Event Description
Weihong Bao's talk considers “influence” as an atmospheric notion of media that binds mind and society at the onset of the Cold War and the rise of television. Influence, in this context, does not entail a one-way traffic but a structure of interdependence, relying on a new notion of set design that orchestrates a system of responses and reactions that produces resonances and dissonances, signal and noise. Situated in the early era of the People’s Republic (1949–) in the decade between the ideological campaign of Thought Reform (1951–1952) and the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962) movement, she examines how the “cool media” of television reconfigures set design through a new set of technological and human assembly. With this framework, Bao returns to the site of television production, not as the origin of signal dissemination, but the node where issues of transmission, amplification, and reception inform and shape the very production process. Probing the influencing machinery and aesthetics of television in connection with other media, this talk highlights the tension intrinsic to influence caught between a climatic regime of power and aesthetic operations of resonances, between spatial-temporal axes of enclosure and porosity, stasis and motion.
Event Speaker
Weihong Bao, Associate Professor of Film and Media and Chair in China Studies at the University of California, Berkeley
Event Information
Free and open to the public; registration required for in-person and online attendance. For more information, please visit the event webpage or email [email protected].
Hosted by the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.
