Following her first book Memory, Subjectivity and Independent Chinese Cinema which, in a recent review, is called “rich and complex” and “unusual” in Chinese screen studies due to its “insistence on bringing fiction and non-fiction together within a single study,” Qi Wang has published a new article and “takes up questions of hybrid aesthetics and bodily archive directly” by doing a comparative study of two recent Chinese documentaries: 24 City (dir. Jia Zhangke) and Tape (dir. Li Ning).

In this article, Wang “objects to 24 City’s attempt at using fiction to copy fiction, eliding their difference to give us a unified narrative and interpretation. She prefers Tape’s overt interest in baring the boundaries between the two modes of representation and exploring the rich dynamic when performance and reality encounter each other or even clash.”

Qi Wang, “The Recalcitrance of Reality: Performances, Subjects, and Filmmakers in 24 City and Tape,” in Zhang Zhen and Angela Zito, eds., DV-Made China: Digital Subjects and Social Transformations after Independent Film, University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015, pp. 215-236.