• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.45
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• pp.321-343
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• 2016

The purpose of this thesis is to look through the political and social background of China preparing for a new era after getting out of the Communist Party of Mao Zedong, rapid inflow of the Western modernism and the avant-garde art arising in China with the focus of art works of Xu Bing, which contributed to the expansion of printmaking of China. Particularly, 85 New Wave Movement arose by young artists since 1985 and the China/Avant-Garde Exhibition held in Beijing in 1989 are the two important issues which reflect a new change from the traditional Chinese art. The artists of 85 New Wave Movement, who pursued a historical revolution and novelty, worked very actively by leading private exhibitions. Since the Cultural Revolution, the government owned the National Museum of Fine Art Beijing had exhibitions on a large scale displaying various visual arts such as performing art, installation, painting, sculpture but the Chinese government interrupted exhibitions two time due to bold performing art and unconcealed installation. Some artists were even taken to the police when performing art. Under these circumstances, Xu Bing, who majored printmaking, produced one of his major works, Books from the sky(1988), while he was working on various experiments focusing on the production process of printmaking and its repetitiveness. Xu Bing devised letters, carved them in trees and finally created approximately 2000 characters. Going further he displayed it as installation work, which means the developed characters go beyond a printed form, for audiences. This made him earn favorable reviews since it was a form of western art coupled with Chinese contents 'Chinese character'. After he received unfavorable reviews, however, he went to America leaving his last work in China, Ghost Pounding the Wall, in 1990, which was not able to exhibited. In those days, China society was going through a chaotic era thanks to the extinction of the Cultural Revolution and Deng Xiaoping's(1904-1997) reformation after the debacle of Tiananmen Massacre. This study looks into Xu Bing's artworks from his initial print works until he went to the US in 1991 and examines how he performed experiments utilizing reproductivity and plurality of prints tinged with Chinese traditional elements, and ultimately became one of the avant-garde artists representing the period.

• (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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• no.22
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• pp.223-252
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• 2011

If we remember that modern world history has built systems of meaning through the concepts "difference," "different," and "other-ness" and has constructed new identity based on opposing hierarchy, music anthropology which tried to build "difference" between the west and the non-west was thoroughly west -centered, in the sense that it has perceived the heterogeneous symbolic systems among nations, as well as the barrier between the two cultures. On the other hand, world music, which has emerged as the most attractive field in culture industry and concert-art-market by crossing over global capitals, markets, and barriers, can be considered the most post-modernist and glocal. However, it is interesting to note that world music, which has been described as post-modern and glocal, has "difference" and "different" in its basis, just like the precepts for modern music anthropology (Meintjes 1990; Guilbault 1993; Taylor 1997; Frith 2000; Feld 1988). Furthermore, one can understand that the "different" and "difference," generally termed as being "non-western," are fundamentally based on ethnic or national imagination. In this sense it is interesting and important to examine such ethnic imagination in the "non-western ethnic musics" in music anthropology and in world music. Notwithstanding the attention paid and research made by music anthropologists, they have failed to elevate the "non-western ethnic musics" to become universally communicative, and these ethnic musics were reborn as "global" and "world music," through the process of "acculturation," "derivation," and "hybridization," with the west as major site for production and consumption. Meanwhile, the audience for world music, which did not exist before the birth of world music as a term, was now born as world music emerged. They are global populace who consume the musical "difference" and "imagined ethnicity," who through their consumption are constructing new social meanings including ethnicity, race, nation, and class identity. This study, by examining current discourse, performance, and process for the world music through media and field studies and scholarly debates, attempts to understand the production and consumption of "imagined ethnicity." This will also shed light on how "ethnicity" is created and consumed, and how this is involved in the process of world music.