The Lure of the Afterimage

This paper tracks afterimages of classic iconography from twentieth-century Shanghai and Hong Kong films in recent and contemporary film, visual art, and mixed media installations created by both Chinese and Western artists.  Working across the disciplines of history, literature, cinema and media studies, and drawing on archival sources, photographs, films, news reports, fiction, memoirs, and artists’ statements, I probe the lure of this recurrent imagery.  How have these iconic markers and moments from Shanghai and Hong Kong circulated within and beyond China during recent decades?  What is the changing significance of these eidetic images from the Chinese past for the present, an increasingly commercialized society?  What might they intimate for China’s future?