CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland
City, Memory and Performing Body
Organiser: Reena Tiwari
Stanley- Niaah, Sonjah (University of
West Indies, Jamaica) THE STORY OF SPACE AND CELEBRATION IN KINGSTON'S DANCE
HALL MEMORY
From 'Limbo' to 'Butterfly' and the 'Jerry Springer', dances throughout Jamaican
dancehall history have mostly been created in the urban Kingston Metropolitan
Area. The city of Kingston is therefore a site of collective memory in respect
of dancehall. The paper will look in detail at the spatiality of select venues
and some of the dances that were popular at those venues, as a way of making a
statement about spaces used over the period 1986-2001. Do these spaces hold any
significance for Kingston's memory or not? What do they say about the psychology
of urban Kingston's dancehall and dancehall culture in general?
Reyes-Ruiz, Rafael
(Oberlin College, USA) REPRODUCING CULTURE: LATIN(O) AMERICAN NIGHTCLUBS IN
TOKYO
Altough Latin(o) American music arrived in Japan as early as the 1930's, its
popularization is linked to Latin American immigration since the late 1970's and
the current global prominence of Latin sounds in the global stage. In this
paper, I will discuss the role of Latin(o) American dance music at popular
nightclubs in Tokyo in disseminating "tropical" imaginaries of Latin
America. I will also discuss the role of dancing in the organization of
immigrant life of Latin Americans in Japan.
Palonen Emilia (University of Essex,
United Kingdom) COLLECTIVE AND INDIVIDUAL MEMORIES IN POSTCOMMUNIST CITY-TEXT OF
BUDAPEST
Postcommunism brought another wave of changes in the city-text of Budapest.
Street names were changed in the early 1990s, while new statues and memorials
are still supplementing the socialist ones. Writing the city-text is a series of
attempts at reconstructing the past and building a common set of heroes. Besides
political attempt at legitimacy, these provide an individual experience of
nowtime, a mix of memories - both collective and individual - and presence. The
proposed paper will account for the ways in which politics of memories have been
inscribed in the city of Budapest through the street names and statues. It
especially tackles their role in construction of identities of places and
identifications through space.
Jamieson Kirstie (Napier University,
Scotland) EDINBURGH, A TIME OR A PLACE
Festivals provide a rich pool of visual symbols through which national and urban
identity is communicated to potential tourists and corporate investors, but
would it be too reductive to define the existence of festivals by their economic
or political function? The manipulation of space and time, identities and
identification takes place through a magnified re-interpretation of the urban
landscape. What is the nature of this particular festival logic of image-making?
What does the gaze of the festival reveal and conceal in its representations?
Within the temporal and cyclical conditions of Edinburgh's festivals, the city,
the state and the nation are visualised in representations of urban bohemianism,
corporate sponsorship, cosmopolitan consumerism, interculturalism and, high and
popular culture. This paper explores the production of symbols, spaces,
atmospheres, reputations and identities in Edinburgh's festivals.
Motohashi, Yayoi (Waseda University,
Japan) DREAM AND CONTRADICTION OF CREATING NATIONAL STYLE: NATIONALISITC
MOVEMENTS OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE IN HUNGARY AND FINLAND AT THE TURN OF THE 20TH
CENTURY
At the turn of the 20th century, there were movements to seek for creating a
national style in Hungary and Finland. At this time, Hungary became independent
under the Austria-Hungary Double Monarchy. Budapest, the new capital of Hungary,
was full of zeal to have their own state. Finland was, at this time, under the
pressure of "Russification", and seeking for the independence. The
nationalistic movements were flourished there. Architects tried to express their
national identity with the inspiration from their own history. They used folk
art motifs for creating the national style. Artists had to face with
contradiction. The national style should be the style, which identify the
nation. However, there was no such style. They had to create this partly
artificially. Above all of artificiality and contradiction, or may be because of
that, their national style represents the "golden era", reflecting
their strong will and their dreams.
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