainstream fictional Chinese films could bring to light issues of interspecific connectivity and multispecies coexistence and harmony, in a region under drastic socioeconomic and environmental changes.
KEYWORDS
eco-disaster film post-disaster Anthropocene nation rebuilding catastrophic condition Taklub Aftershock Wonderful Town
本文第一部份将集中在《美人鱼》当中的地方意识和中港合拍片模式带来的「去地域化」呈现如何改变了香港电影当中的地方意识和生态想象。第二部份我们将会探讨《美人鱼》当中的跨物种关怀伦理和多物种公义的想像，藉以指出为何电影未能摆脱人类中心主义的固有思维，以及其生态意识为何未能更有系统地、更贯彻地展现人与非人物种的复杂关系。
With reference to Jia Zhangke’s Wuyong/Useless (2007), and Ho Chao-ti’s Wo Ai Gaogenxie/My Fancy High Heels (2010) for comparison, this article explores how transnationality in these documentaries, on one hand, facilitates the expression of ecocritical and environmentalist messages concerning nature and the environment, as well as the relationships between human and all other beings on the planet; and on the other, delimits and restrains the creation of a sound ecocritical rhetoric. The article reveals the tendency for recent transnational documentaries to turn representations of ‘interconnectedness’ among different places and people, as well as the construction of ‘nature’, into transnational imaginaries."
Starting with identifying recurrent representations of children in 1960s as a subject in contemporary Chinese paintings, this paper discusses the representations of life of young children in a state school away from home in Zhang Yuan’s Little Red Flowers (2006), as distinct from the more romanticized and idealistic images of “Red” children seen in propaganda films produced during Mao’s era.
Little Red Flowers depicts the childhood of Qiang, a rebellious four-year old boy being taken to board at a nursery school in the 1960s. For Qiang, it is a disaster to adapt to the kind of “carefully organized, minutely scrutinized collective life” , and the kindergarten quickly turns into a totalitarian prison, which further triggers Qiang’s resistance and rebellious acts towards the principal, teachers as well as other kids. Despite the care of a few teachers, the large number of children in the school meant certain degree of negligence, abandonment and dangers to the children. Chaos and rebellions among the children are generated in the unhomely orphanage-like environment. The paper suggests that the representations of the children, who often appear calculating, manipulative, and packed with subversive ideas, which contradict the traditional romantic view of childhood innocence, reflect the impacts of “China under change” had on a whole generation of children, and the collective childhood memories and experience of the generation born in the late-50s to early-60s, amongst whom we find some of the most active writers, artists and filmmakers of today."
Journal Papers by Kiu-wai Chu
and worsening pollution problems at a global scale, there is a
recent flourish of ecocinema studies (or eco-film criticism) concerning
the interplay between cinema and environmental issues.
This paper aims to shed some lights on how ecocinema may
make an effective tool to facilitate the promotion of better environmental
governance; as well as to cultivate in film viewers better
ecological awareness. By categorizing ecocinema into three major
modes: deep ecology film; environmentalist film; and perceptiontraining
eco-film, this paper aims to illustrate the diverse environmental
imaginations ecocritical films could offer, so as to invite
cross-disciplinary conversations between eco-film criticism and
other academic fields, to gather forces in discovering possible
ways to tackle and overcome the many environmental challenges
we are facing collectively in the rapidly deteriorating world.
Unlike literati painters in the ancient times who deliberately avoided politics and instead immersed themselves in creating nature paintings as a form of escapism, Lang Jingshan’s composite photography subtly and intricately reflects the political ruptures experienced in China in the mid twentieth century. Entering the 21st century, the emerging Anthropocene discourse is quickly reshaping our perceptions and the way art represents human-nature relationships. Contemporary artists like Yao Lu and Yang Yongliang create photographic shanshui collages that represent the excessively urbanized environments and observe the environmentally challenged social reality from various perspectives and scales. From the political ruptures we see in Lang Jingshan’s works since the 1950s, to the ecological ruptures in the Anthropocene epoch as reflected in Yao Lu and Yang Yongliang’s works, shanshui evolves under the camera lens and continues to be redefined according to ideologies of the time.
山水是中國藝術中一個舉足輕重的概念。自二十世紀初攝影技術引入中國後，山水經歷了幾個階段的演變。本文將透過藝術家郎靜山、姚璐和楊泳樑三人的攝影作品，探討山水美學在過去一世紀如何從傳統水墨畫被挪用到現代攝影之上。我們將探討山水被再創造的得與失。現當代山水是如何運用拼湊攝影/集綿攝影的技術去營造散點透視法和跨維度視界？同時，它們又如何讓我們更清楚從山水看到意識形態上的斷裂，從而反映中國當今社會和政治的轉變和困境。
有別於刻意歸隱和避世的古代文人畫家筆下去政治化的山水，郎靜山的集錦攝影暗示了他所處之世的政治斷裂和動盪。踏入二十一世紀，人類世話語的出現不但改變了人們對生態環境的感知，也改變了藝術呈現人與自然關係的方式。姚璐和楊泳梁所創作的山水集錦攝影反應當今社會過度城市化，亦透過不同的角度和維度直觀社會現實中遭受的生態環境衝擊。從上世紀五六十年代中國的政治分裂，到當今人類世衍生的生態裂縫，我們看到山水在攝影藝術家鏡頭下不斷演化，並受着不同的意識形態影響而被再三定義。
However, this presentation also aims to demonstrate how an ecocritical, intersectional film analysis could expose our persistent anthropocentric tendency that refrains us from thinking beyond our geopolitical scope; and the challenge in adopting “a planet-centered mode of thinking”(Chakrabarty 2021) that promotes indiscriminatory care and empathy towards the vulnerable humans and nonhuman beings. It argues that unless we could finally resist the seduction of “Anthropocene’s visualization of itself and its aesthetic anaesthesia of the senses” (Mirzoeff 2014), to see beyond the beauty of the natural world, and confront the horror of the many layers of environmental realities; that we could begin to extend our indiscriminatory care, empathy and compassion to all vulnerable and precarious beings in the Anthropocene.
By focusing on its speciesist representations and difference between whimsical interspecific romance and “eco-empathy,” this chapter examines why The Mermaid, as a commercial film with an environmental message, falls short in various aspects to cultivate better viewers’ ecocritical awareness and convey more effective messages in promoting planetary healing. Drawing from recent ecocritical works on affective ecologies (Choy 2011; Weik von Mossner 2017) and corporeal connections between humans, nonhuman animals and the environment/watercapes, from pink dolphins in Sha Lo Wan to the mythical mermaids in Stephen Chow’s comedy film, this chapter explores the extent in which mainstream fictional Chinese films could bring to light issues of interspecific connectivity and multispecies coexistence and harmony, in a region under drastic socioeconomic and environmental changes.
KEYWORDS
eco-disaster film post-disaster Anthropocene nation rebuilding catastrophic condition Taklub Aftershock Wonderful Town
本文第一部份将集中在《美人鱼》当中的地方意识和中港合拍片模式带来的「去地域化」呈现如何改变了香港电影当中的地方意识和生态想象。第二部份我们将会探讨《美人鱼》当中的跨物种关怀伦理和多物种公义的想像，藉以指出为何电影未能摆脱人类中心主义的固有思维，以及其生态意识为何未能更有系统地、更贯彻地展现人与非人物种的复杂关系。
With reference to Jia Zhangke’s Wuyong/Useless (2007), and Ho Chao-ti’s Wo Ai Gaogenxie/My Fancy High Heels (2010) for comparison, this article explores how transnationality in these documentaries, on one hand, facilitates the expression of ecocritical and environmentalist messages concerning nature and the environment, as well as the relationships between human and all other beings on the planet; and on the other, delimits and restrains the creation of a sound ecocritical rhetoric. The article reveals the tendency for recent transnational documentaries to turn representations of ‘interconnectedness’ among different places and people, as well as the construction of ‘nature’, into transnational imaginaries."
Starting with identifying recurrent representations of children in 1960s as a subject in contemporary Chinese paintings, this paper discusses the representations of life of young children in a state school away from home in Zhang Yuan’s Little Red Flowers (2006), as distinct from the more romanticized and idealistic images of “Red” children seen in propaganda films produced during Mao’s era.
Little Red Flowers depicts the childhood of Qiang, a rebellious four-year old boy being taken to board at a nursery school in the 1960s. For Qiang, it is a disaster to adapt to the kind of “carefully organized, minutely scrutinized collective life” , and the kindergarten quickly turns into a totalitarian prison, which further triggers Qiang’s resistance and rebellious acts towards the principal, teachers as well as other kids. Despite the care of a few teachers, the large number of children in the school meant certain degree of negligence, abandonment and dangers to the children. Chaos and rebellions among the children are generated in the unhomely orphanage-like environment. The paper suggests that the representations of the children, who often appear calculating, manipulative, and packed with subversive ideas, which contradict the traditional romantic view of childhood innocence, reflect the impacts of “China under change” had on a whole generation of children, and the collective childhood memories and experience of the generation born in the late-50s to early-60s, amongst whom we find some of the most active writers, artists and filmmakers of today."
and worsening pollution problems at a global scale, there is a
recent flourish of ecocinema studies (or eco-film criticism) concerning
the interplay between cinema and environmental issues.
This paper aims to shed some lights on how ecocinema may
make an effective tool to facilitate the promotion of better environmental
governance; as well as to cultivate in film viewers better
ecological awareness. By categorizing ecocinema into three major
modes: deep ecology film; environmentalist film; and perceptiontraining
eco-film, this paper aims to illustrate the diverse environmental
imaginations ecocritical films could offer, so as to invite
cross-disciplinary conversations between eco-film criticism and
other academic fields, to gather forces in discovering possible
ways to tackle and overcome the many environmental challenges
we are facing collectively in the rapidly deteriorating world.
Unlike literati painters in the ancient times who deliberately avoided politics and instead immersed themselves in creating nature paintings as a form of escapism, Lang Jingshan’s composite photography subtly and intricately reflects the political ruptures experienced in China in the mid twentieth century. Entering the 21st century, the emerging Anthropocene discourse is quickly reshaping our perceptions and the way art represents human-nature relationships. Contemporary artists like Yao Lu and Yang Yongliang create photographic shanshui collages that represent the excessively urbanized environments and observe the environmentally challenged social reality from various perspectives and scales. From the political ruptures we see in Lang Jingshan’s works since the 1950s, to the ecological ruptures in the Anthropocene epoch as reflected in Yao Lu and Yang Yongliang’s works, shanshui evolves under the camera lens and continues to be redefined according to ideologies of the time.
山水是中國藝術中一個舉足輕重的概念。自二十世紀初攝影技術引入中國後，山水經歷了幾個階段的演變。本文將透過藝術家郎靜山、姚璐和楊泳樑三人的攝影作品，探討山水美學在過去一世紀如何從傳統水墨畫被挪用到現代攝影之上。我們將探討山水被再創造的得與失。現當代山水是如何運用拼湊攝影/集綿攝影的技術去營造散點透視法和跨維度視界？同時，它們又如何讓我們更清楚從山水看到意識形態上的斷裂，從而反映中國當今社會和政治的轉變和困境。
有別於刻意歸隱和避世的古代文人畫家筆下去政治化的山水，郎靜山的集錦攝影暗示了他所處之世的政治斷裂和動盪。踏入二十一世紀，人類世話語的出現不但改變了人們對生態環境的感知，也改變了藝術呈現人與自然關係的方式。姚璐和楊泳梁所創作的山水集錦攝影反應當今社會過度城市化，亦透過不同的角度和維度直觀社會現實中遭受的生態環境衝擊。從上世紀五六十年代中國的政治分裂，到當今人類世衍生的生態裂縫，我們看到山水在攝影藝術家鏡頭下不斷演化，並受着不同的意識形態影響而被再三定義。
However, this presentation also aims to demonstrate how an ecocritical, intersectional film analysis could expose our persistent anthropocentric tendency that refrains us from thinking beyond our geopolitical scope; and the challenge in adopting “a planet-centered mode of thinking”(Chakrabarty 2021) that promotes indiscriminatory care and empathy towards the vulnerable humans and nonhuman beings. It argues that unless we could finally resist the seduction of “Anthropocene’s visualization of itself and its aesthetic anaesthesia of the senses” (Mirzoeff 2014), to see beyond the beauty of the natural world, and confront the horror of the many layers of environmental realities; that we could begin to extend our indiscriminatory care, empathy and compassion to all vulnerable and precarious beings in the Anthropocene.
Building upon new materialist theorists’ concepts of vital materialism (Bennett), material-semiotic reality (Haraway), and bioscience of silkworms, this paper moves on to highlight the temporal aspect of eco-materialism, by suggesting how Xu Bing’s artwork– by offering non-anthropocentric perspectives through tiny, slow moving silkworms –enables us to perceive material world differently through reconfiguration of time and temporality. Cultivating an appreciation of slowness and extended duration of observation, “silkworm ecology” offers a new, ecocritical way to perceive life in today’s rapidly changing world that is increasingly defined by speed, efficiency and developmentalism.
This presentation discusses whether sociopolitical and cultural specificities shape films in ways that lead to different representations of the relationship between human beings and the physical environment, nature or the nonhumans. Being an emerging branch of environmental humanities, Chinese ecocinema studies addresses environmental issues on both local and global/transnational levels; at the same time it explores how, through cinematic representations of environmental thoughts in Daoist and Confucian philosophy and ethics; films provide a medium to promote shared common ecological concerns beyond national boundaries that reach towards earth, nature, and the more-than-human world.
In short, this presentation examines the extent in which films and media of various genres address, or fail to address, the growing environmental problems on both local and global scales. By introducing major issues in ecocinema studies, this presentation aims to open a dialogue that focuses on the convergence of ecocriticism/ecocinema studies with environmental governance and resource management, in the context of China.
Bildungsroman criticism has long focused on the relationship between human individual and society. This study complicates it by adding nature and the more-than-human world into the equation, to explore how tensions and conflicts between social values in the modern world and environmental consciousness are pushing human beings towards a new sense of coming of age. Focusing on Bildungsroman in the “Return to Nature” narratives – from Jiang Rong’s autobiographical novel Wolf Totem (2004) and its film adaptation (2015), to Lu Chuan’s Disneynature animal film Born in China (2016) – this paper argues recent Chinese texts are recurrently constructed with “ecological bildungsroman” narratives that rely on problematic, anthropocentric, and anthropomorphic imaginations of animals, which often end up re-affirming prejudice and injustice against the nonhuman world. Instead, this paper questions, whether ecological bildungsroman can be understood in anthropocosmic, or maybe, evolutionistic ways?
In the early 20th century, Kang Youwei theorized a utopian future in his Datong Shu (The Book of Great Unity) in which various boundaries in human society will be eliminated, with nonhuman animals receiving better treatments and welfare. Basing on the Datong ideal but going one step further, how can we envision an ecological coming-of-age in the 21st century? How do we reinterpret coming of age as a process of building human culture from post-anthropocentric perspectives, thus acknowledging the agency and subjectivity of nonhuman animals in cultural formations, which the Bildungsroman discourse often denies?
Topic: The Question of Nature and Environmental Justice in the age of Neoliberalism
In a series of spotlight essays and illustrated scene reviews, a cast of seasoned scholars and fresh new voices explore the vast range of films—encompassing drama, madcap comedy, martial arts escapism, and magical realism—that have been set in Beijing. Unveiling a city of hidden courtyards, looming skyscrapers, and traditional Hutong neighborhoods, these contributors depict a distinctive urban culture that reflects the conflict and tumult of a nation in transition. With considerations of everything from the back streets of Beijing Bicycle to the forbidden palace of The Last Emperor to the tourist park of The World, this volume is a definitive cinematic guide to an ever-changing and endlessly fascinating capital city."
The free UZH online course “Asian Environmental Humanities: Landscapes in Transition” brings together researchers from the University of Zurich and international institutions, we will introduce you to some of the most vibrant cultural trends addressing landscape appreciation, degradation, protection, and rehabilitation that currently circulate in the Asian hemisphere. You will learn about concepts of landscape in Asian religions, philosophy, social sciences, history and the arts and their reverberation in selected environmental projects in China, India and Japan.
Furthermore, we will discuss how they are critically reflected upon in the context of the environmental humanities, and observe how an interdisciplinary approach towards regional ecosystems past and present reaches out beyond pragmatic technological solutions to mitigate environmental damage. Following us on our different paths and trajectories through the five modules of the course, you will encounter many of the reasons why environmental humanities study projects which strive to change people’s prevalent attitudes, values and behavioural patterns in order to redeem the rapidly globalizing crisis, and how they go about it.
Who is this class for: This course is designed for people with a background in the humanities and social sciences, but also aims at a broader audience beyond disciplinary boundaries – that is, to everyone interested in the challenges and opportunities of Chinese, Indian, and Japanese approaches towards environmental issues.
To enroll please visit:
https://www.coursera.org/lea…/asian-environmental-humanities
https://www.sindie.sg/2020/10/chu-kiu-wai-there-are-always-signs-of.html
For more about AFA's "The (In)Hospitable World":
https://www.asianfilmarchive.org/event-calendar/reframe-the-inhospitable-world/
The Online symposium:
https://www.asianfilmarchive.org/event-calendar/reframe-the-inhospitable-world-online-symposium/