The rootless bird: Moving images and/as contemporary art

This editorial considers the accessibility, institutional, ideological and methodological issues that may account for the marginalization of the studies of moving images in contemporary art contexts and advocates for a new form of transdisciplinary research: in studying the transformations of moving images, the disciplines of film studies and art history are themselves being transformed. I argue that a form of trans-spatial thinking is needed in the study of moving images in contemporary China – one that can trace, document and explain how the meaning of a moving image work subtly shifts as artists, curators, scholars and critics, and the moving images themselves traverse and interact with the film industry, the contemporary art world and other spaces.