Call for Abstracts: Contemporary arts and popular cultures in Central Asia
Workshop in Berlin 09. - 10.09.2021
In most academic work, the cultural production in Central Asia has long been considered first and foremost as an expression of autochthonous traditions, “a future of the past”. But in times of widespread internet access and instantaneous cultural flows, contemporary art in the region draws from a much wider range of sources and reaches out to a potentially worldwide public. Its various forms of expression are entangled with translocal worlds of music, crafts and fashion, the fine arts, literature, or even popular varieties of sports.
The Central Asian focus of this year’s GoEast Filmfestival in Wiesbaden, the recent Grammy awarded to the DJ Imanbek from Kazakhstan or the success of the Kyrgyzstani MMA-artist Valentina Shevshenko in the US-based UFC are cases in point, as are active music and video production enterprises within the region.
We invite applications from early career scholars (graduates to early post-docs) working on different forms of contemporary arts and/or popular cultures in Middle Asia. Issues to be addressed are, among others:
• How do present-day cultural expressions draw on globally available resources, how do they integrate them with local elements?
• What audiences do artists address – local “national” ones? the Russophonia? worldwide communities?
• How is contemporary culture intertwined with socio-political changes in the region, (how) do artists navigate “local” and non-local desires and demands?
• And what, in all this, is the role of commerce?
Participants are invited to share their empirical findings in short input presentations and discuss methodological and theoretical issues relevant to their current work with colleagues from related fields – who, however, do not regularly find a forum to meet up.
The contributions will (in accordance with the preferences of the participants) be professionally proof-read and made available on the HU website. Publication is possible if desired.
For more information click "LINK TO ORIGINAL" below.