Categories & order systems: Claude Parent and The Serving Library intersections of architecture, art and editorial design

This paper discusses the work of Claude Parent and The Serving Library, considering the critiques generated by their intersecting of architecture, art and editorial design. Through focus on the ways in which hosting environment, architecture and forms of expanded publishing can serve to dissolve disciplinary boundaries and activities of production, spectatorship and reception, it draws on the lineage of 1960s/70s Conceptual Art in considering these practices as a means through which to escape medium specificity and spatial confinement. Relationships between actual and virtual space are then read against this broadening of aesthetic ideas and the theory of critical modernity.

Travelling drum with different beats: experiencing African music and culture in Australian teacher education

This article reports on a study that examined the effectiveness of introducing African music and culture to Australian non-specialist primary teacher education students at Deakin University in Melbourne (Australia). The study demonstrates that African music enhanced the generic musical experiences, learning, motivation, interest, confidence and competence of students in their fourth year of teacher education. The research also addressed the significance and contribution of African music and culture as a cross-cultural experience for these beginning teachers who in turn could provide similar experiences for their own students. This study highlighted the author's role and cultural identity as a South African music educator in transmitting the music and culture represented in 'the travelling drum' to a cohort of students with a predominantly Eurocentric orientation. By extension, this curriculum initiative broadened students' understanding and application of indigenous methods of teaching and learning as part of a global experience. Such a curriculum represents a pathway to many other forms of non-Western indigenous knowledge of music, culture and pedagogy that can be mapped out as a journey along a multicultural route towards 'internationalising the curriculum'.

Body image attitudes and concerns among indigenous Fijian and European Australian adolescent girls

Research on body image has primarily been conducted among Western women who highly value the thin ideal body size. There has been limited research that has examined body image attitudes among Fijian adolescent girls who are exposed to both traditional sociocultural pressures that promote a larger body size and Western pressures that promote slimness. Using in-depth semi-structured interviews, we examined the factors associated with body image attitudes and concerns among a sample of 16 indigenous Fijian and 16 European Australian adolescent girls aged between 13–18 years. An inductive analysis of girls’ responses indicated that both groups of girls experienced body image concerns including body dissatisfaction, a preference for thinness and concerns associated with weight gain. These findings have implications for our understanding of the role of culture in shaping body image among girls and may prove useful in the development of future survey research that can be implemented among both Fijian and Western adolescents.

Economic reforms, cultural policy : opportunities and challenges to the arts and culture in Vietnam in the age of globalization

The author investigates social change in Vietnam in the late 1980s-2000s, a transition from a subsidized economy to a market-oriented economy. The author discusses the influences of socioeconomic changes on the operation of the performing arts sector through analyzing changes in cultural policies, opportunities, and challenges confronted by performing arts organizations. The new cultural policy allows arts organizations, arts managers, and artists more opportunities to develop a greater degree of autonomy and more freedom in performing, programming and other artistic activities. The author believes that open policies will motivate Vietnam to develop its own national identity and to participate in cultural exchange with other parts of the world. However, under the impact of global culture, global economics, cuts in state funding, and rapid technological development, the performing arts sector has faced challenges in terms of financial viability, audience development, and balance between commercialization and artistic creativity. The author suggests that privatization should be implemented depending on the art form. Consideration should be given by the Vietnamese government to implementing appropriate funding policies and schemes, as state funding still forms a significant part of public companies' incomes.

Mental health, criminal justice and culture : some ways forward?

Objective: This paper aims to offer an overview of the mental health needs of Indigenous men and women in the criminal justice system and how Indigenous cultural perspectives on mental health might infl uence forensic mental health service provision.
Conclusion: There is a need for both mental health and criminal justice agencies to collaborate more closely in developing new models of service provision that incorporate Indigenous perspectives on social and emotional wellbeing, recognize culturally specifi c mental health risk and protective factors in relation to prevention, early intervention and treatment, and take advantage of the opportunities for treatment that arise in the context of criminal justice system intervention.

The idea of Rome in Fascist art and architecture : the decorative program of the Palazzo dei Congressi in EUR, Rome

This paper engages with the notion of interspace by examining an understudied and unpublished cycle of mosaics and frescoes destined for the main hall of the Palazzo dei Congressi in Rome’s south-western suburb of EUR, a major building project by Roman architect Adalberto Libera. It first provides a socio-historical and aesthetic background to the building of EUR as Rome’s international exposition of 1942, which aimed to celebrate the achievements of Italian (and fascist) civilisation. It then focuses on the concept of Romanità (or Roman-ness) as a mythical and idealised past that was engaged on a number of levels as a teleological foundation for the advent (and eternity) of fascist rule. This past was adopted, interpreted and made manifest at the urban scale in the master plan of EUR, at the architectural scale in the buildings and at the interior scale in the decorative programs incorporated in each. It argues that the Palazzo dei Congressi allows us to gain further insight into the notion of interspace as it exemplifies this on a number of physical, symbolic and temporal levels. Physically, in the urban space, architectural form and interiors; symbolically, in the content and compositional layout of the mosaics; and temporally, in the use of historical elision and conflation between mythical pasts and idealised present.

Mana Taonga and the public sphere: a dialogue between indigenous practice and Western theory

Recent re-conceptualizations of the ‘public sphere’ facilitated a much needed shift in thinking about identity politics ‘from a substance … to a movement’ (Weibel and Latour, 2007). This laid the foundation for dissolving the ‘emanatist vision’ (Bourdieu, 1990) of self-explanatory and perpetual systems and structures towards the interrogation of actions and performances that simultaneously constitute and are affected by such wider socio-political realities. Most academic contributions, however, remain on a normative or theoretical level without offering empirical insights.

This article introduces Mana Taonga as an Indigenous Māori concept of cultural politics embedded in current museum practice at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa). It creates a dialogue between Indigenous Māori practice and Western theory leading to a refined understanding of performative democracy within a museum as forum, or public sphere. The authors argue that a specific museum offers a particular place, space and empirical reality to interrogate seemingly universal concepts such as ‘culture’ and ‘politics’ by blending theoretical notions with an awareness of institutional contexts and practices.

Indigenous peoples and modernity

Includes bibliography

Can Developing Women Create Primitive Art? and Other Questions of Value, Meaning and Identity in the Circulation of Janakpur Art

In this article, I examine the values and meanings that adhere to objects made by Maithil women at a development project in Janakpur, Nepal – objects collectors have called ‘Janakpur Art’. I seek to explain how and why changes in pictorial content in Janakpur Art – shifts that took place over a period of five or six years in the 1990s – occurred, and what such a change might indicate about the link between Maithil women’s lives, development, and tourism. As I will demonstrate, part of the appeal for consumers of Janakpur Art has been that it is produced at a ‘women’s development project’ seeking to empower its participants. And yet, the project’s very successes threaten to displace the producers (and what they produce) from their perceived qualities/identities as ‘traditional’ and ‘primitive,’ thereby bringing into question the authenticity of the ‘art’ they produce. The conundrum begs this question: can developing women produce primitive art?

John La Farge as collector of Japanese art : motivations and reflections

Throughout his lifetime, American artist John La Farge (1835-1910) amassed an enormous collection of art and books. La Farge’s study of art and culture encompassed several genres and aesthetic elements. La Farge has been credited as the first American artist — even prior to James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)— to integrate visual elements and cultural awareness of the Far East within his own Western-trained art. Although many scholars have studied La Farge’s art and life from various perspectives, including his interest in Asian art, the object of the present study is solely focused on La Farge’s collecting of Japanese art.

La science de la sétifère ou l'art de produire la soie avec avantage et sureté, comprenant la morique, ou l'art de culture les muriers; la bigattique, ou l'art d'élever les vers à soie; et la setifice, ou l'art de tirer la soie des cocons et d'en composer toutes espèces et qualités de fil de soie.

Mode of access: Internet.

Competing "Host" Discourses: Appropriation of Australian Aboriginal Culture in the Tourism Borderzones

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

King of the Renaissance: Art and Politics at the Neapolitan Court of Ferrante I, 1458-1494

In the second half of the fifteenth century, King Ferrante I of Naples (r. 1458-1494) dominated the political and cultural life of the Mediterranean world. His court was home to artists, writers, musicians, and ambassadors from England to Egypt and everywhere in between. Yet, despite its historical importance, Ferrante’s court has been neglected in the scholarship. This dissertation provides a long-overdue analysis of Ferrante’s artistic patronage and attempts to explicate the king’s specific role in the process of art production at the Neapolitan court, as well as the experiences of artists employed therein. By situating Ferrante and the material culture of his court within the broader discourse of Early Modern art history for the first time, my project broadens our understanding of the function of art in Early Modern Europe. I demonstrate that, contrary to traditional assumptions, King Ferrante was a sophisticated patron of the visual arts whose political circumstances and shifting alliances were the most influential factors contributing to his artistic patronage. Unlike his father, Alfonso the Magnanimous, whose court was dominated by artists and courtiers from Spain, France, and elsewhere, Ferrante differentiated himself as a truly Neapolitan king. Yet Ferrante’s court was by no means provincial. His residence, the Castel Nuovo in Naples, became the physical embodiment of his commercial and political network, revealing the accretion of local and foreign visual vocabularies that characterizes Neapolitan visual culture.

Contemporary publics: shifting boundaries in new media, technology and culture

If the twentieth century has been dominated by discussions of the public, public life, and the public sphere, Contemporary Publics argues that, in the twenty-first century, we must complicate the singularity of that paradigm and start thinking of our world in terms of multiple, overlapping, and competing publics. In three distinct streams—art, media and technology, and the intimate life—this volume offers up the intellectual and political significance of thinking through the plurality of our publics. “Countering Neoliberal Publics: Screen and Space,” explores how different artistic practices articulate the challenges and desires of multiple publics. “Making and Shaping Publics: Discourse and Technology” showcases how media shape publics, and how new and emerging publics use these technologies to construct identities. “Commodifying Public Intimacies” examines what happens to the notion of the private when intimacies structure publics, move into public spaces, and develop value that can be exchanged and circulated.

‘It’s almost like a White school now’: racialised complexities, Indigenous representation and school leadership

Drawing on a broader study that focused on examining principal leadership for equity and diversity, this paper presents the leadership experiences of ‘Jane’, a White, middle-class principal of a rural Indigenous school. The paper highlights how Jane's leadership is inextricably shaped by her assumptions about race and the political dynamics and historical specificities of her school community. A central focus is on Jane's tendency to deploy culturally reductionist understandings of Indigeneity that position it as incompatible or incommensurable with White culture/western schooling. The paper argues the central imperative of a leadership that rejects these understandings and engages in a critical situational analysis of Indigenous politics, relations and experience. Such an analysis is presented as imperative to supporting representative justice in that it moves beyond merely according a voice to Indigenous people to a focus on better understanding, problematising and remedying the racial relations that contribute to Indigenous oppression.