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The Media Arts and Design Program cordially invites you to attend a special lecture "The Melancholy and the Erotic of a Sincere Postmodern Identity: cinematic spaces and vulnerable time"

24 March 2026
Faculty of Fine Arts
The Media Arts and Design Program cordially invites you to attend a special lecture "The Melancholy and the Erotic of a Sincere Postmodern Identity: cinematic spaces and vulnerable time"

By Dr. Mu-Xuan Lin – University of California, Berkeley
13:00 – 14:30
Auditorium 2 Media Arts and Design Building
CMU Art and Culture Center


The Melancholy and the Erotic of a Sincere Postmodern Identity: cinematic spaces and vulnerable time:

Postmodernism, at least in the sphere of artistic creation, is of agency – whether there is one, and if there is one, how reliable it is. In a Postmodern condition, constant transformation, positional relativity, commodification, excess, and the four dimensionality render any identity – be it individualistic, be it cultural or political, be it aesthetic – difficult to define, visualize, and give meaning to. But what if I, living at the cusp of cultures, of generations, and of media, hence a postmodern individual and an artist, neither resist nor surrender to the ethos of Postmodernism? What if I, utilizing my agility of self-positioning/extracting and my aptitude for multiple/simultaneous sensorial perceptions, render myself, the author, my (art) work, and the audience equally in an experience that demands both critique and emotional vulnerability, without being either na?ve (absolute indulgence) or cynical (perpetual critical distance)?

?In this talk, Mu-Xuan Lin demonstrates how she explores the idea of artifact and the concepts of cinematic spaces through the construction of a vulnerable yet energetically charged time. The coexistence and the inevitable codependence of the erotic (active) and the melancholy (passive), in her life as in her art, truthfully bring forth the identity and worldview of a sincere Postmodern individual.


About Dr. Mu-Xuan Lin:

Composer (/curator/writer/researcher) Mu-Xuan Lin (???) (Taiwan/USA) defines her life as a quest for an artistic autonomy poetically engendered by both its will and its vulnerability to one’s corporeal experience and to the world one lives in. Having extensive training in the visual arts and creative writing and frequent exposure to theatre, dance, and literature from an early age, and profound influences from the cinema, Mu-Xuan is interested in the montage and the mise-en-sc?ne of contemporary individuals’ fragmented yet interlaced truths, of the confusion of time and place, and of identities construed and broken. She creates with an emphasis on the kinetic formulation and transfer between various expressive art forms or matters with the sonic and temporal one.

Currently, Dr. Lin is the Assistant Professor of Composition at University of California, Berkeley.

https://muxuanlin.com
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