The Cultural Body In The Cultural Body

Attribute theory is a theory of culture that arose in the late nineteenth century that describes culture “as a set of stable and knowable attributes” (Yon, 2000a, 8). This view of culture suggests that culture is a “complex whole” of these particular attributes: “beliefs, morals, customs, capabilities, and habits that people acquire as members of society (Yon, 2000a, 8). Overall, attribute theory depicts culture as “coherent and predictable” and this means that there are noticeable “patterns of culture” (Yon, 2000a, 8). In contrast, Yon suggests that culture does not fit this ideal view of predictability and culture “is not only a product or a set of attributes that can be claimed and neatly recorded” (Yon, 2000a, 5). Instead, Yon coined

There is a Mexican man that enters with the rest of his family. They eat beans, rice, flour tortillas and etc. The family does there every day routine, the dad wakes up at six- thirty to go to work in his truck. The children go to school and the mother stays at home. The things a person does in their all has a reason which goes all back to culture. Culture is what makes up everyone different from one another. Texts such as “What is Cultural Identity?”, “Where Worlds Collide” and “Two ways to Belong” supports that depending on one’s culture it effects one perspective on the world and others.

On the night of November 11th, I attended Divahn’s performance at the Gamble Auditorium. Their music featured Middle Eastern, Latin, and Indian styles, and the vocals were sung in various native languages of the Middle East. Although I could not understand the lyrics, the music was able to demonstrate the emotions of the piece effectively, so that I could understand the content of the music.

Reed argues that as gender is performative, performance studies highlights the gender issues visible in dance (1998: 516). The unconnected cross cultural examples of the rituals of Cuban Santeria, Greek Wedding, and the Weimer performer Anita Berber illustrates how dance can used to analyse how performance challenges, as well as enforces gender relations and power structures.

Having the Merasi, master musicians of Rajasthan, perform live at Colby College provided students and faculty with a cultural experience unlike any that I have attended. The Merasi, from the Thar Desert in Pakistan, have found great success through their music despite their status in the caste system. As a family group, they have been able to gain the international attention that they needed to establish both music and literacy education for their people back home. Although very few people in our audience could understand their lyrics, the emotion and physical movements of the musicians were effective in conveying the overall themes of their songs. From watching this live performance of Rajasthani music, I was able to observe how the music itself, the behaviour of the musicians and audience, and the function of the music interacted to transport a small part of Rajasthan to the Pugh Center giving the audience a glimpse into its culture.

For this essay, I decided to analyze the art collections of the Fowler Museum at UCLA, more specifically in the Jerome LioMel Joss Gallery. The Jermone LioMel Gallery contains the arts works of Africa, and the Pacific Islands so I will be analyzing arts from the two areas from Papua New Guinea and Nigeria. These arts pieces are the Veranda posts (opo), and the ornament for a sacred flute.

Prince George’s Annual Traditional POW Wow is an event put on by the Prince George Friendship Centre, it takes place at the Carrie Jane Gray Park. It is rich in energy and historical popular culture. Hosting the powwow is a way of ensuring the rich heritage of the aboriginal people is preserved. The word Pow Wow, or pau wau, means a gathering of people coming together to trade. Explorers misinterpreted the ceremony of medicine men dancing, thinking all natives gathered to sing and dance in this manner.

Their dancers connect with the dance tradition embodying feelings of existential human anguish and references to specific geographic places, dancing focused on surreal situations, body use and the relationships between stage and

Art. When we say this sole world what comes to mind? Some of us may think classic Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Leonardo Da Vinci or Johannes Vermeer. The Latina/Chicana part of me then comes to life and thinks about Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dali and Jose Clemente Orozco. There importance and work icon to this day providing there people not only a vehicle to express a message but as well progression through time. Serving to provide both iconic representation and dilemmas through in society. The particular art form that I want to focus on this that of Performance Art, which is a, “Performance is typically a genre in which are is presented “live”, usually by the artist but sometimes with collaborators or performers. ” (“The Art Story”,

A major theme that can be seen through Mutu’s collection of works is femininity and an emphasis on a strong female narrative. Mutu uses her artwork to show her journey as a women artist. She toys with the Western culture’s idea of the ideal female by distorting her female characters through her collages combining fantasy and mystical characteristics. By using common day items from cutout magazines and reinventing their purposes through her collages, demonstrates how different cultures, although each having its own individuality can combine. Mutu dismembers the normal female body and reconfigures it to express her idea or theme she’s tackling. Inside the exhibit, I found Humming hung on a large divider next to Mutu’s Suspended Playtime, balls made from garbage bags hung from the ceiling. Humming, easily able to be overlooked due to its distracting neighbor, luckily caught my attention. Each female figure is created through hundreds of intricate details and different pieces signifying how women are constantly exposed to different ideals that continue to change, as well as putting emphasis on the individuality of each female. The female figure stands on the right-hand portion of the painting,

How do people view the body? The answer varies from location, religion and culture. How western cultures view the body and how the body is treated (our body and others) are different from how non western cultures view and treat bodies. We can see the differences in the western and non western bodies in such works as Anne Fadiman’s account of a Hmong child in America and in articles like Genital Surgeries: Gendering Bodies. Along with the many differences between western and non western thoughts there are also several similarities. Especially when it comes to metaphors of the body.

In this essay I will be looking into the work of Marina Abramovic in relation to the Feminist movement. By looking at her work, I aim to emphasise her influence on this movement. In this essay, I shall also briefly examine the works of Abramovic, particularly Art is Beautiful, Artist must be Beautiful (1975) and four of her performances from her Rhythm series (10 (1973), 0 (1974), 2 (1974), and 5 (1974)). I shall describe the history of the Feminist movement and its influence in order to develop an understanding of Abramovic’s influence.

A fascination with the human body, body were an experience that could somehow be held in common. The ways in which we might experience the body as connected or represent it as disconnected in a live performance. Shifting attention from traditional art object to the artist’s physical action further proposed that art existed in real space and real time. Marina Abramovic, a pioneer of performance art began using her own body as the subject, object, and medium in the early 1970s as she said, ‘In performance my body is object and subject.’ For the exhibition

The concept of culture is something that defines many aspects of one’s life. From physical objects to different ways of thinking, culture adds significance to human life and makes groups of people distinct from one another. Culture is essentially a group of people who come together with similar interests and points of view. According to the Center for Advanced Language Acquisition of the University of Minnesota, “culture is defined as the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization.” From a more sociological perspective, culture is a way in which people come together in order to fulfill their needs. These shared patterns and ideas identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group.” Culture is one of the things that sets the United States apart from the rest of the world. Not that the rest of the world is not cultural, but the circumstance here is different. Many people of different cultural backroads come to this country in search of a better life. As a consequence, the United States has become a place where many cultures merge together like a colossal pot soup.

Culture can be defined in many ways due to the fact that everyone can have their own distinct and traditional beliefs and values. “ Culture is fluid, it is not a static entity which one takes out of the box on occasion. It is with us daily” (Cultural Handout). Someone’s culture is set as the characteristics of the group practices in language, religion, types of food, social traits and habits, and the distinct arts and music. There are a variety of different cultures for example, Western Culture, Eastern Culture, Latin Culture, Middle Eastern Culture, and African Culture. All of these different cultures have their own ideas, values, and individualism, laws that are implied, civil rights, and even technology. In our, “ Culture Handout” culture is defined as the tool of the mind, “ it is an individual’s way seeing and interacting within the world. It encompasses one’s values systems, beliefs, and perceptions of the world around them. Race, socio-economic class gender, sexual orientation, ability, geographic location, age, religion language, etc. all impact the formation of culture, but these various context are not culture” (Cultural Handout).