Workshop 3 (Room 121)
Title: AH802 “Topics in Visual Cultures”
Abstract: Research presentations from AH802 “Topics in Visual Cultures”
Jason Q Han, English
“Abolition and the Transindividual: An Encounter”
Hitherto, the theoretical inquiry centered on the concept of the transindividual and the field of study around contemporary abolitionism have not been thought together. I propose that an encounter between the two might produce novel results. By reconsidering the state of individual/collective dyads as an analytical problem, contemporary abolitionism might be able to think “fatal couplings of power and difference” more fully. Conversely, abolitionist knowledges of racialization can provide a lens for theories of the transindividual to think the social in a more capacious manner.
Jason Q Han is a 2nd-year student in the Lit. And Cultural Studies program at UW Madison. He is interested in the concept of solitude both as it is theorized in the 20th century and how it signifies in contemporary literatures concerned with the digital.
Kean O’Brien, Gender and Women’s Studies
Title: “Trans Crip Nihilism: Art Theorizing Abolition”
Let’s begin with the understanding of queerness negatively, as escape, refusal, and failure of gender. I pursue a feral queerness that bucks against all the apparatuses of constraint and subjection. A feral queer appears as out of time, irrational, inappropriate, and always will. This is where I extend these theories to trans-crip bodies; trans-crip bodies are inherently feral. Trans crip bodies will never be given safety from precariousness, with this fantasy idea of the nation-state supporting us when death stage capitalism, in its most accurate definition in form, wants disabled bodies gone. My research question is what is trans crip nihilism and abolition as a framework offering us as a theoretical lens for analyzing art?
Kean O’Brien received an MA in Education and Leadership in 2022, an MFA from CalArts in 2011, and a BFA from SAIC in 2008. O’Brien is in their second year of the Ph.D. Program here at UW-Madison. O’Brien is a disabled and chronically ill multidisciplinary artist, educator, and writer living in Madison. His work is both personal and pedagogical, exploring the intersections of gender, whiteness, and embodied trauma. Recent writing publications include: The Desire for Ugliness: Queers, Rebels, and Freaks (part of Vol. 5 Playing Shakespeare’s Characters, published by Peter Lang Press). Home: The Trans Body (FWD: Museum, published by UIC Museum Studies Department and Sister Spit, 2020), Boyle Heights and The Fight Against Gentrification As State Violence (The American Quarterly Journal, published by John Hopkins Press, 2019), and others.
Addison McDaniel, English
Title: “Wake Poetics and Abolitionist Centos: Sitting in the Room With Words”
This presentation explores the cento as an abolitionist poetic form. Thinking with Christina Sharpe’s idea of “wake work,” Marquis Bey’s insistence on poetry as the place where black trans feminism happens, and Hil Malatino’s formulation of the trans interregnum, I argue that the cento as a poetic form is inherently abolitionist. Through close readings of two centos by Cameron Awkward-Rich and Franny Choi, this presentation sits in the room with the words of these poems and imagines what is made possible by making community with words.
Addison McDaniel is a PhD Student in English, Literary Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their research focuses on intersections of trans theory and queer theory through intimate attentiveness to contemporary poetry and short stories. In particular, they are interested in how representations of time and temporality bump up against the limitations of these shorter literary forms, and how trans and queer poets and authors navigate this tension. In their free time, Addison enjoys listening to music, playing video games, and adoring their four cats.
Q&A
Abubakar Muhammad, African Cultural Studies
Title: “The indestructible”
Soccer is the world’s most popular game. However, for some children around the world getting the ball to play with is a challenge. They take to the street, employing creativity and resilience to make their own ball using cheap and discarded objects. I explore the dimensions of material culture and creativity in how African children repurpose discarded objects to make their own ball. I argue that the rag ball is a cultural artifact. The rag ball is “indestructible,” embodying resilience, resourcefulness and social significance. The process of creatively crafting the rag ball from the local environment restores voice and agency to African children.
Abubakar’s research interests span youth and street culture, digital culture, mobility and spatiality. His works focuses on soccer, analyzing the dynamics and social drama that emerged from the game’s unique socio-spatial relations. He explores the intricate and often (in)harmonious connections between soccer, education, and social mobility, among African youth, particularly in the context of global culture.
Elijah Nicks
Title: Exploring Youthful Views of Liberation: A Photographic and Theoretical Investigation of Black Youth Spaces in Milwaukee
This project examines how Black youth in Milwaukee experience and envision liberatory spaces, comparing the aesthetics of places they frequent with the spaces they imagine as sites of freedom. Using photography, participatory mapping, and interviews, it critiques the anti-Blackness embedded in school environments through the lens of fugitivity. By highlighting the contrast between schools and youth-identified liberatory spaces, this study informs policymakers and community stakeholders about the necessity of affinity spaces in preventing the criminalization of Black youth. The project culminates in a visual and theoretical analysis that reimagines school and urban spaces as sites of joy, resistance, and self-determined belonging.
Elijah Nicks is a second-year Ph.D. student in Education Leadership and Policy Analysis. His research focuses on Black liberation in schools, exploring how fugitive spaces serve as pathways to collective liberation.
Ian Danner, Design Studies
Title: “Radical Puppets, Material Knowledge, and Serious Humor”
Materials hold knowledge that can be evoked through the tactile processing, transforming, and creating of art objects. I am interested in how these crafted objects, and the materials they are made from, have been used in performance to oppose injustice. In this talk, I will explore the history of Czech puppetry, the impact of “Bread and Puppet Theater”, and my art practice, as they relate to community resilience, socio-political interventions, material knowledge, and the seriousness of humor.
Ian Danner (MS, BFA) is an artist, researcher, and teacher who focuses on craft pedagogy and its entanglement with emergent and speculative queer becomings. Danner is a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) candidate in Design Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who is interested in combining various craft materials and processes to understand (non)binary assemblage and performance. Danner’s earlier artworks questioned interiors by creating objects to adorn domestic spaces with a queer sensibility. Danner continues to explore materiality in fibers, clay, and wood, including how these materials can inform identity-building and promote community engagement. Danner works as a Teaching Assistant/Lecturer in Design Studies and as a Research Assistant for the Hemp Lab within the School of Human Ecology.
Q&A
Anju Kinoshita, Asian Languages and Cultures
@avalon_manga https://www.instagram.com/avalon_manga?igsh=MzN0djlpZ2d2czI4&utm_source=qr
Title: “Who is the Criminal?: In the Dilemma of the Sibyl System in PSYCHO-PASS through the lens of Terayama Shūji’s notion of ‘proxy’”
Japanese popular culture often engages with criminology through philosophical inquiry and social critique. The animation series PSYCHO-PASS (2012-2013) depicts the 22nd century Japan where criminality is not an absolute concept but is defined by the governmental system called “Sibyl.” The antagonist Makishima Shōgo, who is undetectable by Sibyl, represents a paradox—he is a societal disruptor, yet he embodies the advocacy for human free will by quoting Terayama Shūji, “everyone is someone’s proxy.” I will examine the role of Makishima as “proxy” to question how the Sibyl’s construction of criminality parallels institutionalized forms of crime in contemporary society.
Anju Kinoshita is a second-year PhD student in Japanese Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. She holds a B.A. in Global Studies from Akita International University and an MPhil in Arts, Creativity & Education from the University of Cambridge. As both a researcher and an artist, Anju explores manga (Japanese comics) by engaging with fans, professional creators, publishers, and amateur artists. Her research examines how their creative praxis contributes to the cultivation of human creativity.
Hyorim Joe, English
Title:“‘Terrorists on Wheelchairs’: Criminalization of Crip Loitering in South Korea”
From 2021 to 2024, Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination (SADD) organized a series of protests in Seoul Metro subways, requiring the installation of elevators in all Seoul subway stations. The activists planned to board the subway during weekday rush hours, getting on and off at every station on wheelchairs. The reactions of passengers, mostly commuting workers, were instant and explosive; Seoul Metro and police forces defined the protest as “illegal.” When wheelchair users tried to get on public transportation, it was perceived as loitering—a threat and theft of public resources, time, and productivity. This paper, tracing the severe “dangers” that disabled bodies impose on streamlined capitalist/eugenic logic, will examine SADD’s protest as an important abolitionist intervention in 21st-century South Korea.
Hyorim Joe is a second-year English literary studies PhD student in UW Madison. She studied Korean literature and English literature at Seoul National University, where she got her BA and MA. Now she is focusing on contemporary Asian/Asian American literature and cultural productions. Her eyes are on the atmosphere—affect and vibe; aerial and viral contagion; circulation, transportation, and transmission of/between bodies and material; and migratory and diasporic mid-air experiences and their representations.
Shruthi, Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies
Title: “Tamate is Loud: an interview with Bharath Dingri”
In Karnataka, India, there are Dalits who refuse to play the tamate, the drums that led the funeral procession of the oppressor castes. Bharath Dingri refuses to stop playing the tamate. Jam ta-ka ta-ka ta-ka taka jam-ta. “Carrying my tamate is a sign of my ancestors’ enslavement to you. To me, this is the wailing cry of my ancestors. It will never let you forget your oppression.” My interview with actor, singer, percussionist Bharath is a small peg in his fierce vision to make the tamate heard, to see it as a political gesture, and to never forget its oppressive history.
Shruthi is a first year Ph.D student in Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies in UW-Madison.
Through her doctoral project, Shruthi is interested in exploring the counter-cultural aesthetics of contemporary Dalit and anti-caste theatre in India. She hopes to track the ideational antecedents of their forms, methods, and idiomatic language in its messy entanglements with Hindu aesthetic philosophies and its present complications with capital and State.
Q&A
Moderator:
Laurie Beth Clark is Professor in the Art Department where she teaches studio courses as well as graduate seminars on topics in Visual Culture and Performance Studies. Clark’s career merges theory and practice. Her creative projects have been shown in theatres, galleries, museums, gardens, forests, and public and private spaces in more than 150 shows in 35 countries on six continents. Extensive documentation of her creative work can be found at lauriebethclark.art. Clark’s writing has been published in journals (AJS Perspectives, Ecosystems and People, Encounters: Journal of Tourism and Transnational Studies, Global Performance Studies, High Performance, , Lateral, Performance Paradigm, Performance Research, TDR, Theatre Topics, Tourism and Transnational Studies, Visual Culture) and anthologies (A Performance Cosmology, Blaze: Discourse on Art, Companion to Site-Specific Performance, Companion to Visual Culture, Death Tourism: Disaster Sites as Recreational Landscape, Estudos Performantivos: Global Performance, Guerilla Performance and Multimedia, Intermediality, Marketing Memory in Latin America, Memory and Postwar Memorials: Confronting the Past as Violence, MISperformance: essays in shifting perspectives, Performance and the Public Sphere, Performing the Edible, Place and Performance, Political Performance, The Art of Truthtelling After Authoritarian Rule, The Object Reader, Visions and Revisions: Performance, Memory, Trauma, What’s Cooking? Food, Art and Counterculture).