Sexed Asian Machines: On The Communicability Of Multimedia

Sexed Asian Machines: On The Communicability Of Multimedia
Brown Bag Lunch Talk with Jian Chen, Gallatin School Of Individualized Study, NYU

Date: Monday, Sep 20th
Time: 12:30 PM - 1:45 PM

Location:
A/P/A Institute, Room 709
41-51 East 11th Street
7th Floor, Room 709
New York, NY 10003

Free and open to the public.
To RSVP:Email apa.rsvp@nyu.edu, or Call 212-992-9653

Bring your own lunch and A/P/A Institute will provide beverages and dessert!

  

Prior to the multimedia convergence initiated by mass digitalization, documentary and pornographic film/video offered the experiences of communicability and interactivity now attributed to “post-cinematic” multimedia. Pornography and documentary are arguably anti-cinematic forms that work through communicative relays between viewers and film/video, rather than immersive spectatorship, and through visible technological mediation, in contrast to aesthetic signatures or spectacle. Whether through claims to authenticity or the pleasure of fantasy, these two genres also initiate the kinds of cross-cultural contact celebrated more belatedly, and with more polished veneer, in global Hollywood cinema.

Chen’s talk will focus on semi-documentaries on sex work and mainstream online pornography, which feature Asian feminine subjects. Chen contends that these docu/porn forms make potentially explicit the paradoxical relationships between autonomy and control, enjoyment and labor, shaping image consumption and cultural visibility within transnational neoliberal capitalism. And Chen's talk will explore the racial, sexual fantasies that support the imagined free-flow circulation of images and information within multimedia public spheres.

For more information and to RSVP, contact TK

Jian Chen is Postdoctoral Fellow in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. Chen’s current research explores new demands made on cultural consumption, representation, and politics, with the transnational circulation of sexed racial and ethnic images in post-cinematic film and media. Chen’s article “Sex Without Friction: the Limits of Multi-Mediated Human Subjectivity in Cheang Shu Lea’s Tech-Porn” is forthcoming in the electronic journal Postmodern Culture.

Cosponsored with the NYU Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality and the Gallatin School for Individualized Study

For more information, go to A/P/A Institute at New York University.