How to live precariously: Lygia Clark's Caminhando and Tropicalism in 1960s Brazil

Economic booms and busts, major social upheavals, brutal military dictatorships: precariousness has been a feature of everyday life in Latin America since its independence. But what does it mean to “propose precariousness as a new idea of existence,” as Brazilian artist Lygia Clark did in 1966? This essay focuses on one specific work by Clark, her 1963 Caminhando, in order to explore the ways in which the very status of performative practices can respond to their social and political conditions and thus offer a model for a subjective experience of precariousness in everyday life. A close study of the process that led Clark to create precarious works will be further supplemented by a contextual analysis of debates about precariousness and adversity within the Tropicalist movement that emerged in late-1960s Brazil, which included artist Hélio Oiticica as well as singers and film-makers.     

Inscrutably,actually: hospitality,parasitism, and the silent work of Yoko Ono and Laurel Nakadate†

With interest in queer socialities, the author considers Jacques Derrida’s provocation in Of Hospitality to “say yes” as hospitable gesture in order to challenge the gendered and racialized demands of this charge. If Orientalist conflations of the East with femininity have in turn sexualized Asian women as simultaneously hypersexual and submissive, then how can we as viewers and readers performatively read Asian femininity in a different, and not anti-relational, orientation to hospitality? Building upon Anna Watkins Fisher’s concept of parasitic performance, this article posits inscrutability as a feminist methodology by considering Yoko Ono’s performances of Cut Piece and Laurel Nakadate’s video Happy Birthday for their interesting solicitations to audience-participants, costars, and viewers.     

Differences in the executive council of the American federation of Labor

The 1936–1937 General Motors sit-down strike may be the most famous work stoppage in American history. The victory in Flint so heartened workers that a veritable “sit-down fever” wave spread across America. But are labor scholars guilty of unintentionally spreading a Whiggish view of history? Just 7 weeks after the victory in Flint, Hershey Chocolate workers sat down. Within 7 days they were forcibly ejected from the factory and beaten by a mob. This article takes a look at the events in Hershey with an eye toward raising questions about the overall efficacy of sit-down strikes. Although it by no means wishes to diminish the heroism or the usefulness of the Flint sit-down, it argues that a balanced look at the past requires a deeper look into the strikes that failed. The question is of the utmost importance for the contemporary labor movement, as some activists have called for a revival of sit-down militancy as a tactic for organized labor to reverse decades of decline. This may not be wise strategy, as past sit-down strikes are too narrowly filtered through the triumphant lens of Flint.     

Swampwalls: dark matter and the lumpen army of art

Dominant notions of contemporary art are being overturned not by some radical avant-garde theory or movement, but instead by an “uprising” from within the confines of the “art factory,” as well as by newly embodied instances of informal everyday creativity that high culture has long overlooked. Theorists Negt and Kluge might have described this insurrection as the partial unblocking of a counter-public or proletarian sphere: a realm of fragmented identities and working class fantasy generated in response to the alienating conditions of capitalism. A more specific cultural interpretation suggests this mutiny from within and assault from below is the irrepressible brightening of “creative dark matter:” that marginalized and systematically underdeveloped aggregate of creative productivity, which nonetheless reproduces the material and symbolic economy of high culture. The results are explosive, or at least potentially so as this long, pent-up shadow archive spills out into the once forbidden dwelling place of mainstream law and order and high cultural privilege. Meanwhile, a new wave of socially engaged art is thriving on the margins of the art world. Like an enormous production warehouse this “post-public” creativity is developing sustainable farming, reenacting historical labor demonstrations, providing public services lost to decades of deregulatory economic policy, and initiating local bartering systems and environmental cleanups. Its vitality is something Joseph Beuys could have only dream about. And not surprisingly even this “autonomous” and “Interventionist” art is selectively becoming part of the mainstream culture industry through what Gilles Deleuze describes as an “apparatus of capture.” Nevertheless, one result of this new confrontation reveals this vibrant imaginary “from below” is pushing artistic production, pushing also discourse, pedagogy and cultural institutions into radically re-thinking definitions and possibilities not only involving the possibilities of contemporary avant-garde art practices, but also about the very nature of creativity, democracy, and political agency more broadly.     

All the labor problems fit to print: the New York Times and the cultural production of the U.S ‘labor problem’, 1870–1932

The period that spanned the Gilded Age to the onset of the Great Depression saw the rise and relative decline of the US labor movement. The salient events of labor movements over these years undoubtedly shaped public perception about labor issues, and some scholars have been attempting to unpack the mechanisms through which depictions and characterizations of the ‘labor problem’ were produced in authoritative venues that could have shaped the future of the movement. This study goes beyond the standard practice of explaining news report volume to feature the political valance of the reports on the labor problem over a 63-year time period. The aforementioned period also saw significant changes in news reporting practices, with the rise of objective informational writing and the embrace of journalism as a profession. The change within journalism itself could potentially shape the depiction of the labor problem, yet such change has been overlooked by existing literature pertaining to the topic. This research makes a theoretical case for integrating social processes central to the labor movement and journalism from 1870 to 1932 and explains patterns in the cultural production of the labor problem in the New York Times by analyzing these two tracks of history in conjunction using both qualitative and quantitative data.     

Now wash your hands: uncommissioned art and gender

Examining the urban arts in the UK, in their paint and fibre-based alternatives, this article aims to account for the differences in contemporary dealings with graffiti and yarn-bombing (kniffiti). The intersectional complications of gender, race, age and class, as they have come to bear on the visual arts, as well as the historical power structures that have determined the classification of crime, and of art, are offered as possible rationales for present-day handling of ‘deviance’ in the form of urban art. It seems that urban knitting has blind-sighted both social conventions and legal principles in a way that exposes the arbitrary nature of both.     

Contested Resource Extraction,Anti-Corporate Protests and the Politics of Movement Alliance in Bangladesh

Why do activist groups form alliances and why do some alliances later fall apart? This article asks these questions in the context of a popular mobilisation against resource extraction in Bangladesh. It focuses on the dynamics of a strategic alliance between a locally organised community mobilisation against a British mining company and an urban radical activist group, known for its anti-capitalist activism, to explore the subsequent collapse of the alliance and the demobilisation of one group. Based on the qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with activists and organisational documents, the article probes the underlying causes of rupture. Although several individual and organisational factors are identified, it is argued that Bangladesh’s confrontational political culture and its authoritarian party system played a critical role, with local activists vulnerable to co-optation or being silenced by powerful political actors. The article contributes to social movement scholarship by emphasising that specific political cultures can undermine efforts to build strategic alliances between diverse social movement organisations.     

加强高职院校文化艺术教育的若干思考

切实加强大学生文化艺术教育,是全面推进素质教育、促进大学生全面发展和健康成长的重要途径。本文在简要分析高职院校文化艺术教育现状的基础上,论述了高职院校开展文化艺术教育的作用和意义,进而提出了加强高职院校文化艺术教育的策略。