Tuesday, 28 September 2010
W1: Mind Map "Hybridity"
Links that could be referred:
www.orlan.net/works/photo/ - Self Hybridization
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g5fLgSQWU - Akram Khan
http://www.clusterflock.org/2009/03/candy-darling-on-her-deathbed-peter-hujar-yet-another-favorite.html
W2: Intercultural Theatre Images
Videos and Images for Warwick Group 2. Intercultural theatre
Bollywood - 'Bride and Prejudice' - cross-cultural themes
Monday, 27 September 2010
A1: Hybridity
Video: Pangalay dance of the Sama Dilaut and Tausug community, Southern Philippines. The Sama and Tausug are indigenous people living in the Tawi-Tawi and Sulu islands; they are also Muslims. Often classified as a "Muslim" dance, the pangalay tradition pre-dates the arrival of Islam in the Philippines, and the silk sawal and baju lapi attire have heavy Chinese influence from 10th-14th century trading.
Hybridity deals with identity within the post-colonial and global contexts. Kapchan detects hybridity: “whenever two or more historically separate realms come together in any degree that challenges their socially constructed autonomy” (Kapchan 242). Hybridity is the product and the process of mélange itself. It seeks to disrupt the colonial binary and oppositional positioning of colonizer and colonized (and the fixity and fetishization that accompanies it) in order to position the ever changing subject as emergent within the liminal reality, which Homi Bhabha terms the Third Space: “neither a new horizon nor leaving behind of the past...[...]the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself.” (Bhabha 1-2) As an intercultural community of migrants from elsewhere, or hybrid individuals, we find ourselves in a threshold of possibilities that challenges us to participate in cultural engagements in performative ways.
This interstitial space blurring the origins (if such thing can be identified), and consequently leading to an uncertain “destination”, worries “classic reason” and the socio-political process of categorization it entails; its power lies in its transgressive potential. On the other hand, to what extent can this anti-essentialist set of ideas (Canclini) resist recuperation and hierarchization (Bhabha, Visweswaran)? What are the ethical ramifications of cross-identification? To which extent can a culture protect its identity?: “Hybridity turns into a difference-easing concept, negating the foreignness of the foreign [...].[it] neutralize[s] the political claims of culture [and] subverts any normativity compelling non-instrumental grounds for preserving cultural differences and [...] endangered cultural resources.” (Kompridis 321) Can we still talk about societies which have not undergone any kind of hybridization, or as Samuels’ notes it[1], doesn’t hybridity exist only in the “outsider’s perspective”?
Video: London-based dub/electronic composer Gaudi remixes "Bethe Bethe Kese Kese", a Qawwali song by Pakistani artist Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and adds a Jamaican reggae vibe in this contemporary "chill-out" recording.
[1] After having been a participant-observer in a rock and roll Apache group, “Samuels critiques what he calls a philological approach to hybridity, that is, a concern with ‘heritage’ and ‘persistence’ that he identifies with an outsider’s perspective.” (in Kapchan 250) In other words, Samuels asks if there is a real disjunction between Apache music and rock and roll or if it is a mere construction of the outside (and ignorant) observer.
Bhabha, Homi K., The Location of Culture, New York: Routledge, (1994; 2004).
Canclini, Nestor Garcia, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, (1995; 2005).
Kapchan, D. A., et. al., “Theorizing the hybrid”, Journal of American Folklore, vol. 112, no.445, pp.239-253, (1999).
Kompridis, Nikolas, “Normativizing hybridity/neutralizing culture”, Political theory, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 318-343, (2005).
Bhabha, Homi K., The Location of Culture, New York: Routledge, (1994; 2004).
Canclini, Nestor Garcia, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, (1995; 2005).
Kapchan, D. A., et. al., “Theorizing the hybrid”, Journal of American Folklore, vol. 112, no.445, pp.239-253, (1999).
Kompridis, Nikolas, “Normativizing hybridity/neutralizing culture”, Political theory, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 318-343, (2005).
A2: Keyword "Creative Class"
Keyword Amsterdam Group B: Creative class
Art has been veritably invaded by life,
if life means flux, change, chance, time, unpredictability.
- Scot Burton, American sculptor, 1960s
The (originally socioeconomic) concept of "creative class" defines the process in which more and more lay people stop behaving as passive consumers, and turn into active creators of meaning. They connect, exchange idea and... take action!
With the emerging technologies and Social Media trend, both innovation and creativity become mass activities.
Frozen Grand Central, "mission" by Improv Everywhere: over 200 people freeze in place on cue in Grand Central Station in New York. In their own words, Improv Everywhere is an "improvisation troupe which executes pre-planned "missions" which usually involve socially awkward or unusual situations."
Sometimes, this architecture of collaboration is set out to experiment, or even to provoke the mainstream.
Anonymous protester wearing a Guy Fawkes mask posing with police
Mature, Anne Nicole S. (1999), photograph of the Mature-series celebrating senior beauty by Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf
In any case, amateurs challenge the authority of so-called "experts". It appropriates, mixes cultures and codes, and creates new forms, identities, subcultures. This ensures the irrelevance of formal criteria. Who needs professionals anymore?
By taking the risk of crossing borders, amateur communities glue pheriferic networks and start the battle for pushing them on the central stage.
We wonder, if the creative class becomes mainstream, won't this destroy its own purpose of being?
Type Experiments, by New York-based graphic designer and typographer Stefan Sagmeister
Art has been veritably invaded by life,
if life means flux, change, chance, time, unpredictability.
- Scot Burton, American sculptor, 1960s
The (originally socioeconomic) concept of "creative class" defines the process in which more and more lay people stop behaving as passive consumers, and turn into active creators of meaning. They connect, exchange idea and... take action!
With the emerging technologies and Social Media trend, both innovation and creativity become mass activities.
Frozen Grand Central, "mission" by Improv Everywhere: over 200 people freeze in place on cue in Grand Central Station in New York. In their own words, Improv Everywhere is an "improvisation troupe which executes pre-planned "missions" which usually involve socially awkward or unusual situations."
Sometimes, this architecture of collaboration is set out to experiment, or even to provoke the mainstream.
Anonymous protester wearing a Guy Fawkes mask posing with police
Mature, Anne Nicole S. (1999), photograph of the Mature-series celebrating senior beauty by Dutch photographer Erwin OlafIn any case, amateurs challenge the authority of so-called "experts". It appropriates, mixes cultures and codes, and creates new forms, identities, subcultures. This ensures the irrelevance of formal criteria. Who needs professionals anymore?
By taking the risk of crossing borders, amateur communities glue pheriferic networks and start the battle for pushing them on the central stage.
We wonder, if the creative class becomes mainstream, won't this destroy its own purpose of being?
Type Experiments, by New York-based graphic designer and typographer Stefan Sagmeister
A3: Keyword "Subverting Performance Space"
How is power performed in a certain space?
How can power structures be subverted with the help of performative acts?
How can the artist invade the space of legal institutions and possibly hack their discourses?
Examples from contemporary art demonstrate how the limits of performance space can be tested in a subversive way:
How can power structures be subverted with the help of performative acts?
How can the artist invade the space of legal institutions and possibly hack their discourses?
Examples from contemporary art demonstrate how the limits of performance space can be tested in a subversive way:
Tanja Ostojic and The Yes Men
Tanja Ostojic – Serbia
She subverts the performance space of the EU as an entity by becoming the legal (!) wife of a random partner and by presenting this as a piece of art.
The Yes Men – USA
In their innovative strategy called “identity correction”, The Yes Men offer examples of virtual realities that are “too good to be true, but not impossible” thus enhancing one's political awareness.
Glauber Rocha – Brazil
He approaches Brazilian cultural rituals in a creative form of subversion in his last picture, The Age of the Earth (A Idade da Terra, 1979)
W1: Keyword "Transgression"
"Transgression" came to us while discussing words such as limits, borders and restrictions.
Picture on the left illustrates the outcome of Srebrenica genocide, which could be one of the "results“ of transgression in the politics in life.
In terms of performance, exploring boundaries could trigger pushing limits and re-questioning one’s prejudices and presumptions.
For example the piece of Marina Abramovic "Rhythm 0" challenged the audience to participate and thus cross the limits of expected behaviour.(Picture on the right)
Hence, our questions being :do the dissolved boundaries between the performer and the audience still allow the piece to be seen as a performance? Must transgression always lead to violence?
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