China Remixed

China Remixed At a Glance

Jan 9 | Above Ground: 40 Moments of Transformation exhibit opening | Wells Library

Jan 21 | Quilts of Southwest China exhibit opening | Mathers Museum

Feb 1 | China Remixed Video Art Pre-Exhibit opens, featuring “Kora” | IMU lobby

Feb 3 | Above Ground - Roundtable & Lecture | Wells Library

Feb 15 | Isaac Leung - Scholars Series | GISB Auditorium

Feb 15 | China Remixed Public Video Art Exhibition opens | Multiple locations

Feb 19 | Dance as the Practice of Multiculturalism in Contemporary Taiwan | Mathers Museum

Feb 22 | Beili Liu - Artist Talk | Grunwald Gallery

Feb 23 | Gene Yang - Writers Series | Buskirk-Chumley Theatre | free tickets

Feb 24 | Focus Dance Company + IU Contemporary Dance | Buskirk-Chumley Theatre | free tickets

Feb 24 | After All (Mending Sky) opening, installation by Beili Liu | Grunwald Gallery

Mar 1 | Jiayang Fan - Scholars Series | GISB Auditorium

Mar 2 | Ha Jin - Writers Series, First Thursdays | Grunwald Gallery

Mar 8 | Gordon Chang - Scholars Series | GISB Auditorium

Mar 22 | Hua Hsu - Scholars Series | GISB Auditorium

Mar 23 | Shaolin Warriors | IU Auditorium

Mar 26 & 27 | Popo Fan - Chinese Cinema Remixed | IU Cinema

Mar 31 | Wu Man + New Music Ensemble + Vera Quartet | Buskirk-Chumley Theatre

Mar 31 | Kelly Tsai | location tba

Apr 1 | Bingbing and the Young Pioneers film premiere | IU Cinema

Apr 5 | Chee Wang Ng - Artist’s Talk | IU Eskenazi Museum of Art

Apr 6 | Judith Shapiro - Scholars Series | Lilly Library

Apr 6 | East Meets West concert | IU Eskenazi Museum of Art

Apr 6 | 798 Art Zone Exhibition opening | Mathers Museum

Apr 6 | First Thursdays Chinese Night Market | Fine Arts Plaza

Apr 10 & 11 | Flower and Sword | Studio Theatre

Apr 12 | Peter Hessler - Scholars Series | GISB Auditorium

Apr 13 | Marilyn Chin - Writers Series | Neal-Marshall

Apr 14 | Joe Wong - comedian | Buskirk-Chumley Theatre

Apr 18 & 19 | Thunderstorm 2.0 | IU Auditorium

Apr 21 | Amy Olberding - Scholars Series | GISB Auditorium

Apr 25 | Chinese StorySlam | Mathers Museum

Apr 27-28 | Student Research Presentations

Keep scrolling for more details on China Remixed programming!

40+ events • 10 weeks • 1 campus

China Remixed was the largest festival dedicated to Chinese arts and culture ever hosted in the Midwest. It featured world-renowned scholars and journalists, acclaimed novelists, GRAMMY award winning musicians, and comedians.

It also showcased IU faculty expertise and campus resources with a 20-film series on post-revolution film at the IU Cinema, separate exhibits on quilts from southwest China and the 798 Art Zone at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, an exhibition of video art showcased in the Indiana Memorial Union and the Media School, and a concert series featuring Chinese composers and performers from the Jacobs School of Music.

Author Gene Luen Yang's work was the first graphic novel nominated for a National Book Award and the first to win the American Library Association’s Printz Award.

Programming

Isaac Leung: Remixing China Through Video Art
February 15, 6pm
Global and International Studies Building Auditorium (GA0001)
Reception featuring regional cuisine and live music to follow

Leung is an artist, curator, and researcher in art and culture who is currently Lecturer in the Department of Cultural and Creative Arts of The Education University of Hong Kong. His work has been featured on National Public Radio and in, Agence France-Presse, the Chicago Tribune, the NY Arts Magazine, and the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong).

Seating available on a first-come, first-served basis.


Jiayang Fan: Perception and Reality: In Search of Chinese Identity in the Age of Trump and Lamborghinis
March 1, 6pm
Global and International Studies Building Auditorium (GA0001)
Reception featuring regional cuisine and live music to follow

Fan is a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine, where she reports on China, American politics, and culture. She is also a contributor to the New York Times Book Review, Slate, the Paris Review, and the LA Review of Books, among other publications.

Seating available on a first-come, first-served basis.


Gordon Chang: Entwined Destinies: America and China and a History of the Present and Going Forward into the Age of Trump
March 8, 6pm
Global and International Studies Building Auditorium (GA0001)
Reception featuring regional cuisine and live music to follow

Chang is professor of American history, the Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities; and director of the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University. He studies the historical connections between race and ethnicity in America and foreign relations, with a particular focus on the interconnections between East Asia and America. Chang is most recently author of Fateful Ties: A History of America’s Preoccupation with China (Harvard University Press).

Seating available on a first-come, first-served basis.


Hua Hsu: “Who is Enjoying the Shadow of Whom”: On Writing, Culture and Identity
March 22, 6pm
Global and International Studies Building Auditorium (GA0001)
Reception featuring regional cuisine and live music to follow

Hua Hsu teaches in the English Department at Vassar College and writes about music, sports, and culture. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The the New York Times, Slate, The the Village Voice, The the Boston Globe and The Wire. He is author of A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific (Harvard University Press).

Seating available on a first-come, first-served basis.


Judith Shapiro: China’s Environmental Challenges: A Grassroots Perspective
April 6, 4pm
Lilly Library

Shapiro is the director of the Natural Resources and Sustainable Development program for the School of International Service at American University. Her research and teaching focus on global environmental politics and policy, the environmental politics of Asia, and Chinese politics under Mao. She is the author, co-author, or editor of seven books, including China’s Environmental Challenges (Polity) and Mao’s War Against Nature (Cambridge University Press).

Seating available on a first-come, first-served basis.


Peter Hessler: Learning to Speak Lingerie: Chinese Entrepreneurs in Egypt and the Chinese Worldview
April 12, 6pm
Global and International Studies Building Auditorium (GA0001)
Book signing to follow.

Hessler is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he served as the Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2007, and is also a contributing writer for National Geographic. He is the author of River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, which won the Kiriyama Prize; Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China, a finalist for the National Book Award; and Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip. He won the 2008 National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2011.

Seating available on a first-come, first-served basis.


Amy Olberding: Philosophy of Funerals
April 21, 6:30pm
Global and International Studies Building Auditorium (GA0001)
Reception featuring regional cuisine and live music to follow

Amy Olberding is the President’s Associates Presidential Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma. Her research centers on ethics in early China, with particular attention to mortality and bereavement. She is the also the author of Moral Exemplars in the Analects (Routledge 2011), which examines the role of good examples in moral development.

Gene Luen Yang
February 23, 7:30pm
Buskirk-Chumley Theater

Yang is a comic book artist and author of graphic novels, who teaches creative writing through Hamline University’s MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. His book American Born Chinese became the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award and the first to win the American Library Association’s Printz Award.

Yang’s two-volume graphic novel Boxers & Saints was nominated for a National Book Award and won the L.A. Times Book Prize. In January 2016, the Library of Congress, Every Child A Reader, and the Children’s Book Council appointed Yang the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. In September 2016, Yang was named a MacArthur Fellow.

Event is free, but ticketed. Tickets are available through the Buskirk-Chumley box office.


Ha Jin
March 2, 8:00pm
Grunwald Gallery

Ha Jin, a pseudonym for Xuefei Jin, is a celebrated Chinese writer whose work explores the tensions between the individual and the family, the modern and the traditional, and personal feelings and duty. Jin earned a master’s degree in American literature from Shandong University in Qingdao and then enrolled at Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

After the Chinese government’s suppression of the 1989 student-led demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, Jin decided to remain in the United States and later became a U.S. citizen. Jin is author of two collections of poetry and two collections of short fiction stories, Ocean of Words, which received the PEN/Hemingway award, and Under the Red Flag (1997), which won the Flannery O’Connor Award. His novel, Waiting, won the National Book Award for fiction in 1999, as well as the PEN/Faulkner award. He also wrote the story collection The Bridegroom, which won the Asian American Literary Award, and two collections of poetry. He is a professor of English at Boston University.

Event is free, no tickets required. Seating available on a first-come, first-served basis.


Marilyn Chin
April 13, 7:30pm
Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center

Marilyn Chin is a poet, translator, novelist, and a professor at San Diego State University. She is author of Hard Love Province, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Award in 2015. She is also author of Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen, Rhapsody in Plain Yellow, The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty, and Dwarf Bamboo.

Chin has received a Stegner fellowship, the PENen/Josephine Miles award, five Pushcart Prizes, the Patterson Prize, a Fulbright fellowship, and awards from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has read her poetry at the Library of Congress and was interviewed by Bill Moyers and featured in his PBS series “The Language of Life” and in the PBS series “Poetry Everywhere.”

Event is free, no tickets required. Seating available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Focus Dance Group from the Taipei National University of the Arts
February 24, 7:30pm
Buskirk-Chumley Theater

A thrilling double bill featuring Taipei’s award-winning Focus Dance Company and IU Bloomington’s Contemporary dance program! The program will feature new choreography from both groups followed by a collaborative dance that playfully foregrounds differences and similarities in dance styles.

The program includes:

SONG and DANCE of ILISIN, the ANNUAL RITUAL of TAFALONG, AMIS
A suite of traditional songs and dances of the annual ritual of Ilisin from the Tafalong tribe, belonging to the Amis people who reside in eastern Taiwan. The songs and dances reinforce solidarity and spirit.

RELATIONSHIP
An inner exchange that highlights the relationship of carrying and complementing each other.

THE WATCHTOWER OF TWITTERING
A solemn ritual of respecting the ancestors and worshipping for blessings.

BLACK HOLE
A dance expressing the energetic explosion of animal-ness in humans, while exploring the deep essence of human rationality.

SPILL
A contemporary succession of falls, lifts, and leaps that speaks to how two people can be looking at the same thing and each perceive something totally different.

PSALM
An iconic piece by José Limón’s that is part of the standard American Modern Dance repertory.

And much more!

Event is free, but ticketed. Tickets are available through the Buskirk-Chumley box office.

Lecture: “Dancing as the practice of multiculturalism in contemporary Taiwan.”
Feb. 19, 7:00pm, Mathers Museum

Dr. Chi-Fang Chao is currently the associate professor of the Dept. of Dance, Taipei National University of the Arts. She has been trained in Anthropology (MA, National Taiwan University) and Dance Studies (Ph. D. University of Surrey). Her academic interests include dance anthropology, dance ethnography, Okinawan study, and indigenous dance theatre. She has published a monograph in Chinese, Dancing the Culture: the ethnography of Taketomi Island, Okinawa (2010) and many other articles. She has also curated the First and Second Global Indigenous People’s Music and Dance Festival in Taiwan. (2011, 2014) In 2013, she was invited as a visiting researcher by the Okinawan Prefectural University of the Arts. In 2014, she was rewarded with scholarship and taught at University of Roehampton, funded by Choreomundus, a European-based international MA program across countries and institutes. Since 2013, she has started to involve herself in the contemporary indigenous theatrical productions performed in the National Theatre in Taiwan, producing two works entitled Pu’ing: Searching the Atayal Route (2013) and Maataw: the Floating Island.(2016)


Shaolin Warriors
March 23, 7:30pm
IU Auditorium

The first live Kung Fu spectacular of its kind, Shaolin Warriors has audiences around the world gasping in disbelief at death-defying feats. This program has amazed over 700,000 people with its highly charged choreography, atmospheric music and scenery, and spectacular lighting and costumes.

Tickets available through the IU Auditorium box office.


Wu Man
March 31, 7:30pm
Buskirk-Chumley Theater

An evening celebrating the Chinese pipa, featuring Grammy nominee Wu Man and ensembles from the IU Jacobs School of Music. Recognized as a premier pipa virtuoso and leading ambassador of Chinese music, Wu Man has carved out a career as a soloist, educator and composer, giving her lute-like instrument—which has a history of over 2,000 years in China—a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. Through numerous concert tours as well as high-profile collaborations with ensembles such as the Kronos Quartet and Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, Wu Man has premiered hundreds of new works for the pipa while spearheading multimedia initiatives to preserve and create awareness of China’s ancient musical traditions.

The concert will begin with selected solo works for pipa, and then Wu Man will be joined by the JSOM Vera Quartet for the Concerto for string quartet and pipa (Tan Dun, 1999). The program will conclude with Tian Ling (Nature and Spirit) for pipa and fourteen players (Zhou Long, 1992) featuring Wu Man with the JSOM New Music Ensemble (David Dzubay, director). Additional program information and notes at http://www.lotusfest.org/event/wu-man-vera-nme/.

This performance is presented in partnership with the Lotus Blossoms Educational Outreach and is a joint presentation of the IU Arts & Humanities Council and the IU Jacobs School.

Event is free, but ticketed. Tickets are available through the Buskirk-Chumley box office.


Kelly Tsai
March 31 - April 1
Studio Theatre

Kelly Tsai is an award-winning writer, performer, and director based in Brooklyn. Her theatrical work has been developed and presented by Ars Nova, New York Live Arts, Downtown Urban Theater Festival, Museum of Chinese in America, Brooklyn Museum, El Museo del Barrio, Culture Project, University of California-Santa Cruz Rainbow Theater, and more.

Throughout her career, Tsai has been committed to the arts as leverage for social change for concerning issues as diverse as such as cultural identity, feminism, domestic violence and sexual assault prevention, immigrant rights, law enforcement reform, and voter enfranchisement.

Tsai will be featured as part of the Art@IU 5th Annual Graduate Symposium in Theatre and Performance Studies.

Friday, March 31st: Writing Workshop, 2-3:30pm, Studio Theatre (RSVP required: email bsundin@indiana.edu
This workshop focuses on how to write & develop solo performance material of all kinds.

Saturday, April 1st: Performative Keynote Address, 12pm, theatre building room A201 (No RSVP required.)

Formosa, solo performance, 7:30pm, Studio Theatre (Seating is extremely limited. First come, first serve basis.)


First Thursdays
April 6, 5–7:30pm
IU Arts Plaza

The First Thursdays festival will be dedicated solely to Chinese arts and humanities. The main- stage performances and many of the maker stations around the plaza will focus on Chinese art and performance, while our affiliates at the Lilly Library, Fine Arts, IU Cinema, and the IU Eskenazi Art Museum will devote their programming to exhibits and events from China.

The evening will feature a Chinese night market, with culinary traditions from the cultures of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland greater China. Student groups will also host several playful events, including a bubble tea contest, a Karaoke performance, and Chinese games and sports.

Event is free, no tickets required.


Concert of New Chinese Music
April 6, 7:15pm
IMU Starbucks

The student-run Concert of New Chinese Music presents all original musical compositions featuring contemporary interpretations of traditional Chinese forms, remixing classical Han culture with contemporary pop culture, minority culture, and westernized Chinese music tradition.

Event is free, no tickets required.


Flower and Sword
April 10–11, 7:30pm
Studio Theatre in the Lee Norvelle Theatre and Drama Center

Flower and Sword by Ma Sen is the story of a child returning home after 20 years abroad to visit their father’s grave. A ghostly masked figure waits for them/her, revealing dark secrets about a deadly love triangle in the past and its implications for the child’s future. With only two characters that can be played by male or female actors and a focus on symbolism and sexuality, Flower and Sword stands out as an excellent contribution to theatrical modernity from the Sinophone world.

Event is free, no tickets required.


Joe Wong
April 14, 7:30pm
Buskirk-Chumley Theater

Wong is a stand-up comedian and holds a PhD in biochemistry from Rice University in Houston. While living in Boston, Wong eventually qualified for the Boston Comedy Festival, where a booker for “The Late Show with David Letterman” spotted him. Wong became a favorite of David Letterman and Ellen Degeneres, making multiple appearances on both shows. He received a standing ovation at the White House Radio and Television Correspondent’s Dinner in 2010.

Event is free, but ticketed. Tickets are available through the Buskirk-Chumley box office.

Above Ground - 40 Moments of Transformation
January 9-March 10
Lobby, Herman B Wells Library

“Above Ground” is a photographic exhibition organized by the Chinese feminist Lü Ping, who is currently a visiting scholar at Columbia University, and co-organized for the Bloomington campus by Jiling Duan, an IU Bloomington PhD doctoral student in Gender Studies. The selected photographs capture a wide range of performances staged by Young Feminist Activists in China since 2012.

The exhibition will be accompanied by lectures and a roundtable featuring both the original planners of the exhibition and IU Bloomington faculty from the Departments of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Anthropology, and Gender Studies.

Lecture: “Visual Representation of Gender and Class in Changing China”

Wang Zheng, Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and History, University of Michigan

February 3, 12:00-1:15 pm, Global and International Studies Building, Room 2067

Analyzing visual representation of Chinese women in the popular media over a span of 60 years, this talk explores the concealed and erased history of socialist state feminist endeavors in socialist revolution and demonstrates drastic changes in gender norms and practices in the state’s embracing of global capitalism. Given the widespread notions about “CCP propaganda” or “Maoist gender discourse” that always assume an authorship of a faceless patriarchal Party state authority, this talk will bring feminist producers of gendered “propaganda” back to the historical process to highlight socialist feminist transformation of a patriarchal culture. Changes in visual representation signify changed power relations of gender and class, changed constitution of gender and class subjectivities, as well as changed nature of the state. The talk is based on Prof. Wang’s new book Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1964 (UC Press, 2016), which presents the first investigation of high politics in the CCP from a gender perspective.

Roundtable: “Above the Ground: the Past, Present, and Future of Feminist Movements in China”

Featuring Wang Zheng, Lu Pin, and Sara L. Friedman

February 3, 4:00-5:00 pm, Herman B Wells Library

Wang Zheng is Professor of Women’s Studies and History and Research Scientist at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at University of Michigan. She is the author of Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1964; Women in the Chinese Enlightenment: Oral and Textual Histories and the coeditor of From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society; Translating Feminisms in China; and Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era.

Lu Pin is a Chinese feminist organizer and visiting scholar at Columbia University. She has been working for women’s rights and promoting gender equality more than 20 years. In 2009 she established Feminist Voices, an alternative media agency to raise awareness and develop advocacy for anti-discrimination and violence against women, as well as to support young feminist activism around all China.

Sara L. Friedman is Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington. She is the author of Exceptional States: Chinese Immigrants and Taiwanese Sovereignty; Intimate Politics: Marriage, the Market, and State Power in Southeastern China and the coeditor of Migrant Encounters: Intimate Labor, the State, and Mobility across Asia; and Wives, Husbands, and Lovers: Marriage and Sexuality in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Urban China.


Chinese Cinema Remixed
January 29–April 1
IU Cinema

IU Cinema will present 20 film programs linked to mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Five renowned scholars will curate double-feature film programs that explore a ‘mash-up’ of themes—tradition versus modernity, old versus new, government- approved versus independent or underground—relevant to their areas of research. All films will be introduced by the visiting scholars, and public lectures about the pairings will be offered.

Films are free but ticketed. All screenings and ticket information are listed at IU Cinema’s website.

There will also be partial retrospectives of visiting fifth- and sixth-generation Chinese film directors and the following film screenings and discussions:

  • Popo Fan
    Mama Rainbow, March 26, 6:30pm; Papa Rainbow, March 27, 7pm
    Fan is an activist filmmaker and director of the Beijing Queer Film Festival, an underground film event that is pushing for LGBTQ equality in China.
  • Bingbing and the Young Pioneers
    April 1, 7pm
    The Young Pioneers is a Little 500 bike team made up solely of Chinese students, founded in 2015 by Bingbing Zhao, then a junior at the IU Kelley School of Business. The Arts and Humanities Council helped commission the documentary film for the festival.

The opening of this series features two films from director Wang Tong and a lecture from Professor Guo-Juin Hong:

  • Banana Paradise (1989), January 29, 6:30pm
  • Guo-Juin Hong Lecture: Dire Straits: Historiographies of Home in Wang Tong’s Cinema, January 30, 3pm, GSIB 1060
  • Where the Wind Settles (2015), January 30, 7pm

Guo-Juin Hong is an associate professor of Asian and Middle Eastern studies at Duke University. He specializes in film historiography, film theory, sound studies, post-colonial theory and theories of culture and globalization, and film and other media of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China.

Additional Scholars Visits:

  • Evans Chan, Hong Kong: critic, scholar, and filmmaker—February 19-22, 2017
  • Chris Berry, King’s College, London—February 25-28, 2017

Evans Chan
Born in China and raised in Hong Kong, Evans Yiu Shing Chan is a critic, dramatist, and award-winning film director. Chan has been compared to the avant-garde filmmaker Chris Marker, “the most intellectual of the current crop of Hong Kong directors,” wrote Barry Long in Hong Kong Babylon. He is also a program consultant to New York’s Downtown Pace Arts Centre, a veteran cultural critic, and former advisor to the Hong Kong International Film Festival. Chan has written for the Indian-based film journal Cinemaya and The Hong Kong Standard, where he was the staff film critic from 1981 to 1984. Since 1984, Chan has divided his time between New York and Hong Kong.

Chris Berry
Chris Berry is a professor of film studies at King’s College in London. His research interests include Chinese and East Asian cinema and screen cultures; gender, sexuality and cinema; documentary film; and theories of national and transnational cinema. He co-edits two book series for Hong Kong University Press—TransAsian Screen Cultures and Queer Asia— and has been interviewed widely on Chinese and Asian cinema and screen cultures by The New York Times, BBC, The Korea Times, NHK Japan, and others.


Tendrils of Design: Chinese Arts Past and Present
January 20–April 28
Eskenazi Museum of Art

This thematic tour will focus on recurring symbols in Chinese arts over time and provide a context for the work of visiting contemporary artist Beili Liu.


China Remixed Public Video Art Exhibition
February 1-March 10
Multiple sites across campus

This video art exhibition is an international video art exchange of Chinese video art from Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China, and beyond. Curated by Isaac Lueng and featuring work by the IU Bloomington School of Art+Design’s Arthur Liou, this IU-only exhibition is inspired by Leung’s collaborative production of “Both Sides Now,” a dialogic exhibition of video art from Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and the People's Republic of China.

Learn more about these exhibits at this link: https://chinaremixedvideoart.indiana.edu/index.html

Feb. 1 - 14 features Jawshing Arthur Liou's Kora running continuously at the IMU hotel lobby.

Feb. 15 - Mar. 10 features exhibits running in the Franklin Hall Commons Monday through Friday from 12 to 1:30pm, the IMU Starbucks continuously, and the Scholars Commons Sunday - Thursday from 5:30 to 8pm.

* Curatorial Talk, February 15, 6pm, GISB GA0001: Isaac Leung: "Remixing China Through Video Art"


Beili Liu
February 24–March 9*
Grunwald Gallery of Art

Liu is a visual artist and associate professor of art at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work has been exhibited in Asia, Europe, and across the United States in solo and group exhibitions.

Liu will present the installation "After All / Mending the Sky" at the Grunwald Gallery of Art.

* Artist’s talk, February 22, 5:30 p.m., Fine Arts 015

* Opening reception, February 24, 6:00-8:00 p.m., Grunwald Gallery


A Step in Time Across the Line: Recent Works by Chee Wang Ng
March 11–May 8*
IU Eskenazi Museum of Art

What does it mean to be Chinese in today’s diverse global society? Through multimedia works of photography, sculpture, video, and installation, Chee Wang Ng asks this question and explores the possibilities with image rich tableaux of artifacts that range from documentary material to kitsch. With the rise of Chinese engagement with the world-at-large, Chee Wang Ng’s work re-contextualizes not only traditional Chinese cultural imagery, but also modern constructions of race, identity and stereotyping viewed through the lens of history.

* Artist's talk, April 5, 6pm


798 Art Zone Exhibition
April 6-December 15
Mathers Museum of World Cultures

Just after the turn of the 21st century, artists and cultural entrepreneurs began colonizing a former military factory complex in northeast Beijing. Taking its name from that numbered factory, the 798 Art Zone is an urban arts colony that now attracts visitors from around China and the world. This visual tour introduces the district and offers a glimpse of a compelling place that is both visually saturated and reflective of the state of contemporary arts and society in present-day China.

* Opening reception, April 6, 7–8:30pm


Quilts of Southwest China
January 21–May 7
Mathers Museum of World Cultures

In southwest China, traditional bed coverings and other household items have often been made, like American quilts, of small pieces of fabric that are patched and appliquéd together to form artistic, functional textiles. A bi-national consortium of American and Chinese museums, including the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, has conducted research on this important element of intangible and tangible cultural heritage. This groundbreaking exhibition provides American audiences with a glimpse into the historical and contemporary practice of this Chinese textile art and into the lives of the artists and communities who cherish it.

* Opening reception, January 21, 2–4pm

Research Experiences for Undergraduates
Offices of the Vice Provost for Research and for Undergraduate Education

This program supports advanced undergraduate research and creative activity for approximately 6-8 students working in the traditions, histories, and cultures of greater China. Funding will go toward semester-long projects that entail sustained research and/or creative activity and will result in a coherent final project of significant disciplinary value—whether in the form of an essay, exhibit, or performance.

Students will work closely with a chosen faculty mentor to focus the research project, outline a research plan, gather the necessary materials, equipment, and/or archives, and craft the final product. All work will take place during the Spring 2017 semester, and the final products will be presented together at a public exhibition at the end of term.


COLL-C107: China Remixed
Undergraduate course, meets Mondays and Wednesdays from 8 to 10:30 am

China is vital not only to global economics, politics, and security around the globe, but also art and culture. This class explores how the arts offer a gateway for understanding contemporary Chinese society in dynamic ways. By drawing on the events and programs of the 2017 Global Arts & Humanities China Remixed festival, students will experience Chinese film, theatre, music, and literature together with some of the world’s top experts in order to and enhance their understanding as global citizens in a multicultural world. Through these experiences, students will develop a foundation for active engagement with the arts and humanities and an appreciation of diversity while at IU and beyond. This 8 week course counts as a COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit and a COLL (CASE) Global Civ & Culture credit. For more information, contact Dr. Jennifer Goodlander – jgoodlan@indiana.edu.


African American Dance Company in Beijing: A cultural exchange with China University of Mining and Technology Beijing
February 9, 4:30pm
Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center, Dance Studio A217

Come join an interactive discussion and presentation studio event​ as part of the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies Brownbag Series. Students in the IU African American Dance Company will share stories and experiences from their weeklong cultural exchange trip to Beijing in December 2016.


Leadership and the Arts University: a presentation from Yang Chyi Wen, President of Taipei National University of the Arts
April 18, 5pm
Wells-Metz Theatre

Yang Chyi Wen, President of Taipei National University of the Arts and Chairman of the Asian League of Institutes of the Arts, is a renowned arts administrator and educator. President Yang obtained a Masters of Fine Arts from Indiana University’s School of Theatre in 1985, complementing his two degrees – Masters of Arts (1983) and Masters of Architecture (1982) – from Ball State. His specialties include theatrical design, architectural design, arts administration, community transformation, and execution of arts and cultural policy. Yang has also served as Artistic Director at The National Theater and Concert Hall, Chief Director of the Performing Arts Center at the National Institute of the Arts, and as a visiting scholar at Yale University


Chinese Student Storytelling Exchange
April 25, 7:00pm
Mathers Museum

Reflecting the Arts and Humanities Council’s commitment to public storytelling as both an art and an essential form of community engagement, the council will host a student storytelling exchange that features the lives and experiences of Chinese students, Chinese American students, and American students studying in China.

The exchange will first take place live and in dual languages in a “Story Slam” mode with both workshops and public competitions. The program will then extend to the digital sphere where it will be archived and expanded for future use. The goal of this program is to create better understandings and a greater sense of shared community between our international and domestic students, with an eye toward future research on the nature and benefits of study abroad and international exchange.

China Remixed is the largest festival dedicated to Chinese arts and culture ever hosted in the Midwest.

IU & China: A history of engagement

Indiana University has nearly 2,800 Chinese students who account for nearly 40% of the university’s international enrollment. 200 IU domestic students study in China each year.

The university also has a thriving gateway office in Beijing, where it has established international partnerships in business, science, and the arts and entertainment.

The China Remixed program celebrated IU’s international and internationally-minded students, while creating new social and networking opportunities between campus groups and advance the arts and humanities as critical components of global community and leadership.

Consisting solely of Chinese students, the Young Pioneers were the first all-international team to compete in Indiana University's Little 500 bike race.

The 2017 festival amplifies and celebrates these connections as they enrich the work of dozens of departments, groups, and units across campus.

Lauren Robel, Provost & Executive Vice President, IU Bloomington

Festival partners

China Remixed would not be possible without the support and vision of hundreds of scholars, artists, and organizations across campus and in the community. They include:

  • On campus: School of Global and International Studies, Chinese Flagship Program, Asian Culture Center, East Asian Languages and Cultures, The Media School, Center for the Study of Global Change, East Asian Studies Center, Asian American Studies Program, Mathers Museum of World Cultures, IU Cinema, IU Eskenazi Museum of Art, Jacobs School of Music, School of Art + Design
  • In Bloomington: Bloomington Department of Economic & Sustainable Development, Lotus Education and Arts Foundation.