Subversive Art

We invite applications for our panel "Figuring It Out: Crises and Resistance in Graphic Novels, Comics, and Cartoons" at the XV Conference of the Italian Society for Middle Eastern Studies (SeSaMO). The conference will be held in presence at L’Orientale University of Naples (Naples, Italy) on June 22-24, 2022.

This paper develops a pragmatist definition of street art acknowledging its essential subversiveness, while drawing implications at the level of street art’s political and social function. By developing an insight from Irvine (2012), the paper argues that street artworks turn inside out accepted norms of visibility in public spaces. Street artists challenge those norms by deploying carnivalesque strategies such as irony and misappropriation (Scott 1990). In this sense, street art is art intrinsically challenging dominant hierarchies of visibility through the use of carnivalesque strategies. By opposing advertising’s dominion over the city walls, they reclaim – one street at a time – the possibility of expressing themselves in public for those generally excluded.

Autorinnen wie Virginia Woolf, Marlen Haushofer, Ingeborg Bachmann und Elfriede Jelinek sowie Künstlerinnen wie Birgit Jürgenssen, Francesca Woodman, Monica Bonvicini, Veruschka von Lehndorff, Orshi Drozdik und Gabriele Stötzer haben sich in ihren Texten, Fotografien und (Video-)Installationen auffallend häufig mit dem vieldeutigen Motiv der Wand auseinandergesetzt, indem sie ihr eigenes Verschwinden in Szene gesetzt, sich an Wänden abgearbeitet oder sie zu Projektions- oder Schreibflächen erklärt haben. Geschickt verknüpfen sie dabei geschlechterkritische mit ästhetischen Fragestellungen.

Die Wand steht einerseits für das Subjekt einschränkende Begrenzungen, andererseits für einen Schutzraum, der vor Störungen der Außenwelt abschirmt und sich zu einem schöpferischen Ort weitet. In den künstlerischen und literarischen Arbeiten fungiert die Wand mal als Leinwand, leeres Blatt oder ‚vierte (Theater-)Wand‘, dann wieder als unsichtbare Barriere, Gefängnis, Verlies oder Sargdeckel. Vor allem ist sie der Schauplatz eines Vermächtnisses, der die weiblichen Figuren in sich aufnehmend umso deutlicher hervortreten lässt. Gerade in ihren Rissen wird die Wand zu einer sprechenden Größe, die mehr offenbart als verbirgt. Sie ist dabei weniger ein reales als vielmehr ein imaginäres Objekt, das paradoxerweise den Zugang zur Außenwelt verschließt, zugleich aber Durch- und Ausblicke erlaubt.

Einen Raum einzunehmen, sich in ihm zu positionieren, einen Ort für sich zu finden, ist für die hier vorgestellten Künstlerinnen und Autorinnen keineswegs selbstverständlich. Die subversive Strategie, sich zu vermauern, um sich dadurch erst einen Freiraum und einen freien Blick zu erobern, haben erstaunlich viele von ihnen parallel verfolgt, ohne voneinander zu wissen. Der Band versammelt Beiträge von Wissenschaftler*innen aus den Literatur-, Kultur-, Kunst- und Performancewissenschaften, die sich mit unterschiedlichen Ausformungen des schöpferischen Gegen-die-Wand-Angehens auseinandersetzen.

Consumer-grade game engines such as Multimedia Fusion and RPG Maker have dramatically extended the reach of digital games as a medium. They have also spawned online communities, where conventions and canons of using these tools have evolved. These partly stem from the functional constraints of the game engines themselves and are institutionalized through manuals, examples, tutorials, and games made with them. However, some members of game engine communities actively seek to challenge these conventions by experimenting with the engines and finding ingenious ways to put them to unexpected uses. Such experiments can be regarded as a form of metacommentary on the engines’ capabilities and limitations. While arguably impractical and inefficient, they enrich the scope of what can be done with the engine and can contribute to its further development.

Subversive or critical views of Roman emperors voiced by contemporaries while the emperor was in power are difficult to find. What did the population really think of their ruler? Some scattered references prove that discontent could occur. Nicknames given to emperors provide one method, usually neglected, for assessing the popularity of the Roman emperors. But it is important to determine whether nicknames, negative or positive, were in fact used while the ruler in question was alive. Not surprisingly, there is much evidence which shows that emperors were criticized after their death and also given less flattering epithets and nicknames by later historians.

This book provides insights into forms of resistance that produce new world views and subject positions. It explores how productive forms of resistance not only works against power, but rather it can be seen as practices that produce new subject positions and realities. In doing so, the book does not only illustrate different forms of resistance, but a major contribution will be to theoretically display different properties that must be embarked upon in order to capture various dimension of 'productive' resistance. The book contributes to future empirically grounded studies and propose some considerations on how to study resistance in terms of producing different realities and identity positions.

In the contemporary city, the graffiti is increasingly present as it is exposed in public and private spaces, building symbolic urban landscapes. These urban graphics are rich in colors, shapes and discourse. They represent the speak of a group of people who are often socially marginalized, and who use these forms of expression to exercise their political action, becoming protagonists in the city’s symbolic production. This work seeks to understand the graffiti’s spatiality on the walls of the city of Natal-RN, analyzing their forms and contents. The purpose here is to understand which are the logics behind the appropriation of those spaces, as well as the motivations behind the actions of who are graffiting those spaces. In some instance, this work considers that the landscape is ‘subverted’ by the hands of these graffitiers whose work is to keep leaving marks in the city.
Tags: Graffiti, Pixação, Landscape, Subversion.


Na cidade contemporânea a pixação e o graffiti estão cada vez mais presentes, expostos nos espaços público e privado constroem a paisagem urbana em suas dimensões simbólica e material. Esses grafismos urbanos são ricos em cores, formas e discursos. Eles representam o grito de sujeitos/agentes que muitas vezes são marginalizados socialmente, se utilizam destas formas de expressão para se manifestar e exercer uma ação política como protagonistas na produção simbólica da cidade. Este trabalho discute a espacialidade da pixação e do graffiti na cidade de Natal-RN, analisando suas formas e conteúdos impressos nos muros da cidade. Procura-se entender quais as lógicas regem a apropriação destes espaços, assim como quem deles se apropriam, levando em consideração os lugares que são grafitados. A paisagem é subvertida desta forma pelas mãos dos grafiteiros e pixadores que se arriscam riscando os muros e paredes da cidade.
Palavras chave: Graffiti, Pixação, Paisagem, Subversão.

Un análisis tomando en cuenta información de ambos lados el ucraniano y el ruso, da una perspectiva mas clara del desempeño de las operaciones en territorio ucraniano, además de revisar el desempeño de las sanciones sobre rusia y sus actividades de desestabilización en el estado colombiano.

Rhizastance talked to Chris Kramer on his dissertation, Subversive Humor where he argues that an indirect and imaginative route through subversive humor offers a means to raise consciousness about covert oppression and the mechanisms underlying it, reveal the errors of those with power who complacently sustain systematic oppression, and even open those people up to changing their minds.

This paper is a critical overview of the society-shaping importance of the many facets of A(i)da Overton Walker’s life and work as the foremost African American stage performer at the turn of the century. Through her singing, acting, choreography, dance, teaching and mentoring, theatre production, intellectual writings, and cross-dressing performance Aida Overton Walker successfully subverted stereotypes of class, race and gender during the social upheaval and white-mob violence of the Gilded Age and early 1900s, while making her living on the popular stage. Overton was a mother of modern dance, proponent of feminist black pride, a race leader along with W. E. B. Du Bois and others, and a mentor for younger black female stage performers to carry on her work of increasing racial understanding internationally. This essay argues the urgent need for a feminist biographer to write a comprehensive biography of Overton’s life and work, as well as to publish her collected writings, and published interviews and reviews of her work. Laying the groundwork for this biography I outline facets of Overton’s work, along with cultural historians’ commentary on the importance of some of these facets, as well as proposing my own interpretations, questions, and suggestions for further research. In an appendix I provide a time-line drawn from many sources, which I hope will serve as a starting point for A(i)da Overton Walker’s biographer. By seeing how Overton successfully resisted classism, racism, and sexism, and modeled human greatness during dark times raises the bar for our own aspirations to shape a more just society today.

A presente tese se propõe a desvendar parte do imaginário subversivo divulgado pelas páginas de determinadas publicações da imprensa anarquista e anticlerical espanhola, argentina e brasileira, entre os anos de 1897 a 1936, totalizando catorze publicações distintas. Assim, este estudo também comunga com os pressupostos da chamada história transnacional e demonstra, no seu desenrolar, que as publicações dessa imprensa alternativa, apesar das distâncias geográficas significativas e das dificuldades de manutenção que apresentavam, estavam em constante contato umas com as outras, estabelecendo laços de solidariedade, possibilitando a ampla circulação de artefatos culturais e, consequentemente, a constituição de um imaginário combativo e próprio. Imaginário esse que é forjado e aqui revelado através da observação de elementos centrais da arte de protesto: poesias, imagens e contos. Ao desvendar tal imaginário também se está tentando recuperar o percurso realizado por determinadas imagens, suas rotas de circulação e sua apropriação, permanência e alterações na referida imprensa. Com esses objetivos em vista, a tese se centrará na análise de duas temáticas principais para a criação e manutenção desse repertório imagético: o anticlericalismo e o evento datado do 1º de Maio, o qual se constitui na principal data do calendário dos trabalhadores e permite o estabelecimento de um universo simbólico próprio. É possível observar em cada temática a prevalência de certas ideias-imagens e sua constante repetição, permanência e relativa modificação, marcas essenciais de qualquer imaginário, seja esse subversivo ou hegemônico na sociedade, bem como o caráter de complementariedade existente entre o conteúdo textual e o conteúdo visual desse imaginário, uma vez que ambas dimensões discursivas se reforçam e reafirmam mutuamente.

This paper investigates the relationships between forms of humor that conjure up possible worlds and real-world social critiques. The first part of the paper will argue that subversive humor, which is from or on behalf of historically and continually marginalized communities, constitutes a kind of aesthetic experience that can elicit enjoyment even in adversarial audiences. The second part will be a connecting piece, arguing that subversive humor can be constructed as brief narrative thought experiments that employ the use of fictionalized scenarios to facilitate an open, playful attitude, encouraging a space for collaborative interpretation. This interaction between humorist and audience is an aesthetic experience that is enjoyable in and of itself, as the feelings of mirth are intrinsically valuable. But connected to the "Ha-ha!" experience of these sorts of humorous creations is an "Aha!" or potentially revelatory experience that is a mixture of cognitive comprehension and motivated (emotional) response. The third part of the paper will attempt to go beyond the consciousness-raising element with an account of how such possible worlds created in the realm of imagination through subversive humor can bleed into the real world of flesh and blood people. Finally, I will analyze an example of subversive humor.

This article takes a closer look at the phenomena of the “theatrical essay” or “essay on stage” as an example of a dynamic tour de force of singularity and plurality (Jean-Luc Nancy) and the performative autopoietic feedback loop (Erica Fischer-Lichte) between actors and spectators. It applies the concepts of singular plurality and the aesthetic of performativity to selected contemporary stage phenomena.

The present paper presents a study of Visual Kei, a Japanese sub-culture, by the point of view of political resistance against notions of homogeneity and majority, present in the discourse of National identity, as well as the idea of reterritorialization, present in capitalist practices regarding potentially subversive cultures. The question that appear the most during such analyzes is: can Visual Kei, in its subversive content and politics of difference, act as a Temporary Autonomous Zone that escapes rigid notions of Japaneseness put in place by the Ideological State Apparatuses and the machines of capture set up by the market that want to capitalize on such phenomena? While on one hand the spaces and aesthetical experiences created by Visual Kei performers do have potential to confront the symbolic misery natural of neo-liberal societies with its semiotical explosion, on the other hand it is also worth to observe the ways in which Visual Kei gets both stuck in heterotopias as well as produces its own models of majority that does not allow nomadic assemblages to emerge.

The purpose of this article is to discuss ludic art that does not follow the rules. That is, either the rule systems in them are deliberately broken, subverted or in other ways distinctively manipulated, or the viewer’s expectations–based on shared knowledge of how games work–are not met. These particular conditions are major components of the work that are discussed in the text. The aim is to discuss how these ’dysfunctional’ games nevertheless are constructive as works of art, and to further the understanding of how games as a cultural form operate within the field of contemporary art.

Shakespeare is not usually thought of as a subversive writer, and other than the well-documented performance of Richard II relative to the Essex Rebellion and the curious Oldcastle controversy, Shakespeare seems to have avoided conflicts with the authorities. This essay, however, presents an extremely subversive thread—subtly encoded throughout scene 3.7 in Henry V, where the target of the subversion is Queen Elizabeth and her court, an incredibly indiscreet focus for his satire. The subversive storyline is so reasonable and persistent that it should be realized as intentionally crafted to get past censorious eyes and is only discovered by a close reading and suitable interrogation of the text—where we are prompted to do so by the pointed clues in the text.
After piecing out the subversive thread in the scene, I present two plausible triggers, possible Catholic sympathies, and the Oldcastle controversy, that might have motivated Shakespeare to elevate his poetic powers and wit to craft such a subtle, yet dangerous, subversion into the scene. Taken in whole, an appreciation of the subversive nature of this scene should prompt further scholarly attention to the ironic perspective of the play, which was first promoted for the play 100 years ago.

El artículo aborda las reflexiones realizadas por Nelly Richard que estuvieron asociadas al arte marica u homosexual que se desplegó en los años 70 y 80 en Chile, al alero de la llamada "Escena de Avanzada", en la obra de Carlos Leppe y Juan Domingo Dávila. Estas conceptualizaciones son delimitadas y luego contrastadas con algunos puntos clave de la teoría queer contemporánea, particularmente con la noción butleriana de "performatividad del género" y también con la noción deleuziana de "repetición". El objetivo del texto es elaborar una distinción entre "repeticiones normativas" y "repeticiones subversivas" de las normas de género.

This chapter will evaluate humor used with the specific intent to reveal glaring epistemic errors that lead to injustice; flaws in reasoning so transparent that straightforward logic, argument, and evidence seem ineffectual against them, and in some cases, just silly to think such tools would be needed. Laughter seems to be one of the only sane responses. In particular, I will assess how humor can combat conspiracy theories, propaganda, lies, and bullshit. The last one I view in Harry Frankfurt's sense of a complete lack of concern for truth or reality, which I think sums up former President Donald Trump's epic lack of curiosity which has a trickle-down effect on his ardent followers. The sort of conspiracy theories I will focus on are an intermingling of propaganda, well defined and analyzed by Jason Stanley in his work How Propaganda Works, and the "new conspiracism", outlined by Muirhead and Rosenblum in A Lot of People are Saying: The New Conspiracism and The Assault on Democracy. There are perils with this potency of pugilistic comedy. It is easy to punch up, humorously fume at the foibles and fantastical blunders of a world leader who seriously considers ingesting bleach to combat the plague, who also, without irony, regales us of his capacious mnemonic prowess in recalling the following words on a cognitive test: "Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV." The self-proclaimed "stable genius" aced it. But when Trumpism and QAnon e.g., spreads among many who are impoverished and disempowered, the very people to whom Trump and others in his powerful orbit have incessantly lied, it becomes less clear how to wield truth-and justice-seeking wit. Are consciousness-raising comedians seeking to uncover and undermine obvious and dangerous falsehoods punching in the morally correct direction, and how can we tell?

Drei von vielen.
Positionen zum Künstleratelier in der DDR

7. Internationale Tagung des Arbeitskreises Kunst in der DDR
Philipps-Universität Marburg, 14.–15. Juni 2019
Ort: Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas (Vortragssaal im EG), Pilgrimstein 16, 35037 Marburg
Konzept: Sigrid Hofer (Philipps-Universität Marburg) und Martin Schieder (Universität Leipzig)

Im Jahr des Mauerbaus drehte Jürgen Böttcher in Dresden die DEFA-Dokumentation Drei von vielen. Sie erzählt von drei Freunden – einem LKW-Fahrer, einem Chemigraph sowie einem Steinmetz –, die in ihrer Freizeit malen, zeichnen und bildhauern. Ein Trio, wie es nicht besser das Bitterfelder Ideal verkörpern könnte. Doch statt heroischem Arbeiterpathos sieht man junge Künstler, die jenseits des sozialistischen Ideals nach individuellen Lebensformen à la Bohème suchen. Gleich einem Atelierrundgang möchte die Tagung nach dem Raum, nach den Funktionen und nach den Topoi des Ateliers in der DDR fragen. Dieses wird als espace autre verstanden, in dem Gespräche über den kreativen Prozeß geführt wurden, wo man sowohl dem Klassenfeind als auch der Stasi begegnete, das als sozialistischer Lehrraum diente, in dem sich der Staat und seine Künstler inszenierten, Drei von vielen produktiv waren und wo man alternativ im Kollektiv arbeitete. Zugleich gilt es zu untersuchen, inwieweit die alternativen Formate der künstlerischen Praxis in der DDR der späten 1980er Jahre als elementarer Beitrag zu einer sich wandelnden, „anderen“ kulturellen Identität und zu einem „Dritten Weg“ verstanden werden können. Von diesen Prämissen ausgehend, diskutieren ausgewiesene Experten sowie Nachwuchswissenschaftler das Atelier als eine réalité, die die Kunstgeschichte der DDR in all ihren Modi und Ästhetiken, Ambivalenzen und Brüchen widerspiegelt.

Die Tagung wird von der Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur und vom Ursula Kuhlmann-Fonds gefördert.

Women's war literature is argued to be a minor literature (Deleuze and Guattari 1986) as it allows the intolerable to be written, and because female writers often do not take part in wars with arms but rather with their pens, their voices and their intellects, their narratives are subversive and transgressive. In fact, women writers subvert history to create their own world and their own records. In this respect, contemporary Arab women authors have shown a big interest in writing novels, poems and short stories that lucidly portray the transformations war brings, and they have also shown a genuine capacity of transforming moments of war and transforming war time into moments of creation and metamorphosis. The present paper unveils Arab women writers' exceptional capacity in recreating history and moments of war in their literary writings through an in-depth analysis of Huda Barakat's The Stone of Laughter (2006) [‫اﻟﻀﺤﻚ‬ ‫]ﺣﺠﺮ‬ which represents a vivid depiction of the Lebanese Civil War where Barakat artistically recreates this war by subverting its history.

This article aims to analyse some of the popular activist posters and images related to the Gezi Park resistance that took place in Turkey in 2013. The author argues that the theoretical approach of détournement is the driving force in the formation of the activist ‘identity’ and ‘imagery’ related to Gezi protests. Further, through detourning the attacks of the government, the article examines how the activist posters and images caused shifts in meaning and generated the negation and recreation of signs and significations. In this way, it can be seen that détournement as a subversive theoretical approach can be reconstructive while deconstructing verbal and censorship attacks from the government. The article engages with the word Çapulcu (looters) in an address by the former Prime Minister against the Gezi protesters and the penguin documentary used as a censorship element during the protests. It analyses how détournement applied by the protesters to these attacks led to the creatio...

Resumen
El objetivo de este artículo es, por un lado, analizar la presencia del folklore en la programación musical carcelaria oficial durante el franquismo y el empleo de este como elemento generador de la identidad nacional impuesta por la dictadura; y, por otro, compararlo con el papel que dicho repertorio jugó para la comunidad represaliada en el espacio clandestino. Para ello se tratará de arrojar luz acerca de cuestiones tales como el hecho de que repertorios vinculados a la tradición rural fuesen resignificados por el franquismo en el interior de las prisiones como elementos de reeducación a través del elemento nostálgico de la tierra como «patria/matria», fomentando la circulación de los nuevos paradigmas conductuales. Entender el funcionamiento de la articulación de la actividad musical en el ámbito oficial es imprescindible para adentrarse al mismo tiempo en las respuestas subversivas que surgieron en respuesta a ella. Ambas realidades, además de convivir, se entrelazaron en procesos de continua retroalimentación, que deben abordarse de manera conjunta a fin de reconstruir el paisaje sonoro de las cárceles franquistas.
La refolklorización de la música rural y tradicional resultó especialmente útil para la oficialidad del régimen donde mujeres y hombres en tanto que represaliados políticos fueron denominados como «enfermos punibles» (Foucault, 2012) susceptibles de ser reeducados en los valores de la tierra. Partiendo de esta categorización así como de los recientes estudios que han demostrado la necesidad de adentrarse en el panóptico carcelario del franquismo para completar la visión de la estructura musical de la dictadura en todos sus ámbitos (Calero-Carramolino 2016, 2017a, 2017b, 2018a, 2018b y 2019a, 2019b; Pérez-Castillo 2014 y 2015) se ha tomado una muestra de diecinueve piezas procedentes del ámbito oficial y catorce del ámbito clandestino compuestas en las prisiones españolas entre 1939 y 1964 para analizar el impacto de ambas posturas en relación con los usos y modos de composición inspirados en el folklore.
Palabras clave: Cárceles, franquismo, folklore

Abstract
The aim of this article is on the one hand, to analyse the presence of folklore in the official prison’s repertoire during the Franco’s regime and the use of this as a contributor to the national identity imposed by the dictatorship; and on the other hand to compare it with the role that it played for the prisoners in the clandestine space. For this reason, it will try to light up some issues such as the fact that repertoires linked to the rural tradition were resignified by the Francoism inside prisons as elements of reeducation through the nostalgic element of the land as motherland, according to the spreading of new behavioural paradigms. Understanding the working of the articulation of musical activity in the official sphere is essential to enter at the same time the subversive responses that emerged against it. Both realities, in addition to living together, were intertwined in processes of continuous feedback, which must be addressed jointly to rebuild the sound landscape of Franco’s prisons. The refolklorization of rural and traditional music was especially useful for the Regime’s officiality where women and men as political prisoners were considered as punishable ills (Foucault, 2012).
Based on this categorization as well as the recent studies that have shown the need to delve into the prison panopticon of the Franco’s regime to complete the vision of the musical structure during the dictatorship in all its areas (Calero-Carramolino 2016, 2017a, 2017b, 2018a, 2018b y 2019a, 2019b; Pérez-Castillo 2014 y 2015) a sample of nineteen pieces from the official and seventeenth fromthe clandestine domain composed in Spanish prisons between 1939 and 1964 has been taken to analyse the impact of both positions in relation to the uses and modes of composition inspired by folklore.
Key words: Prisons, francoism, folklore

Resume
L'objectiu d'aquest article és d'una banda, analitzar la presència del folklore a les programació musical carcerària oficial durant el franquisme i l'ocupació d'aquest com a element generador de la identitat nacional imposada per la dictadura; i de l'altra comparar-lo amb el paper que aquest repertori va jugar per a la comunitat represaliada en l'espai clandestí. Per a això es tractarà de llançar llum sobre qüestions com ara el fet que repertoris vinculats a la tradició rural fossin resignificados pel franquisme a l'interior de les presons com a elements de reeducació a través de l'element nostàlgic de la terra com «matria», fomentant la circulació dels nous paradigmes conductuals. Entendre el funcionament de l'articulació de l'activitat musical en l'àmbit oficial és imprescindible per endinsar-se al mateix temps en les respostes subversives que van sorgir en resposta a ella. Les dues realitats, a més de conviure, es van entrellaçar en processos de contínua retroalimentació, que s'han d'abordar de manera conjunta per tal de reconstruir el paisatge sonor de les presons franquistes.
La refolklorización de la música rural i tradicional va resultar especialment útil per a l'oficialitat del règim on dones i homes en tant que represaliats polítics van ser denominats com «malalts punibles» (Foucault, 2012) susceptibles de ser reeducats en els valors de la terra. Partint d'aquesta categorització així com dels recents estudis que han demostrat la necessitat d'endinsar-se al panòptic carcerari del franquisme per completar la visió de l'estructura musical de la dictadura en tots els seus àmbits ((Calero-Carramolino 2016, 2017a, 2017b, 2018a, 2018b, 2019a, 2019b; Pérez-Castillo 2014 y 2015) s'ha pres una mostra de dinou peces procedents de l'àmbit oficial i disset de l'àmbit clandestí compostes en les presons espanyoles entre 1939 i 1964 per analitzar l'impacte de les dues postures en relació amb els usos i maneres de composició inspirats en el folklore.
Paraules clau: Presons, franquisme, folklore

Something you may or may not deny: Henry Holiday (as much as Lewis Cerroll) was a master of The Art of Deniability, when he illustrated Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark". Ambiguity helped him to stay out of trouble.

2015-03-16: Link to http://50watts.com/Illustrating-An-Agony-in-Eight-Fits added

2014-04-11: I added an paragraph about intentionality and interpretation.

The purpose of this article is to discuss ludic art that does not follow the rules. That is, either the rule systems in them are deliberately broken, subverted or in other ways distinctively manipulated , or the viewer's expectations-based on shared knowledge of how games work-are not met. These particular conditions are major components of the work that are discussed in the text. The aim is to discuss how these 'dysfunctional' games nevertheless are constructive as works of art, and to further the understanding of how games as a cultural form operate within the field of contemporary art.

[Conference presentation at the PoCG2019 Conference: Philosophy of Computer Games – The Aesthetics of Computer Games. Comments and suggestions are appreciated – xvikar@gu.se]

This article aims to analyse some of the popular activist posters and images related to the Gezi Park resistance that took place in Turkey in 2013. The author argues that the theoretical approach of détournement is the driving force in the formation of the activist 'identity' and 'imagery' related to Gezi protests. Further, through detourning the attacks of the government, the article examines how the activist posters and images caused shifts in meaning and generated the negation and recreation of signs and significations. In this way, it can be seen that détournement as a subversive theoretical approach can be reconstructive while deconstructing verbal and censorship attacks from the government. The article engages with the word Çapulcu (looters) in an address by the former Prime Minister against the Gezi pro-testers and the penguin documentary used as a censorship element during the protests. It analyses how détournement applied by the protesters to these attacks led to the creation of a shared Gezi identity and image.

The subject of this paper is the unconventional and highly subversive treatment of musical material of folkloric origin in the films of Pedro Almodóvar: 'Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap' ('Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón', 1980) and 'Labyrinth of Passion' ('Laberinto de pasiones', 1982). These films are representative examples of the director's experimental artistic poetics based on the interweaving of local and global cultural features. The focus is, therefore, on the folkloric elements of the Spanish and Catalan musical tradition and their transformation and recontextualisation in relation to the socio-political reality of post-fascist Spain. Consequently, well-known theatrical musical pieces and dances such as the pasodoble, zarzuela and sardana acquire transgressive qualities through an unusual play with traditional and postmodern signifiers, aimed at overthrowing conservative patriarchal authority under the Francoist regime.

When analysing the Tunisian uprising through its aesthetics, the premonitory and subversive agency of the artistic sphere becomes intelligible. This contribution, therefore, engages in a reconstruction of an often overlooked local and historical sequence of aesthetic contention and asks if this sequence prefigured the Tunisian uprising. This seditious premonitory subversion grew into a generalized practice as it emerged into full daylight during the liberation phase of the uprising as an important mediator of the fundamental changes the country was taking itself through. The specific practices that structured the aesthetics of Tunisian uprising were thus already formed a decade before the self-immolation of Tarek el-Tayeb Mohammed Bouazizi. This insight is not only fruitful in relation to the ongoing debates reconstructing the historical dynamics that preceded the revolution, but also gives important insights into the visionary subversive dynamics the artistic sphere is still engagi...

O grafite e o picho sao formas de comunicacao escrita e simbolica, que possuem um peso de representatividade quanto ao ambiente do pintor. E possivel observar comumente a utilizacao de figuras em tintas sprays, que mostram objetos, faces e ambientes, alem de frases de efeito e impacto, acompanhadas de uma assinatura que possibilite a identificacao do artista. O presente artigo objetivou analisar a arte de rua sob a otica dos seus idealizadores e entender o significado dela para os individuos que pintam as ruas da cidade de Montes Claros/MG. Esse trabalho foi realizado a partir de uma pesquisa exploratoria e qualitativa. Foram reunidos dados imagens de Pichacoes e Grafites e de entrevistas qualitativas semiestruturadas realizadas com sujeitos de pesquisa que realizam trabalhos dessa natureza no referido municipio. Observou-se que, apesar dos esforcos realizados pelos artistas de rua, ainda ha um preconceito social que considera o grafite/pichacao como uma forma de vandalismo, ainda l...

Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory, to be published July 2019, encourages contextual reflection on the tensions between art production (literature, film, theatre, visual arts) and institutional power, whether it is represented by state control or by capitalist mechanisms of regulation (consumerist ideology, publishing policies, distributors, libraries). Transdisciplinary accounts, systemic and comparative approaches, qualitative and quantitative analyses are all welcome. Articles should include, but not be limited to:
1. National censorship vs. transnational regulation mechanisms
2. Cultural dissidence under fascist/communist regimes
3. Colonial vs. communist control of discourse
4. Regulatory vs. constitutive censorship
5. Art function under totalitarian regimes
6. Transgressive art
7. Censorship in the age of electronic communication
8. Samizdat literature
9. Aesopic language, humour and subversive strategies
10. Contexts of the reception of subversive art

In this essay I propose a reading of the female body in art as a locus for the display, the negotiation and ultimately the overcoming of gendered and racial dialectics of ‘othering’. First, from post-medieval until pre-colonial times, white female bodies depicted in European art largely represented a gendered, sexualised ‘other’ to the Western male gaze. Successively, with the unfolding of sexual politics of colonialism, non-European female bodies on canvas became metaphorical grounds for the unravelling of racial confrontations between colonisers and colonised. Finally, in the postcolonial era, it appears that women not only subvert, but entirely disregard the subject-object dynamics that for centuries constrained them to being passive objects. From paintings by contemporary female artists in Telangana (India), it emerges that women appropriate art, expressing their own subjectivities unapologetically and independently. Overcoming at the same time the gendered marginality conferred to women in European art, and the racial dialectics of ‘othering’ pursued through gendered colonial narratives, these artists represent an eminent example of decolonisation in praxis.

Here, I lay the groundwork for approaching the question of artistic meaning and its societal impact — whether reinforcement or subversion of cultural narratives and structures. This foundation is in four parts. First, I will explore the relationship of artistic meaning to linguistic meaning and translation, which will illuminate the process of interpretation as transformative and necessarily distortional. From there, I will consider in what sense artistic meaning is yet maintained through translation. Lévi-Strauss’ discussion of mythology, elucidated through the second part of this paper, will provide a model for understanding this through the linguistic possibility of immanent transcendence. Given Lévi-Strauss’ assertion that “the purpose of myth is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction” (229), the third section will explore the need for this function through Julia Kristeva’s explanation of the abject in the maintenance of meaning itself, and through Talal Asad’s related discussion of the psychical impact of the instability of meaning on the ideological or societal level, as revealed through experiences of horror. Finally, I will show that art is capable of functioning on the levels of both poetry and myth: aesthetically and without possibility of accurate translation, yet also as a tool for navigating epistemic contradictions — the destabilizing contradictions within a social subject’s foundational understanding of meaning and identity. The myth-like aspect of artistic meaning can thus stabilize and reassure meaning for a subject whose epistemic framework is challenged. This paper will advance a theory of art as it reinforces and reifies a societal mythos, as a first and necessary step toward understanding how it might, in contrast, operate to subvert the mythos and thus structures of power.

A dialectogram is an invented, slightly tongue-in-cheek word combining ‘diagram’ with ‘dialect’ or ‘dialectic’ to describe large, detailed drawings of places in Glasgow. The drawings use ethnographic methods to collate personal narratives, local knowledge, feelings and imaginings about place, to create a unique social and aesthetic document. The dialectogram has been used to create documentary illustrations of the Red Road Flats as part of the Red Road Cultural project (now acquired by the People’s Palace Museum), and to record the living arrangements of the travelling showpeople of Glasgow’s East end (Fig. 1, 2). The DRAW DUKE STREET residency (Market Gallery, 30th of October to the 16th of December) was the first of a series of case study dialectograms for my PhD. These case studies centre on locations that are; in deprived and marginal areas; ‘hidden’ from public view or; are in a state of transition.

Carlfriedrich Claus (4. August 1930 in Annaberg; † 22. Mai 1998 in Chemnitz Annaberg, Eastern Germany). Claus kept in touch with current world intellectual space which affected him and to which he was responsive in spite of his secluded way of life. Wide range of influences and various intellectual bases are obvious in his work (such as Martin Heidegger, Theodor W. Adorno, Karl Marx, Rudolf Steiner, Ernst Jünger, and Ernst Bloch.) He maintained contacts with significant figures of contemporary culture of his time and more precisely with ar tists connected with the movement of concrete poetry as were Pierre and Ilsa Garnier,Raoul Hausman, Dieter Roth, Dick Higgins, Jiří Kolář, Jiří Valoch, Josef Hiršal, Bohumila Grögerová, and many others. Indeed, concrete poetry took on the role of the artistic avant-garde in Central Europe of the 1960 and 1970 and the study of this movement is thus essential for ever y serious reflection on the evolution of the avant-garde in the Central European region after World War II.