DIORAMA PROJECTIONS

Doretta Lau

Memory Destroys - Photographs in the Work of W.G. Sebald

Diorama Projects has invited writer and editor Doretta Lau to present Memory Destroys – Photographs in the Work of W.G. Sebald, a discussion on the writings of W.G. Sebald.

In her 2000 essay on W.G. Sebald A Mind in Mourning Susan Sontag asked ‘Is literary greatness still possible?...One of the few answers available to English language readers is the work of W.G. Sebald.” W.G. Sebald (1944-2001) was Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia and won a series of major awards for his fiction, including the Berlin Literature Prize and the Heinrich Heine Prize.   Since his untimely death, his novels The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo and Austerlitz, published in translation, and other works have continued to be the subject of seminars and conferences and tributes such as artist Jeremy Millar’s A Firework for W.G. Sebald, and Grant Gee’s recently premiered film essay Patience (After Sebald).  Memory Destroys – Photographs in the Work of W.G. Sebald will be led by Doretta Lau and considers the author’s sublime use of photographs in his works, described by Susan Sontag as ‘an exquisite index of the pastness of the past’.

Doretta Lau is a writer and editor living in Hong Kong.  She contributes to Artforum, LEAP, The Wall Street Journal, SCMP, Sing Tao and Crave, and is a former Arts & Culture Editor for HK Magazine and a former Arts Writer for Time Out Hong Kong.  In 2007, she received her MFA from the Writing Division, School of the Arts at Columbia University.  She has a BA in English Literature and BFA in Creative Writing from The University of British Columbia.  Prior to moving to Hong Kong, she was an editorial assistant for the literary annual NOON. Currently, she is working on a collection of short stories.

Location:

Saturday 26 March 2011

4.00pm

2P Contemporary Art Gallery, Hong Kong