Weihong Bao
Biographic Data
| ID | 3618803 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Weihong Bao |
| GIVEN NAMES | Weihong |
| FAMILY NAME | Bao |
| SIGNATURE | BAO W |
| AFFILIATIONS | The Ohio State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Set Design Thinking and the Art of the Human
In this article, I explore the promise and pitfalls of medium as environment by tracking the twin developments of environmental thinking and set design in China, considering it as a problematic of epistemology, technology, and aesthetics. I treat huanjing (environment) as a neologism, a new episteme, a dispositif, and a mode of power, taking set design as the companion medium that reconnects art and technology, aesthetics and politics. Reconceptu…
Introduction
Archaeology of a Medium
This essay explores a critical dialogue between methods and conceptions of cultural techniques—the second wave of media archaeology—and a case in contemporary Chinese documentary. I examine filmmaker Mao Chenyu, who is also an organic farmer, a critical thinker and writer, and a film exhibitor. Mao provides an intriguing case of how ethnography, ecology, and cosmology intertwine; how media art can take the form of media activism by redefining its…
Media Climates
Hermeneutics of Doubt
This essay dwells on atmosphere as a mediating, climatic environment to consider climate as the nexus of mind, medium, and society. An inquiry into atmosphere, I argue, opens up climate from an objective entity into a constellation of aesthetic, infrastructural, and epistemological operations. I situate this richer notion of climate in China during the Second World War and its immediate aftermath by focusing on "doubt" as a unique atmosphere caug…
Reflections on Durational Art
These short reflections, from UC Berkeley faculty in a variety of disciplines, respond to the following question: "What does the phrase 'time-based art' mean to you? What are the central stakes, conventions, challenges, and opportunities of durational art in the contexts in which you work?" Collectively, they probe a wide range of practices and contexts, including, for example, Mexican festivals and midwestern American carnivals, Syrian documenta…
Fiery Cinema
Cinema in modern China was a dynamic entity, not strictly tied to one media technology, one mode of operation, or one system of aesthetic code. It was, in Weihong Bao’s term, an affective medium, a distinct notion of the medium as mediating environment with the power to stir passions, frame perception, and mold experience. In Fiery Cinema, Bao traces the permutations of this affective medium from the early through the mid-twentieth century, explo…
A Vibrating Art in the Air
This article revisits Miriam Hansen's theory of vernacular modernism by putting it in dialogue with wartime Chongqing propaganda film theory. Comparing key points of parallel between Hansen's dual interest in the linguistic and sensorial function of cinema and Chongqing propaganda film theory, Bao situates the latter in light of changing conditions for film production and exhibition in a wartime media ecology. She pursues how the propaganda fanta…
Visual Anthropology
Biomechanics of love
Tsai Ming-liang's film aesthetics has been largely compared with European auteur film-making in style and philosophical concerns. This essay attempts to resituate Tsai's works in relation to his prior theatre practice and his deployment of popular film genres that carry a dialogue with film theories of genre and intermediality. I focus on The Wayward Cloud as a case study to examine the three distinct modes of production within the film, namely, …
From Pearl White to White Rose Woo
Research Article| December 01 2005 From Pearl White to White Rose Woo: Tracing the Vernacular Body of Nüxia in Chinese Silent Cinema, 1927-1931 Weihong Bao Weihong Bao Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Camera Obscura (2005) 20 (3 (60)): 193–231. https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-20-3_60-193 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Weihong Bao; From Pearl White to White Rose Woo: Tracing the …
Introduction
Set Design Thinking and the Art of the Human
In this article, I explore the promise and pitfalls of medium as environment by tracking the twin developments of environmental thinking and set design in China, considering it as a problematic of epistemology, technology, and aesthetics. I treat huanjing (environment) as a neologism, a new episteme, a dispositif, and a mode of power, taking set design as the companion medium that reconnects art and technology, aesthetics and politics. Reconceptu…
Archaeology of a Medium
This essay explores a critical dialogue between methods and conceptions of cultural techniques—the second wave of media archaeology—and a case in contemporary Chinese documentary. I examine filmmaker Mao Chenyu, who is also an organic farmer, a critical thinker and writer, and a film exhibitor. Mao provides an intriguing case of how ethnography, ecology, and cosmology intertwine; how media art can take the form of media activism by redefining its…
Media Climates
Hermeneutics of Doubt
This essay dwells on atmosphere as a mediating, climatic environment to consider climate as the nexus of mind, medium, and society. An inquiry into atmosphere, I argue, opens up climate from an objective entity into a constellation of aesthetic, infrastructural, and epistemological operations. I situate this richer notion of climate in China during the Second World War and its immediate aftermath by focusing on "doubt" as a unique atmosphere caug…
A Vibrating Art in the Air
This article revisits Miriam Hansen's theory of vernacular modernism by putting it in dialogue with wartime Chongqing propaganda film theory. Comparing key points of parallel between Hansen's dual interest in the linguistic and sensorial function of cinema and Chongqing propaganda film theory, Bao situates the latter in light of changing conditions for film production and exhibition in a wartime media ecology. She pursues how the propaganda fanta…
From Pearl White to White Rose Woo
Research Article| December 01 2005 From Pearl White to White Rose Woo: Tracing the Vernacular Body of Nüxia in Chinese Silent Cinema, 1927-1931 Weihong Bao Weihong Bao Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Camera Obscura (2005) 20 (3 (60)): 193–231. https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-20-3_60-193 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Weihong Bao; From Pearl White to White Rose Woo: Tracing the …
Biomechanics of love
Tsai Ming-liang's film aesthetics has been largely compared with European auteur film-making in style and philosophical concerns. This essay attempts to resituate Tsai's works in relation to his prior theatre practice and his deployment of popular film genres that carry a dialogue with film theories of genre and intermediality. I focus on The Wayward Cloud as a case study to examine the three distinct modes of production within the film, namely, …
Visual Anthropology
A Vibrating Art in the Air
This article revisits Miriam Hansen's theory of vernacular modernism by putting it in dialogue with wartime Chongqing propaganda film theory. Comparing key points of parallel between Hansen's dual interest in the linguistic and sensorial function of cinema and Chongqing propaganda film theory, Bao situates the latter in light of changing conditions for film production and exhibition in a wartime media ecology. She pursues how the propaganda fanta…
Fiery Cinema
Cinema in modern China was a dynamic entity, not strictly tied to one media technology, one mode of operation, or one system of aesthetic code. It was, in Weihong Bao’s term, an affective medium, a distinct notion of the medium as mediating environment with the power to stir passions, frame perception, and mold experience. In Fiery Cinema, Bao traces the permutations of this affective medium from the early through the mid-twentieth century, explo…
Reflections on Durational Art
These short reflections, from UC Berkeley faculty in a variety of disciplines, respond to the following question: "What does the phrase 'time-based art' mean to you? What are the central stakes, conventions, challenges, and opportunities of durational art in the contexts in which you work?" Collectively, they probe a wide range of practices and contexts, including, for example, Mexican festivals and midwestern American carnivals, Syrian documenta…
Archaeology of a Medium
This essay explores a critical dialogue between methods and conceptions of cultural techniques—the second wave of media archaeology—and a case in contemporary Chinese documentary. I examine filmmaker Mao Chenyu, who is also an organic farmer, a critical thinker and writer, and a film exhibitor. Mao provides an intriguing case of how ethnography, ecology, and cosmology intertwine; how media art can take the form of media activism by redefining its…
Media Climates
Hermeneutics of Doubt
This essay dwells on atmosphere as a mediating, climatic environment to consider climate as the nexus of mind, medium, and society. An inquiry into atmosphere, I argue, opens up climate from an objective entity into a constellation of aesthetic, infrastructural, and epistemological operations. I situate this richer notion of climate in China during the Second World War and its immediate aftermath by focusing on "doubt" as a unique atmosphere caug…
Set Design Thinking and the Art of the Human
In this article, I explore the promise and pitfalls of medium as environment by tracking the twin developments of environmental thinking and set design in China, considering it as a problematic of epistemology, technology, and aesthetics. I treat huanjing (environment) as a neologism, a new episteme, a dispositif, and a mode of power, taking set design as the companion medium that reconnects art and technology, aesthetics and politics. Reconceptu…
Introduction
Art (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Art history (6 works) · History (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Cinema and Media Studies (5 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (4 works) · History (4 works) · Literature (4 works)