Cultural Activism

O campo cultural é tido usualmente como potencial crítico do status quo vigente. A revolução cultural de Maio de 1968 é um marco no combate às políticas culturais conservadoras na Europa. No entanto, como bem sabemos, é à escala dos territórios locais que a produção social de espaços de acção diferenciados e significativos, maior potencial permite gerar face às forças alienantes da desterritorialização global. Por outro lado, sabemos também que as práticas de cidadania e a diversidade cultural foram sendo negligenciadas em favor de lógicas mercantilistas e da competitividade entre “cidades marca”, na formatação de identidades e imaginários no seio de uma cultura financeira neoliberal. A economia criativa surgiu como novo paradigma da economia mundial, gerando conceitos que hoje ocupam o discurso político oficial sem se perceber concretamente os seus modelos de aplicação aos territórios. Há diversas razões para que este desvio se concretizasse nas sociedades contemporâneas. Uma delas prende-se certamente com a globalização enquanto sintoma de homogeneização e mercantilização da cultura. Mas também na ausente, ou débil, construção de políticas culturais locais, sem formulação de estratégias publicadas e debatidas. Todavia, esta deriva confronta-se hoje com reivindicações opostas: a Democracia Cultural, o Direito à Cidade, a Política dos Comuns, os Direitos Culturais, entre outras. Mas, como conceber estratégias artísticas, culturais e políticas que visem o desenvolvimento da Democracia e da Cidadania Cultural? Como revitalizar o quotidiano cultural das nossas cidades? De que modo afinal se cumpre a Constituição da República Portuguesa na efectivação da Democracia Participativa e dos Direitos Culturais?

The dominant narrative mode in Ainu studies today stresses an activist agenda
that, although worthwhile, limits the potential for new research in the field. In this thesis, I analyze historical accounts of the development of Ainu bear carvings as a case study of the characteristics of the dominant activist mode and present an alternate narrative in order to demonstrate the need for a variety of approaches to Ainu research.

The activist narrative mode is structured to engender sympathy for Ainu people
and respect for their cultural heritage. Activist accounts of Ainu bear carvings often claim that the carvers were pressured by the Japanese tourist industry to violate religious taboos against producing realistic depictions of bears. In this way, the carvings serve as a symbol of oppression of Ainu people under Japanese imperialism. At the same time, activist scholars state that the Ainu bear carvings followed a linear progression from tourist souvenirs to respected works of “fine art.” Thus, the carvings also reinforce optimistic projections regarding the future status of Ainu culture and socioeconomic condition.

My alternate narrative focuses on the complexities and ambiguities in the field
and avoids judging events in moral or sympathetic terms. I explore a broad range of
contextual issues, tracing the regional production of wooden bears from the paleolithic
ancestors of Ainu people, examining the role of bears and woodcarving in Ainu culture,
analyzing Ainu interactions with Japan, Russia, and other neighboring empires, and
investigating the commodification of bear carvings as tourist souvenirs.

Activist narratives have contributed a wealth of valuable research to the field of
Ainu studies and remain a useful tool for promoting social and cultural equality for Ainu people. However, automatic conformity to the dominant activist mode perpetuates the obfuscation of certain details in Ainu history, including the diversity within Ainu and Japanese cultures and institutions, instances of political cooperation between Ainu and Japanese communities, and unanswered questions regarding the complex development of Ainu cultural practices and beliefs. Although any historical account (including this thesis) inherently simplifies its subjects, varying our narrative approach helps us to identify and fill some of the gaps.

As imagens têm papel essencial na construção de estratégias de engajamento e mobilização no contemporâneo, pois é por meio delas que as causas conseguem projetar-se local e globalmente pelas redes de comunicação digital. Fotografias e vídeos podem ter características estéticas particulares que fundem elementos de impacto sensorial, tais como o uso da violência, o senso de imediatismo e a utilização do corpo, com aspectos ligados à circulação nas mídias e à mobilidade dos aparelhos de gravação, reprodução e divulgação.
A intensidade com que algumas dessas imagens foram repercutidas nos coloca questões como: que aspectos estético políticos carregam as imagens produzidas em manifestações contemporâneas? Que impacto elas têm sobre a audiência imersa em ambientes midiáticos híbridos e móveis? O que há de particular na experiência política proporcionada por essas imagens?
Estas e outras questões são abordadas no decorrer deste livro, que faz uso de exemplos de ações ativistas com grande repercussão afim de contribuir para a reflexão do papel da imagem nas práticas políticas contemporâneas.

http://www.pacolivros.com.br/Ativismo_Digital_e_Imagem/prod-4597415/

本研究關懷音樂在社會運動中所扮演的「強連結」角色，以台灣具代表性的 2007 年「正義無敵」及 2005 年「音樂‧生命‧大樹下」兩個演唱會為例，探索籌辦演唱會的行動者如何藉由演唱會的形式進行組織動員？如何可能在演唱會的展演與體驗過程中對參與者產生培力作用？我們發現，音樂透過特定的演唱會組構，的確與政治社會運動產生強連結，超克僅僅是宣傳的作用，乃至於在本地的脈絡下，有可能發展出一套嶄新的音樂場景以及音樂動員結構。本研究試圖建構「議題動員取向演唱會」的概念化，並初步歸結不同音樂社群將音樂美學連結到政治參與之公共性想像的過程與差異，以及描繪音樂場景對於參與者的情感動
員之複雜作用。 
This  study  aims  to  explore  the  role  played  by  the  music  in  social movement  through  the  cases  study  of  two  issue-mobilization  oriented concerts (IMOC): “Justice for All” and “Music, Life, Under the Tree”. We investigate the ways activists use the music concerts to achieve the goals of mobilization  as  well  as  empowerment.  Based  on  the  analysis  of “organization-legitimation-performance”  framework,  we  argue  the  music
activism  actually  creates  “strong  links”  with  social  movements,  which  has transcended  the  mere  propaganda  level.  Furthermore,  we  observed  the possibility of the IMOC to shape the new mobilization structure in Taiwan’s context.  Besides,  we  discuss  the  activists’  variant  imaginations  of  the articulation between music and public participation that influence the music
scenes’  morphology  as  well  as  their  relations  with  the  crowd.  Finally  a research  agenda  concerning  the  resistant  music  and  cultural reterritorialization was proposed.

To understand recent K-pop fandoms' political activism in the U.S., this essay foregrounds the interchange between domestic, regional, and global receptions of K-pop music as well as recent anti-racist cultural activism in the U.S.. I argue that the new K-pop activism has grown out of a recognition of nonwhite and transnational aspects of K-pop musical and visual styles, and the emergence of a global youth synergy that has in fact long actively sought ways to sidestep Anglo-American pop cultural hegemony.

This essay explores the Taiwanese anthropologist Tai-Li Hu’s three ethnographic films focusing on Taiwanese indigenous rituals in the 1980s—The Return of Gods and Ancestors: Paiwan Five-year Ceremony (1984), Songs of Pasta’ay (1988), and Returning Souls (2012). On the one hand, how Hu intermediates spiritual tradition by documenting the traditional rituals of indigenous tribes embodies contemporary changes. On the other hand, Hu stimulates incipient discussions about new spaces, new perspectives, and new discourses on traditional cultural revival and tribal building of the indigenous intellectuals, who return to tribes to act on “cultural activism” in her recent work, Returning Souls. Hu transforms the cultural context of tribe through tracing the origin of spiritual tradition accordingly. Furthermore, she presents the difficulties of negotiation with different dynamics engaging in reviving tribal cultures in light of cultural interventions in the contemporary society. The three documentaries represent a binary opposition between “the traditional” and “the modern” in the culture of Taiwan indigenous people with cinematic features and critical discourses in perspective. Spiritual tradition, which has shown an affinity for the vicissitudes of extrinsic surrounding of the society and cultural background, gives us a vision of creative transformation step by step. Bringing up an in-depth examination of spiritual tradition, these documentaries provide the leavening in a transcultural situation.

As wondrous lands are represented as “wastelands” to make way for urban and industrial development in Hawaiʻi, kūpuna or elders and cultural practitioners are currently building a movement across the islands to mobilize moʻolelo (stories and histories) in huakaʻi aloha ʻāina, (physical and spiritual travels to view and remember celebrated and sacred places) in order to protect them.  On these huakaʻi, moʻolelo have critical decolonial effects as they articulate an ʻŌiwi moʻoʻāina economy of abundance that restores “wastelands” to ʻāina kamahaʻo (wondrous land) and ʻāina momona (abundant land).  In this essay, I focus on a 2010 community struggle to protect the birthplace of the kupua (supernatural hero) Māui in Lualualei valley from a developer’s proposal for a light industrial park. The Concerned Elders of Waiʻanae organized the Huakaʻi Kākoʻo no Waiʻanae environmental justice bus tours to share the Māui moʻolelo and build a broad base of support for their struggles, enabling wonder to grow into direct action.  I discuss the ways that Indigenous and critical settler cartographies map the wonder of the Māui moʻolelo on the ground, and I look to narrative conventions of moʻolelo that compare and connect distant places, helping to grow affinity activism.

Resumo: Apresento o caso da reabertura e patrimonialização do Cine Belas Artes, cinema de rua de São Paulo que foi reativado após intensa participação de cinéfilos e entusiastas envolvidos no âmbito do Movimento Belas Artes (MBA). Em meio a lutas empreendidas pelo MBA entre 2011 e 2015, demais atores, públicos e privados, se associaram às etapas de retomada do equipamento. Com base em análises sobre recentes transformações na instituição cinematográfica; memória das práticas da ida ao cinema; memória coletiva e identidade; e partilha de territórios existenciais e experiências afetivas, percebo que episódios de reabertura de cinemas históricos podem envolver uma série de capturas e instrumentalizações da memória e das potências criativas de discursos e atos das audiências. No exemplo do Cine Belas Artes, as espontaneidades de seus públicos e ações do MBA transformaram-se em valiosos insumos para a consecução de objetivos de instâncias privadas e da política pública cultural/patrimonial. Palavras-Chave: Memória do cinema. Reabertura de cinemas de rua. Mobilização social.
/ Abstract: The article exposes the reopening and heritisation case of the Cine Belas Artes, a sidewalk cinema localised in São Paulo. It was reactivated after an intense activism of cinephiles and enthusiasts engaged in the Belas Artes Movement (MBA). The campaign, developed between 2011 and 2015, also involved other social actors, from public and private sectors. Based on analysis on recent transformations of the cinema institution; memories of cinema-going practices; collective memories and identity; as well as the sharing of existential territories and affective experiences, I suggest that the reopening processes of historical cinemas involve an assortment of captures and instrumentalizations of memory and creative potencies connected to discourses and actions of the audiences. In the case of the Cine Belas Artes, the enthusiast's spontaneity and MBA's actions were transformed into a profitable input, which was used in benefit of the private sector and cultural/ heritage public policies goals.

Die ‚ufo-Universität‘ ist eine interdisziplinäre Plattform, die sich vorgenommen hat, politische, ökonomische und soziale Realitäten zu klären. Die Auseinandersetzung über diese Realitäten und deren Resultate in Form von künstlerischen und agitativen Eingriffen werden hier dokumentiert und durch theoretische Texte ergänzt. Mit diesem Versuch selbstorganisierter, herrschaftskritischer Theorie und Praxis im und über das Feld der Kunst wirft die ‚ufo-Universität‘ das Verhältnis von Politik und Kunst als Frage politischer Kritik auf.

The term ‘ground-up initiative’ has thrown up several synonyms and meanings in the Singaporean context. Seen as both pro and anti-establishment, the term is a catch-all phrase to describe a citizen-based organisational model and/or activity advocating for a community’s needs. There are an estimated hundred odd such informal collectives operating online and offline, self-organising events and outreach efforts to spearhead causes ranging from arts and heritage to social welfare.

Are they merely lifestyle initiatives touching upon community concerns, or are these ground-up initiatives part of a new wave of civil society groups engaging in a new form of social activism?

he Routledge Handbook of Strategic Communication provides the first comprehensive review of research in the strategic communication domain and offers educators and graduate-level students a compilation of approaches to and studies of varying aspects of the field. The volume provides insights into ongoing discussions that build an emerging body of knowledge.

Studies on urban transformation in the Arab Gulf have thus far predominantly dealt with the city as a space of financial investment. Only recently they began to pay attention to contestations of urban space. Cultural initiatives in Kuwait, as this article argues, present and foster new forms to reclaiming urban space. They not only demand, but also engage in practices according to which citizens have a say in how the space which they inhabit is reformed and reshaped .

In 1953 the United Front of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party issued a document denying ethnic status to Kaifeng’s Jewish descendants. Simultaneously, the text recommended that this group be protected from discrimination and their “various activities” be somewhat tolerated. Following “Reform and Opening”, foreign interest in the descendants stimulated a revival of Sino-Judaic identity and local projects designed to attract tourism. In 1993 the municipality launched the Construction Office for the Kaifeng Jewish History Museum; the latter was to be modelled after the synagogue that had endured for seven centuries until its destruction by flooding in 1849. However, after members of the Sino-Judaic community articulated this undertaking in terms of their own cultural revitalization rather than a historical platform for tourism, the Construction Office was summarily suspended in 1996. Several months later, the police issued an order for the mandatory submission of the descendants’ household registry certificates; their status as youtai (Jewish) was compulsorily amended to Han or Hui. This official erasure of communal identity has prompted a cautious but resilient activist movement facilitated with the assistance of foreign organizations, both Jewish and Christian. While initially chartered through traditional elements of clan lineage, ancestor veneration and the preservation of a few Jewish customs, the group has more recently mobilized international resources to actively reinvent a contemporary Sino-Judaic cultural identity. The grassroots activism and global networking of the Kaifeng Jews have engendered new opportunities for cultural expression both in Kaifeng and, for many of the younger descendants, in Israel. Such efforts have provoked periodic responses from China’s authorities. Nonetheless, the Sino-Judaic community has continued to negotiate its invigorated identity, while endeavouring to frame this resurgence within appropriate local and transnational discourse.

Unter Einbeziehung zahlreicher unterschiedlicher und teils unveröffentlichter Quellen aus Privatarchiven rekonstruiert Tiffany N. Florvil die Geschichte der modernen Schwarzen deutschen Bewegung. In sechs ansatzweise chronologisch aufgebauten Kapiteln arbeitet Florvil sich von den 1980er Jahren bis in die Gegenwart vor bzw. von Audre Lordes Berliner Jahren und May Ayims literarischem Aktivismus über die Entstehung zentraler Schwarzer deutscher Organisationen wie der Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland (ISD) und Afrodeutsche Frauen/Schwarze Frauen in Deutschland e.V. (ADEFRA) bis hin zu Black Lives Matter. Besonders viel Raum wird Schwarzen deutschen "Aktivistinnen-Intellektuellen" (activist-intellectuals) bzw. "Alltagsintellektuellen" (quotidian intellectuals) und ihrem intersektionalen wie transnationalen Feminismus eingeräumt.

This essay is about a group of neo-Pentecostal evangelists who decided to represent their church in the New York Dance Parade, which they regarded as an opportunity to promote worship as the true purpose of art and engage in spiritual warfare. Their participation was predicated on a distinction between “performance” and “ministry,” privileging the latter. I argue that upholding this distinction in the immersive context of a secular festival required a process of intensive ritualization, involving physical and spiritual preparations and symbolic boundary maintenance. I further argue that anthropological perspectives on such instances of public religion should seek to account for how ritual forms produce and are shaped by the effects of what I call proximation, a condition of “closeness” between categories of activity otherwise regarded as separate and autonomous (e.g., religion and the arts). The concept is a means to explore how religious ministries are influenced by ostensibly external factors and the need to manage them, and by the various opportunities, tensions, and moral associations that arise when ritual strategies evoke comparisons with secular genres and domains. The proximations of religion highlight the ethnographic significance of ideal-typical categories and spheres, including their potential to intersect, which is a byproduct of how they have been differentiated.

The Global Arab and Arab American MLA Forum invites proposals for the following panels of the MLA Convention in San Francisco, CA (5-8 January 2023):

Migrants as Working Subjects

Literary and artistic representations of migrant labor in the Arab region and global Arab diaspora, as inflected by class, race, ethnicity, language, nomenclature, and sociocultural/economic practices including sponsorship. 250-word abstract & bio by March 15, 2022 to azstanton@psu.edu (Anna Ziajka Stanton, The Pennsylvania State University)

Writing and Cultural Production as Oppositional Work

Oppositional work of writing and cultural production in the Arab region and global Arab diaspora, including protest and dissident literature/art/activism that resists surveillance and discursive/cultural practices of domestication and containment. 250-word abstract & bio by March 15, 2022 to rc49@soas.ac.uk

Decolonizing Global Arab/South Labor Epistemologies

Critique of global Arab/South working conditions in literary and cultural production, including theorizing labor in neocolonial spaces, construction of and resistance to subalternity, and the representation of exploitation and its legacies. 250-word abstract and bio by March 20, 2022 to ctolliver@uh.edu and aidrissi@purdue.edu

隨著全球化資本主義所構成的跨地域社會問題，不同地區的社會⾏動者也開始建⽴其超越邊界和地域限制的交流網絡，並藉⾃我組織與⾃主⽂化實踐的⽅式開展連結。這趨勢提⽰了⼀個重要的問題：⼀種新的跨越地域和邊界的地理想像正在⾏動者之間形成，⽽研究者將需要建⽴⼀個跨地域的⽐較視野，藉以分析這網絡的發展。憑借2016年9⽉在東京舉⾏的⽂化⾏動祭「NoLimit東京⾃治區」作為探討個案，本⽂嘗試勾勒東亞／東南亞地區泛左翼⽂化⾏動者的組織連結與互動，以及此網絡平台所⽣產的後續延伸的影響。此外，本⽂亦嘗試探討，在對抗新⾃由主義式之創意經濟脈絡下的⽂化治理，與籌辨這次⾏動祭的特殊意義，同時這個平台所提倡的異質倫理價值⼜是什麼？

ATUALIZAÇÃO: Uma versão atualizada e ampliada deste artigo foi publicada como capítulo integrante do livro "Metagame: Panoramas dos Game Studies no Brasil" (Intercom, 2017) e na Revista Conexão - Comunicação e Cultura. O capítulo possui o título "Quando os fãs-jogadores encontram o ativismo: repensando a participação e resistência nas práticas digitais do fandom de League of Legends no Brasil" e está disponível na seção "book chapters" deste perfil. O artigo publicado no periódico, por sua vez, chama-se "Quando o ativismo de fã-gamers entra em jogo: participação, resistências e práticas do fandom de League of Legends no Brasil" e está disponível na seção "papers (journals)" deste perfil.

Este estudo procura compreender as práticas de consumo e os processos de engajamento na cultura participativa acerca do potencial de representação política da comunidade brasileira de jogadores do jogo on-line League of Legends. Busca-se cartografar e refletir sobre práticas do ativismo de fã-gamers do que classificamos como sendo um movimento comunicativo, em uma comunidade deste jogo digital, gerado a partir da criação, pela primeira vez neste game, de um bem virtual baseado em um elemento da cultura amazônica e brasileira: a Iara. Nosso objetivo é entender como, e em que momento, o consumo dos fãs transforma-se em uma participação cívica e como práticas de resistência são construídas no espaço comercial hegemônico da cultura pop, sem rompê-lo, a partir de uma metodologia abordada pelo objeto.

This article focuses its attention on inner cities and asks questions about their possible redevelopment. How can an urban regeneration project improve its social innovation effects? We argue that community-led enterprises with social values can drastically improve social innovation in urban regeneration. This article presents the main features of Gillet Square, a project promoted by Hackney Cooperative Developments, a Community Interest Company based in London East End. The nature of the research is qualitative, findings show how a community-led initiative can involve local stakeholders, develop new local assets for and promote social cohesion and inclusion. ABSTRACT AUTHOR COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY, URBAN REGENERATION, SOCIAL INNOVATION, CITIZENS' ENGAGEMENT KEYWORDS JEL Classification: I31, O35 | DOI: http://dx.

In the summer of 2013, Turkey has seen an unforeseen wave of protest lead by the young and proletarianized middle classes, which has left a mark in Turkey's social history. The protests meant to thousands of citizens the unimagined possibility of channeling an energy, dubbed the ‘Gezi spirit’, to collectively produce new forms of resistance and organization against the State power and its induced social stratification in a climate of neoliberalism, trade globalism and urban transformation. In the midst of these complex social developments stands the individual artist who is faced with a looming privatisation, censorship as well as with his own deficiency to have a real social impact through his art. It is known that the Prime Minister’s gesture of inviting eight artists to resolve the Gezi Park occupation was in effect a feint action. Concomitantly, he induced a defamation campaign against theatre director Mehmet Ali Alabora for the role his theatre play, Mi Minor, supposedly had played in ‘preparing the revolution’. However, the protests have also demonstrated signs of hope as they turned into a festival, which shared a lot with Mikhail Bakhtin’s suggestions of the carnivalesque as ritualized rebellion where things are infused with new meanings. I will present some of the forms of performance (a forum theatre, a storytelling play, dance theatre initiatives and a musical) as well as the very performance of resistance in public space as both ‘carnivalesque’ and politically engaged (the standing man’s action on Taksim). I will put these examples against the background of a social stratification in transformation, a civic awareness for diversity, the precarity of the arts, as well as a general fear for loss of liberties and representation. I will reflect on the believed and real impacts of performance in ‘post-Gezi’ times and question how to approach the complexity of it.

Recent years have seen an increased presence of nationalistic rhetoric in many European countries, including Sweden. Apart from the general political implications of this, it has also generated an unwanted attention on folk dance, folk music and other forms of traditional culture. There are numerous examples of how the radical right is promoting and highlighting elements of the old peasant culture, pronouncing them cultural heritage. In this, so-called Swedish values are focused, and the remnants of an old folk culture are used to create ideas of Swedishness and a homogenous Swedish history. However, this process of appropriation does not take place without a strong resistance from, above all, the practitioners of folk dance and folk music. Working in networks, projects, organisations and with personal initiatives, cultural workers and practitioners have mobilised against racism and against the nationalists’ appropriation of folk culture. Instead, music and dance are being used by folk practitioners to create meeting places between native Swedes and immigrants. Most importantly, the dancers and musicians do not only debate and discuss, many of them have also become anti-racist activists, manifesting out on the streets as well as actively welcoming immigrants into the arenas of dance and music. In this article I will show how traditional dance and music in Sweden have become a battleground for starkly differing ideologies and values and what the resistance looks like.

The dynamic interrelations between visual arts and urbanization in contemporary Mainland China bring forward unseen representations and urban interventions. We argue that innovative artistic and creative practices initiated by various stakeholders not only raise critical awareness on socio-political issues of Chinese urbanization but also actively reshape the urban living spaces through the formation of new collaborations, agencies, aesthetics and cultural production sites. All of these facilitate diverse forms of cultural activism as they challenge the dominant ways of interpreting social changes and encourage civic participation in the production of alternative meanings in and of the city. Their signif icance lies in their potential to question current values and power structures as well as to foster new subjectivities for disparate individuals and social groups.

This presentation reflects on a seeming oddity during one of the most iconic events within the on-going student protests in South Africa, the removal of Cecil John Rhodes’ statue from the University of Cape’s campus in April 2015. While ecstatic student activists posed triumphantly on and around the statue, clenching fists and singing revolutionary songs, something/somebody else drew the attention. In an extravagant performance artist Sethembile Msezane symbolically enacted the release of the infamous Zim Bird statue that was plundered from Great Zimbabwe during colonialism and put on display in Rhodes’ Groote Schuur estate in Cape Town. The paper departs from the remarkable contrast between Msezane’s elegant, enigmatic artistic performance and the dominant, populist and philistine cultural politics of the so-called RhodesMustFall movement. It argues that contained in one scene, two very different, opposite and irreconcilable practices of cultural contestation play themselves out. Instead of making an argued choice for one or the other, I articulate and explore the field of tensions opened up by and between them. Using the work of political-aesthetic theorists Fredric Jameson and Jacques Rancière, an activist critique of engaged art actions such as Chapangu is developed and, inversely, an aesthetic critique of the philistine forms of activism of RMF. In doing so, I contemplate some of the aporia provoked by on-going decolonial cultural contestations in contemporary South Africa.

The paper critically examines shifts from settled conditions in urban cultural politics (i.e., institutionalized rules, routines and practices to fund the arts and culture) to unsettled situations (i.e., interventions or protest in cultural institutions and politics) as forms of urban cultural contestation. Respectively, transitions from unsettled conditions to more settled forms of political and cultural practice are analyzed as approaches to potentially new forms of collaboration. These [un]settling oscillations in the cultural field, which are never unambiguous or conclusive, seek to discuss both the constructive and destructive potentials for sporadic and long-term political and institutional change ignited by urban cultural actors to transform cultural politics in both policy and practice. By investigating artist movements in Berlin, Toronto and New York, which differently intervene in public space and policy, we unpack new modes of self-organization in the city which offer analytical insights into potentially 'enabling' or emancipatory practices of urban policy-making and governance. First, the radical transition from a settled to an unsettled condition is discussed via the Gulf Labor Artist Coalition who temporarily occupied the Guggenheim Museum in New York. We frame this protest as antagonistic unsettling. Second, the less confrontational movement from settled to unsettled, agonistic unsettling, is present in the Toronto-based beautifulcity.ca campaign and movement, which mobilized public support for funding arts in the public realm. Third, the self-organized shift from unsettled to settled, counter-hegemonic settling, is empirically investigated at the example of the Berlin-based Koalition der Freien Szene (Coalition of the Independent Scene), which collectivized to intervene in cultural policy-making. Fourth, the top-down development from settled to unsettled, hegemonic settling, is engaged in the context of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs' recently launched Cultural Plan and an unsettling counter-initiative of artists proposing to write a People's Cultural Plan. The empirical case studies address the second panel theme " Searching for an 'enabling' space. Dialogues and bridges between institutions and self-organization practices for a collaborative territorial planning and management " by operationalizing the complexity of multi-actor policy interactions in a framework of conflict and contingency rather than one of consensus and rationality. Assuming conflict amongst urban stakeholders as necessary and ineradicable, and thus productive, we conceptualize [un]settling practices as geared towards the production of 'enabling' (or 'un-enabling?) spaces and practices that remain inherently conflictual. Examining both radical and more agonistic interactions between self-organized cultural movements and local urban cultural political actors, we assess the potentialities of new [un]settled urban cultural movements as experimenting and potentially 'enabling' actors which redefine and re-appropriate notions of both conflict and collaboration in cities.

Crónica para el periódico El Eslabón del Festival No Autorizado, organizado por colectivo Avispero en noviembre de 2014 (Rosario, Argentina). El festival tuvo por objetivo visibilizar una serie de conflictos alrededor de las políticas culturales de la ciudad.

In this dialogue, I speak with distinguished Australian photographer Juno Gemes about a retrospective collection of her work that she is in the process of compiling at her studio on the banks of the Hawkesbury River in New South Wales. Provisionally titled Something Personal: Chronicles of the Movement 1978-2022, it will include photographs produced during a long-term collaboration between Gemes and her friend Frances Peters-Little, a Gamilaraay Yuwaalaraay filmmaker and historian with whom I also spoke for this dialogue. Combined, these conversations provide insight into the social relations, protocols, and ethics that shape and inform Gemes' ongoing photographic practice.

Much has been researched on Kuo Pao Kun’s multilingualism and multiculturalism. However, the analysis of Kuo’s discourse on audiences remains largely unexplored. Given his engagement with state policies on culture and identity formation, examining his discourse on audiences offers a better understanding of both Singapore theatre and the Singapore state. Additionally, there is a need to make sense of the ways which theatre practitioners imagine audiences as it points to issues of subjectivity, audience participation and social engagement, especially in an economically driven society like Singapore where people are often positioned as economic subjects. Among the many Asian and Western dramatists Kuo drew inspiration from, Jerzy Grotowski was pivotal. This essay will also examine the impact of the latter’s ideas on how Kuo envisioned theatre and audiences.

Dans cet ouvrage, Eduardo González Castillo aborde les expériences de groupes de jeunes militants qui cherchent à installer la justice sociale dans l’espace urbain mexicain. Il examine plus particulièrement leurs positionnements politiques et l’insertion de leurs activités dans les dynamiques de reproduction de la ville capitaliste contemporaine. Qualifiée par l’auteur de modalité du militantisme culturel, l’action politique collective de ces groupes s’appuie fortement sur la mobilisation des « techniques » du folklore, de la culture de masse et de l’art. Zapatisme, anarchisme, socialisme et altermondialisme se combinent aussi dans ce cocktail politique, qui est à la fois original et réitératif dans l’histoire des mouvements sociaux. L’objectif de l’auteur est de montrer les implications identitaires d’une telle action politique pour les jeunes ainsi que ses effets sur les rapports de force qui structurent la société dans une région particulière du Mexique : l’État de Puebla.

This article focuses on the cultural politics typical of recent, decolonial student protests in South Africa and asks the following questions: How can white artists who are critical of “whiteness” contribute to black liberation politics? What are the main criticisms of black activists against such contributions, and how can we understand and judge such criticisms? And what role do gender issues play in all this? Specifically, the article reflects on the controversial artwork Fuck White People (FWP) by Dean Hutton, a non-gender conforming performance artist, made as part of the aforementioned student protests. The article focuses specifically on the harsh criticism, rejection even, of this work by a black cultural critic (Kwanele Sosibo) and analyses and assesses the arguments, implicit presuppositions and practical implications. The purpose of the article is to qualify, complicate, and question one-dimensional and somewhat formulaic readings in terms of key concepts within decolonial thought, such as white privilege, white guilt, and white tears. For this purpose, various alternative interpretations of FWP are developed on the basis of concepts such as over-identification, race suicide, symbolic politics, intersectionality and the politics of marginality.

Walang puwang ang mga mahinang-ulo sa akdang ito. Lalong-lalong hindi rin sa mga makikitid ang pagtingin sa mga simbolong umiiral sa kapaligiran ang nilalaman nito. Ang mga tulad nila na walang ibang alam kundi ang sumunod at magsunod-sunuran sa kinamulatang sistema ay fijadong walang-bait sa sarili. Para sa Ilokano ang akdang ito. At para sa kaniyang pangangailangang magpumiglas sa isang masalimuot na labanang higit pa sa daantaon nitong karanasang kolonyal: sa internal na kolonisasyon. Ito ang mukha ng imperyalismong sumisiklab mismo mula sa loob ng isang bansa, ang imperyalismong nagmula sa isang fasistikong kaisipan-pamamaraan tungo sa pagbuo ng isang nasyon, isang estado, isang nasyon-estado, at isang bansa. Nakasalig ang prinsipyong ito sa sariugma ng pagkakaisa kung saan walang pakundangan at esensiyalistikong pinagpapares-pares ang mga kaalaman sa ngalan ng Pambansang Kamalayan. Ito ang layunin ng inyong mga pambansang simbolo—ng pambansang awit, ng pambansang bayani, ng pambansang watawat, ng pambansang kultura, at ng iba pang pambansang ti-la-adda: ang hipnotismohin tayo gamit ang opium ng iisang diwang makabansa. Kasama ng krimen na ito ang walang juisiong pambansang kaunlaran. Binabansot nito ang minana nating kaalaman sa mga lahing ating pinagmulan. Binabaluktot nito ang katotohanan ng diversidad sa bansa. Ang lahat ng ito na pinamamayani sa ating mga dibdib, habang pinatitingala tayo sa ngalan ng nasyonalismo na kung tutuusin, ay walang ugat sa ating inang kultura, sa pamumuhay ng mga taong nauna pa sa ating luminang ng mga lupaing inaangkin natin ngayon. Ang mga ito ay pawang artifisyal at abrakadabra upang tayo ay mapasunod: upang makagamgam sila ng kapangyarihan. Inalis nito sa atin ang karapatan sa nakem. Pilit tayong pinaamo ng mga palyadong ideologikal na aparato ng estado sa sumpa ng deodorisadong fasismo. Dito kinakailangan ng Ilokano ang aktivismo: ang hindi pagsusunod-sunuran, ang paglaban sa mga institusiyonal na fuersang gumagayuma sa ating mga kailian. Hindi maaaring sabihin ng estado na wala itong masamang intensiyon kung ito naman ay nagreresulta sa maling polisiyang pangkultura at pangsining na kumokontrol sa ating mga nasa labas ng hegemonikong sentro. Kinakakailangang taglay ng isang umaastang mabuti ang lahat ng katangian ng pagiging mabuti upang matawag itong tunay sa hangarin. At dahil wala naman talaga itong patutunguhan pang iba, kinakailangan nating mangalampag at angkinin ang nararapat para sa atin. Sa ating pagkilos—sa ating aktibong pagkilos—nakasalaylay ang mga simbolo ng ating kultura: simbolong kinalalagakan ng ating existensiya na kapag nasira o nawala ay siyang katapusan ng lahing pinagmulan.

Britain’s non-white population has formed and worked with complex, sometimes contradictory, and often potent forms of cultural capital in shaping and re-shaping their space in the British nation. Academic as well as policy recognition of the complexity of Britain’s racialised minorities has manifested itself in the widespread belief among the liberal elite, that Britain is becoming a ‘multicultural society’. That multiculture is most often conceived as a judicious, or heinous (depending on your p0litcal outlook) mix of ethnic identities and communities. This perspective, whether from the liberal left or the xenophobic right, obscures more than it reveals (Alleyne 2002). In particular it obscures the political and intellectual work that underlies the negotiated and ever-contested emergent partially multicultural reality of Britain today. That reality has come about in part through political and cultural work, negotiation and contestation.