Welcome to SEATRiP!

Viral Ports, Virtual Currents:
Interconnections between Media, the Arts and Everyday in Southeast Asia and its Diaspora
A 2011-2012 Andrew W. Mellon Interdisciplinary Workshop in the Humanities

Viral Ports Spring 2011
For a Discussion of Professor Christina Schwenkel's Book
Quagmire: Nation-Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta

In the twentieth century, the Mekong Delta has emerged as one of Vietnam's most important economic regions. Its swamps, marshes, creeks, and canals have played a major role in Vietnam's turbulent past, from the struggles of colonialism to the Cold War and the present day. Quagmire considers these struggles, their antecedents, and their legacies through the lens of environmental history.

By exploring the delta as a quagmire in both natural and political terms, Biggs shows how engineered transformations of the Mekong Delta landscape--channelized rivers, a complex canal system, hydropower development, deforestation--have interacted with equally complex transformations in the geopolitics of the region. Quagmire delves beyond common stereotypes to present an intricate, rich history that shows how closely political and ecological issues are intertwined in the human interactions with the water environment in the Mekong Delta.

http://www.amazon.com/Quagmire-Nation-Building-Nature-Weyerhaeuser-Environmental/dp/0295990678
Join us for a screening of Gran Torino and a Workshop
1/20 | SCREENING, 5:30PM - 7:30PM, INTN 1128
1/21 | WORKSHOP, 12:00PM - 2:00PM, INTS 1113

After Performing Gran Torino
Lead Actor Bee Vang on Race, Acting and Asian American Masculinities Workshop with Hmong Media Expert, Louisa Schein, Phd

In this workshop, Vang and Schein engage participants in analyzing portrayals of Hmong -- and immigrants in general -- in a mainstream film with a racist white man as protagonist. Vang shares on-set production experiences and the acting challenges of such a highly racialized scenario. Film clips, including Vang?s own Youtube spoof, and active discussion focus in on issues of masculinity, violence and sexuality. Throughout, Vang and Schein consider strategies for social change in and beyond the media industry.
“Repatriation and Rediscovery of Local Narratives through the Music Recordings and Films of Bali, 1928–1930s”

Dr. Edward Herbst, Arbiter Records

Friday, February 25th
12:00-2:00 p.m.
ARTS 335, free and open to the public

In 1928 the German companies Odeon and Beka made the only recordings in Bali published prior to World War II. This diverse collection of avant-garde and older instrumental and vocal styles appeared on 78 r.p.m. discs but quickly went out of print. My acquisition of 108 of these recordings from diverse archives including UCLA and Indonesia’s Museum Nasional comes at a time when the last artists of that generation are available as links to the creative and cultural currents of the 1920s. Additional finds include film documentation of 1930s Bali by Colin McPhee, Miguel Covarrubias and Rolf de Maré with Claire Holt. My presentation will detail challenges of accessing archives; aesthetic and ethical approaches to dissemination through emerging media; and strategies for grass-roots repatriation via publication of a series of five CDs. A crucial element involves dialogue with elderly and younger artists, composers, village performers, indigenous theorists and scholars. One sociopolitical issue arising from this unprecedented perspective is that aural evidence undermines some cultural hegemonies by demonstrating diverse regional innovations in music and dance, helped and hindered by two instincts affecting inter-village and inter-institutional cultural politics: ‘masilur’ sharing, cooperation and ‘jengah’ competition. Collaborative ethnographic methods have led to re-interpretation of cultural history and creative process. One such topic is the influence of Lombok’s (Muslim) Sasak traditions on Balinese vocal music. Another involves how one song recorded in 1928 relates to the unearthing of a tragic royal romance—expunged from historical accounts—presaging the fall of the kingdom of Klungkung in 1908.

BIO
Edward Herbst’s most recent publication is the multimedia CD, Bali 1928: Gamelan Gong Kebyar of Belaluan, Pangkung and Busungbiu. His article and archival film excerpts can be accessed at www.arbiterrecords.com . His book, Voices in Bali: Energies and Perceptions in Vocal Music and Dance Theater was published by Wesleyan University Press in 1998. The current research on Bali 1928 has received ongoing support from The Ford Foundation and Asian Cultural Council. Herbst made his first visit to Bali in 1972 while working toward a B.A. at Bennington College, spending one year studying gendér wayang in Teges, gong–smithing practices and acoustics in Tihingan, Klungkung, and the inter–relationship between gamelanand dance-theater. He studied with the late I Nyoman Kakul, master of gambuh, baris, and topéng, while living with his family in Batuan. In 1980–81, Herbst spent fifteen months on a Fulbright-Hays focusing on vocal music performance, gamelan and dance–theater. He was commissioned by Sardono Kusumo’s experimental Indonesian dance theater company to collaborate as composer and solo vocalist on Maha Buta in Switzerland and Mexico as well as Sardono’s film, The Sorceress of Dirah, in Indonesia. After receiving a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University he returned to Bali for four months in 1992 (funded by the Asian Cultural Council) to complete research for Voices in Bali.