Toward an aesthetic of weightlessness: Qinggong and Wire-fu

This essay examines the aesthetics of wirework in Hong Kong and Chinese swordplay (wuxia) cinema, primarily since the 1980s. This is read as entailing a fantasy image of freedom. It contrasts the lightness of the wuxia body, characteristically represented in flight, to the materiality and weight of the "kung fu" body, as depicted during the "classic" period of the "kung fu craze" in the 1970s. This is analysed in terms of different ideas of how gender might be negotiated through the body in cinematic martial arts performance, and as a metaphor of the weight or weightlessness of (postcolonial, diasporic and other) cultural experience of identity under globalisation.
The essay is a part of a catalogue – published online as an ebook – to correspond with the solo exhibitions of the artist susan pui san lok's body of work "RoCH Fans and Legends," at QUAD, Derby (19 September – 15 November 2015) and the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester (3 June – 3 July 2016). This was supported by funding from the Arts Council England, Middlesex University and the University of Salford.

As stated on its colophon, the ebook is published on Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike) license, with texts remaining (c) of the authors, 2016.

ISBN 978-0-9954611-0-9
ISBN 978-0-9576332-4-7