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10 storytellers. 10 weeks. 1 world. Join the digital space! Engage in the intersection of technology, storytelling and performance. Now rolling!

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#8. Shared Cultural Trauma: “When one bleeds, so do we all.”

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Can Art Heal Cultural Wounds?

Discover the healing power of art. Creative expression can be a lifeline for those affected by personal and cultural trauma.

Immigration issues, class warfare, and racism have plagued humanity for generations. Things aren’t ‘worse than they have ever been’, we are just more aware of it than before thanks to the internet. Waking up to present-day atrocities can be overwhelming, but awareness and social action will help us put these things into our collective past. We can not change the past, but we can learn to look at it in ways that empower us and allow us to evolve. On the personal and collective level, art helps us address cultural wounds and begin the process of healing our history. A deeper look at this intriguing topic is sure to inspire you to find your own creative voice.

#8. Shared Cultural Trauma: “When one bleeds, so do we all.”

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How Trauma Is Carried Across Generations

Holding the secret history of our ancestors.

“What is overwhelming and unnamable is passed on to those we are closest to. Our loved ones carry what we cannot. And we do the same.This is the subject of Lost in Transmission: Studies of Trauma Across Generations, edited by M. Gerard Fromm (2012). This collection of essays on traumatic transmission builds on the idea that “what human beings cannot contain of their experience—what has been traumatically overwhelming, unbearable, unthinkable—falls out of social discourse, but very often on to and into the next generation as an affective sensitivity or a chaotic urgency.”The transmission of trauma may be particular to a given family suffering a loss, such as the death of an infant, or it can be a shared response to societal trauma.“

#8. Shared Cultural Trauma: “When one bleeds, so do we all.”

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#8. Shared Cultural Trauma: “When one bleeds, so do we all.”

[osfdigistories]

@nationalgeo

Thirty years after the Chernobyl nuclear accident, people are still restricted from resettling the evacuation area, dubbed the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The absence of humans has created an opportunity for nature to thrive. A new study using remote cameras reveals abundant populations of gray wolves, raccoon dogs, and red fox.

#8. Shared Cultural Trauma: “When one bleeds, so do we all.”

[osfdigistories]

#8. Shared Cultural Trauma: “When one bleeds, so do we all.”

[osfdigistories]

An animal with human-like characteristics. A human with animal-like characteristics can also be called an anthro, but technically they are not. An anthro is, technically, an animal that can: a) walk upright, b) talk, or talk somewhat (AKA has human vocal chords), c) has human features (i.e. a centaur, half human, half horse), d) has the bone structure of a human, with some of its animal counterpart (i.e. a cat-anthro that although looks like a human, can jump like a cat). These characteristics separate anthros from humans with cat ears and tail (or something like that).

#8. Shared Cultural Trauma: “When one bleeds, so do we all.”

[osfdigistories]

Why I’m Breaking Up with Aristotle

Chantal Bilodeau on writing ourselves out of the pyramid and why she is breaking up with Aristotle.

It’s me, of course, not him. After all, Aristotle and his posse of ancient Greeks gave us many of the elements that have become the foundation of Western Civilization. They gave us human rights, democracy, and the Olympics. They gave us philosophy, significant advances in mathematics, and medicine. And they gave us dramatic structure, the golden principle behind all of Western dramatic literature.

That’s a lot to admire, I know. But I’m still breaking up with him.

The thing is, our relationship has run its course. Given the new challenges brought on by a rapidly changing world and our inability to communicate effectively around them, and given the fact that I feel he doesn’t really see me as a woman, it’s best we go our separate ways. I have no doubt he’ll continue to be influential in my life—we had many good years together and I will forever value the lessons I learned from him—but in the end he’s too controlling and I need to break free.

#8. Shared Cultural Trauma: “When one bleeds, so do we all.”

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A South African Artist’s Self-Portraits Excavate the Traumas of Apartheid

The South African photographer Mohau Modisakenguses haunting and meditative self-portraiture to create striking images of a country that is in the midst of reëvaluating itself.

@newyorker

“ Modisakeng’s Soweto childhood has fuelled a research-based photography practice in which he creates layered scenes, littered with iconic symbols that explore the nation’s history by “trying to understand how it affects the black body,” he said. His photography and video work also follows the character-driven overtures of African self-portraitists such as Samuel Fosso and Iké Udé. In the photograph “Frame XV,” we see Modisakeng pictured holding a long sjambok whip, a visceral symbol of state-sanctioned violence that he remembers the police using to maintain order during the final years of apartheid. In the series “Lefa,” which is a Setswana word for “inheritance,” he captures himself, from above, lying in a bed of coal. The image evokes the industrialization of his home town of Johannesburg. The performative series “Metamorphosis” features images of Modisakeng in closeup and against a black backdrop, wearing his signature black-brimmed trilby hat, shaking white powder from his face and chest. It appears as if his body were physically changing form, in a state of transformation that alludes to South Africa’s long democratic struggle to define itself. “

#8. Shared Cultural Trauma: “When one bleeds, so do we all.”

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Anthropological Airwaves by Anthropological Airwaves on Apple Podcasts

Download past episodes or subscribe to future episodes of Anthropological Airwaves by Anthropological Airwaves for free.

Anthropological Airwaves is the official podcast of the journal American Anthropologist. On it, we explore the craft of anthropology in all of its forms. Building on the journal’s commitment to four-field, multimodal research, the podcast hosts conversations about anthropological projects—from fieldwork and publishing to the discipline’s role in public debates. By demystifying the craft of anthropology, the podcast broaches a series of fundamental questions about past, present, and future disciplinary practice, and charts new paths for anthropological engagement

#8. Shared Cultural Trauma: “When one bleeds, so do we all.”

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Natasha Davis is a performance and visual artist who creates poetic and challenging interdisciplinary material exploring body, memory, identity and migration. Her work is non-linear and based on rigorous research and interpretation of personal histories. She was born in Croatia and is now based permanently in London.

#8. Shared Cultural Trauma: “When one bleeds, so do we all.”

[osfdigistories]

The painting that has reopened wounds of American racism

New York art world bitterly divided over ‘cultural appropriation’ of 1955 photograph of murdered 14-year-old Emmett Till

@guardian

“It is one of the most powerful images to emerge from the racism that infected the southern states of America in the 1950s – the photograph of a badly beaten 14-year-old boy, lynched after being falsely accused of flirting with a white woman, lying in a funeral casket.Now protests over a painting based on the photograph, included in a New York museum show, are dividing the city’s art world amid claims of racist exploitation and censorship.At the centre of the battle over cultural appropriation is artist Dana Schutz’s expressionist painting Open Casket (2016), a gruesome depiction of Emmett Till, lynched in Mississippi in 1955.The painting, on display at the Whitney Biennial exhibition, initially drew swift condemnation from critics who claimed Schutz, who is white, was taking advantage of a defining moment in African American history.“

#8. Shared Cultural Trauma: “When one bleeds, so do we all.”

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#8. Shared Cultural Trauma: “When one bleeds, so do we all.”

[osfdigistories]

Native, Indigenous cultures and healing trauma. Eduardo Duran, PhD - The Trauma Therapist Project

Soul wounding, Native, Indigenous cultures and the healing of trauma. Eduardo Duran, PhD is a psychologist and veteran of the US Navy submarine force and he is pretty amazing. He’s one of those individuals that makes you think, “Yes, he’s someone I want working to help people who’ve been traumatized.” Listening to him share his story …

“Do not waste your suffering” -Eduardo Duran

#8. Shared Cultural Trauma: “When one bleeds, so do we all.”

[osfdigistories]

#8. Shared Cultural Trauma: “When one bleeds, so do we all.”

[osfdigistories]

Trauma is the American experience

Being black in certain parts of America trains you to deal with murder. Lately, the whole country has been learning

@salon

“What happened with Kenneka Jenkins, the young black woman from Chicago who mysteriously died in a hotel freezer? How are they surviving in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, after President Trump mocked their pain and jump-shot rolls of paper towels at them during his visit? How long will Las Vegas continue to grieve in the wake of Sunday's mass shooting, after the national coverage fades away?It’s like tragedy is the number one restaurant in America right now, and trauma is its top-selling dessert.“

#8. Shared Cultural Trauma: “When one bleeds, so do we all.”

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SPECTRESS

About the Project SPECTRESS In Brief The Social Performance, Cultural Trauma and the Reestablishing of Solid Sovereignties (or SPECTRESS) project is a network of nine international university partners that has been funded by the European Commission to undertake a four year programme of scholarly exchanges focussed on the concept of

The Social Performance, Cultural Trauma and the Reestablishing of Solid Sovereignties (or SPECTRESS) project is a network of nine international university partners that has been funded by the European Commission to undertake a four year programme of scholarly exchanges focussed on the concept of ‘cultural trauma’ and national identities. The project is unique in a number of ways: first of all, it is global in the scale of its collaboration, a rarity among projects of this type, which are more commonly framed by a national or regional context. Second of all, we propose not only to look at societies assimilating trauma, but more specifically also at the way in which the arts and culture reveal and assist in this process. As such, we hope to contribute to the growing evidence base for the true value of the arts, culture and heritage to societies undergoing deep and traumatic stress. Finally, SPECTRESS will directly address the question of how we, as an international network of scholars, are able to communicate most effectively across languages and cultural spaces about our findings, by investigating innovative technological approaches able to connect our ideas within and from our native languages, rather than always via the academic vehicular language of English.

#8. Shared Cultural Trauma: “When one bleeds, so do we all.”