Talk by Amy Abdou | SEMINAR RHYTHMANALYSIS IN CONTEXT, Open Set 2018-2019
The talk 'GHETTO ROMANTICISM' was part of the Seminar Session 'TRACES OF RHYTHMS: HERITAGE, DATA AND FICTION' on 8 December 2018, which examined the following: the agency of rhythmical narratives and how they affect social dynamics and knowledge production; artistic and research practices of developing narratives; and filters in urban and historical narratives, which amplify some rhythms and withdraw or overwrite others.
Talk GHETTO ROMANTICISM: ESSENTIALIST NOTIONS OF BLACK CULTURE AND THE NEOLIBERAL WELFARE STATE
By Amy Abdou (Sr. Lecturer Leadership and Entrepreneurial Behaviour, Intercultural Management and Transformative Business at Wittenborg University in Amsterdam, Open Set participant)
Hip hop is a constant rhythm in the urban environment and a stereotypical indicator of urban life. It pours out of store fronts, cafes, mobile phones, apartments and cars. It's also a global cultural phenomenon that is linked to black identity politics and resistance (Gilroy, 1993). Hip hop allows individuals the capacity to perform their identities and influence others, expressing style and belonging in repetition and creating a variety of recognizable rhythms on the street. In this regard, hip hop is a phatic and poetic symbol of urban cool and authentic black culture. Because these rhythms are evident in the cultural practices and behaviors associated with a particular type of urban experience, they can be extracted and commoditized as signifiers of an ethnic enclave. In this paper, I combine Debord’s insights on the ethnic spectacle with the Frankfurt school’s critique of the cultural industry to describe the means through which hip hop is co-opted into neoliberal social and political agendas. Using Amsterdam’s Bijlmer as a case study, I will discuss the commodification of hip hop and black culture in the renewal of the city landscape in order to illustrate the ways in which institutions profit from essentialist notions of racial classification in the culture industry.
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SEMINAR RHYTHMANALYSIS IN CONTEXT
http://openset.nl/seminars.php
The Seminar offers both theoretical and practical context to the theme of ‘rhythm’, as part of the seven-month programme in design, art and humanities Fluid Rhythms, which consists of a Summer School and LAB as well. The Seminar aims to address the key concept of ‘rhythm’ in the fields of arts, urban planning, performance, and humanities and will be hosted in collaboration with the scientific consortium Designing Rhythm for Social Resilience. Together we investigate rhythm-led practices as common ground for research and artistic practice. The seminar is open to practicing artists and designers, as well as researchers from different disciplines, interested members of the local community, activists, educators, curators and social servants, who are curious to discover the relevance of rhythms for their practice.
The programme is made possible by the support of the City of Amsterdam Zuidoost, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Het Pauwhof Fonds, CBK Zuidoost, and has been organized in collaboration with the research group Designing Rhythm for Social Resilience (2018–2022).