SOUP TALK: CHARLIE GERE

Mountain-Water: Chinese Echoes in North West England
Shan shui 山水, literally ‘mountain water’, is a Chinese term for landscape and for forms of painting and poetry that engages with the cosmic dimension of the surrounding environment. The North West of England, the Dales and the Lakes, is perhaps the part of the country in which this idea of landscape can be found.
In this talk, Charlie Gere will look at three figures who have connections to both China and the North West. The first is Laurence Binyon, who was born in Lancaster, and lived in Burton-in-Lonsdale, just below the Yorkshire Dales, where his father was vicar, until the age of five. Binyon is best known for his poem ‘For the Fallen’, often read at Armistice event, but he was a major figure in the study and collecting of Asian art when working at the British Museum. It was Binyon who introduced the poet Ezra Pound to the widow of Asian scholar Ernest Fenellosa, leading Pound to edit and publish Fenellosa’s work on the Chinese character as a medium for poetry, and, in doing so, changing Western poetry dramatically. It was perhaps Binyon’s memory of the landscape near Burton, including Ingleborough, and mountains and waters of the Lake District that led to his interest in Chinese painting.
The second figure is Chiang Yee, who came to England from China to study at the School of Oriental Studies, but ended up writing and teaching about Chinese art and poetry. In 1936, depressed about the prospect of war between China and Japan, he travelled to the Lake District, where he found a landscape that reminded him of China. His experiences there led to the first of his ‘Silent Traveller’ books, ‘The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland’, in which he describes his travels around the Lake District, and also paints and writes poetry in Shanshui style.
The third figure is Li Yuan Chi, an artist, who left mainland China after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and lived in Taiwan, Italy, and London before finally ending up befriending the artist Winifred Nicholson, and starting a gallery in the hamlet of Banks on Hadrian’s Wall in the late 1960s.
Charlie Gere is a British academic who is professor of media theory and history at The Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, The University of Lancaster and previously, director of research at the Institute for Cultural Research at The University of Lancaster. He is author of several books and articles on new media art, art and technology, continental philosophy and technology. His main research interest is in the cultural effects and meanings of technology and media, particularly in relation to post-conceptual art and philosophy.
Talk starts promptly at 6:30pm