[9/16, 5pm] Puppets: A Live Wayang Golek

When Fri, 16 September 2011, 17:00 – 19:00

Where Outdoors on the Norlin Quad

Description A Wayang Golek Sunda, rod puppet performance of West Java, Indonesia in collaboration with Gamelan Tunas Mekar under the direction of Balinese composer and Artist-in-Residence I Made Lasmawan. Dalang : Kathy Foley Gamelan Director: I Made Lasmawan Regional Notes: Sunda/West Java Sunda is the culturally rich region of West Java which covers the western third of the Indonesian island of Java. The mountainous region of Priangan ("abode of the gods") with its capital of Bandung is currently a major industrial and economic area of Indonesia. It is inhabited by ethnic Sundanese who are culturally and linguistically differentiated from the Javanese who live in other parts of the island. Wayang puppetry and gamelan, as they are currently performed in Sunda are influenced by the older Cirebonese traditions, but all the arts are re-interpreted with the more democratic and down-to-earth worldview of the highlands. Modern times have seen great artistic resurgence and creativity in Sunda, especially around the city of Bandung.

[10/1, 10am] Symposium on Contemporary Korean Art

When Sat, 1 October 2011, 10:00 – 17:00

Where 1125 18th Street, Boulder, Colorado (ATLAS Room 100) (map)

Description In conjunction with the exhibition "Image Clash: Contemporary Korean Video Art." Reception to follow at 5 pm in the CU Art Museum, light refreshments will be served. As both cultural researchers and translators, artists investigate preconceptions around the notions of community, collectivity, and individuality that are inherent in the political and sociological landscape in which they are situated. The symposium will consist of conversations between each participating artist and a critic, and a round table to discuss issues concerning religion, military culture, gender identity, and other current cultural issues, not only focusing on the art of the videos but also exploring their significance as socio-political discourses.

[11/11, 9:30am] Seeing Spirits: Spirituality and Visuality in Southeast Asian Media

When Fri, 11 November 2011, 09:30 – 16:00

Where 1300 Pleasant Street, Boulder, CO (Hale Science, Anthropology Reading Room, 4th Floor) (map)

DescriptionA one-day seminar on contemporary Asian visual culture What is the allure of making the invisible world visible? How does visualizing spiritual or religious worlds intersect with dreams of transparency or authority? How does obscurity intersect with politics? What are the stakes of visuality? This one-day seminar will host three internationally renowned anthropologists of Asia on contemporary visual culture. Together, these guest speakers pose wide-ranging questions about the relationship among the spiritual, the political and the visual. Patricia Spyer (New York University and Leiden University) will present on the rise of large-scale public murals by Christian artists in the aftermath of political and religious violence in Eastern Indonesia. Mary Steedly (Harvard University) will ask why new film freedoms in the aftermath of the Suharto regime resulted in the boom in a particular genre—horror. Karen Strassler (Queens College, CUNY) will present on popular, street art paintings of the Javanese folk goddess, Ratu Kidul, that mimic photographic style. Free and open to the public. All are welcome. Hale Science Building, Anthropology Reading Room, 4th Floor.

[11/28, 6:30pm] Anpo: Art X War

When Mon, 28 November 2011, 18:30 – 20:30

Where Eaton Humanities Room 150, Boulder, CO (map)

DescriptionA film screening and a lecture by the film's director, Linda Hoaglund. ANPO: Art x War documents artistic and popular response to the renewal of the U.S.-Japan post-war treaty supporting U.S. military bases in Japan. The film focuses on artists and their work - including painting, photography, anime, film, and music - exploring how Japanese artists recorded responses to American military presence in the 1950s. These responses culminated in broad national protests in 1960. This event is free and open to the public.

[1/26, 12pm] The Magical World of the all-female Japanese troupe, Takarazuka

When Thu, 26 January, 12:00 – 13:00

Where 1424 Broadway Street, Boulder, CO (CAS Conference Room) (map)

Description Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Theatre & Dance at CU-Boulder Bud Coleman will give a lecture entitled, "The Magical World of the all-female Japanese troupe, Takarazuka." From its founding in 1913, the all-female revue Takarazuka has grown from a modest entertainment in a hot springs outside of Osaka to a entertainment juggernaut which includes the very respected Takarazuka Music School, two large theatres, and selling 2.5 million tickets every year.  This presentation will include a brief history of the company, clips from performances, and a look at how the company has changed (and not changed) during tumultuous events and movements of the 20th and 21st centuries. Bring your own lunch to this event, and we will provide dessert.

[2/4, 11am] International Symposium: "Keeping It Real!"

When Sat, 4 February, 11:00 – 17:00

Where ATLAS Building Room 100, CU-Boulder (map)

Description As part of the exhibition, “Keeping It Real! Korean Artists in the Age of Multi-Media Representation,” (opening Feb 2, 2012), this symposium will feature most of the participating artists along with a few leading curators and scholars who specialize Asian Contemporary art. This exhibition comments on the contemporary state of South Korean art by offering a unique and unprecedented opportunity to experience new art forms pioneered by emerging Korean artists working in Seoul, New York, and Europe. The artists in this exhibition lead us into a mysterious, ironic, and hybrid reality, a reality that completely challenges our perceptions of the world as we are conditioned to think about it. The works on view are a series of dialogues that illuminate conjunctures between real life and fantasy which present objects and human behaviors through a creative and conceptual kaleidoscope. The virtual reality in their art- a hyper-reality materialized in scientific, technological, and global idioms- unerringly subverts our intellectual, experienced, and intuitive knowledge about art and society. These artists belong to a new generation, born since the tumultuous social and political phase of modern Korean society subdued; without the Cold War, without riot police, yet possessing access to the larger world via the internet, opportunities to travel abroad, and products promoted locally by global corporations. The exhibition features photography, video, site-specific installation, and sculpture and includes the work of eight artists including: Kyung Woo Han, Yong-ho Ji, Yeondoo Jung, Shun-il Kim, Sun K. Kwak, Hyungkoo Lee, Jaye Rhee, and Kiwoun Shin.

[3/2, 6:30pm] Treasure of the Lisu - a film by Yan Chun Su

When Fri, 2 March, 18:30 – 19:30

Where ATLAS 100, CU-Boulder (tentative) (map)

Description Treasure of the Lisu takes us into the world of Ah-Cheng, a master musician and tradition bearer of the Lisu minority people in southwest China. Originating in eastern Tibet, the Lisu people now live among the mountainous Nu (Salween) River canyon, an area caught between the ancient and the modern world. As a skilled craftsman, Ah-Cheng is the only person in his village who can still make the chiben, an emblematic four-string lute, which is one of the most important objects to the Lisu People. Being one of the last remaining tradition bearers of the Lisu people in his village, Ah-Cheng holds a vital role in the survival of his ethnic culture. Through intimate access to the daily life of three generations of Lisu people in Ah-Cheng's family, this 30-minute documentary shows, with heart-felt compassion and humor, the effect of modernization on ethnic traditions. Treasure of the Lisu presents a world rarely seen by Westerners, a world that seems far away yet we will find the unexpected similarities striking. Yan Chun Su is a documentary filmmaker born in China who received her education in both China and the US. In her research Yan has traveled to Patagonia, the Amazon, the Arctic, Mongolia, and remote communities in China and Southeast Asia. Her first film, Sega, African School Dream, was a result of her teaching in a small village in Ghana during 2006. Her documentaries have been shown in film festivals internationally. Treasure of the Lisu has been screened at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, the Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival, the Athens Ethnographic Film Festival, the Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival and the Banff Mountain Film Festival. Film screening will be followed by a brief talk by the filmmaker Yan Chun Su. This screening is free and open to the public.

[3/16, 7:00pm] Syndromes and A Century

When Fri, 16 March, 19:00 – 20:00

Where University of Colorado, Boulder Visual Arts Complex (map)

Description This film showing is part of the Brakhage Center Symposium, March 16-18.

(Sang sattawat). Dedicated to Apichatpong's doctor parents, and loosely based on their recollections, Syndromes and a Century begins in a rural hospital that basks in a light so radiant it finds all doctors in love. Here dentists serenade their crushes with flossing-related karaoke, and even job interviews sound romantic. Later, in an antiseptic urban hospital bathed in fluorescence (the light of the new century), the same actors, playing similar characters, re-evoke their scenes, with loves and desires repeated like syndromes. Concerned with how memory (and, by extension, cinema) works to recall and rephrase stories and emotions, Syndromes and a Century is blissfully impervious to narrative concerns.—Jason Sanders , PFA Film Notes