scholarly journals The Being and Becoming of African Diaspora Art

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 405-416
Author(s):  
JACQUELINE FRANCIS
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
African Descent ◽  
Black Body ◽  
West African ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
Cultural Consciousness ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
And Performance

By and large, “African diaspora art” is a generic label, presently applied with the purpose of broadly situating modern and contemporary artwork by people of African descent in discussions of African art, most often in connection with “traditional” West African ritual sculpture, installation, and performance. I focus on the work that this term has done or has been summoned to do in the US since the late twentieth century. This essay considers several artistic projects and critical and institutional missions linked to African diaspora art and culture: (1) a 1960s essay by art historian Robert Farris Thompson that organizes nineteenth-century material culture under this heading, (2) the black body as icon of the African diaspora in in the work of US artist David Hammons from the 1970s, and (3) the founding of the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco in 2002. We are in the process of institutionalizing African diaspora art, situating it as a cultural consciousness that supersedes other identifications and narratives of association. We value and celebrate this epistemological construct, and, in doing so, reveal that it is also a social formation driven by doubts about racial and national belonging and the desire for a transformative signification and new, organizing logics of being.Cultural identity … is a matter of “becoming” as well as of “being.”Stuart Hall1By and large, “African diaspora art” is a generic label, often summoned to broadly situate modern and contemporary artwork by people of African descent and to connect it to “traditional” West African ritual sculpture, installation, and performance.2 It is a valued and celebrated epistemological construct; it is also a social formation driven by doubts about racial and national belonging and the desire for a transformative signification and organizing logics of difference. We are in the process of institutionalizing African diaspora art, situating it as a cultural consciousness that is meant to supersede other powerful identifications and narratives of political association.

Form as Weapon: the Political Function of Song in Urban Zimbabwean Theatre

2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-154
Author(s):  
Martin Rohmer
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Protest ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Cultural Management ◽  
Political Function ◽  
Humboldt University ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University

In Zimbabwean society, what may not be spoken sometimes becomes acceptable in song – whether to avoid social taboos and enable a wife to complain against her mother-in-law, or in broadening the boundaries of political protest. In this article, Martin Rohmer looks back to the ways in which song enabled forms of protest against forced labour and other aspects of colonial rule – in times of outward compliance as well as of direct struggle – and considers how urban theatre groups in independent Zimbabwe have adapted the tradition to their own, contemporary ends. Martin Rohmer spent almost two years studying Zimbabwean theatre when a research assistant at the University of Bayreuth, and completed his doctorate on Theatre and Performance in Zimbabwe at the Humboldt University, Berlin, in 1997. Since then he has been working in the field of cultural management for the Young Artists' Festival in Bayreuth. The present paper was first presented at the Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in San Francisco in November 1996.

scholarly journals Non-discursive Knowledge and the Construction of Identity Potters, Potting and Performance at the Bronze Age Tell of Százhalombatta, Hungary

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandy Budden ◽  
Joanna Sofaer
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
Differential Acquisition ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Bronze Age

This article explores the relationship between the making of things and the making of people at the Bronze Age tell at Százhalombatta, Hungary. Focusing on potters and potting, we explore how the performance of non-discursive knowledge was critical to the construction of social categories. Potters literally came into being as potters through repeated bodily enactment of potting skills. Potters also gained their identity in the social sphere through the connection between their potting performance and their audience. We trace degrees of skill in the ceramic record to reveal the material articulation of non-discursive knowledge and consider the ramifications of the differential acquisition of non-discursive knowledge for the expression of different kinds of potter's identities. The creation of potters as a social category was essential to the ongoing creation of specific forms of material culture. We examine the implications of altered potters' performances and the role of non-discursive knowledge in the construction of social models of the Bronze Age.

scholarly journals Effects of Spondias mombin l. On milk composition of lactating West African Dwarf (WAD) ewes

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-343
Author(s):  
M. A. Oguike ◽  
M. E. Udeh
Keyword(s):  
Milk Protein ◽  
Post Partum ◽  
Milk Composition ◽  
West African ◽  
Trial Group ◽  
Total Solids ◽  
Treatment Groups ◽  
West African Dwarf ◽  
Spondias Mombin ◽  
And Performance

A study was conducted to investigate the effects of Spondias mombin on milk composition using milk from twelve lactating West African dwarf (WAD) ewes. The lactating ewes were assigned to two treatment groups of six ewes per group, designated T1 and T2 representing control and trial group, respectively The ewes in T2, the trial group were fed Spondias mombin L. post partum while those in T1 the control were not fed Spondias mombin. Colostrum samples were collected from each ewe the first four days following parturition while normal milk was sampled for analysis after two weeks of lambing through 12 weeks of lactation. The constituents studied were lactose, milk protein, butterfat, ash, total solids and solid non-fat. Results showed that the colostrums of ewes fed S. mombin had significantly higher (P<0.05) total solids, and solids not fat contents of 18.34 and 11.31% respectively, than those of the control ewes which were 17.32 and 10.35%, respectively. The other constituents of colostrums of the different groups were not significantly different (P>0.05). At week 2 of lactation, lactose (3.98%) and ash (0.98%) concentrations of normal milk of treated ewes were significantly higher (P<0.05) than those of the control ewes for lactose (3.74%) and ash (0.65%). Also by the 12th week of lactation, ash contents of the two treatments were significantly different (P<0.05) with T2 having higher value. There were no significant differences (P>0.05) in the normal milk compositions of both groups in weeks 4, 6, 8 and 10. These results suggest that feeding S. mombin to lactating ewes could be useful in improving on the milk composition of WAD ewes and has no adverse effects on their general health and performance.

scholarly journals Глобальные города: многокритериальная оценка устойчивого развития

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
И.А. Шмелева ◽  
С.Э. Шмелев
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Carbon Tax ◽  
Waste Recycling ◽  
Global Cities ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Strategic Direction ◽  
And Performance

A new strategic direction for greening our cities and making them smart to reduce the environmental impact of their performance, increase employment and economic viability and to enhance the quality of life requires a thorough assessment of sustainability and smart urban performance. The research presented in this paper is based on data on 143 global cities including London, New York, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Moscow, Beijing, Seoul, Singapore, Shanghai, Sydney and Tokyo. Exploring linkages between different sustainability and smart city dimensions, this study applied a multi-criteria approach using a panel of 20 indicators to assess urban sustainability performance of global cities. The assessment focused on the drivers of CO2 emissions in cities, including important aspects of energy transitions, the share of coal in the energy mix and renewable energy, public transport, cycling patterns and pedestrianization, waste recycling as well as carbon tax. The results show that San Francisco leads in economic and environmental priorities, and Stockholm leads insocial and smart city priorities. Seoul consistently performs very successfully across the whole spectrum of indicators. We devote considerable attention to the strategies, policies and performance of the leading cities, namely, San Francisco, Stockholm and Seoul. This assessment could be a valuable tool for policy-makers and investors, and could help identify linkages between different sustainability dimensions, as well as sustainable development potential and investment opportunities in cities.

Look, blackness in Brazil!: Disrupting the grotesquerie of racial representation in Brazilian visual culture

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Andrea Dos Santos Soares
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Studies ◽  
Black Feminism ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Racial Representation ◽  
Racial Domination ◽  
And Performance

This article experiments with collage to explore the visual representation of black people in Brazilian media, popular culture and politics, examining how these representations constitute statements regarding dynamics of racial domination. The work proposes that the introduction of disruptive elements into the very images that objectify the black body could create the necessary conditions for a valuable criticism of how blackness is disposed within the nation’s formation. The articulation with black studies in visual culture and performance, black feminism, African diaspora and post-colonial theories intends to develop analytical frames to examine the interconnection between the representational process of ‘stereotyping’, symbolic violence and anti-black ideologies in the context of the national formation narratives. Methodologically, the articulation of these fields of inquiry intends to provide tools able to highlight and disrupt the regimes of racial representation circulating in Brazilian popular culture.

A Provocation of The Modes of Black Indigeneity

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-50
Author(s):  
Kyle Mays
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
African Descent ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Indigenous Studies ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Indigenous Land

This essay explores the meaning of the term Black Indigeneity (BI). Afro-Indigenous Studies scholar Kyle T. Mays asks, what is Black Indigeneity? How do scholars talk about it? What are its possibilities? Relying on a survey of recent scholarship, Mays argues that BI is largely understood as a form of Black Americans participating in settler colonial processes meant to erase and displace Indigenous peoples. He argues that we should look at BI as an analytic that African Americans have used to create belonging and continue to express cultures practiced throughout the African diaspora, adapted and transformed into a modern iteration of cultural expression. In this way, we should rethink how we view blackness and indigeneity as two separate entities, and explore how people of African descent create belonging on dispossessed Indigenous land.

Redrawing Borders of Belonging in a Narrow Nation: Afro-Chilean Activism in the Hinterlands of Afro-Latin America

2018 ◽  
pp. 137-153
Author(s):  
Sara Busdiecker
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
African Descent ◽  
First Century ◽  
Twenty First Century

Chapter examines the historical and contemporary roots of Afro-Chilean invisibility and the nature and trajectory of collective organising that has only recently emerged among Afro-Chileans in response. It reflects on the ways in which the desire and need for Afro-Chilean activism since the turn of the twenty-first century, in this forgotten corner of the global African diaspora, highlights the temporally and spatially enduring nature of the struggles for equality among African-descended peoples. Within this context and using specific examples, the chapter shows how the activities and demands of multiple organisations based around shared African descent have helped to redefine notions of belonging in Chile and, in turn, challenge traditional expectations of what it means to be Chilean.

Don Asher’s Fictional-Real Jazz World

2020 ◽  
pp. 122-148
Author(s):  
Reva Marin
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
New England ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Short Story ◽  
American Music ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Performance Traditions ◽  
The Rich ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Story Writer

This chapter examines the life and writings of Don Asher, who studied with pianist Jaki Byard before embarking on a career as a New England society band and honkytonk pianist and later as a nightclub pianist in San Francisco, including a long stint at the famed hungry i. Asher was also a novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and collaborator, and analysis of selected works of his fiction and nonfiction uncovers his enduring and sometimes transgressive fascination with African American music and culture. While Asher’s work appears to illustrate “the problem with white hipness” (Ingrid Monson) or “love and theft” (Eric Lott), his ethnic satire was aimed not only at African Americans but also at other groups—Italians, Irish, Jews—as well as at himself and his fictional counterparts. This chapter considers the rich stew of literary and performance traditions in which Asher found models for his satirical, comedic impulses.

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