Evolving Fields: Sensoriality, Imagination and Memory in the Humanities 6th – 7th June 2017
Conference Programme
Day One
9.00 – 9.30
Registration
9.30 – 11.00
Session One
TR6 – Graduate School Welcome – Panel 1: On Memory and Identity Welcome The Lady doth process too much, methinks. Incorporating Memory and Experience in Salutaris’ Ritual Procession at Ephesus Dr. Abigail Graham, University of Warwick Paper Rajbansi Women of India and Bangladesh: Memories of Partition and Trauma. Ankita Roy, QUB Paper 11.00 – 11.30
Coffee Break [Graduate School Lounge]
11.30 – 13.00
Parallel Session Two
TR6 – Graduate School
0G/074 Lanyon Building
Panel 2: Imagination and the Body
Panel 3: Engaging the Senses in Performance
The Dynamism of the ‘Mindful Body’: Re-imagining and Negotiating Traditional Medical Conceptions Among the Nahuas of the Sierra Norte (Mexico) Chiara Magliacane, QUB Paper
Sensing Timing in Participation: an Enactive Approach to Musicking Juan M. Loaiza Restrepo, QUB Paper
Imaginative Horizons of Posthumanism: The Evolution and Revolution Towards Posthumans Xinyi Wu, QUB Paper
From “Active Perception” to Connection: Engaging the Senses in Argentine Tango Federica Banfi, QUB Workshop
1
13.00 – 14.00
Lunch break [Common Room, 13 University Square]
14.00 – 15.30
Parallel Session Three
TR6 – Graduate School
0G/074 Lanyon Building
Panel 4: Performativity and Tourism
Panel 5: The Senses in the Middle Ages
Patterson’ Spade Mill: a Journey through Senses, Memories and Imaginations Petra Honkysova, QUB Paper
The Croxton Play of the Sacrament (14th C, anonymous) Performance
Disentangling Conflict Tourism from ‘the BottomUp’ Savannah Dodd Paper
‘du liebú tube, din stimme ist ein seitenspil minen oren’: Imagination and Sensual Re-Creation in Mechthild von Magdeburg’s Das fließende Licht der Gottheit Catherine Coffey, QUB Paper
Is it True that Anthropological Knowledge is ‘Profoundly Performative and Relational’ (Hastrup 2004: 469)? Ashwin Tripathi, QUB Paper
Rewriting Religious Narrative: Sense, Imagination and Memory in the Middle Ages Aisling Reid, QUB Paper
15.30 – 16.00
Coffee Break [Graduate School Lounge]
16.00 – 17.30 Session Four 0G/074 Lanyon Building Panel 6: Knowing the Dance
Knowing the Dance Paula Aida Guzzanti, QUB, and Martin Della Vecchia Performance Exploring the Middle Place between Dance and Poetry Paula Aida Guzzanti, QUB, and Olive Broderick Workshop
2
Day Two 9.00 – 9.30
Registration
9.30 – 11.00
Session One
TR6 – Graduate School Keynote Lecture
Prof. Tim Ingold University of Aberdeen
11.00 – 11.30
Coffee Break [Graduate School Lounge]
11.30 – 13.00
Parallel Session Two
TR6 – Graduate School
TR4 – Graduate School
Panel 7: Engaging with the Visual Arts
Panel 8: Music and Imagination
Postmodern Nostalgia: The Ever Present Past Rebecca Bannon, QUB Paper
Imagining New Ways of Doing: Collaborative Research and A Song for Northern Ireland Sarah-Jane Gibson, QUB, and Beverley McGeown Paper
By No Definition, a Video Installation which ReDefine the Memories Fang Qi, Newcastle University Paper A Secret about a Secret? Emotion and Historiographical Methodology in Western Photography of the Boxer Rebellion Dr Emma Reisz, QUB Paper
The Intimacies of Musical Imaginaries in the Country and Irish Genre in west Ulster Hannah Gibson, QUB Paper An Analysis of Imagination and Music, Cosmopolitanism and Buddhism. Children of Lir: an Example of Imagination as Methodology. Antonia Giannoccaro, QUB Paper
13.00 – 14.00
Lunch break [Common Room, 13 University Square]
14.00 – 15.30
Parallel Session Three
TR6 – Graduate School
TR4 – Graduate School
Panel 9: Researching the Urban Environment
Panel 10: The Politics and Methods of Imagination
The Imperial Façade: An investigation into the Expression of Imperial Identity and Discourse through Biography, Architecture and
Imagining What’s Possible: Appreciative Inquiry for Overcoming Inequality in Belfast Alice Neeson, QUB
3
Town Planning Steven Donnelly, QUB Paper The Social Impact of the Student Lifestyle in Belfast Michelle Dolan, QUB Paper The Politics and Poetics of the Haptic: Commercial Gentrification and the Suppression of Touch in Amsterdam’s Indische Buurt Elisa Fiore, Radboud University Nijmegen Paper
Paper Anthropology, Social Movements, and the Radical Imagination Jamie McCollum, QUB Paper The Stone that Binds: Building Community through Language and Place James Zimmerman, QUB Paper
15.30 – 16.00
Coffee Break [Graduate School Lounge]
16.00 – 17.30
Session Four
TR6 – Graduate School Panel 11: The Community Art Circle and the Kula Ring
The Community Art Circle and the Kula Ring Kayla Rush, QUB Performance
4
Conference Detailed Programme
Day One
PANEL 1: ON MEMORY TR6 – GRADUATE SCHOOL
AND I DENTITY
The Lady doth process too much, methinks. Incorporating Memory and Experience in Salutaris’ Ritual Procession at Ephesus Dr. Abigail Graham, University of Warwick Paper In ancient and modern worlds, experience plays a key role in creation and formulation of memory. Recent scholarship in a number of fields from media theory to ancient epigraphy has demonstrated the importance of differentiating between a written account and an experience. In my current research on Salutaris’ foundation at Ephesus (an inscription that sets out a ritual procession for Artemis), I have tried to recreate Salutaris’ procession as a means of “experiencing” the ritual event. Previous scholarship treats the foundation text as a factual guide to the event, rather than a record of Salutaris’ aspirations, hopes and his fears for his ritual event. I have applied A. Chaniotis’ “Murphy’s law* of ritual events” together with information from the text (clauses & fines against changes, undignified behavior, theft, or desecration of the statuettes) to highlight the difference between the claims of the text (permanence, solidarity, dignity and concord) and the reality of the event as an experience. Do efforts to control the outcome of the procession profess power (hope) or are they an acknowledgement of all the things that could potentially go wrong (fear)? In an effort to reconstruct the procession I have examined literary sources (Xenophon of Ephesus’ account of ritual procession at Ephesus) as well as archaeology (e.g. comparing the recorded weights of the statuettes with surviving statuettes and depictions of votive statuettes in art)) to determine the size and visibility of the statuettes. As a sensorial experience one must also imagine aspects of the performance that could not be controlled: the weather, the attitude of the audience, the behaviour of those carrying the statuettes. This imaginative and practical approach yields insights both to the text and to our understanding of a ritual performance. I could end the paper with a short re-enactment, to demonstrate. *Murphy’s law: What can go wrong, will go wrong.
Abigail is Lecturer in Ancient History & Archaeology at the University of Warwick. Her primary interest is the appearance and perception of monuments in the ancient world, with a specialisation in the Late Republican/Early Imperial period (ca. 80 BC- AD 250). This topic broadly includes archaeological evidence from the urban landscape as well as broad range of visual culture and historical information from art and architecture to epigraphy. The overall aim of my research is to explore the ways in which monumental inscriptions can be used within their urban contexts to inform our understanding of the urban landscape, including the representation of identity, imperial power and religion, as well as the function of public writing and literacy in the ancient world.
Rajbansi Women of India and Bangladesh: Memories of Partition and Trauma Ankita Roy, QUB Paper Sir Buchanon Hamilton undertook a survey of Rajbansi’s between the years 1807 and 1817, after being entrusted with the responsibility of collecting information of the various population of Eastern India. The history of the origin of the Rajbansi’s is a mystery. It has been said that they belong to the great Bodo family that entered India in the 10 th century B.C., from the east spread over Assam and the whole of North and East (present day Bangladesh) Bengal. The first historical records of the people living in the North of Bengal were found in the accounts of 1206 A.D. Rajbansi’s are the largest original inhabitants of North Bengal and the third largest Hindu caste in the whole province (Basu 2003). In the words of Beauvoir, women are clearly defined by their physical capabilities “When women is given over to man as his property, he demands that she represents the flesh purely for its own sake. Her body is not perceived as the radiation of a subjective personality, but as a thing sunk in its own immanence; it is not for such a body to have reference to the rest of the world” (De Beauvoir 1972: 189). Theories on feminism and women’s body will be effective in determining the role Rajbansi women’s bodies play in the society. Building on my previous research on gender identity formation through folk song Bhawaiya, I will now be investigating on gender –power relations experienced by three generations of Rajbansi women in two South Asian countries i.e. Darjeeling district in India and Rangpur district in Bangladesh. The partition of India and Bangladesh in 1971 will be crucial to my research, in exploring aspects of memory among the older Rajbansi women and how they perceive the changes in gender-power relations.
Ankita Roy is a first year research student at Queen’s. She is an alma mater of Coventry University and graduated with a Master of Arts degree in Applied Communication. Her MA dissertation thesis investigated gender, power and social relations of the Rajbansi women of North Bengal through Bhawaiya folk songs. Her present research aims to investigate the gender-power relations of the Rajbansi community who reside in North Bengal, India and Rangpur, Bangladesh. Prior to her engagement with research, she had 2 years of volunteering experience at NGO’s and worked closely with rural women, in India. Her experience has been integral in shaping her
5
research interests about genderpower relationships.
PANEL 2: IMAGINATION TR6 – GRADUATE SCHOOL
AND THE
B ODY
The Dynamism of the ‘Mindful Body’: Reimagining and Negotiating Traditional Medical Conceptions Among the Nahuas of the Sierra Norte (Mexico) Chiara Magliacane, QUB Paper Anthropologists have lately focused their attention on how socially-shared meanings and personal experiences are negotiated within the social sphere, being in constant transformation and interacting through the body; not so surprisingly, the body is an active participant of what is happening in the world around it. Among the Nahuas’ indigenous context, experiences of illness are embedded through a complex interaction and constant negotiation between indigenous medical conceptions and the scientific medicine; traditional meanings, which find their roots long before the conquest of Tenochtitlan by the hand of Hernán Cortés (1500s), are re-imagined with original interpretations. Drawing on Margaret Lock’ and Nancy ScheperHughes’ concept of the ‘mindful body’, the paper refers to the qualitative data collected from an ethnography focused on the concept of the blood and its place in the complex Nahuas’ cosmology and symbolic world. The aim is to suggest an interpretation in which Nahuas’ indigenous medical conceptions are re-imagined with an incredible dynamism, shaped both by the individuals’ own imagination and the socially-shared context; therefore, the concept of the mindful body should represent not a static but an extremely dynamic body, which is constantly adapted and transformed through its interaction with the social world. The intervention is intended as a gaze on the multi-faceted ways in which human imagination is displayed in this complex and heterogenous context, mainly from an anthropological, but also historical, perspective.
Chiara holds an M.A. in Conflict Studies and a II-level Degree in Medical Anthropology; she will start her ESRC-funded Ph.D. in Anthropological Studies at Queen’s University Belfast in October 2017. Her research interests lie within the subfield of medical anthropology: in particular, the body and the embodiment, the social inequalities of health, ‘structural violence’ and the politics of trauma. To date, she did research in two areas: the Sierra Norte de Puebla, Mexico, and Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Imaginative Horizons of Posthumanism: The Evolution and Revolution Towards Posthumans Xinyi Wu, QUB Paper The posthuman, which generally refers to a person in a state beyond being human has sparked many arguments and debates. Fascinated with multiple perspectives on the posthuman, I think this term ought to be understood both from a biological view and a moral perspective. This paper goes back to its foundation as humans and distinguishes the posthuman from human and transhuman. I find that in the biological dimension, the posthuman equals to the transhuman which represents the superhuman or heroic human who has better body functions than humans’ flesh and blood. Meanwhile, in the moral dimension, the posthuman stands for a transcendental form of consciousness along with the reconstructed humanity. As humans’ creation for self-improvement, the posthuman can be achieved through a two-way transformation—a biological evolution supported by advanced technology and a moral revolution with cognition keeping pace with time. I elucidate these two strands separately to explicate each part, while they are by nature inseparable in an integrated process of this transformation and so should be conducted at the same time. Besides, I find that the transformation of the posthuman requires imagination to light the road ahead. Without the ability of imagination to foresee possibilities and evaluate risks, humans will be forever trapped in the quagmire of the present. Only through the expansion of ourselves and the unceasing exploration of the universe beyond imaginative horizons, can human species of tomorrow be greater than what we are today. My presentation will include the screening of a video followed by a group discussion.
PANEL 3: ENGAGING THE SENSES 0G/074 – L ANYON BUILDING
IN
Xinyi Wu is a current master student of Anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast as well as a current master student of economics in Minzu University of China. She received the B.A. degree from Minzu University. Her research interests of Anthropology include cosmopolitanism, identity, robots and posthumans. She is also interested in sociology, psychology and philosophy. Xinyi’s MA dissertation will focus on the shifting identities of Chinese diasporas in Belfast, exploring the transformation process of their social identities.
PERFORMANCE
Sensing Timing in Participation: an Enactive Approach to Musicking Juan M. Loaiza Restrepo, QUB Paper
6
Doing music together is a window into the ways in which we simultaneously master and submit to the binding rhythms of our social lives. Crucially, to music is a verb, and so is to human. Thus, to music is to bring to life, in its very occurrence, the relational patterns of feeling, knowing, and growing that belong to the process that Tim Ingold calls humaning (2015). What is distinctive of musicking? My proposal for this presentation is to focus on the participatory enaction of timing: Persons immersed together in action become attentive to the timing of their mutually defining patterns of movement and multimodal presence. I propose that in musicking we make lived time. By enaction I invoke an unconventional way of looking at the interlocking of action, perception, and affective experience. This approach is part of an ongoing project in philosophy of mind and cognitive science that seeks to overcome the reductionist and individualist view of the mind mostly modelled on the metaphor of the “computer in the head”. Enactivism challenges the reductionist view that separates perception and action, as well as cognition and emotion. In contrast, enactivism (Evan Thompson, 2007) adopts a holistic approach to the meaningful dynamics that cut across organisms and their environments. For the enactive approach, there is no dedicated way of talking about sensorial perception that is not simultaneously also about the dynamics of action. Participatory enaction designates the ways in which persons in mutually defining actionperception loops generate domains of experience that otherwise would not be available to each individual on their own. Many forms of musical improvisation and partly unscripted forms of joint action (e.g. joint speech) are distinctive forms of participatory enaction of timing. They manifest in condensed ways the skilfulness of sensing timing in participation.
Juan is a musician, improviser, and final year PhD candidate at the Sonic Art Research Centre, Queen's University Belfast. In the thesis “Musicking in the Continuity of Life and Mind” Juan looks at ethnomusicological approaches to musical social interactions through the lens of empirically informed theories of joint action, enaction in sociality and intersubjectivity. Juan's main interest lies in the production of a conceptual framework and operative definitions that describe and explain the interdependencies occurring at different timescales of social life through musical activity. Juan has previous degrees in music from Newcastle University and engineering from Colombia.
From “Active Perception” to Connection: Engaging the Senses in Argentine Tango Federica Banfi, QUB Workshop Choreologist Valerie Preston-Dunlop calls for an ‘active perceiving’ in dance (2014: 41). She makes the point that our bodies are equipped with a sensorial apparatus. We may assume, therefore, that sensing is unavoidable. Although there are instances in which the stimulus is so subtle that it requires attending to it, that is an active perception. This is particularly true for dancers that are engaged in couple dancing, such as Argentine tango. In tango, one person leads the movements and the other is following. Such non-verbal communication between perceiving bodies is possible only through a deep sensorial engagement, an active perceiving that results in what dancers call ‘connection’. Sociologist Kathy Davis describes connection as ‘the embodiment of tango’ (2015: 64). Described as a loss of personal boundaries, a total exposure of the self, connection evokes a kind of intimacy that is out of the ordinary experience of everyday life. The ephemerality of connection while dancing, creates a liminal experience of self and other as one in which the senses play a fundamental role. This workshop explores how two people create a bodily connection by engaging with their senses. Proposing exercises used in tango technique classes, participants will engage with one another, walking together using different points of contact. This is not a dance class, though it will allow participants to develop their active perception in order to experience connection. At the end of the exercises, participants will be able to write down their first impressions, self-reflections and observations. These will be shared on a voluntary basis at the end of the workshop to feed a discussion about the role of the senses and perception to build connection.
PANEL 4: PERFORMATIVITY TR6 – GRADUATE SCHOOL
AND
Federica graduated in Social anthropology in 2015 at Queen's University Belfast, obtaining the Anne Maguire Memorial Prize for her dissertation 'Embracing tango: negotiating emotions and gender through dance'. In December 2016, she obtained her MA in Social anthropology also at Queen's, receiving the John Blacking’s prize for her dissertation ‘Threads of tango: online dynamics of offline tango dancing’. Federica started her PhD at Queen’s in October 2016. Her PhD project, a multilocal ethnography of improvisation and transnationalism in Argentine Tango, is the first anthropological project funded by the AHRC Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership.
T OURISM
Patterson’ Spade Mill: a Journey through Senses, Memories and Imaginations Petra Honkysova, QUB Paper The more anthropology enquires into human sensualities, the more can be seen how intertwined they are with the past, present, and future experiences. What is more, senses developed into feelings provide a platform for remembrance and imaginations. This paper will deal with a deconstruction of the human experience in the context of a tour through an old spade mill. As a researcher and a member of the Mill's staff, I became part of the Mill through oral and live demonstrations of spade making, and part of the community of practice. I have gained an insider's perspective about how the staff accumulated their craft skills and knowledge about the site. My fieldwork in the Patterson’s Spade Mill – the last water powered mill in daily use in the UK and Europe (and who knows if not in the rest of the world), revealed
Petra has been living and working in Northern Ireland for the last 14 years. She graduated in Social Anthropology in 2013 at Queen’s. This year she will finish my MA degree also at Queen’s. Her interests are human practices and experiences. Her first fieldwork took place in Sao Paulo Brazil, where she
7
to me how a relationship is forged between the participants and the Mill’s environment and narrative. I am going to discuss how sensual experiences recuperate memories and imaginations in both the context of the Mill and the wider aspects of the participants’ life. Furthermore, I will talk about why it is important to keep the appearance and character of the place genuine, and its workers craftsmanship alive. I am aiming to show how my findings can be applied in the tourism and conservation sector; mainly in visitor services that deal with the enhancement of the visitor experience through property development and tour content, and whose efforts are to share common purpose with the public about conservation and protection of cultural and environmental heritage.
examined the experiential aspect of ayahuasca (herbal consciousness altering drink) in Santo Daime and shamanistic ritual settings. Her second fieldwork examined the experience of the Patterson’s Spade Mill, an old industrial site owned by the National Trust.
Disentangling Conflict Tourism from ‘the Bottom-Up’ Savannah Dodd, QUB Paper Thousands of pounds of government money are funnelled into the conflict tourism industry on the grounds that it has educational value and that it constitutes recognition of heritage. However, academics have suggested that, although conflict tourism may present an economic boon, it has detrimental societal implications including reifying binary identities and formalizing divisive narratives. I initially undertook this research project with the belief that the local perspective has been neglected in previous studies of conflict tourism in Belfast, where top-down perspectives from the government, the tourism industry, and academia have dominated the discourse. However, after conducting more than twenty interviews with tour guides, community leaders, and residents of the Falls and Shankill roads, I have understood that it is not a straight forward solution to suggest a bottom-up perspective. My research explores the complexity of the conflict tourism project in Belfast, aiming to understand the multitude of divergent collective memories that complicate the process of narrative construction, the benefits to various stakeholders that have the potential to create and reproduce inequalities, and the political ramifications of commodifying culture for the tourist gaze. Furthermore, I will explain the ethnographic methods used to complete this research, including interview, participant observation, and photography.
Savannah is an anthropologist whose work focuses on political and religious conflict, identity politics, tourism in areas of conflict, and visual methodologies. She received her master’s degree from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in the Anthropology and Sociology of Development. Savannah has worked in the development sector with NGOs and the United Nations, but has shifted her focus toward academic research and visual methods of representation. She is currently based in Belfast as visiting researcher.
Is it True that Anthropological Knowledge is ‘Profoundly Performative and Relational’ (Hastrup 2004: 469)? Ashwin Tripathi, QUB Paper Anthropology emerged as a colonial enterprise where 'the others' were the object of 'participant observation'. It emerged as a distinctive feature of fieldwork where the end product was 'Ethnographic Realism'. Anthropological trajectory has undergone many changes and data collection method keeps on reviving. Post-modernism has brought 'Experimental Ethnography' in the academic domain. The present day debates revolve around how objective is anthropological data. Subjectivity is the price anthropologists pay to include data from both verbal and non-verbal medium. The latter can be well represented by sensorial interaction which equally dictate the course of the research. Thus making the product reflexive where we connect to the informants socially and psychologically; communicating the relational and interpretational nature of the field. Sensory Ethnography allows to answer the bigger questions of how knowledge and ways of knowing are produced. Most of the time, relevant data cannot be 'called up' (Hastrup, 1994), but has to be experienced as performed. My work focuses to know how senses are used ethnographically to have this performative experience. Thus making me answer the ways to make the fieldwork experience into anthropological knowledge.
PANEL 5: PERFORMING THE S ENSES 0G/074 – L ANYON BUILDING
IN THE
Ashwin is a Master's student in Anthropology. Her research interests are tribal culture, religion and emotions. She is currently researching Kinship ties and Concept of care amongst Indian families in Belfast for her MA Dissertation. She holds Bachelor of Science in Anthropology from University of Delhi, India. In addition, she is working as a Student Assistant in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and holds the post of International Student Ambassador for School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics.
MIDDLE AGES
The Croxton play of the Sacrament (14th C, anonymous) Performance Medieval Catholics used their bodies to interact with the divine: they kissed crucifixes, they kneeled before holy images and they touched saints’ relics. These types of bodily interactions rendered the holy accessible; supplicants did not have to wait for death to encounter God, he was literally present in religious artefacts which they could pray to and touch. It is within this context that we can begin to understand the appeal of the Eucharist, which made Christ’s body accessible to all. Easy access to the divine, however, prompted fears that the Eucharist might fall into the wrong hands. Such fears are manifest in an anonymous fourteenth century Middle
8
English play known as The Croxton Play of the Sacrament. It dramatizes the physical abuse by five Jews of a Host, the bread consecrated by a priest during the Christian Mass. Not only does the play demonstrate Christian unity in contrast to a Jewish ‘other’, it also affirms the doctrine of transubstantiation—the Eucharist bleeds as it is the real body of Christ. The torture of the host by Jews allows the audience to witness the passions of Christ; the performance thus memorializes and reconstructs the past within the context of medieval doctrinal concerns and fears about Jews.
‘du liebú tube, din stimme ist ein seitenspil minen oren’: imagination and sensual re-creation in Mechthild von Magdeburg’s Das fließende Licht der Gottheit Catherine Coffey, QUB Paper One of the seminal pieces of medieval female-authored* Christian mysticism, the Flieβende Licht der Gottheit by the 13th-century beguine Mechthild von Magdeburg, is renowned for its heavy and often markedly erotic use of sensorial imagery. The Christian soul’s imagined journey to God repeatedly finds its expression through the evocation of physical and sensual interactions with the Godhead. The focus of my current research concentrates, not just on Mechthild’s own imagination and use of sensorial imagery, but on the relationship between the imagination and the senses in understanding and translating this fascinating text for modern academic and non-academic audiences. Caroline Walker Bynum asserts that women were able to produce an authoritative authorial account and reach ‘God not by reversing what they were but by sinking more fully into it’ (Walker Bynum, 1992: 172). This serves as a useful cornerstone for the investigation of the implications and practicality of imaginative and sensorial translation. Building on this, and, in particular, focusing upon the various imagined voices Mechthild attributes to the body, senses and soul, key passages and their translations in modern German and English will be revisited and reimagined. As a result, the importance of the translator’s personal physical experience when exploring and recreating the text will come to the fore, alongside the necessarily imaginative nature of transcreational activity. * “Authored”, here, is a particularly problematic term which will be expanded upon over the course of the paper.
Catherine is currently a PhD student of Translation Studies in the QUB School of Arts, English and Languages. Her research focuses on the 13th-century Flieβende Licht der Gottheit, the famously sensual visionary text attributed to the North German beguine Mechthild von Magdeburg. Elaborating on previous work considering the early translation, dissemination and reception of Mechthild’s text, Catherine hopes to direct her PhD research towards a close-reading and evaluation of modern academic translations of the FL. Her goal is to highlight the conscious and unconscious oversights in Mechthildian scholarship, alongside the need for her translators to foreground their own physicality in practice.
Rewriting Religious Narrative: Sense, Imagination and Memory in the Middle Ages Aisling Reid, QUB Paper The ‘substitutive’ holy lands known as the sacri monti (holy mountains) comprise a series of mountain top chapels containing realistic painted statues made of wood and terracotta. Built in Piedmont and Lombardy between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries, they enabled Italian pilgrims to travel within the safe confines of their local area, rather than travelling abroad. This paper will take the sacri monti as a starting point to explore the role of the senses, imagination and memory at medieval pilgrimage sites. It will argue that the interaction of Christians with material objects, as well as dramatic religious performances, shaped their imagination of the biblical past. The life-sized religious sculptures commonly housed at medieval pilgrimage sites enabled visitors to imaginatively insert themselves into biblical scenes and physically interact with the numinous. Many saintly sculptures don anachronistic clothing and feature apocryphal biblical narratives. In this regard, they reimagine and improve on the past to generate a contemporary religious narrative more palatable to the medieval supplicant. The interactions of pilgrims with their physical surroundings thus reconstructed memory to rewrite the past into the present
Aisling is based at Queen’s University Belfast, where in 2015 she successfully defended her PhD dissertation on the role of material artefacts in the religious practices of late medieval Italy. She specialises in medieval material culture and is particularly interested in confraternal studies.
PANEL 6: KNOWING THE DANCE 0G/074 – L ANYON BUILDING Knowing the Dance Paula Aida Guzzanti, QUB, Olive Broderick and Martin Della Vecchia Performance Knowing the Dance is a performance of dance and poetry. The piece integrates the experience of holding a shared space between dance improvisation and poetry writing. Within this shared space, layers of dancing, sensing, writing and conversing have informed and shaped a performance that brings together both expressions closely together into to form a oneness of dancing and poetry reading. In this dialogue, a collection of dance-poems weaves themes of
Olive’s first publication 'Darkhaired' was a winner of the Templar Poetry pamphlet Award and was shortlisted for a Michael Marks Award. Originally from Youghal in Co. Cork, came to Belfast to undertake the
9
family relationships, life and ecology into a piece where the dance is indivisible from the dancer, and the poems are indivisible from the poet. Knowing the Dance extends this space of experimentation to the performance event, by holding the work together though an improvisational score that allows for the sensing of the experience to continue to inform the relationship between the dance and the poetry. Through this performance piece, we address two key themes of this conference. First, Knowing the Dance is an exploration of how the sensorial realm contributes to artistic research in the field of dance and writing studies. Secondly, through a combination of artistic and autoethnographic research methodologies, we will contribute to the debate on how first-person approaches and the use of videography and personal narratives can contribute to the development of new perspectives in research in the arts and humanities. The concept for Knowing the Dance was conceived by poet Olive Broderick as part of her ACES award project. Knowing the dance explores a middle place where dance/movement and poetry can creatively meet, both within the poems themselves and between poetry and dance as two distinct artforms. This collaborative piece is one element of this project. Moreover, this collaboration is a component of dance artist Paula Guzzanti’s practice-as research PhD project, exploring the relationship between affect and conscious awareness in dance improvisation practice. Paula Guzzanti is a supported artist by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Down Arts Centre (Downpatrick). Guzzanti’s artistic portfolio is available in www.paulaguzzanti.com
Queen's, Creative Writing Programme. She has received a Hennessy X.O. Literary Award, Emerging Poetry Category. She acknowledges the support of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, including a Artists Career Enhancement Scheme (ACES) 2016/17 award for a project which explores the meeting place between poetry and dance/movement. Paula is a dance artist and scholar based in Northern Ireland. She is currently undertaking a PhD research project at Queen’s exploring the relationship between affect and conscious awareness in dance improvisation practice. Her interest in artistic expression and improvisation led her to create work through the mediums of site-specific performance, screen-based dance, children’s dance theatre work and dance improvisation performance. Her improvisational practice is influenced by direct training with choreographer/writer Miranda Tufnell, and Australian Choreographer Rosalind Crisp.
Exploring the Middle Place Between Dance and Poetry Paula Aida Guzzanti, QUB and Olive Broderick Workshop Olive Broderick and Paula Guzzanti propose to co-facilitate a workshop on moving, writing and the role that the imagination plays in the process of moving between these two practices. This workshop will offer new ways for artists and researchers to examine the relationship between the experience of things and its articulation in writing form. It is aimed at practitioners and researchers interested in developing research approaches that involve observation of movement and/or moving and writing from that experience. This workshop can cater up to 15 participants. No experience of dancing or artistic writing is required, just an attitude of connecting to the senses and experimentation.
Day Two PANEL 7: ENGAGING WITH TR6 – GRADUATE SCHOOL
THE
VISUAL ARTS
Postmodern Nostalgia: The Ever Present Past Rebecca Bannon, QUB Paper This paper aims to investigate how recent Postmodern Hollywood film releases are influenced by not only the memory of previous filmic techniques but also by previous literary sources. Remakes and re-imaginings are prominent and tap into this nostalgia for the past that is associated with the Postmodernism. This strain of recent films are concerned with displaying familiar stories in a new way, by engaging with previous knowledge of the stories but adding a new twist to make the stories quasi-original. Even if people are not aware of the stories in detail, most people will have some knowledge of the characters involved; these films draw on that vague awareness by claiming that the full story was not previously disclosed. This nostalgia is carried into the cinematography of the films, mimicking techniques such as tinting and black and white cinematography through modern technology an example of which would be digital editing such as grading. In order to explore this topic, the paper would undertake a
Rebecca is a third-year part-time PhD student in Film Studies within the School of Arts, English and Languages. Her thesis is on a specific set of Postmodern filmic releases. The focus is on how these films blend old stories with a new twist, how the aesthetics of these films mimic previous techniques in cinematograph and how these narratives have evolved from the fairy-tale archetype
10
close textual reading of some of these films such as Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter (2012), Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters (2013) and Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and refer more broadly to some of the remakes in production by both Universal and Disney studios. The close textual analysis of the films would be accompanied by key Postmodern theories discussing ideas of simulacra, nostalgia, and a recycling of the past. Through these theories an argument will be made that memory and imagination form the basis of these films and it is through a nostalgic mimicry of the past that this is can be seen. As Fredric Jameson claims: …the producers of culture have nowhere to turn but to the past: the imitation of dead styles… (Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 1991:1718) This is supported by Baudrillard who claims that “cinema plagiarizes itself, recopies itself, remakes its classics, retroactivates its original myths, remakes the silent film more perfectly than the original…” (Simulacra and Simulation, 1994:47). It is this tension between the past and the present that will be explored throughout this paper.
to address modern concerns such as feminism and equality. These films display a nostalgia for the past through the lens of the present.
By No Definition, a Video Installation which Re-Define the Memories Fang Qi, Newcastle University Paper In the practical-led research Fang Qi inquired into her memories to explore the individual struggles in the cultural dislocations. Both of her method and research theme focused on recalling, re-organizing, and re-building the bonds between personal history and the collective memories. Her animation installation work By No Definition (three-channel video installation, 9 mins) aimed to understand and re-interpret her fragmented memories in which she witnessed the dramatic social changes in the 1980s in China. By visualizing and animating her childhood story happened in a garden into a large-scale space, she achieved to overlapping the social and individual histories. Her witnessed of girl who nearly fell into a fountain in the garden evoked the artist’s sudden awareness of the danger in the beautiful peace, as well as the fragility of an individual in the fast changing society. The garden, was somehow the only architecture which lasted till today in the massive city expansion and reformations in the past 20 years. Standing between the crakes between the new and the old, it showed itself as a holder which embraced the heterogeneous sides of life: brightness and darkness, obedient and rebellion, and the young and the old. The artist developed both drawings and poems when she immersed herself deeply into the bottom of her memories in this garden. By recalling and transforming her sensorial experiences of smells, sounds, sights, and touches, she questioned the way to define memories as one singular characteristic. Using cross-thinking and metaphorical visual language, she interwove her phenomenological recalling of her memories into the shapes, lights, flashes, and motions. From the realistic recalling she transformed herself and the audience into a surreal world in which nothing could be defined and interpreted in one singular way. The memories of the garden was eventually released in the dark empty room which waited for the audience to immerse into. Link of the animation: www.fangqiart.com
Fang Qi is a Chinese artist and illustrator who is doing practice-led PhD research in Fine art at Newcastle University. She is now doing a crossdiscipline to transform narrative drawings to installation works. The artist got her BA degree in Public Art and MA degree in Visual Communication Design in Jiangnan University, China.Fang Qi’s works encompass various mediums including drawing, illustration, animation, and installation. With strong sense of social and cultural critic, her works are keen on exploring the conflicts between individuals and the society in the dramatic social changes and cultural dislocations in modern China. Her rebellion metaphorical visual language bridged the surreal imagination and the reality which invited her audience to challenge the conventional definitions of self, memories, identity, and the human nature. The artist has exhibited her work internationally with numerous awarded gained
A Secret about a Secret? Emotion and Historiographical Methodology in Western Photography of the Boxer Rebellion Dr Emma Reisz, QUB Paper In this paper, I explore Westerners’ emotional experience of the Boxer Rebellion by considering their photography of the conflict and its aftermath. Between 1899 and 1901, tens of thousands of Chinese and several thousand foreigners died during a series of anti-Western uprisings in China. The conflict was documented not just by professional photographers, but also by a significant number of amateur photographers living in China at the turn of the century. This paper helps to reconstruct Westerners’ emotional response to the conflict by focusing on photography for and by Westerners living in China. Scholars have often noted that photography can be elusive, even unknowable. For the American photographer Diane Arbus, the apparently mercurial quality of photography does not arise from any deficiency in the viewer, but is an essential characteristic of the medium, writing that ‘a picture is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know’. One of the methodologically challenging aspects of photography for historians is what Barthes called the punctum, that emotionally resonant quality of an image which creates an - often specious - confidence in the viewer that they understand what they are seeing.
Dr Emma Reisz is Lecturer in Imperial and Asian History at Queen's University Belfast. After her PhD, Dr Reisz held an ESRC postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge and a Junior Research Fellowship at Jesus College, Oxford, before coming to Queen’s. She writes on British imperialism and transnational networks. Her current research focuses on historical photographs in the Sir Robert Hart Collection held in Special Collections at Queen’s University Belfast.
11
In this paper, I suggest that by focusing on the emotional intent of photography, we can reconstruct not only Westerners’ visual experience of the Boxer Rebellion - what they saw but more importantly, their visualities, their ways of seeing. I go on to argue that foreigners in China were troubled not just by the fear, hardships and losses experienced during the conflict, but also by the disturbing questions the Rebellion raised about the ethics of Western influence in China and about the future of Sino-Western relations, and that these emotional responses helped to shape foreign attitudes to China for decades to come.
PANEL 8: MUSIC AND I MAGINATION TR4 – GRADUATE SCHOOL Imagining New Ways of Doing: Collaborative Research and A Song for Northern Ireland Sarah-Jane Gibson, QUB, and Beverley McGeown Paper This paper addresses the theme of imagination and research through exploring new collaborative perspectives in ethnographic research and the process of imagining and creating a song representing both sides of a sectarian society. Inspired by the suggestions of Samuel Araújo for a third “mode” of ethnography, this paper explores the relationship between researcher and participant in ethnographic fieldwork through the concept of “participatory action research”(Araújo, 2008; Mendoca, 2016). Araújo challenges researchers to consider a “collective authorship” between participants and researcher whereby participants collect and analyze data alongside the researcher and then present the results collaboratively. This paper is a culmination of collaboration between myself, a PhD student, and Beverley McGeown, a community musician. Beverley McGeown shares her experiences of the process of conceiving and creating a song for Northern Ireland. The song was commissioned with the intent to create a piece of music that all communities in Northern Ireland would feel comfortable singing. The process involved meeting with stakeholders representing different parts of the community: young, old, Catholic and Protestant. It then culminated with a group of musicians holding a weekend workshop where they worked together to write the song. Together, Beverley and I explore the nature of collaboration: the collaboration involved in creating and imagining a song that unites, rather than divides and the experience of preparing and presenting research collectively. The paper concludes by exploring how academic research can better support grassroots community projects.
Sarah-Jane is in the final phases of writing her PhD thesis, which is titled: Re-imagining identity through singing: Amateur Choral Singing in Post-conflict Northern Ireland. She is based in the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s University, Belfast. Sarah-Jane has a background in choral singing and music education and has taught in the United Kingdom, the United States of America and South Africa. Beverley (MA, Bmus) is a graduate of Queen’s, and now a performer, composer and educator of music. As a performer (flute, voice, Gamelan) she has played and toured extensively with various choirs and instrumental groups, including the New Irish Orchestra and the Brian Irvine Ensemble. She is currently Musical Director for Open Arts, an arts & disability organisation based in Belfast, where she teaches Javanese Gamelan and directs the Open Arts Community Choir, amongst other inclusive music projects within Northern Ireland.
The Intimacies of Musical Imaginaries in the Country and Irish Genre in West Ulster Hannah Gibson, QUB Paper ‘Take me home again, take me back to the place where I belong’ are the lyrics of a song called ‘Take me home’ by Country and Irish artist Michael English. This is an example of a typical lyrical theme in this musical genre: the hankering for home, the idealised homeland that is rural Ireland. The Country and Irish music genre is recognised as a progression from the showband genre in the mid 20th century and sees similar levels of popularity among all generations today in rural Ireland. This unique Irish genre thus offers a way of informing a sense of place which both informs and shapes the moral and political ideals in the community. The scene today consists of intimacies that signal imaginaries within musical elements which include lyrics and stylistic elements. As has been highlighted previously groups find solidarity in lyrics of songs as often the themes are representative of aspirations and common belief. Through song texts and the identities of singers, the public finds itself included in the imagined community the music makes contact with. Through a description and analysis of lyrical themes and marketing materials I will address themes of morality, gender and sexuality, and national sentiment in west Ulster. I will attempt to move towards answering the question of how exactly the moral and political economy is defined through this music’s presence in this area of Ireland in particular.
Hannah is a 1st year PhD candidate in Anthropological studies in the School of History, Anthropology, Politics, and Philosophy at Queen’s. She graduated from her MA in Social anthropology: Ethnomusicology in 2015, and has a BMus from City, University of London, gained in 2014. Her research is based on the Country and Irish musical phenomenon that has gained popularity among all age groups in rural areas across Ulster. She will be conducting fieldwork in the West of the province that will investigate themes around morality and family values, sexuality and gender, and national sentiment and sense of place. Hannah is also and instrumental tutor and performer
12
based in Omagh, Co Tyrone.
An Analysis of Imagination and Music, Cosmopolitanism and Buddhism. Children of Lir: an Example of Imagination as Methodology. Antonia Giannoccaro, QUB Paper As Einstein pointed out in his own life experience, imagination precedes knowledge and its production and it is therefore at the core of human evolution and actually defines it. The anthropological quest for imagination and the implementation of imagination as a method of investigation is in this moment very crucial for our discipline and for its own evolution, as it provides a mean for relating the studies of humanity to social sciences. In my presentation, I am going to present the results of my ethnographic interviews, which aim to connect the role of imagination to music and Buddhist practice in Northern Ireland. The research has proved the role of imagination to be crucially defining topics as different as cosmopolitanism, musicality and Buddhist beliefs. As N. Rapport and G. Delanty have underlined, the study of imagination in sociology and anthropology is a quintessential tool of investigation since it underlines the value of transformation within and without the individual, creating and strengthening trajectories that reinforce the individual personal and social agency. Moreover, this transformative power of embodied imagination can be visible projects related to the conflict transformation. In this respect, I will present a trailer of a visual anthropological projected “Children Of Lir”. In this research I analysed the way imagination affects and improves the children’s realization of themselves, as individuals and part of a group, getting consciousness of the environment and of oneself in it. This research has been presented at the international conference on consciousness in Helsinki in 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsQVa_kgw1c Imagination is therefore a powerful tool for closing and opening doors, in life as much as in our discipline. I will therefore expose how the methodology applied to the visual project “Children of Lir” may enhance my research about Buddhism, music and cosmopolitanism and create an impact.
PANEL 9: RESEARCHING TR6 – GRADUATE SCHOOL
THE
Antonia is a master student in Anthropology at QUB focusing on Social Anthropology and Ethnomusicology. Antonia has a bachelor and a master in Mass Communication, from the University of Bologna in Italy. She has been a researcher at UC Berkeley, in cognitive linguistics, focusing on points of view, mental spaces, gestures and emotions in film language. Antonia has been assisting to the teaching of semiotics of cinema, theories and techniques of film language and film criticism at the University of Bologna. She has been professionally working in broadcasting and film production for a decade and she is interested in consciousness and imagination in relation to self and social transformation.
URBAN E NVIRONMENT
The Imperial Façade: An Investigation into the Expression Discourse through Biography, Architecture and Town Planning Steven Donnelly, QUB Paper Belfast during the 1800's witnessed an acceleration in growth as a result of expanding industrialisation and trade, with artefacts of its architectural and planning legacy still extant in the urban fabric. However, despite Belfast's documented architectural and sociocultural history - the expression of imperial identity and discourse within the built environment and the lives of its visionaries remains unexplored. The built environment is a geographical platform for the expression and negotiation of power, identity, culture and memory. Its spatial practitioners (planners, architects, engineers) are thus imagined as agents of change within social, political and cultural landscapes of the British Empire, performing its philosophies and design teleologies. In this research, the lives and works of Jacob Owen (1778-1890), Charles Lanyon (1813-1889) and William Henry Lynn (1829-1915) are used to construct informed analytical platforms for the exploration of imperial expression and legacy in Belfast's built environment. Together, they exemplify a pedagogical relationship where their creative and professional engagements have impacted the built environment of Belfast and other Irish geographies. By using biographical and architectural sources, the research aims to deconstruct their life geographies and works in search of political, socio-cultural and design connections to imperial discourse, and where particular events and allegiances have potentially influenced their negotiations with the built environment.
of
Imperial
Identity
and
Steven (MSc, Postgraduate Fellow RGS) is a postgraduate researcher in Geography and Planning situated within the School of Natural and Built Environment at Queen's. He studied Geography as an undergraduate at QUB gaining a strong interest in spatial planning which he carried into his Masters in Urban and Rural Design. Outside of his thesis work, he is proactively involved in urban regeneration and artistic development projects with the South Belfast Partnership Board, Young Civic Leaders NI, Folktown CIC and King Street Arts Collective, and his own project Blackstaff Music Belfast.
The Social Impact of the Student Lifestyle in Belfast Michelle Dolan, QUB Paper The term 'town and gown' refers to cities which host a high concentration of HEI (Higher education institutes) and references the interactions between the local and student
Michelle is a MA student of anthropology in Queens University
13
populations. My aim is to elicit a deeper understanding of how distinct groups understand and utilise space within a contemporary town and gown city. My research concentrates on an area known as the Holyland. 'The houses were superior to the industrial housing closer to town and attracted a more prosperous type of tenant (Evans Weatherall: 2002:58). One can appreciate the architectural characteristics and features which reflect the symbolic capital of this areas first residents. An acknowledgement that sensoriality is fundamental to how we learn about, understand and represent other people's lives is increasingly central to academic and applied practice in the social sciences and humanities (Pink 2015:3). Inspired by Pink's sensorial approach and in order to investigate how the residents (student, local and ethnic groups) view and understand this space I will utilise two methods: photo-ethnography and walking interviews. It is argued that walking interviews generate richer data, because interviewees are prompted by meanings and connections to the surrounding environment and are less likely to try and give the ‘right’ answer (Evans and Jones). Hitchens and Jones (2004) discovered that respondents found it easier to verbalise attitudes and feelings when 'in place'. By engaging the walking interview method 'both researcher and participant are more exposed to the multi-sensory stimulation of the surrounding environment' (Adams and Guy 2007). Ethnographic photography can potentially construct continuities between the visual culture of an academic discipline and that of the subjects or collaborators in the research (Pink 2007:66). By combining photo-ethnography with walking interviews I hope to create photographic representations that refer to local visual cultures and simultaneously respond to the interests of academic disciplines (ibid).
Belfast. Her research interests include space, architecture and photography. Michelle's dissertation will explore 'the social impact of the student lifestyle in Belfast'. She graduated in 2008 with a B.A honours degree in Visual Communication from Limerick School of Art and Design. Her B.A thesis investigated 'The evolving status of women in Ireland and how this is reflected in Irish media’.
The Politics and Poetics of the Haptic: Commercial Gentrification and the Suppression of Touch in Amsterdam’s Indische Buurt Elisa Fiore, Radboud University Nijmegen Paper Sensory experience is generally understood as a taken-for-granted fact of everyday life. Reduced to a timeless, ahistorical, and naturalised field of experience, the sensory structure of everyday life most often goes unnoticed for its assumed unremarkableness. In this paper, I propose to challenge the widespread understanding of the senses as innocent occurrences of human experience and appreciate their contribution to processes of socialisation, identity formation, and worlding. In order to do so, I will build on sensuous scholarship that foregrounds sensoriality as the lifeblood of embodied sociality and materiality. I will argue that the senses, as the very means for the transaction between human and non-human agents, and the very condition for the carnal experience of self-hood, society, and culture (Vannini et al. 2012), are part of a larger set of norms and values that do not only define, but also produce our own positionality in the world. In other words, the senses are both political and poetic, i.e. entangled with questions of power and thus productive of particular material arrangements of reality. In this paper, I will present the case of Amsterdam’s Indische Buurt, a multicultural neighbourhood that has been undergoing a rather intensive and aggressive process of both housing and commercial gentrification over the past fifteen years. In particular, I will focus on the progressive process of boutiquing of the local retail environment – which is leading to the substitution of the many Turkish- and Moroccan-owned groceries with high-end pop-up and concept stores, and organic food bodegas – to look at how this transition from a haptic to a visual retail culture participates in the whitewashing of the neighbourhood. I will then conclude by arguing that a slow practice of attunement to everyday sensory ambiences can provide insights into the ways in which the political and the poetic are synthesised in the everyday.
PANEL 10: T HE POLITICS TR4 – GRADUATE SCHOOL
AND
METHODS
Elisa graduated with a Research Master degree in Gender and Ethnicity from Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Her final thesis was a feminist new materialist investigation on how affective urban materialities contribute to processes of racialisation in Rome’s Banglatown. Currently, she is in the first year of her PhD research at the Institute for Historical, Literary and Cultural Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Her project is a multisensory ethnography of two gentrifying multicultural neighbourhoods in Rome and Amsterdam. In particular, the project looks at how gentrification transforms the sensory qualities of these neighbourhoods and what this sensory transformation can tell us about race- and class-based exclusion in those areas.
OF I MAGINATION
Imagining What’s Possible: Appreciative Inquiry for Overcoming Inequality in Belfast Alice Neeson, QUB Paper Appreciative inquiry is an approach used in community development projects which seeks to build on people’s hopes and capacities in order to bring about positive change. It is based on the idea that people’s thoughts and actions are shaped by the questions they are asked. When people are only asked about problems in their communities, the possibilities that they can imagine for change are often limited. However, when they are encouraged to talk about the things they value, enjoy or are proud of, it can open up new possibilities for the future
Alice Neeson is a PhD candidate in the School of History, Anthropology, Politics and Philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research looks at the role of participatory media in the reconciliation process in Canada,
14
that are rooted in the community assets which already exist. This paper seeks to outline how appreciative inquiry can be used as a research method as part of a participatory action framework. It will discuss how activities such as personification, empathy mapping and storytelling can help to build shared understandings of how inequalities can be overcome, and uncover and develop shared narratives for a better future. It will also reflect on cocreation and peer research, and their roles in ethnographic action research. The research draws upon ethnographic fieldwork in four Belfast communities, which are traditionally considered to be deprived. This ongoing research project is facilitated by the Young Foundation in partnership with Belfast City Council.
where she carried out twelve months of fieldwork with non-profit organisations working in the field of Indigenous-settler reconciliation. She has a particular interest in participatory action research, communications for social change, and community research. Before enrolling at Queen’s, she worked in human rights and non-profit communications. She has a Master’s Degree in Communications from the University of Leicester, and a B.A. in Social Anthropology and English from Queen’s University Belfast. She is also an industry trained journalist.
Anthropology, Social Movements, and the Radical Imagination Jamie McCollum, QUB Paper We appear to be living at a time of political crisis, our political institutions are suffering from a widespread lack of legitimacy. Those in power seem unable, or simply unwilling, to tackle the problems that we face; their solution is to offer us more of the same neoliberal policies of austerity and perpetual war. We are told ‘there is no alternative’ - a position that is inherently unimaginative. To illustrate that our choices do not need to be so limited, this paper will discuss the ‘radical imagination’ of ‘new’ social movements, (such as ‘Occupy’, and the broader ‘alter-globalisation’ movement) which promote new forms of political organization based on principles of direct democracy, horizontalism, and gender equality; and how by creating these ‘alternative modernities’, these social movements show us that, contrary to what we are being told, ‘another world is possible’. In addition, by drawing on the work of anthropologist Ghassan Hage, and the author’s own research, this paper will explore the ways in which anthropology shares this ‘radical imagination’ with these ‘new’ social movements, and how it has influenced their development
Jamie is enrolled as a PhD student at the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, and the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice (here) at Queen’s. His current research project is examining a ‘new’ political model being promoted by many within the Kurdish movement, i.e. ‘democratic confederalism’ which is a non-state model of governance which promotes direct democracy, horizontalism, and gender equality . This research will explore the broad themes of nationalism, the state, social movements, and sovereignty.
The Stone that Binds: Building Community through Language and Place James Zimmerman, QUB Paper
Following thirteen months of fieldwork in mid Wales, a series of vignettes is presented in order to illustrate the connection between language, identity, community, and belonging in a small Welsh town. With 31 percent of the town able to speak Welsh and nearly 50 percent of people able to speak Welsh across the entire local authority, the Welsh language is a noticeable aspect of daily life. These vignettes – a campaign to save an iconic Welsh-language dormitory at a university, a St. David’s Day parade, and the experiences of Welsh learners – show the varying contexts of language use and the ways in which Welsh is used as a basis for defining groups. These vignettes cover a range of group types, from a small local community in the Welshlanguage dormitory to much more abstract groups that span the entirety of Wales. As such, each of the vignettes describes a different form of Welshness in which the Welsh language is always at the heart but in which the size and scope of the group grows. In the smallest of these groups, every member knows one another on a personal level. In the largest, members could live anywhere in Wales – or, indeed, anywhere in the world – and still claim connection to one another through their shared Welsh nationality. From the local to the national, there is a move towards the increasingly ‘imagined community’.
James received my BA in cultural anthropology from the University of Houston, my MSc from the University of Oxford, and am in the final year of my PhD in anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast. My interests are primarily within linguistic anthropology, with particular focus on minority language groups. I am interested in minority language speakers and the connections between group language and group identity. I conducted thirteen months of fieldwork in mid Wales looking at how Welsh speakers associated the Welsh language with notions of identity, community, and belonging.
PANEL 11: T HE COMMUNITY ART C ENTRE AND THE KULA RI NG TR6 – GRADUATE SCHOOL
15
The Community Art Circle and the Kula Ring Kayla Rush, QUB Performance This is an experimental, imaginative, performative piece. It stems from an ethnographic observation: that arranging people into circles is nearly universal in community arts practice. In this performance, I interrogate these omnipresent circles and bring them into conversation with another famous ‘circle’ in anthropology: the kula ring. Famously described by Bronislaw Malinowski in his ethnography Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), the kula ring was subsequently treated by Marcel Mauss, in whose Essai sur le don (The Gift, 1925) the kula ring features prominently. In the past twenty years, The Gift has become prominent in discussions of contemporary art, inspiring a number of artists to pursue ‘generous’, ‘relational’ works. Many of these artists speak or write about such works using anthropological, sociological, and philosophical explications of ‘the gift’; the most influential of these appeared in Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics (1998). In this performance, I bring these disparate analyses into dialogue with my own ethnographic research on community arts in Northern Ireland. Drawing on participant-observation and sensory ethnography, as well as body knowledge and ‘enskilment’ gained through training as a community artist during my fieldwork, I interrogate the possibilities for comparison between the community arts circle and the kula ring. What does each circle accomplish through its processes of exchange? What is exchanged within the community arts circle, and might we call these exchanges ‘gifts’? Might community arts be understood as a ‘generous’ or ‘gift-giving’ practice at all? This is not a ‘traditional’ conference paper: using movement, multi-media, and multi-sensory techniques, I ask viewer-participants to join me in this dialogical journey of discovery, and to decide for themselves whether such an analysis might have merit. Please note that while there will be opportunities for interactivity, these are entirely optional; attendees may decide for themselves the extent, if any, to which they wish to participate.
Kayla is a PhD candidate in social anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast, where she is currently writing up her thesis on community arts in contemporary Northern Ireland. She also holds an MA from Queen’s, where her master’s dissertation was awarded the 2014 John Blacking Prize, and a bachelor’s degree from the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music. Her research interests include performance studies, the senses and the body, pedestrian practices, and the political economy of arts funding. In 2016, she presented a paper on community arts and generosity at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been published in the Irish Journal of Anthropology, and online in the research blog Women Are Boring and the Community Arts Partnership Monthly publication. She is contributing a chapter to a forthcoming volume on ‘the politics and poetics of place-making in Belfast’
Notes
16