Lau Kar-leung and Walter Benjamin

An authentic and auratic performing body – Gordon Liu in Lau Kar-leung's 36th Chamber of Shaolin.

Having made two blog posts here recently, I realised that I should probably also add a link to my recent ("proper") article,  "Lau Kar-leung with Walter Benjamin: Storytelling, Authenticity, Film Performance and Martial Arts Pedagogy," published in am exciting special edition of the journal JOMEC (JOurnalism, MEdia and Cultural studies) on the expanding new field of "Martial Arts Studies," edited by Paul Bowman.

The article is here:
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/jomec/jomecjournal/5-june2014/White_Authenticity.pdf

and the table of contents for the journal is here:
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/jomec/research/journalsandpublications/jomecjournal/5-june2014/index.html

There's some really fascinating material in the journal besides my own contribution!

Lua Kar-Leung and the Radical Aesthetics of the Kung-fu Body

I have been working on a paper that I am giving in New York next month. (The conference is “Radical Aesthetics and Politics: Intersections in Music, Art and Critical Social Theory,”9 December 2011 at Hunter College, CUNY - see http://chreculture.blogspot.com/)

In this I am setting out to discuss a potential radicality in the performing kung-fu body, and I attempt to make this argument in particular with reference to Lau Kar-Leung. My argument draws on ideas in Walter Benjamin's "The Storyteller" that highlight the importance of an "auratic" relation to the past in allowing us to imagine the world differently. Benjamin's essay also highlights the value of artisanal modes of experience and practice, with which I associate martial arts practices and its performing bodies.

For me, there are larger stakes in the essay, which are to do with the ways in which popular culture more generally may serve as a medium of a counter-memory or counter-practice.

Below is a link to an early draft – rather longer than the 15-minute paper I'll give. Please forgive its roughness: it's presented here as a work in progress. As such, any comments on it would be very welcome!

To read the draft click here.

Zatoichi

Some of my favourite moments from the original series of Zatoichi films are not fights but songs.

This from Zatoichi's Cane Sword (1967)

The lyrics are:

Maybe you wear rags, but your heart is more beautiful than any flower.

It is young once so enjoy it.

If you're a man, do something that nobody else would.

A man hides his tears and forced himself to smile, but some women

do not know.

You say you're in love, but there's nothing to say.

If you're a

man, catching a smile

I sent you

This is rapidly turning into a blog on musicals!