In our event calendar you will find current cultural events related to Chinese culture in Switzerland. We are thankful for your tips regarding interesting events.
Please send your information to info@sinokultur.ch.
Cultural Events ⟩ Agenda
In our event calendar you will find current cultural events related to Chinese culture in Switzerland. We are thankful for your tips regarding interesting events.
Please send your information to info@sinokultur.ch.
The Institute of Art History of the University of Zurich is pleased to share the invitation to the upcoming public lecture by Dr. Uli Sigg on 9. December at the University of Zurich, inaugurating our new platform, Roundtable: East Asian Art in Dialogue .
Dr. Uli Sigg, Visiting Professor at the Chair of East Asian Art History, UZH— diplomat, entrepreneur, art patron, and the foremost collector of contemporary Chinese art — will deliver a special lecture: "Between the Private and the Public: Collecting as Cultural Discourse." The talk will reflect on Sigg’s experiences and insights into the role of collecting in shaping global cultural narratives.
The lecture will inaugurate a new platform for Zurich and Switzerland’s East Asian art ecosystem: Roundtable Series: East Asian Art in Dialogue. This roundtable series is designed as a cross-sector forum for professionals across the East Asian art community—including academics, curators, gallerists, artists, collectors, patrons and cultural organizers. It aims to share priorities, surface emerging issues, and foster collaboration across Swiss and global art ecosystem.
Date: Tuesday, 09.12.2025, 18:15–20:00, followed by Apéro until 21:00
Venue: Auditorium (KOL-G-201), University of Zurich, Rämistrasse 71, 8006 Zürich
Registration (free, required): https://ema.uzh.ch/RTRFX
The Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies of the University of Zurich would like to invite you to the talk "Beyond Escapism and Subversion: Fantasy Fiction in Post-Socialist China" by Jun. Prof. Dr. Jessica Imbach (Universität Freiburg) on December 18th.
Over the past decade, Chinese fantasy fiction has experienced an extraordinary boom, both in print and online. This surge is in many ways an outcome of broader transformations of the post-socialist era such as economic liberalization, the rise of cultural capitalism, and the rapid digitization of everyday life. At the same time, the boom has unfolded under increasingly stringent media control, especially under Xi Jinping.
How can we make sense of the scope, diversity, and popularity of fantasy fiction in this environment? Existing frameworks tend to read fantasy either as an escapist commodity, the inevitable outcome of a heavily commercialized cultural sphere, or as a subversive allegory, a coded mode of critique in a tightly monitored media environment.
These two interpretive frameworks, fantasy as escapist commodity and fantasy as subversive allegory, offer important insights, but neither can account for the ideological and aesthetic diversity of contemporary Chinese fantasy worlds. Rather than normative analysis of fantasy fiction as distraction from reality or as coded modes of resistance, Jessica Imbach argues in this talk for a more nuanced and historically-informed approach that studies Chinese fantasy fiction in relation to traditions of literary realism, the shifting structures of the cultural economy, and the evolving sensibilities of China’s digital publics.
Date: 18. December 2025, 16:15 - 17:45
Location: Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies, Rämistrasse 59, CH-8001 Zürich, Raum RAA-E-21
All fields are required.