Workshop on The Living Past: Disaster, Trauma, and Visual Art in East Asia

March 28, 2019

This workshop brings scholars together who are working on issues around visual representations of disaster and trauma in East Asia. It seeks to contribute to an understanding of how visual media (including painting, film, photography, memorial statue, and multi-media art) are used to respond to catastrophe and trauma associated with Asia-Pacific Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, and other socio-environmental violence and injustices in China, Japan and South Korea. How does the visual participate in coming to terms with the living past, in reconciling with what is irreconcilable, and in demanding a presentation that is often unpresentable?

10:00am to 12:00pm | 626 Kaneff Tower

Meiqin Wang (California State University Northridge)

“Documenting Social and Environmental Injustices in Contemporary China: Visual Images as Forms of Civic Participations”

Tomoe Otsuki (University of California, Berkeley)

“A Critical Inquiry of the Symbolism of the Child and the Notion of Futurity: The Statue Sun Child in Fukushima and the Dystopian Literature in Post-Fukushima Japan.”

Jooyeon Rhee (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

“Searching for Homeland: Cinematic Representation of Korean-Japanese (Zainichi) in North Korea and Japan”

12:30pm to 2:30pm | 626 Kaneff Tower

Vicki Kwon (University of Alberta)

“Connecting Vietnam and Jeju: South Korean art and Activism Remembering the Vietnam War”

Sara Osenton (University of Toronto)

“Recasting Bodily Memory: Self-Production of Japanese Disabled Veterans’ Image”

Hong Kal (York University)

“The Portrait of Wrongful Deaths in South Korea”