The optics of dispossession: urban precarity as political art

How are conditions of urban dispossession sustained and perpetuated by the way peoples on the margins of the world economy are imagined and brought to public visibility? With a focus on the works of European artists, this article explores the image-making projects whereby ghettos, shanty communities and favelas are represented as iconic lifeworlds of the poor. Competing representations of urban poverty are manufactured for public attention by aesthetic, symbolic and affective means, ranging from a romance of despair or humanitarian compassion to a nostalgic longing for premodern signs of a deprived but simpler life. In contrast to the racialised human form, which is central to iconographies of the North American Black ghetto, the shanty-town inhabitants and city builders of the Global South are typically rendered visually absent: a tropology of people’s disempowerment and dispossession. Although often encoded by a critique of intensifying inequalities, the globalised traffic in urban poverty-art relies on an image-making process that is grounded in a detachment from social life. The representations of urban dispossession tend to produce a repertoire of free-floating emblems and signs that can be variously deployed, assembled, appropriated and discarded. Such visual templates are globally consumed as works of art that can alter urban imaginaries, encourage tourism and local economic development as much as neoliberal subjectification. After analysing a range of such artistic endeavours, this article concludes by focusing attention on how an image-maker’s commitment to humanising optics of urban dispossession can transform non-representational art to become a practice of truth.

Our Land, Our People: A Reflection of Tibetan Buddhist Space in Contemporary Art

This article illustrates how a contemporary Tibetan artist disrupts expectations in the creation of his political art. Utilizing Robert Smithson’s dialogic of site and non-site, Tenzing Rigdol’s 2011 site-specific installation Our Land, Our People is interpreted as a reenactment of a culturally specific historical practice of moving space. This approach shares important similarities to historical cases in which physical spaces were relocated to and within Tibet, allowing for the application of 20th century theories arising in the spatial turn to contemporary Tibetan art.

The Personal Is Political Art: Using Digital Storytelling to Teach Sociology of Sexualities

How can sociology instructors provide high-quality education in the sociology of sexualities that captures both the increasing need for digital pedagogical tools and sociology’s continued drive for theoretically rich course content? We present digital storytelling as a highly adaptable instructional tool that is appropriate for a range of undergraduate sociology courses. We outline one specific application of digital storytelling—a staged, semester-long assignment in which students create multimedia presentations to tell stories about how they were socialized into some gendered or sexual role. We also discuss three key learning outcomes from the digital storytelling project: (1) developing students’ sociological imagination and intersectional thinking by connecting their own lived experience to social theory, (2) developing transferable technological skills, and (3) learning to apply sociological concepts outside of the classroom. We close our discussion with potential assignment modifications to improve accessibility.

Infinite Interpretations? A Corpus-based Study for the Identification and Interpretation of Competing Frames in Parliament-representations in Hungary

Political communication highly depends on generic figurative frames such as Politics Is War, Object, Sport, Art and Politics Is Landscape. Regarding political art, it is suggested that artists use complex cognitive solutions (e.g. parallel issue-specific frames) in creative ways which are connected with one of the major generic frames. The study discusses parliament-representations (made between 2006 and 2015) which are not only attractive elements of the cityscape; thus, not literary representations of the building. Using the method of visual framing, the analyses (1) describe the artworks, (2) interpret the occurring symbols and metaphors determined contextually, and (3) reveal the ideological and power relations. Summing up, political artworks can be comprehended according to conventional mental schemas. However, artists usually create a minimum of two competing specifications of the general frames occurring at the same time, and let the viewer choose the one that fits better with their worldview.

Colour me Revolutionary

Colour in China has a long history of artistic, symbolic, religious, and mythological use. This paper takes the idea of colour as a meaningful element within Chinese society and introduces the use of visual colour grammar as a new way to identify and breakdown the use of colour within political art and propaganda posters. The use of colour has been adapted by visual linguists into its own unique visual grammar component, relaying much more information than just a symbolic transfer from sign to signifier. Meaning within political posters can be derived from regularities in use, presentation, and conventional meanings. Colour as a visual grammar component is expressed through the three metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. This paper explores how the Chinese views on colour interconnects with the metafunctions of colour to look at the political posters of the PRC. I will discuss both the approach to art as a text that can be ‘read’ through visual grammar and present colour in the Chinese context as more than a symbol making device but as a meaning component in and of itself.

Art Addressing Consumerism in the Age of Late Capitalism

The globalized world is still in the phase of late capitalism, signified by the establishment of multinational corporations, globalized markets and work, mass consumerism, and the fluid flow of capital. The question of the criticism of art towards the capitalist system, its ideology and consumerism is therefore still current and is readdressed in this contribution. Considering this issue, the recurrent theoretical reference is American materialist aesthetician Fredric Jameson, who was among the first to define culture and art in the context of late capitalism. In the article the author revises Jameson’s critique of art addressing consumerism and demonstrates that he did not consider the relevance of the means of consumption as regards the cultural logic of late capitalism. She claims that in order to open space to examine contemporary art as being critical towards consumerism, one also needs to consider the ontological changes that have occurred to art and pay attention to performative art, while Jameson was still focused on a representational mode of art. By being performative and also setting out actions outside of spaces that were traditionally designed for art, in the space meant for consumption, art has much a better chance to act politically, which Jameson wished to see from art which addresses consumerism but did not. The author argues that if one is to seek critical or political art in late capitalism, those would be the cases of artistic interventions into the means of consumption.

Historic squares’ identity expression: Namik Kemal Square, Famagusta-Cyprus

Historic square's naturalistic layers harmonize in contrast with man's unstable taste, changing intentions with time, and neoliberal policies. Consequently, the challenge of what will stand out on the square's expression to the future remains an enormous pertinence amid the identity struggle. Recall that historic squares represent the bedrock for the chronological events that shaped human settlements, be it socio-economic, cultural, religious, political, art and architecture, educational, and folklore. This paper aims to analyze the square's identity as part of its historical and cultural representation. Besides, examine the layers on the surfaces (facades) facing it and their functional changes from history to now. The paper adopted an integrated study approach, using a literature review simultaneously with fieldwork to perform the analysis to describe and observe beyond the structural image to the social implications of the surrounding works of art, architecture, and nature. Based on the results, Namik Kemal Square is characterized socially, physically, and functionally by the surfaces of Lusignan, Venetian, Ottoman, British, Republic of Cyprus, the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus, and Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to now. The square exemplifies a mix of hard/soft surfaces and old/new textual layers. Presently, some functions have changed; others are changing, while only a small percentage maintained uncompromising character. The study hypothesizes that though place remains, occupancy changes with pre-existing tissues. Therefore, the surfaces of the diverse identities about people's existence in a setting (square) should be conserved for livability. Furthermore, design principles that will displace the square's identity should be discouraged.

Theatre as Inclusive Arts-based Research: A Key to Political Art in the Post-democracy?

In this chapter we investigate different approaches to art as research (arts-based) in relation to applied theatre practice and research from a cultural democratic perspective. In particular, we discuss theatre as “inclusive” practice and research and how this relates to different traditions of arts-based research. Based on literature analyses and experiences from Centres of Applied Theatre Research in South Africa and Norway, we unveil some different and dominant traditions of arts-based research that are currently voiced and familiar in Norway and South Africa. We explore four notions of exclusiveness within European notions of “artistic research”: The alternative epistemology, Knowing for the sake of the arts only, The limited artistic context, and Only qualified artists do artistic research. Seen from a different cultural angle, the South African, we find that tendencies of exclusiveness are challenged by different notions of inclusiveness: The role of the arts and its embeddedness in social life, Inter disciplinarity, The extended political and historical context, Embracing intersectionality. As answers to potential accusations of applied theatre art running errands for the liberalist post-democracy, this chapter discusses inclusive arts-based research as a form of cultural praxis that may negotiate paradoxes of post-democracy

The Fate of the Russian inTelligentsia in the XX Century. Re-Reading Milestones

The article provides an analysis of historical events in Russia in the 20th century from the point of view of the influence of the Russian intelligentsia on them, its the­oretical and practical activities. The starting point for the author is the collection Milestones (1909) and the criticism of the intelligentsia, which is the main meaning of the articles in this collection. The author shows that, despite the great influence of the intellectuals on the fate of Russia, they was not able to fully realize its ideals, and the fate of many of them was tragic. Their ideals were in contradiction with the real life of Russia, and later of the Soviet Union, they did not take into account the peculiarities of the development of the Russian and then the Soviet state and society. Their attempts to go against social practice inevitably ended in failure, while the de­sire to act in accordance with social practice often led to results that were contrary to their ideals. According to the author, the fate of the Russian intelligentsia in the 20th century confirmed the correctness of the materialist understanding of history, according to which, in the absence of ideals, movement forward has neither a driv­ing force nor a direction, and without reliance on practice, all ideals turn into utopia. Therefore, the correct solution to the problem of connecting excellent ideals and ob­jective practice is a matter of high political art. In the process of modernizing a backward state, the intelligentsia has a special mission.