Open Lectures & Events

“Border Aesthetics” international conference 5-7 September 2012, University of Tromsø

Wednesday 5 September. 1715-1830 Aud. E 0101 Prof. Debra A. Castillo, Cornell University “Rasquache Mockumentary: Alex Rivera’s ‘Why Cybraceros?’” The lecture studies Rivera’s 12-year-old spoof outsourcing website, with particular attention to the 4.5 minute 1997 video that served as its original point of departure (he is now best know for his 2008 feature film, Sleep Dealer). Rivera’s work in general involves a practice he calls a “rasquache aesthetic” of filmmaking. In a recent interview he defines this concept more precisely, commenting on how Latinos/as channel the creativity that responds to necessity, as people with limited resources turn to repurposing and recycling for their original work. In the hands of Latino/a artists associated with rasquachismo, this practice of collage becomes a conscious and conscientious cultural practice.

Debra A. Castillo is Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, Emerson Hinchliff Professor of Hispanic Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature at Cornell University. She also directs the Latin American Studies Program. In her often transdisciplinary research, she specializes in contemporary narrative of the Americas, gender studies, and post-colonial literary theory. Her most recent book is the co-edited (with Kavita Panjabi) Cartographies of Affect: Across Borders in South Asia and the Americas.

Thursday 6 September. 1045-1200 Aud. E 0101 Professor Ulrike H. Meinhof, University of Southampton. “From Border Communities to Networks and Neighbourhoods: Re-imagining Europe in the 21st Century” The lecture introduces geo-political and symbolic dynamics of 21st century Europe through three conceptual prisms: those of borders or border communities, networks, and neighbourhoods. Each of these can be seen as both descriptive lenses for capturing specific phenomenan of social interaction in geographical spaces as well as metaphors for imagining human encounters across visible or invisible divisions, such as for example nationhood, ethnicity, race, religion or gender. Examples include a rich, multi-layered spectrum of every-day life narratives as well as examples of artistic productions.

Ulrike Hanna Meinhof is Professor of German and Cultural Studies at the University of Southampton and a specialist in discourse analysis. Her main areas of research currently involve ethnographic research on transnational networks of migrants, especially musicians from African countries, in multicultural neighbourhoods across European border communities, in provincial regions and in metropolitan spaces across Europe. She led the EU Border Identities and Changing City Spaces projects; ongoing are SoFoNe: Searching for Neighbours: dynamics of mental and physical borders in Europe, and TNMundi: Diaspora as social and cultural practice: A study of transnational networks across Europe and Africa.

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Thursday 6 September. 1800-1930 Tromsø kunstforening Artist Dmitry Vilensky, Chto delat? / What is to be done? “The Border Songspiel - where do we start and how?”

Dmitry Vilensky will discuss the process of research and construction of a new film focused on the border situation between Norway and Russia. What kind of artistic means of (re)presentation do we have at hand today to build a forms of narration which not simply represent a current situation but would be able to interfere into reality? The video film “Museum Songspiel” will be screened as an example of certain artistic method developed by the collective “Chto Delat” in constructing a fictional forms of political narratives. Chto delat? / What is to be done? was founded with the goal of merging political theory, art, and activism in early 2003 in Petersburg by a workgroup of artists, critics, philosophers, and writers from Petersburg, Moscow, and Nizhny Novgorod. They are at present working on a project concerning the Norwegian-Russian border.

Friday 7 September. 1045-1200 Aud. E 0101 Assoc. Professor Frederik Tygstrup, University of Copenhagen. “Credit Crunch. Re-negotiating the Border between Fiction and Reality” The events that took place in the financial markets in the late 2000s referred to as the “credit crunch,” and the subsequent uprooting of the Western economies, were related to a new and radically increasing dislocation of speculation. If the ancient credit system were built upon territorial and social specificity, it now has become deterritorialized and eventually re-territorialized on the dislocated circuits of banking. This new practice of speculation, I will argue, is in turn related to an other ancient border, or division, this time of epistemological character: the border between fiction and reality. Assessing some fictions from the age of the credit crunch, and reviewing some of the ways fiction is understood in contemporary artistic and cultural practices, my aim will be to chart a new landscape of social imagination where the border between fiction and reality is increasingly loosing its authority and its relevance.

Frederik Tygstrup is the director of the Copenhagen Doctoral School in Cultural Studies and Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Copenhagen. His primary specialization is in the history and theory of the European novel and his present research interests focus on the intersections of artistic practices and other social practices, including urban aesthetics, the history of representations and experiences of space, literature and medicine, literature and geography, literature and politics.

Friday 7 September. 1300-1430 Aud. E 0101 Cultural Production Panel Debate We have invited four actors in the Barents Region aesthetic borderscape to present their work and share with us their thoughts on cultural production in Northern borderlands and on the border as a focus for cultural work, in the light of the themes of the conference.

Knut Erik Jensen (filmmaker), Liv Lundberg (poet and professor of creative writing, Tromsø), Liv-Hanne Haugen (dance artist) and Luba Kuzovnikova (artistic director, Pikene på broen, Kirkenes).

The Border Aesthetics lectures & Events are part of the final conference (http://uit.no/bac2012) of the Border Aesthetics research project under the Research Council of Norway KULVER programme, arranged by the Border

Poetics / Border Culture research group (http://uit.no/borderpoetics) at Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and education