Culture Connections (Asynchronous)
Developing Community Access to the Arts
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nicole Foran
According to philosopher Herbert Marcuse, society is the enemy of good art. Instead, strength and meaning come from subjectivity and the individuals passion, imagination, conscience, and personal history. The function of art should be to oppose the given society and its tactics of desublimation, which replace healthy natural impulses with behaviors influenced by political/economic forces. If we concede that the higher education institution is subject to the whims of political and economic forces, how do we function within that framework to create meaningful artwork and connection? If society causes the "flatttening out" of art into a commodity enmeshed in that society, how do we stimulate dialogue and broaden community access and engagement with the arts through gallery and educational settings? Institutions and artist spaces reliant on public or political funding are increasingly required to dedicate their efforts to community programming. What is at risk and what strategies can be employed to avoid the pitfalls of group-think in development of powerful and impactful public and community art projects? This paper highlights various programming initiatives designed to increase public engagement and advocacy for the arts. Best practices for community involvement will be emphasized, as will recommendations for growing support from institutional leaders without jeopardizing the intent of the artist.
U.S. Symphony Orchestras and their Communities: Unintentional Barriers and a Lack of Cultural Relevance
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Julia Atkins
In the United States, symphony orchestras have faced an aging audience for decades, causing a nation-wide panic related to their future existence. It seems as though their aging audience is due to two reasons: (1) how the music is presented and (2) a lack of cultural relevance. This combination results in an audience that is predominantly White, upper class, and middle aged for many symphony orchestras across the United States. This predominance among audience members lack diversity and does not represent the communities in which orchestras reside. Furthermore, this lack of diversity and representation further creates a disconnect between symphony orchestras and their communities, causing barriers for people to attend. These barriers result in many people feeling that they do not belong at a symphony orchestra concert. Recently, this disconnect has intensified due to the coronavirus pandemic. Many in the orchestra field are only just realizing how White and elite the field really is, with many still oblivious to the organizations’ traditionalist methods. This paper considers these barriers as they apply to symphony orchestras in the United States and what opportunities they may have to close the gap between them and their communities.
Digital Storytelling and Cultural Heritage for Social Inclusion: MEMories and Experiences for Inclusive Digital Storytelling View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Pascuala Migone
Funded by the Horizon2020 EU programme, MEMEX – ‘MEMories and Experiences for inclusive digital storytelling’ is a 3-year project (2019-2022) that promotes social cohesion through the use of digital tools, with the aim of providing inclusive access to tangible and intangible cultural heritage (CH) and of facilitating encounters and interactions between communities at risk of social exclusion. Through an Augmented Reality App for smartphones, participants will create, visualise and share their geolocalised digital stories, in which personal memories and experiences intertwine with the heritage that surrounds them. These tools provide languages and spaces to collectively generate and make visible creative, inclusive and plural narratives, emphasizing the active role of the participants in re-interpreting existing cultural heritage. MEMEX’s actions target migrant women in Barcelona; citizens of the 19th district of Paris; and first, second and third-generation Portuguese migrants in Lisbon. Through a social impact evaluation study, the project provides the opportunity to critically assess the pilot projects from a social, cultural and technological perspective, reflecting on the role these digital tools can play in making visible socially excluded realities and expanding access to culture and the arts, especially now, in a pandemic context where social, cultural and institutional fragilities have intensified. The study employs a qualitative approach, and is set up around four dimensions (cultural, social, spatial and emotional), which will be assessed through three instruments: interviews, observation of the storytelling workshops, and analysis of the participants’ stories.
The Cultural Transnational Field of Mithila Paintings: Multi-scalar Mediations in the 1970s View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Hélène Fleury, Ehrhardt Damien
Mithila paintings (Bihar, India), being both local and global, can meet the condition of a transnational cultural field. This notion is developed in recent theories based on Bourdieu’s conception of field, but generalized on an international or global level. The beginning of the commodification of Mithila paintings represented both a radical reconfiguration of a ritual practice and the inscription in a wider post-Independence project focused on economic development. Among other handicrafts and folk art items, Mithila paintings took place within a national-state-centered politico-economical field. In the 1970s main transcultural mediators as Véquaud, Moser-Schmitt or Owens come into play, fond on the paintings themselves and driven by countercultural Indophilia and/or applied anthropology. They were followed by an array of international visitors and art dealers. Both dissension and cooperation characterize the interaction between global agents constructing the Maithil transnational field. In the early 1970s a nexus existed between Indian government institutions and international mediators, generating the construction of a now transnational field especially focused on Mithila paintings. After 1976, this transnational cultural field grew more autonomous from the national-state-centered cultural, political, and economical fields, because of the disengagement of Indian government institutions, contributed to the emergence of a non-governmental internationalization of the Maithil art scene via structures like the MCAM (Master Craftsmen Association of Mithila), the EAF (Ethnic Arts Foundation and still later the Mithila Art Institute).
Pivoting the 2020 Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival: Disrupting Exclusion, Inviting Connection View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Pierre Leichner, John Trinh
The annual Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival offers visual and performing artists facing social exclusion and other barriers opportunities for exhibition and sales, performance and participation, connection and learning. In response to pandemic restrictions this year’s festival was mostly virtual. Visual artists were offered the opportunity to participate in an 8-week workshop to create an online artist statement. Thirteen artists were given a tool kit consisting of a microphone, a light and a tripod to use with a cell phone. Each artist produced a 3-minute video artist statement. Performances were filmed in a professional setting. The online event featured over 3 evenings a live-stream of 11 performing acts including 36 artists, plus the 13 artist video statements and an interactive chat on Dec 3-5. An online exhibition of 17 visual artists was created. Around 100 viewing households participated for each 1.5 – 2-hour broadcast of recorded material. Finally, an in-person exhibit for 17 artists November 9 – January 9 was held at the Lost & Found Café.Feedback evaluation sessions were held with the artists, the organization committee and staff. Artists created stronger connections with each other thanks to the workshops. Overall a very successful production stage resulted in high quality audio and video. The turn towards online festival required more technical expertise and less involvement from volunteers. The public enjoyed the diversity and depth of talent showcased in the festival. A hybrid event is being planned for this year. Video clips of artist statements and performances will complete this presentation.
Theatre and Cities: Different Perspectives and Subjectivism View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Graziela Ares
This paper analyzes the relationship between urban spaces and theatre, combining the aesthetics and sociological perspectives. The interest of social sciences in arts is related to its potentials of social representations, complex relationships, subjectivism, and building and communicating knowledge to scape the dominant positivism and epistemologies. From examples of Brazil, the research presents the main transformation and opportunities faced by the urban theatres and the main challenges that jeopardize their own existence, access, and public appreciation. Then, it collects different perspectives to show how important the theatre associated with urban spaces can be to sociological studies, whether they assume the role of scenic spaces, cultural equipment, places that promote exchanges, collectivities, subjectivities, and abstractions promoting the aesthetics and humanities concomitantly. I hope to confirm that, due to their potential, theatre and urban cultures can be an alternative and the activism against hegemonic models. It is urgent to resolve the conflicting interests among arts, capital, and politics.
Sagot: On Political Prisoners, Medium, and Aesthetics View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Allen Baylosis
While conducting community health work in Tarlac in 2009, Filipino American Melissa Roxas was abducted, imprisoned, and tortured by the Philippine military. She was a victim of enforced disappearances or the disappearance of individuals suspected of being military officers by the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Since the Marcos regime, there have been 1,996 known cases of enforced disappearance in the Philippines. Roxas and other political prisoners' abduction inspired interdisciplinary artist Roselle Pineda to produce a performance piece based on political prisoner Alan Jazmines' poem “Maliit at Malaking Piitan” (Small and Big Prison). On this account, this paper analyzes Roselle Pineda's performance art piece “Sagot”, which she devised in 2013, and her creative vision, her exploration of space, medium, and aesthetics. Concepts from Janelle Porter's “Dance With Camera” and Amelia Jones' notion of “documentation as performance” were employed to analyze the piece. The video tends to respond to concerns such as the Visiting Forces Agreement between the Philippines and the United States and injustices against political prisoners. Pineda's take on choosing “Sagot” might be another way of treating her work as a form of resolution regarding her thoughts and experiences on experimenting with an avante-garde style of video of the performance. Thus, just like “Sagot,” this essay takes readers to different departures of responding to this performance video piece.
Featured The Fashion Apparatus View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Remie Cibis
The Fashion Apparatus explores how Vilém Flusser’s understanding of the camera as an apparatus and the photograph as a technical-image, can be used as a lens through which to view the fashion industry and the production of fashioned-subjectivities. Flusser’s definition of the apparatus is closely mirrored by what is arguably the most central tool of fashion practice; the sewing machine, which is notably alluded to throughout his text. As both a product of culture and a machine that produces cultural forms, the sewing machine, like the camera, informs our understanding of the material world and of ourselves. Like the camera, the sewing machine is also a result of the industrial revolution, while simultaneously producing our current post-industrial era; in which images and information have taken the place of objects and of subjects. Building on these reflections on the apparatus within the context of fashion, and the expansive view of the apparatus discussed by Flusser, the paper then proposes that fashion-garments also operate as apparatuses and are in fact even more intimately entwined in the production of subjectivity than either the camera or the sewing-machine. This entwinement both makes the fashion-garment a more coercive apparatus, but also one which is more reliant on the wearer and thus more open to individualised forms of representation.
