The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Events

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About the lecture
In the digital times, there is almost nothing that couldn’t be digitalized. The digitalization often refers to the modern digital technique based on the digits of 0 and 1. Nonetheless, as it is widely known, the digits of 0 and 1 also correspond to the most ancient sinograms of yin and yang. In that sense, isn’t the digital technique not only modern but also ancient? In the proposal here, the digital technique is regarded as the »arithmetic operation on the digits« in general. As the etymological meaning of »digit« which is »finger« implies, the digital technique is concerned with the body that counts. The body that dances also counts. It either counts time through movement or counts movement through time. »To count« already means »to digitalize«. The presentation will begin with the »Chinese modern dance« of Liu Feng-hsueh, one of the most important choreographers and dance researchers who often works with dance notation, in order to examine how different digital techniques in different dance notations make for different conceptions of time and movement that also make for different dances.

About the speaker
Chieh-Ting Hsieh teaches at National Cheng-Chi University. His recent research interests include dynamics of music and dance, notation, cultural-techniques and media theories. He was the director of research-oriented artistic project »Transnotators« at Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab. He also works as artist and musician. Most recently, he appeared in the concert of Chung Yu-feng, one of the most prominent pipa musicians, at Taiwan International Festival of Arts 2022.

About the lecture series
In recent years, literary and cultural works that evoke the cultural memories of classical Chinese traditions are gaining popularity in the global Sinitic-languages space and cyberspace. From literary to visual culture, from pop music to fashion, from state policies to daily rituals, these classicist articulations present Chineseness as complicated, multifaceted, multilingual, and cross-cultural. They raise important questions on the relevance of Chinese traditions today to China, to global Chinese communities, and to a future of »world literature«—as Goethe envisioned it nearly two centuries ago. In this multiannual lecture series, prominent scholars, writers, and artists will present fascinating case studies from their research or draw upon their aesthetic practices to elaborate on their understanding on these important questions. Such investigations demonstrate the abundant aesthetic and intellectual resources that the vast repertoire of Chinese cultural memories may provide to engage in a dialogue on the present and future of a global culture.

Concept of the lecture series: Zhiyi Yang, Professor of Sinology, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and Goethe Fellow at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften