PRESS RELEASE
RoCH Fans and Legends
Freeebook / Unlimited ebook
20 December 2017
Design by Land of Plenty
67pp plus video, audio and interactive content
ISBN 978-0-9954611-0-9
ISBN 978-0-9576332-4-7
FREEE DOWNLOAD
(Please select iBooks or Digital Editions or request WeTransfer)
ABOUT
RoCH Fans & Legends documents a body of work by artist and writer, susan pui san lok, commissioned by QUAD and the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CfCCA) for solo exhibitions in 2015 and 2016, in partnership with Animate Projects and the University of Salford. The project encompasses drawings, animation, moving image for gallery and online, and a limited edition artist book multiple. This unlimited freeebook edition features production stills, moving image documentation, interactive touches, and several original commissioned texts.
RoCH Fans & Legends draws on the prolific film and television adaptations of The Condor Trilogy (1957-61), a classic ‘new wuxia’ epic by Louis Cha, aka Jin Yong, to explore the genre’s recurring tropes and translations in diaspora. ‘RoCH’ refers both to the popular shorthand for Return of the Condor Heroes (the second novel in the trilogy), and to the shifting aesthetics of its many repetitions and ‘returns’. From film and television to anime and comic books, the trilogy’s numerous re-versions reflect evolutions in medium and materiality in tandem with (re)production technologies and distribution platforms. They also attest to its enduring appeal, with multiple productions and co-productions from Hong Kong and mainland China, Taiwan, Japan and Singapore since the late fifties, as well as innumerable fan-generated dubs and subtitles, fan-fiction extensions and fan-translations into English.
The Condor Trilogy has been compared to both The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, yet it is only now, forty years after its first publication and some forty adaptations down the line, that it is making international news with the announcement of its first ever English translation, to be published by MacLehose Press in February 2018. The freeebook, RoCH Fans & Legends, documents the first phase of an ongoing project.
FEATURED WORKS
Covers I & II (2015), animated drawing, 3’
Figures (2015) contravision vinyls, dimensions variable
Peach Blossom Isle (2015) wallpaper, dimensions variable
Trailers (2015), single-channel video, 4’
RoCH Fan (2015), concertina multiple, 102mm x 187mm x 8415mm
Condor (2015), wall drawing in chalk, approx. 1000mm x 600mm
Trilogies (2015), 3-screen installation, 65 minutes
CONTRIBUTORS
Dr Alice Ming-Wai Jim (University of Concordia, Montreal),
Jean Hui Ng (Research Curator, CFCCA)
Dr Marquard Smith (Piet Zwart institute, Netherlands / UCL, London)
Henry Tsang (Emily Carr University of Art & Design, Vancouver)
Dr Luke White (Middlesex University, London)
Dr Andy Willis (University of Salford, Manchester)
Wayne Wong (University of Hong Kong / Kings, University College London)
PLEASE SEND ME THE RoCH FANS AND LEGENDS FREEEBOOK
RoCH Fans & Legends was supported using public funding by Arts Council England, with additional funding from Middlesex University and the University of Salford.
SPSL 