Abstract
This article examines translocality and crossmediality as new developments in cinema and visual studies. Isaac Julien's 9-screen video installation Ten Thousand Waves (2010) represents a migratory aesthetics based on translocal evocation, crossmedial interaction, and mobile spectatorship. As Julien reconstructs the legend of Mazu and memories of Shanghai in radically different modes (e. g., the idyllic versus the phantasmagoric, the nostalgic versus the post-nostalgic), their screen images and sounds enter a constant circulation and produce intriguing multi-directional, multi-spatial, and multi-temporal dissonance/resonances across different media and genres — cinema, art photography, video installation, police rescue footage, calligraphy, poetry, painting, and star performance. Cross-border visual arts no doubt have enhanced the auteur mystique, but a key question remains as to whether Western audience, in its reception of Eastern imageries, could break through the confines of entrenched Orientalism.
First Page
6
Last Page
15
Recommended Citation
Zhang, Yingjin. 2017. "Aesthetics of Translocality and Crossmediality in Isaac Julien's Ten Thousand Waves." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 37, (6): pp.6-15. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol37/iss6/6
