[Commlist] CCVA Annual Conference CFP

The 16th Annual Conference, the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts, 
Birmingham City University
Magical Metropolis: the Shanghai Surreal Date: 23-24 November 2023 
Venue: School of Art, Birmingham City University, UK (in-person only)
Deadline for abstracts: 31 March 2023

For the first time, the CCVA annual conference instrumentalises a 
specific cityscape to provoke discussions, debates, and new 
understandings in a transdisciplinary context. This year, we focus on 
Shanghai, popularly known as modu (magical metropolis) today.

Following the First Opium War (1839-42), Shanghai involuntarily opened 
to European trade whilst certain areas were forcibly rented by imperial 
powers under an unjust semi-colonial system of concessions. The city 
rapidly developed into one of Asia’s thriving treaty ports, a 
cosmopolitan metropolis which became the Chinese art world’s nucleus 
amidst the Republican era (1911-1949).  During the 1930s, Surrealism 
entered Shanghai through returnee study-abroad students who encountered 
the movement in France and Japan. Disseminated through a nexus of 
copious periodicals, manhua, exhibitions, artist’s studios, and art 
collectives such as the Storm Society (juelanshe), Surrealism was 
concentrated in the city’s former French and international concessions, 
purveying a repertoire of distorted nudes, oneiric cityscapes, and 
political dystopia. The Shanghai Surreal can also be characterised 
across performing arts, architecture, cinema, animation, urban 
transformations, and everyday life.  Indeed, Parisian Surrealists 
praised Hollywood films such as The Shanghai Gesture (1941) which 
propagated a distinctly orientalist urban mythology, counter to their 
Chinese peers.
Under Mao, Shanghai became a surreal palimpsest, architectural vestiges 
of its capitalist past threatened socialist modernity. Imperial urban 
spaces were re-appropriated, resembling a Surrealist dreamscape blending 
past and present. The city became a hub for poster production and other 
forms of revolutionary propaganda wherein fantastical imagery distorted 
reality into an unintentional form of the surreal, a reconciliation of 
‘the real and the imagined’ (Breton: 1924). Model Operas (Yangban xi), 
which commingled communist ideals with traditional theatre, were 
performed for the very first time in Shanghai at a 1964 festival. 
Moreover, the Shanghai Animation Studio, founded in 1957, produced Havoc 
in Heaven (1961) which utilised metaphysical elements of Daoist folklore 
to advocate a Communist message.
After the Reform and Opening Up (1978), the Third (and first 
international-facing) Shanghai Biennial in 2000 ‘legitimised’ Chinese 
avant-garde art in a state-owned institution (Wu 2019). The exhibition 
included the display of Surrealistic artwork. Once again, Shanghai 
became a global centre for contemporary art, catalysing an art museum 
boom and international exchange. In this respect, Berghuis (2007) argued 
that a ‘New Shanghai Surreal’ can ‘overcome the past conditions of 
socialist-realism as well as the present-day vehement conditions of pure 
capitalism’, invoking Surrealism’s dialectical reconciliation of 
opposing forces (Breton 1929). Most recently, during Spring 2022, the 
government’s ‘Zero-Covid Policy’ (Qingling zhengce), locked down 
Shanghai’s 25 million inhabitants for two months. This irrational, 
surreal experience of everyday life prompted direct responses and 
protests from artists and other creative professionals.
> From the Republican era to the present day, The Shanghai Surreal reflects the city’s moniker modu, a simultaneously magical yet intoxicating city where East vs West, tradition vs modernity and, more recently socialism and capitalism coexist.  We welcome art-historical studies of Shanghainese Surrealism alongside broader, multidisciplinary conceptions of Shanghai as a ‘Surreal City’. Possible perspectives include but are not limited to:

Surrealist references or strategies amongst Shanghai related 
artists/groupings/exhibitions. Surreality in Shanghainese periodicals, 
manhua and visual culture. Shanghai’s urban transformations and 
architecture. The Shanghai Surreal in film, animation, and theatrical 
forms. Surreal visualities and testimonies of Shanghai covid lockdowns.

Please submit one document containing 1) an abstract of up to 300 words; 
2) a 100-word biography, contact information and any institutional 
affiliation by 31st March 2023 to Dr. Lauren Walden 
((lauren.walden /at/ bcu.ac.uk)) and (ccva /at/ bcu.ac.uk). Applications from all 
career stages and postgraduate students are most welcome. Following the 
conference, selected papers will be invited for publication in the 
Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art indexed by Scopus. Please kindly 
note this is an in-person only event.

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