Spectacles of Sexuality: Televisionary Activism in Nicaragua by Cymene Howe.
1) Do you believe it is possible to understand film(s) created by another culture without a pre-existing understanding of that cultures norms and values?
2) In what way has the introduction and use of film, diminished the social and cultural significance of history and memory amongst indigenous and Third World people? Do you think that it has diminished social and cultural significance amongst peoples in the Western world?
3) Although we are able to obtain more information, subjectively, through the analysis of an image as opposed to reading a text, is it possible to fully understand an issue based on televisualist anthropology?
1. In what ways is radio successful in effecting nostalgia and mediating kinship?
2. How does Aboriginal radio facilitate social media by linking distinct phenomena e.g. kinship, expressive language, music and remote communities together?
Main points
-Fisher discusses the performative, mediated interweaving of speech, song, & kinship on Aboriginal radio broadcasts in Northern Australia.
-He focuses specifically on increasingly popular radio request programs, which have emerged from the activist drives of Indigenous media producers, and invariably involve “shout outs” by callers to close and extended kin. These request programs developed as a means for connecting prison inmates to their families and communities; they are the intersection between a history of Aboriginal incarceration, the dispersal of kin networks, and the expressive idiom of radio requests.
Reference:
Fisher, Daniel
2009 Mediating Kinship: Country, Family, and Radio in Northern Australia.
Cultural Anthropology 24(2): 280-312.
Discussion Questions:
1 – Are talk shows (and other forms of participatory media) really cathartic or personalized experiences for the involved audience, giving people agency, or are they more a means of pushing the particular agenda of those in control? Relatedly, are they democratizing devices that give voice to audience members or “anti-political” machines as described by Matza in the article?
In other words, are talk shows a platform for the public to voice their frustrations and to subsequently inspire change in the society, or are they simply a distraction that keeps people from taking concrete actions in the real world?
2 – Matza describes the differences between the very personal subject matter of American talk shows and the more distanced nature of Soviet talk shows. Despite these differences, are there parallels between the talk shows he discusses and forms of participatory media we’re familiar with in our own culture?
Bonus Question: Have you ever participated in a radio talk show program? If so, does your personal experience relate to what we have talked about here?
Matza, Tomas 2009 Moscow’s Echo: Technologies of the Self, Publics, and Politics on the Russian Talk Show. Cultural Anthropology 24(3): 489-522.
Dean Ward, Beth Penney, (Tony) Meng Zhai, and Jana Mings.
I’m renting a room in house I found on craigslist. It’s a standard character house without the modern demands of ensuite and open-concept living space. In my room the ceiling is at a slant, the window is painted shut and a name is scribbled on one of the walls, “Brady” or “Brody”.
It is small and harmless and stands for a personal connection him and a place. Not intended for public viewing, it was written in the privacy of what was once Brady or Brody’s room but was made accessible to the public through free advertising. More meaningful than a doodle and does not have the exposure to be a true tag or a territorial marker (Kan 2001) it is a connection between a person and a place. It lacks apparent artistic forethought or a political agenda and while there is the sense that it is claiming a space it lies outside of a greater system of territories contested between different groups. It instead can be viewed as a marker of the relationship between a person and a location, fulfilling a personal need to be associated and remembered by place.
Kan, Koon-Hwee
2001 Adolescents and Graffiti. Art Education 54(1):18-23
Street art/graffiti proves a continual outlet for expression of angst, defiance, and especially bravado/machismo for a younger demographic of people in the urban Vancouver area. Like any art form, though, this is not an act one can comfortably label, describe, or classify in cookie cutter terms, and never one which is necessarily shallow, driven purely by emotion, desire for mischief or as a fame-seeking venture.
Graffiti/street often functions as a symbol of resistance, public or personal identity, popular culture, (Whitehead 2004: 29) or, as previously mentioned, a challenge to socio-economic hierarchy and authority. Yet, in other instances and in the appropriate venue, it can clearly be a source of soft and productive provocation, intellectual stimulation and even spiritual enlightenment. Spirituality is often a shared thematic consideration of skilled veteran graf artists and it has been argued incorporating such themes helps artists derive a deeper and longer lasting sense of personal satisfaction from the art, regardless of one’s socio-economic status or religious affiliation (Noble 2004).
"Don't mistake kindness for weakness. Mind, Body, Soul." 2004 - Acrow, Virus, Efex.
If you stroll down 41st near Collingwood you’ll find an almost block-long wall I photographed the other day, from which one piece/segment remains a prime example of the duality of street art just mentioned. Luckily it has remained virtually untouched despite 8 years of direct exposure to Vancouver’s inhospitable weather and remains a supreme example of refined and thoughtful artistic expression.
By: James Cross
Downtown Eastside alleyway.
The ‘Fuck The Police’ (or ‘Fuck Tha Police’) slogan emerged from hip-hop group N.W.A.’s 1988 album Straight Outta Compton. Since then, the phrase has become one of the most ubiquitous and familiar forms of graffiti in the Western world. The phrase falls squarely into the graffiti-as-resistance category; a symbol of the frustration of young black men in particular with the oppressive and racist treatment they receive from law enforcement officers.
The aim of this resistance is four-fold: First, the act of writing it is itself an affront to the law. Second, the graffiti self-consciously proclaims its own ‘deviant’ nature, and leaves a record of its resistance for everyone to see. Third, the graffiti was also left anonymously, showing the threat that an invisible, marginalized enemy can pose to state power. Fourth, the marking of this graffiti on physical space is a method of claiming territory by groups or individuals who feel they have no territory of their own or feel their territory has been taken away by the arm of the state: the police (Ferrell 79). This final attempt is similar to tagging, in the sense that it marks a space and challenges the ownership of that space (Rafferty 77-78). However, ‘Fuck The Police’ graffiti goes one step further, turning that challenge into a political message against state violence and repression, and against racism.
– Maura Doherty
References:
Ferrell, Jeff. “Urban Graffiti: Crime, Control, and Resistance.” Youth & Society 27.1 (1995): 73-92. Print.
Rafferty, P. “Discourse on Difference: Street Art/Graffiti Youth.” Visual Anthropology Review 7.2 (1991): 77–84. Print.
The discussion of Graffiti often revolves around its public presence and the message that it carries with it, whether it be political, gang-related, or a social commentary.
However, graffiti also appears in places where it is not easily seen, and doesn’t actively work as a strong message. Well hidden under a North Vancouver Bridge is an improvised art gallery of graffiti that is constantly painted over and changed. It is situated near a popular hiking, trail, but most pieces are hidden behind the columns, which support the bridge, or deep in the shadows. In most cases, the artwork requires a good amount of hiking to even be seen.
In Jessie L. Whitehead’s article on the connection between students and art in a public space, he suggests that graffiti is a familiar occurrence in almost every city setting, and that it “offers an effective example of the connection between art and the world of everyday life”. In an area like North Vancouver, a large amount of the population consists of high school students, and graffiti can be seen as a more playful, quiet, well-hidden form of rebellion. Instead of on a popular building in the center of a city, these pieces are located in the wilderness, with very few viewers. This style can be seen as a personal expression, but not to the public as a whole. It is an expression only visible to those who know where to look. This suggests that graffiti has a more personal use as well.
Found in an alley north of Water street, behind popular shops and restaurants in Gastown the historic heart of Vancouver. Not far from here is the heart of the Downtown Eastside, home of “worst drug problem in Canada,” (Macdonald, 2009) where drug related deaths are 7 times the provincial average (Bruxton et.all, 2010).
Within the larger tag-bomb, a silver human-height signature that stretches several paces of wall, are a series of comments. These comments are written with marker, and look a lot like what you would find scrawled in a library cubby. What they represent is dialogue, materializing one of the key social issues of Vancouver’s urban space.
Brighenti describes walls as “part of the unquestioned here-and-now of a given urban environment,” tactical placement of visuals focus public attention (Brighenti, 2010). This wall is behind a row of chic furniture and tourist shops, a stark symbolic contrast to a localized homeless population. I didn’t have to travel far, but an effort was made- needed to be made, in order to find it.
Graffiti is not particularly rampant in this city. Homelessness is. Both are a visible affront to public space, and generate similar, seemingly unending debates. Regardless of aesthetic appeal, this particular graffiti acts a medium on “the street,” as it materializes a dialogue of “the street.” This is not to say that anyone intended it to be such, authorial intent is impossible to determine in this context, thus it is read entirely as-is, in the here-and-now. What materializes is a visual conversation happening at the backstage of Vancouver’s most historic space: a powerful symbol for the affliction at the tip of the public tongue.
Bibliography.
Buxton, Jane A., Azar Mehrabadi, Emma Preston, Andrew Tu, and The Canadian Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use (CCENDU) Vancouver-Site Committee.
2010 Local Drug Use Epidemiology: Lessons Learned and Implications for Broader Comparisons. Contemporary Drug Problems 36 (Fall/Winter):447-458.
Brighenti, Andrea Mubi.
2010 At the Wall: Graffiti Writers, Urban Territoriality and the Public Domain. Space and Culture, 13(3): 315-332.
Macdonald, Nancy.
2009 Vancouver’s Drug Woes Escalate. Maclean’s, December 28, 2009: 25
When we see graffiti-occupied walls, in the outside world, we might stop and look, deeming one as innovative and another irrelevant, but rarely will we grab a pen and scribble “this blows…learn to draw.” Yet, with anonymity comes liberty. (Case in point- the comment box on Justin Bieber’s YouTube channel)
Seeing this image in the girls’ washroom, my eyes were immediately drawn to the inscription “you’re still a slut” accompanied by a heart, likened to the obligatory “lol” we include in sarcastic texts. Without hesitation, I’m reminded of Mean Girls. The words beneath it, actually song lyrics, we can assume were written by a girl who just ended a relationship or was in the middle of a rocky one- feeling inhibited- seeking a safe sounding board. So much for female solidarity.
Mark Ferem claims (Dermakardijian 2008) that although some women’s latrinalia recognizes segregation within the female gender “such as bimbos, sorority girls etc”- and in this case sluts apparently- it ultimately expresses the conscious attitude necessary to inspire change. Women of the future, he contends, are gathering their thoughts on bathroom stalls, inciting the spirit of the collectively oppressed. But is this really the case today? When we think of YouTube and Facebook, the comments made- along with each like and dislike– seem to be focused on almost more than the original post itself. So, if one defines graffiti as artistic expression or cathartic release can the comments themselves, made about graffiti, be considered a part of the art itself?
Ashleigh Murphy
Source:
Dermakardijian, Ashley
2008 Beyond “A good bathroom read”: A Bakhtinian study of the gendered carnival in women’s latrinalia. Masters dissertation, Stephen F. Austin State University.