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WORLDMAKING FROM A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE:
A DIALOGUE WITH CHINA
從全球視閾看“世界”的建構：對話中國

Epochal Life Worlds: Man, Nature and Technology in Narratives of Crisis and Change

Song Wenzhi, Yangzijiangpan Daqing hua (扬子江畔大庆花)

Song Wenzhi, Yangzijiangpan Daqing hua (扬子江畔大庆花)
Image Credit: chineseposters.net

Epidemics, earthquakes, industrial accidents, and floods are apocalyptic catalysts: They threaten planet Earth as a life world. At the same time, they mark the beginning of radical metamorphoses, heralding new eras – which also entail new depictions of the world. Therefore, catastrophes and moments of crisis are tipping points which bring about long-term, impactful, epochal changes in life worlds. Only rarely can it be clearly discerned who is responsible for these changes. Historical epochs are often described with reference to humans, nature, and technology (Ice Age, Stone Age, Age of Printing, Digital Age, Anthropocene). Our project focuses on the interplay of these three in moments of collapse and "critical transitions" .

We understand life worlds as worlds of experience engendered by human as well as non-human and super-human interaction, worlds which are continuously constructed and reinvented. Such a concept also challenges the idea of neatly divided sections of world and shows how human and non-human "worlds" (nature as well as technology) interact. The aim of this project is to explore and describe these processes in greater depth, thus establishing different “morphologies” of the creation of life worlds. We will engage in a dialogue with Chinese scholars in order to reconsider the Chinese counterpart of “life worlds”, shenghuo shijie 生活世界. So far, it has been known primarily as a philosophical translation term, limited to the discussion of German philosophical concepts of Husserl, Schütz, and Heidegger. We would like to probe into possibilities of expanding it to become a broader conceptual term, which may be a useful tool not only for theories of phenomenology, but well beyond, in particular in the humanities and social sciences.

For a better understanding of the factors contributing to such processes, the project studies epochal moments of crisis and their emotional processing and representation through texts, climate data, and statistics on technical and demographic development, and cultural products such as music, literature, art, and film, among others. The analyses focus on mechanisms of interplay between world-making and world-narration, with an emphasis on China in exchange and comparison with other world regions.


Activities of this project: Talks, Lectures, Presentations, Workshops, Interviews

Publication "After the Sun: Slow Hope? Rethinking Continuous Crisis Through China’s Revolutions" by Barbara Mittler published with Palgrave Macmillan

On September 22, 2023, the article "After the Sun: Slow Hope? Rethinking Continuous Crisis Through China's Revolutions" by Barbara Mittler was published in "The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2" (ed. J.P. Zúquete).

Monograph "Chinesisch-deutsche Lyrikdialoge" by Sara Landa published with De Gruyter

On September 5, 2023, De Gruyter Publishing House published the monograph "Chinese-German Poetry Dialogues. Approaches to Chinese Poetry from Expressionism to the Present [Chinesisch-deutsche Lyrikdialoge. Annäherungen an die chinesische Dichtung vom Expressionismus bis zur Gegenwart]" by Sara Landa.

Interview with Barbara Mittler on the annual conference "The Making of Epochal Events"

On August 24, 2023, an interview with Barbara Mittler about the annual conference "The Making of Epochal Events" of the BMBF Joint Center "Worldmaking from a Global Perspective: A Dialogue with China" was published.

Workshop "Environmental Narratives: Narrating Crisis - Imaging Disaster - Envisaging Future"

The workshop, jointly organized by the Heidelberg project "Epochal Lifeworlds: Humans, Nature, and Technology in Crisis and Change Narratives" and the Rachel Carson Center Munich on July 8 and 9, 2023, explored the role of narratives of environmental crises and catastrophes both in the past and in the present.

Joint Workshop of the Heidelberg Centre for Apocalyptic and Postapocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) and the Joint Center “Worldmaking"

A joint workshop of the Heidelberg Center for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies and the Worldmaking Project "Epochal Life Worlds: Humans, Nature and Technology in Narratives of Crisis and Change" took place on July 4, 2023. The workshop provided an opportunity for fellows from both centers to get to know each other and to present their ongoing research.

Reading and Discussion with Philipp Weiss

On June 27 at 20:00 in the CATS courtyard, there was reading and discussion with author Philipp Weiss, currently poet-in-residence with the project “Epochal Life Worlds”. His novel "Am Weltenrand sitzen die Menschen und lachen" (At the Edge of the World People Sit Laughing) offers a panorama of entangled stories and histories and explores languages and forms of approaching the narration of the Anthropocene: Between France and Japan, from the 19th to the 21st century, the novel depicts a Panopticon of our multilayered reality.

Annual Conference 2023 of the Joint Center "The Making of Epochal Events: Narrating Turning Points in Chinese History"

The Joint Center's annual conference was held at Heidelberg University from June 15-17, 2023. The event brought together project members and fellows from all sites involved in the Joint Center as well as other invited scholars around the theme "The Making of Epochal Events: Narrating Turning Points in Chinese History,". The event engaged with the question in how far events are “epochal” at all, whether they necessarily mark a break with the past, thus promising the dawning of a new epoch, a “new reality” (Simon), or whether the “epochal” can also be constructed to make a claim of historical discontinuity that might be quite at odds with the experiences of the actors involved.

Lecture "Nature, Politics, and Amphibious Worlds in Central Yangzi Valley of Late Imperial China" by Yan Gao

On June 2, 2023, Heidelberg Visiting Fellow Yan Gao presented her research on "Nature, Politics, and Amphibious Worlds in Central Yangzi Valley of Late Imperial China" during a public lecture.

Taiwan Lecture Series "Sinophone Filmmaking: Identity and Environment"

As part of the Taiwan Lecture Series "Sinophone Filmmaking: Identity and Environment," the project "Epochal Life Worlds: Man, Nature and Technology in Narratives of Crisis and Change" invited former visiting fellow Winnie L.M. Yee (University of Hong Kong) for a discussion on Sinophone filmmaking.

Digital Dialogues #13 "Comparisons and Transcultural Dialogues: Universal Love in Mohism and Christianity"

On May 17, 2023, the project "Epochal Lifeworlds: Humans, Nature, and Technology in Narratives of Crisis and Transition" hosted an event on "Comparisons and Transcultural Dialogues: Universal Love in Mohism and Christianity" as part of the Joint Center's Digital Workshop Series "Digital Dialogues". Wu Yun (Jiao Tong University) and Thorsten Moos (Heidelberg University) engaged in a dialogue on the justification and engagements with "universal love", exploring the potential of comparative ethics and universalist claim.

Konzert: Uraufführung "Das Lied von der Erde" mit Neukompositionen von Ying WANG

On May 13 and 14, 2023, the world premiere of "The Song of the Earth" with new compositions by composer Ying Wang took place in Heidelberg and Mannheim as part of the concert series "Confucius and the New World Order", which was jointly launched last year by KlangForum Heidelberg, the Confucius Institute Heidelberg and the Worldmaking Joint Center.

Workshop "Worldmaking in a Sinophone Context: Conceptions, Processes and Practices"

The workshop "Worldmaking in a Sinophone Context - Conceptions, Processes and Practices," March 31-April 1, 2023, explored theoretical concepts of worldmaking through empirical examples in China. Project members, (former) fellows, and new colleagues came together to present their research as work-in-progress at various stages on historical and contemporary processes and practices. Sara Landa attended from the project "Epochal Life Worlds: Man, Nature and Technology in Narratives of Crisis and Change".

Digital Dialogue #11 "Literary and Visual Representations of Climate Changes and Environmental Cataclysm in Early Modern China and Europe"

As part of the Joint Center's Digital Dialogues Workshop series, (former) fellows Joana van de Löcht and Yizhou Wang examined the role and influence of climate, or the interactions between humans and climate and environmental changes, on the emergence of literature and art in early modern China and Europe during the Little Ice Age (ca. 1300-1850).

New book publication: "Family - Life - Pandemic. Words and Worlds of Chinese Migrant Women Workers"

The project "Social Worlds: China's Cities as Spaces of Worldmaking", in cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, has translated the writing project of Chinese artist Jing Y., in which Chinese women migrant workers speak out and tell their own stories and memories, into German. Translations were also provided by Sara Landa and Xiaojie Chang from the project "Epochal Life Worlds: Man, Nature and Technology in Narratives of Crisis and Change".

DVCS 32th Annual Conference 2022 with contributions by the Joint Center

December 9 – 11, 2022, the 32th Annual Conference of the German Association for Chinese Studies (DVCS) on the topic “Sustainability: China's approach to the environment and posterity in the past and present” took place at the Centre for Chinese Studies at Kiel University. The Joint Center had been represented by members from three of the center’s locations presenting their research in five out of eight panels.

Heidelberg Ruperta Carola Lecture Series "End as Beginning: Global and Transdiciplinary Perspectives”

Between October 2022 and February 2023, the Ruperto Carola Lecture Series brought together scholars, public figures, and artists in a variety of event formats (lectures, panel discussions, concerts, readings, and film screenings) to engage in a dialogue with each other and with a broad audience on the topic of the tension between endings and beginnings.

International Conference "Creating the ‘Good Life’ in the City: Urban Spaces in Times of Change, Challenge and Crisis"

Between October 10-12, 2022, an international conference on "Creating the ‘Good Life’ in the City: Urban Spaces in Times of Change, Challenge and Crisis" co-organized by the Thematic Research Network Umwelten–Umbrüche–Umdenken, the Heidelberg "Worldmaking" subproject "Epochal Lifeworlds", the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society and the Environmental Humanities at the Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt was held at Heidelberg University. The conference focused on dynamics of urban transformation by looking into the ways in which different actors shape and negotiate these processes in order to realize the ‘good life’.

Workshop "After the Crisis?—Rethinking Processes and Potentials of Change in Environment and Society"

Co-organized by the Heidelberg project “Epochal Life Worlds: Man, nature and technology in narratives of crisis and change” and the Rachel Carson Center Munich, this workshop investigated the action potential in moments of crisis and different strategies and narratives employed to put transformative visions in spite of and after a crisis into practice—both in the past and the present.

Lunch Talk "Ecopoetry as Method: Reading Gary Snyder as a Cultural Mediator between China and the World" by Winnie Yee

On July 19, 2022, the project "Epochal Life Worlds: Man, Nature and Technology in Narratives of Crisis and Change" hosted a talk by Winnie Yee (University of Hong Kong), 2022 fellow in the Joint Center's project "Social Worlds: China's Cities as Spaces of Worldmaking". In her talk, Winnie Yee examined Chinese poetry’s inspirational effect on Snyder and analyses his translations of Han Shan’s poetry in order to provide a means of transcending the simplistic dichotomies of the East and West.

Lecture "Re-thinking Apocalypse: Two Prints from Hiroshige's '100 Famous Views of Edo' Cycle"

In their talk on July 14, 2022, the speakers Yi Chen /CAPAS) and Boris Steipe (University of Toronto) mapped out the narrative systems of two prints from Hiroshige's celebrated "100 Famous Views of Edo" cycle - "Sunrise at Kanda Myōjin Shrine", and "Komakata Hall and Azuma Bridge" to develop the polyphony of layers. The analysis revealed a generally unrecognized aspect of loss and transience that underlies a part of Hiroshige‘s lyrical work.

Performance of “or/and” - A Chamber Operatic Poem by Shih-hui Chen and Monique Truong

As part of the Taiwan Lecture series at the Heidelberg Institute for Chinese Studies, the Worldmaking Project “Epochal Life Worlds: Man, Nature and Technology in Narratives of Crisis and Change” hosted a performance of a 60-minute chamber operatic poem for soprano and chamber ensemble, by Shih-hui Chen, the composer-in-residence at the Heidelberg Center for Asian and Transcultural Studies.

Network meeting "Krise und Neuordnung" (Crisis and Reordering)

Between June 13 and 14, 2022, members of the Joint Center for Advanced Studies participated in the network meeting Krise and Neuordnung (Crisis and Reordering) organized by the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) and the University of Hamburg. The event dealt with questions of what constitutes “crisis” across political, environmental and economic domains, and the forms of global and national re-ordering that emerge out of crises.

Online Workshop "Living an Epoch with Nature: Plants and Spatial Representations in the Ming-Qing Transition"

This interdisciplinary workshop focused on representations of plants and space and discourses on the interaction between humans and nature during the transition from the Ming to the Qing period in seventeenth-century China. From the various perspectives of art history, literary studies, cultural history, history of knowledge, and philosophy, the presenters discussed how individual artistic, poetic, and intellectual figures met the challenges and interacted with the real or imagined natural environment.

Annual Conference of the Joint Center "Global Conflicts, Global Collaboration: China in a Changing World Order"

From June 2 – 4, 2022, Göttingen University hosted the annual conference of the Joint Center. This event brought together project members and fellows from all the Joint Center’s participating locations, as well as additional invited scholars. Under the umbrella of the theme "Global Conflicts, Global Collaboration: China in a Changing World Order", the conference – among other subjects – discussed arenas where shared global issues emerge but also become sources of geopolitical contestations.

Workshop CREATIO - Vom Ende als Anfang: Globale und interdisziplinäre Perspektiven

Together with the Junge Kantorei and the Academy for Future, the Heidelberg project team of “Epochal Life Worlds” organized an interdisciplinary project on the theme of creation. The workshop was the first of a series of events which aim to bring together scholars from various disciplines, climate activists, professional musicians, and youth groups in order to rethink crises and transformations as an interplay of destruction and creation, end and beginning.

CAPAS Lecture Series 2022 "Ending Worlds"

Organized as a joint lecture series of the Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) and the project “Epochal Life Worlds: Man, nature and technology in narratives of crisis and change” of the Joint Centre for Advanced Studies “Worldmaking from a Global Perspective: A Dialogue with China”, this lecture series undertook the task of exploring imaginaries and experiences of catastrophic and (post-)apocalyptic events from an interdisciplinary perspective with a special focus on Asia.

Lecture Series "The (Re-)Invention of Latin America: Myths of Conquest and Civilisation" startet with a lecture by Stefanie Gänger and Barbara Mittler

On April 21, 2022, in the framework of the lecture series “The (Re-) Invention of Latin America—Myths of Conquest and Civilisation“, Barbara Mittler (PI of the Joint Center's project "Epochal Life Worlds: Man, Nature and Technology in Narratives of Crisis and Change") gave a lecture together with Stefanie Gänger (professor of Modern History at Heidelberg University) on the topic "CONQUISTA Rethinking Global History through Artistic Renderings".

Opinion article in VAN Magazine with contributions by Barbara Mittler and Björn Alpermann on classical music in China

On February 9, 2022, VAN Magazin published an opinion piece by Hartmut Welcher entitled "Contact avoidance - China tours of German orchestras serve almost exclusively marketing strategies and political instrumentalization. The much-invoked "cultural exchange" hardly takes place. A missed opportunity", contributions to which were made by Barbara Mittler and Björn Alpermann.

Digital Dialogue #5 "Art in Times of Crisis - The Covid-19 Pandemic and Taibei's Artscapes. A Digital Dialogue with Contemporary Taiwanese Artist Betty Apple"

As part of the Joint Center's Digital Workshop Series "Digital Dialogues", Dr. Phillip Grimberg talked with artist Betty Apple about the ways in which the current pandemic has changed and/or influenced artists' understanding of the world and themselves, and how she understands the relationship between different kinds of worlds-natural, political, cultural, fictional, literary, linguistic, and virtual-and their vulnerability to crisis, change, and disaster.

Pandemic Readings Continued "A personal glimpse of life in China's Lockdown: Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City by Fang FANG" - An Online Reading and Discussion

In continuation of the Workshop Series “Pandemic Readings”, the CATS and the Confucius Institute Heidelberg organized another event series on pandemics, dystopias and literature. As part of the 2nd event, Sara Landa (CATS) talked with the German translator of the diary and long-time cultural mediator Michael Kahn-Ackermann about selected records and the challenges of translating a non-literary collection of posts and thoughts.

Pandemic Readings Continued "Science Fiction Literature from China - The Waste Tide by Qiufan Chen" - An Online Reading and Discussion

In continuation of the Workshop Series “Pandemic Readings”, the CATS and the Confucius Institute Heidelberg organized another event series on pandemics, dystopias and literature. This series started December 2, 2021, with a discussion of Chen Qiufan’s “The Waste Tide” by Frederike Schneider-Vielsäcker (Heidelberg) and Dr. Chiara Cigarini (Venice).

Fellow Lecture "King Yu’s Space Colonies: Planetary Futures in Contemporary Chinese Fiction" by Dr. Johannes Kaminski

Within the framework of the Fellow Lectures, the talk of Dr. Johannes D. Kaminski, fellow in the project "Epochal Life Worlds: Man, Nature and Technology in Narratives of Crisis and Change" addressed Chinese perspectives on the ecological crisis, tracing two lines of arguments in contemporary essays and novels. The common perception of the West's responsibility for climate change can also be found in the texts as well the conviction that technology can allow humanity to transcend the predicaments of present and future ecological crises.

Fellow Lecture "Why Does Over Population Matter for Climate and What Should We Do About It? Lessons from China's Controversial One-Child Policy" by Dr. Dale Jiajun Wen

As part of the Fellow Lectures, Dr. Dale Jiajun Wen, fellow in the project "Epochal Life Worlds: Man, Nature and Technology in Narratives of Crisis and Change", addressed the influence of population figures on the climate and opened the discussion about which policies should be adopted to facilitate women's empowerment and the necessary demographic transition.

Presentation “Reinventing the Buddhist Tradition: Vegetarianism and Cultural Identity in Republican China” by Matthias Schumann

On August 24, 2021, as part of the biennial conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies (EACS), Matthias Schumann, postdoctoral researcher in the project "Epochal Lifeworlds: Humans, Nature, and Technology in Narratives of Crisis and Transition" presented a paper on "Reinventing the Buddhist Tradition: Vegetarianism and Cultural Identity in Republican China".

Digital Dialogue #1 "The Interpretation of Natural Events in European and Chinese History: A Digital Dialogue"

As part of the Digital Workshop Series "Digital Dialogues" of the Joint Center "Worldmaking", the two speakers, Dr. habil. Thomas Wozniak, research fellow at the Joint Center, and Dr. Ishayahu Landa, discussed the interpretation of natural events such as solar eclipses, ‘dragons’ or famine.

Symposium "Vanitas21: Present - Transience and Faith in Catastrophic Times"

On July 3, 2021, as part of the Vanitas21 project, a symposium on the topic of "Vanitas 1630 - 2021-Transience and Confidence in Catastrophic Times" was held in cooperation with the Junge Kantorei at the Wartburgkirche in Frankfurt. With the support of the TRN Environment-Rethinking-Transformations, and as part of the Joint Center "Worldmaking", concerts on the question of pandemics and creativity, also a topic of the workshop series "Pandemic Readings", will take place on September 19 and 25, 2021.

Workshop Series "Pandemic Readings: Crisis and Creativity"

On May 20, 2021, the four-part workshop series "Pandemic Readings: Crisis and Creativity" was launched, organized and conducted by the project "Epochal Lifeworlds: Humans, Nature and Technology in Narratives of Crisis and Change" at Heidelberg University.

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