Into East River(s): Chinese/American Artists & Asian American Poets, on Thursday, June 2, 2011, from 4PM to 8PM, at 25 West 43rd Street, 19th Floor, between 5th & 6th Avenues, Manhattan. This forum is free, open to the general public, and includes a light supper. Due to limited space, registration is required.

For thousands of years, rivers – both East and West – have been used as a source of food and drinking, for energy, and for navigation. Culturally and politically, rivers have also been used to delineate the boundaries of nations, regions, and communities. New York City’s East River, for instance, is a “navigation” passage way for the city’s natives, immigrants, and refugees alike. Other rivers, both East and West, be it the Yangtze, Tigris, Thames, Los Angeles, or the Mekong, and their tributaries, have both linked and demarcated cultures, countries, and politics.

Curated by Russell C. Leong, AAARI’s CUNY Thomas Tam Scholar at Hunter College; and Yibing Huang, Professor of Modern Chinese Literature at Connecticut College, Leong and Huang hope that this program will lead to more bilingual and bicultural dialogue.

Images of Exclusion and Inclusion
Zhang Dali in Conversation with Curators Yibing Huang and David Rong (Bilingual Program)

*Chinese artist Zhang Dali’s work focuses upon the constant revision, erasure and exclusion of certain moments and figures in modern history, particularly, late 20th-Century Chinese history. By exposing the man-made blank or absence beneath various official news and photographical documents, Zhang shows that there is always a “second history” that needs to be dug out and restored against collective amnesia and silence.

Corky Lee in Conversation with Prof. Peter Kwong

*Chinese American artistCorky Lee selects images from his 250,000 images of Asian America. Lee has for 40 years sought to “include” what has been neglected by the mass media: the expression, politics and culture “inside” communities rather than from the outside, viewing his subjects as the determining “subjects” rather than as the “objects” of history. Turning a stereotype on its head, Corky refers to his work and forthcoming book as “what’s not on the menu”-in other words, both as what is absent and what is authentic and cannot be located in the tourists’ guidebook.

To register for this forum, please reply to this email with your name, phone number and zip code, or call our office at 212-869-0182. Please be prepared to present proper identification at the security desk when entering the building.

For details on this and all of AAARI’s upcoming activities, or to view streaming videos of past events, please visit www.aaari.info.