Cultural Scene Research Articles

Facing Poland's “New Historical Politics”: A Conversation with Jaroslaw Suchan

Abstract This conversation between Jarosław Suchan, director of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Poland, from 2006 to 2022, and grupa o.k., the collaborative endeavor of Julian Myers and Joanna Szupinska, addresses the current political crisis in Poland under the rule of the ethnocentric right-wing populist party Law and Justice and its effects on art-institutions in that country. It addresses Suchan's innovative approach to the avant-gardes of the early twentieth century, which he sees as internationalist and emancipatory, and explores the circumstances of his dismissal by forces within the ultra-conservative government. It provides Suchan's parsing of disparate factions within the ruling party, his critical analysis of their aims to advance a whitewashed view of Polish history, his efforts to produce a counternarrative to this “new historical politics,” and his hopes and fears for a Polish cultural scene under right-wing populist direction.

ANNA/ASJA LACIS AND THE MULTILINGUALITY OF THE OTHER

The article discusses the multilingual nature of Anna/Asja Lācis’s own works as well as those devoted to her. When Anna Lācis’s memoirs were published in German in 1971, the editor Hildegard Brenner pointed out that the name Asja Lācis should appear more often in the research on Walter Benjamin and the cultural scene of Weimar. Asja Lācis did not receive well-deserved acclaim over the subsequent decades either. The conference, which is devoted to Asja Lācis and her work in the context of proletarian theatre and the ideas of leftism, indicates that the situation has changed under the influence of geopolitical and technological circumstances. The article analyses the influence of changes in the world on approaches to translation in culture and ensures an insight into Walter Benjamin’s translation work before meeting Asja Lācis in Capri. The goal of the paper is to analyse the efficiency of such work in order to understand both the difficulties in their relationships and the reception of their literary heritage, which are closely intertwined, as well as to facilitate the dialogue between this reception and leftism, which juxtaposes it to Antonio Gramsci’s works about translatability.

Dragostinova, Theodora K. The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene

Dragostinova, Theodora K. The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene

A Review of Sustainable Urban Regeneration Approaches Based on Augmented Reality Technology: A Case of the Bund in Shanghai

Both physical and cultural aspects are important for urban areas. In the context of urban space involving cultural resources, the application of augmented reality (AR) could physically integrate cultural resources into the physical facilities of the city. In this paper, the narrative approach is introduced to the construction of an urban cultural scene based on AR technology. Following the collection of historical materials about the Bund in Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s, this study creates the characters and events in a non-fictional way, organizing a series of narrative elements around themes based on real historical contexts. This is in line with AR, a technology that superimposes virtual information in the real world. As part of this non-fictional narrative design, the author has chosen suitable characters as ‘avatars’ to observe and experience the development of the narrative from a first-person perspective. A participatory viewing can be brought about by adopting a non-fictional approach, rather than a simple information transfer and passive reception. The result is that instead of the traditional guide centric model, a multi-path tour model is created. In conclusion, this paper believes that the use of AR technology can link the narrative to the region more directly and closely. Further, a new cultural scene is created that allows visitors to have an immersive experience. AR technology provides a narrative perspective based on regional knowledge that reinforces and represents the image of the region in a cohesive way.

Oswald Mathias Ungers at Belvederestrasse: Self-portrait in the Studio

Planning implies a double register of actions. On the one hand the architect establishes a dialogue with the reality, performing a maieutic action that allows him to arrive to an epiphany concerning the context’s deepest meanings. On the other hand, the obstetrical role of the architect is propaedeutic to the creative act of designing that, in the poietic impetus, pushes the architect towards the definition of a dynamic continuum of renewed principles. In the tension between maieutic and poietic, between autonomy and heteronomy of the architectural discipline, the nature of architecture is rooted. Working with the interdisciplinary dimension of architecture corresponds to the opportunity of drawing a cultural self-portrait, of which it is possible to decrypt the traits through the patient scanning of images, photographs, objects collected in the memorabilia. Individuals like Oswald Mathias Ungers (1926-2007) express, in an extraordinarily clear and fascinating way, the attitude of working within architecture through other disciplines. OMU arrives on the scene of architectural culture not only for his works and his theoretical contributions, but also for the importance of his art and rare books private collection. The collected artworks are matrixes at the basis of his architectures, they reflect his ideas through the free tools of art. Ungers’ studiolo, built in his house in Belvederestrasse in Cologne, assumes the value of a place of retreat in an ideal and inscrutable spot, in which Ungers can study his art collection and reflect on the cultural matrixes of his architecture. The thesis that this essay wants to explore is the relationship between OMU’s architecture and the system of references to the sister arts of architecture, considering the Kubus-Haus as a paradigm of this interdisciplinary interweaving based on suggestions, analogies, similarities, connections and overlaps, that have created a general and complicated system akin to a palimpsest.

Grappling Above Their Weight Class

The 1970s were big for national anniversary celebrations. The U.S. Bicentennial was in 1976, of course, but two hundred years seemed barely worth mentioning, given that Poland had celebrated its millennium in 1966, Romania commemorated a 2050th anniversary in 1980, and Iran had one-upped everyone in 1971 by putting on a party for the 2500th anniversary of the Persian Empire. But for a girl growing up in Bulgaria in the 1970s, the only anniversary of real importance was “1300 Years Bulgaria,” the expansive commemoration of the 681 CE founding of the medieval Bulgarian state. Although the anniversary itself fell in 1981, the socialist nation began partying in 1977, and it was not just an internal affair. As that girl, Theodora Dragostinova (now a professor of history at Ohio State), shows in her monograph The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene, Bulgaria used this prolonged celebration to develop an “ambitious cultural program … to showcase Bulgarian culture abroad and thus boost the prestige of their country and establish its presence on the global scene” (2).

A place that will be the last to collapse, but that will inevitably collapse

The text was written at the request of the Steirischer Herbst 2019 festival within the framework of its program with the phrase Grand Hotel Abyss, a striking metaphor of the philosopher Georg Lukács, which he used to describe the European intellectual and cultural scene in its confrontation with the arrival of fascism. In five monologues, the text reconstructs the story of the hotel complex Haludovo, a decadent paradise for rich American gamblers on the Croatian island of Krk in former Yugoslavia. The author of the idea and the investor of this hotel complex was the American multimillionare Bob Guccione, owner of the adult magazine Penthouse. With this playground for the rich, Guccione thought he had found the formula to merge capitalism and socialism, to appease the hatreds of the Cold War. The Grand Palace Hotel Haludovo offered for a socialist country unimaginable luxury, but it went bankrupt already in 1973, just a year after the lavish opening party, and entered a slow but certain decline. Today, its ruins represent the remnants of many failed ideas – Yugoslavia and its model of socialism and social ownership, the transition and privatization of the 1990s and the weary concept of a sovereign Europe.

Discursos políticos de activistas disidentes de la discapacidad en Chile

The present study is part of a microsociological research conducted between 2016 and 2019 in the context of the emergence of new social movements triggered in post-dictatorship Chile. Specifically, it deals with the emergence of the sociopolitical discourses of people labeled as disabled. The intention is to present the construction of the political discourses of dissident disability activists living in Chile. For this purpose, we value these discourses as counter-hegemonic or from the margins; that is, they do not follow the approaches of dominant medical and citizen interpretations. We used a qualitative and feminist methodological approach on the bodily itineraries of eleven activists. This allowed us to further explore the group’s life trajectories, social discourses, and political praxis. The political discourses of dissident disability activists living in Chile are part of the claims of non-standard corporealities to access the public and cultural scene. It is imperative to generate counter-hegemonic discourses incorporating diverse knowledge in order to advocate for the rights of people who relate to difference and to make visible the structural inequalities that affect subaltern collectives. The article incorporates a situated, feminist, and Latin American perspective to address a phenomenon of growing interest in the social sciences, and presents reflections that contribute to both academia and activism.

Creative Hubs in Hanoi, Vietnam

Creative Hubs in Hanoi, Vietnam

Josep Carner’s Diplomatic Career

Carner was a renowned writer when he started his diplomatic career in 1920. He was considered the most eminent living Catalan poet and had an important presence in the social and cultural scene in Barcelona. His joining the Spanish consular service came as a bombshell. From then on he never again lived permanently in Catalonia, although he kept in touch and came back frequently until the Civil War. This article provides a detailed description of Carner’s diplomatic endeavours (and biography) based on his file at the Spanish Foreign Affairs Ministry’s archive, and it includes a final table that summarises all the jobs, postings and dates of his diplomatic career.

The Cultural Orientation: The Spatial Construction of Yi Nationality-themed Films

Yi Nationality-themed films create a unique cultural scene through the selection of traditional/modern living space in the process of creation. In the films, the space has become a metaphor for the identity of the Yi nationality, a concrete expression of "national unity" and the identity of The Times. And to a certain extent, it has been a reflection of national culture and adherence and a replica of national myth and epic tradition. However, the unique aesthetic style of Yi Nationality-themed films is not presented in the construction of space. To create a unique aesthetic style, we must use national symbols to construct a unique audio-visual space, pay attention to the construction of image cultural space to create a unique aesthetic style, and then realize the rapid development of Yi Nationality-themed films.

Álbumes musicales de mujeres, marcas de uso y escena cultural

Through a close examination of eighteen music albums that belonged to Carmela and Clarisa Vega, from Copiapó, in northern Chile, this article examines private and public musical practices carried on by women. We propose that the scores contain marks of the uses given to them; these traces can be divided into three categories: marks of appropriation, musical marks, and manipulation marks. These traces, complemented with information published in the local press, reveal how these scores were used at charity events and civil commemorations, and in music teaching. In this cultural scene, several repertoires were employed to fulfill different musical functions, especially valses (waltzes) and opera arrangements. This article underlies the public agency of female musicians through their organizing of concerts and their piano, zither, guitar, mandolin, and singing performances. In addition, it examines some composition practices developed by women and the editions of their scores. The study of this Copiapó cultural scene thus unveils an entire network of female sociability practiced in a provincial city.

A long march on the mainstream: chronicle of Laibach’s artistic career

ABSTRACT Laibach is a music and cross-media group from Slovenia, which develops a multi-disciplinary art practice. While exploring the relationships between art and ideology as their major point of interest, Laibach has appropriated a symbolically charged language of communication, which encompasses an eclectic assemblage of provocative and ambivalent artistic, political, and religious references, often relying on their shock value. Since their beginning, the group has been associated and surrounded with controversy, provoking strong reactions from the political authorities of former Yugoslavia and in particular in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. Laibach’s international success commenced when the famed British label Mute Records signed them and released their 1987 album Opus Dei. In the over 40 years of Laibach’s existence, which coincided with the political, economic, and cultural transition in the European East, the group has crossed a wide path from being the harsh, ominous voice of the Slovene alternative cultural scene in socialist Yugoslavia to independent Slovenia’s major cultural export. This paper puts into an historical perspective the spectacular changes in Laibach’s uneasy co-habitation with the institutional framework and cultural mainstream of their home country, on the one hand, and the global contemporary art scene and music industry, on the other.

I’m So Bored with the USA: Reflecting America in British Punk Memoirs of the 1970s

In recent years there have been an increasing number of biographies and autobiographies written by the leading figures of the British punk scene of the Seventies and Eighties. As we pass the 40th anniversary of 1977, it can be argued that the British punk scene has also ‘come of age’ in academia with a number of retrospectives that examine not only the contemporary impact of punk in the Seventies but also the legacy of the punk movement in shaping British culture.
 With a focus on John Lydon’s text Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs (1993) and Viv Albertine’s Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys (2014), this article will examine how these autobiographies draw attention to ways in which the British sub-cultural scene offered a platform through which British culture and identity could be reassessed as anti-American and anti-capitalist. This study will also highlight to what extent the self-reflexive framing of these personal narratives within the larger political, cultural and social landscape, can be read as a characteristic feature of the British punk memoir. Through these texts it is possible to uncover the pivotal role of the British punk scene in the development of a counter cultural identity that mirrored changes in the contemporary national identity. As such, punk memoirs, biographies and autobiographies not only give perspectives on a subversive youth cultural scene but, perhaps more importantly, can offer unique insights into the evolution of post-imperial British identity.

Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp

Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp

The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics

Texas is usually at the center of United States history. Whether it was as one of the causes for the Mexican–American War or the setting for the landmark ruling of Roe vs. Wade, which legalized abortion, the state has played and continues to play a significant role in the shaping of the nation. As Perry Como's 1942 hit tune begins, “The stars at night are big and bright (fast clap 4 times) deep in the heart of Texas!” In Frank Andre Guridy's book, The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics, the sports stars were indeed big and bright. Add the emergence of the commercialization of sport, the economic investments, and the pioneering visionaries in Texas in the 1960s and 1970s, and the result is the creation of today's modern sports industrial complex.Guridy's purpose is to explain the “consequences of [the] legal and political transformations vividly played out in sports” during the “Second Reconstruction” in Texas (4). The state was at the forefront of the convergence of social, political, and economic changes that manifested as the sports revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The book begins with a snapshot of sports in Texas during the Jim Crow era, including the success of African American teams like the track team at Texas Southern University and the Mexican American basketball team at Lanier High School in San Antonio. He also notes, in 1969, the Texas Longhorns were the last all-white football team to win an NCAA championship in the sport. Guridy then transitions into the factors that led to the evolution of sports in Texas: wealthy businessmen looking to cash in, the booming energy sector, and the securing of state-of-the-art stadiums.Houston and Dallas are at the center of this volume. In the 1960s, the Black community in Houston threw its support behind a proposal for a domed stadium. The promise was that the seating, teams, and jobs would be desegregated. The AstroDome was the first indoor stadium in the nation, bragging a host of architectural firsts that others would copy, including the injury-prone astroturf. The “Phi Slama Jama” era of basketball at the University of Houston demonstrated that dunks drew TV ratings. In addition, Black players like Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler had a significant impact on the college game and later the NBA.Inspiration (or envy) struck the Dallas Cowboys owner Clint Murchison Jr. after the opening of the AstroDome. Tired of the decaying Cotton Bowl, he built Texas Stadium in Irving. Guridy explains how the construction of these two pathbreaking sports venues changed the landscape not only in Texas but nationwide, as other cities carbon-copied the Texas blueprint for success and profitability.The next chapters deal with the integration of the Southwest Conference and the subsequent race to acquire the best African American football players, inevitably resulting in NCAA violations. Guridy also explains how the Texas Rangers moved from Washington, DC. The common thread was how “commercialized sport catalyzed social change by unhinging the historical hierarchies of the Jim Crow era” (79). The San Antonio Spurs and the impact of the Mexican American working-class fan base also has a dedicated chapter.Guridy's best chapters address how Texas served as the background for two significant events during the sexual revolution: the “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match and the formation of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. The tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, held in the Houston Astrodome, was a turning point for feminism. Millions of television viewers witnessed King's victory, resulting in the development of the women's pro tennis tour.The author's chapter on the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (DCC) “exposed some of the contradictions of the sexual revolution,” including their woeful pay to the hypersexualized way they were used to sell tickets and garner television ratings (213). African American cheerleaders were members. Television producers and directors helped fuel the DCC's popularity by scanning the sidelines frequently during games.Since this is a book about Texas sports, there is no shortage of newspaper articles to choose from; however, most of the sources are secondary, taken from a wide array of sport history books. Guridy aptly shows, albeit grudgingly, how sports in Texas desegregated certain areas of the social and cultural scene. My one structural complaint is that there is no bibliography, only a notes section.The volume offers fans the genesis of big-time sports and how events in Texas fundamentally altered sports for the better. Guridy's book adds value to the historiography of sports history through the lens of civil rights, feminism, and the sexual revolution. Women's studies scholars and Texas historians would benefit greatly by adding this book to their list.

Punks in Peoria: Making a Scene in the American Heartland

Punks in Peoria: Making a Scene in the American Heartland is a written history of a people that normally do not have histories written about them: small-town teenage and twenty-something misfits forging a musical and cultural scene despite the societal forces that would rather they did not exist. It is the kind of history that is archived in bedroom closets and passed down in conversation and local lore.This book is as close to a primary document as a book of its type could be. Most of its twenty-four pages of references are personal correspondence and conversations with the people who lived the scene between the late 1970s and the early 2000s. One of its authors is a figure in the book, and the pictures that accompany its pages were dug up from the personal collections of those involved. The authors do a good job, however, of positioning the happenings in Peoria within the broader political and musical culture of the time. Punks in Peoria is written from the inside, by those who were part of it, so the voice is sincere, sympathetic, and positive with enough retrospective clarity to be critical and honest when necessary. The authors are aware of the dynamics of race and gender within the culture and acknowledge those realities while taking a clear feminist, anti-racist, and gender-affirming stance.While few of the bands or figures in the book could be described as central to anything outside of central Illinois, some did go on to storied musical careers rooted in the quirky Peoria scene. But more importantly, this book, through a deeply detailed case study, tells the story of the musical culture that most amateur musicians lived in the punk rock scene across the country and has captured this moment in American history in a heartfelt snapshot.It often felt like reading the story of any American city. The specifics are less important than the process, the culture, the piece of life they represent and encapsulate. It is an important account of the mechanisms of countercultural movement in music and in general in the years preceding widespread access to the Internet: like the origins and transmission of local slang, and how social cliques and personal identity interacted with music before social media, which makes this work so timely.Significantly, this book is a monument to how youth can come together through punk music to create a world that they want to belong to from scratch. Most readers will come away reminded of someone they knew in high school or shows they attended in college; and, for anyone that had a band of friends that booked DIY shows in ill-suited community spaces to create music of questionable sound quality while also making great memories, moments of this book will read like a personal memoir.For those who did not live this time in Peoria, it can be hard to grasp the long lists of band names and subgenres of punk rock. Such unfamiliarity is significantly ameliorated by the online resources created by the authors and others. Jonathan Wright has a YouTube channel that includes video of the Jesus Lizard's concert detailed in chapter 12. Punks in Peoria has a YouTube channel of its own that includes several recording compilations of hard-to-find material. There are also two extensive compilations of Peoria punk music on the MixCloud station Cities and Signs Radio, and an accompanying record available from Alona's Dream Records. Punks in Peoria has a Linktree page that can direct you to many of these and other resources.For Peoria locals who grew up in this period, this must be a remarkable narrative that both rekindles old memories and helps clarify them in context. If only every city could have an account like this of the growth of its musical cultures. Until then, we will have to live vicariously through the contributions of Wright and Barrett in Punks in Peoria.

Urban alternative cultural production in Turin: An ecological community approach

From the ashes of the creative city paradigm, there is a growing awareness of the urban creative economy as an adaptive complex system of intertwined actors and institutions. Yet, especially in the European context, little attention has been given to understanding informal and alternative art spaces and venues that contribute to the vibrancy of the urban cultural scene. Drawing on the emerging creative and cultural ecology literature, the article proposes a conceptual and empirical framework to analyze alternative cultural production as an ecological community. After providing a conceptualization of distinct types of alternative cultural organizations, we investigate the economic, spatial, and relational structure of more than 50 art spaces in Turin, Italy, an industrial city that has experienced a radical urban transformation based on culture-led development strategies. Using both a quantitative and qualitative approach, our findings unveil a distinction between centers pursuing artistic specialization and those more oriented toward aggregating diversified cultural activities. The two types of organizations coexist within the community, but the difference in their mission and operation influences the organizational structure, the involvement in neighborhood revitalization, and features of the local network of collaborations. From a spatial perspective, while the centers tend to cluster in the main peripheral areas of social and urban transformation, the analysis points out possible different locational choices and spatial dynamics for the two types of organizations in distinct areas of commercial and real-estate-led transformation.

Shaping early twentieth century Rome: the AACAR and the contributions of Filippo Galassi and Gustavo Giovannoni

ABSTRACT The building of Rome, the new capital of Italy from the 1870s onwards, brought to the foreground the European debate between transformation and conservation. The development of the modern city and its relationship with the ancient historic core marked the Italian cultural scene at the turn of 19th century. Respect for the historical environment was the reference point for the work of numerous technical and artistic associations, which were engaged in the urban transformations of the capital and impacted both on the city's development and wider national debates. Among these, this paper focuses on the Associazione Artistica fra i Cultori di Architettura (AACAR), founded in 1890. The AACAR assumed a central role in the study, protection and design of the city, introducing the practice of building thinning and research into new urban and architectural models for the city's expansion. As influential members of the AACAR, the figures of Filippo Galassi and Gustavo Giovannoni stand out. Through their manifold cultural and institutional activities, their approach to artistic city building influenced the principles of urban and architectural design in the 1910s and 1920s, leaving a long-lasting legacy on Italian urban design.

The Korean Vernacular Story: Telling Tales of Contemporary Chosŏn in Sinographic Writing

The Korean Vernacular Story: Telling Tales of Contemporary Chosŏn in Sinographic Writing