Contemporary Cultural Phenomena Research Articles

Ikonen und Klischees

Abstract Astonishingly, the trio ‚action film – Italy – tourism‘ has to date received little attention from the perspective of cultural studies and semiotics. The aim of this article is thus to show that communication strategies have made tourist travel a complex phenomenon of contemporary everyday culture from a semiotics perspective: conceptually, theoretically, and through a cursory examination of select examples from film. By doing so, it outlines the ways in which the combination of tourism and action films contributes to common clichés about Italy.

К вопросу о построении методологии Italian Studies в России

The study of Italian culture in the Russian academic tradition has a long history, however, the interdisciplinary space of Italian studies has appeared only recently. The article attempts to define the field of Italian studies in Russia and analyze what paradigms are involved in contemporary studies of Italian culture, as well as to consider what place cultural studies occupy among them. The optics of cultural studies is not built exclusively in the practices of interdisciplinarity, but has its own methodological specifics. The experience of the semiotic analysis of culture and analysis of the culture of consumption ensure the effectiveness of the methodology of culturology. This is manifested in the studies of contemporary Italian cultural phenomena, in particular in the study of the complex phenomenon of Made in Italy, which is seen as a political cultural project for constructing the identity of italianità.

Contemporary Ukrainian Visual Culture on the Way to the International Cultural Space

The article is devoted to the visual culture of Ukraine since independence. It pays special attention to the trends and phenomena of contemporary Ukrainian visual culture that have entered the context of world culture through recognition on international cultural platforms (competitions, festivals, biennials, etc.). The considerations concern the development of various trends in contemporary Ukrainian art, which use various artistic media: photography, installation, performance and film. In particular, Ukrainian conceptual photography was the most interestingly represented by several generations of photographers of the Kharkiv School, who combined radical bodily imagery and social criticism. The Ukrainian installation is represented by the works of artists of the REP (Revolutionary Experimental Space) group, which is focused on the unity of art and politics and considers artistic creation as a political act. An interesting sub-direction of the installation is the video installation, which delivers an original combination of contemporary Ukrainian artists with site-specific art and artistic means of reflecting on the traumas inflicted on Ukrainian society by the war. The article pays special attention to the development of contemporary Ukrainian cinema. The author demonstrates the connection between the work of contemporary Ukrainian filmmakers and the traditions of Ukrainian poetic cinema. In addition, other trends in Ukrainian cinema are identified: the experimental search for a new film language, the development of documentary cinema, on top of the convergence of fiction and non-fiction artistic languages in the work of contemporary Ukrainian filmmakers. The dominant issues of contemporary Ukrainian films selected for screening at leading European film festivals are identified: inclusiveness, reflection on Ukrainian history, war trauma, psychological rehabilitation of combatants, etc.

That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them

That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them

Review of the Dictionary “Ecology of Human Existence. Part II. Media Ecology”

The subject of this review is the second part of the information-military dictionary “Ecology of human existence: media ecology”. The dictionary presents the theme of media ecology or ecology of communications through a number of terms in the aspect of the ecohumanist approach. The authors of the vocabulary articles developed and used it as a new methodology in the study and understanding of the capabilities of modern digital technologies that form the information environment for the existence of a contemporary human. The editors and authors of the vocabulary set a goal of carrying out a philosophical interpretation of the technical and technological conditions of human ‘in-der-Welt-Sein’, in the aspect of information environment (media space), and propose a new, namely, eco-humanistic approach for solving the main problems of the relationship “human – technical and technological world”. The texts of vocabulary articles substantiate the thesis that the capabilities and power of modern digital technologies actualize the need for an eco-humanistic measurement of the relationship “human – technical and technological world”, which does not pre-refuse digital technologies, but means the optimal use of all technological tools, taking into account the detection and preservation of their humanistic potential. The review pays attention to the specifics of the theoretical development of the eco-humanistic approach and its main principles: integrity, optimality, coordination, and eco-systemity. As a result of the analysis the reviewer concludes that the eco-humanistic approach proposed and used by the authors will allow to study and explore the processes and phenomena of contemporary culture in a multidimensional manner, to receive a more accurate interpretation of the ways of human existence and eco-cultural practices that ensure the effect of the staneity of the “ecosystems” in the situations of any intensive technological transformations.

Blacksmithing Art in the Cultural and Art Environment of Ukraine

The paper analyzes the body of literature on the blacksmithing art and delineates the main lines ofstudy of the latter as a phenomenon of contemporary culture and art. Reconsideration of the experience of the blacksmiths, both craftsmen and artists, contributes to revealing the national, regional, and local cultural features, asthe culture of blacksmithing art, on the one hand, islinked to the past, and on the other hand it serves as a modern representation and symbol of the nation. The aim of the work is to study Ukrainian blacksmithing art in the sociocultural context of contemporary time. Methodologically, the research was based on generalization, on the systemic-structural, and structural-functional methods that enabled revealing and examining the traditional and innovative basis of Ukrainian blacksmithing art in the cultural and art environment of Ukraine.

‘The Future is just around the Corner...’ – The construction of urban narratives through temporary supergraphics

Drawings play various roles in (and in-between) the processes of design, construction and the continuous use and appropriation of space. This article explores large drawing elements positioned at building sites. It discusses how decision makers, developers, planners and design professionals actively use such representational means to create site and project narratives for the site preparation and construction phase. Two projects and sites are presented here in order to illustrate and explore the role of large on- site supergraphics during site transformation. The main aim is to explore how they configure specific conceptions of time. The first is Ōtautahi: An Origin Story, a large comic strip mounted on the hoardings of the building site for a new convention centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, as part of the city’s post- earthquake rebuild. The second case is a ground mural in the Danish town of Køge featuring a map in a section of a temporary urban space called The Space of Time that is part of the town’s harbour transformation. The analysis engages with theoretical perspectives on visual culture, drawing and space – in particular urban comics, cartography, mapping, site thinking and transformation. It sheds light on an emerging phenomenon in contemporary urban culture – one characterized by hybrid authorships, ambiguous aesthetics and time-space constellations.

Paradoxes of mindfulness: The specious promises of a contemporary practice

The growing popularity of Western secular mindfulness programs in recent decades has frequently been criticized by sociologists. Mindfulness in this line of argument is viewed as the quintessential neoliberal and capitalist technology of the self. However, this – quite justified – functionalist critique does not account for how mindfulness is increasingly being used to escape growth driven-based optimization pressure. We therefore show, on the basis of our extensive empirical field research, how mindfulness is negotiated as a response to contemporary crises and social change, how this phenomenon can be understood as a symptomatic, contemporary cultural phenomenon. From our ethnographic data from 121 hours of participant observation in mindfulness courses in Germany and six interviews with mindfulness teachers, as well as analysis of relevant literature, we reconstruct four paradoxes of mindfulness. With reference to this, we show to what extent mindfulness is a program of specious promises. For in the final analysis, the broad accessibility and popularity of the program are based on the fact that its application is just as paradoxical as the social problems to which it promises to be a solution.

Showing How They Made Them Move: Early Making-of Documentaries on the Production of Animated Films

Contrary to popular belief, ‘making-of’ documentaries are not a phenomenon of contemporary home cinema culture, but have a long pre-DVD history. This article engages with a special subcategory: ‘making-of’ documentaries on the production of animation. With a focus on French and American examples, the author retraces the transition of production imagery from metaleptic cartoons to emergent documentary genres of the 1930s, arguing that this historical shift reformulated the question of how the creation of animated films can be captured cinematically. Providing decidedly nonfiction (but not necessarily ‘objective’) images of the making of animation, the films challenged established concepts to address the realm of cinematic production. The article seeks to examine this theoretical potential, using the notion of a cinematic hors-cadre as a key example.

Ideological responses to the breaking of COVID-19 social distancing recommendations.

COVID-19 has plagued the globe since January 2020, infecting millions and claiming the lives of several hundreds of thousands (at the time of writing). Despite this, many individuals have ignored public health guidance and continued to socialize in groups. Emergent work has highlighted the potential role that ideology plays in such behavior, and judgements of it. In response to this contemporary cultural phenomenon, we tested whether judgements of those allegedly flouting the guidance on social distancing were influenced by an interaction between the ideologies of those providing judgements and those allegedly breaking the rules. Our data suggest that judgements of those flouting social distancing guidance are influenced by ideology in a symmetrical way. That is, both liberals and conservatives condemn outgroup flouting more than ingroup flouting. We discuss this finding in the context of theoretical work into ideological symmetries, and the implications of growing ideological polarization in contemporary Western democracies.

Репрезентация феномена интерсекса в современной культуре: кинематографический дискурс

Today, significant changes are taking place in the approach to the study of many sociocultural phenomena. Duality and polarity of their perception and analysis are being mitigated, alternative facets of the familiar and the generally accepted are coming to light, a number of “marginal” ideas are becoming the “new norm”. The research paradigm of the 20th – 21st centuries pays special attention to non-binary gender. Modern researchers focus on such issues as self-identification and search for gender identity, mechanisms of gender construction, variability of sex-role and identification models, non-conventional forms of gender identity (transgender and agender, intersexuality, etc.), as well as their representation in contemporary culture. One of such nonconventional phenomena of culture today is intersexuality, the current form of the well-known philosophical idea of androgyny. Intersex as a phenomenon of contemporary culture is considered as an element of the emerging non-binary gender system. Nowadays, intersex is not only the denomination of a person with biological characteristics atypical of the binary gender paradigm, but also the name of a distinctive culture discussing the problems of this new kind of people, who have become a significant part of our society. This article studies the representation of the intersex phenomenon in contemporary culture through the lens of cinematography. The sociocultural status of intersexuality explains the increasing quantity and thematic diversity of cinematic material. Intersexuality is a subject of active artistic reflection of many contemporary directors (L. Puenzo, C. Lavagna, J. Solomonoff, R. Féret, S. Savory, etc.), the discussion of acute social, legal and ethical problems being their focus. Thus, the leading themes are as follows: self-identification of intersex people and their search for gender identity; the problem of medicalization of intersex people and the legality of “corrective”/ “normalizing” operations from both medical and ethical points of view; parent–intersex child relationship; socialization of intersex teenagers and social acceptance of this new type of person.

Tendentious Actions, Racism, or Bad Prejudice?: Examining the Relations of Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia in the Contemporary South Korea

When the phenomenon of contemporary South Korean culture in the world goes viral, some content can be regarded as tendentious content in the receiving countries. While some of these countries have large potential markets for South Korean commodities, including contemporary culture, these seem untouched by some of the tendentious prejudices exercised by South Korean. This research will emphasize the answer to the question of South Koreans who often take tendentious actions towards other countries/cultures? This article argues that the acts of prejudice committed by South Koreans are due to the high ethnocentric attitudes of South Korean society. Even when it became controversial, in the end, South Korea did not care much about cultural sensitivity to the culture of other countries. This article uses the concept of ethnocentrism as an answer to the frequent actions of either racism or things that tend to be in South Korean society. The findings confirm that the tendentious act of South Korean society stems from their feelings of cultural superiority by looking down on other cultures since Korea was colonized and is now a country with a more developed economy.

Intertekstualność. Wersja pop

The concept of intertextuality used in the field of literary theory for the first time by Julia Kristeva seems to be (nowadays) a well-recognised category, though understood in different ways. Numerous interpretations of contemporary cultural phenomena testify to its attractiveness. However, the author of the article argues that in relation to popular literature and culture, a more theoretical approach to the place and status of this category is lacking. He argues that in this context intertextuality should be understood simultaneously as a strategy for producing texts and a specific model of reading. In this sense, it is an indication of formation based on the pleasure principle of a community of cultural representations, experiences and interpretations. However, this heterogeneous universe demonstrates that popular culture is agonist by nature, where the issue of emotional participation and recognition plays a key function.

La pandemia nei sogni

The pandemic within dreams. The article aims to analyse different representations of the pandemic within dreams to trace correspondences between the symbolic expressions of the oneiric language and the sociology of the imaginary. The theoretical-methodological framework of Carl G. Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz guides the articulation of the essay. The unconscious lived through the memory of dreams has the typical and strong tendency to be projected externally, hence the hypothesis that it is possible to grasp its reflections in external reality and the social world. The question to be answered concerns which shared movements are present in the unconscious of individual subjects during the current period dominated by the pandemic and which relationships can be detected between the symbolic material emerging in individual dreams and some contemporary cultural phenomena. The empirical material is drawn from a series of interdisciplinary meetings regarding patients' dreams during the pandemic.

The Performative Dimension of a Literary Text-Concert

Using the premises of literary intermediality theory, the paper dwells on the particular performability of a literary text, in which a concert is not only described but also played out as a distinct socially significant phenomenon of contemporary culture. It is because of the performative dimension, which is an essential medium between actual musical events and their verbal rendition, between the embodiment of music in movements, gestures, sounds of instruments, program pieces, and its presentation in interpretations that are historically determined and motivated by personal poetologies of authors, that such texts could be treated as texts-concerts. It is stated that a literary text-concert thematizes and describes a concert event using specific names of musical pieces and their performers, drawing attention to the performing style and individual manner of expression used by musicians as well as the sound of musical instruments while interpreting specific musical compositions. The text itself is conceptualized as a concert, i.e., the plot may be framed by a concert event or be presented as a special concert event with a detailed description of the conditions of the performance (acoustic space, the drama, timing, atmosphere, acoustic background, relevant auditory habits, and performative and ritualistic elements of the concert) and their impact on the listener. Due to particular structural technologies aimed at the most adequate and vocal rendering of the musical performance, a text of this type is played out as a concert that exceeds the limits of representation and displays such dimensions as embodiment, mediality, or eventfulness. In a metaphorical sense, the text is a stage on which the musical performance plays out, which is often combined with the discourse on the author’s creative becoming. Since a text-concert is constituted through intermedial links with music, it has the potential of revealing its own mediality, showing the things it talks about, and in such a way transcending the limits of its content. The analysis is based on Julio Cortazar’s essay Around the Piano with Thelonius Monk and Friedrich Christian Delius’s The Future of Beauty. 

Big Books in Times of Big Data

Big Books in Times of Big Data

ТЕОРЕТИЧНА МОДЕЛЬ КОЛООБІГУ КУЛЬТУРИ ЯК КУЛЬТУРОЛОГІЧНИЙ ПІДХІД У ВИВЧЕННІ ФЕНОМЕНІВ СУЧАСНОЇ КУЛЬТУРИ

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate the importance and applicability of the theoretical model of the circuit of culture for researching of axiological aspects of the contemporary cultural phenomena. The research methodology applies the methods of studying, analysis and generalisation to clarify the peculiarities of the theoretical model of the cultural circuit. There is a hermeneutical approach to study the semantic aspects of cultural phenomena. The scientific novelty of the article is in explanation of the prospects of using the model of the circuit of culture for analyses of the phenomena of contemporary culture in Ukrainian Cultural Studies. Conclusions. The article has identified the usage of the model of the cultural circuit, which offers the studying of the meanings in the context of human social and cultural experience, significantly expands the research frameworks for the interpretation of the value-semantic sphere of people. The article has proved that the theoretical model is significant because it meets the peculiarities of Ukrainian Cultural Studies and can be used as a methodology of the research of the value-semantic aspect of phenomena in contemporary culture. To confirm the prospects of the usage of the circuit of culture, the author’s own invention of the value-semantic element of the circuit of the culture of the chestnut symbol in the context of the urban culture of Kyiv is given, and the prospects of this methodology for the analysis of contemporary art and the art market are indicated. The research based on five connected processes as representation, identity, production, consumption, and regulation. They require a detailed examination of human ideology, everyday social practices, lifestyle and ways of understanding reality, as well as the study of works of art and official documentation, which testifies to the possibilities of diverse study of values and meanings that circulate in the dynamic area of culture. The article is a part of the cultural study of the art market as an area of functioning of contemporary art and aims to find a current methodology. The expediency of using the model of the circuit of culture as a theoretical basis is substantiated, which makes it possible to study the specifics of the creation of the meaning when a person gains experience in different social and cultural conditions.

It is time to look back on postmodernism

It is time to look back on postmodernism

Conceptualizing Performance and Performative Practices in Scientific Discourse

The article analyzes the works on performance and performative practices asthe phenomena of contemporary culture and art,and highlights the main directions of research of these phenomena. The reasons for the increased interest in the study of performanceas a phenomenon of artistic culture are clarified, the complexity and ambiguity of this phenomenon are noted.The aim of the work isto study and systematize the existing theories regarding the conceptualization of performance and performativepractices in the mode of humanitarian knowledge, to consider these phenomena from various standpoints. That will provide a solutionto the scientific problem of determining the essential specifics of performance as a phenomenon of modern culture.The theoretical and methodological basis of the research was philosophical and general scientific approaches, principles and methods that allowed to consider the phenomenon of performance from different perspectives: the principle of interdisciplinarity allows to reveal the essence of performance as a sociocultural phenomenon; the method of generalization made it possible to determine the place of performance in the worldview paradigm due to the analysis of ambiguous formulations and statements regarding the phenomena of performance and performative practices.

After fashion film: social video and brand content in the influencer economy

Luxury and designer fashion brands today produce as much digital content and branded entertainment as they do design and product. Online video is a key part of that production. In this article, the author questions whether the use of the generic term ‘fashion film’ is still relevant to discussions of the moving image in the digital age. He does this by examining a range of promotional uses of the moving image by the fashion industry – by brands such as Gucci, Burberry and Louis Vuitton – on the social media platforms Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat, which blend design with media. This article seeks to engage critically with the branded dominance of ‘fashion film’ as a commercial phenomenon in contemporary visual culture by positioning it as a shape-shifting form of ‘content’ through the dissemination of moving images on social media, on mobile image-sharing platforms, in which the visual dynamic of the feed (of marketing and data) is now, in part, superseding the aesthetic framework of cinema (of narrative and drama). Rather than situating it primarily as part of film history, here the author situates the contemporary fashion-moving image at the intersection of digital interactivity, fashion branding and celebrity influence.