The Waterfall and the Fountain
Comparative Semiotic Essays on Contemporary Arts in China

Area 11 – Scienze storiche, filosofiche, pedagogiche e psicologiche

Geographically and anthropologically distant cultures inspire awe and fascination: for centuries, Europe and China, the West and the East have fantasized about each other, longed for journeying toward each other, mutually projected onto each other their own alter egos. Modern innovation in the transport of people, goods, and especially cultural contents in digital form has increasingly narrowed the distance between these two geographic and human poles. Today, China is everywhere in the West, and viceversa. Yet, facility of access is not always tantamount to in–depth comprehension. Century–long differences, prejudices, and asymmetries still persist. Comprising the essays of several specialists in cultural theory and analysis, both from Europe and China, the volume seeks to uncover the semiotic formula underpinning the encounter, the dialogue, but also the clash between Western and Eastern aesthetics, especially in the neglected field of popular culture and arts. The title hints at the Chinese fascination for waterfalls and the natural flowing of the elements, compared with the European attraction to fountains as exploitation of technological mastery over nature: each chapter in the volume focuses on many aesthetic dialectics, spanning from literature to painting, from videogames to food.

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