“Spectacle East Asia,” a special issue of the peer-reviewed electronic journal Invisible Culture guest edited by Sohl Lee and Godfre Leung, is now online. This special issue features four articles on contemporary East Asian visual culture, including an essay by globally renowned curator Okwui Enwezor, and an afterword by Museum of Modern Art curator Barbara London. The issue also includes seven video artworks by contemporary artists from China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, accompanied by a curatorial statement. The writers explore current issues of aesthetics and politics across a vast array of cultural events and artistic practices: the 2008 Beijing Olympics, 2009 “Chinese Internet Maintenance Day,” 2008 Candlelight Vigil Protests in Seoul, 2008 Gwangju Biennale, Japanese artist collective Video Earth, graffiti cultures in Beijing and Shanghai, Cai Guoqiang’s exhibition “Peasant da Vincis” in Shanghai, etc.

Invisible Culture, no. 15 (http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/Issue_15/)
Special Issue “Spectacle East Asia”
Guest editors: Sohl Lee and Godfre Leung
Issue Contents
Godfre Leung
Introduction: The Sociality of the Spectacle
Okwui Enwezor
The Politics of Spectacle: The Gwangju Biennale and the Asian Century
Hyejong Yoo
The Candlelight Girls’ Playground: Nationalism as Dialogy, the 2008 Candlelight Vigil Protests in South Korea
Rika Iezumi Hiro
Between Absence and Presence: Exploring Video Earth’s What is Photography?
Caitlin Bruce
Public Surfaces Beyond the Great Wall: Communication and Graffiti Culture in China
Sohl Lee
Curatorial Statement for Seven Videos: The Metaphor of “Flying and Falling” in Contemporary East Asia and Visual Arts
Seven Videos by Chen Chieh-jen, Gao Shiqiang, Sangdon Kim, Kwak Duck-jun, Minouk Lim, Mixrice, and Zheng Bo

Barbara London
Afterword

For information, questions or comments about this issue or about the journal, please contact Genevieve Waller and/or Iskandar Zulkarnain at ivc[dot]rochester[at]gmail[dot]com