Vol 2 No 1

Homebirth Advocacy on the Internet

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Shira Segal

Indiana University, USA

Volume 2, Number 1, 2010 I Download PDF Version

 DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v2n1.09

Abstract

On-line depictions of the maternal and birthing body in the familial and communal context aims to destigmatize the “natural” (i.e., the non-intervened) body by putting birth –and representations of birth –back into women’s hands and homes. The many rich and diverse representations of amateur homebirth home movies on the Internet are part of an on-going visual effort to make and exhibit visual documents of and about the maternal, birthing body that upholds the (w)holistic model of childbirth and thus furthering the emotional, visual, and political stakes of the homebirth movement both on-line and in real life. As part of the rich history of alternative representations of childbirth –and alternative birth practices such as homebirth –that reworks the traditionally taboo subject of childbirth with the said goal of empowering women and their families, contemporary on-line representations of homebirth are politically, corporeally, and emotionally invested.

[Keywords: Internet, Childbirth, Visual Culture / Video, Gender, YouTube]

Editorial, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2010

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Tirtha Prasad Mukhopadhyay

Volume 2, Number 1, 2010 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v2n1.01

The visual capacity is an excellent addition to the bogey of sense buds that we have –it definitely enhances capabilities of maneuver and movement, along with instrumentation of an entire spectrum of sensory or tactile reflexes, but its epistemic function is that of bridging, of taking us through the phenomenon of vision to that other territory. The special edition on Visual Arts has been designed with the aim of getting to employ  visual signs for making connections through terminals that are al so nonlinear and unpredictable, just as they are.

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Metaphysics and Representation: Derrida’s Views on the Truth in Painting

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 Chung Chin-Yi

National University of Singapore

Volume 2, Number 1, 2010 I Download PDF Version

 DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v2n1.08

Abstract

This paper discusses Derrida’s deconstruction of both representational and post-representational thinking, in pointing out that they both assume a realist or representational paradigm as its assumption. It examines Rosemary Hawker’s contention that Derrida’s argument is one fundamentally concerned about the inseparability of idiom and content, and argues that indeed this was an accurate reading; Heidegger and Shapiro’s fallacy as interpreted by Derrida is precisely the trap of metaphysical and representational thinking in assuming that content is separable from form. It also examines Marcellini and Haber’s arguments that Derrida’s arguments are about the failure of the representational paradigm of thinking as there is always a surplus and excess of meaning because each rendering differs from its origin. Finally it finds out that there is no such thing as pure representation as art always renders its object with a difference, or differance. Keep Reading

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Performing and Dying in the name of World Peace: From Metaphor to Real Life in Feminist Performance

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 Ahu Antmen

Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey

Volume 2, Number 1, 2010 I Download PDF Version

 DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v2n1.07

Abstract

The paper presents an analysis of “Brides on Tour” undertaken by the Italian performance artists Pippa Bacca and Silvia Moro on International Women’s Day (8th March) in 2008  and considers it as much as a symbolic act of sacrifice, performing for global politics as potent subject and woman as victimized object of local ‘petty crime’.  A very important aspect of the performance is the way it blurs certain boundaries, as with feminist activity in general. In the performance, the writer detects a sense of solidarity by women for women on a global level, where the sacrifice reflected in the risk-taking aspect of hitchhiking symbolizes the past efforts of feminist activists who have at times put their lives in danger to better the living conditions of women through the ages and across nations. Keep Reading

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

‘Just as good a place to publish’: Banksy, Graffiti and the Textualisation of the Wall

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Anindya Raychaudhuri

Cardiff University, UK

Volume 2, Number 1, 2010 I Download PDF Version

 DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v2n1.06

Abstract

The article focuses on the work of the (in)famous graffiti artist Banksy, as a way into discussing the wider artistic and textual aspects of graffiti-art. Banksy has famously declared that the wall is ‘just as good a place to publish’ – a statement that certainly invites a study of graffiti-art as a movement to appropriate both the wall and the surrounding cityscape as a space to situate the ‘texts’. A graffiti-artist has to remain, to use Baudelaire’s expression, incognito, and the implications of a necessarily anonymous artist on both the nature and ownership of the ‘text’ created have to be considered when examining graffiti art. The transient and ephemeral nature that Baudelaire attributes to modernity constitutes the very essence of graffiti. Indeed, graffiti-art is doubly ephemeral – because the authorities ‘buff’ (remove) it with depressing regularity, and because its roadside existence means that the viewers themselves are usually in motion relative to the artwork. Graffiti artists like Banksy, therefore exemplify sociological criticism of early cinema (Georg Simmel’s “Metropolis and Mental Life”, for example.) and as such, should be an essential part of ‘urban studies’ of art and aesthetics. Keep Reading

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Soyinka and Yoruba Sculpture: Masks of Deification and Symbolism

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Gilbert Tarka Fai

University of Maroua, Cameroon

Volume 2, Number 1, 2010 I Download PDF Version

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v2n1.05

Abstract

The Yoruba mask is a piece of sculpture that is both artistic and functional. The carved work fulfils one or more of several functions—sacred or profane, personal or communal, serious or satirical. As an object it has only its relatively insignificant quota of vital energy that is found, according to African ontology, in all matter and substance of the visible world- animal, vegetable and mineral. But the Yoruba mask also has a force that extends to the world of spirits and gods. These masks also have the dual effect of transforming the wearer and the ambivalence of serving good and evil ends. This indicates that the Yoruba mask apart from its spiritual essence is a symbol of great complexity and ambiguity. It is from this great community of sculptors and from the ambivalent quality of the mask as image and symbol that some of Wole Soyinka’s creative writings emerge. This paper argues that Wole Soyinka uses his native Yoruba sculpture, and the mask in particular, to dramatise the essential spiritual continuity of human nature through the dramatic appearance of gods and the spirits of the ancestors in the world of the living during the dance of possession. Keep Reading

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“Beyond Borders”: Rabindranath Tagore’s Paintings and Visva-Bharati

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Amrit Sen

Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India

Volume 2, Number 1, 2010 I  Download PDF Version

 DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v2n1.04

Abstract

This paper seeks to locate Tagore’s paintings and his writings on art in the context of the evolution of his ideas of Visva-Bharati. It intends to argue that as Tagore moved from the idea of the brahmavidyalaya to the idea of Visva-Bharati, his paintings and his concept of art changed substantially. The ‘imagined community’ of Visva Bharati was replicated in Tagore’s canvas as he conceptualised a world without borders, where ideas and knowledge could be freely and equally assimilated and exchanged. Setting himself apart from the binaries of the self and the ‘other’ and the rhetoric of nationalism, Tagore’s unique postcoloniality used the aesthetic and the pedagogic to bypass the political. Keep Reading

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Living in the Theme Park: A Textual Tour of Savannah’s Public Squares

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Tom Lavazzi

Kingsborough Community College, New York, USA

Volume 2, Number 1, 2010 I  Download PDF Version

 DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v2n1.03

About the Paper

In drafting this essay, the author has counter-posed two compositional strategies, one based on conventional rhetorical structures, founded in enlightenment concepts of sequential logic, rationality, and isomorphism—i.e., the standard, academically sanctioned thesis essay form, proceeding in an orderly and hierarchical manner from head (main idea) through body (detailed breakdown and investigation of thesis points—equivalent to scientific testing or proof of an initial  hypothesis/proposal, deploying transitions and focal topics to govern and control the content of each subsequent investigative unit (paragraph).  From this perspective, the essay structure is very much the rhetorical double of the city plan it proposes to elucidate.  Working against this more panoptically controlled hierarchical structure, is a postmodern turn toward [Internet] www-based, non-sequential organization.  Hence, certain sections of the essay are potentially arrived at via mock-URLs, suggesting the tentative, self-consciously constructed, unnatural nature of the smoothly flowing logical structure; at any moment, a different link could be selected, interrupting/disrupting/complicating the logical and sequential arrangement.  Also along these alinear lines are bolded fragments of text, suggesting an associational pattern of connectivity among images and ideas destabilizing and rendering motile the more static, rationally secured surface of the final product. Keep Reading

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Subjectivity in Art History and Art Criticism

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Eleni Gemtou,University of Athens, Greece

Volume 2, Number 1, 2010 I Download PDF Version

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v2n1.02

Abstract

Art history and art criticism belong in a wider sense to the humanities, whose aim is the interpretation and comprehension of human actions and intellectual work.  Both fields draw their basic methodological tools from the hermeneutical tradition.  Their central analytic category is comprehension (verstehen) that seeks to ascribe meaning to the spirit of these actions, or to works of art.  The intention of the art historian is to analyse and integrate artistic works in a wider intellectual and social frame, while the aim of the art critic is to examine the values connected with artistic creations.  Their roles are not always distinguishable, as analysis, comprehension, interpretation and evaluation often co-exist in the studies of both fields.  However, the approach of the art historian should have a scientific character, aiming at objectively valid formulations, while the critic should give equal consideration to subjective factors, acknowledging international artistic values, often taking on the additional role of philosopher or theorist of art. In my paper I examine the varying degrees of subjectivity in the approaches of art historians and art critics.  I give emphasis to the methods and language both use, while I approach the categories of artistic values (aesthetic, moral, cognitive) according to their subjective usage, but also to their role in the comprehension and evaluation of art.  My conviction is that art history and art criticism are complementary activities, as the former creates fertile conditions for the latter’s complete and essential evaluations. Keep Reading

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

About the Contributors (Vol 2, No 1)

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Ahu Antmen is Assistant Professor at Marmara University Faculty of Fine Arts in Istanbul, Turkey. She graduated from Istanbul University Faculty of Communications. She obtained an MA in 20th Century Art from Goldsmiths College, and completed her PhD on “New Approaches in Turkish Art” at Mimar Sinan University. She lectures on 20th Century Art, Contemporary Art Practice, Contemporary Turkish Art and Visual Culture at Marmara University. Her recent publications (in Turkish) include a book on Trends in 20th Century Western Art and monographies on Turkish artists Ali Teoman Germaner and Hale Tenger. She has also edited a volume on Art History and Feminist Criticism. Email: aantmen@doruk.net.tr

Amrit Sen is Reader in English at the Department of English & Other Modern European Languages, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. He has won the Outstanding Thesis Award for his book The Narcissistic Mode: Metafiction as a Strategy in Moll Flanders, Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy. (Worldview, 2007) He is interested in Travel Writing and has recently won the UGC Research Award for his Project titled, The Self & the World in Tagore’s Travel Writings. He also takes a keen interest in the History of Science in India, especially the writings of Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray. He would welcome your comments at amritsen@gmail.com

Anindya Raychaudhuri is a PhD student at Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University, researching the constructions of gender in the narratives of the Spanish Civil War. His other research interests include Marxist and postcolonial theory, detective fiction, graffiti and urban studies, and subculture studies. He has written on, among other things, cinema and the Indian Partition, the works of Christopher Caudwell, Doctor Who and on British graffiti-artist Banksy. Email: raychaudhuria@cardiff.ac.uk

Chung Chin-Yi is completing doctoral studies at the National University of Singapore. Her research centers on the relationship between deconstruction and phenomenology. She has published in Nebula, Ol3media and the Indian review of World literature in English, KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy, Vitalpoetics and SKASE Literary Journal. She is a teaching assistant at the National University of Singapore. She has presented papers on the Beckett centenaries in 2006 in Denmark and Ireland and recently at the Theory Culture and Society 25th anniversary conference. Email: enigma719@hotmail.com

Debasish Lahiri is Lecturer in the Department of English, Lal Baba College, West Bengal, India. Email: debasish.lahiri@gmail.com.

Eleni Gemtou is Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and History of Science, University of Athens, Greece.  She studied classical archaeology in the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (Germany) and completed her dissertation in Art History in the Kapodistrian University, Athens (Greece). Amongst others projects, she worked on archaeological excavations and in museums within Greece, as well as in the educational programs of the British auction house, Christie’s, in Athens. Since 2004 she has been working as a lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science in the University of Athens. She published papers in international and Greek journals and participated in a number of conferences. Email: egemtos@phs.uoa.gr

Gilbert Tarka Fai is Lecturer, Department of English, Higher Teachers’ Training College, University of Maroua, Cameroon. Email: tarkafai@gmail.com.

Josephine A. McQuail is a Professor of English at Tennessee Technological University in the U.S. She served as the Executive Director of the Northeast Modern Language Association from 2003-2006. She has published on a number of subjects, including William Blake, George Gissing, and James Joyce. E-mail: jmcquail@tntech.edu

Reynaldo Thompson, an artist, curator and writer par excellence, is Coordinator at the School of Digital Arts of the University of Guanajuato, Mexico. His visual art and architecture background helps him to play with the interaction of space, time and art. In 2006 he was awarded a scholarship from the CONACULTA and has participated in more than 30 solo and group shows in the United States, Latin America and London. His works have been shown in collective and solo shows in spaces such as the Dallas Museum of Art for the Day of the Death (October-November, 2002), the Centro Cultural de España in Mexico city with the show Chateau de l’ame: trilogy of water (February- March, 2006) and the Museum of Modern Art of Santo Domingo with the video-installation Red Alive (June 14, 2008). His works have also been exhibited in many other public and private shows. Thompson also participated in an experimental project in London organized by Phyllida Barlow and sponsored by the Arts Council of England entitled What do artists do? in October 2008.  In June 2009 he will have a solo show in Demolden Gallery Project in Santander, Spain.  He had also participated as a curator in many exhibitions in the last three years. Email: thompsonreynaldo@gmail.com

Sarawut Chutiwongpeti graduated from the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, in 1996. Since then, he has been working as a media artist with Cyber Lab at the Center of Academic Resources, Chulalongkorn University. In 1998, he secured funding and travelled as a visiting artist/researcher to several countries such as Canada, the United States of America, Denmark, Finland, France, Norway, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Austria, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, Egypt, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea and Japan. He is associated with a number of international organisations and centres.   Sarawut has organised many international solo and group exhibitions of his works. He has won many national and international awards for his original works. More of his works can be found at http://www.chutiwongpeti.info.  Email: utopia1998@gmail.com.

Shira Bat-Ami Segal is doing her doctoral research on Representations of Pregnancy and Childbirth in Avant-garde Cinema and Home Movies in the Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University. She is also Associate Instructor of C360 Motion Picture Production in the same department. She has published a number of research papers and presented papers in quite a few conferences and seminars. Email: sbsegal@indiana.edu

Siddhartha Dasgupta is Lecturer in the Department of Political Science, Bhatter College, Dantan, West Bengal, India. He did M.A in International Relations from Jadavpur University in 1999. He worked (2000-2003) as Political Affairs Officer at the Consulate General of Japan, Kolkata. He is doing doctoral research on “Bengali, Bangladeshi and Islamic Identities in the Politics of Contemporary Bangladesh: Cross-border Implications for West Bengal”. He has also completed a UGC Minor Research Project (MRP) on Indo-Bangladesh affairs. He has published quite a few papers in reputed journals. Email: sdg1975@rediffmail.com

Sreecheta Mukherjee is a freelance writer on fashion designing, arts and crafts. She runs her blog Designs from India at http://sreecheta.blogspot.com. She studied Textile Designing from International Institute of Fashion Design (INIFD), Kolkata. Email: sreecheta1980@gmail.com.
Tom Lavazzi is Associate Professor of English, Kingsborough Community College, New York, USA. His poetry and criticism appears in such journals as American Poetry Review, Postmodern Culture, Women in Performance, the South Atlantic Review, Symploke, Talisman, Midwest Quarterly, The Little Magazine, Mantis: Journal of Poetry, Criticism, Translation; Genre, Poetry Motel, Poetry New York, Post-Identity, Rhizome: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, and Sagetrieb, among others; his work has been anthologized in Finding the Ox: Buddhism and American Culture (SUNY Press, forthcoming), Dialogism and Lyric Self-Fashioning: Bakhtin and the Voices of a Genre. (Pennsylvania: Susquehanna University Press), Modernism and Photography (Praeger), Synergism: An Anthology of Collaborative Poetry and Poetic Prose (Boshi Press), Carl Rakosi, Man and Poet (National Poetry Foundation), Contemporary Literary Criticism (Gale), Poetry Criticisms 42 (Gale), Home Grown (Blue House), and Jumping Pond: An Anthology of Ozark Poetry (Sand Hills Press).  I have published three volumes of poetry: Stirr’d Up Everywhere, Crossing Borders, and LightsOut.  A book of experimental critical performances, Off the Page: Scripts, Texts and Multimedia Projects from TEZ (a performance group he founded in 1995) is forthcoming from Parlor Press’s Aesthetic Critical Inquiry series (2009). Email: Tom.Lavazzi@kbcc.cuny.edu

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