Lai Chiu-han Linda

Linda Lai Chiu-han (黎肖嫻), also known as Linda Chiu-han Lai, is a Hong Kong-based academic, artist, curator and art historian working at the intersections of experimental video art, interactive media and cultural history. Lai was Associate Professor at the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong; and she retired on 1 July 2023. She is the artistic director of the Writing Machine Collective, which she founded in 2004, and runs a self-funded art space called Floating Projects and works as an independent curator of moving image.

Lai's artworks are primarily experiments with various forms of video and installation, based on her research in experimental historiography. Themes of her artistic work include Hong Kong cultural identity and gender. Her works have been exhibited widely in Hong Kong and worldwide in cities including Shanghai, Torun, Paris, Barcelona, Kuala Lumpur, London, Taipei, Seoul, New York City and Montreal, and several times in International Competition at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2005, 2009, 2011).

Lai received her B.A. in English Language & Literature at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and pursued her M.A. (Wheaton College, Illinois – communication & journalism) and Ph.D. (New York University – Cinema Studies) in the United States.

According to the scholar Phoebe Wong, Lai is a feminist who dislikes how Cantonese movies perpetuate gender roles.

Selected publications

2021: Our Manifestos 2: Videogr aphy, Documentary Impulses, Floating Projects: ISBN 978-988-75664-0-3 2021: On union, displaced: Capt ure and captivity with the Hong Kong Artist Union (HKAU), contributor E. Bovino, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Volume 8, Issue 1, Jul 2021, p. 49 - 70, ISSN: 2051-7041 2017: World Film Locations: Hon g Kong ed. by Linda Chiu-han Lai and Kimburley Wing-yee Choi, and: Historical Dictionary of Chinese Cinema by Tan Ye and Yun Zhu, and: The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas ed. by Carlos Rojas and Eileen Cheng-yin Chow, ed by Paul Cohen (Center for the Study of Film and History), Vol.47 (1), p. 59-62, review 2013: Film Locations:Hong Kong, coedited with Kimburley Wing-yee Choi (Intellect Books) : 2008: "Attempting a history of (new) media arts for Hong Kong: archaeology, literacy and education for artists" for the Hong Kong Visual Arts Yearbook 2007 (2008) : 2007: "Whither the Walker Goes: Spatial Practices and Negative Poetics in 1990s Chinese Urban Cinema", anthologized in The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the 21st Century, ed. Zhang Zhen (Duke University Press), 205-37 : 2007: (art catalogue) Re-Fabrication: Choi Yan-chi|Choi Yan-chi's 30 Years, the paths for interdisciplinarity in art (1975-2005) 2004: (art book) Crypto-glyph: Dialogues in Many Tongues in the Hidden Crevices of an Open City with Theresa Junko Mikuriya, a 288-page documentation of their 8 rounds of dialogues via photography and text : 2001: "Film and Enigmatization: Nostalgia, Nonsense, and Remembering," anthologized in At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World, ed. Esther C.M. Yau, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 231-50 : 2000: "HK Cinema in the 1930s: Docility, Social Hygiene, Pleasure-seeking & the Consolidation of the Film Industry," in Screening the Past (an electronic refereed journal on film and media arts published in Australia), issue #11. Officially Upload on 1 November 2000.

Selected artworks

Installations PUSH: the Quest for a Voice, In Search of a Body (「推」: 探索嗓音、搜尋身體), an interactive, digital installation in collaboration with Theresa Mikuriya, Official Selection for the Hong Kong Art Biennial Exhibition, November 20, 2003 to March 1, 2004. One Take (2 versions); a looping video (wall projection), at "Social Club," Para Site, Hong Kong, 20 Feb to 10 Mar 2002; and the "Fourth State Of Water", an installation exhibition on water, CoCA (Center of Contemporary Art), Turen, Poland, 2 March to 29 April 2012. 1906-1989-2012/ Guangzhou-Hong Kong-Shanghai-Anji (1906-1989-2012:廣州-香港-上海 -安吉)" 2012, a mixed media installation (混合媒體裝置), commissioned for the themed exhibition, in theme section "Revisit" curated by Qiu Zhijie at the 9th 2012 Shanghai Biennale, Oct 2, 2012 to Mar 31, 2013. Door Games, Window Frames: Near Drama (景框戲門), an automated multi-window projection using found images from Hong Kong Cantonese melodrama from the 1960s.

Video art

Lai's video work has been collected by the Asia Art Archive.

Door Games Window Frames: Near Drama (景框戲門) (single-channel video version); 2012, 11m 30s. Screened at festivals in South Korea and the Netherlands. Voices Seen, Images Heard (看得見的聲音，聽得見的形象); 2009, 28m. Screened at thirteen festivals and art events around the world. Non-place, Other Space (隱城･懸浮半空); 2009, 3m 35s. Screened at seven festivals around the world. and 9 art spaces Shanghai Saga: Other Skies, Other Lands (上海歌：另尋天地); 2009, 32m. Entry in the International Competition at 55th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2009. Trespassing World Cities (搖擺過路人); 2005, 28m. Juror's selection for Women Make Waves Film Festival 2006. Door Game (戲門); 2005, 26m. Screened at four festivals in Asia. I Told Them My Camera Was On (六度分離:準備好未?); 2004/2005, 24m. Screened at three festivals in Europe, including the 51st International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2005 and the Rencontres Internationales Paris Berlin Madrid 2005.

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