The Contemporary China Centre at the University of Westminster is pleased to announce the next event in our Conference Deconstructed – Ways of Sensing: Productions and Perceptions of the Third Front.
Recent years have seen the emergence of a significant body of academic literature on the Third Front, a massive military-industrial project launched by China’s central leadership in the 1960s. There is now considerable knowledge of the decision-making that shaped this former state secret, the subsequent construction of factories in remote mountainous areas of China’s interior, and the memories of retirees who worked in these factories.
This panel develops an emerging fourth strand of enquiry by examining the Third Front as a subject of cultural production, encompassing genres including Mao-era mass art and contemporary cinema. It also introduces a new strand of enquiry by examining sensory perceptions of Third Front spaces, including papers on remembered soundscapes and on walking through contemporary spaces of industrial heritage.
Past events in the CCC Conference, Deconstructed series can be found on our YouTube Channel.
Chair: Dr Paul Kendall (University of Westminster)
Dr Angie C. Baecker
Dr Angie C. Baecker is Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Chinese History and Culture at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research examines the material and cultural history of art and culture in modern China, with a focus on the socialist period. Her current book project writes a history of the mass art movement in socialist China, and she is developing a second project on ornament and political economy in industrial textile design from the Cultural Revolution. For this panel, she will share research on the infrastructural aesthetics of mass art, looking in particular at collectively made artwork produced on site at Third Front projects by mobilized construction workers.
HU Zhongxiao
HU Zhongxiao (They/them) is a PhD candidate at the University of Westminster. Hu's research interests focus on the heritage-making of Third Front projects in Sichuan and Chongqing, and especially how these heritage projects are produced, represented, and perceived at the intersection of post-socialist memory politics and local entrepreneurialism. In this seminar, Zhongxiao will share their walking and investigative work at the heritage park Dongjiao Jiyi (东郊记忆) and surrounding areas.
Dr LI Mingkun
Dr LI Mingkun is a Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Westminster. He recently completed his PhD in Film Studies at King’s College London, where his research examined how memories of the Third Front have been mediated through screen media from the 1980s to the 2020s. In this panel, he will revisit Wang Xiaoshuai’s Third Front Trilogy to explore the sensory dimensions of cinematic intergenerational memory, revealing the contested and shifting ways in which the Third Front is remembered across generations.
WU Chenyong
WU Chenyong is a PhD candidate at the Center for Historical Geographical Studies, Fudan University. He has published research on the Third Front in The Chinese Historical Geography and South China Geographical Journal. Among other aspects, his work considers the environmental and sensory dimensions of industrialisation, with his panel contribution examining the railway soundscape of the Second Automobile Works (SAW), one of the Third Front’s key projects.
