The success of the project is a collective effort by the Art Museum team, with the support of experts from different fields. The team was led by Professor Josh Yiu, Director of the Museum, and Ms Heidi Wong, Manager (Education, Outreach and Communications) (’17, Translation). Several members from the Faculty of Arts contributed to this award-winning project, including Professor Fan Sin Piu, Professor from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, and Professor Ting Sun Pao, Adjunct Professor and Senior Research Fellow of the Department of History. Through the appreciation of the paintings of Sung Wong Toi, they introduced the history and the culture of the historic site from different perspectives, providing insights into heritage conservation and the continuation of Chinese cultural-political lineage in Hong Kong. The texts accompanying the tours and the Time Travel Guide, which was designed to elevate the time travel experience, are based on the research articles by two faculty members of the Cultural Management Programme, Professor Pedith Pui Chan, Assistant Professor, and Dr. Vivian Ting Wing Yan, part-time lecturer.

Time Travel・Hong Kong was at first designed to supplement a special exhibition “Hong Kong Impressions,” which was held at the CUHK Art Museum from September to November 2020. It is an online interactive tool for public engagement that leveraged the revival of local tourism in Hong Kong at times of travel restriction caused by COVID-19. It effectively uses Google street views to create a juxtaposition of current street views with landscape paintings and coloured slides from the 1940s to the 1970s. It offers an immersive and informative journey of art, history and culture, supported by developments in latest technology.

Sparkle and Charm: Canton Enamels of the Qing Dynasty features more than 170 sets of Canton enamels of the Qing dynasty along with complementary porcelain and paintings, providing the public with more insights into this artistic craft by illustrating the distinctive tradition and history of enamelware, and advanced enameling techniques such as the use of colours and ways of painting.

Painted enamelware, a translucent or opaque substance made from glass and other materials that is applied as ornament to the surface of metals, porcelain, glass, etc., was introduced from Europe to China during the late 17th century (the early Qing dynasty). It enthralled the Kangxi Emperor, who instructed the imperial workshops to develop the enameling technology, reproduce the enamels, and apply them on metals, porcelain, and glass. In the process, craftsmen from Canton, now Guangzhou, and Western missionaries who were familiar with the enameling techniques, glass making and painting skills were recruited into the imperial workshops, to produce enamel works.

These painted enamels with Chinese and Western elements were mainly for the emperors’ use and for imperial gifts, as well as for export and home markets. Rarely do these ancient artefacts from the past centuries reach a wide audience these days, apart from a few exhibits at the China’s palace museums and a few museums in Guangzhou and Hong Kong.

To preserve the legacy of enamel art and raise the public’s interest in it, CUHK’s Art Museum and Loupe will organise a series of DIY workshops and talks alongside the exhibitions. Details of the programmes will be released later via the Art Museum’s website and social media platforms.

This talk examines the stories that are told through the language of metrics at different scales of a tuberculosis control programme. It tracks a patient’s route from the community to the municipal levels and how the concept of who or what a ‘patient’ is transforms as they and their file ascends the scale. Different stories of the same patient can be told at each level, ranging from recounting the vicissitudes of a person’s attempts to pursue treatment, to their being subsumed as part of a data point. This transformation is made possible through the practices of scale-making intrinsic in the design of the DOTS approach – the globally endorsed gold-standard for managing tuberculosis. This quality of scalability – that a project ought to function in the exact same way when inserted into any wider, bigger context – is one demanded of public health programmes today. The kinds of stories that are told at each scale depends on the kinds of data that inform those who tell them. This talk explores the nature of these data as they travel and transform up a scaled programme, and how health professionals come to conceive of and act towards these concepts as they simultaneously produce them.

Speaker

Ting Ting Shum (Department of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh)
Ting Ting Shum is a Ph.D candidate with the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research examines the everyday enactment of tuberculosis control in contemporary Shanghai, China, with a particular focus on the experiences of the public health professionals working in the community, district and municipal levels.

Join Zoom Meeting: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/98295881292
Meeting ID: 982 9588 1292
Passcode: 526873

All interested are welcome

According to the modal theory of facts, two facts are identical if they are necessarily equivalent. This theory faces the objection that it is incompatible with the best theory of metaphysical grounding, which is the standard theory of grounding, and hence should be rejected. I defend the modal theory from this objection by arguing that there is an alternative theory of grounding that is compatible with the modal theory and is at least as attractive as the standard theory. This argument is partially based on there being reasons to think that, if grounding is transitive, as the standard theory holds, then, contra the standard theory, grounds cannot be disjunctive.

Speaker
Prof. Daniel Graham Marshall
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Lingnan University

Joining the Seminar online:
No registration is required.
Link of Meeting: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/91024467019

Until relatively recently, interpretations of early modern Catholicism have focused on a binary – broadcast/reception - model with unidirectional waves of proselytising missionaries emanating ultimately from Rome being passively received (to a greater or lesser degree of comprehension) by indigenous peoples in the four parts of the globe visited by missionaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Africa, Europe, Asia and America). This interpretation presupposes a model of religious change essentially in terms of ‘spiritual conquest’. More recently, historians - myself included – have sought to complicate this decidedly crude model of cause and effect by emphasising reciprocity, albeit within a forcefield of inequality, in which indoctrination and influence were filtered through an awareness of the degree to which conversation rather than conversion took place; a process that left plenty of space for misunderstanding and misappropriation. This lecture uses as its case study, Francesco Ingoli’s Report on the Four Parts of the World, written in the early 1630s to brief members of the papal committee responsible for the missions: the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, which had been founded in 1622, about the state of and prospects for Roman Catholicism throughout the globe.

Speaker 
Prof. Simon DITCHFIELD
Department of History, University of York

ZOOM Meeting ID: 990 8868 4183
Meeting link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/99088684183

This talk examines the historical engagement of Christianity and Islam, now the world’s two largest religious traditions. Soon after Islam’s emergence in seventh-century Arabia, Muslims encountered a substantial and long-established Christian population, with a growing network of churches stretching across Asia as far as Chang’an. How did Christians and Muslims interact within the new empires forged by Muslims in western Asia? This talk introduces the cooperation and conflict between early Muslims and Christians in fields as diverse as commerce and science, government and philosophy. The focus of the talk is religious exchange. I argue that Christians and Muslims influenced each other’s religious beliefs and behavior, and that central Christian and Islamic practices, such as fasting and prayer, took shape through the creative encounter between these two traditions.

Speaker
Dr. John ZALESKI
Department of Theology, Loyola University Maryland

ZOOM Meeting ID: 990 8868 4183
Meeting link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/99088684183

Supervised by Professor Isaac Leung, Assistant Professor of the Cultural Management Programme, the curators brings together thirteen groups of artists to present our life experience during the pandemic. The exhibition consists of four parts: “Normal Temperature” uses “temperature” as a clue to explore how technology intervenes in everyday life; “M i k 6” reveals the tension between individuals’ desire for freedom and the search for solace; “So Close, So Far” makes use of creativity to push spatial boundaries; and “Let’s Call It A Day” challenges the definition of time and happiness. They seek to explore the processes of change and adaptation that continue to intertwine with normality.

Immersive virtual space

Traditionally, an exhibition is an organised presentation and display of physical objects. At the time when physical access was limited during the pandemic, curators had to explore innovative ways to adapt to the change. While many exhibitions online attempt to reproduce the experience of viewing physical galleries, “____ing” invites the audience to enter an immersive virtual space designed for the senses. In the “Normal Temperature” section, it invites audiences to check their temperature before entering the exhibition, inspiring audiences to rethink how technology intervenes in everyday life. Through one of the artworks in the “M i k 6” section, the curators strive to advocate inner equilibrium and the search for a moment of serenity by inviting audiences to “play” the seesaw as a single player. Throughout each of the works, the curators invite audiences to fill their own “____” with creativity and seek their own ways to breathe amidst the new normal.

Making use of computer software and lens-based equipment, Professor Leung taught his student how to utilise new media to curate exhibitions that integrate technology, aesthetics and practicality. “New forms of collaborative models and cultural production have created profound opportunities for artists, curators and art institutions to set examples and create both models that bring different fields into contact and projects that investigate new ways of exhibiting arts,” said Professor Leung. “I taught students the technical aspects of new media technologies and ways to integrate research skills and theoretical knowledge into curatorial practice.”

Uncertainty brings inspiration

The exhibition responds to the ever-changing normality and complex restrictions. It all sprang from unexpected challenges in life. Originally, the final course work for CUMT3005 was in the form of a physical exhibition. Due to the fifth wave of COVID-19, all courses in Term 2 of 2021-22 had to be taught online. Physical events had to be cancelled. The uncertainty in life inspired students to ponder how the pandemic affected the everyday life of Hong Kong people. They explored how the terms, such as “new normal,” had brought new meaning to people’s lives. “The unexpected challenges during moments of crisis, on the one hand, brought disruption; on the other hand, they encouraged students to critically reconsider people’s lives from different perspectives,” said Professor Leung. “During the brainstorming sessions, students came up with a list of potential works, then looked for relevant theories to frame their ideas. Despite the challenges the pandemic brought, students also discovered that people were able to come up with creative ideas to deal with the hardship.”

From physical to virtual

Curating an exhibition is never easy, let alone an interactive virtual one. “Many of the artworks were created for a physical exhibition setting. Students had to come up with strategies to alter the works in a way that would reveal contextually relevant details and be cognisant of the interface and experience of an online environment,” said Professor Leung. His students learned to be aware that online exhibitions are neither a duplicate nor a replacement for physical exhibitions. They reorganised the materials in a multifaceted environment where users could interplay between real and digital. “Students had to take a proactive position to liaise with artists, web designers and other parties in order to determine possible solutions,” said Professor Leung. He was pleased to see that his students transformed from being passive learners to being engaged producers and participants of digital media.

About “____ing”

Curated by students from the course of CUMT3005 Design Your Exhibition – Curatorial Planning and Practice, the virtual exhibition “____ing” is open to the public until August 2023. The project is supported by the Funding Scheme for Virtual Teaching and Learning.

It’s long been established that animalism – the view that we are (human) animals – is at least logically consistent with psychological continuity theory, the view that we persist through relations of psychological continuity. Yet these views are generally considered to conflict. Indeed, as far as I know, no contemporary philosopher explicitly endorses both views. I suspect that this is primarily for three reasons. First, jointly accepting these views requires us to deny a popular account of material objects, one that is permissive with respect to what sorts of objects there are while being restrictive with respect to what sorts of changes an object can survive. Second, and relatedly, adding animalism to psychological continuity theory arguably undermines the standard motivation for psychological continuity theory. Third, animalism seems to fit more naturally with an alternative to psychological continuity theory (namely, biological continuity theory) while psychological continuity theory seems to fit more naturally with alternatives to animalism.
In spite of all this, I think we have very good reason to accept the combination of animalism and psychological continuity theory. I shall demonstrate this in the process of developing an account of the metaphysics of human persons – and of material objects more generally – that implies, among other things, that we are accidentally animals and essentially (or at least continuously) thinking things.

Speaker
Prof. Nicholas Rimell
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, CUHK

Limited seats for face-to-face seminar. Registrations will be handled on a first come, first served basis.
Delivered in English. All are welcome.
 

In this book talk, Professor Hui will present an aspiring Chinese fashion designer Ma Ke and her fashion exhibit Useless (2007). Ma intends to draw attention to the loss of the emotional bond between the maker and the user of clothes in the age of industrialized mass production and consumption. To help fashion recover this lost memory, Ma buries her apparel under dirt for a period of time. When the garment is unearthed, she reasons, it will find itself imbued with the imprint of the time and space of its soil. Presented at Paris Fashion Week in February 2007, Ma’s fashion exhibit Useless was intended to be a critique of modern consumer culture. Hui’s analysis then turns to Jia Zhangke’s documentary film Useless (2007), a transmedial dialogue with Ma’s fashion exhibit Useless. What characterizes the Useless documentary is its tripartite structure. Contrary to the second part of the documentary, which focuses on Ma’s middle-class fashion, the first part features a group of laborers in a garment factory in China’s Guangdong Province. These workers produce Ma’s first fashion line, Exception. Linking consumption to production, the director emphasizes the fact that Ma’s fashion is manufactured by the Chinese factory workers. The third part of the documentary turns to the working class in China’s Shanxi Province. With the rise of the market economy, the local tailors cannot compete with factories and department stores. To make a living, some tailors have to work as coal miners; thus, their expertise is rendered useless. In this talk, Hui argues that Jia’s documentary engagement with Ma’s fashion is double-edged: although Jia embraces some parts of Useless, Jia critiques other parts of Ma’s design. Hui will demonstrate how the director brings a new level of visual complexity to the designer’s antifashion and anticonsumption gesture through the use of montage.

Speaker

Prof. Calvin Hui
Class of 1952 Distinguished Associate Professor of Chinese Studies, 
College of William & Mary (U.S.A.)

Keynote speakers:
1. Prof. Zheng Yongnian, Professor, CUHK Shenzhen; Director, The Institute for International Affairs
2. Prof. Xiao Geng, Professor of Practice, CUHK Shenzhen; Director of Institute of Policy and Practice, the Shenzhen Institute of Finance; Chairman of the Hong Kong Institution for International Finance

Moderators: 
1. Prof. Li Chen
2. Prof. Tim Summers