Session 4: Aesthetic Representations

3rd Global Conference

Tuesday 10th November – Thursday 12th November 2009
Salzburg, Austria

Gazing at the Gaze and Back
Zsuzsanna Ardó
University of Sao Paulo, Brazil

This illustrated talk will give a first-hand account of my personal and professional experience over several years as a photographer working with Roma communities – the largest and fastest growing minority in Europe. The talk will explore various aspects of my photography project: how and why it came about in the first place, its stages, the process of selecting where, what and whom to photograph. Minority cultures tend to be closely-knit communities, sometimes seemingly watertight ones. A photographer is, by definition, an intruder at worst, and an outsider at best, and probably not a welcomed one to start with. I will talk about my choices to gain access and work with the people in these communities; the nature of the relationship between my ‘subjects’ and myself, and our respective interpretations of identities of ourselves and the ‘other’; and about some of the ways in which they see and define their own and each other’s identity and membership within the broader identity category, both ‘Roma’ and the wider cultural category they are part of .

Finally, I will look at the postproduction process, the various stages of photo review, selection and editing. As the project narrative goes back over several years, it has had several encounters with the public, both inside and outside Europe: SynergySync Arts and HatGang Productions have curated and produced exhibitions from the work over the years in India, Hungary, US and the UK. The different narratives of how these exhibitions came about present a relevant meta-journey of the journey, the public face of a relatively private process. I will discuss how these images have been received in various contexts and roles, by subjects and non-subjects, with or without Roma identity. The talk will be illustrated with some of my photos, selected from my exhibition featured at the conference.

Defining Cultural Identity: Floral Imagery and Symbolism in the Poetry of Mahmoud Darwish
Naglaa Hassan
Facutly of Arts, Fayoum University, Cairo, Egypt

Mahmoud Darwish (1942-2008), recipient of France’s Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres medal and the Lotus Prize, and author of about 30 poetry collections – is not only Palestine’s most revered poet but also one of the most prominent Arab poets. Darwish, who was almost six when Israel came into being in 1948, has devoted his poetry to the articulation of the dilemmas of his nation and to the resistance of the state of cultural dislocation threatening his country. In fact, throughout his long career, Darwish has been keen on grappling with the idea of cultural effacement and the attempt to define his cultural identity through the use of poetic images and symbols. Of particular notice is his use of floral imagery through which the writer attempts to evince the true cultural identity of Palestine. Images of flowers (jasmine, roses, iris, and oak) fruits and plants (oranges, olives, wheat, thyme) that are dominant in his poetry soar above romantic and quotidian connotations and work out to define the cultural identity of the place. The paper will, therefore, start by tracing the importance of local and natural elements in the definition of culture paying particular attention to the position of the German philosopher Gottfried Von Herder on this issue. Thereafter, it will trace and analyze the manifold floral items that are used either metaphorically or symbolically in Darwish’s poetry in his attempt to define and safeguard the threatened cultural identity of his country. The analysis will move chronologically across Darwish’s prolific opus ranging from his first volume Sparrows without Wings (1960) to the last posthumously published one I don’t Want to Finish This Poem (2009).