Paper short abstract:

The Reef Islands Ethnographic Film Series in the Solomon Islands started in the early 1990s, with little focus on music, which was mainly used for ritual and church purposes. In 2005 it seemed a complete new music form had arrived or was that really what our film witnessed?

Paper long abstract:

The first main shoot for the Reef Islands Ethnographic Film Series in the Solomon Islands, in 1996, was seriously affected by the unexpected death of one of the main characters and partners in the project, Alfred Melotu, the paramount chief of the Aiwoo-speaking people on the island of Ngasinue. His death and funeral resulted in the first film we produced from the series, Alfred Melotu - the funeral of a paramount chief (2002), and footage from this plays an important role in the installation film, Passage (2014), which forms a crucial element of the ethnographic exhibition, The Life of the Dead, at Moesgaard Museum (MOMU). In 2005 I revisited the Reef Islands and Mola'a, a small settlement on the northern tip of Ngasinue, where Alfred had settled with his extended family only a few years prior to his death. It was mainly a courtesy visit to his descendants, especially Agnes, his widow, and sons, daughters and grandchildren. The main surprise, however, was the apparent emergence of a completely new music form and practice, or was that what it was?

Paper short abstract:

This paper has been written together with informant Alistair Fraser and explores how he relates to and connects with the natural world.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we look at the practice of musical improvisation within the contemporary taonga pūoro musical paradigm (Māori musical instruments). When taonga pūoro practitioners improvise in the natural landscape they can be seen as wayfarers navigating the contours of the acoustic landscape(s). As these practitioners come into dialogue with the entities of the natural environment, they are able to transform these relational experiences into sound phenomena, which in turn (re)create places that are meaningful to the practitioner and the audience(s), human or otherwise. By coming into dialogue with renowned taonga pūoro practitioner Alistair Fraser and how he relates to and connects with the natural world through sound, this methodological paper challenges the way we explore, expand and extend our appreciation of acoustic Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Paper short abstract:

Aboriginal arts globally well known is the main topic of this paper. I will focus on the two exhibitions held in Japan; in 1960s and in 2016. By comparing the two and also its acceptance, I will argue how the difference was performed by the agencies in the different 'states'.

Paper long abstract:

The 'Arts' of Australian Aboriginal people is produced by many artists and accepted widely both in Australia and in abroad. Aboriginal arts have become a big industry and are very popular, one of the most famous aspects of Australia.

In Japan, there have been a several exhibitions of Aboriginal arts held since 1960s, and many of them are considerably well accepted, including very successful exhibition of Emily Kama Kungwarreye in 2008. In this paper, I will focus on two particular exhibitions held in Japan, one in 1960s and the other in 2016. The former was on Bark paintings and the latter was on Acrylic Paintings on Canvas. By comparing these two exhibitions, I will focus on the changes of Japanese acceptance from 'primitive art' to 'high art'. In the former exhibition, they were introduced as very important primitive art which is nearly dying out. But in the latter, they were introduced as 'art'. I will argue how Aboriginal arts have changed its acceptance through 'transit' of the time and how it was performed by what kind of social background and agencies. Also, I would like to focus on the difference of the acceptance which happened by the geographical 'transit' from Australia to Japan first. I will analyze the social and historical background of the difference and changes, and try to argue about the social formation of the agencies that have a crucial part in performing those changes.

Paper short abstract:

We explore the ways that the practice of 'dance therapy' is described and prescribed in State and Federal government health policies, programs and other initiatives and in practitioner literature within Australia.

Paper long abstract:

Discussions on the nature and definition of 'art' often focus on culturally- produced dichotomies such as art/craft or high/low culture. In this presentation, however, we focus on an alternative conception of art as therapy, exploring how art practices can be defined or contested as artistic and therapeutic. Despite longstanding anthropological interest in the role of art forms in healing rituals Western biomedical conceptions of art- as- therapy are only beginning to be explored by anthropologists such as Hanna (1990) and Hogan and Pink (2010). The definition of activities as therapeutic can have real-world implications on the recognition and funding of particular programs and professionals and are these implications are in turn inscribed on the bodies of participants.

In particular we explore the ways that the practice of 'dance therapy' is described and prescribed in State and Federal government health policies, programs and other initiatives and in practitioner literature within Australia. Our policy and discourse analysis will examine questions such as: who are the actors who define 'dance therapy'? What are the definitions of the practice? What activities are included and excluded? We also draw auto-ethnographically on the practitioner experiences of Alice Langsford, a participant and instructor in dance-based activities for people living with disability.

This paper provides the framing for a larger proposed ethnographic research project exploring concepts of dance, body, health and transformation in the experiences of South Australians in dance therapies and occupational dance practices.

Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic research conducted in the Adelaide and Melbourne Hip Hop scenes from 2006-2007. It examines how, when and why Hip Hoppers made distinctions between 'underground' and 'mainstream' Hip Hop and Hip Hop and other music genres like 'Pop'.

Paper long abstract:

'Someone that makes Hip Hop to make money…I just call that pop music, I don't class it as Hip Hop anymore' (Simon, 22 year-old Male Hip Hop Promoter, Adelaide).

This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Melbourne and Adelaide from 2006-2007 to explore how Hip Hop fans and artists (primarily MCs, DJs and producers) defined and employed categories like 'underground' 'grass roots' 'popular' and 'mainstream'. I demonstrate that these concepts were frequently understood as binary-oppositions with 'underground' and 'grass roots' being contrasted with 'popular' and 'mainstream'. As the quote from Simon suggests, these oppositions were value judgements that Hip Hoppers used to support claims to authenticity and to draw boundary lines. I argue that contestations about what was or was not 'authentic' were heightened at the time of my study, a period when Australian Hip Hop music was steadily growing in popularity and several Hip Hop artists were reaching new levels of commercial success and acclaim. These changes were understood by my participants as a potential threat that needed to be mitigated. In particular, the possibility of economic gain ('making Hip Hop to make money') was viewed as a corrupting force that could dilute the artistic, political and cultural value of Hip Hop or 'dumb it down'. In this paper I examine my participants struggles to produce and/or consume Hip Hop that fit within their conceptualisation of 'underground' (authentic) Hip Hop and to avoid the perceived perils of 'mainstream' success or becoming 'pop' (inauthentic).

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the genealogies of listening of ten Australian hip hop MC, demonstrating how key aesthetic practices are engaged with. The paper examines how artists' engagement with art objects demonstrates the manner in which popular culture forms an important basis for one's own identity.

Paper long abstract:

For hip hop artists in Australia, recorded hip hop music provides an important blueprint for the music they make. This aesthetic blueprint is referred to by these artists, something which can be observed by examining the patterns of references that these artists make their own works. As Dimitriadis (2009, p.xvi) suggests, members of the hip hop community (both fans and artists) use their knowledge of hip hop culture as a way to work out their own hip hop identities; this is achieved through a "complex positioning and re-positioning around texts". My research argues that through a sustained engagement and re-positioning of particular hip hop works, MCs are able to construct a unique artistic identity that draws on key hip hop aesthetic practices that they have learned about through their listening practices. This type of engagement with other hip hop texts forms what can be considered a 'genealogy of listening', a term used by Feld (2012) to describe a process of mutual engagement that is only possible through a shared listening experience.

Drawing on ethnographic research with Australian hip hop MCs and song analysis of these particular artists, this paper demonstrates how Australian hip hop artists construct an artistic identity through an engagement with what they perceive to be a key hip hop aesthetic practice. The paper encourages a more fluid understanding of an artists' engagement with art objects, in this context, music, to demonstrate the manner in which popular culture forms an important basis for one's own identity.

Paper short abstract:

Hip hop provides a pathway and analytical tool for anthropologists to explore identity politics and advocacy particularly in the context of youth, cultural diversity and migration studies

Paper long abstract:

More than 40 years after its inception, hip hop culture continues to be important in young people's lives regardless of their cultural background or geographic location. It thereby provides a pathway and analytical tool for anthropologists to explore identity politics and advocacy particularly in the context of youth, cultural diversity and migration studies. This paper discusses how anthropologists can use hip hop to explore expressions of self and social identities. It shows how migrant young people in Australia use hip hop as a contact space in which identities are negotiated through self-identification and performances of belonging.

Australia is a multicultural country marked by diverse demographics and behavioural expectations. Depending on a number of factors such as their migration journey, age at arrival and time of residency, people tend to have different experiences and expectations in relation to their settlement in Australia. Some people quickly adapt to 'the Australian way' while others hold on to their cultural background and according behavioural expectations. This can cause fractions between family members and members of the community. Hip hop provides young people caught in-between different behavioural expectations with opportunities to negotiate and express themselves and their experiences if belonging.

Drawing on long-term ethnographic research conducted with Tongan young people and the literature, hip hop will be discussed as an important in-between space that allows young people to negotiate their identities. Consequently, it is argued that hip hop culture continues to be an important analytical tool for anthropologists.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic encounters with hip hop dancers I examine ways in which hip hops borders and boundaries are policed by its practitioners. My argument is that practitioners invoke particular notions of authenticity in order to appeal to their peer's sense of legitimacy and originalism.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic encounters with hip hop dancers I examine the varied ways in which hip hops borders and boundaries are policed by its practitioners. As a complex, dynamic and diverse social field, hip hop is governed, not by any one institution or office, but by its practitioners - people who across the world are engaged in its various practices within their own local context. I argue that by invoking particular notions of authenticity, hip hop dancers are able to police its borders by appealing to their peer's sense of legitimacy and originalism. This presentation shares the voices of Krumpers in Perth, Rockers in New York and Bboys in Osaka to illustrate how individuals, across different places, are able to re-imagine notions of authenticity and determine for themselves what is, and what is not, a part of hip hop culture. This paper reflects on these notions and considers how anthropology can be useful in tracing the way this shifts and moves on the ground.

Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic research, this paper seeks to understand the complex relationships between popular images, cultural definitions and everyday life through exploring how goths draw on, reject and fight against certain images in their practices, in how they define goth and police its boundaries.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic research with goths to consider the complex and negotiated nature of meaning in contemporary life by examining how people draw from and contest the popular imagination. The paper examines how goths contextually fight and embrace popular images of goth, especially when seeking to define and defend its boundaries and relative distinctiveness. Here the popular imagination is understood to incorporate a range of 'popular' images of a particular cultural group constructed and reproduced through media and social interactions (e.g. word-of-mouth communication). The popular imagination is often central in shaping general understandings of the culture through tropes and stereotypes that have gained popularity over time through these various discourses and representations. As such, it can influence people's behaviour towards those they perceive as belonging to this culture, irrespective of the individual or group's actual affiliation.

Several strands of goth's popular image frame it and its participants in a negative way, demonising and/or trivialising it in the popular imagination. In light of this, this paper considers how goths selectively disassociate themselves from popular images that they interpret as 'harmful', seeking to protect the culture's integrity and the sense of difference that they perceive as fundamental to its existence. At the same time, the paper considers how goths selectively draw on the popular imagination to define and practice goth. The paper thus uses the negotiations of goths to gain insight into the complex ways that meaning and culture are constructed and negotiated in everyday life.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how electronic music producers in Adelaide create works designed to reject comfortable categorisation. If this process reflects an interrelation of influences, infrastructures and intense individualism, then what is at the centre of the action in the suggested posthuman present?

Paper long abstract:

This paper is an anthropological report into the state of the art in contemporary music production. It differs from other studies into electronic music in that it is concerned with a wide variety of experience and aesthetics. Drawing upon a 12-month-long ethnography into electronic music practice in Adelaide, this paper has two aims. First, it shows how music practice continues in the context of state legislation, media dictates and corporate codes. The irrepressible creative drive forges ahead in its inexorable path of expression, aesthetic performance reflecting an attitude where personal ethics and experimentation drive and shape highly individualistic musical expression. Secondly it presents three case studies that illustrate how the accessibility of artistic freedoms of choice, afforded by digital technology, can synthesise personal development with virtual possibilities. With social media a live feed of what is happening culturally throughout the world, my participants input from a spectrum of influences, transforming them through accessible software platforms into original musical forms. Categories of identification and classification, both artistic and personal, are replaced by complex systems of interaction and relationality. This paper also has a theoretical function, to test the claims of posthumanist writers, who champion a move away from the rigid definitions of human, nature and machine, into an altogether new assemblage where such boundaries become open to question. This paper asks how anthropology can identify the infrastructures and processes that are defining the current state of the art. Can electronic music practice be an indicator of what we may be becoming?