Emergent Elements
Asynchronous Session
COVID-19 and the Chinese Biennials View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Xinming Xia
This paper offers a critical review of how the COVID-19 pandemic impacts the holding of representative Chinese biennials and how the exhibition organizers deal with the crisis. The outbreak of the COVID-19 has greatly influenced our lives. The working-from-home mode has been widely adopted and many offline events have transformed into online events. Still, some activities are hard to resume as usual, such as the biennials. Many of them have been postponed or moved to the virtual exhibition. Nonetheless, biennial organizers in China have managed to launch the biennials as scheduled. The successful holding of the large-scale events should be first attributed to how China has adopted the strictest epidemic control measures. Biennial organizers also need to deal with problems like the transportation of artworks, the need to reduce gathering, etc. They have managed to showcase high-quality exhibitions, accommodate many visitors, and expand the influence of the biennials. This paper adopts the case study method and reviews two biennials that have been successfully held, the 13th Shanghai Biennale and the 1st X Museum Triennial. By analyzing the organizing structure and curatorial practices behind them, we can learn from the Chinese biennials to conquer the new problems that emerged in the pandemic time. There is also the concern that since the Chinese government still insists on the zero-COVID policy, the holdings of the large-scale exhibitions still face the risk of being suspended at any time. It would be challenging for the Chinese biennials to adapt to such uncertainty.
Pandemic Music Discourses: Basque Pop Songs during COVID-19 Pandemic View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Marina Landa
The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the lives of musicians in so many different ways, including the Basque Country. Beginning with the lockdown in March 2020, it is not only that they postponed or cancelled tours and releases, but that the emergency situation had an impact on their compositions and creations. This work explains how the pandemic is told in pop songs, using a critical discourse analysis method based on coding. The objective of this research was to understand how the pandemic is reflected on Basque pop songs. Therefore, the lyrics of songs composed from the lockdown on and released between April 2020 and May 2021 that have sounded on the public radio Gaztea (N= 74) have been analyzed. COVID-19 is not explicitly mentioned in none of them; nevertheless, feelings, topics, and values related to the collective experience are covered. For instance, “lockdown” or “ERTE” (an economic measure in Spain) are mentioned, as well as feelings that belong to the experience societies are living worldwide, such as uncertainty, loneliness, or desperation. Lots of songs are related, in a matter of fact, to the loneliness lived at home with sentences as “when will I be able to go out”.
Spontaneous Environments in Rural Areas : Espacio Comün (Nalda, La Rioja) Case Study View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sofía Moreno Domínguez
At this time Espacio Comün is focused on generating spaces to act as an incubator and serve as a reference for cultural activities that can arise from the rural environment and serve for it or for the city or become an enabler of rural-city alliances. With the people, we work with we detect a need to promote employment and self-employment, to accompany ideas and projects that are born and that can become strengths in the towns and serve as an oxygen bubble for people who return from the city with difficulties. The place was offered to local artists of Nalda and its surroundings by the agricultural cooperative and the PANAL Association. We need a development center where people can develop projects and train through accompanied experiences that even allow them to make mistakes without risk, as well as a place to promote generational change in the countryside, with social innovation and respect for the environment. As one of the 13 artists who are currently coworking in Espacio Comün and linked as it is with my thesis in the making, I present this case study as one alternative use of old buildings to contemporary uses rooted in a local ambiance as is Nalda.
Stories in Cloth: Exploring Contemporary Issues Through Students’ Embroidered Narratives View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kristin Vanderlip Taylor
This paper highlights a project designed for an undergraduate art education course to help students visually communicate ideas about contemporary issues through the use of cloth and embroidery. Students examined how historic embroidered visual narratives have been used to inform, advocate for, or protest local or global issues and events. Using peer feedback for developing visual literacy and dialogue to foster empathy, students explored and discussed the socially-responsive works of various artists while also learning to talk about their own work (and the work of their peers) critically to improve visual communication skills. Students researched local and global issues such as homelessness, food insecurity, mental health, COVID-19, the Black Lives Matter movement, and transgender rights, then designed visuals to inform, advocate for, or protest their chosen topics, embroidered in cloth. Outcomes from the project included responsive and empathetic dialogue with peers while building community, meaningful feedback noted in discussions and reflective writing, and improved visual communication skills evidenced in students’ embroidered narratives.
The Poetics of Poetry Film: Diegesis and New Dialogic Frameworks View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sarah Tremlett
This study by poetry filmmaker, poet and theorist Sarah Tremlett, centres on her identification of a category of new narrative voice in the poetry film, as part of her five-year research encapsulated in her 400-page ‘industry bible’ The Poetics of Poetry Film. Tremlett’s area of research is the philosophy of poetry film in audio-visual practice, and her interrogation of subjectivity and voice are central to this subject. Poetry films are short films which include poetry, the moving image and soundscape, and are often a collaborative form. As a researcher since 2005, the author identified that there were no books on the category of poetry film and its formal characteristics. Importantly, the voice, and the role of the poet in the poetry film are unique in relation to other forms of short film. Many poetry films include the poet as voiceover, and this creates an interesting problematic in terms of diegesis and narrative in this largely lyric and subjective form. Equally, the poetry film is often a form of adaptation where a filmmaker interprets a poem; in this way a new dialogic form can be in play. Whilst including the importance of other voices, for example Spanish, Portuguese and Argentinian video poets, Tremlett establishes the characteristics which make a poetry film a unique form of short film whilst primarily focussing on her theories relating to voice, diegesis. and a new dialogic.
