Reading for this week

The reading for this week is:

Memory as Cultural Practice (I added this again)
La Raza Cosmetica
False Identification:Minority populations Mourn Diana
You are Here

Enjoy.

Amber

First conference call

If you would like to join the first conference all today (Monday May 26th) at 6pm Chicago time, please join Skype. To do so:

1. Go the Skype site: www.skype.com
2. Download their application
3. Create a user name
4. Add me as a contact by clicking the small + on the bottom right of the pop-up screen
5. Look for amberginsburg (all lower case-all one word)
6.Add me to your contacts
7. Be on Skype at 6pm (Chicago time)

Hope to hear from you this week or sometime soon.

Amber

Why this book?

A few people have asked me, "Why this book?" It might seem odd to choose a book on performance and hemispheric studies, as I know very little about performance and didn't even know the term hemispheric studies until I read the introduction.

My friend Katie Hargrave recommended the book to me some time ago. We both work inter-disciplinarily. Reading this book as a methodological model for inter-disciplinarity is easier NOT knowing the subject well. I appreciate the broad approach and expanse language Diana Taylor uses. She sees each subject in conversation with each other (pg.xvii). The way she asks questions of each appeals to my open-endedness.

I have been accused many time of having performance in my work. When Taylor writes- “Civic obedience, resistance, citizenship, gender, ethnicity, and sexual identity, for example, are rehearsed and performed daily in the public sphere.”- performance bleeds into critical spatial practice, history, and gender studies. Nice. I was at the train Metra station reading that sentence. The two platforms, divided by track, had benches facing one another. Suddenly I was performing reading for the folks opposite me while they were performing a variety of things, boredom, mating rituals, and a race politics, to name a few. I love the idea of public spaces as sites of performance where we both influence and are.

I tend to shy away from the diaristic. Not so with this reading. This entry in written in the first person as an experiment in directness. This writing, while deeply personal, still manages to appeal to broad interests. Another nice model.


Amber

Hello Art Theory Summer Campers,

Today is the official opening of Art Theory Summer camp. Our first book is Diana Taylor’s The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. There are 10 chapters in the book and we have four weeks allotted. The first reading is:

Introduction: Who, When, What, Why
1. Acts of Transfer
2. Scenarios of Discovery
3. Memory as Cultural Practice

Feel free to join in the conversation about the book as a whole or any article of interest. Participate as you are able.

Our first Skype meeting will be

Monday the 26th at 6pm.

If you are interested in this time-based dialogue, sign up for Skype prior to the meeting time. Skype is a free online commutation tool that allows for conference calls. If you have a headset, or headphones, conference calls are much easier to understand. http://www.skype.com/

Happy reading!

Amber

Art Theory Summer Camp is about to begin again. Below is a list of summer readings, as well as a schedule. As an addition to the blog format, this year there will be weekly SKYPE meetings. I hope having “talk time” will allow for fluid and organic connections to take place that will complement the written format of the blog. Times for phone meeting will be regularized to meet the needs of this year's participants.

Order or reserve your books now for the summer and join the fun.

Book ONE:
The Archive and the Repertoire-Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas
Diana Taylor
May 19th –June 16th

Book TWO:
State of Exception
By Giorgio Agamben
June 17th-July 7th

Book THREE:
The Human Condition
Hannah Arendt
July 8th-August 4th
Human Condition

Book FOUR:
Outline of a Theory of Practice
by Pierre Bourdieu
Aug 5th-September 1st


Amber