‘What is the meaning of a safety-pin?’ Critical literacies and the ethnographic turn in contemporary art

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 507-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kris Rutten ◽  
An van. Dienderen
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Ethnographic Methods ◽  
Literacy Practice ◽  
Symbolic Representations ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Critical Literacies ◽  
Situated Literacy ◽  
Safety Pin

In this contribution we address the concept of critical literacies by analyzing how symbolic representations within subcultures can be understood as an engagement with specific literacy practices. For some time now, cultural studies researchers with an interest in literacy have depended upon ethnographic methods to document how members of subcultural communities mobilize literacy practices to achieve critical ends. But the extent to which ethnography actually grants researchers access to subcultural perspectives on literacy has come into question. In this article, we aim to problematize and thematize the ethnographic perspective on literacy in general – and subculture as a situated literacy practice in particular – by critically assessing contemporary art practices that focus on the representation of subcultural identities. We therefore specifically look at artwork by Nikki S. Lee, who focuses on subcultures in her work through ‘going native performances’.

Screening Statues

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Jacobs ◽  
Susan Felleman ◽  
Vito Adriaensens ◽  
Lisa Colpaert
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Film History ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Experimental Art ◽  
Broad Scope ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Extensive Reference

Sculpture is an artistic practice that involves material, three-dimensional, and generally static objects, whereas cinema produces immaterial, two-dimensional, kinetic images. These differences are the basis for a range of magical, mystical and phenomenological interactions between the two media. Sculptures are literally brought to life on the silver screen, while living people are turned into, or trapped inside, statuary. Sculpture motivates cinematic movement and film makes manifest the durational properties of sculptural space. This book will examine key sculptural motifs and cinematic sculpture in film history through seven chapters and an extensive reference gallery, dealing with the transformation skills of "cinemagician" Georges Méliès, the experimental art documentaries of Carl Theodor Dreyer and Henri Alekan, the statuary metaphors of modernist cinema, the mythological living statues of the peplum genre, and contemporary art practices in which film—as material and apparatus—is used as sculptural medium. The book’s broad scope and interdisciplinary approach is sure to interest scholars, amateurs and students alike.

scholarly journals The Persistence of Primitivism: Equivocation in Ernesto Neto’s A Sacred Place and Critical Practice

Arts ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 111
Author(s):  
Camila Maroja
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Art History ◽  
Native People ◽  
Amazon Rainforest ◽  
Critical Practice ◽  
Sacred Place ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Environmental Work ◽  
Global Art ◽  
Venice Biennale

During the 2017 Venice Biennale, the area dubbed the “Pavilion of the Shamans” opened with A Sacred Place, an immersive environmental work created by the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto in collaboration with the Huni Kuin, a native people of the Amazon rainforest. Despite the co-authorship of the installation, the artwork was dismissed by art critics as engaging in primitivism and colonialism. Borrowing anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s concept of equivocation, this article examines the incorporation of both indigenous and contemporary art practices in A Sacred Place. The text ultimately argues that a more equivocal, open interpretation of the work could lead to a better understanding of the work and a more self-reflexive global art history that can look at and learn from at its own comparative limitations.

scholarly journals «The Great Neurosis» of Jacques Loysel and Alfred Kubin

2020 ◽  
pp. 144-149
Author(s):  
D. O. Martynova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Visual Image ◽  
Lost Generation ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Graphic Artist ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Pathological Image

On the example of the work «The Great Neurosis» by the French sculptor Jacques Loysel and «Europe» by the Austrian graphic artist Alfred Kubin, it is described and analyzed how artists gave characteristics of changes in their eras, using the same visual image associated with a mental illness. It is proved that while Loysel’s artwork was associated with the latest discoveries in medicine, then Kubin’s artwork was reinterpreted in a new way, reflecting the problems and experiences of the «lost generation». From this it follows that the example of the works «The Great Neurosis» and «Europe» by Loysel and Kubin can be traced not only to evolution, but also to the introduction of the pathological image of the “hysterical body” both in the art of the XXth century and in contemporary art practices. Such a study demonstrates the relevance and signifi cance of studying the links between, as well as the analysis of the impact of mechanisms of institutions of disciplinary power on the visual arts of various eras.

scholarly journals An Investigation of Sites, Uses and Practices For  Literacy in the Lives of Pasifika Students

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
John G Dickie
Keyword(s):  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Ministry Of Education ◽  
Literacy Practice ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
School Students ◽  
Lower Test ◽  
Pasifika Students ◽  
The One ◽  
Out Of School

<p>An investigation of sites, uses and practices for literacy in the lives of Pasifika students Lower test scores on school measures of literacy for Pasifika students than for the majority of students in New Zealand are a cause for concern. As part of a wider attempt to address this problem the Ministry of Education has argued that teachers need to be better informed of out-of-school literacy practices. This thesis considers what can be learned when this guidance is followed and it investigates students' social and cultural uses of literacy in family and community settings. It explores the argument that knowledge of these out-of-school literacies will inform teachers and through incorporation (McNaughton, 2002) teachers may be able to make effective connections for students to school literacy. A sociocultural perspective is used to investigate the social and cultural practices of the students while the study also uses Cremin's (1976) concept of configurations of sites to consider how learning is mediated for students in different settings. Rogoff's (1995) three planes of analysis provide a tool to examine students' practices at the community, interpersonal, and personal levels. The investigation sought the students' own perspective of how they appropriate knowledge about literacy as they collected information with cameras and journals on their own practices. The participants were 14 Pasifika students aged 11 and 12 years (mostly Samoan) as well as three adult Samoan church representatives and teachers from the students' school. Students' photos were used to elicit rich description in semi-structured interviews and interview schedules were also used with students and adult participants. The findings illustrate how the students were socialised into particular practices that are contextualised in the sites of family, church and neighbourhood. They reveal that for the students there was both overlapping of values and conflict between their sites of literacy practice. The complementarities occurred most strongly between family and church and a valued feature of the students' practice was the use of Samoan language. The most common conflicts were those related to popular culture and they occurred between the sites of family, church and school on the one hand and neighbourhood sites on the other as well as within family sites. The thesis argues that awareness of the complementary and conflicting features is essential for teachers in understanding the complexity the students face in choosing their paths among two cultures. This knowledge enables teachers to incorporate aspects of out-of-school literacy into school practice and to draw on those in the students' backgrounds who may facilitate students' literacy acquisition.</p>

scholarly journals The power of one-to-one coaching: Preparing pre-service teachers for the early childhood literacy classroom

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-87
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A Morphis
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Second Grade ◽  
Literacy Practice ◽  
Early Childhood Classroom ◽  
Timely Feedback ◽  
Literacy Course ◽  
Level Of Understanding ◽  
Elementary Child

This article focuses on a shift in the author’s approach to teaching a literacy course to a coaching-based model after observing pre-service teachers “struggle” to implement the teaching practices during on-site fieldwork with a kindergarten, first-, or second-grade child partner. The author discusses how she provided more timely feedback and instruction by coaching the undergraduate students who were taking a course she taught while the students were working with an elementary child partner and preparing a running-record assessment. Coaching provided the pre-service teachers with a deeper level of understanding of specific literacy practices in the early childhood classroom, and it afforded them the opportunity to reflect on the objective of the literacy practice in a way that let them better use it during their own teaching.

The practice of multispecies relations in urban space and its potentialities for new legal imaginaries

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (0) ◽  
pp. 148-161
Author(s):  
Teresa Dillon
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Urban Commons ◽  
Liberal Individualism ◽  
Ontological Position

This article explores what it means to enact multispecies relations in urban space. This exploration is rooted in contemporary art practices that create living frameworks through which encounters with non-human animal cultures, histories, rituals and justice are manifested. Such works play with the legalities and categorizations of ‘animal’ and ‘nature’ by exposing the nested reasonings and protocols that continue to propagate hierarchical species logics. Consequentially such work, alongside scholarship on earth-bound legalities, looks to how law can foster more just multispecies orderings, which aspire to create more equitable conditions for all. To scaffold such transitions the article makes the case for how a constant, public, educational and social rehearsal that unknots histories of liberal individualism is required in order to shift the ontological position of the human species. This rehearsal is set against the backdrop of climate emergencies and the call for a more expansive notion of the urban commons. The closing reflections point to how the Earth’s inviolability must necessarily be placed at the centre of an approach to urban making that is complemented by an intersectional set of innovative cosmologies, actions, manners and ways.

Forming The Guild

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Ellcessor ◽  
Sean C. Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
New Literacies ◽  
Media Production ◽  
Star Image ◽  
Affinity Spaces ◽  
Web Series ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
Affinity Space ◽  
Sense Of Mastery

This paper expands on Gee’s (2004) notion of “affinity spaces” by placing them in the context of games, media stars, and their fans and combining cultural studies and new literacies approaches. The Guild, a web series about the misadventures of MMO-players, written by and starring actor, writer, producer, and gamer Felicia Day, is examined. On WatchTheGuild.com, fans of The Guild enact literacy practices, particularly those that align with Day’s activities and star persona, such as media production and critique. These literacy practices are constrained by the limitations of projective identity in the context of star-based affinity spaces. Taking on projective identities within The Guild’s affinity space, individuals are faced with the impossibility of fully achieving the star’s – Day’s – successful identity as simultaneously gamer and media producer. The imbalance in cultural power allows the professionally manufactured star image to remain forever unattainable. This paper proposes reconsidering projective identity to move beyond the affinity space to develop one’s own sense of mastery outside the context of star-based fandom.

scholarly journals Parallelotopia: Ottoman transcultural memory assemblages in contemporary art practices from the Middle East

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 493-513
Author(s):  
Gabriel Koureas
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Ethnic Violence ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ethnic Communities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Etel Adnan ◽  
Dynamic Exchange

This article engages with the conversations taking place in the photographic space between then and now, memory and photography, and with the symbiosis and ethnic violence between different ethnic communities in the ex-Ottoman Empire. It questions the role of photography and contemporary art in creating possibilities for coexistence within the mosaic formed by the various groups that made up the Ottoman Empire. The essay aims to create parallelotopia, spaces in the present that work in parallel with the past and which enable the dynamic exchange of transcultural memories. Drawing on memory theory, the article shifts these debates forward by adopting the concept of ‘assemblage’. The article concentrates on the aesthetics of photographs produced by Armenian photographic studios in Istanbul during the late nineteenth century and their relationship to the present through the work of contemporary artists Klitsa Antoniou, Joanna Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige and Etel Adnan as well as photographic exhibitions organised by the Centre for Asia Minor Studies, Athens, Greece.

scholarly journals Understanding Collaborative Teaching and Learning in Adult Literacy: Practices in Canada and the United Kingdom

1970 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice Taylor ◽  
Karen Evans ◽  
Ali Abasi
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Adult Students ◽  
Adult Literacy ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Case Study Research ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Collaborative Teaching ◽  
Literacy Practice ◽  
The United Kingdom

The purpose of this study was to investigate how adult students learn collaboratively with other peers in both formal and non-formal adult literacy programs and what teaching styles best support this learning. A multi-site case study research design was used involving several different literacy organizations in Eastern Ontario, Canada, and in Central London, United Kingdom. Findings suggest that collaborative learning is the cement that bonds the various building blocks in a community of literacy practice across small, large and tutorial types of programs. Central in this framework is the component called the Instructor’s Philosophy and Teaching Perspective which helps explain the teaching and learning transactions.

DIMENSIONS OF LITERACY: A CONCEPTUAL BASE FOR TEACHING READING AND WRITING IN SCHOOL SETTINGS. Stephen Kucer. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2001. Pp. x + 304. $59.95 cloth, $29.95 paper. NEGOTIATING CRITICAL LITERACIES IN CLASSROOMS. Barbara Comber and Anne Simpson (Eds.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2001. Pp. xxii + 290. $79.95 cloth, $29.95 paper.

2003 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Cushman
Keyword(s):  
Language Arts ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Literacy Teachers ◽  
Conceptual Base ◽  
General Audience ◽  
University Teachers ◽  
English Classrooms ◽  
Critical Literacies ◽  
Second Language Teachers

Preservice kindergarten through university teachers will benefit from these books' overview of the field and their carefully weighed claims about what counts as literacy practices in language arts and English classrooms. Though geared more toward a general audience of literacy teachers, the books do have sections and chapters that would appeal to preservice second language teachers. The straightforward writing in both books will be easily accessible to students for whom this may be the first encounter with literacy and classroom research. Taking different tacks on literacy research, the books complement each other well: Where Kucer's survey stops, the Comber and Simpson collection picks up.

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