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12 april 2019: NWA-matchmakingsbijeenkomst De Kunst van de Kritiek

NWA-matchmakingsbijeenkomst
De Kunst van de Kritiek / The Art of Criticism

Meld je aan met het formulier onderaan deze pagina.

Wanneer:
12 april 2019, 12.00-17.00 uur (inclusief lunch)

Waar:
@DROOG Design
Staalstraat 7A/B
1011 JJ Amsterdam

Voor wie:
Deze matchmakingsbijeenkomst is bedoeld voor alle spelers uit het veld van de kunst- en cultuurkritiek: critici, redacteuren en ontwerpers; universiteiten en hogescholen; presentatie-instellingen en festivals. Het aantal plaatsen is beperkt (50).

Wat:
Het programma wordt binnenkort bekend gemaakt.

Waarom:
Het doel van de bijeenkomst onder de noemer De Kunst van de Kritiek / The Art of Criticism is het opbouwen van een consortium rondom het thema ‘kritische reflectie op kunst als aanjager van maatschappelijke reflectie en debat’. Samen met partners uit het werkveld (journalistieke media, culturele instellingen en individuele (jonge) critici), hogescholen en universiteiten vindt al enige tijd praktijkgericht onderzoek plaats naar innovatieve en inclusieve vormen in de kunstkritische praktijk, zoals podcasts, vlogs en collaboratieve schrijfvormen. De vraag hoe in het digitale tijdperk de reflectie op kunst kan worden gestimuleerd en gefaciliteerd door innovatieve vormen staat daarbij steeds sterker in de context van een urgent gevoelde noodzaak om te werken aan een divers en inhoudelijk publiek debat. Hierin raakt dit thema, naast de route ‘Kunst: onderzoek en innovatie in de 21e eeuw’ ook aan de route ‘Op weg naar veerkrachtige samenlevingen’.

Zoals ook op Europees niveau wordt onderschreven, zijn (kunst)kritische en reflectieve praktijken van groot belang voor een veerkrachtige democratische samenleving. In een context van gedeelde reflectie op culturele en artistieke producten, kan ook gedeelde reflectie op de maatschappij doordacht, bediscussieerd, geformuleerd, gedeeld en uitgewisseld worden. Deze matchmakingsbijeenkomst is bedoeld om partners bij elkaar te brengen die willen onderzoeken hoe zulke praktijken in Nederland kunnen worden vormgegeven en ontwikkeld. Daarbij wordt ook nadrukkelijk de vraag op tafel gelegd naar de invloed en mogelijkheden van innovatieve, digitale technologieën. De praktijkvraag van critici, media en instellingen vraagt om theoretische verdieping en inbedding in een onderzoeksveld waarin zowel kunst- en cultuurwetenschap, media- en journalistieke studies als sociale wetenschappen samenkomen. Wij hopen met deze matchmakingsbijeenkomst te komen tot een onderzoeksagenda op dit thema en een eerste stap te zetten tot het opzetten van een uitgebreider onderzoeksplan, binnen de kaders van de NWA en de passende beleidsplannen.

Mogelijk gemaakt door de Nationale Wetenschapsagenda.

Meld je aan: (toch verhinderd? weer afmelden wordt op prijs gesteld vanwege de beperkte plaatsen)

Sounding Out!

Sonic Contact Zones: An Interview with DJs MALT and Eat Paint in Koreatown, Los Angeles

On Sunday, February 21, Atlanta-based hip-hop photographer Gunner Stahl will be DJing at a raw space being built at 4317 Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles’ Koreatown as part of the Red Bull Music Festival. Red Bull suggests that many of the photographer’s artistic subjects, such as Tyler the Creator, Playboi Carti, Lil Uzi Vert, Gucci Mane, and/or The Weeknd might make guest appearances during his set. This star-studded stage with financial backing from the drink that gives you wings will stand across the street from Vilma’s Thrift Store, DolEx Dollar Express, Gina’s Beauty Salon, and Botanica Y Joyeria El Milagro. Tickets are a modest $15. At first glance, the location choice might seem odd; why not the legendary Wiltern Theater just down the street on Western? Or why not set up a stage inside MacArthur Park? Those are definitely options, and many performers do grace the stage of The Wiltern for fans in Koreatown and the greater Los Angeles area. However, for those who know Los Angeles’ Koreatown gets down, discounted snacks and pedicures a stone skip away from millionaires sounds just about right.

Figuring out these connections between sound, capital, culture, ethnicity, and art in LA’s Koreatown has been a popular pursuit in recent years. The year was 2014. The place was The Park Plaza Hotel on the outskirts of Los Angeles’ Koreatown. The people performing were TOKiMONSTA (Jennifer Lee), Far East Movement (Kevin Nishimura, James Roh, Jae Choung, and Virman Coquia), Dumbfoundead (Jonathan Park), and others. The reporter was Erik Kristman for Vice Media’s Thump. In the article titled “SPAM N EGGS Festival Was a Window to LA’s Multiculturalist Underground Movement,” Kristman proclaims: “Koreatown’s spectrum of sound, a culture hidden beneath its mid-Wilshire scenery, is no doubt one of the few remaining jewels of the LA underground.”

In Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital (1996), Sarah Thornton writes that DJs “play a key role in the enculturation of records for dancing, sometimes as an artist but always as a representative and respondent to the crowd. By orchestrating the event and anchoring the music in a particular place, the DJ became a guarantor of subcultural authenticity” (60). Asian American DJs performed in Koreatown, so the electronic music and hip hop they mixed was enculturated not only with a Los Angeles neighborhood flair but also with an ethnic twist.

Park Plaza Hotel, Taken by Flickr User Cathy Cole (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The Park Plaza Hotel, now The MacArthur, has its own important history as a venue as well. Built in the 1920s by prominent Los Angeles-based architect Claud Beelman, the building has hosted the racially exclusive Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, night clubs such as Power Tools with attendees such as Andy Warhol, and has been a site of numerous films and music videos such as Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble” (2017). It survived the demolishing of similar Art Deco buildings during the 1980s. It survived the 1992 Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of four police officers who beat Rodney King and the killing of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins by Soon Ja Du, the Korean-born convenience store owner of Empire Liquor on 91st Street and Figueroa Avenue. It survived, if not flourished, in the subsequent gentrification of the Wilshire Center area with eager real estate agents and endowed buyers who are made nostalgic by the building’s Art Deco façade. The right DJs playing in a prime spot such as The MacArthur could definitely guarantee a level of Los Angeles subcultural authenticity for attendees. But what kind of authentic? And was that something anyone was trying to go for?

Kristman’s caricaturization of Koreatown certainly reveals how this visage of authenticity affected him. In his words, Koreatown is a diamond waiting to be mined. Koreatown is hidden. Koreatown’s “spectrum of sound” takes the singular verb “is,” meaning it functions as a unified, indistinguishable whole. Kristman has “no doubt” about his analysis of his authentic trip to Koreatown.

The openers of Spam N Eggs that night were two techno DJs and producers named MALT (Andrew Seo) and Eat Paint (Vince Fierro). Together, they run the Los Angeles-based Leisure Sports Records. We met at the Seoul-based coffeehouse Caffé Bene in Los Angeles to share misugaru lattes and talk about Kristman’s statement.

“I definitely wouldn’t call ‘Koreatown’ very underground,” says Vince. “It’s certainly become a new social center to LA’s night life, and there was a time when there was a feeling of great potential for a solid underground movement. But sadly, there have not been any significantly artistic home-grown breakthroughs coming from K-Town.”

Vince continues: “Rather, it serves as a new landing pad for the very commercialized Korean hip-hop and EDM cultures in Los Angeles. These genres dominate the K-Town club landscape. Unfortunately [pause] to me, anyway [pause] it’s success not won with any kind of daring artistry or underground legitimacy but rather with familiar aesthetics and neon lights.”

“[Los Angeles] helps them, too,” adds Andrew. “They’ll close off streets and bring in vendors because it gets people out spending money. A lot of the Korean stars come out for these events, but the thing is [pause] what kinds of people are these events attracting? Obviously, Koreans, or people that are fans of Korean music. I think Korean people here have a lot of pride, and they see that there is a rise in the culture and the area’s popularity and they’re jumping on that. They’re trying to make it bigger and better. If you walk around Koreatown, you’ll see gentrification happening everywhere.” He references the Wilshire Grand Center, the Hanjin Group-owned skyscraper that stands taller than any other west of the Mississippi, and its surroundings as evidence.

Urban studies carried out by Kyonghwan Park and Youngmin Lee, Kyeyoung Park and Jessica Kim, and others on Koreatown’s fraught relationship with surges of capital have made similar acknowledgments in wonderful detail. These surges are not evenly distributed among clubs; there are many more “secret” dimly-lit rave spots that pop up throughout the district than there are widely advertised above-ground clubs in Koreatown. Even relatively established clubs such as Union at 4067 West Pico Boulevard or Feria at 682 Irolo Street were not glamorous (and both have closed since the time this recent interview was conducted); they are surrounded by predatory lending offices and abandoned shops. Andrew gave me the address of an upcoming rave spot in Koreatown; it was basically under an apartment complex.

“I think they just want to bring what they build in Korea over here because that’s how they do it over there,” adds Andrew. “They just have apartments and then clubs and restaurants underneath or underground. It’s kind of like how Tokyo is.”

If this “hidden, underground” Koreatown culture does exist, as Kristman suggests, then finding it requires ignoring the flashing lights of Spam N Eggs and seeking out the darker warehouse raves. It also requires a level of suspended disbelief that Koreatown is untouched by hipster gentrification and instead an embracing of a subcultural essence that goes beyond city architecture and real estate. The physical space of sections of Koreatown might not be as important as the potential for the production of space in terms of creating sonic contact zones.

sign in Koreatown, Los Angeles by Flickr User vince Lammin (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The zones created by artists such as Malt and Eat Paint are mobile and fleeting as they pop up whenever and wherever these DJs perform. Like Josh Kun famously put forward in his book Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (2005), the music these musicians produce and mix has the ability to create audiotopias “of cultural counter that may not be physical places but nevertheless exist in their own auditory some-where” (2-3). Electronic music, and perhaps similarly this “jewel-like” spectrum of Koreatown sound, has the ability to implant identity into the buildings and surrounding neighborhoods. What once was a Mexican restaurant and is now abandoned becomes a pulsating techno club attracting those Angelenos who shy away from the more commercial scenes.

Perhaps Kristman was focusing more on the Asian American DJs themselves than the types of music they were spinning or The Park Plaza Hotel and its situation in Koreatown. As Asian Americans, these DJs represent and are representative of an authentic subculture to which Kristman bears witness. However, many artists shy away from or sometimes outright deny any racial or ethnic connections being made between their art and their identities. Andrew and Vince shared personal and well-known examples of ambivalent attitudes toward such labeling. Jason Chung, also known as Nosaj Thing, is one of the best-booked electronic performers today, flying around the world sponsored by Adidas or playing huge shows with Flying Lotus. Vince, who worked very closely with Jason just as his career was taking off, reflects on Nosaj’s rise: “Everyone here in K-Town thinks Nosaj Thing is a god. But if you ask him about his pride in being Korean, he won’t say anything.”

Andrew adds: “It’s just like how Qbert is for the Filipino community – that’s who Nosaj Thing is for Koreans today. When I went to South Korea to perform, they would ask me how I was affiliated with him, although I’m not really. South Koreans are amazed to see a Korean guy make it in the music industry in America with a sense of originality, not having to sell out.”

Both Andrew and Vince shift the conversation suddenly to Keith Ape and his debut as a trap music artist. Keith Ape’s success was due in part to spectacle (as the genre demands), to the power of hallyu promotion, but more so to simple respect from established artists such as Gucci Mane and Waka Flocka Flame. In a Noisey documentary about his first U.S. performance at South by Southwest (SXSW) in 2015, Keith Ape is translated as saying: “You know, I’m Asian. And I heard stories of how Asians are still looked at as outsiders in the States. And I heard it’s even worse when it comes down to hip-hop.”

While his successful Atlanta trap-style set at SXSW ultimately assuaged those fears of acceptance, for many beginning and working Asian American DJs and performers, this perceived and sometimes enforced musical barrier is daunting. While Andrew seemed to have his criticisms about how Korean promoters of Korean artists seem to be strictly focused on the commercial payoff of such events, he did not condemn their tapping into the United States market. Furthermore, he never mentioned that performing in the electronic music genre was either assisted or hindered by his ethnicity. Rather, much like Nosaj Thing, Malt lets the music do its work and create an audiotopia in which race and ethnicity are not under the spotlight. Literally, most of the shows Malt performs at do not feature the performer; the DJ is often in the dark, putting the focus almost exclusively on the music.

MALT, courtesy of Leisure Sports Records

Vince adds: “Korean American artists like Nosaj Thing and TOKiMONSTA and David Choe – all these people are doing their own thing. They’ve got these ‘don’t see me as Asian’ mottos, these ‘just think I’m dope’ vibes.”

Instead of searching for authenticity in the racial or ethnic identities of performers, Andrew is more interested in breaking stereotypes about the dangers associated with techno music, raves, and drug use. Andrew concludes: “I think first impressions are very, very important to Korean people. Looks are everything. South Korea is like the biggest plastic surgery country in the world. I went to Korea to visit my grandma, who I hadn’t seen in a long time, and all she would ask me was like, ‘Are you eating well? Look at your hair!’ Just purely about my looks. I was telling her, ‘Grandma! I run a label back in LA! I’m trying to be a musician!’ At our events, random Korean people walk by, they’ll come in for five seconds, listen to the music, and label it as ‘drug music,’ like something you listen to when you’re messed up. The same thing could be said about trap or EDM, right? But they don’t associate it with that. Hopefully, if the right timing comes, we can change that somehow.”

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Featured Image: TOKiMONSTA by Twitter User Henry Faber, 2011 (CC BY-NC 2.0)

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Shawn Higgins is the Academic Coordinator of the Undergraduate Bridge Program at Temple University’s Japan campus. His latest publication is “Orientalist Soundscapes, Barred Zones, and Irving Berlin’s China,” coming out in the 2018 volume of Chinese America: History and Perspectives.

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REWIND!…If you liked this post, you may also dig: 

“How Many Latinos are in this Motherfucking House?”: DJ Irene, Sonic Interpellations of Dissent and Queer Latinidad in ’90s Los Angeles—Eddy Francisco Alvarez Jr.

Contra La Pared: Reggaetón and Dissonance in Naarm, Melbourne–Lucreccia Quintanilla

SO! Amplifies: The Women in L.A. Punk Archive— Alice Bag

Sounding Out!

SO! Podcast #74: Bonus Track for Spanish Rap & Sound Studies Forum

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Bonus Track for Spanish Rap & Sound Studies Forum

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA ITUNES

ADD OUR PODCASTS TO YOUR STITCHER FAVORITES PLAYLIST
nopare2In “Asesina,” Darell opens the track shouting “Everybody go to the discotek,” a call for listeners to respond to the catchy beat and come dance. In this series on rap in Spanish and Sound Studies, we’re calling you out to the dance floor…and we have plenty to say about it. Your playlist will not sound the same after we’re through.

Throughout the forum, we explored what Spanish rap has to say on the dance floor, in our cars, and through our headsets. Michael Levine discussed trap in Cuba and el paquete semanal. Lucrecia Quintanilla mused about about Latinx identity in Australia. Ashley Luthers broke down femme sexuality in Cardi B’s music.

A forum on Spanish rap couldn’t be complete without a mixtape, and Lucrecia Quintanilla obliged. She has provided SO! readers with a free playlist that acts as a soundtrack to our series. Also? It’s hot. We wrap up No Pare, Sigue Sigue: Spanish Rap & Sound Studies with this bonus track.

Songs:
We will dance to the light of the moon – Lucreccia and Ruben Heller-Quintanilla
La Cumbia Modular – Galambo
Festividad – Funeral
6 De la Mañana – Kelman Duran
Daddy Yankee, DJ Playero Baby Yankee Rio Bamba Remix
New Freezer- DJ Na
Contra La Pared – Moro
Como Mujer – Ivy Queen Lucreccia Quintanilla Edit
Dimelo – Demphra
Fuego – Lisa M.
El-Apache-ness- x-jlo-mueve-el-cucta-x-jenny-from-the-block    Tayhana-Turra-Edit
La Chilaperra – Mixeo Dj’s
Try Again (Chaboi ‘Mas Duro’ Dembow Refix)
Sueltate el dembow – Bigote Edit
Y Que Lo Mueva (feat.MC Buseta) – Rosa Pistola and YNFYNYT SCROLL
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Featured image: “La Flor de Reggaetón” by Flickr user La Tabacalera de Lavapiés, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Lucreccia Quintanilla  is an artist/DJ/writer and PhD candidate at Monash University in Naarm, Melbourne, Australia.
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INC

19 Februari: Rondetafelgesprek: ‘De Muur’ & Paul Virilio

Speciaal evenement: 19.02.2019 > Tijd: 19:30 — 23:00 uur
Locatie: West, vml. Amerikaanse ambassade, Alphabetum / Lange Voorhout 102, Den Haag
Tickets: 5,- euro / bestellen via: https://tinyurl.com/demuur-virilio
Meer info: www.westdenhaag.nl

Op 15 november 2018 heeft Network Cultures uit Amsterdam de elektronische versie van het boek ‘De Muur’ (1984) als open source op internet gezet als pdf en epub. In 18 september 2018 overleed de Franse stedenbouwkundige, filosoof en essayist Paul Virilio op 86-jarige leeftijd aan de gevolgen van een hartaanval. Deze beide gebeurtenissen zijn aanleiding voor een rondetafelgesprek in de bibliotheek van de voormalige Amerikaanse ambassade in Den Haag.

Geert Lovink schreef over ‘De Muur’: ‘Historisch gezien is dit geschrift uit de koker van de Nederlandse architectuurtheorie een interessante avant-gardische aanwijzing dat er reeds fikse scheuren zaten in de (Westerse) kijk op de Berlijnse Muur. De grote sprong voorwaarts die ‘De Muur ‘maakt is de kijk op dit repressieve politieke fenomeen als een amoreel, materieel object. (…) Hoe was dit mogelijk, vroeg ik me af, om zo poëtisch, zo anders te schrijven over harde politieke zaken zoals stadsvernieuwing, buurtinspraak en andere voorbeelden van de repressief-pedagogische sociaal-democratische stadspolitiek in de late jaren van de welvaartstaat?’
Virilio staat bekend als filosoof van de snelheid. Hij vond deze de belangrijkste invloedsfactor van onze maatschappij. Hij thematiseerde de desintegratie van het territorium en de invloed van alle soorten communicatietechniek. In een onderhoud met de krant Libération in 2010, verklaarde hij, dat ‘we een synchronisatie van het gevoel beleven, een mondialisering van de affecten. (…) Op ieder moment kan iedereen op de planeet (…) dezelfde paniek beleven. We zijn van de standaardisering van de meningen – die mogelijk werd dankzij de persvrijheid- overgegaan naar de synchronisatie van het gevoel. (…) Vroeger kende onze samenleving een gemeenschap van de belangen, vanaf nu zal ze voortbestaan als communisme van de affecten’.

Tijdens deze avond besteden we aandacht aan het boek ‘De Muur’, de reden voor de herpublicatie, de intellectuele erfenis van Paul Virilio (destijds de belangrijkste inspirator van het boek) en de stand van zaken rond de architectuurtheorie en de architectuurpublicatie. Er zullen foto’s te bezichtigen zijn van Piet Rook uit de tentoonstelling De Muur (1984), er zullen films vertoond worden van en over Paul Virilio en er is een kleine tentoonstelling van het gedrukte boek. 

Programma
19:30 — 20:00 uur        Deuren open

Moderator: Bert van Meggelen

20:00 — 20:45 uur        Presentatie van De Muur

Jan De Graaf en Wim Nijenhuis, auteurs van het boek De Muur

  •  Voorlezen fragmenten uit het boek
  • Over de heruitgave bij en door Network Cultures
  • Anekdote over de subsidieverstrekking destijds door Q8
  • Kort gesprek over het boek, opmerkingen en vragen uit het publiek

20:45 — 21:00 uur        Herdenking van Paul Virilio

  • Film van en over Virilio

21:00 — 21:15 uur        Pauze

21:15 — 21:45 uur        

  • Statement over Virilio: Wim Nijenhuis
  • Anekdotes over Virilio door Patrice Riemens
  • Kort gesprek over Virilio, opmerkingen en vragen uit de zaal

21:45 — 22:15 uur        Architectuurpublicaties in deze tijd

  • Statement over de herpublicatie van De Muur door Geert Lovink
  • Statement over de SvZ in de architectuurpublicatie door Harm Tilman
  • Kort gesprek over architectuurpublicaties en vragen uit de zaal

22:15 — 23:00 uur       Napraten  

Over de sprekers:
Jan de Graaf: Stedenbouwkundige en essayist, medeauteur van ‘De Muur’(1984) en auteur van ‘Europe: Coast Wise’ (1997); in 2010 nam hij deel aan het winnende ontwerpteam van de prijsvraag Herinneringspark 1914-1918, over het Westelijk Front van de Eerste Wereldoorlog; in 2015 publiceerde hij ‘Difficult landscapes; a geographcial reflection on heritage, war and peace’, in Topos 92, 84-90 (met Robert Schütte).

Wim Nijenhuis: Stedenbouwkundige en essayist, medeauteur van ‘De Muur’ (1984) en ‘De diabolische snelweg’ (2007) en auteur van ‘The Riddle of the Real City, or the Dark Knowledge of Urbanism’ (2017).

Geert Lovink: Mediatheoreticus en internetcriticus. Oprichter van het Institute of Network Cultures (www.networkcultures.org) en lector aan de Hogeschool van Amsterdam. Zijn nieuwe boek heet ‘Sad by Design’.

Harm Tilman: hoofdredacteur van het architectuurplatform de Architect, voorheen coördinator Stedenbouw, Academie van Bouwkunst Rotterdam

Patrice Riemens: Geograaf en voormalig medewerker bij de Waag Society in Amsterdam. Vertaalde met Arjen Mulder: Paul Virilio, ‘Het horizon negatief’ (1989). Patrice Riemens was een persoonlijke vriend van Paul Virilio en zijn familie.

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De avond is georganiseerd door Wim Nijenhuis en Jan de Graaf i.s.m. West Den Haag.

U bent van harte welkom. De gesprekken en presentaties zijn Nederlandstalig. De toegang is 5,- euro en reserveren is noodzakelijk.

Voor vragen kunt u contact opnemen met:

Wim Nijenhuis: jwnijenhuis@kpnplanet.nl / 0031(0)634567217

Jan de Graaf: janendezee@gmail.com / 0031(0)627013670

of  Marie-José Sondeijker: marie-jose@westdenhaag.nl / 0031(0)703925359

De voormalige Amerikaanse ambassade ‘Onze Ambassade’ wordt tijdelijk beheerd door ANNA Vastgoed & Cultuur en kunstinstituut West Den Haag. Het programma van West wordt mede mogelijk gemaakt door de Gemeente Den Haag en het Ministerie van OCW.

Sounding Out!

Cardi B: Bringing the Cold and Sexy to Hip Hop

In “Asesina,” Darell opens the track shouting “Everybody go to the discotek,” a call for listeners to respond to the catchy beat and come dance. In this series on rap in Spanish and Sound Studies, we’re calling you out to the dance floor…and we have plenty to say about it. Your playlist will not sound the same after we’re through.

Throughout January, we will explore what Spanish rap has to say on the dance floor, in our cars, and through our headsets. We’ll read about trap in Cuba and about Latinx identity in Australia. And because no forum on Spanish rap is complete without a mixtape, we’ll close out our forum on Thursday with a free playlist for our readers. Today we continue No Pare, Sigue Sigue: Spanish Rap & Sound Studies with Ashley Luthers’ essay on femme sexuality in Cardi B’s music.

Liana M. Silva, forum editor

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“Ran down on that bitch twice” was all I heard in this tight, dark basement filled with black and brown bodies, sweat dripping everywhere from everyone. Girls danced all over, yelling and shouting lyrics as they clapped and pointed along to the fast, upbeat rhythm of the song, feeling their own sensations and pleasure from the vibe, and rapping with the catchiness of the repeated phrase, “Ran down on that bitch twice!” As everyone was jumping, the space around me shook because there was so much body movement and flow; it was lit. This wasn’t the first time I heard Cardi B, but dancing along to her song “Foreva” was definitely the first I remember hearing her. Since that dark basement party, I realized that the attitude and energy Cardi B invokes through her raps and lyrics is addicting.

Listening repeatedly to “Foreva,” and the rest of her debut mixtape Gangsta Bitch Music Vol.1, has attuned me to Cardi B as a stone cold, gangster bitch: someone who is fearless, tough on the outside and inside. She doesn’t hesitate; she doesn’t bluff. She gets straight to the point and lets you know that she will fuck you up if and when necessary. A ‘G’ she is, as some would say when describing a person who shows no fear and is always hustling—except that someone is imagined as a black male from the so-called ‘hood who affiliates with drugs, gangs, etc. The music itself reflects this gangster feel, through the hard trap sounds and beats in every track. Trap music as a style and subset of Hip-Hop, and arguably a genre on its own, originated in Atlanta, and has over time become mainstream all across the U.S. specifically within the Northeast region. Within Cardi’s performed, stone cold bitch lyrical persona, she embodies an aggressive femme sexuality, a racialized femme hunger for sex with black men, and an emotional depth that makes her endearing to listeners. Her embodiment of this multiplicity—stone cold attitude, femme sexual thirst, and emotional complexity—can be heard in her music, through the explosion of beats, rhythms, and lyrics that keep listeners hooked to the sound of her self-image. In other words, Cardi B’s sonic and lyrical movements work in tandem with her audio-visual construction of black, Caribbean, Bronx femme desire.

Nowadays this audio-visual construction  is visible across her music and social media, but I want to focus on the image of her debut mixtape cover, Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol.1. This image hailed me and continues to hold me in thrall after lengthy meditations on it. In it, Cardi B sits in the backseat of a car, high-rise apartments peering through the back window, with her legs spread wide open. Between her legs, a big, black, faceless, tatted man gives her head as she casually drinks her Corona. The man’s back sprawls in the place where we might imagine Cardi B’s junk/pussy; he’s her bitch. The audacity of displaying her desire mid-sex-act intrigues me and does more than merely assert black femme sexual desire. The media blew up when Nicki Minaj did her lollipop photoshoot in which her legs are wide open, and her crotch is heavily exposed. But Cardi B’s mixtape cover has a different impact, because of the positioning of its vulgarity and audacity.

I’ve seen pictures of Nicki Minaj and Lil’ Kim where they’re half naked, open to giving men pleasure, and completely distorting the expectation of respectable black women to cover their bodies and assets. But what makes Cardi’s mixtape visual different even from Lil’ Kim’s and Minaj’s visual constructions is that it shouts power from the position often occupied by cis-male desire. Cardi B is seizing her own sexual power and gangster agency while she asserts her business hustle from the seated position of power that is often assumed by cis-male gangster rappers and performers. In the angle and composition of the mixtape image, we, as viewers, are positioned to look up at her as we witness her experiencing pleasure. She’s above us, and her chosen sexual object, who is a big black man, a figure whose masculinity is historically challenged by normative and respectability-obsessed society, and who is historically susceptible to being emasculated, is situated beneath her: there’s a troubling of power’s embodiment, specifically through sex, in this image. She’s visually insisting on getting play.

I connect Gangsta Bitch Mixtape Vol. 1’s cover image to the sounds, vibes, and lyrics of Cardi B’s tracks within the mixtape. In “Foreva,” for example, she raps, “Silly muthafucka who raised you/ a nigga with a pussy how disgraceful.” It’s at this point that we realize that the “bitch” that she “ran down on,” “twice,” is also a dude. In the lyrics, she alternates between beefing with trifling chicks and dudes; for Cardi, bitches breach a gender dyad. She raps from a masculine position as a femme, which ultimately illustrates her mixtape cover’s reversal of who is in the receptive and dominant position of sexual power. In “Foreva,” she’s talking down on black men the same way that most of these men speak on black women in the Hip-Hop industry. Cardi twists the normative misogyny and disrespect that is often demonstrated towards black women in Hip-Hop and instead uses that towards apostrophic black men. The lyrics of “Foreva” and the Gangsta Bitch mixtape cover both sustain this idea of Cardi B working within masculine tropes as a woman in the industry. On the mixtape cover, she is the one who is receiving pleasure, instead of giving it to a man. Lyrically and physically, she’s in a place where she’s on top, looking down on her subject/object of sexual desire, and inviting her audience to watch.

Sonically, “Foreva” and other tracks fits within the genre of trap music. Many of the songs in the mixtape have aggressive beats. The genre is characterized by a deep, hard mood created by the fast beat: Justin Burton describes it as “one of the most iconic sonic elements of trap is the rattling hihat, cruising through subdivisions of the beat at inhuman rates.” This is what we hear and feel from Cardi’s music itself. Specifically, the BPM for “Foreva” is 161 which fits into the range of typical Trap music. The way she sounds is what she embodies. The flow of “Foreva” tells us as listeners that Cardi B isn’t here to play and she damn sure won’t let anybody stop her from making her money. The rest of the music on the mixtape takes a similar route, in that these crisp rhythms speak to her power, her urban upbringing, coming from the Bronx, and her days as a stripper. She owns her sexuality and claims it through the music. The cover reflects this: she is poised and looking directly at us, her stone-cold persona manifested in how she also appears utterly unbothered by you, us, looking at her, looking at us.

Cardi B’s a freak. Clearly. (As if we didn’t know this.) But the way she visually and sonically expresses her sexual yearning is more complicated than the word freak can capture. The thing with Cardi B is, she’s not afraid. In fact, she doesn’t care about respectability. Even when she raps about making money or callin’ shots on someone, she never hesitates to slide in something sex-related because she knows she’s good at getting and giving play, both sexually and musically: “Fuck him so good he gonna want to spend all that/ Pussy got him on the jugg he gonna re-up and come right back.” If you read the lyrics from “With That,” you could think the lyrical subject is a male rapper, like trap’s Future or Gucci Mane. In fact, this song is a remake from Young Thug’s “With That,” which comes from his album Barter 6. Young Thug is one of the big faces in the Atlanta Trap music scene and his track “With That” reflects the life of a rapper like him. Poppin pills, stacking money tall, Thug knows he’s killing the game and shitting on these other rappers with his sounds–Cardi B echoes that bravado in her remake.

Drugs, sex, money, hustle: Cardi B, in a way, replicates the masculine attachment to these tropes. But we are not listening to an abstract, masculinist lyrical subject on her mixtape; we are listening to a black femme subject. So, this goes beyond ‘replication’, as we may wonder whether it has ever historically not been the case in the Americas that black women also had to hustle, grind, find stimulation to escape normative constraints, and take care of their sexual desires. Which is to say, black men are not the OG hustlers; arguably, black women are, and Cardi B channels that historical force in her audio-visual construction of a stone-cold bitch who knows how to get play, and still have feelings in a hatin’ ass world.

We’re introduced to this hard, stone cold Cardi B inside and outside of her music’s lyrics as she repeatedly performs that she is not at all ashamed of the fact that she used to be stripper, aka, someone who hustles hard. Her choice of the trap genre, as a black Latina, acknowledges the existence of that hustle theme within it—even honors it. Her refusal of shame and respectability affects that take a specific toll on black women in the Americas, circles me back to the welcoming aura she displays on the mixtape cover. She wants viewers to see her in her happy place; she wants us listeners to hear how good she is in bed; she wants the world to know she’s a freak. This is her way of fucking with the mythical construction of masculinity in Hip-Hop where cis-men are the most badass, aka, the “most political” subjects; she acts on her own urges and desires, which does a lot more than just show femme as “sexy.” She’s sexy and she’s cold and so is her music too: the kick drums, synth lines, and hihats make her sonically ominous and cold.

In one of Cardi B’s latest tracks, “Money,” I still hear echoes of “Foreva,” but I’m hearing so much more. I find myself paying as much attention to the audio as to the visual constructions that Cardi B’s generous yet cutting aesthetic offers: in the cover image for “Money,” we see her naked body, positioned in a way that shows off her peacock thigh tattoo, suggesting but keeping her junk from you. She’s wearing a plethora of gold watches, almost as if they’re long-sleeve gloves, and a gold hat, the shape of which channels both Beyoncé’s in “Formation” and Jeffery’s (aka, Young Thug) on the cover of Jeffery. Unlike the cover of the first mixtape, Cardi does not give us her hair in this image, and she does not give us her gaze; while she directs her face at the camera, the hat dripping with diamonds conceals her hair and her eyes from us—or, she is giving her gaze to herself, to the inward rewards of her hustle. The ice is cold, but the image is warm as a swarm of gold bling and golden light surrounds her.

Lyrically, on “Money,” she’s doing what she does best, rapping about her hustle, her money, and still managing to throw in a little something about her love for sex. Sonically, this is pure trap. We hear an orchestration of keyboards, brass, and drums. As for us, listening viewers, we not only consume her music, but also continue to take in everything Cardi B has to offer because it fascinates and pleases us. She returns our pleasure (in her pleasure) to us, and nothing less than that.

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Featured Image: Still from “Cardi B ‘Foreva’ (Live) Choreography By- Hollywood”

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Ashley Luthers is currently a Senior at Wesleyan University studying English and Economics. She has spent the past year researching and studying Cardi B inside and outside of the classroom. Her final senior essay revolves around Cardi B as a black femme artist in Hip-Hop through an analysis of different theories surrounding the black female body.

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REWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:

“The (Magic) Upper Room: Sonic Pleasure Politics in Southern Hip Hop“–Regina Bradley

“What Feels Good to Me: Extra-Verbal Vocal Sounds and Sonic Pleasure in Black Femme Pop Music” -Robin James

“I Love to Praise His Name”: Shouting as Feminine Disruption, Public Ecstasy, and Audio-Visual Pleasure–Shakira Holt

Janneke Adema

Et si la recherche scientifique ne pouvait pas être neutre?

Sous la direction de Laurence Brière, Mélissa Lieutenant-Gosselin et Florence Piron

Accessible en libre accès intégral sous la forme d’un cyberlivre.

Le PDF du livre est téléchargeable librement à partir de l’archive ouverte de l’Université Laval : http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11794/34463

Acheter un livre, c’est nous soutenir et permettre à ceux et celles qui ne peuvent l’acheter de le lire en libre accès.

Les manières de faire de la science aujourd’hui sont multiples et innovantes. Pourtant, un modèle normatif continue d’écraser les autres : le modèle positiviste. Il soutient que la science vise l’étude objective de la réalité en s’appuyant sur l’application rigoureuse de la méthode « scientifique » dont la neutralité est un des emblèmes. Cette vision est vivement contestée dans plusieurs champs de recherche, tels que les études sociales des sciences, l’histoire des sciences et les études féministes et décoloniales. Ces critiques considèrent que les théories scientifiques sont construites et influencées par le contexte social, culturel et politique dans lequel travaillent les scientifiques, ainsi que par les conditions matérielles de leur travail. Cet ancrage social de la science rend impensable, pour ces critiques, l’idée même de neutralité. Faut-il donc renoncer à cette exigence normative? Par quelle autre norme la remplacer?

Né d’un colloque tenu en 2017 à Montréal, ce livre propose les réflexions et analyses sur ces questions de 25 autrices et auteurs issus de sept pays. Études de cas, analyses réflexives et discussions théoriques s’entrecroisent pour permettre une réflexion collective approfondie sur ces enjeux anciens, mais constamment renouvelés, notamment dans le contexte du nouveau statut précaire de l’expertise scientifique dans l’espace public.

ISBN epub : 978-2-924661-54-3
ISBN pour l’impression : 978-2-924661-52-9
547 pages

Utilisez le bouton Paypal ci-dessous pour commander le livre imprimé ou l’obtenir en format ePub (prêtable). Les auteurs et autrices peuvent aussi l’utiliser pour commander des exemplaires supplémentaires. Une contribution de 9 $ aux frais d’envoi est automatiquement ajoutée. Le livre sera bientôt disponible dans nos librairies dépositaires : la Librairie du Quartier à Québec, Zone libre à Montréal, à venir pour Paris, Genève et l’Afrique.


Pré-vente et vente



Table des matières

Introduction. Un espace de réflexions sociales et politiques sur les manières de penser et de faire des sciences
Laurence Brière, Mélissa Lieutenant-Gosselin et Florence Piron

Partie I. (Im)possible neutralité scientifique

L’ancrage sociologique du concept. Réflexion sur le rapport d’objectivation
Marie-Laurence Bordeleau-Payer

La neutralité pour quoi faire? Pour une historicisation de la rigueur scientifique
Oumar Kane

De l’impossible neutralité axiologique à la pluralité des pratiques
Pierre-Antoine Pontoizeau

Sur l’idéal de neutralité en recherche. Bachelard, Busino et Olivier de Sardan mis en dialogue
Julia Morel et Valérie Paquet

Quand les résultats contredisent les hypothèses. La neutralité en question dans la production du savoir sur le cerveau
Giulia Anichini

Les traductions coloniales et (post)coloniales à l’épreuve de la neutralité
Milouda Medjahed

Les pratiques d’évaluation par les pair-e-s : pas de neutralité
Samir Hachani

Les faits, les sciences et leur communication. Dialogue sur la science du climat à l’ère de Trump
Pascal Lapointe et Mélissa Lieutenant-Gosselin

Partie II. L’insoutenable neutralité scientifique

L’amoralité du positivisme institutionnel. L’épistémologie du lien comme résistance
Florence Piron

Voyage vers l’insolence. Démasquer la neutralité scientifique dans la formation à la recherche
Maryvonne Charmillot et Raquel Fernandez-Iglesias

La question de la neutralité en sciences de l’environnement. Réflexions autour de la Marche internationale pour la science
Laurence Brière

Neutralité, donc silence? La science politique française à l’épreuve de la non-violence
Cécile Dubernet

Les sciences impliquées. Entre objectivité épistémique et impartialité engagée
Donato Bergandi

Partie III. Au-delà de la neutralité

Neutralisation et engagement dans des controverses publiques. Approche comparative d’expertises scientifiques
Robin Birgé et Grégoire Molinatti

Non-neutralité sans relativisme? Le rôle de la rationalité évaluative
Mathieu Guillermin

Comprendre et étudier le monde social. De la réflexivité à l’engagement
Sklaerenn Le Gallo

Langagement. Déconstruction de la neutralité scientifique mise en scène par la sociologie dramaturgique
Sarah Calba et Robin Birgé

Partie IV. Perspectives réflexives

Que signifie être chercheuse? Du désir d’objectivité au désir de réflexivité
Mélodie Faury

Des relations complexes entre critique et engagement. Quelques enseignements issus de recherches critiques en communication
Éric George

Perspectives critiques et études sur le numérique. À la recherche de la pertinence sociale
Lena A. Hübner

Réguler les rapports entre recherche scientifique et action militante. Retour sur un parcours personnel
Stéphane Couture

Les auteurs et les autrices

Résumés
Abstracts
Zusammenfassungen
Abstractos
Astratti

 

À propos de la maison d’édition

 

Sounding Out!

SO! Podcast #73: NYC Highline Soundwalk

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In a recent profile, New Yorkmagazine’s Justin Davidson called the NYC High Line, a “tunnel through glass towers,” an urban beautification project that had been designed with local real estate prices in mind, which has since become a “cattle chute for tourists,” wending its way through Manhattan’s Lower West Side from Gansevoort Street to 34th, and lined on each side by newly sprouted luxury apartment towers designed by some of the world’s preeminent architects. Conceived in the mid-2000s and completed in several phases through 2018, the High Line has been an epicenter of gentrification: From the 10,000 square foot glass-and-steel wedge of 40 10th Avenue, to twisty twins of 76 Eleventh Avenue, to the massive Western Yard project, the sounds of the High Line – as I experienced them this past August – are redolent with the city’s rising inequality, and the remaking of working class neighborhoods and small businesses into stretches of upscale high rises and posh boutiques.

Having not visited the High Line for a year or so – and having never walked the route from end to end – I decided this past August to make this viaduct-turned-urban greenway the subject of a soundwalk. How, I wonder, might the soundof this space reveal its complex relationships and uses to the city surrounding it – its use as a public park, a tourist-trap, a space for small business, a featured attraction for builders and real estate agents marketing location? The whole walk is about a mile and a half, and I have about an hour to play with before heading up to midtown to make a research appointment, so I hoof down to the Meatpacking District to pick up the trail at its southwestern terminus.

Climbing up a set of stairs directly next to the Whitney museum, the shrill sounds of the streets gradually melt away and I emerge into a peaceful grove of birches and thick shrubs. It’s relatively quiet at the moment, and one gets the sense of being in a rooftop garden – an urban meadow at once removed from the city, yet still immersed in its ambient hum. As I walk the length of the route, these city sounds become the leitmotif of my journey: the din of traffic along the avenues and cross-streets; the distant car horns; the sirens; the weekday morning sounds of unseen trucks loading and unloading their wares at nearby businesses; the constant drone of rooftop air conditioners; the sounds of tourists conversing in myriad languages; the inescapable jingling of mobile phones. And it’s from these latter sounds that I can begin to see – particularly as I’m here at an off-hour – why some local residents are a bit ticklish about the High Line’s popularity with out-of-towners.

But overlaying all of this are the sounds of construction – the drills, circular saws, massive trucks, and heavy equipment of every description – that pierces the air on every block. Such sounds are not unusual in New York City, of course. But here, on each side of the High Line, the scale of such projects is enormous, and I can’t help but think of each pop of a nail gun, each hammer, each whirring crane, and creaking construction elevator making its sonic contribution to the glass and steel monstrosities piling up on the site of former slaughterhouses. Here, in this tumult, is the city-as-palimpsest: the writing-over of the industrial past with a plutocratic future.

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Featured image by Moltkeplatz. It is in the public domain.

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Andrew J. Salvati is a PhD candidate in Journalism and Media Studies at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. His research examines the ways in which American history is packaged in popular media forms including film, television, computer games, mash-ups, and podcasts. Andrew currently live in New Jersey with his wife and two cats.

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tape reelREWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:

Sounding Out! Podcast #57: The Reykjavik Sound Walk— Andrew Salvati

DIY Histories: Podcasting the Past— Andrew Salvati

Sounding Out! Podcast #2: Springtime in KC: Soundwalking Kansas City—Liana Silva

Sounding Out!

Ghosts in the Machine: Sampling Dr. King

Education is never politically neutral. Many of us advocate for social justice when we’re outside of the classroom but struggle to continue that work inside as well, especially with issues that appear on the surface largely unrelated to our disciplines. This inaction maintains the centering of the white experience, continuing to normalize and prioritize it at the expense of all others. Marginalized voices remain marginalized. We don’t need our own students to be directly impacted by policies to advocate on behalf of those who are. This is work we all must do.

27296397823_8c01549f57_z

“New Orleans Street Musicians …” by Flickr user sswj, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

While social issues have made important inroads within musicology and ethnomusicology, they rarely make an appearance in music theory or composition, especially in a classroom setting. To begin these conversations, we must expand the scope beyond the purely technical and examine the ways in which music is a social and cultural phenomenon. Understanding how a triad functions, for example, is only part of the story. We must also recognize that any musical activity involves a network of people who might be engaged in any combination of producing, performing, buying, selling, listening, analyzing, teaching, institutionalizing, and so on. Discussing these networks means discussing their persistent systemic inequalities and power differentials, and understanding that these are social and not just musical issues. Cultivating this awareness is crucial in the development of our students as critical thinkers who can question the society in which they live, who can locate injustice and fight to advance social good. Abstract music theory is important, but music theory combined with a social awareness is vital.

Georgetown University hosts an annual Let Freedom Ring! initiative, a recurring project to honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King. “Teach The Speech,” in particular, is a cross-campus curriculum project where interested faculty and staff incorporate that year’s selected work by Dr. King in our courses and workshops, sparking campus-wide conversations rooted in themes of social justice. The first time I joined the “Teach the Speech” efforts, I redesigned my basic theory class to include guiding principles from King’s entire body of work. In addition to covering the expected chords, scales, and other technical material, we discussed the disparity in representation faced by women and POC within music, viable modes of protest in music, and the possible roles of government sponsorship and censorship of artists. We rooted these issues in the real-life examples of the Grammy’s, the Women’s March, and the threats by the Trump administration to cut funding to the NEA and the NEH. Final projects based on these bigger-picture topics provided students further opportunity to reflect on the ways in which these and similar topics manifest in their own lives, transcending a preoccupation with “notes on a page.”

“Free at Last” by Flickr user Thomas Hawk, CC BY-NC 2.0

My second time participating in the “Teach the Speech” initiative, I used a recording of Dr. King delivering “I Have Been to The Mountaintop” as part of a module on sampling for my DJing and production class. Students had to create short tracks using this recording as the only permissible sound source. Anything resembling a kick, snare, hi-hat, melody, or harmony had to be constructed from a sample. Using something we don’t typically consider to be music as the sound source for creating music demonstrates the power of the studio and illustrates just how far creative slicing, dicing, and processing can take us. Beyond these important practical applications, though, the use of speech provides us with a framework for discussing why context matters. Do context and history always travel alongside the immediate acoustic phenomenon of sound? Can we identify something as “the music itself”? Through wrestling with these and related questions, students begin to understand sample-based composition as both a musical and a moral undertaking.

The process of sampling is largely a process of curation, involving a responsibility not just for the product but also for the source. If a student chooses to sample a large-enough portion of Dr. King’s speech, so that one can recognize words, phrases, even full sentences, then her choice includes the layers of extra-musical meaning attached to those words in addition to their musical qualities. “Violence,” for example, has a particular sonic profile and meaning that most listeners understand. How we actually interpret this word depends on many factors, including the context in which it is used in the original source, the identity of the speaker, and any audio processing that students might apply. The addition of distortion, for example, will influence the impact of that word on and its reception by the listener. The sampled word might be a fragment of a larger word, “violence” snipped from “nonviolence,” and never appear in its own right in the source. These and other complex issues involved in the process of sampling exist whether or not the student chooses to engage with them.

If the student samples an extremely small fragment of the Dr. King speech, obscuring the source and working with sound on an almost molecular level, then perhaps these questions go away. Can we still discuss the attendant connotations and denotations of indecipherable fractions of words or slices of the ambient hiss between the words? In this situation, is the origin of the sample still relevant for the work being done? When the ties connecting a heavily processed source to the finished product are untraceable, does it matter where we sampled from? Is white noise simply white noise?

“White noise on the Columbia” by Flickr user jaisril, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Arriving at these kinds of questions is largely the point of the exercise. With a little deliberation, students realize that there is a very clear distinction between sampling the word “violence” from a speech by Trump and from a speech by MLK. There is a context, a lineage, and a history to samples that lives outside the phenomenon of pure sound, and this holds true even at the molecular level. This is crucial for students to understand, and its implications extend far beyond a music class.

“Pride (In the Name of Love)” by Flickr user T, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

We can, for example, ask students to consider the related question about whether or not it’s possible to separate art from the artist. Can we ever listen to pre-MAGA Kanye with the same ears? How do we interpret a post-MAGA Kanye song about uplift and resilience? What does it mean to watch a film where Harvey Weinstein had a major role in producing? A minor role? Moral dilemmas form a part of every media interaction we have, and similar questions comprise other aspects of our lives. Can we continue to allow the misappropriation of Dr. King’s “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” without acknowledging the “radical” Dr. King? Can we reconcile a country built on expropriation, slavery, and genocide with one whose propaganda extolls the principles of equality and freedom? These are indeed crucial lines of moral inquiry, and our pretending otherwise enables current systems to remain in place. Sampling King’s speech enables my students to engage with those lines of inquiry from an angle they have not considered before: at the level of sound.

This is work we all must do. Within academia, we need to combat injustice inside the classroom as well as outside to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice. One way we can engage is through careful attention both to the examples we choose and the way we contextualize them. Students and educators alike need to understand the political nature of education that is too often a means of upholding the power structures within society that position whites at the top, and white males at the very top. These largely invisible systems have very real impacts on our lives, and the only way we can evolve to a more just society is by questioning their seeming inevitability. We must foster dialogue that transcends the classroom. We must engage with social problems. We must look beyond the accumulation of knowledge as an end in itself. We must, in short, to do good. This is work we all must do.

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Featured image: “Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial” by Flickr user Cocoabiscuit, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Dave Molk teaches composition and theory at Georgetown University. He’s close friends with producer Olde Dirty Beathoven, a founding member of District New Music Coalition, and a board member of New Works for Percussion Project. Outside of music, Dave is a leader of CCON, an organization devoted to supporting undocumented communities in higher ed in the DMV. Find him online at https://www.molkmusic.com/ and @DaveMolkMusic.

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tape-reelREWIND!…If you liked this post, you may also dig: 

A Listening Mind: Sound Learning in a Literature Classroom–Nicole Furlonge

 

Freedom Back: Sounding Black Feminist History, Courtesy the Artists– Tavia Nyong’o

 

My Music and My Message is Powerful: It Shouldn’t be Florence Price or “Nothing”–Samantha Ege

Janneke Adema

The difficulty of the plains – 6 theses on open access

The following is a lightly edited text of a keynote address by Malte Hagener at NECS Open Media Studies Post-Conference, 30 June 2018, Hilversum, The Netherlands.

When Bertolt Brecht returned to (East) Germany in 1949 he wrote a short poem in which he reflected upon his own situation. The immediate fight against fascism had been won, but the more daunting task still lay ahead: building a new society. Many believed that the road ahead would be clear and easy from here on, but Brecht doubted this. He writes:

When the difficulty
Of the mountains is once behind
That’s when you’ll see
The difficulty of the plains will start

Of course, historical situations are always unique, singular and ultimately uncomparable. Nevertheless, I want to use Brecht’s metaphor of “the difficulties of the plains“ to talk about the stage we currently find ourselves in regarding open access. We have crossed a mountain range full of difficulties, we have mastered many challenges, but also full of amazing adventures and fascinating prospects. A lot has been achieved and while many thought the mountains were the only obstacle we had to overcome, we find ourselves in a plain devoid of perceivable obstacles or dangers, at least at first sight. The challenge has changed because we now rather face the problem of drudgery and orientation—how can we keep going without the large and overpowering challenges. To put it in even more emphatic terms: From a heroic struggle, we have to adapt to the problems of the everyday; it is as if an action blockbuster has given way to a Berlin school reflection on the mundane. The questions to be asked now are: Which direction do we take; How can we keep going when an immediate aim is no longer visible; How can we motivate ourselves and others? I want to illustrate my point in the form of five and a half theses.

1. We ain’t achieved nothing yet!

By now, most large European scientific organisations and funding bodies have, in one way or another, implemented Open Access into their funding policy and operational routines. The EU Commission states on its homepage regarding its flagship programme Horizon 2020: “The global shift towards making research findings available free of charge for readers, so-called ‘Open access’, has been a core strategy in the European Commission to improve knowledge circulation and thus innovation. It is illustrated in particular by the general principle for open access to scientific publications in Horizon 2020 and the pilot for research data.“ This shift in political thinking at the European level has trickled down to national funding agencies, to universities and to many individuals who have embraced the basic principles, including myself. Most disciplines have adopted open access as (at least) one way of publishing; many academics have gathered practical experience and have a basic knowledge of what OA stands for. A study conducted by the university library at the University of Utrecht in 2015/2016 found out that 86.8% of scholars support the general aims of open access, 9.3% were indecisive, and only 3.9% had a negative view of OA. In a way, OA has been thoroughly internalised into the academic system and it seems as if the struggle for open access has been won across the board.

At this point in time, one might be tempted to propose: Can we all go back to our “real“ duties (which are always urgent and pressing): do research, write papers and books, teach seminars and give lectures, counsel students, organise conferences and so on? I believe that this would be a serious misunderstanding, because we have not really achieved anything yet—if we are not careful to follow up with developing our own tools and to taking the power back. This is not some extra-work that we might want to do if we have a bit of extra time. It should, instead, be a central part of any scientific daily routine. Open Access, open data, open science—whichever term you prefer—if understood in its full complexity, is set to restructure the entire scientific process: from the way we develop questions and gather data through publishing and access all the way to the long-term strategies of safeguarding and archiving sources, material and publications. The whole cycle of knowledge production has to be integrated and restructured. Therefore, open access remains a constant task to develop and adapt in relation to the current tools and methods.

Another way to conceptualise the relationship would be to see open access and open science as a supplement in the way proposed by Jacques Derrida—something, allegedly secondary, that serves as an aid to something “original“ or “natural“. When we follow the endless game of references and links, we might want to reach a stable denoted reference, but that is ultimately impossible. It is at this missing origin, at the imaginary point of stability, that the supplement appears. The supplement is an add-on and a substitute, something that completes another thing and something that may replace it and therefore pose a potential threat. In this way, open access is a supplement to the existing scholarly ecosystem of editing, reviewing and publishing—it is meant to replace it, while also adding on to it. It is both an accretion (Hinzufügung) and a substitution. In this way, open access might also be a means to highlight the artificial and arbitrary nature of the publication system, which might have appeared natural and normal to many. And in this way, open access is also something that is never finished, that continues to elope and abscond us, a marker which reminds us of the unfinished business of circulation and knowledge production in the academic world. Everything remains open to revision; final stability can never be achieved.

2. The Empire Strikes Back – …for the benefit of humanity?

One way to put the argument of the supplement into more concrete terms would be to look at the dynamic restructuring of the publication system. If we look around, there is a mixture of the old system which open access was meant to overcome and new players and tools trying to take advantage of the rapidly transforming ecosystem. As it appears at the moment, it is the old players that seem to profit most. Look, for example, at Elsevier, our very own behemoth: Elsevier’s profits has swelled again last year, to €900 million in 2017, a profit margin of 37%—higher than Monsanto or Goldman Sachs. In a recent article, The Guardian put the business model of the publishing giants in provocative terms: “It is as if The New Yorker or The Economist demanded that journalists write and edit each other’s work for free, and asked the government to foot the bill. Outside observers tend to fall into a sort of stunned disbelief when describing this setup.“And this situation is far from over—the quote is from last year—so the old stakeholders are coming back with a vengeance if we are not careful.

In many European countries, new open access funds were introduced in the last five to ten years because the transformation to open access was not meeting the expected goals. These well-intentioned initiatives have led in many cases to what is now known as double dipping: There are still overpriced subscriptions, but there are also OA funds available for those at wealthy institutions to pay for overpriced APCs. When I wrote a review (not even an article) for a Taylor & Francis journal some years ago, they asked me for more than €1000, to make the article available in open access. Obviously, this has nothing to do with the real costs to the publisher, even if a creative bookkeeper can always come up with endless overhead which has to be covered. It is, rather, meant to kill two birds with one stone: If people agree to pay, it wins a handsome profit to the company; at the same time, it also gives the enterprise the opportunity to claim that they support (or at least allow) open access. With approval rates of more than 90% among academics, publishers would be crazy to oppose open access. But they have to fit it into their business model, so most take the path of least resistance.

Apart from the generally problematic nature of APCs, there is another effect of openness that we might have underestimated in the past—that openness is also open to businesses using the data for their own ends. Openness means transparency, and transparency—at least potentially—means control. This can be seen both on a political and an economic level. Let me turn again to Elsevier: The company is no longer calling itself a publishing company but, instead, a “global information analytics business that helps institutions and professionals advance healthcare, open science and improve performance for the benefit of humanity.” And, to make things even more ironic—indeed this is a punchline that you could not make up—the EU is in the process of implementing an Open Science Monitor, a “full-fledged monitoring system“ of open access and transparent research across countries, which is being developed in conjunction with none other than Elsevier. So one of the companies that profits most from the current set-up is gathering data and preparing policy decisions in the very field where many criticise its dominance. Open access has, at least partly, created a system in which the monopolists have been able to reap even more profit than before. And inadvertendly, we might help to shape an ecosystem in which science is being monitored even more closely by monopolists because output will be measurable in ever smaller amounts of data. Those who own and control the tools will be those who decide how to use them and who will profit from them.

Another example of how the old system has adapted to the new challenges and chances is the venture capital–funded platform academia.edu. Here, control of data and profit-seeking has given rise to a platform that masquerades as a scholar-friendly social network. There are more examples to give, but instead of preaching to the choir, let me move on.

3. Get out – of the Filter Bubble

Because “preaching to the choir“ exemplifies one of the key problems: We—as OA advocates—are largely talking to ourselves. There is, by now, a sizable community of people active in the field of open access; we meet at conferences such as this one, but often in designated slots and under specific headings. We are not a small group, but we are also, let’s face it, not the majority. Most colleagues would say they embrace open access (and I gave you the numbers), and I believe they do in principle; but in reality, they do not change their modus operandi. They still follow an opportunistic strategy in publishing and they are far from changing their practice. In fact, this is partly true for myself and—I believe—for many others. Habits are slow to change, and when you are invited to an established journal, it is hard to reject such an offer. It is hard to expect individuals to radically change their behaviour in an existing system, when the immediate effect of such changed behaviour has direct negative consequences.

We have to change the environment in such a way that open access becomes the normal way of doing things. And we have to change the environment in such a way that it is not the big players that are able to profit even more than before. If you go back and read what was written five or ten years ago, it was all about implementing open access and changing people’s minds. But mentalities are slow to change. Since the process was not fast enough for the ambitious aims of the large stakeholders (the European Commission, large funding agencies, governments), money was pumped into the system that went towards those at the crucial junctions. Something similar might happen again and again, if we don’t make ourselves heard.

4. The Paradoxical Self-Evidence of Openness

Openness appears to be a self-explanatory concept. In almost all discussions I hear about open science, open access, open source and so on, it is always assumed that openness is inherently, yes almost ontologically, a good thing. Now, I consider myself an OA-advocate and therefore I am standing here before you as a proponent of such a view. Yet we should, at least for the sake of argument, step back for a moment and reconsider if openness is always already good, no matter what the social, political or cultural circumstances are. First of all, we have to ask ourselves what openness really means. It is a relational term that is dependent on perspective and context. Crucial questions have to be asked here because very seldomly are all aspects open in the same way: What exactly is open to whom under what circumstances? And also: Who can use the openly available materials to what ends? Who has control and power (both in legal and economic terms) to use material published under the sign of open access, open data or open source? Openness and privacy—which is an ideal that most of us, I assume, would not want to give up lightly—are more often than not in conflict with each other because privacy is always balancing out access of others with control of the self.

I have found a welcome and sober antidote to the ideological positioning of openness as inherently good in the work of danah boyd. boyd has repeatedly and forcefully argued that data is never neutral, that opening up data and making it available for third parties always has political implications and possible side effects that might not be apparent at first sight. It is not enough to give people access to data; we need to also make tools available to understand that data, and we need to construct an environment in which the circulation of data can be monitored and registered. One example that boyd gives is the open availability of information on schools, which usually has the directly observable effect of higher ethnic and social segretation—because specific groups might (and will) read this data in a certain way. Certain individuals and collectives have resources available (knowledge or capital to pay someone to use a certain knowledge) that allows them to make use of data in a specific way. boyd even demonstrates how algorithms might inadvertently contribute to inequality, because the way certain elements correlate makes it more likely to include discriminatory elements of another level into the equation. Therefore, data about your family or your place of residence might influence your credit score or the likelihood of getting parole without any conscious discrimination, but rather as ripple effects of algorithms. This kind of algorithmic discrimination will be an important topic of discussion in the next couple of years.

5. Sustainability Means Discrimination

I still occasionally encounter colleagues who believe that something is open access because it can be found on the internet. Often, they have built a project website, some WordPress structure that a student assistant programmed and another one renovated after the first one has left. Some years later, money on that specific project has run out and the research interest has shifted elsewhere; no one is caring for the dilapitated structure anymore, and some browser generations later, the website will be unusable, inaccessible, or simply gone. In the old days of what McLuhan has called the “Gutenberg galaxy”, books were delivered to libraries, where they could still be accessed hundreds of years later—even if no one in the meantime had cared to look at them. The sources and structures of the digital age have a radically reduced half-life period. This puts a much higher pressure on the infrastructure that we need to build and maintain. The speed of production and reproduction, the sheer amount of data being produced today, means that we have to discriminate what we want to keep and what we risk to lose.

I am consciously using the term discrimination here because creating data and making research always means making distinction, drawing a line, identifying something as meaningful (and, by implication, something else as not meaningful). We discriminate, too, if we decide to archive something, to build structures that are meant to keep and safeguard material for a longer period of time. Most of us still grew up in McLuhan’s “Gutenberg galaxy“—it has a five-hundred-year history and we did not need to think too much about how it functioned. We did research and wrote, we handed it in, we got a review and if we were good (or lucky) enough, we got published. There were specific roles in the process: advisors and editors, publishers and reviewers, printers and librarians—a whole system constructed towards quality control (discrimination of the first order) and long-term preservation (discrimination of the second order). Currently, we begin to understand how the shape of a new system might look like or at least what the stakes are: It is an accelerated system in which the temporal cycle of discovery, publication and discussion has been radically shrunk; this might not be visible in the same degree for the humanities and social sciences as for the natural and life sciences, but it is still beginning to be felt. At the same time, we have large private companies which aggressively enter into some parts of this system with the aim of making profit. While profit has always been part of the system, it has now taken on a very different function.

Discrimination is a key concept that is built into the nature of information. Whenever we create data that has a structure that is machine-readable, we make specific kinds of distinctions. This is again danah boyd on data analysis and discrimination: “discrimination as a concept has mathematical and economic roots that are core to data analysis. The practices of data cleaning, clustering data, running statistical correlations, etc., are practices of using information to discern between one set of information and another. They are a form of mathematical discrimination. The big question presented by data practices is: Who gets to choose what is acceptable discrimination? Who gets to choose what values and trade-offs are given priority?” And this is, again, why I believe we have to obtain a certain degree of data literacy, because it is only if we understand the tools we are using that we also understand what forms of discrimination they entail.

6. From Collecting to Curating

If we look at the natural sciences, we can see that the line between what counts as data and what counts as a publication is increasingly blurry. The difference between research data and a journal article is currently a hot topic of discussion, just as research data management as a strategic field has taken the place of OA in the minds of big funding organisations. The large grants and strategic attention that were devoted to open access ten years ago are now geared towards research data management. Of course, this dynamic movement (just like open access fifteen years ago) originates with the STEM crowd, but it will inevitably reach and transform the humanities and social sciences as well. The larger and more established disciplines in our field such as history, art history, philosophy or literary studies, will have the reputation and the power to eventually build their own platforms or participate in larger infrastructures. If media studies wants to be more than an appendix to one of those disciplines, we have to move fast and decisively, because our only reasonable alternative is to be attractive as an innovative pathfinder and as an experimental field. If we do not react at all, the bandwagon will pull ahead without stopping. No one is waiting for media studies to get moving. Therefore, we need to build our own infrastructure,n which is actually much more fun than some of you might believe.

Let me sidetrack a little to tell you what I actually do in a project that has only recently made its public appearance. We have launched in September a repository with funding from the German research association DFG. Because funding is still largely a national concern, we have started in the first phase with mostly German-language sources. But the larger idea for the future is an infrastructure for the sustainable archiving and publication of research within the larger field of film and media studies, regardless of language or origin. We try to be as inclusive as possible, but we also have to make distinctions as to what belongs to media studies and what does not. It is naive to assume that collecting is some natural flow of things and that collections have a systematic logic that is beyond individual decision-making processes. We should be aware of the fact that archival collections, be they analog or digital, are always curated. And in this sense, I consider MediaRep to also be a curated collection—but we want to make the decisions and the process visible to users. I believe that openness in this sense is more than online collections without paywalls, but a transparent way of decision-making.

Conclusion

I hope that I have been able to show you some of the challenges and dangers that I would see as the “difficulties of the plains”. The difficulties of the mountain are a thing of the past ten years: we just had to rally behind the term open access and convince people of its value. This mission has been accomplished, but now we have to do many different tasks at once: We need to understand—and make it understandable to others—that publishing, editing and reviewing is an ethical decision and that our actions have consequences for a larger field. We need to be aware of the ripple effects and collateral damages of specific actions in specific situations—or even the consequences of the lack of actions. Maybe this could be a topic for professional associations such as NECS: to formulate best practice models for publishing.

We need to talk to librarians and funders, to presidents and politicians; we need to make our voice heard beyond our immediate circle of friends and supporters. We need to build alliances in order to be able to formulate and follow long-term goals. We need to construct infrastructure in the way that magazines and libraries, repositories and social networking platforms are infrastructure. We need to run and oversee this crucial infrastructure. We also need to understand that all these practices are not inherently good just because we mean well—therefore, we need to constantly monitor the effects, because in a complex and dynamic system an effect can never be directly determined.