Dora García (ed.): If I Could Wish for Something (2021)

15 May 2022, dusan

“In 1930, German film composer Friedrich Hollaender wrote “Wenn ich mir was wünschen dürfte”, famously performed by Marlene Dietrich. It inspired the foundation of Dora García’s exhibition ‘If I Could Wish for Something’ and this accompanying publication. The song serves as a powerful expression of a complex concept: sadness as political strength. García in turn connects this concept with women’s struggles for emancipation. Disappointed in the promise made to them by revolutionary movements, which for now remains unfulfilled, women are seeking to transform this feeling to overcome the temptation of victimhood and open up the possibility of an ethical encounter. ”

With texts by Antonio Cataldo, Saddie Choua, Paloma Contreras Lomas, Dora García, Agnieszka Gratza, Carla Lamoyi, Hilde Methi, Andrea Valdés, Sayak Valencia, and Pieternel Vermoortel.

Publisher Fotogalleriet, Oslo, and Netwerk Aalst, Aalst, 2021
ISBN 9789081080064, 9081080067
222 pages
via KHiO

Exhibition, (2)
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF

Adriana N. Helbig: Hip-Hop Ukraine: Music, Race, and African Migration (2014)

15 May 2022, dusan

“In Hip Hop Ukraine, we enter a world of urban music and dance competitions, hip hop parties, and recording studio culture to explore unique sites of interracial encounters among African students, African immigrants, and local populations in eastern Ukraine. Adriana N. Helbig combines ethnographic research with music, media, and policy analysis to examine how localized forms of hip hop create social and political spaces where an interracial youth culture can speak to issues of human rights and racial equality. She maps the complex trajectories of musical influence—African, Soviet, American—to show how hip hop has become a site of social protest in post-socialist society and a vehicle for social change.”

Publisher Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 2014
ISBN 9780253012043, 025301204X
xix+233 pages

Interview with author: Amanda Jeanne Swain (New Books Network, 2014, podcast).
Reviews: Kevin C. Holt (Current Musicology, 2014), Michael C. Thornton (Slavonic and East European Review, 2015), Mark Alan Rhodes II (Social & Cultural Geography, 2015), Anna Oldfield (Popular Music and Society, 2015), Tony Mitchell (Slavic Review, 2016), Kendra Salois (Ethnomusicology, 2017).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF
Multimedia companion

Christina Dunbar-Hester: Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures (2020)

21 December 2021, dusan

“A firsthand look at efforts to improve diversity in software and hackerspace communities.

Hacking, as a mode of technical and cultural production, is commonly celebrated for its extraordinary freedoms of creation and circulation. Yet surprisingly few women participate in it: rates of involvement by technologically skilled women are drastically lower in hacking communities than in industry and academia. Hacking Diversity investigates the activists engaged in free and open-source software to understand why, despite their efforts, they fail to achieve the diversity that their ideals support.

Christina Dunbar-Hester shows that within this well-meaning volunteer world, beyond the sway of human resource departments and equal opportunity legislation, members of underrepresented groups face unique challenges. She brings together more than five years of firsthand research: attending software conferences and training events, working on message boards and listservs, and frequenting North American hackerspaces. She explores who participates in voluntaristic technology cultures, to what ends, and with what consequences. Digging deep into the fundamental assumptions underpinning STEM-oriented societies, Dunbar-Hester demonstrates that while the preferred solutions of tech enthusiasts—their “hacks” of projects and cultures—can ameliorate some of the “bugs” within their own communities, these methods come up short for issues of unequal social and economic power. Distributing “diversity” in technical production is not equal to generating justice.

Hacking Diversity reframes questions of diversity advocacy to consider what interventions might appropriately broaden inclusion and participation in the hacking world and beyond.”

Publisher Princeton University Press, 2020
Princeton Studies in Culture and Technology series
ISBN 9780691182070, 0691182078
xi+271 pages

Reviews: Jenna P. Carpenter (Tech & Society, 2021), Rebecca Ortenberg (Lady Science, 2020), Samantha Shorey (International Journal of Communication, 2020).

Publisher
WorldCat

EPUB (updated on 2022-8-29)
PDF (added on 2022-12-12)