dj hatfield is associate professor in the graduate institute of music at national taiwan university. a sociocultural anthropologist, hatfield's current research projects include "houses, harbors, and hope," which looks at the role of far ocean fishing in formations of indigenous modernity on taiwan. he is also the author of several articles on taiwanese religious practice and the book length monograph taiwanese pilgrimage to china: ritual, complicity, community. in addition to his academic work, hatfield brews beer, sings from old tunebooks, and hangs out with a variety of musicians and contemporary artists
UNESCO Observatory Multidisciplinary eJournal in the Arts (Special Issue "Taiwanese Indigenous Contemporary Art: Polyphony and Mipaliw, ed. Ching-yeh Hsu), 2023
In this paper, I explore how contemporary ‘Amis artists engage with settler environmentalism. The... more In this paper, I explore how contemporary ‘Amis artists engage with settler environmentalism. These artists, who belong to one of Taiwan’s sixteen recognized Indigenous groups, form alliances with settler environmentalists while rejecting many of settler environmentalism’s basic postulates and positioning of Indigenous people, suggesting kinds of polyphony that might be necessary for meaningful collaboration around environmental issues to form. Building on theoretical discussions of alliance and refusal in Indigenous studies and ethnomusicology, I argue that polyphony, particularly as generated through practices of quotation, dialogue, and address, configures both alliance and refusal as dynamic, as well as generative, communicative features of contemporary art practices in settler colonial contexts. For my work, I rely on a combination of close reading of art works, interviews, and ethnographic description of my collaboration with Rahic Talif (Makota’ay Pangcah) and Hana Kliw (‘Atolan ‘Amis). Speakers of Pangcah employ direct quotation of environmental sounds to frame the more-than-human world as endowed with both sonic and gestural voices. Contemporary Pangcah artists, such as Rahic Talif, employ this linguistic feature in their works to confront audiences with possibilities for ethical renewal, responding to these voices as those of something other than a mute natural resource. Rahic’s work, which is often non-figural, generally refuses to serve his mainly settler audiences with images of dancing Indigenous bodies or other multicultural tropes; rather, in his work traces of voices create a means for audiences to extend new relationships with Indigenous people and places. Yet, quotation pairs with modes of labour along the ocean and other ‘Amis landscapes, demonstrating how the ocean is both the object of subsistence practices and ethical grounding for practices of shared labour
Introduction: Complication and Deferral Heat and Noise Fabrication and Commitment Vignette: Remem... more Introduction: Complication and Deferral Heat and Noise Fabrication and Commitment Vignette: Remembering a Movement Reluctance and Conversion Objects and Institutions Enjoyment and Sincerity Itineraries and Structures Techniques and Forgeries Commitment and Curiosity Conclusion
Resounding Taiwan: Musical Reverberations across a Musical Island, ed. Nancy Guy, 2021
From their beginnings as an ethnic music market, Taiwanese Indigenous popular musics have expande... more From their beginnings as an ethnic music market, Taiwanese Indigenous popular musics have expanded in recent years to engage national and international audiences. In this expansion, they have produced a dual voice, at once entangled with the politics of official multiculturalism on Taiwan but also emerging as a means of refusal. In his promotion of the Amis Music Festival, ‘Atolan ‘Amis singer-songwriter Suming Rupi invites people to learn his language, while warning them not too casually to say they love ‘Atolan. Other ‘Amis musicians, such as Ado Kaliting Pacidal, employ musics as a means of pilgrimage, exploring broad connections to Austronesian peoples across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. However, in their creative work, they often highlight the ways in which these connections emerge from continued collaboration with other Indigenous peoples and across the settler-Indigenous divide, troubling notions of fixed ethnic identities. For this reason, listening to ‘Amis voices might s...
Preface by Edith Turner The Nature and Function of Rituals: Comparing a Singapore Chinese with a ... more Preface by Edith Turner The Nature and Function of Rituals: Comparing a Singapore Chinese with a Thai Ritual by Ruth-Inge Heinze Ritualism and Contactism: Popularity of a Hindu Ritual by Anoop Chandola The Ritualization of Conflict by Vladimir I. Ionesov Ritual Practice in a Sinhalese Village: Coping with Uncertainty by Victoria J. Baker Sinhalese Puberty Rites for Girls by Deema de Silva The Philippine Good Friday by Enya P. Flores-Meiser The Tupilaq: Ritual Carvings of the Dorset Inuit in the Eastern Arctic and Greenland by David Kahn Function of Rituals among the Buddhists in Mustang District, Nepal by Tomo Vins'cak Balancing Modernity and Tradition: Ngada Rituals as a Space of Action by Susanne Schroter Fire from Heaven: The Combustible Context of the Easter Ritual at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher by Patrick D. Gaffney The Ritual Core of Shamanism: Observations on an International Gathering of Shamans by William S. Lyon Altered States of Consciousness and Shamanic Healing...
With the rise of a form of multicultural nationalism on Taiwan, a number of institutions have for... more With the rise of a form of multicultural nationalism on Taiwan, a number of institutions have formed around indigenous language revival, including mother tongue language education classes in elementary and middle schools, competence tests in all variants of Taiwan's extant indigenous languages, and mother tongue speech and performance contests. To many in this island country of 23 million people, including those in the dominant Sinophone population, commitment to indigenous languages is a necessary part of Taiwan's process of democratization. Yet such measures have been symbolic rather than effective. In this article, I discuss the influence of this sociopolitical context on the work of contemporary indigenous songwriters writing in Sowal no 'Amis. These songwriters have attempted to create a media profile for the 'Amis language by emulating popular music forms. However, their actual impact for language revival is limited. The limitations of such work suggest that for musical production to benefit language revival, song composition in endangered languages is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Other sociological features of music circulation and consumption might be needed for songwriting in endangered languages to have the intended effect
Within the context of official multiculturalism and the promotion of tourism to improve the econo... more Within the context of official multiculturalism and the promotion of tourism to improve the economic prospects of Taiwanese Indigenous people, ritual dances of ' Amis/Pangcah people, known as malikoda, have become sites of conflict concerning ritual propriety and performance. Although as participatory practices, malikoda can never be performed for an audience, they have served to mediate outside power, including but not limited to ancestral spirits and political figures. However, whether and how those outside ' Amis communities can malikoda remains subject to debate. Malikoda animates a model of Indigenous sovereignty, which can flexibly incorporate external forces that impinge on ' Amis communities. Yet, the felicity conditions for malikoda are unstable. To resolve this, ' Amis people have relied upon a combination of heritage and local discourses that define the dance as an act of hospitality. Both types require the alignment of various actors, media and interpretations at multiple scales, often obviating interpretation. Thus, attention to malikoda highlights how Indigenous people engage with indigeneity as a cultural resource under multiculturalism and raises broader questions about the role of animation in sovereign assertion. Resumé : Dans le contexte du multiculturalisme officiel et de la promotion du tourisme comme moyen d'améliorer les perspectives économiques des populations autochtones taïwanaises, les danses rituelles des Amis / Pangcah, connues sous le nom de malikoda, sont devenues des lieux de conflit atour de la justesse et de l'exécution des rituels. Bien que les malikoda, en tant que pratiques participatives, ne puissent jamais être exécutées devant un public, elles servent de médiateurs pour les forces extérieures, y compris, mais sans s'y limiter, les esprits ancestraux et les figures politiques. Or, la question de savoir si et comment les forces extérieures aux communautés Amis peuvent exécuter la malikoda reste sujette à débat. La malikoda anime un modèle de souveraineté autochtone capable d'intégrer avec souplesse les forces extérieures qui empiètent sur les communautés Amis. Néanmoins, les conditions du suc-cès de la malikoda sont relativement instables. Pour remédier à cette instabilité, les Amis s'appuient sur une combinaison de discours patrimoniaux et de discours locaux qui définissent la danse comme un acte d'hospitalité. Ces deux types de discours nécessitent l'alignement, à des échelles multiples, de divers Good Dances Make Good Guests: Dance, Animation and Sovereign Assertion in 'Amis Country, Taiwan DJ W. Hatfield Berklee College of Music acteurs, supports et interprétations, souvent d'une manière qui fait obstacle à l'interprétation. Ainsi, l'attention portée à la malikoda met en évidence la façon dont les peuples autochtones investissent l'autochtonie comme ressource culturelle dans le cadre du multiculturalisme, et soulève des questions plus larges sur le rôle de l'animation dans l'affirmation de la souveraineté.
Drawing from the case of Taiwan Hu-sheng Temple, a temple to the Goddess Mazu in Lukang construct... more Drawing from the case of Taiwan Hu-sheng Temple, a temple to the Goddess Mazu in Lukang constructed nearly entirely from glass, I argue that mul-tiplicity and remediation have become dominant tropes in Taiwanese ritual life. While both of these tropes rely upon the overall logic of Taiwanese ritual practices, they also foster innovative and entrepreneurial projects to market "local culture" in a variety of new media. Hu-sheng Temple is exceptional: it was constructed to showcase the ingenuity of Taiwanese glass manufacturers, makes connections to environmentalist movements, and represents Taiwanese landscapes as a sacred geography. However, mainstream temples share these features-reflexivity, entrepreneurship, and cosmic projection-in often less obvious forms. Lukang's glass temple provides a lens through which we can better understand the role of remediation in ritual practices, particularly in their entanglements with variously situated attempts to reimagine (and market) Taiwan.
Drawing on the contradictions between the lyrical modes of karaoke and the situation of karaoke p... more Drawing on the contradictions between the lyrical modes of karaoke and the situation of karaoke performance, this article examines the role of colonial nostalgia and the vernacular concept of fate in contemporary Taiwan. Stressing that colonial nostalgia is a formal property of ...
UNESCO Observatory Multidisciplinary eJournal in the Arts (Special Issue "Taiwanese Indigenous Contemporary Art: Polyphony and Mipaliw, ed. Ching-yeh Hsu), 2023
In this paper, I explore how contemporary ‘Amis artists engage with settler environmentalism. The... more In this paper, I explore how contemporary ‘Amis artists engage with settler environmentalism. These artists, who belong to one of Taiwan’s sixteen recognized Indigenous groups, form alliances with settler environmentalists while rejecting many of settler environmentalism’s basic postulates and positioning of Indigenous people, suggesting kinds of polyphony that might be necessary for meaningful collaboration around environmental issues to form. Building on theoretical discussions of alliance and refusal in Indigenous studies and ethnomusicology, I argue that polyphony, particularly as generated through practices of quotation, dialogue, and address, configures both alliance and refusal as dynamic, as well as generative, communicative features of contemporary art practices in settler colonial contexts. For my work, I rely on a combination of close reading of art works, interviews, and ethnographic description of my collaboration with Rahic Talif (Makota’ay Pangcah) and Hana Kliw (‘Atolan ‘Amis). Speakers of Pangcah employ direct quotation of environmental sounds to frame the more-than-human world as endowed with both sonic and gestural voices. Contemporary Pangcah artists, such as Rahic Talif, employ this linguistic feature in their works to confront audiences with possibilities for ethical renewal, responding to these voices as those of something other than a mute natural resource. Rahic’s work, which is often non-figural, generally refuses to serve his mainly settler audiences with images of dancing Indigenous bodies or other multicultural tropes; rather, in his work traces of voices create a means for audiences to extend new relationships with Indigenous people and places. Yet, quotation pairs with modes of labour along the ocean and other ‘Amis landscapes, demonstrating how the ocean is both the object of subsistence practices and ethical grounding for practices of shared labour
Introduction: Complication and Deferral Heat and Noise Fabrication and Commitment Vignette: Remem... more Introduction: Complication and Deferral Heat and Noise Fabrication and Commitment Vignette: Remembering a Movement Reluctance and Conversion Objects and Institutions Enjoyment and Sincerity Itineraries and Structures Techniques and Forgeries Commitment and Curiosity Conclusion
Resounding Taiwan: Musical Reverberations across a Musical Island, ed. Nancy Guy, 2021
From their beginnings as an ethnic music market, Taiwanese Indigenous popular musics have expande... more From their beginnings as an ethnic music market, Taiwanese Indigenous popular musics have expanded in recent years to engage national and international audiences. In this expansion, they have produced a dual voice, at once entangled with the politics of official multiculturalism on Taiwan but also emerging as a means of refusal. In his promotion of the Amis Music Festival, ‘Atolan ‘Amis singer-songwriter Suming Rupi invites people to learn his language, while warning them not too casually to say they love ‘Atolan. Other ‘Amis musicians, such as Ado Kaliting Pacidal, employ musics as a means of pilgrimage, exploring broad connections to Austronesian peoples across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. However, in their creative work, they often highlight the ways in which these connections emerge from continued collaboration with other Indigenous peoples and across the settler-Indigenous divide, troubling notions of fixed ethnic identities. For this reason, listening to ‘Amis voices might s...
Preface by Edith Turner The Nature and Function of Rituals: Comparing a Singapore Chinese with a ... more Preface by Edith Turner The Nature and Function of Rituals: Comparing a Singapore Chinese with a Thai Ritual by Ruth-Inge Heinze Ritualism and Contactism: Popularity of a Hindu Ritual by Anoop Chandola The Ritualization of Conflict by Vladimir I. Ionesov Ritual Practice in a Sinhalese Village: Coping with Uncertainty by Victoria J. Baker Sinhalese Puberty Rites for Girls by Deema de Silva The Philippine Good Friday by Enya P. Flores-Meiser The Tupilaq: Ritual Carvings of the Dorset Inuit in the Eastern Arctic and Greenland by David Kahn Function of Rituals among the Buddhists in Mustang District, Nepal by Tomo Vins'cak Balancing Modernity and Tradition: Ngada Rituals as a Space of Action by Susanne Schroter Fire from Heaven: The Combustible Context of the Easter Ritual at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher by Patrick D. Gaffney The Ritual Core of Shamanism: Observations on an International Gathering of Shamans by William S. Lyon Altered States of Consciousness and Shamanic Healing...
With the rise of a form of multicultural nationalism on Taiwan, a number of institutions have for... more With the rise of a form of multicultural nationalism on Taiwan, a number of institutions have formed around indigenous language revival, including mother tongue language education classes in elementary and middle schools, competence tests in all variants of Taiwan's extant indigenous languages, and mother tongue speech and performance contests. To many in this island country of 23 million people, including those in the dominant Sinophone population, commitment to indigenous languages is a necessary part of Taiwan's process of democratization. Yet such measures have been symbolic rather than effective. In this article, I discuss the influence of this sociopolitical context on the work of contemporary indigenous songwriters writing in Sowal no 'Amis. These songwriters have attempted to create a media profile for the 'Amis language by emulating popular music forms. However, their actual impact for language revival is limited. The limitations of such work suggest that for musical production to benefit language revival, song composition in endangered languages is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Other sociological features of music circulation and consumption might be needed for songwriting in endangered languages to have the intended effect
Within the context of official multiculturalism and the promotion of tourism to improve the econo... more Within the context of official multiculturalism and the promotion of tourism to improve the economic prospects of Taiwanese Indigenous people, ritual dances of ' Amis/Pangcah people, known as malikoda, have become sites of conflict concerning ritual propriety and performance. Although as participatory practices, malikoda can never be performed for an audience, they have served to mediate outside power, including but not limited to ancestral spirits and political figures. However, whether and how those outside ' Amis communities can malikoda remains subject to debate. Malikoda animates a model of Indigenous sovereignty, which can flexibly incorporate external forces that impinge on ' Amis communities. Yet, the felicity conditions for malikoda are unstable. To resolve this, ' Amis people have relied upon a combination of heritage and local discourses that define the dance as an act of hospitality. Both types require the alignment of various actors, media and interpretations at multiple scales, often obviating interpretation. Thus, attention to malikoda highlights how Indigenous people engage with indigeneity as a cultural resource under multiculturalism and raises broader questions about the role of animation in sovereign assertion. Resumé : Dans le contexte du multiculturalisme officiel et de la promotion du tourisme comme moyen d'améliorer les perspectives économiques des populations autochtones taïwanaises, les danses rituelles des Amis / Pangcah, connues sous le nom de malikoda, sont devenues des lieux de conflit atour de la justesse et de l'exécution des rituels. Bien que les malikoda, en tant que pratiques participatives, ne puissent jamais être exécutées devant un public, elles servent de médiateurs pour les forces extérieures, y compris, mais sans s'y limiter, les esprits ancestraux et les figures politiques. Or, la question de savoir si et comment les forces extérieures aux communautés Amis peuvent exécuter la malikoda reste sujette à débat. La malikoda anime un modèle de souveraineté autochtone capable d'intégrer avec souplesse les forces extérieures qui empiètent sur les communautés Amis. Néanmoins, les conditions du suc-cès de la malikoda sont relativement instables. Pour remédier à cette instabilité, les Amis s'appuient sur une combinaison de discours patrimoniaux et de discours locaux qui définissent la danse comme un acte d'hospitalité. Ces deux types de discours nécessitent l'alignement, à des échelles multiples, de divers Good Dances Make Good Guests: Dance, Animation and Sovereign Assertion in 'Amis Country, Taiwan DJ W. Hatfield Berklee College of Music acteurs, supports et interprétations, souvent d'une manière qui fait obstacle à l'interprétation. Ainsi, l'attention portée à la malikoda met en évidence la façon dont les peuples autochtones investissent l'autochtonie comme ressource culturelle dans le cadre du multiculturalisme, et soulève des questions plus larges sur le rôle de l'animation dans l'affirmation de la souveraineté.
Drawing from the case of Taiwan Hu-sheng Temple, a temple to the Goddess Mazu in Lukang construct... more Drawing from the case of Taiwan Hu-sheng Temple, a temple to the Goddess Mazu in Lukang constructed nearly entirely from glass, I argue that mul-tiplicity and remediation have become dominant tropes in Taiwanese ritual life. While both of these tropes rely upon the overall logic of Taiwanese ritual practices, they also foster innovative and entrepreneurial projects to market "local culture" in a variety of new media. Hu-sheng Temple is exceptional: it was constructed to showcase the ingenuity of Taiwanese glass manufacturers, makes connections to environmentalist movements, and represents Taiwanese landscapes as a sacred geography. However, mainstream temples share these features-reflexivity, entrepreneurship, and cosmic projection-in often less obvious forms. Lukang's glass temple provides a lens through which we can better understand the role of remediation in ritual practices, particularly in their entanglements with variously situated attempts to reimagine (and market) Taiwan.
Drawing on the contradictions between the lyrical modes of karaoke and the situation of karaoke p... more Drawing on the contradictions between the lyrical modes of karaoke and the situation of karaoke performance, this article examines the role of colonial nostalgia and the vernacular concept of fate in contemporary Taiwan. Stressing that colonial nostalgia is a formal property of ...
in this talk, i listen to the sound of boat horns as they register differences in temporal orient... more in this talk, i listen to the sound of boat horns as they register differences in temporal orientation from settler musics. the talk is the core of a chapter in my manuscript in progress, _houses, harbours, and hope_
Although ritual remains an important site for the study of political life, few scholars have aske... more Although ritual remains an important site for the study of political life, few scholars have asked how the material culture of ritual might afford assertions of indigenous sovereignty. In this talk I approach these issues in an 'Amis community on the Pacific Coast of Taiwan, focusing on a controversy surrounding the kulakul, a dance performed during the community's annual harvest ritual. Usually translated from 'Amis as the "Warrior Dance," the kulakul expresses youthful strength and beauty. In living memory, young men have always performed the dance holding colorful umbrellas; however, during the 2015 annual harvest ritual politically strident youth advocated dancing with spears. Controversy surrounding spear wielding touched on a variety of aesthetic issues. Those who argued about the virtues of umbrellas versus spears employed the kulakul to bring a set of contrasts--between 'Amis and "mountain aborigines", civility and bellicosity, docility versus decolonization--into resolution. Each competing imagination articulated a set of commitments and hopes, resolving a self-image with another image meant for purposes of display. At stake in this resolution was a hoped for sovereignty held in opposition to, but also in negotiation with, the dominant Sinophone settler colonial society. Because hopeful assertions, as in the kulakul, must also register settler colonial fantasies, I argue that approaches to the politics of ritual should attend to material forms, such as umbrellas (or spears), in which this doubleness may be differently articulated.
*This is an earlier draft version of the paper "Remediation and Innovation in Taiwanese Religious... more *This is an earlier draft version of the paper "Remediation and Innovation in Taiwanese Religious Sites." I include it here because it includes sections in English that only appear in the version of the paper that appeared in Mediating Religion (in Chinese)
In this essay, I explore how critical listening to the sonic archive of far ocean fishing may pro... more In this essay, I explore how critical listening to the sonic archive of far ocean fishing may provide critical purchase on dominant narratives of indigeneity. Representations of Taiwanese indigenous people within nation building projects under Nationalist Party and post-totalitarian regimes situate indigenous people alternately as targets of social amelioration and a vanishing substrate of Taiwanese national difference. However, during the 1970s and 1980s, the majority of coastal 'Amis men traveled throughout the world as they provided labor for Taiwan's far ocean fishing fleet. During the same period, 'Amis, who are one of Taiwan's sixteen recognized indigenous groups, created a vibrant popular music scene drawing upon the sounds and narratives of far ocean fishermen and those who waited for their return. I follow the lead of song lyrics, which often tell listeners, "Listen to the boat engines." Listening with far ocean fishermen to the sound of boat engines and other elements of the far oceaning soundscape, I examine how quotation and failed mimesis of boat engines contributed to the voicing of a distinct formation of indigeneity. Dominant models of indigenous cultural resurgence would hear boat engines as an index of loss. In contrast, the far oceaning cohort employs these sounds to articulate an indigenous cosmopolitanism. Attention to the sonic archive of far ocean fishing warns against the tone deafness of elite projects of cultural reconstruction. It also suggests an alternate means to imagine Taiwan beyond settler colonial narratives.
In this presentation, I explore how a community at the margins of national histories registers so... more In this presentation, I explore how a community at the margins of national histories registers sonic memory as a means of survivance. Makota’ay, a Taiwanese indigenous (Pangcah) community in present-day Hualien County, has both benefitted and suffered from its location at the mouth of the Siugulan River. As Pangcah oral history recounts, river and ocean brought the ancestors of Makota’ay Pangcah to Makota’ay and still delivers resources. The river also conveyed colonial merchants, armies, and settlers (including Taiwan’s ethnic Chinese majority). Thus, Maokota’ay Pangcah live in multiply occupied places in which sounds index both ancestral presence and a series of colonial occupations from the late 19th Century to the present. Employing soundscape documentation as well as oral historical and archival research, I listen for more than sonic traces of these multiple occupations: I consider how Pangcah register these traces as sonic memories. I argue that such registrations often display a gap between the intentions of occupiers and the lived experience of the community, a kind of failed mimesis through which indigenous people sound traces of occupation, making these sounds resonate as figures of survivance. At times, sound, such as the echo of waves within a coastal cave or a drop of dew into a canyon, transforms relationships of occupation; when these sounds are narrated, they become alternate histories. As such, sound in its various registrations forms part of an ethics of place opposed to settler presence. To understand the ethical force of remembered sound, I argue, requires us to think more clearly about how indigenous people employ sonic practices—some traditional but others borrowed from settlers—to register sounds of occupation. This work will require closer engagement with indigenous sonic practices and also suggests frameworks for collaborative sound installation art.
most approaches to language maintenance and revitalization begin with the premise that languages ... more most approaches to language maintenance and revitalization begin with the premise that languages are valuable as forms of intangible cultural heritage. what if this notion is deeply flawed, further marginalizing the languages that such rhetoric intends to rescue? in this talk, i pose the question of what _good_ are indigenous languages in order to create an ironic experience from which we might move forrward
this is a talk that i gave in 2013 for a very strange meeting of ethnic chinese professional peop... more this is a talk that i gave in 2013 for a very strange meeting of ethnic chinese professional people in boston. given the context, i needed to be polemical
In this talk, I explore refusal as pointing out possibilities to develop more responsive relation... more In this talk, I explore refusal as pointing out possibilities to develop more responsive relationships to Indigenous musics and musicians. In particular, I discuss recent works by contemporary installation and performance artist, Rahic Talif (Mangota’ay Pangcah). In these works Rahic employs malikoda, a variety of ‘Amis / Pangcah ritual dances nearly iconic of Taiwanese Indigenous Peoples, as a method. As he dances across large canvases applying paint with his feet, Rahic reflects on ways that Pangcah aesthetics might be maintained in dialogue with colonially derived materials. Rahic’s use of malikoda as method criticizes mainstream semiotic ideologies in which dance is cultural content for inclusionary performances. In his work refuses to give viewers any iconic representation of the dance, its gestures, or dancing Indigenous bodies. His mimetic refusal suggests ways that refusal might be articulated with and configure possible alliances. With this in mind, I compare Rahic’s work with refusal in the work of Indigenous popular musicians, arguing that critical art practice may inform new ways of engaging with and interpreting Indigenous musics
(version given at National Taiwan University, December 2020)
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Papers by DJ Hatfield
be necessary for meaningful collaboration around environmental issues to form. Building on theoretical discussions of alliance and refusal in Indigenous studies and ethnomusicology, I argue that polyphony, particularly as generated through practices of quotation, dialogue, and address, configures both alliance and refusal as dynamic, as well as generative, communicative features of contemporary art practices in settler colonial contexts. For my work, I rely on a combination of close reading of art works, interviews, and ethnographic description of my collaboration with Rahic Talif (Makota’ay Pangcah) and Hana Kliw (‘Atolan ‘Amis). Speakers of Pangcah employ direct quotation of environmental sounds to frame the more-than-human world as endowed with both sonic and gestural voices. Contemporary Pangcah artists, such as Rahic Talif, employ this linguistic feature in their works to confront audiences with possibilities for ethical renewal, responding to these voices as those of something other than a mute natural resource. Rahic’s work, which is often non-figural, generally refuses to serve his mainly settler audiences with images of dancing Indigenous bodies or other multicultural tropes; rather, in his work traces of voices create a means for audiences to extend new relationships with Indigenous people and places. Yet, quotation pairs with modes of labour along the ocean
and other ‘Amis landscapes, demonstrating how the ocean is both the object of subsistence practices and ethical grounding for practices of shared labour
Drafts by DJ Hatfield
be necessary for meaningful collaboration around environmental issues to form. Building on theoretical discussions of alliance and refusal in Indigenous studies and ethnomusicology, I argue that polyphony, particularly as generated through practices of quotation, dialogue, and address, configures both alliance and refusal as dynamic, as well as generative, communicative features of contemporary art practices in settler colonial contexts. For my work, I rely on a combination of close reading of art works, interviews, and ethnographic description of my collaboration with Rahic Talif (Makota’ay Pangcah) and Hana Kliw (‘Atolan ‘Amis). Speakers of Pangcah employ direct quotation of environmental sounds to frame the more-than-human world as endowed with both sonic and gestural voices. Contemporary Pangcah artists, such as Rahic Talif, employ this linguistic feature in their works to confront audiences with possibilities for ethical renewal, responding to these voices as those of something other than a mute natural resource. Rahic’s work, which is often non-figural, generally refuses to serve his mainly settler audiences with images of dancing Indigenous bodies or other multicultural tropes; rather, in his work traces of voices create a means for audiences to extend new relationships with Indigenous people and places. Yet, quotation pairs with modes of labour along the ocean
and other ‘Amis landscapes, demonstrating how the ocean is both the object of subsistence practices and ethical grounding for practices of shared labour
(version given at National Taiwan University, December 2020)