How does animation think? What happens when animation falls in love with other visual forms? In this talk, Dr Panpan Yang traces the perplexing permutations and ramifications of a distinct pattern of imagination in Chinese animation – the remediation of painting, calligraphy, and porcelain. She proposes a form of trans-spatial thinking to examine contemporary Chinese animation: to trace, document, and explain how the meaning of a work of Chinese animation subtly changes as it moves in and out of the world of the film industry, the sphere of contemporary art, and other spaces.

Panpan Yang is currently a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of History of Art and Archaeology at SOAS University of London. She holds a PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations and Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Chicago. From 2023 to 2025, she is the Principal Investigator of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded research project on calligraphic imagination in contemporary Chinese art and emergent media. Her articles have appeared in Archives of Asian Art, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Journal of e-Media Studies, Melodrama Unbound, Chinese Animation: Multiplicities in Motion, and other journals and edited volumes. With Oscar-winning art director Tim Yip and design historian Leren Li, she recently completed the co-authored book Spiritual DNA, under contract with Hong Kong University Press.