Democracy’s Fourth Wave? Digital Media and the Arab Spring

Did digital media really "cause" the Arab Spring, or is it an important factor of the story behind what might become democracy's fourth wave? An unlikely network of citizens used digital media to start a cascade of social protest that ultimately toppled four of the world's most entrenched dictators. Howard and Hussain find that the complex causal recipe includes several economic, political and cultural factors, but that digital media is consistently one of the most important sufficient and necessary conditions for explaining both the fragility of regimes and the success of social movements. This book looks at not only the unexpected evolution of events during the Arab Spring, but the deeper history of creative digital activism throughout the region.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117564/1/Democracy's Fourth Wave.pdfDescription of Democracy's Fourth Wave.pdf : PD

Art Practice as Buddhist Practice: A Soteriology through Suffering

The thesis examines the Buddhist concept of suffering, portrayed through visual art. The central questions are how can art be used to understand Buddhist suffering and, conversely, how can Buddhist suffering be used in the creation and perception of visual art. My thesis is based on an understanding of suffering (Dhukkha) described in the Early Buddhist Texts. Suffering is addressed through the Khandhas; collective processes that recognize human subjectivity as shifting. The Khandhas show that we are just processes of cause and effect. The Khandhas also bridge divides between reason and affect, mind and body, drawing on the work of Sue Hamilton and Peter Harvey. These theorists describe a Buddhism that has been termed modernist, where there is a renewed focus on suffering. The 4 artworks use the Buddha’s principle metaphor for suffering; of being on fire. The first two suites show seated bodies burning, portraying the universality of suffering. The third suite has nuns standing in a panorama of gold, representing immanent enlightenment. The fourth suite utilizes an image of my ‘self’ as the site of suffering. The dissertation compares Dhukkha to the works of Theodor Adorno, Susan Sontag, Mieke Bal and Mark Ledbetter as theorists of suffering. Adorno saw the representation of suffering as gratuitous, reinforcing existing systems of repression. For Bal, representations of suffering are only possible through inflection; changing forms so that exploitation is removed but art remains. Buddhism however sees suffering as intrinsic to all representation. Ledbetter then posits suffering as one part of a larger process of seeing that includes voyeurism. Works by six artists are paired and compared to understand different ways of articulating suffering. Colombian artist Doris Salcedo uses materials that speak of the lives of people missing in war torn Colombia. In contrast Oscar Munoz uses video to invoke the suffering and transience of both life and images. The work of Bill Viola is examined to show immediacy in the apprehension of pain and suffering. Viola’s works are juxtaposed with Zhang Huan who uses ash to invoke existential suffering. Finally, late works by Mark Rothko and Richard Serra are analyzed to understand the transformation and ending of suffering through abstracted forms. The artworks are lastly compared to a history of Buddhist self-sacrifice, including suicide and self-immolation. Both the artworks and these acts relate to the Buddhist understanding of ‘self’. Ultimately that ‘self’ is a delusion. The understanding of the delusion provides release from suffering, which is the aim of Buddhism

Female Reverberations Online: An Analysis of Tunisian, Egyptian, and Moroccan Female Cyberactivism During the Arab Spring

Digital technologies and social media networks have the potential to open new platforms for women in the public domain. During the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions, female cyberactivists used digital technologies to participate in and at times led protests. This thesis examines how Tunisian, Egyptian, and Moroccan female cyberactivists deployed social media networks to write a new body politic online. It argues throughout that female activists turned to online activism to disrupt gender relations in their countries and demand social, religious, economic, and political gender parity

The tyrants within us and the thread of history : the creation of Sic Semper Tyrannis, a one-person play

The assigned task was to create and perform a 20-40 minute long one-person play, with no other guidelines or restrictions offered. Having never performed in or written a full one-person play, my challenge was two-fold: create a cohesive and coherent script, and craft the production and performance of that script. From several inspirational sources, I was spurred on to explore the dynamics of revolutionaries, fanatics, and vigilantes through the lens of presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth. Through the combination of Booth’s infamy and the modern day realities of fame-seeking, political divisiveness, and tragically pervasive “spectacle killing” events, I was ultimately able to craft the story that became the one-person play SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS. My research led me to amass a great deal of material to draw from, and it soon became clear from the initial script that expanding the piece and its theatrical elements would be required. Through both script revisions and the addition of sound and visuals, I was able to ultimately create and perform a piece that successfully integrated extravagant technical elements and presented several different voices within the same character embodied by my performance with the use of physical and vocal choices. The audience was responsive to the material, and the resulting video recording and production photography stand as a testament to the project’s implementation. It is my intention to use all of the resulting feedback as a means of further evaluation and expansion of the piece and its subject material

#LetThemStay: : Visual Representations of Protests and Community Mobilization for Asylum Seekers in Australia

This article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC). Users may reproduce, disseminate, display, or adapt this article for non-commercial purposes, provided the author is properly cited. See https:/creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.The indefinite mandatory detention on the mainland and in offshore processing centers of asylum seekers applying for protection in Australia is particularly controversial due to the government’s notoriously harsh policy. In response, large-scale public protests have been staged across the country in recent years to register popular dissent and convey concerns to decision-makers. However, dominant media representations of protests have historically been largely negative, often cast as ineffectual at best, and at worst, violent clashes that alienate the broader population from the cause in question. This paper outlines a visual analysis of media representations of protests that took place in February 2016 against the proposed deportation of 267 asylum seekers from the Australian mainland as part of the #LetThemStay campaign. Through the analysis of four photographs from a range of media outlets, we found that depicting peaceful protests methods and community mobilization complicated dominant understandings of protests and protesters. Indeed, #LetThemStay demonstrated the political power of compassionate solidarity between participants afforded the privilege of safe residency and citizenship, and those forcibly absent who are denied such rights. As such, the paper highlights the impact of peaceful protesting, while also recognizing its limitations in changing Australia’s punitive asylum seeker policies.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Eastern European Time-Based Art During and After Communism

Soviet-era Communism was a project of emergence that failed to realise its Utopian ambition. Nevertheless, it created an unprecedented simulacrum whose visual language was appropriated by a number of artists as a readymade. This artistic response to everyday reality shaped an unofficial narrative of the Communist epoch. Operating beyond the official realm these artists were subject to varying degrees of censorship, and their activities led to what became known as ‘non-official’ art. Non-official artists suffered from inferior materials, lack of exposure, and were forced to radicalize their methods of production. Without official support the everyday domestic realm and a diverse range of outdoor sites became sites of production. The primary arena, however, and the one that would become the most politicized, was the artist's body that often acted as one or both material and surface. On the one hand the thesis takes the Communist context as a common platform from which to discuss time-based art practices in Eastern Europe while, on the other, it proposes that such a general view is worthless since it does not pay sufficient attention to the particular conditions within each bloc country. While the former serves as a reference for artistic response in a wide view, the latter provokes a deeper, more contextualised, understanding of the social, political, and cultural conditions that ultimately shaped non-official art. To understand fully the effect of the Communist past also involves analysing it through the lens of the present day. A number of works produced pre- and post-1989 are analysed that offer insights into the past, its disintegration, and the transition period. The theoretical and critical thrust is shaped from primary research material gathered from artists, intellectuals, and critics throughout the region, so as to most clearly reflect its own contemporaneous and unfolding discourse. It builds on these key sources and underscores the difficulties faced when trying to locate the works within existing art history canons. Together with this written element, a further two curatorial strands complete the form of the thesis. A website has been created that reflects the thesis enquiry, three re-enactments of historical works are undertaken as a strategy that allows for a more experiential understanding of context, and three new performances devised by the author in response to the contexts researched complete the work. The thesis was written throughout Eastern Europe, and primarily in Poland where the author lives and works.Arts and Humanities Research Counci

Martyrdom in the Modern Middle East

This volume assembles contributions from different academic perspectives (religious and Islamic studies, literary and theatre studies, theology, sociology and history) on modern manifestations of martyrdom in the diverse Middle Eastern religious traditions, including Islam, Christianity, Judaism and the Baha'i-faith. The latter is considered in more detail since it is often not included in comparative studies on the monotheistic religions. An excursus into the farer East composes the contribution on Mahatma Ghandi. The volume considers central sociological, philosophical and theological problems which lie at the heart of the phenomenon of martyrdom, the significance of martyrdom in different conflicts, the competing martyr figures which develop in the course of these conflicts as well as the accompanying representations in art and ritual. Special attention is directed to the transitions of traditional forms of martyr representation and the emergence of a global discourse on martyrdom, which can be noticed both in the dissemination of martyr practices as in the reactions to certain martyr events on a global scale