Biliana Velkova : the musical

Biliana Velkova-The Musical is a personal story about coming of age within two distinct ideologies, communism and capitalism and the impact of immigration and assimilation. It also gives a glimpse of my two worlds and my navigation between them. And lastly, I hope that it adds to our collective memory of communism, no matter what the reality of it was. My project becomes part of the dialogue that is currently surfacing around the relevance of post communist realities and discourse

A Future Without Spectacle: A Refuge from Cultural Hegemony in Contemporary Art and Neo-Humanism

Abstract This paper explores possibilities for the future of popular culture. Central to the arguments in this paper, is the search for a remedy to a visual culture that has been left deconstructed and fragmented by a Western obsession with postmodernism. This paper begins with a discussion of Boris Groy’s “society of spectacle without spectators” (2012) and the ramifications of such an observation as homological to the state of contemporary art and the human subject. A discussion of the works of modern and contemporary artists is used to illustrate contemporary art’s metonymic relationship to the future of popular culture. Specific examples are explored such as German photographer and film maker Thomas Demand’s works that create a “critical fiction” Liljegren (2013) to highly engage the spectator and are juxtaposed with postmodern speculations such as Baudrillard’s simulacra

Unintelligible Silence: Challenging Academic Authority in a New Socio-dialogic Politics of the Real for Collective Justice and Transformation

What is silence? Is it a loss, an omission? Is it a stopping of the mouth, of the voice? An empty place where no meaning has come forward…or perhaps at times quite the opposite, an absence-as-presence  Deleuze, 1990; Derrida, 1976)? Might silence evoke much more about what we assume is our monological, unitary reality, indexing possibilities yet unseen? This paper outlines the ways in which silence is typically understood according to scholarly orthodoxy: as omission in human communication or a silencing of minoritized individuals or communities by those in power. It then moves to critique the preeminence of whitestream (Grande, 2003) Western-centric academic authority, which self-perpetuates via the exclusion of outsider ways of doing, being and knowing such as those brought forward by silence, constituting a loss of meaning and knowledge from the social imaginary. This paper suggests that the pursuit of an articulate unknowing (Zembylas, 2005) regarding silence as a creative, disruptive force beyond the control of rationality is a means of engaging with radical possibilities for a different, juster world. It proposes a socio-diologic politics of the real that welcomes silence as an unsettling of our current thinking about what is and will be possible, as well as who does and does not matter. It concludes by illustrating the ingenious force of silence in examples of subversive art that expose the hegemonizing, rational(ized) version of reality sold by academics and powerholders, bringing forward into the imagination what prospects for change, justice, and social transformation yet await.&nbsp

Lady Gaga as (dis)simulacrum of monstrosity

Lady Gaga’s celebrity DNA revolves around the notion of monstrosity, an extensively researched concept in postmodern cultural studies. The analysis that is offered in this paper is largely informed by Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of monstrosity, as well as by their approach to the study of sign-systems that was deployed in A Thousand Plateaus. By drawing on biographical and archival visual data, with a focus on the relatively underexplored live show, an elucidation is afforded of what is really monstrous about Lady Gaga. The main argument put forward is that monstrosity as sign seeks to appropriate the horizon of unlimited semiosis as radical alterity and openness to signifying possibilities. In this context it is held that Gaga effectively delimits her unique semioscape; however, any claims to monstrosity are undercut by the inherent limits of a representationalist approach in sufficiently engulfing this concept. Gaga is monstrous for her community insofar as she demands of her fans to project their semiosic horizon onto her as a simulacrum of infinite semiosis. However, this simulacrum may only be evinced in a feigned manner as a (dis)simulacrum. The analysis of imagery from seminal live shows during 2011–2012 shows that Gaga’s presumed monstrosity is more akin to hyperdifferentiation as simultaneous employment of heterogeneous and potentially dissonant inter pares cultural representations. The article concludes with a problematisation of audience effects in the light of Gaga’s adoption of a schematic and post-representationalist strategy in the event of her strategy’s emulation by competitive artists

The '419 Scam': An Unacceptable 'Power of the False'?

One of the more virulent manifestations of a burgeoning virtual world is the very physical waste that underwrites its proliferation. Illegal e-waste dumping in Western Africa not only wreaks havoc on the ecosystems of its destination countries, but also bolsters the arsenal of the "419 scammers" and 'data miners,' in turn. As the pernicious nature of such online fraud is protested by Western media, and the global economic inequalities that foster such deception is conveniently ignored, the material vestiges of Western privilege are unwittingly recycled into the war machines of the '419 scam.' Wilfully blind to the global conditions that perpetuate the fraud, '419'" vigilantes or 'scambaiters' take it upon themselves to hunt the scammers as a way of 'turning the tables' on their operations. An online sport steeped in colonial tradition, the redoubtable scambaiters proudly display their "trophy" catches on online forums such 419eater.com and 419baiter.com. In contradistinction to the issues of morality that pervade the commentary on methods of the 419 scammers and scambaiters alike, this paper will focus instead, on the multiple creative possibilities, that are actualised by these encounters. It is argued, that such exchanges, even in their current lamentable state, at least facilitate unforeseen connections between parts of the world that had never once spoken at all. That the successful facilitation of these scams, whether on the part of scammer or scambaiter, require a level of research into their respective subjects, that brings Africa and the West into an unprecedented 'intimacy,' Even if the outcomes are ultimately antagonistic, and the relations produced "false" ones, this paper asks whether they might be identified as the nascent stages of a more productive 'powers of the false.' to make use of a concept by philosopher, Gilles Deleuze. That the forgery and fantasy used to negotiate the scams might actually have the effect of furthering conversation about the global iniquity that inspire them in the first place

An Interview with Tony David Sampson: Author of Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks

We are delighted to have the opportunity to talk with Tony about how his work touches on issues of imitation and contagion—a loaded term unpacked within his 2013 book

Prepare for Glory: The Multiplication of the Digitally Hyperreal Hero in Frank Miller's/ Zack Snyder's 300

The filmic adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel 300 by Zack Snyder stands right between recorded history and postmodern entertainment, with its storyline crammed between an actual event and its virtual filmic shell. The muscular homogeneity of the Spartan army, made possible with digital technology, is viewed as a kaleidoscopic reflection of the relation between one story and its many narrated versions, visually exemplified by the army of 300 Spartans, in which specificity is effaced and the individual conflates with the dehumanized mass. Drawing on the libidinal dynamics of male muscularity, the film fuses history, the superhero tradition and current so­cial anxieties to present an abstract ideal, death in the noble service of free­dom, through a specific, contemporary viewpoint. Digital post-processing ensures that the aesthetics of the film is the same as that of the graphic novel, minimalist but hardly life-like; thus the film celebrates the ability of digital imaging to transform a single abstract idea/ ideal into a pop culture spectacle, faithful, as such, to the time and era that it addresses

Templates for Activism: Creative Convergences in Feminist Art and Law

Community arts are an underexamined approach to creative social advocacy that catalyzes a shift in perceptions about social issues through cultural, symbolic and artistic means. One example, Templates for Activism, forges new geographies between feminist jurisprudence, feminist art and community arts practices, and in doing so seeks new ways to foster the work of feminist law.Les arts communautaires sont une approche de revendication sociale créative qui catalyse un changement dans les perceptions en ce qui a trait aux questions sociales par l’entremise de méthodes culturelles, symboliques et artistiques. Un exemple, Templates for Activism, forge de nouvelles géographies entre la jurisprudence féministe, l’art féministe et les pratiques des arts communautaires, et de ce fait, recherche de nouveaux moyens de favoriser le travail du droit féministe

Stalling for Time

Carel Fabritius left behind few but important works of art. We are concerned here with the View in Delft, and attempt to make two points about it. The first is that this small painting manages to break away from the classical perception of perspective, an endeavor informed mostly by new findings in the field of optics of the time. The second point, theoretically related to the first, stresses compositional elements that would bring View in Delft closer to a meditation on the fleetingness of life, making it a "town-scape" vanitas