Paper short abstract:

The use of new technologies, the “religious industry” and migration are leading to the expansion of Afro-American cults across the globe. How does this nomadism modify the meaning, appearance and function of the material cultural elements associated with Afro-American rituals?

Paper long abstract:

Afro-American cults are becoming increasingly global, mainly due to immigration, the influence of a strong religious industry and the massive presence of these religions on the Internet. This nomadism alters the practice, meaning and function of the rituals —both religious and artistic— and especially modifies the material cultural elements associated with them.

Given this, and based on ethnographic data gathered in Spain on the practice of Afro-American cults in diaspora, this paper has two main objectives: on the one hand, it aims to show how material culture —and especially that associated with religious and artistic practice— is not only a "reflection" of social change, but also a strategy for dealing with this change and modifying the present. In our case, this implies that the objects become a tool for dealing with the transculturalism which characterizes diasporic processes. On the other hand, this paper upholds that the alterations which Afro-American cults are experiencing as a result of their nomadism should not be interpreted as a "loss" of authenticity, but rather as another example of their dynamic, hybrid and unifying nature.

Visual anthropology is a discipline which is particularly appropriate for analyzing the nomadism of objects in Afro-American cults, since it enables us, through edited images, to relate the experiences and objects filmed in different contexts, thus undertaking comparative and multi-situated anthropology.

Paper short abstract:

What are the epistemological and ethical results of using ethnographic film-making methodologies to understand Diasporic objects? This paper will focus on the complex meanings the kora assumes when it is contextualised as Diasporic and how film-making can contribute to understand this complexity.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation will address the different meanings and uses the kora, an African harp, assumes when it is contextualised as Diasporic and how these meanings can be understood with ethnographic film-making methodologies. I will draw from material collated during two years of intermittent fieldwork in Benelux amongst West African musicians, amongst whom the kora features prominently, and address how film-making can inform understanding the inconsistent and complex signifiers of the kora when in a Diasporic context.

Ethnographic film-making methodologies begin with objects and the relationships they facilitate, rather than with the discourse and semantic associations. They articulate how objects facilitate practise, generate social relationships, and constitute space. A result of this approach is to move away from the insularisation, racialisation, and authenticity politics of objects. Another result, is to take objects seriously and prioritise how they serve to constitute social relations rather than represent them.

Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the redefinition of local cultural heritage with African diasporic communities, through their ‘diasporic imagination’ and in relation to their traditional objects displayed in UK museums. It focuses on Yorùbá diasporic communities based in Manchester and explores the ways this diasporic group redefines its diasporic identity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks at the redefinition of local cultural heritage with African diasporic communities, through their 'diasporic imagination' and in relation to their traditional objects included in colonial collections, displayed in British museums. Within this context, the term 'diasporic imagination' will be used to indicate the reinterpretation of the past on the basis of present, experienced memories of displacement (Ang, 2011).

As Jeanette Joy Fisher points out: 'as human beings, we all have a desire to feel as if we belong to a social and cultural community. We long for a feeling of attachment, of being rooted in a particular place, and of feeling as if we have ownership of something significant in our lives' (http://environmentpsychology.com/place_identity.htm). However, diasporic groups, including the African/Yorùbá ones, lack this attachment and ownership to a particular place. Museums can certainly support diasporic groups in overcoming this estrangement, by assisting them to create a sense of place and negotiate their identities. Nevertheless, in order to do so, it is essential that museums construct narratives of redefinition and reinvention that claim the present, through the past.

The paper will focus on the local Yorùbá diasporic communities (first and second generation) based in Manchester and it will explore the ways this diasporic group redefines its African/Yorùbá diasporic identity and mediates it with its new, British identity, by relating and interpreting their traditional objects displayed in museums in the North-West England.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ways in which landscape and diaspora are depicted in the works of those Cornish based artists which feature in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art, founded by Paul Mellon in 1966.

Paper long abstract:

In the opening lines of 'Touring Cultures' (1997), Rojek & Urry state that migration is not only a people phenomenon - it applies to cultures and objects as well. This paper, based on a short residency at the Yale Centre for British Art (January to March 2012) addresses the world of moving artworks. By exploring how landscape and diaspora co-exist in the works of Cornish based artists in the YCBA collection, it draws together many features regarding colonial, British and European modernism. An early inventory of this collection revealed it possessed sixty-six works from eight iconic St Ives School artists. After further archive excavation, we see that this estimate only skims the surface.

One objective is to highlight some of the key landscape depictions that have migrated away from their vernacular, creative settings. I shall do so by examining a selection of pieces in terms of their biographical trajectories and abstract spatial representations. Conceptually, the idea is thus to consider how these artworks act as diasporic objects of identity for this peripheral rural region that has been a well-known land of labour emigration and exile. Increasingly the case within the rubric of global markets, artworks often factor as exchange commodities. And yet, less attention has been given to the ways in which various forms of cultural identity also move when such harbingers of taste are relocated. Such theoretical undercurrents guide the interpretation of this case study of Cornish artworks in a university owned, philanthropic research collection.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will examine the nature of digital images in contemporary architectural practice, as crafted, mobile and affective objects, which acquire altered meanings as they circulate among, and are received by, the various actors in a transnational network of globalised architectural production.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will examine the nature of digital images in contemporary architectural practice, as crafted, mobile objects (Latour 1990, Pinney 1997, Gell 1992), which acquire altered meanings as they circulate among, and are received by, the various actors in a transnational network of globalised architectural production.

Drawing on ethnographic research in eight offices in the UK, we will describe how digital images are 'crafted' through the assembled technical and artistic expertise of architects and visualisers, within an overarching process of sharing and negotiation between designers, consultants and client on a large-scale urban redevelopment project in the centre of Doha, Qatar. We will show how these images move around a global network of localised sites during this process, as visual artefacts in both electronic form and different physical formats, according to the context in which they are viewed; and how they acquire as much tangible and emotive substance as objects with social agency in their own right as the future buildings they evoke and represent.

We will explore the altered and new meanings with which they are inscribed during their circulation and reception from place to place, in different contexts of social practice, and how these images in turn mobilise affect that has significant agency in the production of new architectural and social environments, and contribute to the complex negotiation of cultural difference between 'producers' and 'receivers' in processes of postcolonial urbanism in the Arab world and other global contexts (Sheller 2009, Elsheshtawy 2008, 2010; Ren 2011).