Stroke by Stroke: Calligraphic imagination in contemporary Chinese art and emergent media

This AHRC-funded research (led by Dr Panpan Yang) explores a distinct pattern of imagination: Chinese calligraphy in the transmedia context.

How do the transformative and performative qualities of Chinese calligraphy come into play in photography, cinema, computer fonts, iPhone apps, virtual reality and cyberspace? How do media collisions as such transform our understanding of calligraphy today? How can we rediscover, retool and mobilise cultural heritage in an age of global media mixing? How can we put the history of art in dialogue with our digital future?

This research explores a distinct pattern of imagination: Chinese calligraphy in the transmedia context. what is termed ‘calligraphic imagination’ is negotiated through a set of oscillations between image and text, rupture and continuity, spatiality and temporality, and materialisation and dematerialisation. What emerges in the investigation is an alternative history of Chinese calligraphy in the modern and contemporary context as seen through the lens of new media forms. 

Multidisciplinary in nature, this research project is located at the intersections of art history, Chinese studies, screen studies, and digital humanities. Placing art historical writings on Chinese calligraphy in conversation with film history, media archaeology, and platform studies, this research sheds new light on how cultural heritage is reinvented at moments of historical rupture.

The research project also enables ‘London is Calling: Emerging Artist Initiative’ led by Small Gallery, an AHRC-funded experimental art space.

Image: Qu Leilei and Caroline Deane at 'Sacred Truths: An Interactive Calligraphy Workshop' at SOAS Brunei Gallery, 19 July 2023. Photo by Jiaqi Zhang