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Open Lectures & Events
“Border Aesthetics” international conference 5-7 September 2012, University of Tromsø
Wednesday 5 September. 1715-1830 Aud. E 0101
Prof. Debra A. Castillo, Cornell University
“Rasquache Mockumentary: Alex Rivera’s ‘Why Cybraceros?’”
The lecture studies Rivera’s 12-year-old spoof outsourcing website, with particular attention to
the 4.5 minute 1997 video that served as its original point of departure (he is now best know for his
2008 feature film, Sleep Dealer). Rivera’s work in general involves a practice he calls a “rasquache
aesthetic” of filmmaking. In a recent interview he defines this concept more precisely, commenting
on how Latinos/as channel the creativity that responds to necessity, as people with limited
resources turn to repurposing and recycling for their original work. In the hands of Latino/a
artists associated with rasquachismo, this practice of collage becomes a conscious and
conscientious cultural practice.
Debra A. Castillo is Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, Emerson Hinchliff Professor of Hispanic
Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature at Cornell University. She also directs the Latin
American Studies Program. In her often transdisciplinary research, she specializes in contemporary
narrative of the Americas, gender studies, and post-colonial literary theory. Her most recent book is the
co-edited (with Kavita Panjabi) Cartographies of Affect: Across Borders in South Asia and the Americas.
Thursday 6 September. 1045-1200 Aud. E 0101
Professor Ulrike H. Meinhof, University of Southampton.
“From Border Communities to Networks and
Neighbourhoods: Re-imagining Europe in the 21st
Century”
The lecture introduces geo-political and symbolic dynamics of 21st century Europe through three
conceptual prisms: those of borders or border communities, networks, and neighbourhoods. Each of
these can be seen as both descriptive lenses for capturing specific phenomenan of social
interaction in geographical spaces as well as metaphors for imagining human encounters across
visible or invisible divisions, such as for example nationhood, ethnicity, race, religion or gender.
Examples include a rich, multi-layered spectrum of every-day life narratives as well as examples of
artistic productions.
Ulrike Hanna Meinhof is Professor of German and Cultural Studies at the University of Southampton and
a specialist in discourse analysis. Her main areas of research currently involve ethnographic research on
transnational networks of migrants, especially musicians from African countries, in multicultural
neighbourhoods across European border communities, in provincial regions and in metropolitan spaces
across Europe. She led the EU Border Identities and Changing City Spaces projects; ongoing are
SoFoNe: Searching for Neighbours: dynamics of mental and physical borders in Europe, and TNMundi:
Diaspora as social and cultural practice: A study of transnational networks across Europe and Africa.
please turn page
Thursday 6 September. 1800-1930 Tromsø kunstforening
Artist Dmitry Vilensky, Chto delat? / What is to be done?
“The Border Songspiel - where do we start and how?”
Dmitry Vilensky will discuss the process of research and construction of a new
film focused on the border situation between Norway and Russia. What kind of
artistic means of (re)presentation do we have at hand today to build a forms of
narration which not simply represent a current situation but would be able to
interfere into reality? The video film “Museum Songspiel” will be screened as an
example of certain artistic method developed by the collective “Chto Delat” in
constructing a fictional forms of political narratives.
Chto delat? / What is to be done? was founded with the goal of merging political theory, art,
and activism in early 2003 in Petersburg by a workgroup of artists, critics, philosophers, and
writers from Petersburg, Moscow, and Nizhny Novgorod. They are at present working on a
project concerning the Norwegian-Russian border.
Friday 7 September. 1045-1200 Aud. E 0101
Assoc. Professor Frederik Tygstrup, University of Copenhagen.
“Credit Crunch. Re-negotiating the Border between Fiction and
Reality”
The events that took place in the financial markets in the late 2000s referred to as the “credit
crunch,” and the subsequent uprooting of the Western economies, were related to a new and
radically increasing dislocation of speculation. If the ancient credit system were built upon
territorial and social specificity, it now has become deterritorialized and eventually reterritorialized on the dislocated circuits of banking. This new practice of speculation, I will argue,
is in turn related to an other ancient border, or division, this time of epistemological character:
the border between fiction and reality. Assessing some fictions from the age of the credit crunch,
and reviewing some of the ways fiction is understood in contemporary artistic and cultural
practices, my aim will be to chart a new landscape of social imagination where the border between
fiction and reality is increasingly loosing its authority and its relevance.
Frederik Tygstrup is the director of the Copenhagen Doctoral School in Cultural Studies and Associate
Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Copenhagen. His primary specialization is in the
history and theory of the European novel and his present research interests focus on the intersections of
artistic practices and other social practices, including urban aesthetics, the history of representations and
experiences of space, literature and medicine, literature and geography, literature and politics.
Friday 7 September. 1300-1430 Aud. E 0101
Cultural Production Panel Debate
We have invited four actors in the Barents Region aesthetic
borderscape to present their work and share with us their thoughts
on cultural production in Northern borderlands and on the border
as a focus for cultural work, in the light of the themes of the
conference.
Knut Erik Jensen (filmmaker), Liv Lundberg (poet and professor of
creative writing, Tromsø), Liv-Hanne Haugen (dance artist) and Luba
Kuzovnikova (artistic director, Pikene på broen, Kirkenes).
The Border Aesthetics lectures & Events are part of the final conference (http://uit.no/bac2012) of the Border
Aesthetics research project under the Research Council of Norway KULVER programme, arranged by the Border
Poetics / Border Culture research group (http://uit.no/borderpoetics) at Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and
education