Archive for: Cultures of Rhythms and Spectacle

This text briefly summerises the Cuban relationship to the film art and the way it is represented in Hollywood films. Researching political appearance of Cuba on film from 1897 when film crews started to work there until today, including mentioning local Cuban film masterpieces such as “I Am Cuba” and Cuba’s prominent presentation in famous American blockbusters like “Godfather Part II” and 007 films. From Cuban most popular cartoon hero (also a revolutionary) to Oliver Stone’s screenplay for “Scareface” and his interview with Fidel Castro are individual examples of many interesting fascettes of well traced propagandic ways to be seen of film use from both confronted sides of the cold war curtain concerning this hot island. Western uderstanding of Cuba as untaming exotic island out of our time is compared here with the western admiration of Japanese culture in the similar way because of it’s great diversity from the American culture and often historical-political dissagreeaments with the USA. For the coda the imaginary 3-d world of a far, far away planet Pandora from the newest James Cameron blockbuster film “Avatar” is used here to stress the profound meaning of a lone island in the (space) sea that raises it’s head and it’s arms against repressive corporative system. Looking how much guerilla troops that defeat the USA marines have similarity to Che-Guevara and his commerads we can only conclude that po(p)litical obsession with Cuba and it’s imaginary echoes is far away from Hollywood and nowdays even more highly raised on meta physical level of 3-d science fiction.

The article is focused on rock concerts and music events of popular music in general. It was inspired by the need to express thoughts and doubts arising from author’s personal experiences and reading of the available literature. It takes into consideration all the most important aspects of the topic: today’s importance and the role of rock concerts, issue of authenticity in rock performance, problems of audience-performer communication, similarities to the events in theater before and after the emergence of rock music…

The text analyses those events and features that indicate a specific carnevalesque character of the Yugoslav New Wave scene. Methodologically, the work relies on the Bakhtin’s interpretation of carneval literature, holidays and grotesque, and his systematization of its most important characteristics. Bakhtin’s statements were practically applied to some of the phenomena which introduced New Wave, and especially festivals, “Greetings from Zagreb” and “Greetings from Belgrade”. These festivals were promotion of both – some of the basic characteristics of the New Wave movement, as well as of the arts that will be positioned at the top of the movement (rock music and photography), as the most influential arts.

These specific characteristics of carneval art were presented with “Greetings”. The first is the actual reality, in which only current news, tendencies and thoughts of contemporary and popular culture are something worth artistic attention. Second is the fact that the New Wave art rely on its own, althought begginer’s experience, improvisation and free fantasy, and not on historical legacy. The third feature is the use of speaking dialects and jargon (newspaper’s clips, news from the daily press, parody of the serious genres, parodic life and art citations).

New Wave with its strong presence of music and games, becomes close to the visual performances and especially theatrical-presentational forms that belong to urban, street culture. New Wave, though temporary, becomes, like a carneval, form of life itself.

From the syncretic art of prehistory, through the religious and political spectacle of history, to modern alienation, the human individual has not been significantly changed. At the very beginning man was directly involved in magical rites, then he lost this status becoming a passive observer of events, which has led to engaging in virtual reality today, due to the latest fast development of high technology. Through direct participation in live interactive spectacle of classical music concert contemporary man returns to his magical roots. While playing part in the live recreation of music ritual on the stage he becomes an active factor in the creation of art work, creator of his own life.

This text re-questions possible effects of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed within the context of the disciplinary legacy and the contemporary conditions of cultural production. Starting from the assumption that this practice has not been fully de-coded, that is, included into the body of the discipline, but that there are certain points of its (soft) resistance to the mechanisms of total translation immanent to the operative logic of culture of the spectacle, my attempt is to direct the experiences and the thought of the Theatre of the Oppressed towards the establishment of a platform that would enable development of radical strategies of resistance, within the dominant matrix of generating new-media reality. Thus, the critical potential of the Theatre of the Oppressed is, with its simultaneous activity within more then one register, left without a possibility of their synthesis or reduction. Through a constant movement while gazed at, the critical potential is taking shape of a fictional presumption, that is the jump of faith towards im/possible society of the equal.