Dec-Issue 4 Cerebration

The December issue of Cerebration is currently online.
Issue 4, 2005 is a special issue with an interview of historian and writer,
William Dalrymple. _Cerebration_ is also accepting submissions for the
Feb-March 2006 issue.
Thank you,
Amrita Ghosh
www.cerebration.org


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Today's Topics:

   1. OPEN CALL:   LA Freewaves (experimental media art,        video,
      animation, shorts) (anne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)
   2. Re: [Urbanstudy] Re: Problematizing Definitions (anant m)
   3. Re: [Urbanstudy] Re: Problematizing Definitions
      (Prem Chandavarkar)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 15:17:40 -0800
From: "anne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <listbot@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Reader-list] OPEN CALL:   LA Freewaves (experimental media
        art,    video, animation, shorts)
To: "reader-list@xxxxxxxxxx" <reader-list@xxxxxxxxx>
Message-ID: <20051221232343.DFAC128DA17@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

OPEN CALL:   LA Freewaves (experimental media art, video, animation, shorts)

*PLEASE POST/FORWARD*


Too Much Freedom? LA Freewaves 10th Celebration of Experimental Media Arts

Postmark Deadline: February 15, 2006.

The showcase will present experimental media art from around the world at
art venues in Los Angeles in November 2006 and through the Freewaves web
site.  Media art works include experimental video and film (narrative,
documentary, art, animation, etc.), DVDs, websites, simple installations,
and video billboards. Works from the festival will also appear on public
television, cable stations and video-streamed on the Internet. Competitive
selection process will be conducted by a group of international and local
curators with diverse specialties and backgrounds. Notification of
acceptance is in July 2006. Artist payments will be $200 for selected works.

How to Enter:

* Work must be completed since January 1, 2003.
* Entries must be postmarked to Freewaves by February 15, 2006.
* Include completed entry form 
* Label entries with title, artist?s name, length, date of work and format.
* Include a resume or bio plus a one paragraph description for each work
submitted.
* For websites, indicate URL address on application form.
* For installation proposals, include additional description and
diagrams/images.
* If you are in US, include self-addressed stamped envelope for return of
work.
* There is no entry fee to submit work for consideration, however, we highly
encourage those who can afford it to become LA Freewaves members with a $25
donation.  With membership, you support our programs so that we can continue
to promote and exhibit innovative new media art during this difficult time. 

Send To:
LA Freewaves 
2151 Lake Shore Ave
Los Angeles CA USA 90039
Questions: write anne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

LA Freewaves is a nonprofit organization which survives on grants and
donations.

-------------------------------------

Open Call Entry Form
Too Much Freedom? LA Freewaves 10th Celebration of Experimental Media Arts

Please type or print clearly.

Artist Name:______________________________________________
Street Address:___________________________________________
City, State and Zip Code:____________________________________
Country:_________________________________________________
Email Address:____________________________________________
Phone Number:___________________________________________
---------------------------------------
Title of Entry 1:____________________________________________
Description/Date of Work: ___________________________________
Format/URL:______________________________________________
Running Time: ________ minutes
---------------------------------------
Title of Entry 2:____________________________________________
Description/Date of Work: ___________________________________
Format/URL:______________________________________________
Running Time: ________ minutes
---------------------------------------
Title of Entry 3:____________________________________________
Description/Date of Work: ___________________________________
Format/URL:______________________________________________
Running Time: ________ minutes
---------------------------------------
For format, indicate: -DVD -Mini DV -VHS -Website (indicate URL) -Silent
Video Billboard -Other (explain)

___Yes!  Sign me up for membership.  Here?s my $25 donation.  I want LA
Freewaves to continue to promote and exhibit innovative new media art.
___ I?m not entering the festival, but sign me up for membership. LA
Freewaves rocks!! (Indicate name, physical address and email above and send
form with your $25 check.)  Make membership check or money order payable to
LA Freewaves.

Enclose resume/bio, work description text and SASE.  For questions and
entries, contact Anne Bray at anne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or:

LA Freewaves
2151 Lake Shore Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90039 USA
(323) 664-1510

a media arts magnet

Open Call Entry Form (PDF)
<http://www.freewaves.org/opencall.pdf>



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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 13:54:48 +0000 (GMT)
From: anant m <anant_umn@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Reader-list] Re: [Urbanstudy] Re: Problematizing Definitions
To: zainab@xxxxxxxxx
Cc: reader-list@xxxxxxxxx, urbanstudygroup@xxxxxxxxx
Message-ID: <20051221135448.33739.qmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

hm. i hope i am not making an ass of myself in the
presence of a whole bunch of cultural studies folks. 
i think it is better to think of a geneology of
culture rather than define it. to my reckoning, the
first loaded use of the word culture was made by
mathew arnold.
some time in the second half of the 19th century. this
was just before the time colonial anthropologists were
seriously beginning to wonder if they had it all
worked out. for arnold, culture was high culture all
that is 'beautiful and intelligent' and he was
strongly opposed to the plebian and the ordinary. and
you must read his dismissive references to the irish!
education therefore had to be in the hands of the
cultured and not democratized. 
later on a whole range of marxist critics led by
raymond williams turned it on its head and argued that
culture is really the ordinary. this was a way of
challenging the ways in which high culture reproduces
power relations.
raymond williams and his work notwithstanding, culture
remained largely the domain of anthropologists first
the structuralists strauss and then bodley and geertz
types whose primary means of getting at culture was
via ethnography where one places oneself firmly in the
lifeworlds of those whose culture is being studied and
then withdraws to the library to reflect on the
ensembles of meanings and practices that are not one's
own. hence ideas like primitives, savages and noble
savages and then the ultimate 'thick descriptionists
and so on. 
Here is the cross that the scholar bears: she/he at
the moment of the ethnographic encounter and actually
coproduces meaning with an interlocutor but when she
or he withdraws to write about it for a diffferent
audience, she or he produces the culture of the
'other' for the consumption of scholarly kin. 
thus in your interaction with the woman whose child
you thought was being treated cruelly (at least at
firsy anyway) she and you together coproduced
meaning.but when you report it to us, the woman
remains outside of this conversation and it is her
culture versus our culture that we end up talking
about. 
well, that was an attempt at a rough and ready
geneology of culture. i have no idea what culturality
means. others please add or delete. 
anant

--- zainab@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

> I am still interested in understanding the 'general
> meaning' of the term
> culture? What constitutes culture? And what
> constitutes acts of
> culturality?
> Cheers,
> Zee
> 
> 


                
___________________________________________________________ 
Yahoo! Exclusive Xmas Game, help Santa with his celebrity party -
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------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 10:47:14 +0530
From: Prem Chandavarkar <prem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Reader-list] Re: [Urbanstudy] Re: Problematizing Definitions
To: anant m <anant_umn@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: reader-list@xxxxxxxxx, urbanstudygroup@xxxxxxxxx
Message-ID: <43AA36DA.8050303@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"; format=flowed

Let me - like Anant - stick my neck out in "the presence of a whole 
bunch of cultural studies folks".

Was just reading Gayathri Spivak's essay "Can The Subaltern Speak". 
Spivak examines philosophical production, such as Foucault, Deleuze and 
the Subaltern Studies Group, who seek to unmask the workings of power in 
order to reveal voices that are typically not heard.  While such 
analyses often start from a critique of essentialism, they tend to posit 
other essences through the construction of monolithic and anonymous 
presences such as "the workers' struggle" or "the history of the 
subaltern".  And because these essences are monolithic and anonymous, 
they involve the erasure of individual identity.  Therefore any attempts 
to speak for the subaltern eventually construct representations that 
erase their identity.  It does not matter whether this comes from the 
activist philosopher or from the organic intellectual who has risen from 
the subaltern ranks.  The organic intellectual destroys his/her status 
as a subaltern by attempting to represent the subaltern.

Spivak draws a distinction between two forms of representation.
1. Proxy - the attempt to speak for, as in politics
2. Portrait - the attempt to speak of, as in philosophy
It is important to distinguish between these two forms.  While proxy may 
appear to be more genuine since it demands engagement (speaking 'to' the 
subaltern, and not just speaking 'of'), it should be realised that the 
myths and beliefs constructed through portraiture affect the basis on 
which choices of proxy are made.

All this ties back to the point Anant made - when Zainab interacts with 
the woman and child some meaning is produced, but when she reports it to 
this discussion group the woman and child are excluded and we now are 
aware of two different languages operating, and immediately wonder which 
one is more authentic.

So returning to the question "what constitutes culture?" - we must first 
ask if the question is worthwhile.  To ask the question at all implies a 
belief that it is answerable, which in turn involves an assumption that 
culture has already occurred in an observable fashion.  This assumption 
immediately pushes culture into the past (it does not matter whether 
this is the immediate past of yesterday, or the remote past of history). 
   And culture is most alive when it is in the present, when it is 
actually experienced.

So rather than asking 'what is culture' it is more worthwhile to ask:
1. What is the basis on which claims to define culture operate, 
intersect and compete?
2. What are the politics, myths, beliefs, genealogies and spatial 
practices that underpin the construction of such claims?
3. What are the traces we leave in space that eventually accrue into 
memories and symbols?
4. What are the conversations and intersections that take place between 
tacit experiences and explicit definitions of culture?
5. (Most important to us) What is the complicity of the intellectual in 
all of these processes?
6. How can we individually use such critique to construct our own 
ideology and ethics?

Prem



anant m wrote:
> hm. i hope i am not making an ass of myself in the
> presence of a whole bunch of cultural studies folks. 
> i think it is better to think of a geneology of
> culture rather than define it. to my reckoning, the
> first loaded use of the word culture was made by
> mathew arnold.
> some time in the second half of the 19th century. this
> was just before the time colonial anthropologists were
> seriously beginning to wonder if they had it all
> worked out. for arnold, culture was high culture all
> that is 'beautiful and intelligent' and he was
> strongly opposed to the plebian and the ordinary. and
> you must read his dismissive references to the irish!
> education therefore had to be in the hands of the
> cultured and not democratized. 
> later on a whole range of marxist critics led by
> raymond williams turned it on its head and argued that
> culture is really the ordinary. this was a way of
> challenging the ways in which high culture reproduces
> power relations.
> raymond williams and his work notwithstanding, culture
> remained largely the domain of anthropologists first
> the structuralists strauss and then bodley and geertz
> types whose primary means of getting at culture was
> via ethnography where one places oneself firmly in the
> lifeworlds of those whose culture is being studied and
> then withdraws to the library to reflect on the
> ensembles of meanings and practices that are not one's
> own. hence ideas like primitives, savages and noble
> savages and then the ultimate 'thick descriptionists
> and so on. 
> Here is the cross that the scholar bears: she/he at
> the moment of the ethnographic encounter and actually
> coproduces meaning with an interlocutor but when she
> or he withdraws to write about it for a diffferent
> audience, she or he produces the culture of the
> 'other' for the consumption of scholarly kin. 
> thus in your interaction with the woman whose child
> you thought was being treated cruelly (at least at
> firsy anyway) she and you together coproduced
> meaning.but when you report it to us, the woman
> remains outside of this conversation and it is her
> culture versus our culture that we end up talking
> about. 
> well, that was an attempt at a rough and ready
> geneology of culture. i have no idea what culturality
> means. others please add or delete. 
> anant
> 
> --- zainab@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> 
> 
>>I am still interested in understanding the 'general
>>meaning' of the term
>>culture? What constitutes culture? And what
>>constitutes acts of
>>culturality?
>>Cheers,
>>Zee
>>
>>
> 
> 
> 
>               
> ___________________________________________________________ 
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