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Biographical Sketch

Dr. PAN Lu joined the Department of Chinese Culture as Assistant Professor in August 2015. Her research interests coalesce around the topic of cultural and cross-cultural analysis of various textual forms. She particularly specialises in topics concerning literature, film, visual culture and art, urban culture, creative industries and cities, modernity theories and cultural memory in modern and contemporary China, East Asia and Europe.

Pan studied in Shanghai, Bayreuth and Hong Kong. She was visiting scholar and visiting fellow at the Technical University of Berlin (2008 and 2009), the Harvard-Yenching Institute (2011-2012), researcher in residence at Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (2016) and visiting scholar at Taipei National University of the Arts (2018). She was also recipient of DAAD Scholarship (2008-2009), Li Ka Shing Prize for Best PhD Thesis, HKU (2010), and Swire Scholarship (2009-2010) among others. Meanwhile, Pan is also actively involved in film and art projects. Her artwork appeared in Urban Living Room, the 10th Shanghai Biennale and her on-going film project “Traces of an Invisible City” has received grants from DMZ International Documentary Film Festival, South Korea. She was also selected artist-in-residence at Center for Art and Urbanistics, Berlin, Germany (Oct- Dec, 2016). In 2018, her film (co-directed with Bo Wang) “Miasma, Plants and Export Painting” received Award of Excellence in Image Forum Festival, Tokyo, Japan.

Pan is author of two monographs: In-Visible Palimpsest: Memory, Space and Modernity in Berlin and Shanghai, (Bern: Peter Lang, 2016) and Aestheticizing Public Space: Street Visual Politics in East Asian Cities, (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect/University of Chicago Press, 2015). She is co-editor of the book Politics and Aesthetics of Creativity: City, Culture and Space in East Asia, (Los Angeles and Hong Kong: Bridge 21). Her articles on various topics also appear in leading academic journals in cultural and visual studies such as Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Continuum, Public Art Dialogue, Creative Industries Journal, European Journal of East Asia Studies, Journal of Cultural Research, Landscape Architecture Frontiers, Journal of Visual Art Practice, Media Theory, etc.

Academic Qualifications

• PhD, Dept. of Comparative Literature, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR (2010)
• M.A., Intercultural Anglophone Studies, University Bayreuth, Germany (2005)
• B.A., Chinese as Foreign Language, Shanghai International Studies University, China (2003)

Present Position

• Assistant Professor, Department of Chinese Culture, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University of Hong Kong

Previous Positions Held

• Visiting scholar, School of Fine Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts, Taiwan (19.Mar. – 25. Mar., 2018)
• Artist-in-Residence, Center for Art and Urbanistic, Berlin, Germany (01. Nov. – 31. Dec., 2016)
• Researcher-in-Residence, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan (21. May- 23 Jun, 2016)
• Lecturer, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong (09/2013 – 05/2014)
• Visiting Fellow, Harvard-Yenching Institute, Special Training Program in Urban Studies (09/2011 - 06/2012)
• College Lecturer, Domain of Media and Cultural Studies, The University of Hong Kong SPACE Community College, Hong Kong (08/2010 - 07/2015)
• Visiting Scholar, in Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany (06/2008 - 09/2008 and 07/2009 - 08/2009)

Selected Exhibitions and Screenings

• Many Undulating Things (2019), UK Premiere: Open City Documentary Festival, Nominated for Open City Awards. Sep. 2019.
• Many Undulating Things (2019), World Premiere, Compétition Internationale Burning Lights, Visions du Réel, Switzerland, Apr. 2019.
• “Miasma, Plants and Export Painting”, nominated for the “East Asia Experimental Competition”, 32nd Image Forum Festival, Tokyo: 04-12/08, 2018.
• “Ode to Infrastructure” (Exhibition installation), Infrastructural Territory, OCAT Shanghai, 30/06/2018-09/09/2018.
• “Miasma, Plants and Export Painting” (Exhibition installation), Bi-city Beinnale of Urbanism\Architecture, Shenzhen, China, 15.Dec.2017- 15.Mar.2018.
• “Traces of Invisible City” (screening), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA. 3-4.2, 2017.
• “Traces of Invisible City” (screening), DMZ International Documentary Film Festival, Paju, South Korea, 9. 22-29, 2016.
• “Ode to Infrastructure” (Solo, co-produced), META Gallery, Shanghai, China. 10.22- 12. 10, 2016.
• “Picture Postcards from the Future” (group show), Urban Living Room, the 10th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai, China. 12.2014-1.2015.

Grants

• General Research Fund, “From The 70s Bi-weekly to Communiqué: Autonomous Media, Social Activism and Alternative Cultural Production in Hong Kong 1970s-1990s” (06/2018)
• “Grant for Translations of German Books into Other Languages”, for translating Boris Groys Über das Neue, Goethe Institute China (11/2016)
• Early Career Scheme, Research Grants Council, The Hong Kong SAR Government (06/2016)
• University’s Start-up Fund for New Recruits, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (04/2016)
• DMZ International Documentary Film Festival Grant for Film in Production “Traces of an Invisible City” (09/2014)
• Fellowship, Urban Studies Training Program, Harvard Yenching Institute (09/2011 - 06/2012)
• Research Scholarship for Foreign PhD Candidate and Young Scientist awarded by German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) ((06/2008 - 09/2008 and 07/2009 - 09/2009)
• Swire Scholarship, The University of Hong Kong (06/2008 - 08/2010)

Awards and Honors

• Award of Excellence, “Miasma, Plants and Export painting”, Image Forum Festival, Tokyo, Japan (08/2018)
• Honorable Mention by International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) and the Urban Communication Foundation (UCF) Research Grant 2014 for film project “Traces of an Invisible City: Visuality, Public Space and Cultural Anxiety in Hong Kong”. Co-directed with Bo Wang. (05/2014)
• Li Ka Shing Prize for Outstanding Postgraduate Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (2009-2010) (11/2011)
• Scholarship for Foreign Students awarded by Bavarian Federal Government, Germany (04/2005 - 07/2005)

Publications

Monographs：

1. In-Visible Palimpsest: Memory, Space and Modernity in Berlin and Shanghai. Bern: Peter Lang, Eurosinica Vol.15, Bern: Peter Lang, 2016.
2. Aestheticizing Public Space: Street Visual Politics in East Asian Cities. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect/University of Chicago Press, 2015.

Edited Volumes:

3. Politics and Aesthetics of Creativity: City, Culture and Space in East Asia, co-edited with Dixon H.W.Wong and Karin Ling-Fung Chau. Los Angeles: Bridge 21, 2015.

Refereed Articles:

4. "The Making of Gòng / Kyō – Visual Archive and the Common in Contemporary East Asia." Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 19.3 (2018): 431-48.
5. "Socially Engaged Archive: Art, Media and Public Memory in East Asia." Media Theory [Online], 2.1 (2018): 222-244. Web. 29 Jul. 2018Available at: http://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/44.
6. “Translating visual archives: on the Making of the New through Three Cases of Hong Kong”, in Journal of Visual Art Practice, Vol. 16, Issue 3 (2017), pp. 1-18.
7. “Archival Flows: Fragment, Material, and Memory in/through the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum”, in Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Volume 16, No. 4 (2017), pp 14-24.
8. “Traces of an Invisible City”, co-authored with Bo Wang, in Landscape Architecture Frontiers, Volume 5, Issue 2 (2017), pp146-153.
9. "Abandoned Negatives, Themeless Parks: Images of Contemporary China in Two Photographic Projects”, in Journal for Cultural Research, Volume 21, Issue 1 (2017), pp 33-50.
10. “Marginality as Centrality: South Korea’s Alternative Creative Cities”, in Creative Industries Journal, Volume 8, Issue 1 (2015), pp 39-57.
11. “Writing at the End of the History: Reflections on Two Cases of Graffiti Writing in Hong Kong”, in Public Art Dialogue, Volume 4, No.1 (2014), pp147-166.
12. “Remembering the Pain of “Others”: Reflections on the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum and Beyond”, in Writing the War in Asia – a Documentary History, An Online Archive founded by University of Essex, University of Hong Kong and University of Konstanz, http://www.uni-konstanz.de/war-in-asia/?p=726, March, 2014
13. “Who is Occupying Wall and Street: Graffiti and Urban Spatial Politics in Contemporary China”, Continuum, Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, Vol. 28, Issue 1 (2014), pp 136-153.
14. 《上海的懷舊政治》 (The Politics of Shanghai Nostalgia) in Wen hua yan jiu, Vol 15 (2013), Beijing: she hui ke xue wen xian chu ban she, pp 177-192.
15. “Nostalgia as Resistance: Memory, Space and the Competing Modernities in Berlin and Shanghai”, in European Journal of East Asia Studies, Vol. 12 (2013), pp135–162.
16. Visualizing Amnesia: Memory and Space in the Photography of Shanghai’s “New Village”", in Media Fields Journal, UC Santa Barbara, Vol. 5 (2012) “Memory, Space and Media", pp1-14.
17. “The Invisible Turn to the Future: Commemorative Culture in Contemporary Shanghai” in Culture Unbound, Special Issue on “Shanghai Moderne: the Future in Microcosm?” Volume 4, Article 7, 2012, pp121-146. Linköping, Sweden Linköpings University Electronic Press.

Book Chapter:

18. “The Kitschy, the Shanzhai and the Ugly: Creating Architectural Utopia in Contemporary Chinese Cities” in Politics and Aesthetics of Creativity: City, Culture and Space in East Asia, co-edited with Dixon H.W.Wong and Karin Ling-Fung Chau. Los Angeles: Bridge 21, 2015, pp153-176
19. "キッチュ、“山寨”、醜さ──現代中国の都市における建築ユートピアの創造". In 谷川建司・須藤遙子・王向華, Ed., 東アジアのクリエイティヴ産業―文化のポリティクス, 森話社, Tokyo, Japan, pp.47-74 (Jul 2015)

Translation:

20. 鲍里斯・格罗伊斯，《论新》(2018). Chongqing: Chongqing University Press, 2017. Translated from Boris Groys, Über das Neue. München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1992.
21. 《民主现代主义：再探二十世纪早期中国与欧洲小说之政治》,translated from “Democratic Modernism: Rethinking the politics of early twentieth century fiction in China and Europe” by Sebastian Veg, in Studies on Modern Chinese Literature, June (2014), pp1-27

Film

1. Many Undulating Things, Dirs. Bo Wang & Pan Lu, Hong Kong, 2019, 125 min., English, Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese with English and French subtitles.
2. Miasma, Plants, Export Paintings, Dirs. Bo Wang & Pan Lu, Hong Kong, 2017, 28 min., Mandarin with English subtitles.
3. Traces of an Invisible City: Three Notes on Hong Kong, Dirs. Bo Wang & Pan Lu, Hong Kong, 2016, 70 min., Mandarin with English subtitles.