Month: August 2026

Speaker: Monica Macias, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London

Moderator: Arnika Fuhrmann, Professor, Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Tuesday, September 15, 2026
Time: 5:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Faculty Lounge (Room 430), 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, The University of Hong Kong
Registration link: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=109085
All are welcome. Registration is required.

The extraordinary true story of a West African girl’s upbringing in North Korea under the guardianship of President Kim Il Sung.

In 1979, aged only seven, Monica Macias was sent from West Africa to the unfamiliar surroundings of North Korea by her father, the President of Equatorial Guinea, to be educated under the guardianship of his ally, Kim Il Sung. Within months, her father was executed in a military coup; her mother became unreachable. Effectively orphaned, she and two siblings had to make their life in Pyongyang. At military boarding school, Monica learned to mix with older children, speak fluent Korean and handle weapons on training exercises. Reaching adulthood, she went in search of her roots. Spending time in Madrid, Malabo, New York, Seoul and finally London, at every step she had to reckon with others’ perceptions of her adoptive homeland. Optimistic yet unflinching, Monica’s astonishing and unique story challenges us to see the world through different eyes.

Monica Macias is the daughter of Francisco Macias, the first president of Equatorial Guinea following its independence from colonial Spanish rule. She has lived in several countries around the world and now resides in south London. Black Girl from Pyongyang is her first book to be published in English, and she will be the subject of a forthcoming documentary film. For further details on her work, visit https://monicamaciasauthor.com/

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Speaker: Gabriel Remy-Handfield, Research Assistant Professor, Academy of Language and Culture, Hong Kong Baptist University

Moderator: Arnika Fuhrmann, Professor, Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Tuesday, September 22, 2026
Time: 5:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Faculty Lounge (Room 430), 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, The University of Hong Kong
Registration link: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=109028
All are welcome. Registration is required.

This talk introduces the media art practice of emerging Taiwanese artist Li Yi-Fan (1989–). Inspired by video games, Internet culture, science fiction, and horror, Li constructs a bizarre universe using machinima and self-developed game engines to interrogate our troubled relationships with digital technologies. Performing through an abject, grotesque avatar that acts as his double, the artist stages a form of digital puppetry that exposes the absurdities of contemporary digital life.

My talk is divided into two parts. First, I illuminate Li’s aesthetic influences by tracing a genealogical lineage through three key elements: Hans Bellmer’s Surrealist dolls, which establish a visual vocabulary of anatomical deformation and the grotesque; Tony Oursler’s uncanny projected video-sculptures; and Teri Silvio’s concept of ang-a, a uniquely Taiwanese mode of animation grounded in puppet theater. This framework situates Li’s practice within the ecology of contemporary visual culture, performance, and animation theory.

The second part offers close readings of howdoyouturnthison (2021) and Rewiring (2020) with the goal of addressing the following questions: how does the artist’s manipulation and control of virtual bodies reveal a form of uncanniness specific to our technologically mediated environment? How does he propose a new visualization of the digital body? I examine how Li’s digital doubles become a site of abnormal corporeality. Drawing on Shane Denson’s theories of discorrelated-images and abject cringe, I argue that Li produces what I term as the speculative uncanny—an aesthetic modality in which the virtual body is rendered unfamiliar and strange through real-time computational imaging.

Gabriel Remy-Handfield is a Research Assistant Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, where he is affiliated with the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Montreal, where his doctoral dissertation focused on media artist LuYang. Previously, he was a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Australian National University, China Centre in the World. His research spans East and Southeast Asian literature, cinema, and digital art, with a particular focus on queer and psychoanalytic theories, posthumanism, and speculative fiction. Gabriel’s work has been published in journals such as Screen Bodies, the Journal of Chinese Film Studies, and the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. His forthcoming projects include a co-edited book on LuYang with Livia Monnet, and a publication on media artist Li Yi-Fan for the Journal of Chinese Cinemas.

For updates on future events hosted by the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures, please visit https://www.csgc.hku.hk/

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Moderator: Alvin Wong, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature, HKU

Date: Monday, September 7, 2026
Screening: 4:00-6:00 pm Hong Kong Time (In French and Mandarin with English subtitles)
Conversation (in English): 6:00-6:45 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Room 436, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, The University of Hong Kong
Registration link: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?ueid=109002
All HKU staff and students are welcome. Registration requires HKU Portal ID.
Please note that this film is restricted to persons aged 18 or above.

Feng Xia, a 53-year-old Chinese immigrant and mother living in Montreal, has spent her life shaped by duty — to her family, her culture, and a loveless marriage. But when she meets Camille, a spirited young Québécoise, a long-buried desire is awakened. In the balmy and joyful Montreal summer, Feng Xia takes the radical step of choosing herself — embarking on a journey of forbidden love and long-overdue self-discovery. Her awakening becomes a profound reckoning with identity, exile, and the steep cost of liberation.

Xiaodan He (和晓丹) is a Chinese-Canadian filmmaker of Naxi heritage. She studied film production at the Beijing Film Academy from 1993 to 1997 and subsequently worked at the Yunnan Ethnic Film Studio. After immigrating to Montreal, Canada, in 2002 and studying screenwriting at the Université du Québec, she has dedicated herself to filmmaking. Her body of work encompasses both documentaries and feature films, with a creative focus on women-centric narratives. She was the first Chinese immigrant filmmaker to receive Canadian government funding for a feature film. Her first feature, A Touch of Spring (2018), was selected to represent Canada at the Cannes Film Festival and won He the Best Emerging Director Award at the Asian American International Film Festival in New York. Montréal, My Beautiful was awarded the WIFF Prize in Canadian Film at the 2025 Windsor International Film Festival, and Joan Chen (陳沖) won Outstanding Lead Performance in a Canadian Film at the 2026 Toronto Film Critics Association Awards for her performance in the film.

For updates on future events hosted by the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures, please visit https://www.csgc.hku.hk/

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