纠缠的历史，推测的未来：当代艺术实践中的东北解殖叙事
何伊宁
2000年代初，我在长春郊区的“世界公园”与街头景象中初次触碰了东北的复杂肌理，那时的影像构筑了我对这片土地最初的现代性想象。在随后的十余年间，从东北亚的旅行，到2018参与北镇国际摄影大展现场，再到2022年委托艺术家深入丹东与哈尔滨的口岸创作，我的策展实践与东北的地缘政治、城市变迁及历史回响紧密交织。
本次讲座将基于我在伯明翰城市大学亚洲视觉艺术中心（CCVA）的博士研究，尝试将这些个人经验与研究案例置于“解殖方法论”的框架下进行反思。作为东亚近代史上地缘政治的漩涡中心，“满洲”的历史幽灵在当代艺术创作中被反复召唤。我将探讨艺术家如何超越殖民框架，回应东北复杂的殖民历史、离散经验以及能源转型下的社会阵痛。
讲座将重点论述中国及华语艺术家如何利用本地知识与智慧，进行一种“推测性未来”的建构。在东北这一全球能源枯竭与转型的样本中，我们如何通过艺术实践，在历史的废墟与纠缠中，想象一个多元的、去殖民的、可持续的未来？
Entangled Histories, Speculative Futures: Decolonial Narratives of Northeast China in Contemporary Art
Yining He
In the early 2000s, my first encounter with the layered fabric of Northeast China took place on the outskirts of Changchun — at the “World Park” and amid the streetscapes that surrounded it. The images I made then formed my earliest visual imagination of the region’s entanglement with modernity. Over the following decade, this engagement deepened through travels across Northeast Asia, my participation in the Beizhen International Photography Festival in 2018, and, in 2022, the commissioning of artists to develop new work along the border zones of Dandong and Harbin. My curatorial practice has since become intimately interwoven with the geopolitics, urban transformations, and historical reverberations of the Northeast.
This lecture builds on my doctoral research at the Centre for Contemporary Visual Arts, Asia (CCVA), Birmingham City University, and seeks to reframe these personal experiences and case studies within a decolonial methodological framework. As one of the principal vortices of modern East Asian geopolitics, the historical spectre of “Manchuria” continues to be summoned and renegotiated within contemporary art practice. I will examine how artists move beyond the colonial frame to respond to the Northeast’s entangled colonial histories, diasporic memories, and the social ruptures unfolding under contemporary energy transition.
The lecture pays particular attention to how Chinese and Sinophone artists mobilise local knowledge and situated wisdom to construct what might be called “speculative futures.” Taking the Northeast as a paradigmatic site of global energy depletion and transition, I ask: how might artistic practice — working through the ruins and entanglements of history — allow us to imagine a plural, decolonial, and sustainable future?
For more information about 2026 Changbai Sping – Annual Research Residency Program (May 17 – May 28 ), see