Migrations non-documentées et imaginaires sur Internet : le cas des harraga tunisiens.

International audienceLes frontières entre l’Afrique du Nord et l’Europe sont de plus en plus difficilement franchissables en raison de la mise en œuvre de politiques migratoires restrictives et se déploient dans l’espace physique et dans l’imaginaire de ceux qui aspirent à émigrer. Des Tunisiens, principalement de jeunes hommes célibataires, tentent de quitter leur pays sur des embarcations de fortune sans passeport ni visa. Dans les dialectes maghrébins, on nomme ces candidats à l’émigration harraga – « les brûleurs » – car ils « brûlent » les frontières ainsi que les étapes nécessaires à un départ qui respecterait les contraintes imposées par les États.Certains harraga mettent en ligne des contenus en lien avec leurs désirs ou leurs aventures migratoires. Ils créent des pages dédiées à la harga sur les réseaux sociaux tels que Facebook, postent et commentent des séquences filmées durant les traversées ou créent des vidéos grâce au montage d’images qu’ils collectent sur internet et qu’ils associent à des chansons. Ces matériaux sont des portes d’entrée vers l’imaginaire migratoire des harraga. L’espace digital leur permet de documenter, mettre en scène, anticiper ou fantasmer le franchissement des frontières ainsi que leur vie de l’autre côté de la Méditerranée.À la rencontre des humanités digitales et des sciences sociales des migrations, ce texte porte sur l’agentivité (agency) de ceux qui désirent migrer. Elle interroge les modalités par lesquelles les harraga tentent de « brûler » les frontières tant physiques qu’imaginaires en faisant, notamment, appel aux ressources digitales. Elle étudie l’imaginaire migratoire des harraga et leur perception des frontières grâce à des matériaux originaux récoltés dans le cadre du projet « Undocumented Mobility (Tunisia-Switzerland) and Digital-Cultural Resources after the ‘Arab Spring’ » financé par le Fonds National Suisse pour la recherche scientifique. La spécificité de ces données sera interrogée, notamment à l’aune des défis méthodologiques qu’elle induit

Digital Passages: Migrant Youth 2.0. Diaspora, Gender and Youth Cultural Intersections

Increasingly, young people live online, with the vast majority of their social and cultural interactions conducted through means other than face-to-face conversation. How does this transition impact the ways in which young migrants understand, negotiate, and perform identity? That's the question taken up by Digital Passages: Migrant Youth 2.0, a ground-breaking analysis of the ways that youth culture online interacts with issues of diaspora, gender, and belonging. Drawing on surveys, in-depth interviews, and ethnography, Koen Leurs builds an interdisciplinary portrait of online youth culture and the spaces it opens up for migrant youth to negotiate power relations and to promote intercultural understanding

Protest Images, Collective Portraits

A aparência é uma instância política, uma vez que a representação coletiva é uma possibilidade de emancipação da comunidade, dos “povos” (Didi-Huberman, 2012) e um mecanismo de constituição de memória cultural. A possibilidade de aparência, que também participa da história coletiva é uma relação de poder em si mesma. Na cultura digital, a aparência global banalizou-se, mas também foi dissolvida sob um regime tecnológico digital de produção visual, de “imagem de massa” (Cubitt, 2016). A imaterialidade, a obsolescência programada, as versões de software disponibilizado e a dependência para produzir e criar visualidades sob a influência de regimes corporativos globais, que organizam sistemas e tecnologias, tornam esta afirmação paradoxal e problemática para uma constituição coletiva dessas representações, correndo o risco de mercantilizar a memória. Apesar disso, tem havido uma ligação entre técnicas culturais e memória, onde a “ideologia californiana” (Barbrook, 1999) organiza a cultura digital, num equilíbrio entre uma “cultura participativa” e um “empreendedorismo neoliberal”. No entanto, nunca uma quantidade tão grande de imagens foi produzida e partilhada. Hito Steyerl define estas imagens digitais como “imagens pobres” ou, como defendido neste trabalho, imagens precárias, ao criar uma correspondência entre o atual regime político de trabalho com uma produção visual digital, numa perspectiva não profissional. Mas em momentos de protesto, estas “imagens pobres”, reconhecidas como desvalorizadas, comunicam e criar memória e história, emancipando a noção de vídeo “vernacular” como parte da acção política (Snowdon, 2014). Foram momentos como os movimentos sociais de 2011, como as “Arab Springs”, “Movimento 12M”,“Madrid 15M” e “Occupy Wall Street”, em que as “redes de indignação e esperança”(Castells, 2012) se formaram e surgiram globalmente, num espaço público híbrido de contestação, que estas imagens podem ser novamente convocadas. Conforme analisado, na paisagem visual do Youtube.com, onde “a cultura participativa continua a ser o seu principal negócio” (Burgess e Green, 2009), estas imagens fazem parte do fluxo dos protestos e a sua recuperação constitui um ato de “reaparecimento”. Este reaparecimento é pensado aqui em diferentes gestos, respectivamente, como constituição de um corpus de vídeos de protesto, alinhados pela metáfora das imagens-pirilampos (Didi-Huber man, 2009), em tempos digitais, transportadas para o continente visual do Youtube.com. Também como parte de uma investigação prática, foi desenvolvido um protótipo de um documentário interativo, como um filme plataforma, organizado em torno da representação de uma “articulação do protesto” (Steyerl, 2002) onde as contribuições se organizam, entre linhas temporais individuais e coletivas. Como num editor de vídeo, é proposta uma mesa de montagem como experiência participativa, utilizando os materiais dos protestos. Este estudo propõe experimentar práticas artísticas como num “laboratório crítico” (Hirschhorn, 2013) com um efeito de “coletivos encontrados” presente no arquivo (Baron, 2013) que se constituem neste artefacto multimédia, interativo enquanto hipótese de persistência na memória coletiva, ou retrato coletivo de aparência política, a partir de momentos de protesto de movimentos sociais como os de 2011. Produzir uma intervenção activista e estética, uma intervenção artivista, como “forma de arte” política do século XXI (Weibel, 2014).Appearance is a political instance, as collective representation is a possibility to an emancipation of communities, of the “peuples” (Didi-Huberman, 2012), and a mechanism of constitution of cultural memory. The possibility of appearance that also participates in the history of collectives is a power relation in itself. In digital culture, global appearance seems to have exploded, but it has also been dissolved under a digital technological regime of “mass image”(Cubitt, 2016) visual production. Immateriality, programmed obsolescence, pervasive software and a dependence to produce and visualize under global corporations regimes, that organize systems and technologies, make this affirmation paradoxical and problematic to a collective constitution of these representations with a risk of commodifying memory. Despite this, there has been a connection between cultural techniques and memory, that under the “Californian Ideology” (Barbrook, 1999) digital culture is organized as a balance between “participatory culture” and “neoliberal entrepreneurship”. However, never such a quantity of images have been produced and shared. Hito Steyerl defines these as “poor images” or as stated here, defined as precarious images, making a correspondence between present political regimes of labour with visual and cultural production digitally produced, as non professional video. But in moments of uprisings, these poor images, commonly recognized as devalued, served to communicate and create memory and History, emancipating “vernacular” videos as part of the political actors (Snowdon, 2014) Such were moments as 2011 social movements, like “Arab Springs”, “Moviment12M”, “Madrid15M” and “Occupy Wall Street”, when “networks of outrage and hope” (Manuel Castells, 2012) stepped out globally, in an hybrid public space of insurrection. As analyzed in visual landscapes of Youtube.com where “participatory culture is its core business” (Burgess and Green, 2009), these images were part of the uprisings flow, and their retrieval constitutes an act of “reappearance”. This reappearance is oriented here in different gestures, respectively as a constitution of a corpus of protest videos, aligned through the metaphor of fireflies-images (Didi-Huberman, 2009) in digital times, transported to Youtube.com visual continents. Also, as part of a practice based research, a prototype of an interactive documentary, as a platform film, has been developed, aligned with a representation of an “articulation of protest”(Hito Steyerl, 2002) where, as an editing table, between individual and collective timelines, a participatory interactive experience is proposed, using remnant materials of protests. This study essays how to relate artistic practices of “Critical Laboratory” (Hirschhorn, 2013) with “found collective” effect of archive documentary (Jaimie Baron, 2013) related in this digital, online, multimedia, interactive, audiovisual artifact, produced by individuals with digital images, in a way to persist in collective memory and become a collective portrait of political appearance from historical moments of social movements uprisings as those of 2011. At the same time, an activist and aesthetic intervention, an artivist intervention takes place, as a political “XXIst Century art form” (Weibel, 2014)

Belly Dance and Glocalisation: Constructing Gender in Egypt and on the Global Stage

This thesis is an ethnography of the global belly dance community with particular reference to the transmission of dance paradigms from Cairo to the international dance community. Key words describing my topic include dance, gender, performance, group dynamics, social norms and resistance, public vs. private, tourism, and globalisation. I hypothesize that social dancing is used in many parts of the world as a space outside ordinary life in which to demonstrate compliance with or to challenge prevailing social paradigms. The examination of dance as a globalised unit of cultural capital is an emerging field. With this in mind I investigate the way this dance is employed in professional, semi-professional, and non-professional settings in Egypt and in other parts of the world, notably North America and Europe. Techniques included interviewing members of the international dance community who engage in dance tourism, travelling from their homes to Egypt or other destinations in order to take dance classes, get costumes, or in other ways seek to have an 'authentic' dance experience. I also explored connections dancers fostered with other members of the dance community both locally and in geographically distant locations by using online blogs, websites, listservs and social networking sites. I conducted the first part of my fieldwork in Cairo following this with fieldwork in belly dance communities in the United States and Britain

If I Ruled the World: Putting Hip Hop on the Atlas

“If I Ruled the World: Putting Hip Hop on the Atlas” contends for a third wave of Global Hip Hop Studies that builds on the work of the first two waves, identifies Hip Hop as an African diasporic phenomenon, and aligns with Hip Hop where there are no boundaries between Hip Hop inside and outside of the United States. Joanna Daguirane Da Sylva adds to the cipha with her examination of Didier Awadi. Da Sylva\u27s excellent work reveals the ways in which Hip Hoppa Didier Awadi elevates Pan-Africanism and uses Hip Hop as a tool to decolonize the minds of African peoples. The interview by Tasha Iglesias and myself of members of Generation Hip Hop and the Universal Hip Hop Museum provides a primary source and highlights two Hip Hop organizations with chapters around the world. Mich Yonah Nyawalo’s Negotiating French Muslim Identities through Hip Hop details Hip Hop artists Médine and Diam’s, who are both French and Muslim, and whose self-identification can be understood as political strategies in response to the French Republic’s marginalization of Muslims. In “Configurations of Space and Identity in Hip Hop: Performing ’Global South’,” Igor Johannsen adds to this special issue an examination of the spatiality of the Global South and how Hip Hoppas in the Global South oppose global hegemony. The final essay, “‘I Got the Mics On, My People Speak’: On the Rise of Aboriginal Australian Hip Hop,” by Benjamin Kelly and Rhyan Clapham, provides a thorough analysis of Aboriginal Hip Hop and situates it within postcolonialism. Overall, the collection of these essays points to the multiple identities, political economies, cultures, and scholarly fields and disciplines that Hip Hop interacts with around the world

Digital passages: migrant youth 2.0: diaspora, gender and youth cultural intersections

Increasingly, young people live online, with the vast majority of their social and cultural interactions conducted through means other than face-to-face conversation. How does this transition impact the ways in which young migrants understand, negotiate, and perform identity? That's the question taken up by Digital Passages: Migrant Youth 2.0, a ground-breaking analysis of the ways that youth culture online interacts with issues of diaspora, gender, and belonging. Drawing on surveys, in-depth interviews, and ethnography, Koen Leurs builds an interdisciplinary portrait of online youth culture and the spaces it opens up for migrant youth to negotiate power relations and to promote intercultural understanding

Educate, Inspire, Change: A Musical Ethnography of World Camp, Inc

Blighted by nation-wide HIV and deforestation crises, the nation of Malawi plays host to scores of international Non-Governmental Organizations every year. This project focuses on one such organization, World Camp Incorporated, and its use of musical strategies in the implementation of educational outreach programs in rural primary school classrooms. Throughout a four-day curriculum, music is called upon to energize students, galvanize classroom unity, convey curricular concepts, and re-present medical information to host communities. Much has been written about music\u27s affective and effective power as demonstrated through local community-based organizations, but this ethnographic project resituates music as a tool for social change in the cross-cultural context of international aid. Through the historical and political contextualization of World Camp\u27s presence in host communities, I suggest that volunteers\u27 dominant cultural status enables them pedagogical latitude in the classroom and a unique discursive space where horizontal, symmetrical relationships with their students are possible. Through songs and dances each morning, volunteers seek to foster social cohesion with their students, an encounter to which I apply Thomas Turino\u27s semiotic theory as an analytical metric. In community gatherings at the conclusion of each camp, classes of students utilize music and drama to re-present messages about HIV and other social challenges faced by Malawians. The resulting hybridized musical genre often weds Malawian folk music idioms to medical and behavioral concepts from World Camp\u27s curriculum. Drawing on the work of performance theorists, I assess the degree to which these performances both celebrate and subvert rural societal structures amid students\u27 efforts to combat local social problems

Tales from the Belgrade pit: performance, identity, communication and violence at underground concerts

Since the early 80s punk rock/hard core punk and heavy metal music were already part of the ne Yugoslavian music scene. Although these genres originally came from different social context they were accepted, approach to the music and attitude was highly influenced by the Yugoslavian social political context. Performative parts of these ( scenes such as visual look, communication, behavior, musi cal lyrical themes and concerts were subordinated to wider socio and ideological climate. Šutka the term used in Serbian stands for rough form of dancing and other bodily techniques practiced at underground concerts. In this presentation I’m going to analyze the specifics of these practices in Serbia in the last 15 years. As the title indicates, I will explore the relationship between performance, identity, communication and violence within the context of concerts as places of social ritual

What politics? : Youth and political engagement in Africa

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