Reviewing Representations
Jagiellonian University
Cusick’s Reasoning, Bowie’s Rocking: Experiencing Ineffability and Queerness in Music View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jee-Weon Cha
Where does queerness in music come from? How might we experience it? What would queer music sound and feel like? This study explores such questions to better understand how musicality and sexuality converge in theory and practice. Inspired by Suzanne Cusick’s pioneering essay “On a Lesbian Relationship with Music,” I start by discussing the pre-discursive nature of music. The notion of music as the ineffable will then be integrated with such ideas as affect, body, pleasure, and queer temporality, aiming to lay the groundwork for elucidating the queer possibilities induced by music. Finally, an examination of songs from David Bowie’s glam rock repertoire illustrates how ineffability and queerness could be experienced through music listening.
From Ayodhya to Prambanan: The Memetics of Indonesian Art and Religion View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Randall Groves
This paper looks at the movement and transformations of Indic art and religion in the history of Indonesia. It is informative to trace the changes undergone by religion and art as they move from one cultural context to another. Memetics is a fairly recent approach to the analysis of religion, art, popular culture and politics, which draws on Darwinian natural selection to explain the spread of ideas and practices. It is important to stress that Memetics is not sociobiology. It does not reduce phenomena to their role in genetic fitness; instead, it posits a new replicator, the meme. I focus on (a) the adoption of religious art, ideas and practices in Indonesia and (b) the transformations of these arts, ideas and practices as they move from India to Indonesia. I examine the bas reliefs depicting stories from the Ramayana at the Prambanan temple complex to show what changes, additions and transformations are revealed in the art and how they reflect changes in religious ideas. Because Hindu religion and art did not come to Indonesia via military conquest, the representations of the Ramayana at Prambanan provide a good test case for a memetic approach to cultural analysis, one that focuses on the memetic power of ideas-their ability to replicate. Memetics, however, need not be employed reductionistically. It can co-exist with a wide range of hermeneutic approaches. I argue that the analysis of the Prambanan Ramayana representations shows that memetics is a useful new addition to comparative cultural analysis.
Whipping the Mind in Shakespeare Mas
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Oliver Benoit
"Whipping the Mind" is the title of the artwork done for the Grenadian pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale from April to November 2022. The art explores a cultural ritual, Shakespeare Mas, integral to Carriacou's intangible heritage and identity. Carriacou is the second largest tri-Island state of Grenada in the southern Caribbean, with a population of 9,595. The Mas are performed yearly during the island's carnival celebrations. The performance is unique to Carriacou and has always been admired by its people and visitors. Two performers are dressed in colourful costumes and wear face masks to disguise one's identities. They recite Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to each other, and the one who fails to repeat the verses of Shakespeare's plays correctly would be whipped with a bull's pizzle by the other performer. Using the bull's pizzle as a whip in the performance aroused my curiosity. Thus, the paper ponders over the Whip's significance in the performance and society as a means of settling scores during the performance among members of the Carriacou communities. The Whip is also used to instill learning, not just in the recital of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar verses but within schools and homes. The paper further argues that the performance consists of meanings that evade one's consciousness, despite the harmful effect of the Whip in society. The paper contends that the visual arts can deconstruct cultural phenomena to uncover hidden meanings other than the celebrations of a unique cultural identity.
