How to account for the use of traditional techniques and styles in contemporary art? Many artists are certain of their neutrality and disavow any underlying ideological connotation; others, like Hao Liang, advocate a distinct historical agenda—to investigate the insurmountable chasm between modern China and its ancient past. The artist’s rise to prominence over the past decade can be primarily attributed to his revival of Chinese ink landscape painting on silk hand scrolls. To cultivate a sense of interconnectedness across human societies, he revolutionizes the somewhat rigid form of narrative

Autofiction, as a genre, has sought to burn the safety blanket of detachment that poets and novelists often hide under, positing instead an authorial “I” that is very much “me,” but presenting occurrences that may or may not be factual. One of the landmarks of autofiction, Guillaume Dustan’s 1998 novel In My Room, brought its author instant notoriety for its (self-) portrayal of drug-fucked faggotry in mid-1990s Paris. Scenes drift from the eponymous bedroom to the darkroom and to the dance floors of Le Queen, a world of almost totally impassive hedonism, where happiness comes in forms that can