"The cultural capital of postmigrants is enormous"

Lizzie Stewart argues here for a step back from more celebratory discussions of the term 'postmigration' as lens and for critical attention to its role as label. She brings critical perspectives on the 'brand value' of postcolonialism, and on »the rationalizing/racializing logic of capital« (Saha 2018) in the cultural industries, into conversation with a detailed discussion of branding and formatting practices at three theatres in Germany: Ballhaus Naunynstraße; Gorki; Schauspiel Cologne. Entanglements of artist activism with production of culture in a capitalist context provide important lessons and models for the developing usage of the term postmigration in the academic sphere.

Dilip Kumar: An Auteur Actor

Dilip Kumar has been praised for his sublime dialog delivery, for his restrained gestures, and for his measured and controlled underplay of emotions in tragic stories as well as in light-hearted comedies. His debut in 1944 with Jwar Bhata (Ebb and Tide) met with less-than-flattering reviews. So did the next three films until his 1948 film, Jugnu (Firefly), which brought him recognition and success. Unlike his contemporaries such as Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand, who propelled their careers by launching their own production companies, Dilip Kumar relied on his talent, his unique approach to characterization, and his immersion in the projects he undertook. In the course of his career that spanned six decades, Kumar made only 62 films. However, his work is a textbook for other actors that followed. Not only did he bring respectability to a profession that had been shunned by the upper classes in India as a profession for “pimps and prostitutes,” but he also elevated film-acting and filmmaking to an academic discipline, making him worthy of the title ‘Professor Emeritus of Acting’. Rooted in the theoretical framework of Howard S. Becker’s work on the “production of culture” and “doing things together,” this paper discusses Kumar’s approach to acting, character development, and the level of his involvement and commitment to each of his projects. The author of this article argues that more than the creative control as a producer or a director, it is the artistic involvement and commitment of the main actors that shape great works of art in cinema. Dilip Kumar demonstrated it repeatedly.

A critical (and interdisciplinary) survey of popular music genre theories

Genres are among the most discussed topics in popular music studies. The attempt to explain issues as complex and layered as how musical genres are born, how they work and what they ontologically are cannot avoid opening a box full of theoretical problems, questions and tools that need to be understood and used in order to say something significant on genre today. Despite the long story of this theoretical debate (roots of which can be traced back to ancient Greece) and the variety of disciplines involved (e.g. literature, music and film studies, but also philosophy, sociology, cultural studies and semiotics), it is difficult to find survey papers that can give an overview of such a rich research environment. This paper attempts to fill that void by trying to systematize the main (contemporary) perspectives on musical genre, in particular non-essentialist theories coming from the overlapping fields of musicology and sociology. Most importantly, its overview stresses the necessity of an interdisciplinary study of musical genre, which – as an exemplum of extraordinarily layered phenomenon of the human production of culture – intertwines technical, social, discursive, commercial, historical and other elements, thus requiring an approach capable of accounting for as much of its many layers of meaning as possible.

Introduction

In this introductory chapter to Between Connection and Contention, Sanchez Summerer and Zananiri lay out the genesis of the project, an overview of issues related to the study of cultural diplomacy in relation to Christian Palestinians during the British Mandate and review various theoretical approaches to field. They establish the conceptual grounding of this interdisciplinary volume, which engages with methodologies from history, cultural studies and international relations. They layout how this volume approaches and reconceptualises the agency of the different actors involved as central to both the production of culture and its operationalisation through cultural diplomacy.

Cellulases of basidiomycetes for the development of cellulose bioconversion technologies

Basidiomycetes cultures were screened for the ability to actively express the cellulases complex. Nutrient media with various forms of sugars were used. From 22 cultures of macromycetes (14 species), a group of six cultures with high level activities of extracellular (Il-11 I. lacteus – 70 IU, Fvv F. velutipes – 78 IU, Pe-1 P. eryngii – 87 IU, Ps-1 L. sulphureus – 83 IU, Mg M. giganteus – 74 IU) and intracellular (Sc-51 S. commune – 102 IU) cellulase complex was selected. Cultures of the species exhibit notable differences in the expression of enzymes, which indicates a significant influence of genetic factors on the process of producer selection. Endo-1,4-β-D-glucanases isozymes for most fungi had a molecular weight of 55 kDa and above, except for S. commune, which had more variability of conformation and weight 12–55 kDa. The culture of Il-11 I. lacteus on media with Avicel and filter paper had the highest activity, its endo- and exo-1,4-β-D-glucanases activities ranged 37–39 IU/mL and 18–20 IU/ mL, respectively. The culture of S. commune Sc-51 is able to accumulate a significant amount of intracellular cellulases, but the production of culture fluid with high viscosity complicates technological manipulations and increases processing time. The obtained data allowed us to isolate an Il-11 I. lacteus culture with stable expression and high activity of the cellulases complex at different carbon sources.

Labor, classification and productions of culture on Netflix

PurposeThis paper examines promotional practices Netflix employs via Twitter and its automated recommendation system in order to deepen our understanding of how streaming services contribute to sociotechnical inequities under capitalism.Design/methodology/approachTweets from two Netflix Twitter accounts as well as material features of Netflix's recommendation system were qualitatively analyzed using inductive analysis and the constant comparative method in order to explore dimensions of Netflix's promotional practices.FindingsTwitter accounts and the recommendation system profit off people's labor to promote content, and such labor allows Netflix to create and refine classification practices wherein both people and content are categorized in inequitable ways. Labor and classification feed into Netflix's production of culture via appropriation on Twitter and algorithmic decision-making within both the recommendation system and broader AI-driven production practices.Social implicationsAssemblages that include algorithmic recommendation systems are imbued with structural inequities and therefore unable to be fixed by merely diversifying cultural industries or retooling algorithms on streaming platforms. It is necessary to understand systemic injustices within these systems so that we may imagine and enact just alternatives.Originality/valueFindings demonstrate that via surveillance tactics that exploit people's labor for promotional gains, enforce normative classification schemes, and culminate in normative cultural productions, Netflix engenders practices that regulate bodies and culture in ways that exemplify interconnections between people, machines, and social institutions. These interconnections further reflect and result in material inequities that crystalize within sociotechnical processes.

Editorial. AI, Arts & Design: Questioning Learning Machines

Explorations of the relationship between Artificial Intelligence (AI), the arts, and design have existed throughout the historical development of AI. We are currently witnessing exponential growth in the application of Machine Learning (ML) and AI in all domains of art (visual, sonic, performing, spatial, transmedia, audiovisual, and narrative) in parallel with activity in the field that is so rapid that publication can not keep pace. In dialogue with our contemplation about this development in the arts, authors in this issue answer with questions of their own. Through questioning authorship and ethics, autonomy and automation, exploring the contribution of art to AI, algorithmic bias, control structures, machine intelligence in public art, formalization of aesthetics, the production of culture, socio-technical dimensions, relationships to games and aesthetics, and democratization of machine-based creative tools the contributors provide a multifaceted view into crucial dimensions of the present and future of creative AI. In this Artnodes special issue, we pose the question: Does generative and machine creativity in the arts and design represent an evolution of “artistic intelligence,” or is it a metamorphosis of creative practice yielding fundamentally distinct forms and modes of authorship?

Cultural production and platform mediation: A case in music crowdfunding

Although a great amount of research has been concerned with the growing relevance of crowdfunding for cultural productions, it is still little investigated how the actual functioning of crowdfunding platforms can affect both the way of conceiving and doing crowdfunding and the financing opportunities and performances of different projects. The article illustrates how this occurs in the case of an Italian crowdfunding platform, through activities of project classification and evaluation and campaign consulting it carries out, which are not visible from the outside. It also points out how these activities are shaped through the constant search for a balance between meritocratic principles and company sustainability. Opening what is usually treated as an organizational black box, the article provides an original contribution that enriches the understanding of the ways in which crowdfunding platforms can influence the production of culture as well as the subjectivities characterized by the neoliberal ethos of self-management and self-entrepreneurship.

Expanding the Field of Constraint: Novelization as an Example of Multiply Constrained Writing

This essay deals with the question of the multiple constraints that determine the production of highly commercialized literature, namely, novelization. As a literary genre, novelization is easy to defi ne: it is the novelistic adaptation of an original fi lm or, more specifi cally, of the screenplay of this fi lm. As a cultural practice, however, novelization is hardly known, given its lack of prestige, hence its near-absence in the scholarly fi eld (novelizations seem so „bad” that nobody thinks they deserve any serious interest). In cultural and institutional terms, novelizations are blatant examples of commercial literature, that is, literature not written at the initiative of an idividual author eager to give a personal form to certain ideas or feelings but ordered by a publisher to fulfi ll certain commercial needs. Despite all the prejudices against the genre, however, novelization is a fascinating literary practice which can fruitfully be studied via the notion of constraint. At the same time, the notion of constraint can be usefully enriched by the example of novelization, which brings to the fore aspects that are less clearly seen when one focuses on high or elite literature. The essay presents, fi rst, some aspects of the genre, which is less simple or homogeneous than it may appear. Second, it discusses a seminal article that has opened the mainly form-oriented domain of constrained writing to the broader fi eld of cultural and institutional constraints: R.A. Peterson’s „Five Constraints on the Production of Culture: Law, Technology, Market, Organizational Structure, and Occupational Careers” (1982). Third, the essay offers a comparative analysis of the novelization genre in various cultural environments, reusing Peterson’s set of institutional and cultural constraints. The case study of novelization demonstrates that constrained writing is not simply a matter of obeying internal formal constraints, as is generally believed, but also of following external, institutional constraints: the latter are less known due to the fact that the most often cited and studied examples of constrained writing belong to literary genres or domains where these external constraints are less directly felt.