EASGSU Film Talk Series: Island Echoes: Labor, Citizenship, and Nonhumans in the Ocean

Island Echoes: Labor, Citizenship, and Nonhumans in the Ocean: Conversation on Long Time Between Sunsets and Underground Waves 

This virtual event takes place on Zoom. Click here to register for the Zoom link.

Film Introduction

Long Time Between Sunsets and Underground Waves (2020-2021) examines the mutual interventions between human activity and nature from the perspective of an island. By adopting a semi-documentary, semi-fictional approach, the work explores the multiple relationships between the island's economy, geography, and biopolitics.

The island seems to be a closed-off, circulatory ecosystem and economy, located not too far offshore from the mainland. The development of tourist infrastructure has just begun, while the influence of the tides still imposes limits on people's daily lives and economic activities. Late at night, the dense forest is haunted by ghosts and apparitions, perhaps because the spirit of the island's indigenous peoples has not yet dispersed.

Under the surface of the sea, legends and superstitious beliefs about mythical creatures and the nomadic Bajau people still circulate–much like the second-generation immigrants residing on the island. Lacking clear identities and nationalities, their origins lie far away in legendary places. Today they are scattered around the Malay Archipelago, searching for a place to live, sometimes far from the mainland or major islands, separated by choice or by force.

Panelists:

Hu Wei, Artist

Hu Wei lives and works in Beijing, graduated from CAFA and obtained an MA at Dutch Art Institute (DAI) in NL. He works in a variety of media, including film making, installation, printed images, performance and drawing. His interest often begins with the seemingly unrelated elements between text and visual culture, exploring the multiple, speculative connections between art and reality in relation to both political and formal level through research, "translation" and imagination. 

His solo projects include: Touching A Fabric of Holes, Macalline Art Center, Beijing(2023); Affairs, DRC NO.12 Art Space, Beijing(2022); The Long Way Around, ShanghART Gallery, Beijing(2021); Proposal for Public Assembly/Encounter, Jimei Arles 2018, Xiamen(2018); Father: "Tomorrow, don’t act smart with the boss, find out what he wants first.", Wyoming Project, Beijing(2018); Nothing Related, But Everything Is Concerned, TJCHINA Gallery, Tijuana, Mexico(2014)

Hu Wei is the winner of East Asian Contemporary Art 2019 Prize, the nominee of HUAYU Youth Award 2020 and Jimei· Arles Discovery Prize 2018. Hu Wei has previously been an artist-in-residency in countries including Malaysia, South Korea, Portugal, the Netherlands and Mexico. 

Dr. Erin Y. Huang, Assistant Professor, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto

Erin Y. Huang is Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. She is an interdisciplinary scholar and comparatist specializing in critical theory, Marxist geography, postcolonial studies, queer and feminist theory, cinema and media studies, and Sinophone Asia. She is the author of Urban Horror: Neoliberal Post-Socialism and the Limits of Visibility (Duke University Press, 2020). Her second book project, Islands of Capital: Media Aesthetics of Zones across Militarized Oceans, traces the technologies of the ocean and zoning as islanding in contemporary maritime capitalism and global warfare, with focus on the South China Sea, the (western) Pacific islands, and the transpacific intimacies of archipelagic Chinese and American empires.

Moderator: Sofi Zhihui Zhang, Ph.D. Student, Department of Art History, University of Toronto

This event is hosted by the East Asian Studies Graduate Student Union. Part of the The Fantastical and the Real: 2023 EASGSU Film Talk Series