Global Impacts for a New World
Removal and Reparation in the American Memorial Landscape: Making Room for National Self Reflection
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Katherine Platt
The proposed paper asks the question, is there a tectonic shift taking place in the memorial landscape of the United States? To consider this question, I will examine two current phenomena. The first is the heated debates and movements related to symbols of the Confederacy (1860-65), the founding principle of which was the preservation of slavery. The second concurrent phenomenon to be examined is the emergence of a new genre in the U.S. memorial landscape, which is dedicated to the recognition and contemplation of the atrocity of slavery and its many legacies. Commemoration of an atrocity perpetrated by its own people against its own people is a dramatic innovation on the U.S. memorial landscape. In June 2015, holding a gun and Confederate flag, white supremacist Dylan Roof murdered nine black people in a church in South Carolina. In July 2015 the Confederate flag came down from the South Carolina State House. Since that time a widespread movement (and counter movement, of course) to remove flags, monuments and other public iconography honoring the Confederacy has burgeoned. In 2014 the first museum solely focused on slavery opened in Louisiana. In 2018 the National Memorial to Peace and Justice, dedicated to the history of lynching, and the related Legacy Museum, focusing on slavery and its legacies, opened in Alabama. Recognition, responsibility, respect, and reparation are some of the themes engaged in these new spaces. This paper asks, might removal and symbolic erasure be part of the rehabilitation of collective memory?
Developing Art as Process: Exploring the Space between
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alfredo M Lopes
So much occurs in between generating creative product, in particular, internal and external process; as a response to 21st-century society, knowledge, experience and environment, as influences in artistic practice. I suggest a different approach to developing artistic practice: investigating the space in which ideas germinate, are organized, and contribute to product. I suggest this approach as a means for comprehending and fostering creative outcomes and intend to demonstrate this process in the context of small jazz ensemble composition. Small jazz ensembles have enabled individuals to collaborate with others in the form of improvisation and/or composition as a collective space and experiment of sorts. This type of music scenario is a catalyst; engagement in the community to internal/external stimulus, observed as intuitive/intellectual underpinnings, reflect metaphysical/physical planes as "creative design," occurring independently in the musician/composer, and interdependently in collaboration with others as a common thread. The arts, in particular, jazz music has been a medium for accommodating and communicating ideas/ideals as/through community; allowing the artist to reflect, respond, and contribute to society at a given point in time and history. I intend to explore this theme, in particular, process and interrelationships occurring in writing, rehearsing, arranging and performing small jazz ensemble composition as a model for observation, interpretation, and development of artistic practice in contemporary culture.
