Clare Chun-yu Liu: This is China of a particular sort, I do not know

This is China of a particular sort, I do not know

2020

34:01 minutes
colour digital video, sound

‘This is China of a particular sort, I do not know’ is an artist film in response to chinoiserie, a European visual style of materiality imitating Chinese motifs popular in the eighteenth century. It is set and entirely filmed at the Royal Pavilion Brighton, a British pleasure palace built by George IV based on the idea of illusion, and hence its exterior being Indian Mughal and interior chinoiserie.

Across five dialogues and one monologue, the artist herself and relevant historical individuals - that are George IV the British King, Chien-lung the Chinese Emperor who received the Macartney Embassy, George Macartney who led the first British embassy to China, William Alexander the draughtsman from the Embassy, and Ang a Ching Dynasty royal family member and also the artist’s childhood neighbour in Taiwan – question, miss, argue and disagree with each other over the representation of Chineseness in chinoiserie at the Pavilion.

Such an interlocution is by nature imaginative as it travels across time and place. Yet all viewpoints are informed by the individuals’ lived experience and accordingly married with various perspectives from Chinese Studies, Sinophone Studies, Literary Studies, Postcolonial Theory and Tibetan Buddhism.

This film is one of the three case studies as part of the artist’s practice-based fine art PhD titled "Reinterpreting English Chinoiserie from a Postcolonial and Personal/Taiwanese Perspective: Creating New Narratives through Art Practice".

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ORIGINAL MUSIC Ian Costabile

CAMERA DIRECTING EDITING SCRIPT Clare Chun-yu Liu

This film was made with financial assistance from PAHC Research Degree Fund, Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University

screenings/exhibitions:

2023 Asymmetry Foundation, London, UK

2023 Asia Pacific Film Festival, UK

2022 New Art Exchange Open, UK [exhibition]

2022 Clare Chun-yu Liu artist films screening, de Art Center, China [Q&A recording link]

2021 Istanbul Experimental Film Festival, Turkey

2021 Busan International Video Art Festival, South Korea [exhibition]

2021 SMIF: Asian Film and Video Festival, Spain [online]

2021 EX-IS, South Korea

2021 Image Forum Festival, Japan [interview link]

2021 Experimental Forum, USA [Honourable Mention]