Monuments should not be trusted exhibition

Monuments Should Not Be Trusted brings together over 30 leading artists and groups from the “golden years” of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia - the period between the early 1960s and the mid 1980s. Over 100 artworks and artefacts illuminate the key contradictions of this single party state – built after WWII on socialist principles, yet immersed in “utopian consumerism.” This is the first time in the UK that the art of this period, which has attracted increasing attention, has been shown in the context of the social, economic and political conditions that gave rise to it. It draws on new and innovative research on this period, and features many of its most celebrated artists. The exhibition begins with the rise of consumerism, midway through President Josip Broz Tito’s 37 year presidency, and ends a few years after his death in 1980. As well as artists’ works in moving image, collage, photography, sculpture and painting, the exhibition encompasses music, TV clips and fascinating artefacts, such as gifts made by workers for President Tito’s birthday, and relay batons which were carried across the country and ceremonially presented to him.

Contribution to The World Goes Pop exhibition catalogue

Biographies for artists Barel, Joav (p.174), Brudascu, Cornel (p.177), Bucan, Boris (p.178), Chicago, Judy (p.182), Ivekovic, Sanja (p.197), Komar and Melamid (p.200), Lach-Lachowicz, Natalia (p.203), Otasevic, Dusan (p.212), Overstreet, Joe (p.214), Pininska - Beres, Maria (p.215), Rosler, Martha (p.222), Schifano, Mario (p.223), Self, Colin (p.224), Tajiri, Thinkichi (p.228), Tanaami, Keiichi (p.229), Tilson, Joe (p.231), Vardea, Chryssa (p.233), Yokoo, Tadanori (p.234), Zelibska, Jana (p.235) and Zielinski, Jerzy (p.236).

Visuell Perception : En studie av visuella faktorer kring ett musikaliskt framträdande

The essay investigates the visual element as seen by the audience and artist to be of greatest importance to a musicalperformance. The study was conducted in the form of a field work which included doing interviews with artists, surveys of the audience and interpretive observations of live performance. The fieldwork was conducted in three different environments in which I found myself on the spot and performed the various stages included in the field work. It was done to create a surface that could be used in an essay, and through that use this material to compare and analyze my results and in the end be able to answer my questions. I started from eight different factors which all could beexperienced visually on stage. The factors were light / colors, costumes, props, effects, stage presence, attitude / image, nervousness and dance / body language. Those factors would then be examined in the various musical performances and to be answered by the audience and performers which of those factors they considered to be of great importance or small importance when it comes to visual perception in a musical context. The result was a clear statement where two factors were considered to be most crucial for a musical performance, and a clear statement in which two factors were considered by the majority to be less important. The results demonstrate a common understanding what the artist and the audience thinks is important. A result that can act as a template for what an artist should think about regarding the visual elements before an performance. My theory is my assumption that the visual elements of musical performances can play an important or decisive role, an assumption that was strengthened by my empirical experiences at a concert visit. I wanted in this essay explore and give a clear picture of what it is that artists and audiences consider to be visually crucial for a musical context

Inkzine : Redesignandet av en tatuerings- och piercingcommunity

Our employer, Gaddad, is a tattoo and piercing community that was created in 2006 with the basic idea to make it easier for people to get in touch with the tattoo artists and piercers from all over Sweden. With the homepage’s popularity at 2009 they decided to expand with the news page Inkzine. 2011 they contacted us with a plan to expand the homepage to Europe and then merge their two sites under the name Inkzine.The goal of this project was to create design suggestions for Gaddad / Inkzine that both the administration and the current users liked and would consider implementing on the website. In order to evaluate the current design and our suggestions we decided to use two questionnaires . The first questionnaire evaluated the currentdesign to provide us with information for the redesign. The second questionnaire evaluated our new suggestions.With these questionnaire we also carried out an analysis to see the differences in opinions among the users and also between the administration and the users.We also investigated other community homepages, company homepages that had been internationalized, and other tattoo homepages. To see what others had done to adapt to the international market and to investigate the design of tattoo homepages.We also did literary studies in redesign and internationalization, in order to obtain a theoretical foundation for our work.The results of the investigation of other homepages showed that in order to perform an internationalization of a web site no major changes to the looks were necessary, only linguistic changes. The results of our questionnairesshowed that users had in most cases put the majority of their votes on

Ensamhet - gemenskap : Ett spänningsfält i Vilhelm Ekelunds författarskap

For the Swedish poet, essayist and aphorist Vilhelm Ekelund, ensamhet (solitude) and gemenskap (intellectual and spiritual community) were highly complex notions, with various and often contradictory meanings. In this article, I argue that both concepts have positive as well as negative connotations in Ekelund’s texts. Solitude can be sweet and delightful and the poet/writer may long for it, but it can also appear to him as a sordid and painful state. In the same way, life with other people may be just as difficult and complicated. I show that Ekelund as a young poet both embraced solitude as a positive notion and suffered from depressing isolation. The theme of solitude also appeared in his early prose as a heroic stance fitting for an extraordinary person. According to Ekelund, the fate of the truly gifted artist is loneliness, and he will find great difficulties connecting with people around him. In fact, he will find intellectual and spiritual community only when communicating with the great precursors – in Ekelund’s case that meant the prominent figures of Greek and Roman cultural heritage. “Modern” artists interested him only in so much as they openly venerated this classicist tradition. Ekelund may have despaired at the idea of an intellectual or spiritual community with his contemporaries; he was, nevertheless, optimistic regarding the ability of later generations to understand him. He was convinced that he did not write for people in his own time but, indeed, for posterity.

The Björling 'Opera' : A children's Nursery Academy and an Italian Conservatory in Miniature

The aim in this chapter is to develop a deeper understanding about the informal Björling 'School' in Sweden. Contextually the example is related to the micro history of opera education contributing to the macro perspective illuminating a provincial example of the concept of domestic opera schooling. The specific focus was on Karl David Björling (1873-1926), the teaching parent of the Swedish tenor Jussi Björling (1911-1960) and his brothers Gösta and Olle.   The Björling family model of opera schooling belongs to the classical canon of domestic home education which was common during the epoch. The phenomenon is also within the field of opera singing an important reference to the historical context of the Nordic opera history of vocal education.   The uniqueness concerning the Björling School seems to be the rigorous and exceptionally early training. David Björling’s pedagogy was rooted in earlier German theories of musical upbringing. It's clear from his results that he was familiar with the neo-humanistic ideal on which reformed music education was based. Of a specific interest is the term Gesang als Unterricht as a concept for developing childrens musical and memorising capacities.   Conceptually the roots of the Björling model are in the eighteenth-century Romantic view of prodigies and their abilities. The extensive touring is connected to the promotion of wonder-children, and David Björling’s educational style to the conservative Master-pupil tradition.   David Björling's vocal ideal was a part of the contemporary debate about “The decadence of the singing art”, and seems to have its roots in an older Italian tradition. There are recurring similarities between his educational methods and the didactic principles of the Lamperti School: Enjoying a revival around the late 1800s and early 1900s, it has been called the natural or the national school. Nevertheless, through authentic experiences and gramophone recordings the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso became David Björling’s pedagogical role model.

The indigenous art market: a roadmap to a more equitable and efficient system

The Indigenous art market plays a significant role both in promoting appreciation for the accomplishments of Aboriginal culture and within broader concepts of the export of a national culture.[1] Despite the growth in status and impact of Indigenous art over the past decade, very little scholarship or resources exist to assist their development and analyse their impact on economic or social wellbeing. This paper canvasses new ways of operating the Indigenous art market to better support emerging and established artists in a globalised economy and suggests that there is a pressing need for future research to develop a new framework for its operation.

The politics of exclusion: political censorship and the arts-as-industry paradigm

In Australia from 1992 to 1999 Jeff Kennett led the Liberal state government in Victoria. Under his leadership an important vision statement for the arts was produced, and ambitious redevelopments of Victoria’s major cultural institutions were undertaken. Kennett’s ‘vision’ included reforms to Arts Victoria (the state-based arts funding agency) and a radical revision of how the arts were to be subsidised. This represented a wholesale adoption of a new policy approach which saw the arts and culture as an industry which could benefit, in particular, the development of cultural tourism for the state of Victoria. This paper argues that while the arts could be seen to have benefited from the Kennett government’s largesse, some parts of the arts sector were excluded and subjected to censorship. Based on both primary and secondary sources, we argue that in this period, the work of artists which expressed a politically dissenting view was actively discouraged.

Children's participation in music : connecting the cultural contexts - an Australian perspective

The cultural contexts of home, school and community all have important parts to play in the music education of children, but at present in Australia, these three entities are insufficiently connected on a number of fronts, not the least being an understanding about the purpose(s) of young people's engagement with music. This paper puts forward two specific proposals for action aimed to help build linkages among the three cultural contexts and ensure young people's on-going engagement with music. These proposals, which call on the education sector to assume leadership for action, have implications for policy makers, school personnel, as well as parents, individual artists and community arts organisations.

Cultivating mangement? Managing culture?

Jean Battersby, the founding executive officer of the Australia Council of the Arts from 1968, delivered a lecture in May 2005 which bemoaned a situation in which the focus and funding of the arts appears to have more to do with managers than with artists. Cultural policy and cultural economics have become the staple of the day, so much so that the thought of an economist actually proposing an Arts Council protected from political manipulation and scrutiny—‘with antennae sensitive to public opinion or political advantage’ and ever ready to apply the ‘child of three’ test (Battersby, 2005: 2)—seems an absurdity. Yet, in July 1945, Maynard Keynes proposed that Britain have an Arts Council without government and its bureaucracy intervening in the relationship between artists and their public. The task, as Battersby records it, ‘is not to teach or to censor, but to give courage, confidence and opportunity’ without prescription (2005: 6).

Ruminations on war, culture war

To descry that this generation of artists has been in the midst of a war, a cultural war, sounds so obvious. After all, what generation in deeply reactionary times could not claim the same? However, who is struggling with whom and over what can often prove far more open than the popular polarities which pitch government, business, bureaucracy on one side and artists, performers, intellectuals on the other.  But what is it to say we on the one side are at war with the other? Is the war, culturally as much as militarily, limited or unconditional, intermittent or continuous, external or internal, declared or undeclared, defensive or aggressive? Is it a warfare aiming to annihilate or to annex, to conquer or to cleanse, to dominate or to displace, to eliminate or to expel, to impregnate or to enslave. In brief, warfare is waged in diverse ways with diverse goals as the brutally concise words of Thoukydides reveal when brooding upon stasis--the strife from 427 B.C. convulsing city after city in the great war between Athens and Sparta--as  the cause of many calamities--as happens and will always happen while human nature is what it is, though there may be different degrees of savagery, and, as different circumstances arise, the general rules will admit of some variety [Bk 3.82; 1972: 242).

Women's art as indicator of social change

The support for feminism in Australia came not from the scientific field, where there was almost total opposition to it, but from literature, philosophy and the arts. An art museum is an arbiter of taste and a cultural building that points important ideas throughout its lifetime.

Melbourne 2006: marketing south-eastern Australian aboriginal art

The Aboriginal cultural sector is dynamic and highly valuable to the Australian economy, returning an estimated $100 million dollars annually. The majority of Aboriginal artists and art works have been perceived to be in northern Australia— eighty per cent of them are in fact in this region—but Aboriginal artists in south-eastern Australia are emerging as a strong force as they struggle for recognition from commercial and national galleries, curators, art dealers, newspaper critics, and buyers. If marketing is to be effectual, the Aboriginality of the art must be presented in a form that is understood and accepted by the audience. Thus changing public perceptions is crucial to marketing south-eastern Aboriginal art. The primary task of this article is to discuss this marketing priority for Aboriginal art and artists in south-eastern Australia, previously neglected in marketing literature. Specifically, the upcoming Melbourne Commonwealth Games are proposed as an opportunity for intensive marketing of the region’s Aboriginal arts.

Recent indigenous theatre in Australia:the politics of autobiography

Over the past decade Australian theatre has seen an increased profile for works written and created by Indigenous artists. This paper looks at the development of Indigenous theatre in Australia and considers how increased mainstream production opportunities have facilitated this expansion of Indigenous theatre practice. Based on the textual analysis of a number of key works, this paper looks at the development of the one-person show as the dominant genre for Indigenous theatre practices, and investigates the relationship between autobiography and the celebration of ‘otherness’. This study argues that this theatre work represents a shift away from conventional representations of Aboriginality towards a more self-determined expression of political identity.

Valuing the arts : theorising and realising cultural capital in an Australian city

For those who make and admire artistic works, there is no question of their value. However, for others interested in economic development, the value of the arts is often more tangential, contested and questionable. While the post-modern world of consumption and spectacle suggests to some academics and governments that the arts and cultural industries are the way of the future, others remain sceptical about their social and economic value. This is a theoretical as well as a practical issue this paper explores by offering a reconceptualisation of Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital as a way of re-assessing the value of the arts. The paper then applies this framework to quantify and qualify the value of the arts in one regional city in Australia – Geelong in Victoria – focusing on the work of two artists. The aim is to describe the interconnected processes by which the arts generate cultural capital in the form of confidence, image, individual well-being, social cohesion and economic viability. The analysis also highlights the ongoing power relations which prescribe artistic production, circulation and valuation. The implications of such a rethinking and application go well beyond one city and region to other places grappling with the relationship between artistic production and urban well being. By focusing on the broad-ranging process by which artistic value is created for individuals, groups, professionals, communities and governments, a model becomes available for other places to use in realising their cultural capital.