For the ‘Rotterdam Project’, a large amount of historical data on patrons of Rotterdam’s main theatres during the ‘long’ 19th century (1773–1914)was collected, digitally registered and statistically analysed. The data was gathered from the theatre archives of the city of Rotterdam and included data on such specifics as ticket sales, repertoire and featured performers. The database holds prosopography information on over 16,000 patrons and almost 15,000registered ticket sales to these patrons. This dataset (https:// doi.org/doi:10.21943/auas.7381127) can be used to make comparisons to the datasets of similarly sized cities in other countries during the same period and for broader re- search on 19th-century cultural history. So far, the data has been mainly applied to empirically test the master narrative of theatre historiography on the social composi- tion of theatre audiences. The analyses based on the data show that this narrative must, for the most part, be rejected.
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As the revolutions across the Arab world that came to a head in 2011 devolved into civil war and military coup, representation and history acquired a renewed and contested urgency. The capacities of the internet have enabled sharing and archiving in an unprecedented fashion. Yet, at the same time, these facilities institute a globally dispersed reinforcement and recalibration of power, turning memory and knowledge into commodified and copyrighted goods. In The Arab Archive: Mediated Memories and Digital Flows, activists, artists, filmmakers, producers, and scholars examine which images of struggle have been created, bought, sold, repurposed, denounced, and expunged. As a whole, these cultural productions constitute an archive whose formats are as diverse as digital repositories looked after by activists, found footage art documentaries, Facebook archive pages, art exhibits, doctoral research projects, and ‘controversial’ or ‘violent’ protest videos that are abruptly removed from YouTube at the click of a mouse by sub-contracted employees thousands of kilometers from where they were uploaded. The Arab Archive investigates the local, regional, and international forces that determine what materials, and therefore which pasts, we can access and remember, and, conversely, which pasts get erased and forgotten.
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Many, many comparisons have been drawn in recent years between the current rise of (right-wing) populism and the financial crisis of 2008 that shook and continues to shake Europe to its core, and the tumultuous and horrifying events of the 1930s, which in the end resulted in the Second World War. A number of recent studies which (partially) focus on this decade carry ominous titles like To Hell and Back, The Age of Catastrophe and The Triumph of the Dark. Referred to by some historians as the second Thirty Years’ War, the period from the First World War to the end of the Second still continues to draw much academic and indeed public attention. In many cases, Germany deservedly plays a central role in the analysis, either in the form of the Kaiserreich or the ill-fated Weimar Republic and, of course, Nazi Germany. The five books under review here discuss European history between 1914 and 1950 in general, and that of Germany in particular, in this period. What do these books tell us about Europe’s and Germany’s path in the first half of the twentieth century, and what new insights do they provide? https://doi.org/10.1177/0265691418777981 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martijn-lak-71793013/
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A short article reflecting on working with archives as an artist in a post-colonial setting.
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This first book in the Ebifananyi series that is part of the output of PhD research presents the legacy of Ugandan photographer Deo Kyakulagira (1940-2000) in an effort to diversify the hegemonic image of 'African Photographers' resulting from success stories like those of the late Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keita (both from Mali).
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After the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia, a flourishing cultural scene was established in Croatia’s capital Zagreb. The scene calls itself: independent culture. In this book, Sepp Eckenhaussen explores the history of Zagreb’s independent culture through three questions: How were independent cultures born? To whom do they belong? And what is the independence in independent culture? The result is a genealogy, a personal travel log, a mapping of cores of criticality, a search for futurologies, and a theory of the scene.Once again, it turns out that localist perspectives have become urgent to culture. The untranslatability of the local term ‘independent culture’ makes it hard for the outsider to get a thorough understanding of it. But it also makes the term into a crystal of significance and a catalyst of meaning-making towards a theory of independent culture.
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Ebifananyi II – People Poses Places Andrea Stultiens.People Poses Places is the second part of Ebifananyi, a book series that visualises historical Ugandan photo collections. In People Poses Places we delve into the archive of the photographer Musa Katuramu. In the mid 1930s, teacher and carpenter Musa Katuramu went around his neighbourhood with a simple camera to make portraits of family and friends. His portraits are remarkably intimate and revealing. This is unusual for the time and region where the images were produced. Most camera-owners were outsiders such as missionaries or colonists. Katuramu was an amateur photographer that constructed studios on site. The technology of his camera was limited but he maintained one basic rule that worked; never point your camera towards the sun. Katuramu’s archive was carefully stored by his son Jerry Bagonza. The archive consists of roughly 1500 negatives and 750 prints that have never been shown before. The book is composed of archival images that alternate with contemporary photographs made by Andrea Stultiens and her colleague Rumazi Canon, who grew up in the same region. People Poses Places is the second publication from a series of at least eight books, which present themselves as small intimate publications with an open spine and the local word for photographs printed on it, that literally translates into likenesses.
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‘Staying Alive’ is the title of an exhibition and of the 7th book in the Ebifananyi series and two exhibitions. One of the exhibitions took place at Afriart Gallery, the other one on the balcony of the new six story inpatient building of the Uganda Cancer Institute. Books and exhibitions present photographic documentation from the late 1960s and early 1970s and from more recent pasts, and reflections in words on the photographs and the history of the institute by Marissa Mika and I.The Uganda Cancer Institute was the first major cancer research and treatment facility in the Great Lakes region. It celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. While part of the reputation of the institute was/is that it is a place where people (are sent to) die, the aim is of course to keep them alive and develop knowledge about the disease that caught them.
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This article illustrates the ‘visual turn’ approach to sports history in an analysisof traditionally under-researched material from the late nineteenth century. Focusing on football (‘soccer’) action photography, we argue that interpreting this visual material contributes significantly to the exploration and interpretation of the broader social and cultural context within which sports were practised andthe visual material was produced. Regarding the latter, the photographer’s challenge was to capture the movement inherent in the practice of sports generally and of football specifically. Our analysis explains the time at which these pictures first appear as a consequence of developing possibilities and skills in ongoing photographic experimentation. This is illustrated by a case study of a football action photograph from the archives of the Noorthey Institute for boys in Voorschoten, dating from 1895-1897. There, conducting sports was seen as a way of enhancing the students’ physical and mental strengths, including improved study performance. It took place in an atmosphere of camaraderie among teachers and students, the latter acting as supervisors and teammates at the same time. Beyond the texts, the photographs visualize what this educational approach entailed in actual practice
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Twenty Ugandan artists made their interpretation of the first photograph made of a Buganda monarch. The picture, made in 1875 by Henry Morton Stanley has been (mis)interpreted by engravers. Even though the pictures that are known in Uganda of Kabaka (King) Muteesa are based on Stanley’s photograph, the original was barely known. The Ugandan artists all responded to the formal qualities, or the historical and political realities it relates to. Together they provide a deep reading of the photograph, and give it what I consider to be important and rightful exposure in present day Uganda.Artists participating in the exhibition: Canon Griffin, Daudi Karungi, Eria (Sane) Nsubuga, Eva Ddembe, Fred Kato Mutebi, Fred Ndaula, Henry Mzili Mujunga, Ian Mwesiga, Margaret Nagawa, Martha Namutosi, Matt Kayem, Migisha Boyd (b40deep), Nathan Omiel, Odama Jacob, Papa Shabani, Piloya Irene, Ronex Ahimbisbwe, Odama Jacob, Sanaa Gateja, Timothy Erau, Violet Nantume, Wasswa Donald. My role was that of initiator, curator (with Kazungu Martha, Canon Griffin and Robinah Nansubuga), and artist.
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