Contribution short abstract:

Traditional place-lore studies often focus on folklore genres and styles, overlooking human relationship with place. This paper adopts a phenomenological approach to explore “story-places” as key parts of human experience, emphasizing joy and happiness in Lithuanian belief narratives.

Contribution long abstract:

The traditional approach to place-lore studies often treats places as mere containers for the folk legends. While folklorists' engagement with place-lore is directly concerned with the notion of place, the emphasis is typically on the folklore itself—its genre, style, and nuances. A natural place (a hill, a stone, or a river) becomes a focal point in the landscape to which the narrative is “attached”. Meanwhile, the relationship between the human being and the place itself is often overlooked.

In this paper, I employ a phenomenological approach to examine the concept of story-places. They are an integral part of the lifeworld, forming an inseparable component of everyday human experience. The emotional response, whether positive or negative, is an integral aspect of how this relationship between an individual and a place is expressed.

This paper will examine the role of joy and happiness as integral aspects of our relationship with place, as evidenced in folk legends, belief narratives, and personal memories. This approach is based on phenomenological thinking, which is oriented towards experience. I will present a number of examples from Lithuanian belief narratives and place-lore, as well as cases from other countries, which demonstrate how the overwhelming quality of a place often associates it with the joy of being in a place, or even only thinking about it. And what features or qualities of the specific place raises this joy in a first place.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper will examine the impact of revitalizing traditional culture that was made by the Latvian folklore ensemble ''Mičotāji'' during their world tour in Latvian culture centres in the 1970s

Contribution long abstract:

In the 1970s, while Latvia was under Soviet occupation, one of the most essential Latvian culture centres in exile - Münster Latvian Gymnasium (MLG) started to lack finances and students. One of the initiatives for fundraising became an outstanding example of folklore revitalization. It was ''Mičotāji'' (''The Cappers''), a folklore ensemble formed by the gymnasium's students who developed a performance based on traditional Latvian wedding rituals and music. It gained outstanding popularity, and the group was invited to perform in various Latvian centres in Europe, USA, Canada and Australia. It did not only help to raise the funds necessary for the MLG to continue its work but also created interest in the younger generation in folklore. According to interviews with the participants and spectators of the performances, it left a positive impact on learning traditional music and even implementing Latvian rituals in their weddings. ''Mičotāji'' also strengthen the international network of Latvians in the Western world.

Along with examining the impact the ensemble ''Mičotāji'' made on the Latvian youth in the 1970s, developing a broader interest in folklore as an engaging activity, in this paper, the author will analyze what Western exile folklorists have written about wedding rituals during the Soviet occupation and discover the sources used in the creation of the ''Mičotāji'' ensemble's production.

Contribution short abstract:

This presentation explores the oral transmission of local customs and dance practices, the impact of written communication, and the affective dimension of how a centuries-old folkloric practice shapes a "future of joy" in a small contemporary European village.

Contribution long abstract:

In 1998, at the beginning of my academic career, I visited a village in Western Bohemia where, according to one of my students, the circular dance known as the Kolo was still preserved during various celebrations, particularly those connected with the archaic lunar calendar. Since then, I have visited the village, named Postřekov, almost every year. During the Carnival festival, which is celebrated over five days, the world of this small community transforms into a Dionysian whirlpool. The circular dance represents a moment when the small community becomes a small engine that, at least to the ethnographer, inevitably recalls the cycle of eternal return.

In our presentation, we will focus primarily on the oral transmission of local customs and dance practices and the potential influences of written forms of communication on them. Another aspect will be the theme of the panel, namely the affective dimension, exploring how, through a centuries-old folkloric practice, it is still possible today in Europe to construct, or perhaps not construct, a "future of joy."

Contribution short abstract:

This paper explores possibilities of unwriting the triviality barrier by examining the negativity bias to ‘seriousness’ in the academic humanities before turning to the ambivalence of digital culture to consider Camp as a tool that may extend to offline contexts for analyzing affect and joy.

Contribution long abstract:

While folklorists have long understood what Brian Sutton-Smith named the “triviality barrier” facing our discipline, scholarship in conversation with this limit tends to focus on it as something to overcome by demonstrating some underlying nontriviality in our work. We know our work is not trivial, so this paper explores the possibilities of, instead of continually rewriting the importance of our work, unwriting the broader notions of triviality that have erected this barrier in the first place.

As an ongoing consequence of early academic adherence to objectivity as elision of self, scholarship is valued in relation to its perceived ‘seriousness,’ a quality to which joy and affectivity are made anathema (a consequence of the extant structures of power to which humanity is anathema). And yet, drawing on negativity bias, a bias widely attested in psychological research, ‘seriousness’ in the humanities may be inherently affective in its tendency towards the dark, depressing, and damning underlying its subject matter and/or conclusions. Although a truly apathetic ‘seriousness’ lacks emotional data, a ‘seriousness’ that centers analytical negativity overlooks critical swathes of emotional data.

By way of example, this paper turns to digital folklore and its ambivalence to consider both the importance of affect and tools for analyzing it. Where joy and humour are as pervasive as, and often coterminous with, hatred and vitriol, affect is central to communication, and ambiguity abounds, concepts like Camp and its ‘serious unseriousness’ may support a critical framework to begin to counter our institutional aversions to joy.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper provides an example of how middle-aged women rediscover and express emotions in digital media, mainly sexual desire but also the joy they feel among like-minded women of the same age. I describe how a happy object align women in a social community toward happiness.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper provides an example of how middle-aged women rediscover and express emotions in digital media, mainly sexual desire but also the joy they feel among like-minded women of the same age. The ethnographic case is a community of European and North American women aged around 40 to 60 years who sexually desire 20-year-old TikTok celebrity William White. White went viral when he began lip-syncing to 1980s hits, particularly Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” while performing his flirtatious signature moves: the smile, the wink, and the eye roll. This study is based on 6 months of daily lurking in a digital community the women call Whiteyynation, structured around White’s accounts on various digital platforms. In trying to understand the meaning of a young male TikTok’er in the lives of middle-aged women, with Sara Ahmed’s theory of emotions, I describe how happy objects align individuals in a social community toward happiness. Specifically, I analyze how White, through a playful capitalization of 1980s music combined with a certain flirtatious look, functions as a happy object that is multiplied, magnified, and circulated in Whiteyynation. I explore the circumstances and conditions surrounding Whiteyynation as an affective space and affective economy, such as the production and distribution of selfproduced content, gifting as a strategy for increased reciprocity, and the various currencies at play.

Contribution short abstract:

Swiss folk music has traditionally been deeply entrenched within a particular mode of sociality. This paper explores how attending to affective qualities shifts how we think about participation, genre, and the parameters of folk practices, and raises questions about their sociopolitical complexity.

Contribution long abstract:

Swiss folk music has traditionally been deeply entrenched within a particular mode of sociality. Learned socially and collaboratively, and locally embedded in place, there is a strong affective and atmospheric dimension to the practice, in which performer and perceiver are often one and the same. Events foster a sense of comfort, familiarity, enjoyment, and “gemütlichkeit”, and beyond simply being a pleasant addition to the practice, these qualities also facilitate it, becoming an integral characteristic of the genre. One participant identified this succinctly when asked what made a good folk musician: “joy”.

This aspect, eluding easy categorization, poses a challenge for a topic that frequently finds itself at ideological crossroads. Historically, Swiss folk practices have been a site of intense nationalization and politicization, while today, contemporary musicians often distance themselves from these narratives and focus on creative practice, technical skill, and formal training. However, attempts to replicate the underlying affect of traditional settings take on great importance even in new pedagogical environments.

I explore how, despite their intangibility and indeterminacy, affective and experiential attributes are in fact critical to the existence of the tradition and its ongoing maintenance and reproduction, requiring an analytical framework that accounts for their significance outside of discursive contexts. This paper grapples with how attending to affective qualities such as joy shifts how we think about participation, genre, and the parameters of folk practices, while also acknowledging that positive affective experiences are contingent on further factors—such as belonging—which remain inextricable from their sociopolitical significance.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper uses the example of Swiss popular music practices in Switzerland and in South Korea to reflect on affective dimensions such as joy and other positive feelings associated with folklore practices in different cultural contexts.

Contribution long abstract:

Swiss folklore, more precisely yodeling, was brought to Korea at the end of the 1960s by a Korean who had returned from Switzerland. Shortly after his return, the enthusiastic yodeler founded the first yodeling clubs in Korea. He wanted to pass on the joy of traditional Swiss singing.

In light of this historical context, it is observed that the practice of yodeling and Swiss folklore persists in South Korea to the present day. It is noteworthy, however, that the Korean adaptation of these musical traditions differs in several ways from their Swiss "original form." In Switzerland, yodeling and traditional Swiss music are frequently performed with an emphasis on upholding traditional norms and values. In contrast, yodeling is practiced in South Korea out of various motivations. One significant reason for practicing this musical genre on the Korean peninsula is the joy of exploring and experiencing this music, the feelings as well as concepts associated with it.

This paper employs Swiss popular music as an illustrative case study to reflect on the ways in which the practice of intangible cultural heritage, for instance traditional music, may be subject to variation across different levels or reinterpretation in disparate cultural contexts.

Contribution short abstract:

In this presentation, I reflect on Doom Metal and their affective/sensitive world, taking as a starting point my (auto)ethnographic research on the 2023 and 2024 editions of the Doom Over Vienna festival.

Contribution long abstract:

Doom metal is a sub-genre of extreme metal that has been sonically characterised by its low-pitched tones, moaning vocals, and often extreme slowness, which are in dialogue with aesthetic concepts such as depression, melancholy, suffering, hopelessness, monotony, isolation, and solitude. Alongside this, researchers also point out the persistence of ideas such as mysticism, romanticism, beauty, contemplation, spiritual connection, calm, completeness, and joy. This alleged paradox actually constitutes an important part of the internal dialectic of Doom Metal both in its productive and receptive moments. In this sense, Selim Yavuz underlines the tension between the surface emotions in Doom Metal and these emotions’ reflections on the fans and how dissonant expressions like "delightfully depressing" actually collaborate in the social construction of Doom Metal as a music world.

In this presentation, I propose reflecting on Doom Metal and their affective/sensitive world, taking as a starting point my (auto)ethnographic research on the 2023 and 2024 editions of the Doom Over Vienna festival. My focus is then the concepts, interpretations, subjetivities, experiences, motivations, and behaviours around Doom Metal observed and analysed in my fieldwork. In this case, I use autoethnography as a first step to access the "aesthesic" and receptive dimensions of Doom Metal and analyse my experiences in the field. As a hypothesis, I propose that the experience of Doom Metal serves as an alternative way of engaging with the own affective world through music, as an aesthetic delimitation against the world, and also as a non-normative form for understanding and experiencing temporality.

Contribution short abstract:

When people keep coming back to the same music festival without knowing which bands will attend, it means the festival has a post-consumerist value to them; a ritual; a place of belonging; a sense of community. At Roadburn Festival this is combined with the joy of doom and heavy music.

Contribution long abstract:

In the pilot practice-based research project "Archiving Heaviness; Collecting and Curating the Roadburn Festival with its Community" I am engaging as a long-time attendee and a researcher in order to understand if/how this group of people, its organisation, and its recurrence enact transformative values through attending and connecting with music.

Because organizing the next edition(s) always takes precedence for festival organizers, they do not seem to get around to collecting, valuing, researching and/or presenting who or what they actually are. Roadburn festival is a community-aware event. For the last 26 years it has built a community which – through the interfaces and platforms provided by the organization before, during and after the event – is quite self-aware and inquisitive into its own nature. The festival has emerged from a celebration of the heavy psychedelic rock and metal, through subgenres as industrial, stoner, doom, sludge and post-metal, into a much wider boundary spanning curation of music which is presented and perceived as heavy. Alongside this musical curation, the festival has also fostered inclusion, friendship and community values. It has connected these in recent editions through the prism of ‘redefining heaviness’. Its artistic curatorship is known for creating unique spaces for exploration and experiment. The tones and frequencies may have changes, but the community keeps coming back. What drives this loyalty to the unknown? To what extent does the role of the cathartic experience of heaviness form the red thread?

Contribution short abstract:

This presentation interrogates queer joy as a type of folklore, crafted with intention and articulated in vernacular terms. The inherent rebellion of queer joy reveals how pleasure is a form of social critique, demarcating how bodies are disciplined into alignment with normative social expectations.

Contribution long abstract:

In The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Sara Ahmed describes how the Other—including the queer Other—is constructed by mainstream imaginaries as possessing outsized suffering, joy, or both. Neoliberal social contexts discipline bodies by presenting pleasure to be acceptable only as a reward for re/productivity and good conduct, foreclosing the potential for queer joy by virtue of queer lives being neither “good” nor reproductive. And yet queer joy exists, taunting normativity with the potential for its unwriting. This presentation interrogates queer joy as a type of folklore, crafted with intention and articulated in vernacular terms. And because queer joy grows from the rejection of normative social expectations, it challenges the idea that an analytical approach foregrounding the affective diverges from more conventional “hard" theoretical lenses; rather, it imbues those approaches with new perspective. As Ahmed points out in her article “Happy Objects”: “To be affected by something is to evaluate that thing. Evaluations are expressed in how bodies turn toward things. To give value to things is to shape what is near us. […] Happiness is an orientation toward the objects we come into contact with.” When a folk practice inspires joy, it prompts us to query how our bodies—literal or metaphorical—have oriented toward the source of that joy, and what they have, in that same movement, turned away from. The inherent rebellion of queer joy reveals how happiness and pleasure are agents of social critique.