
Popular culture is one of the sites where the struggle, commodification, and redefinition of world making is shaped. Stuart Hall remarks that it is this arena of consent and resistance where hegemony arises, and where it is secured. In a world that is becoming increasingly conducive to globalization, fashion and hip-hop have migrated beyond the confinement of the West and are currently embedded within politics, literature, media, film, movements and youth cultures across the globe. This process of fast-paced cross-cultural translation, queering and hybridization refuses national borders, otherness, and marginalization. Furthermore, it is also fueled by the desire to queer identity and to incorporate different meanings, networks, biographies, and experiences within institutions and societies.
Over the years museums of ethnography or world cultures have developed a practice of working with different stakeholders – especially source community stakeholders. This program pushed beyond such limited engagement with collections and offered a platform for different artists of diverse cultural biographies to interact with the collections and create new works, conversations, and knowledge that complicate our perspectives and understanding of concepts such as belonging, social justice, activism, material cultures, and archives.
With guest speakers such as cultural theorist Greg Tate, fashion designer Stephane Ashpool (Pigalle Paris), writer and activist Massih Hutak, academic Lewis Borck, fashion designer Grace Wales Bonner, critical thinker and activist Tracian Meikle (UvA) and artist Farida Sedoc. See the full program below.