Paper short abstract:

The paper examines digital video, social media, and online networks as modes of collective memory, mourning, and cultural resistance, in relation to contemporary events of racial violence and death such as the Grenfell tower fire and the killing of George Floyd. What forms of techno-utopia are emerging to counter the dominant media spectacle of this ‘necropolitical violence’ circulating in public networks?

Paper long abstract:

The tragic (media) events such as the Grenfell tower fire and the killing of African-Americans by the police are symptoms of the failings of the state, neoliberal violence, and the contemporary crisis of racial (network) capitalism. Alternative digital media and communication networks are engendering forms of social organising, everyday multiculture, and collective mourning and remembrance of the dead - from real-time, viral videos of live coverage of protests, mobile phone street photographs, to online music videos of remembrance? To what extent are these mutating archives of digital fragments creating autonomous black/brown sociality and historical memory countering the amnesia of the racial state and corporate media? The paper considers how these digital ‘(infra)structures of feeling’ invent forms of ‘concrete utopias’, radically reimagining the temporality and spatiality of urban life and social resistance. Can digital everyday life offer forms of utopian ‘techno-poesis’ in times of tragedy and pessimism?

Paper short abstract:

I explore how visual representations of Black brilliance and key moments of protest have been used creatively for grassroots fundraising on platforms such as Youtube and Instagram by Black Lives Matter members, who are not ordinarily affluent, and how this can subvert conventional power relations.

Paper long abstract:

Black Lives Matter is a very visually orientated movement, and its fundraising is no different. Lino prints of Bristol's Colston statue being pulled over were advertised on Instagram stories for a couple of pounds, and the earnings donated to Black Lives Matter. By taking advantage of YouTube's advert revenue system, many supporters of the movement uploaded videos designed to be shared and played repeatedly, including, or rather especially, the adverts, in order to earn money which was then donated to foundations and campaigns related to Black Lives Matter. The content of the videos varies widely, but the most popular one (with over ten million views at the time of writing) is 'an art exposition'; a compilation of Black art such as poetry and music, all with the names of the artists and links to their websites and social media. This is a conversion of various themes of the movement- celebrating Black brilliance, directing people (and their spending) to Black creators, and an original, grassroots approach to campaigning. Celebrating Black brilliance subverts dominant, often negative, depictions of Black people and culture in audio-visual media. Anticapitalist or not, encouraging people to spend their money at Black owned businesses and directing fiscal resources towards Black people is an important way to grow Black power. Finally, such fundraising strategies make sense in a world where racism is intrinsically linked to capitalism, and where many supporters do not have much (if any) disposable income.

Paper short abstract:

Using ‘Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock' this paper explores the influence of racialised truths and the value of self-representation by indigenous communities in the context of a hegemonic western corporate-influenced comparative perspective. I look at how film can be a platform for marginalised communities to resist powerful global actors

Paper long abstract:

‘Something that I’d seen was lacking, was filming from an indigenous perspective, and our story wasn’t being told correctly’ (Awake: A dream from Standing Rock, 2017). The values of objectivity and truth within ethnographic filmmaking are a reflection of power structures that are historically embedded and are only challenged when subjects have sovereignty over the filmmaking process. Awake is an indigenous-made film that demonstrates an alternative approach to ethnographic filmmaking through self-representation, subject sovereignty and activism. Critically examining the normalisation of ‘racialised truths’ gives context to indigenous media offering a better understanding of their lives. At the time of conception, race was a relation of difference through which power was expressed, a social construction that assumed whiteness as the norm and other races as deviation. Leaving behind western constructs can lead to a more in-depth understanding of other cultures, as it means theircultural realities can be represented without the forced truth, and false dichotomy of ‘western’ and ‘deviation’. Awake circumvents the checklist of western comparative perspectives and presents indigenous communities as they see themselves. The filmmakers and subjects of Awake use the platform of the film to give context to, and mitigate negative corporate-influenced and institutionalised media bias. The media and powerful actors supporting the Dakota Access Pipeline were misrepresenting the indigenous community and manipulating peaceful actions using corporate-backed counterinsurgency - techniques that are becoming widespread to diminish resistances across the world.

Paper short abstract:

Progress is a new project curated by Jeffrey Lennon to establish a platform for the curation of an international programme of work that interprets culture and heritage through artbased interventions inviting reflections on race, politics, gender, social commentary, and history.

Paper long abstract:

Progress

Jeffrey Lennon, African Street Style, London

This initiative produces a programme of sensitive, considered and new material, reflecting and contextualizing the challenges and preoccupations of both displeasure and resilience that the diaspora have been facing on their journey outside the African continent.The project is set within two phases, covering the activities of 1968, and 2020.

Working alongside Decolonising the Archive and Imigongo Films, and supported by British Council and Arts Council England, ‘Progress(1968)’ established a multi-faceted platform, using this period as its reference point to commission artists, academics, and interview members of the public to create new art interventions which reflect the examination of a time period of considerable social and political significance for the African diaspora. We collated views and experiences from this time of social unrest in the cities of London; Kingston, Paris, Rio as well as the Biafra region and Guinea Bissau.

This first phase of the project was launched in London (Brixton), October 2019, as an immersive public arts installation.

Progress2020 continues the programme, aiming to capture the current experience, with specific examinations of duality, gender, as well as assessments of the ongoing legacy of colonialism. We are working with associates and artists in the cities of Bremen, Kingston, Maputo, and Bologna, responding to our intention of assessing experiences within both capital and smaller cities, to capture the various experiences encountered by a global diaspora

Paper short abstract:

This presentation explores ‘catalytic signifiers’ through the cultural politics of black diasporic and popular music as it transitions from the 1970s and 1980s reggae dancehall, through 1990s pirate radio and 2000s YouTube music videos through the notion of “sonic intimacy.”

Paper long abstract:

This presentation explores ‘catalytic signifiers’ through sound, specifically the cultural politics of black diasporic and popular music as it transitions from the 1970s and 1980s reggae dancehall, through 1990s pirate radio and 2000s YouTube music videos. To do this it develops the notion of “sonic intimacy,” which refers to the ways in which sound conveys notions of presence, relation and shared understanding at odds with the visual and rational regimes of racial capitalism.

The sonic intimacies of the reggae sound system were important. The presence of people in the dancehall, shared understandings of racial and class oppression, the penetration of bass through the collective body, combined with the wisdom of reggae, produced a demand that exceeded the imagination of the racist state at that moment.

But what happened to those sonic intimacies and cultural politics as musics, tastes and sound technologies changed emphasis? While the intimacies of sound cultures – the atmospheres, feelings, vibes, hypes, and energies – are widely known and discussed, they are not often the focus of analysis, and this is not inconsequential for our understanding of alternative cultural politics today.

Moving sonic intimacies from the margins to the center of debate, this presentation will address: (i) what happened to the demand of the reggae sound system as it is transformed into the fractured fervour of jungle pirate radio in the 1990s, and then into the hyperlinked screen intensities and immediacies of grime YouTube music videos from 2010, and (ii) why hearing sonic intimacy as alternative cultural politics matters today.