Diverse Voices (Asynchronous)
Arts, Disability, and the Museums: Representational Issues in Imagery View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Berube Patricia
What impact does the cultural model of disability have on the way we acknowledge and address representational issues in museums? Also, how do these representational issues materialize in disability imagery and art? For some, the binary between disabled and non-disabled seems to be transposed to the museum in the form of a dominant culture (or ‘disabling culture) vs. a disability culture. As such, one of the observations that can be made is that the portraiture of disability is often either ignored, or stereotyped. While museums have always played a role in the social triage of its visitors, the role of the representational critique, along with the amazing work carried by curatorial activists (such as Amanda Cachia), are representative of a need for change.
Cinema as National Propaganda : How Countries Sell Their Identity Thought the Movies View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nieves Villaseca Blanco
Cinema is part of the soft power or national brand, projecting images and imaginaries about a country, its living style, values, and people. A brief review of American films supported by American government brings us a clear view of one of the most successful and influential propaganda forces of the modern history in the world. This consideration helps us understand why the United States is one of the most desirable international destinations.
From Local to Global : Building American Urban Museums and Collecting the World, 1910-1940 View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Julie Codell
In the US between 1910 and 1940, several philanthropic art collectors were networked through dealer/agent Martin Birnbaum (1878-1970) who required his American collector-clients to share their collections with public. Birnbaum was an art agent for 15 years for America's most prominent philanthropic collectors who promised to donate their collections to public institutions and who were often trustees or executives of those same public institutions. The works Birnbaum purchased for them laid the foundations for the then-emerging Midwestern art museums in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Cincinnati, and also expanded established East Coast museum collections in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. While museum administrators were building local cultures and networking with wealthy merchants and industrialists in their cities, their growing museum collections, thanks to the vision of Birnbaum and of local collectors and curators, were quickly becoming global, first pan-European and then in the 1930s-40s expanding to include works from Asia and Africa. I examine this process of the intertwining local and global identities among collectors during this culturally expansive period in the US, as collectors, dealers, and curators began to travel abroad extensively to seek new cultural forms of knowledge and to develop an American culture that went beyond local pride to become national and world renowned.
Suburban Imprints: Political Printmaking on the Edge of the Global City in the Pre-digital Decade View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Marla Guppy
Political printmaking is a product of time and place. The social context makes it relevant, capable of recognition and response. Yet there are spaces within the political landscape where a synergy of media, message, and engagement produces distinctively local art. Such spaces sometimes exist on the cusp of change – in a moment before the product is generalised or overtaken by other cultural expressions. The last decades before the introduction of digital technology marked an important time for poster-making, a time when the use of photography in print making enabled a style of community commentary. The concurrent emergence of the global city with its neglected outer suburbs became a new focus for community art practice. In response to new urban scenarios Garage Graphix, a print workshop operating in western Sydney through the 1980s and 90s, developed innovative techniques in community-centred design and production. The pre-digital process of both design and print production facilitated community expression of the socio-political landscape in a period of urban rapid change. A distinctive workshop practice enabled the training and employment of local residents, in particular suburban women and First Nation residents as print-makers. Further, the form was linked to the technologies of the time with the 1980s representing the last decade before digital photography gained ascendency. This paper considers the artworks created by Garage Graphix as a critical product of the emerging culture of Western Sydney and and as a methodology of local political expression shaped by art form, feminism, technology, and place.
Money is a Dirty Word : The Arts as a Vehicle for Sculpting Entrepreneurial Worlds View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Melanie Sarantou, Niina Karvinen
This paper addresses the role of the arts in mitigating societal challenges. It explores the outcomes of one of 35 experiments of the AMASS European Testbed, a European Commission-funded Horizon 2020 project. This initiative sought to understand the bold approaches and attitudes of artists to engage in a self-hack with business mentors and service designers. The aim was to experiment with what could be, and what ought to be the contributions of the arts in fast-changing worlds in which margins have become blurred and omnipresent. This arts-based action research (ABAR) project created concrete opportunities for people to come together and accompany artists as agents in creative projects and interpretations. The project implemented ABAR approaches that drew on data collection methods such as focus group discussions, ethnographic observations, workshops and note taking. The research asked: ‘How can the arts be a vehicle for sculpting entrepreneurial worlds?’, and ‘How can artist finding themselves at the margins of entrepreneurial environments explore their own unique abilities cross the margins between the arts and business worlds?’ Assessment methods of the study impact included reflective interviews, open-ended questionnaires, process evaluation and artistic imaging, such as photo or video voice. The main outcomes of the intervention illustrated how artists can harness margins as opportunities for growth and self-realization, while unique opportunities can be leveraged through interdisciplinarity. The arts insufficiently report on evaluation practices for measuring impact. Thus, the value of the study lies in documenting the work and evaluation processes applied in this experiment.
Featured Playful Disobedience: Re-centering a Method of Embodied Practice in Uncertain Times View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Reka Polonyi
The notion of play has been a source of curiosity and confusion in academic writing. Across disciplines including anthropology and performance studies, play has been declared to be ambiguous, extremely variable, contradictory, and paradoxical. Play theorists believe that our forms of play reflect the social and cultural values of our times. In performing arts, play has exploded throughout the twentieth century as a platform for uncertainty, creative risks and activism - and as colourful protests against dominant ideological notions of production, optimization and efficiency in movement, body, and space. In 1968, the Swedish activist group Aktion Samtal took over an established art institution with a loud and disorderly playground that celebrated anarchic play. Their work, The Model: a Model for a Qualitative Society, was a form of protest that boasted fresh ideas for a social utopia at the time. The Swedish activists had introduced an anti-elitist alternative of seeing, listening and finding one’s place in the world: play was a form of positionality that proposed to re-allign visions toward a collaborative and participatory society. What does it mean to harness such playful practices to understand shifting circumstances today, and imagine new, future possibilities? The practice of play celebrates a methodological fluidity and adaptability that is most valuable in times of crisis. In considering play ‘seriously’ as a platform for uncertainty and creative risks, the ambitious initiative offers a critical glimpse at how institutionalised centres of cultural meaning-making can be unsettled, negotiated, and re-imagined.
Art, Race, and Health Equity: A Research Progress Report from the City of Boston View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rebekah Moore, Dee Williams
COVID-19 has laid bare and compounded the systemic inequities in healthcare that have plagued our nation for centuries, thus exposing an awful truth about which public health researchers and clinicians have repeatedly warned: Race is a predeterminant of health. Decades of empirical research in the health sciences confirms that participation in the arts, ranging from music, dance, and theatre to visual arts and creative writing can help to reduce adverse physiological and psychological outcomes, including those most prevalent and harmful for minoritized individuals and communities. This presentation highlights an ongoing longitudinal study investigating how and why inclusive participation in the arts constitutes a critical public health intervention on both structural racism and its predictive negative health outcomes. Our interdisciplinary team of artists and art, law, sociology, and public health faculty and students has generated needed knowledge on the history and diversity of Black and Latinx art in Boston and the interrelated economic, environmental, and health challenges facing BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) artists and the neighborhoods in which they live and work. This foundational knowledge will support the next research phase: a public health intervention to extend arts participation to underserved BIPOC teenagers, so that they are empowered to locate, chronicle, and contend with systemic inequities, and to build protective health factors so that they, and their communities, can thrive. Our study concludes with policy recommendations positioning the arts within the purview of public health and just governance structures, in the City of Boston and beyond.
Dobble Debate on Differing Abilities View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nina Czegledy, Lynne Heller
An intense period of transformation in game development strategies has unfolded in this century (Henricks). As a consequence, it is important to observe how an increasing number of contemporary games relate to susceptibilities, disabilities and advanced age, thus contributing to processes of social innovation and social change. Within this context terminology has changed dramatically and questions have been raised. Who is considered disabled today? To what extent do assisted technologies and digital tools alter the conditions for people with disabilities? Do we view disabilities— or better, different abilities –— in alternate ways than a century or even few decades ago? Do some of the relevantother games offer a deferential yet whimsical approach? And last but not least, how are these issues represented in games from the vantage points of politics, science, arts, technology, design, education and economy? The consideration of these issues prompted Lynne Heller and myself to develop Dobble Debate -— a stimulating collaborative analog card game.
Adaptations by Arts Based Organizations During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Look at Sustainability, Global Impact, and Transferability View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Caitlin Epstein
Art’s utility for social change is often overlooked, but in the midst of several crises, ranging from climate change to the COVID-19 pandemic to police brutality and racial inequality, art-based organizations have provided outlets and services that adapt to and address these crises. The purpose of this research was to discover how grassroots level art-based organizations in the United States have adapted their methods amidst cascading crises, and if these adapted methods are sustainable and transferable. The initial data was obtained during the Fall of 2020 through participant observation while working as an intern with SNAG Magazine, interviews with supervisors and partners of other art-based organizations, and analysis of primary documents, websites, and social media. In the Spring of 2021, I reconnected with organizations to examine the sustainability of their adapted methods. The main findings of this research were that, in a time of upheaval, art-based organizations responded in ways that supported their local and wider communities. Adapting primarily by moving their services online, they emphasized community participation, devised innovative solutions to problems, and stressed the importance of art not being an obligation. Despite early success in adapting, many organizations faced challenges such as funding issues and staff burn out that affected the sustainability of the work. This research adds to limited literature on arts for social change, especially during a time of particular challenge, by providing examples of how arts organizations across the United States are adapting in the face of multiple crises to affect positive change.
