India China Institute at The New School

Join Hai Zhang, a 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.

You can join this event by registering to attend in-person, or by registering to receive the Zoom/Livestream link. More details can be found below.