‘Nothing to practice’: Julius Eastman, queer composition, and Black sonic geographies

2021 ◽  
pp. 147447402110594
Author(s):  
Alexander Liebman
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Musical Performances ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Music Scenes ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The World ◽  
Concert Halls ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Black Queer ◽  
Creative Life

I trace the musical performances and life of Black, queer composer Julius Eastman, considering Eastman’s oeuvre as a heterotopia defined by both revolutionary freedom and tragic capture. Eastman lived on the margins of 1970s and 1980s avant-garde minimalist music scenes unable and unwilling to comport to white norms of esthetic innovation and cultural acceptability. Eastman’s infusion of camp performativity with minimalist music and his Blackness and queerness challenged (and ultimately nullified) the avant-garde esthetic claims made by white composers. Whereas the white avant-garde insisted upon a tabula rasa, a separation from history to create (supposedly) new sonic forms, Eastman’s melding of genres, provocative song titles, playful disposition to the world, and his very presence in concert halls and university auditoriums challenged the racialized norms embedded within minimalist music. Eastman ruptured assumed codes of composition and performance yet was punished for these transgressions, barred from work and ultimately dying alone and homeless at the age of 49. Pursuing a creative life encased by erasure exemplifies the ways in which Blackness is parantological, constantly escaping from the fixity of racial ontologies that erase Blackness in the name of white supremacy. Examining Eastman’s artistic work and conflict with minimalist music prefigures the contemporary moment in which efforts to prioritize materiality, affective reality, and being over culture, signification, and discourse often belie white racialized standpoints. Intertwined with these theoretical concerns, I sketch how Eastman disrupts overwrought notions of scale, direction, rigidity, and intent through what Camilla Hawthorne calls ‘everyday practices of Black space-making’.

African Women in Music, Theater, and Performance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adedayo L. Abah
Keyword(s):  
Specific Region ◽  
African Women ◽  
Music Theater ◽  
Musical Performances ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Political Protests ◽  
Women In Music ◽  
The World ◽  
And Performance

While women in certain regions of Africa have always enjoyed relatively equal access to view performances and perform publicly, many have not always enjoyed the same access to public performances of their craft. The role of women in music, theater, and performance in Africa has been diminished often by its demotion to the lyrical performances of women to enliven life’s transitions, from celebration of births to rites-of-passage ceremonies, marriages, and funerals. However, African women have always instigated social and political protests through songs and musical performances, imitation, and meaning-charged lyrics. The record and achievements of women as individuals or band-associated public performers were available mostly from the middle of the 20th century. Many African women have broken barriers in the categories of music, theater, and performance through exceptional demonstration of their crafts and talents. Some of them, like Sonah Jobarteh and Jalil Baccar, mostly wielded influence within a specific region of the continent, while some, like Miriam Makeba and Cesária Évora, were well known throughout the continent and globally. These African women compelled the continent, and sometimes the world, to stop and ponder on their talents in the arts of music, theater, and performance.

scholarly journals Editorial: Time Travel

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-248
Author(s):  
PAUL RAE
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Time Travel ◽  
The West ◽  
American Power ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Past ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
The World ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Way

One of the most forbidding and yet rewarding challenges in a substantive internationalization of arts scholarship is accounting for the experience and passage of time. The extent to which developments in theatre and performance over the past 150 years have been tied up with the larger social, economic and technological transformations reflexively understood as ‘modernity’ is a key reason an international journal readership is able to find interest and value in scholarship on performances they may not have seen, that are practised in places they have never been. At the same time, any such research – it is tempting to say ‘from outside the West’, but in fact the requirement holds everywhere – must register how the work under discussion complicates an otherwise oversimplified narrative of developmental modernity. This narrative treats a homogenized industrial and postindustrial ‘West’ as having led the way and established a model for how other parts of the world would modernize subsequently. The assumption is quickened in discussions of art because arguably one characteristic of those transformations as they happened in numerous centres of Euro-American power was the role that artists played in giving them aesthetic form and expressing their meanings. This is prominent in the emergence of modernism and the avant-garde, and it is logical that in recent times scholars of modernism have been particularly energetic in questioning the developmental narrative and demonstrating not only how such phenomena were constitutively reliant on processes elsewhere, but also how artistic developments everywhere both informed each other (often inequably) and manifested local and highly contingent characteristics.

scholarly journals Holiday parades in Ottoman miniature of the XVI–XVIII centuries

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Татьяна Хамзяновна Стародуб
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
World History ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Decorative Art ◽  
Action And Perception ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Early 18Th Century

В мировой истории искусства встречаются события, которые можно интерпретировать как подателей идеи создания художественной композиции, рассчитанной на действие и восприятие не в замкнутых интерьерах дворца или храма, а в обширных общественных пространственных зонах. Нечто подобное произошло в официальной культуре Османской империи периода XVI – 1-й трети XVIII века. Одним из проявлений творческого подъема страны в это время было развитие монументального оформительского искусства театрально-декорационного характера. Источником наших знаний об этом виде творчества служат тексты и иллюстрации рукописей особого жанра – Сюрнаме, или «Книги празднеств». Две рукописи этого жанра – 1580-х годов и 1730-х годов, обильно и красочно иллюстрированные исторически достоверными изображениями праздничных парадов, позволяют предположить зарождение таких явлений авангардного искусства XX века, как инсталляция и перформанс в далёком прошлом. In the world history of art one occurs with events that can be interpreted as generators of the idea of creating an artistic composition designed for action and perception not in the closed interiors of a palace or a temple, but in vast social spatial zones. Something similar happened in the official culture of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th – first half of the 18th century. One of the manifestations of the country's creative rise at that time was the development of monumental decorative art of a theatrical-scenery character. A source of our knowledge about this kind of creativity is the texts and illustrations of manuscripts of a special genre – Surname, or "The Book of Festivals." Two manuscripts of this genre, dating from the 1580s and 1730s, and abundantly and colorfully illustrated with historically authentic images of festive parades, suggest the emergence of such phenomena of avant-garde art of the twentieth century as Installation art and Performance art in such a distant past as the Ottoman Turkey from the 16th to early 18th century.

Of the Absence of Dance: Feminisms and Pragmatisms in the Writing of Dance Theory

2008 ◽  
Vol 40 (S1) ◽  
pp. 78-85
Author(s):  
Kent De Spain
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Performance Theory ◽  
Dance Studies ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The World ◽  
Second Year ◽  
And Performance

In many ways “Dance Studies” has in recent years become synonymous with a kind of theoretical writing that is heavy on poststructuralist philosophy but often curiously disconnected from the intentions and everyday practices of dancers and choreographers. In this presentation I intend to examine this issue by investigating and analyzing the essays that make up the book Of the Presence of the Body: Essays on Dance and Performance Theory (edited by Andre Lepecki), through the lens of a course I am teaching that steeps second-year M.F.A. dance students in the world of dance theory. What is the role of “dance” in these essays? Is there a clear demarcation between feminine and masculine approaches to the theorized space of dance writing? In what ways does dance theory perform its own authority? How can the values of practitioners inform the scholarship of theorists? If there is a voice of dance theory, to whom is it speaking, and on whose behalf?

THE FAUST LEGEND AND ITS ROLE IN ALFRED SCHNITTKE'S WORK

Tempo ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 63 (248) ◽  
pp. 2-11
Author(s):  
Lilia Khanina
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Acceptance ◽  
The World ◽  
International Attention ◽  
History Of ◽  
Concert Halls ◽  
World Class ◽  
Creative Life

Alfred Schnittke (1934–1998) is among the most notable composers in the second half of the 20th century. Over the past 20 years his work has won wide acceptance and greater international attention. His music, performed by world-class musicians in countless countries and in the most prestigious concert halls, has become an integral part of Russian cultural heritage. Schnittke's vast popularity is evident in the existence of so many publications, reviews, and dissertations not only in Russia but all over the world. However, some aspects of the composer's life and music remain unexplored, and a study of Schnittke's work would not be complete without examining one particular subject which influenced Schnittke throughout his creative life: the Faust Legend. The Faustian Legend ‘was among the forces that supported Schnittke's dialogue with the past and shaped his identity’. Before delving into this topic it would be logical to give a brief excursus in the history of the Faustian legend itself.

Sea Urchins and Circuses: The Modernist Natural Histories of Jean Painlevé and Alexander Calder

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-211
Author(s):  
Patricia E. Chu
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Sea Urchins ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Machine Age ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Historian

The Paris avant-garde milieu from which both Cirque Calder/Calder's Circus and Painlevé’s early films emerged was a cultural intersection of art and the twentieth-century life sciences. In turning to the style of current scientific journals, the Paris surrealists can be understood as engaging the (life) sciences not simply as a provider of normative categories of materiality to be dismissed, but as a companion in apprehending the “reality” of a world beneath the surface just as real as the one visible to the naked eye. I will focus in this essay on two modernist practices in new media in the context of the history of the life sciences: Jean Painlevé’s (1902–1989) science films and Alexander Calder's (1898–1976) work in three-dimensional moving art and performance—the Circus. In analyzing Painlevé’s work, I discuss it as exemplary of a moment when life sciences and avant-garde technical methods and philosophies created each other rather than being classified as separate categories of epistemological work. In moving from Painlevé’s films to Alexander Calder's Circus, Painlevé’s cinematography remains at the forefront; I use his film of one of Calder's performances of the Circus, a collaboration the men had taken two decades to complete. Painlevé’s depiction allows us to see the elements of Calder's work that mark it as akin to Painlevé’s own interest in a modern experimental organicism as central to the so-called machine-age. Calder's work can be understood as similarly developing an avant-garde practice along the line between the bestiary of the natural historian and the bestiary of the modern life scientist.

Characterizing the effectiveness of COVID-19 mitigation measures: A data-centric approach (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukman Olagoke ◽  
Ahmet E. Topcu
Keyword(s):  
Control Measure ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
World Health ◽  
Mitigation Measures ◽  
Effective Control ◽  
The World ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
The Impact

BACKGROUND COVID-19 represents a serious threat to both national health and economic systems. To curb this pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a series of COVID-19 public safety guidelines. Different countries around the world initiated different measures in line with the WHO guidelines to mitigate and investigate the spread of COVID-19 in their territories. OBJECTIVE The aim of this paper is to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of these control measures using a data-centric approach. METHODS We begin with a simple text analysis of coronavirus-related articles and show that reports on similar outbreaks in the past strongly proposed similar control measures. This reaffirms the fact that these control measures are in order. Subsequently, we propose a simple performance statistic that quantifies general performance and performance under the different measures that were initiated. A density based clustering of based on performance statistic was carried out to group countries based on performance. RESULTS The performance statistic helps evaluate quantitatively the impact of COVID-19 control measures. Countries tend show variability in performance under different control measures. The performance statistic has negative correlation with cases of death which is a useful characteristics for COVID-19 control measure performance analysis. A web-based time-line visualization that enables comparison of performances and cases across continents and subregions is presented. CONCLUSIONS The performance metric is relevant for the analysis of the impact of COVID-19 control measures. This can help caregivers and policymakers identify effective control measures and reduce cases of death due to COVID-19. The interactive web visualizer provides easily digested and quick feedback to augment decision-making processes in the COVID-19 response measures evaluation. CLINICALTRIAL Not Applicable

scholarly journals Vernacular traditions in Norwegian jewelry design - Past, present, future

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid Skjerven
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Behavior ◽  
Reliable Indicator ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Economic Decisions ◽  
The World ◽  
Future Situation ◽  
Jewelry Design

Living in an era of globalization, the capability of communicating identity has become of greater importance than ever. This has increased our estimation of the vernacular, which represents an expression of a national or local identity. In Norway the vernacular tradition in silver jewelry is particularly strong. It has played an important role not only locally, but also in the constantly changing relation with the outside world, in accordance with the societal situation. It should therefore constitute a reliable indicator of how our country relates to the present process of globalization. The aim of the paper is to throw light on the relation between Norway’s role on the global scene and the use of the vernacular tradition in the development of jewelry design in general. It consists of a historical exploration that leads up to a discussion the present and future situation. Today there is a cleft between consumer behavior and avant-garde practice. In accordance with the global situation and Norway’s geopolitical situation of existing in the outskirts of political and economic decisions, the situation is characterized by a variety of practices, and by a slow acceptance of the vernacular values in the world of avant-garde practitioners.

Distance and Reflexivity: Creating the Stage World of Pantoland

2005 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 331-339
Author(s):  
Millie Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
Financial Support ◽  
Extended Version ◽  
Senior Lecturer ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
Forthcoming Book ◽  
The World ◽  
Commercial Theatre ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University

In pantomime the Dame and comics, and to a lesser extent the immortals, are positioned between the world of the audience and the world of the story, interacting with both, forming a link between the two, and constantly altering the distance thus created between audience and performance. This position allows these characters to exist both within and without the story, to comment on the story, and reflexively to draw attention to the theatricality of the pantomime event. In this article, Millie Taylor concludes that reflexivity and framing allow the pantomime to represent itself as unique, original, anarchic, and fun, and that these devices are significant in the identification of British pantomime as distinct from other types of performance. Millie Taylor worked for many years as a freelance musical director in repertory and commercial theatre and in pantomime. She is now Senior Lecturer in Performing Arts and Music Theatre at the University of Winchester. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Conference on Arts and Humanities in Hawaii (2005), and an extended version will appear in her forthcoming book on British pantomime. Her research has received financial support from the British Academy.

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