‘Creator gave us two ears and one mouth’

Acoustic ecology has served as a foundational theoretical field for many sound scholars to understand the soundscape as a signifier for environmental crisis. While sound theorists like R. Murray Schafer and those in the World Soundscape Project have developed ways in which to critically analyze environmental soundscapes, these methods have often excluded Indigenous narratives which offer complex understandings of sound through embodied experience. In this paper I employ a brief description of acoustic ecology, drawing attention to its benefits as a methodological approach to sonic ordering, while also demonstrating the possibilities for expansion of this field when examined in conversation with Canadian Indigenous perspectives and notable sonic activist movements. I address how Indigenous knowledge systems, futurisms, art, and activism can provide critical perspectives within the field of acoustic ecology, which lends well to understanding soundscapes of crisis. I identify a few case studies of sonic forward Indigenous environmental movements which include game design by Elizabeth LaPensée, Rebecca Belmore’s Wave Sound sculpture, and the Round Dance Revolution within the Idle No More movement. In sum, this paper works to bridge the work of acoustic ecology and Indigenous sonic movements to encourage a complex and nuanced relationship to sound, and to explore moments for understanding sonic intersections at the forefront of environmental crisis.

Magic on Wheels: A Study of Re-engagement, Re-enactment and Re-staging the Stereotypes of Performativity and Performance of Persons with Disabilities in the Choreography of Syed Sallauddin Pasha

Amidst society’s segregation of the people among minorities on the basis of gender, race, caste and creed, it is difficult to locate the position of another extreme social minority, i.e. persons with disabilities. But the turn of the century has validated some art and activism performed by persons with disabilities due to which the disabled have marked their position in literature, film and media to some extent, yet they have not secured a position of dignity in the mainstream. To make disabled people visible, Syed Sallauddin Pasha (the father of Indian dance therapy for persons with disabilities) initiates his own Natya Shastra i.e. Classical Wheelchair Dances for differently-abled artists. Drawing upon Syed Sallauddin Pasha’s therapeutic dance choreography, the present paper studies performance arts in the context of differently-abled people, and for this, the paper explores the intersection of Performance Studies and Disability Studies. In performing arts (or dance in particular), the body is the medium of representation, likewise, the body defines the identity in the context of disabled people. Therefore, the paper by studying the intersection of Disability Studies and Performance Studies, explores the stereotypes related to the body by scrutinising the disabled dance bodies on the stage. The paper further attempts to explore the idea of accessibility for persons with disabilities by taking into account the assistive devices and accessible architecture. The study then goes into an analysis of spectators’ response, stare and gaze towards disability dance performances. In a broader context, the paper offers to scrutinise the negative stereotypes attached to disability and disabled dancing bodies on stage by exploring the nuances in Syed Sallauddin Pasha’s choreography.

How is art political? The political construction in the discourse of art activism in Hong Kong

With the radicalization of activism in Hong Kong in the past decade, it has become increasingly common for artists to engage in the political situation through their creative work; the discussion of art and activism has also become popular and the term ‘art activism’ is usually used to describe such practices, referring it with a new political imagination of art. This article takes the discussion of such practices through the concept of art activism as a complex dynamic of discursive practice. It reflects the ways in which politics are constructed through the discourse of art activism, and how such a concept contributes to its political dynamics in social movements. This article attempts to analyse the changing trajectory of the discourse of art activism and to explore how different actors discuss its confrontational relationship in different contexts. Hence, what kind of politics does this concept refer to? This article suggests that the discourse of art activism has been influenced by the theory of New Social Movements in the West, in which the construction of collective emotions and identities are emphasized. It has become a key element in the political composition of art activism, and provided a new impetus to the dynamics of social movement, but at the same time imposed certain limitations later on. This article takes such a review as an attempt to outline the political construction of the discourse of art activism in Hong Kong, tracing its dynamics and changing trajectories, hence the heterogeneous elements in the discourse of art activism that may provide an alternative perspective in deconstructing its boundaries.

Fracturing the Historical Continuity on Truth: Jotiba Phule in the Quest for Personhood of Shudras

Anti-caste traditions in India work to understand and examine the idea of personhood which the majority in India is deprived of by virtue of being born in the lower rungs of the caste hierarchy. This paper examines the historical continuity in Brahminism and the rupture Jotiba Phule presents to it through his art and activism which serves to disturb the regular flow of singular continuity of what is perceived as history and historiography. Jotiba’s quest is for finding the essence / personhood of, what Butler calls, a ‘precarious subject’ and recognizing that precarious subject – the Shudra, as a subject of history. But the personhood of this precarious subject is never a complete personhood. Therefore, Jotiba attempts to unveil the path towards achieving complete personhood which is embedded in reaffirming the lost or concealed truth – by discontinuing the historical flow of the social structure of caste and establishing a new subject rising out of crisis in social structure in history. I have chosen two works from Jotiba’s works as new methodological tools for history writing and historical criticism, and made hermeneutical and phenomenological readings of the both. The works are his poem Kulambin (a peasant woman), and the Satyashodhak (truth-seeker) marriage as the public performance of protest- as they are both - the essential and the mundane to his life, which exemplifies the truth Jotiba followed and established an organization Satyashodhak Samaj (Society of Truth Seekers) as a testament to it.

Strategies for Combating Erasure and Silencing

Curated by Yelaine Rodriguez and edited by Tatiana Flores, this Dialogues stages a series of conversations around Afro-Latinx art through interventions by Afro-Latina cultural producers. Black Latinxs often feel excluded both from the framework of latinidad as well as from the designation “African American.” The essays address blackness in a US Latinx context, through discussion of curatorial approaches, biographical reflections, art historical inquiry, artistic projects, and museum-based activism. Recent conversations around Latinxs and Black Lives Matter reveal that in the popular imaginary, Latinx presupposes a Brown identity. In their contributions to “Afro-Latinx Art and Activism,” the authors argue for a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of Latinx that does not reproduce the racial attitudes of the Lusophone and Hispanophone countries of Latin America, nor the black-white binary of the United States. They look forward to a time when the terms Afro or Black might cease to be necessary qualifiers of Latinx.

What Does Archipelagic Thought Offer toward the Understanding of Latinx Identity?

Curated by Yelaine Rodriguez and edited by Tatiana Flores, this Dialogues stages a series of conversations around Afro-Latinx art through interventions by Afro-Latina cultural producers. Black Latinxs often feel excluded both from the framework of latinidad as well as from the designation “African American.” The essays address blackness in a US Latinx context, through discussion of curatorial approaches, biographical reflections, art historical inquiry, artistic projects, and museum-based activism. Recent conversations around Latinxs and Black Lives Matter reveal that in the popular imaginary, Latinx presupposes a Brown identity. In their contributions to “Afro-Latinx Art and Activism,” the authors argue for a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of Latinx that does not reproduce the racial attitudes of the Lusophone and Hispanophone countries of Latin America, nor the black-white binary of the United States. They look forward to a time when the terms Afro or Black might cease to be necessary qualifiers of Latinx.