Yellow River @ Mississippi River :: seeking what a river carries

Yellow River @ Mississippi River :: seeking what a river carries is a collaborative student project that emerges from an image quest to gather clues to the cultural meanings and histories of the Yellow River in China and the Mississippi River in Minnesota. These rivers resonate, converge, and diverge in the collective imagination. A shifting projection of images sparked by this collaborative visual quest, Yellow River @ Mississippi River will juxtapose these virtual views with those of the nearby downstream flow of the waters of the Mississippi River that shape this site.

Artists and professors Liu Xuguang and Diane Willow are the catalysts for a project that will be created by students at the University of Minnesota and the Beijing Film Academy. The students will communicate with each other and experiment with a range of virtual media before coming together on site to present their vision of these two rivers and the meanings they carry.

Sponsored by the Weisman Art Museum and the China Exchange Program of the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota

Liu Xuguang

Beijing artist Liu Xuguang exhibits his work internationally. He is vice-director of the fine arts department and director of the New Media Art Lab at the Beijing Film Academy. He received his PhD in fine arts at Tsinghua University and studied at the National Institute of Saitama University of Japan and Tokyo University of Arts.

Diane Willow

Multimodal artist and creative catalyst Diane Willow works among disciplines and media: “by any medium necessary” best describes her process. Focused on art as experience, she invites people to engage in multisensory explorations as participants and choreographers. She is associate professor of experimental and media arts at the University of Minnesota and shares her work internationally.