Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

REFIGURATION OF IDENTITIES AND FUTURES IN TIMES OF TRANSFORMATION 137and origination, as a site for meaning/and themaking of meaning; the way they frame their imageas representations and their human subjects withintheir purview in forming, shaping the ideologicallyconstructed human subject as members of groups,ethnicities, communities that make up the nation. It is ingrasping/analyzing the articulations of the relationshipbetween film and the social fabric that we can beginto unlock and understand our place in the processes ofsocial and political transformations, and in so doingactively participate and contribute, to re-imagine andre-make the texts and practices of the nation, thattends toward dominant modes of expression that limitand contain the human subject in it’s homogenizingideological grip.Alternative cultural expressions and practices can aid inre-defining and re-drawing cultural lines and bordersand their demarcations, to expand their territories asinclusive of differences and diversities towards an open,equitable and just society and its representations.They provide for opportunities of a discursiveand processual engagement across textual, filmicrepresentations as much as real physical ones, to createless exclusionary spaces and more cultural dialoguesacross borders. Culture and film thereby becomesa means of projecting and transforming social andpolitical conditions—in their representations as text aswell as practice.In other words, as an example in Yayan Wiludiharjo’spractice, the film only really begins where it ends, wherethe subject does not stop at the screen either as textualengagement or practice, but is taken further extendingas a continuum, from cinematic space to public spacesacross village halls, campuses and community networks,via discussions, talks, reconciliation and action. It isin this sense that I mean when I speak about film ascrossing and transgressing textual and cultural borders,spaces and practices, to re-imagine and realize spatialpolitics as a necessary engagement in cultural politics.Beller, Jonathan. “KINO-I, KINO-WORLD. Notes on theCinematic Mode of Production.” Ed. Mirzoeff, Nicholas. TheVisual Culture Reader. London: Routledge, 2002.Bhabha, Homi. “Dissemination: Time, Narrative and theMargins of the Modern Nation.” Ed. Bhabha, Homi. Nationand Narration. London: Routledge, 1990.Brennan, Timothy. “The National Longing for Form.” Ed.Bhabha, Homi. Nation and Narration. London: Routledge,1990.Burgin, Victor. In/Different Spaces—Place and Memory inVisual Culture. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of CaliforniaPress, 1996.Crouch, D. and C. Malm. “Landscape Practice, LandscapeResearch: An Essay in Gentle Politics.” Eds. Dorrian, Markand Gillian Rose. Deterritorialisations— Revisioning Landscapesand Politics. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2004.Debray, Regis. “Marxism and the National Question.” NewLeft Review 105.Sept.-Oct. (1977): 27.Renan, Ernest. “What is a Nation?” Ed. Bhabha, Homi.Nation and Narration. London: Routledge, 1990.Rogoff, Irit. “Studying Visual Culture” Ed. Mirzoeff, Nicholas.The Visual Culture Reader. London: Routledge, 2002.Sipe, Michelle. “Landscape Aesthetics and the Inscaping ofClass in Women’s Nineteenth Century Literature.” Eds.Dorrian, Mark and Gillian Rose. Deterritorialisations—Revisioning Landscapes and Politics. London: Black DogPublishing, 2004Sommer, Doris. “Irresistible Romance: The FoundationalFictions of Latin America.” Ed. Bhabha, Homi. Nation andNarration. London: Routledge, 1990.Textual engagement, filmmaking and screening becomeprocesses within and without spatial territories andborders, across lived spaces and embodied places ascultural practice.REFERENCESAnderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on theOrigin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso Editions.1985 [1983].Asian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows