monday is the 18th, not the 20th as previously imagined…
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The Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium
of UC Berkeley's Center for New Media Presents:
Star Personas and Fan Fictions: Bruce Lee, JJ Chinois,
and the Queer Technologies of Celebrity
Mimi Nguyen
Women's Studies, University of Michigan
Mon, 18 Oct, 7:30-9pm: UC Berkeley, 160 Kroeber Hall
All ATC Lectures are free and open to the public.
What happens when a Chinese American lesbian performer borrows from
the distinctive cinema and styling of international superstar Bruce
Lee to create her own Asian (drag) sensation, aspiring celebrity JJ
Chinois?
This talk examines the use of video and digital forms and technologies
of public celebrity, in concert with queer forms and technologies of
the self, for assembling a desirable commodity body in American and
transnational popular culture.
JJ Chinois is the creation and alter-ego of New York City artist Lynne
Chan. Nguyen will examine Chan's interpretation of Asian
masculinities as individuated performance and as reproducible
commodity. She will also consider the historical and cultural
possibilities (and limitations) for stardom engendered by contemporary
transnational circuits of culture, capital, and technology.
Nguyen explores technologies of the self and of the star to reflect
upon the specific social histories and material conditions that creat
a desirable commodity body. Nguyen examines the technological
implications of JJ Chinois' "star potential" by focusing on Chan's
guerilla music video and "official" website, as well as the layers of
his cinematic and stylistic borrowing from Bruce Lee's body of work
(both his disciplined, physical body and his films). Nguyen looks at
how Chan/Chinois reproduces and critiques the techniques through which
these popular cultural forms amplify the illusion of interactivity,
intimacy and identification between stars, fans, and wannabes.
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Mimi Thi Nguyen is Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Rackham
School of Graduate Studies and Assistant Professor in Women's Studies
at the University of Michigan. She earned her PhD. in Ethnic Studies
at the University of California, Berkeley, with a Designated Emphasis
on Women, Gender, and Sexuality. She is currently completing her first
book, which examines the historical production and mobilization of
refugeeness for varied political and cultural projects (such as
commemoration, humanitarianism, consumption and multicultural
nationalism) in particular within the transnational configuration
"Vietnamese America." She continues to situate her work within
transnational feminist cultural studies with her next project, which
will focus on fashion, citizenship and transnationality. She is
co-editor with Thuy Linh Tu of Alien Encounters: Pop Culture in Asian
America (forthcoming) and author of multiple essays on Asian American,
queer, and punk subcultures, digital technologies, and Vietnamese
diasporic culture, published in academic collections, on-line
publications and popular magazines.
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Also Upcoming: 22nd - 24th October
Distributed Form: Network Practice
Architecture, Media and Design Symposium
College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley
Featuring Mark Wigley, Michael Speaks, Marcos Novak,
Reinhold Martin, Mark Goulthorpe, Dagmar Richter, Michael Bell, Peter
Bentley, Peter Testa, Casey Reas, David Crawford, George Legrady, and
Kris Pister. http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/conference/dfnp/
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The ATC is sponsored by UC Berkeley's: Center for New Media, Office of the
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, College of Engineering
Interdisciplinary Studies Program, Center for Information Technology in
the Interest of Society, Consortium for the Arts, BAM/PFA, Townsend Center
for the Humanities, and the Intel Corporation.
ATC Director: Ken Goldberg
ATC Associate Director: Greg Niemeyer
ATC Assistant: Therese Tierney
Curated with ATC Advisory Board
Full F04-S05 series schedule and video archive:
http://www.ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg/lecs/
Contact: [email protected], or phone: (510) 643-9565
atc @ ucb, monday 18 oct
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Type: discussion