Discussion with Artist Hai Zhang on BEING: A Digital Archive of the Age of Flux in China
November 10, 2022 , 3:00 pm – 4:15 pm
Join Hai Zhang, an Artist and Visiting Artist for the inauguration of his collaborative digital archive project with India China Institute titled – ‘BEING’. Between 2008 and 2019, Zhang frequently visited China, his homeland, to photograph the changing social and physical landscape. He says:
“Every time I return to China (whether on specific topics or not), I become increasingly aware of the passage of time between visits and my inability to keep pace with the country. It has been a human impulse to collect images like souvenirs as a reminder of the experience. Yet, the documentary images serve as a perfect metaphor from the fragmentary nature of memory and the desire to take ownership of it.”
Zhang’s work with India China Institute establishes the continuity between disjointed experiences by bringing individual lives in China to the forefront of contextual discourse. This digital archive closely examines life in a society that is in a perpetual state of flux. In addition, Zhang will share his thoughts on the process of archiving and what it means to make archival material accessible to the public.
As Dr. Roland Benoit, a German neuroscientist once said, “Our memory is not made for the past, but for the future.” So is the project – BEING.
SPEAKERS
Hai Zhang
PHOTOGRAPHER, VISITING ARTIST, INDIA CHINA INSTITUTE
ZHANG, Hai was born in Kunming, China in 1976. In 2000, after his graduation of the college in Chongqing, he moved to the US. Since then, he has lived in Alabama, Miami, Washington, DC and New York City. Before he was able to devote himself to photographic work, he worked for the renowned architect, Rafael Vinoly, for several years.
ZHANG is interested in photography as a vital tool to investigate the context whether alien or familiar. While he has dedicated a great deal of energy and time to photograph in China and the Deep South of the US, he has also traveled to Costa Rica, Russia and Southeast Asia for projects.
ZHANG is also interested in making photography books not for a presentation but an integral investigative process to examine the subjects and photography itself. He has been applying the permutation and variation in book making for his short and long term projects as well as subject matters.