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- Convenors:
-
István Povedák
(Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design)
Daniel Wojcik (University of Oregon)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Performativity and ritual
- Location:
- G23
- Sessions:
- Saturday 10 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Prague
Short Abstract:
Contemporary crises on a global scale have exponentially increased a widespread sense of uncertainty and existential anxiety in the world today. This panel theme explores how vernacular artistic expression has been used as a way to address current problems and confront personal and societal trauma.
Long Abstract:
The political, economic, ecological, and cultural processes of the recent past, combined with pandemics and armed conflicts, have dramatically increased the sense of crisis and trauma in contemporary societies. In response to these processes, growing attention has focused on making people aware of the risks and uncertainties of everyday life. However, the role of vernacular creativity (art-making, music-making, body adornment, street art, foodways, dance and performance, craftwork, etc.) has received relatively little attention in this regard.
Even within the fields of Ethnology, Folkloristics, and adjoining disciplines, the study of vernacular creativity as a coping mechanism for uncertainties and crises in life has remained largely on the margins of academic inquiry, with only a few pioneers in the field investigating the ways in which such artistry attends to individual and societal dilemmas. In this panel we welcome papers that address the following questions, among others, in regard to vernacular artistic expression, with a particular focus on material culture, music, and dance:
Who were the initial artists in a given region/ethnic enclave that began to use artistic creativity to deal with crises and the uncertainties of everyday life?
What were the initiatory factors and motivations behind their artistic presence and performance?
How do vernacular artists express personal and broader societal traumatic events, including inequalities, violence, war and refugee experiences, discrimination, injustice, etc.?
How do artists from marginalized or displaced groups draw upon tradition and cultural heritage as a way of coping with uncertainties today?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 10 June, 2023, -Daniel Wojcik (University of Oregon)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation interrogates the problematic concept of the "outsider artist" and illustrates how specific individuals labelled “outsiders” in fact have drawn upon vernacular traditions and cultural heritage to confront adversity, address societal crises, and offer solace to others.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation, illustrated with visual examples, explores the artistic activities of individuals labeled "outsider artists" who have created things in response to traumatic events and the uncertainties of everyday life. I interrogate the problematic concept of “outsider art”--generally defined as "raw art" made by people who have no formal artistic training and whose work is "untainted" by the culture of the academy, and somehow is disconnected from a community and the broader culture. I illustrate how specific individuals labelled "outsiders" in fact have drawn upon vernacular traditions and cultural heritage in the art-making process, but the broader cultural contexts of their work often has been ignored by the dealers, curators, and even the scholars of such art. I then focus on selected individuals who have used creativity to confront adversity and societal crises, including the war trauma, displacement, racism, violence, and societal upheaval. In some cases, these so-called outsider artists have offered solace and healing to others and their broader communities.
István Povedák (Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design)
Paper short abstract:
This paper demonstrates through the story of a Hungarian Roma painter how the cumulative disadvantage and the insecurity of existence is expressed in art. The possibilities and limitations of applied cultural research will be explored along with this individual's life and artistic expression.
Paper long abstract:
Janó Bari (1957-) is a Hungarian Romani painter. His life and living conditions reflect the situation of the majority of Roma in Hungary: born into a poor family with many children, taken away from his parents by the state during communism and placed in state care, with no qualifications, imprisoned by mistake, married, divorced, and now living in poor conditions. The uniqueness of Janó lies not in these circumstances, but in his personal character. Janó, who resembles Bob Marley, with dreadlocks and tattoos, is a self-taught artist who has painted with his long beard and hair in various performances. He was the only Roma participant in the underground art scene of the 1980s, but unlike many of the gadjo (non-Gypsy) artists, he failed to become financially rich after the fall of Socialism. One question to be explored: is he one of the many other Roma artists who have suffered a similar fate? How did he cope with his disadvantaged circumstances and ongoing discrimination through his art? To what extent do artists with similar fates stick together, or do they tend to work in isolation, resigned to their difficult situation? Where is the researcher's responsibility in this situation and how far does it extend?
Carol Silverman (University of Oregon)
Paper short abstract:
Via complex performance, Romani refugees from the 1999 Yugoslav war navigate their uncertain relationship between their former Kosovo home and their new home in Germany. Ritual celebrations reconfigure space and memory via music and dance by invigorating gendered European diasporia kinship networks.
Paper long abstract:
Via performance embedded in ritual, Romani refugees from the 1999 Yugoslav war navigate their uncertain relationship between their former Kosovo home and their new home in Germany. Family celebrations (now in banquet halls rather than homes) reconfigure space and memory via music and dance by invigorating gendered kinship networks in a European-wide diaspora where relatives travel to attend multiple day rituals. Migrants hold ambivalent meanings both about Kosovo (a mixture of nostalgia for “home,” and memories of racism, violence, revulsion, and trauma) and Germany (a mixture of safety, insecurity, intolerance, and culture shock). Many never desire to return home due to violent evictions and confiscated properties. Some display the psychological and physical effects of PTSD. After 23 years, Roma are still unwelcome and some are still being deported as “unworthy” migrants. European refugee policies have responded to precarity, the influx of new refugees, xenophobic populism, the fear of Muslims, and Kosovo being classified a “safe country.” In response to exclusion, the Romani social imaginary provides a measure of security by performatively displaying tradition as well as innovation. One Dortmund block is emerging as a center of Kosovo Romani cultural and religious life. Performative displays embedded in large celebrations creatively enact a Romani sensibility via new styles of music, dance, costume, and the revitalized Muslim religion. Embodying affective modalities via gendered rituals, migrants reaffirm their sense of belonging to a transnational community of Kosovo Roma. I trace the “intimacy of neighborhood and politics of the state” (Gray 2011) via performative modes.
Kinga Povedák (Hungarian Research Network (HUN-REN))
Paper short abstract:
This presentation examines congregational musicking as a vernacular form of religious artistic expression. I analyze congregational hymn texts and explore how this materialized form of spirituality responds to current problems and trauma on the societal and/or personal level.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I look at congregational musicking as a vernacular form of religious artistic expression. I analyze congregational hymn texts as a performative way of knowledge production. As theologian Amos Yong explains, popular hymnody often becomes an expression of what people believe and is sometimes a more reliable indicator of popular belief than credal confessions (2015, 281). Congregational song is a way of making the immaterial material, and the hymn texts are the fabric of this materiality.
This presentation examines this hitherto unexplored source and, through the analysis of selected texts, seeks to answer the question of how this materialized form of spirituality responds to current problems and trauma on the societal and/or personal level. In a diachronic analysis, I compare how religious communities react to societal transformations and locate themselves in the broader social and cultural space.
The scientific study of this particular vernacular art form is intended to raise awareness of religious musicking not only as a way to explore religious lifeworlds, but also as a means to emphasize the role of sound in methodological epistemologies. This vernacular unfolding of spirituality is an unrecognized source of inspiration that offers the opportunity to study more precisely the dimensions of spirituality and religious lifeworlds through the lyrics of congregational songs.
Lisa Gilman (George Mason University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how displaced peoples use arts in three contexts to better understand the cultural impacts of migration, the creativity and entrepreneurial initiatives of “refugees,” and what structural systems are needed to better address migrants’ well-being and cultural sustainability.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the strategic use of the arts (music, dance, visual arts, poetry, and photography) by displaced peoples in three very different contexts in order to better understand the cultural impacts of migration, the creativity and entrepreneurial initiatives of “refugees,” and what structural systems are needed to better address migrants’ well-being and cultural sustainability. It draws from my ethnographic research with Syrian migrants in Turkey, Uyghur refugees in France, and Burundian, Rwandan, and Congolese people living in the Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi. The project is centered on efforts by refugees who have landed temporarily or permanently to use arts to promote something positive within their own migrant communities or within the larger social context in which they find themselves. It thus offers counternarratives to the pervasive negative rhetoric about refugees by emphasizing strength, initiative, joy, and community, while bringing into relief the complex and very real challenges of forced migration. It also highlights that institutional support too often neglects the cultural dimensions of trauma and displacement, thereby missing a critical means of understanding the needs and potential of displaced peoples. In this short presentation, I offer one example from each country to illustrate how “vernacular artistic expression has been used as a way to address current problems and confront personal and societal trauma,” while offering a nuanced and complex perspective on the “refugee crisis” from hyper-local to global perspectives.
Filipa Ramalhete (Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa) Maria Assunção Gato (ISCTE- Instituto Universitário de Lisboa)
Paper short abstract:
Starting from a multidisciplinary participatory methodology, working with collective memories, spatial representations and wishes for the uncertain future, a collaborative public art project designed and built a sculpture, contributing to the empowerment of an ancient mining community.
Paper long abstract:
The mining village of Lousal, in the southern Portugal rural municipality of Grândola, has its origins in the 19th century. The mine was closed in 1988, causing the loss of the only local source of economic income and an identity crisis in a community mostly born and raised there, for whom the mine was the “prison” of violent and poorly paid work, but also the centre of their lives and their homes, as well as the great support base for the complex webs of social relationships and solidarity that characterized Lousal. In 1996, the Municipality of Grândola and the Fréderic Velge Foundation started a Project to revalue the mining village of Lousal, which included a museum, a restaurant and a hotel. After 25 years, the underlying dynamism of this project fell far short of the expectations of the residents and the feeling of permanent crisis and spatial injustice prevailed.
In 2018, a multidisciplinary team (fine arts, anthropology, sociology, architecture, economy) proposed the creation of a collaborative sculpture for the village. Starting from a participatory methodology which worked with collective memories, spatial representations and wishes for the uncertain future, a common ground was discussed and resulted in a proposal of a sculpture, built in 2019, after twenty months of intensive discussion and communitarian work.
The paper will present the projects’ methodological approach and discuss the role of anthropology in understanding territorial representations and practices thus contributing for the success of multidisciplinary collaborative artistic practices.
Weronika Plinska (Institute of Art and Design, University of the National Education Commission in Cracow)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I will discuss the "shimmering, synthetic appearances" (Linker 1983) created by contemporary visual artist Krzysztof Marchlak, which portray individuals belonging to the LGBTQ community in Poland.
Paper long abstract:
I will also refer to his large-scale photographic panorama entitled "Paradiso" which I will describe as a socially engaged synthetic appearance of an artificial paradise dedicated for those exiled from the kingdom of binary gender oppositions. I will argue that contemporary artistic photography can become a tool for managing community art projects created with those communities that suffer from systemic practices of delimiting their visibility in public sphere.