Noodle, Nude(l)
Tuesday, January 23th 2010

source: photograph by Tilman Porschuetz, February 13th, Jong-Gak, Seoul

Cunt Punt, Baik KyuHee
Thursday, January 29th 2010

source: contributed by the author, originally published on Bling! magazine, June 2009

authors-note:
[ see "I Call It as I See It - by Baik KyuHee" ]

Breakfast of Champions, it’ll do your body better than a glass of milk. Cleft of Venus, it keeps prepubescent schoolboys clinging to their socks. Like an officer’s wet whistle, your head’ll turn 180˚ to its traffic-halting, tire-screeching sound. You can do just about anything with it: shave it, shout it, love it, rub it. Supple, sweet and sassy. Cunt.

The Oxford English Dictionary cites its earliest use, circa 1230, in reference to Gropecuntelane,’ a district of red lights for red sights. Today, the English-American vernacular considers it to be one of the, if not most, taboo words today.

Verbal Vivacity: Let’s say it together

Feels so forbidden and sounds so good. Cunt. The hard C positions your posterior tongue at the back palate of the mouth. With slight exhalation, the U gracefully undulates your tongue forward and the N advances the tip of your tongue to rest behind the top front teeth. And then, like a jetty that dazedly deflects the smooth rolling motion of the ocean, the titillating T completes the utterance of CUNT. That T is what does it. Like a casual, but calculated, flick of a cigarette, it makes you squeal at the cusp of oral rebellion. Say it a few more times, let your self go. Your mouth just won’t get bored with the word. Such sensual satiation! And we just don’t seem to hear or say it enough.

No Men in Menstruation: Who’s got the problem?

Remember those awkward sex-ed classes when your middle-aged male P.E. instructor in faded gray sweat suit- bashful, but blushing with defected delight- would pop into the VHS ‘Getting to Know Your Body.’ Of course, all the boys got to leave the room and flaunt their free time. And the girls went home that day with a party bag of monstrous menstrual pads, complete with diagram of those godsend wings, and a blow to their adolescence. From the onset of puberty, menstruation is socially and pedagogically encouraged to be a Girls Only situation. Basically, if Aunt Flow is comin’ to town, she ain’t never gonna greet the boys- period.

Why? Let’s spread our knowledge. Sanitary napkins: napkins that sanitize, right? It implies that menstrual fluid is unsanitary. Stashed between the legs, there to be sheepishly soaked with endometrial shedding, sanitary napkins demonstrate only a smidgen of the fear of femininity embedded in Aisle 8: Female Hygiene. Procter & Gamble, 8th largest global corporation as of 2008, released Tampax Compak, a tampon specifically ‘made to go unnoticed.’ What’s with the prudence? Who the hell cares? Maybe the corporate directors of P & G? Nine out of the twelve board directors are men.

Raunch Romp: Unveiling the vulgar.

Besides P & G’s testosterone-driven influence in Aisle 8 (P.S. – They also manage Always and Whisper) phallicism also penetrates into vaginal vulgarisms. Jeer a guy of being a pussy and he’s weak. Put down a fellow, call him a twat, and he’s inept. The Aussies and Brits, toss around cunt as a term of playful endearment or diluted derogation. But in this case, it’s used predominantly by and towards wrinkly, weary old men. So, pussy, twat, and cunt strike soft blows below-the-belt. Slowly and surely, we sense an underlying negativity under Sally’s underpants.

Now we’ve been knee deep in vagina, but have we yet perused the very own vagina? Politically correct and anatomically acknowledged, its Latin derivative signifies a scabbard, a sheath for a sword. Ah-ha! A-OK vagina is merely the receptacle of the almighty powerful penis.

Even more: Motherfucker – Man who fucks a mother. Son-of-a-bitch – Man born from a bitch. Bitch – Female dog. Bastard – Man born from a whore. Do we see a pattern?
Misogyny, behind his mask, muddles a disdain to muff.

Meretricious Maverick: Take it to the streets.

Not a call for a feminist foray, tumescent with a bloody vengeance, this tea-for-two with cunt is to invoke insight. So, what about cunt makes it so deliciously deviant from the others? Just as the Compak Tampon alludes to menstruation but hides it in the palm of your hand, cunt refers to the female sex yet its nonpareil taboo hushes the pussy’s power. It’s a muzzle to a greater puzzle: cunt’s maximum sexual appeal minimizes its social appeal. An especial euphemism, cunt’s taboo tucks an embarrassment to vagina under the sheets.

Well then, let’s spread the sheets to where the sun doesn’t shine. Cunt can fashion women with the smartest and sultriest shock power on the streets. Slip on your silk stockings, cock your cleavage and cleft, and embrace your mutinous member. Clout to the chin, punt to the perfect play, strut it to your defense and maim the offense. Love your pretty cunt. Be a precious cunt.

I Call It as I See It, Baik KyuHee
Thursday, January 29th 2010

source: contributed by the author, originally published on Eloquence Magazine 2009

authors-note:

ANT acronym = the ant insect - "perfectly fit for a blind, myopic, workaholic, trail-sniffing, and collective traveler" (Latour) [...]

YOU SAY: "I follow two major guidelines in my work:
Frist: "How does one work morally correct in a controversial social structure like the one mentioned for this proposal?" (conceptional outline) I believe: all social structures are controversial, therefore predicaments of morality need not be relevant. Morality itself is a social structure/institution therefore controversial. Your work is your work...I won't judge you for collecting tartcards. bahahaha!
Second: "Acting there by the means of what’s there" (conceptional outline). Please elaborate...I do not understand this. Is the extent of acting dependent on the provisions of the context/environment?

Last year pondering my masters thesis...I'm still wading in lukewarm water: female sexuality or underground youth culture. Both? I have considered the possibility of participatory observation in a Korean brothel...eeek! How do you participate/act? Collecting cards, partaking in services...?

I published several articles last year for a Seoul-based ex-pat magazine, Eloquence [...]. One of my pieces echoes the transcultural dynamics within the context of white male/Korean female relationships. The piece has a very "catchy/cheesy" tone to it due to the the medium of its transmission (the magazine). However, beyond that, I elaborate a very significant contemporary situation = the Korean woman in her attempt to iconosize herself as a transcultural (by physical/sexual/intellectual appeal) product.

editors-note:

My first step will be to publish cards supplying the service of producing advertisments in the exact same way the cards offer massages or other services. I will print 20,000 to 400,000 and spread the news on the street.
And acting there by the means of what's there is basically the approach to create a catchy punchline for the proposal - The art of proposal writing for a certain audience of selective boards, as here to say the Platoon.

Soft and sassy, she saunters in your direction. Her eyes, surgically pinched wide, and her plastically perfect nose accentuate the translucently clear face that rests on her barely healthy, thin frame. Closer, her sleek, silky tresses lock you, hypnotized to her sweet and succulent scent. A twinkle in her eye and a coy smile make you weak in the knees and all the more sure of why you decided to teach English in Korea. She passes you by. And as you turn to see her rear perspective on life, she snuggles into the embrace of that overweight, pathetically pasty, boring blue-eyed and wheat-washed hair guy that made you feel so self-assured. Has he tasted a bit more of Korea than just kimchi? What the hell is a sucker like that doing with a girl like her?

That’s the all-too-familiar-scenario: cute Korean girl with below par White boy. We call him ‘charisma guy.’ You know those cats that couldn’t make it because they were just so socially awkward and unattractive. But then, they come here and all of a sudden verbal communication and physical attraction are at different standards, or no standards whatsoever.

What about the other way around? Is there a ‘charisma girl?’ That doesn’t really matter. Less often you spy a White woman with a Korean man. Reaction: “Well, good for him. Maybe he’s not as small as the rest of ‘em.” The notorious stereotype of Asian males with small dicks assumingly renders this especial Korean man better equipped than others. So then, is it size? Does size matter? Don’t think so. Korea’s tradition of female sexual repression doesn’t give room for preference. A survey of the Korean Research Institute of Sexuality and Culture reports 15.2% of female high school survey participants masturbate as opposed to the 49.9% male masturbators in high school. The Confucian perspective of the woman as a secondary sex doesn’t permit Korean females a sexual freedom tantamount to that of Western women.

So, then, why is there an exponential interest of Korean women for White men? Let’s get intimate with history.

Pleasure Doing Business?

In 2008, over 14 trillion won was pocketed to prostitution in Korea. Perplexed, you ask, “Prostitution?” Intimacy does get dirty, just hear me out.

Ramifications of foreign rape and pillage titled Korea as the Hermit Kingdom. However, with the Japanese occupation of more than 30 years, Korea spread her doors open for business, with and without her consent, to the global phallus. ‘Comfort camps’ enslaved women to relieve the sexual needs of the Japanese Imperial Army. Afterwards, the U.S. military presence during the Korean War produced ‘camptowns,’ venues for sexual services. The Korean government was basically one big pimp, building and maintaining brothels. Willing to take any measures of hospitality, Korea desperately needed the U.S. and thus encouraged women to do the dirty deed for the country.

Even before the Japanese occupation and U.S. military presence, Korean women sacrificed themselves for the state’s sake as far back as the 11th century. The kisaeng were female entertainers belonging to the court, trained in music, poetry, and medicine. Of course, sexual provisions were included. Their low social status undermined their unprecedented sacrifices. In the 19th century, the rebel army of Hong Gyeong-rae conquered the Jeongju fortress precisely because of clandestine information trafficked by the kisaeng. Similarly, we forget to acknowledge the sex workers of contemporary Korea. The prostitutes of the U.S. military ‘camptowns’ actually maintained the peninsulas’ economy, contributing almost 25% of the gross national product, with foreign currency during the 1960s. There on after, sex tourism still lures leisure seekers from all over. And now, the industry amounts to approximately 1.6% of the gross domestic product.

To say the least, prostitution bore biracial relationships in Korea. At first, the industry was recreationally supplied for military ‘guests’. Back in the 70’s and even through the 80’s, it was frowned upon for a Korean woman to be seen with a foreigner. Most likely, others would assume she was a sex worker with her G.I. Joe boyfriend. An arduous history of assault developed a strong xenophobia in Korea. But as we enter the 90’s, we see a growing Western seepage.

Who’s Got English Fever?

The 1990’s was a coming of age for Korea. After the 1986 Asia Games and the 1988 Seoul Olympic games, Western culture became more than just a novelty. And especially after the ‘97 Financial Crisis, the value of the English language began to shine like a goldmine. Due to a Confucian tradition that correlates knowledge with status and power, Koreans are known for extremely disciplined erudition. This ‘education fever’ drastically evolved into an addiction for the English language with high-priced investments.

Imagine the Energizer bunny, yellow instead of pink, renovated with the All-American ‘soccer mom’ enthusiasm, without the lawn chair but with a perm. This is the new-age version of the Korean housewife: handler of the home and the ultimate pusher for education. Her die-hard persistence pushes her child as young as 5 years of age into English hagwons, or private ‘cram schools,’ on top of regular schooling. She’ll spend one million won a month for after-school English-immersion programs. On top of that, a private tutor at 100 thousand won an hour a couple times a week could correct that godforsaken ‘lice’ to ‘rice.’ And when the time is right, she’ll migrate with the other ‘wild geese’ split-families to the States or New Zealand with her child and daddy’s dough. Of the 20 trillion won spent on education, about 15 trillion pours into the overflowing gauntlet of English acquisition.

This is ‘English Fever.’ The government’s educational agenda of the ‘90s installed mandatory listening tests in entrance exams, a focus on more conversational and communicative aptitude, and an English curriculum in all elementary schools. A blinding neurosis has swept the entire country. This fanatical English frenzy coincidentally catalyzed an influx of native English speakers. Today, more than 27,000 foreign nationals are registered instructors at schools and hagwons, however there could easily be more than 50,000 teaching off the radar. By 2013, the government plans to bring the supply to the demand with 23,000 more English teachers.

Now, that’s quite an abundance of wide-eyed bachelors and bachelorettes. Korea’s English education system inseminates biracial acquaintanceships in all kinds of ways. Private tutoring is a given. On the internet, ‘language exchange’ participants sometimes explicitly advertise for intimate relationships. On the streets, check out the nooks and crannies of Yonsei, Hongik, and Ewha University: it’s a bilingual melting pot of blossoming, hormonally charged students, national and foreign. Ewha is a woman’s university that houses male foreign exchange students. Beyond the students, foreign English teachers socialize near the universities because that’s where it’s at. From music venues to Western bars and HOFs, Sinchon and Hongdae fans the flame of the youth’s ‘English Fever.’ This is where the trend stays steady: cute Korean girl and charisma White guy. {[Oh, and it stays steadily White. Korea still discriminates. Dark, tan skin still distinguishes you as a rural, country farmer.]}

Well, to each her own. We’ll never really know why she’s with him and it’s really none of our business. But, historically speaking, we could assert a few reasons. Could it be self-sacrifice? Like the prowess of the underdog kisaeng or the amative artisans of the ‘camptowns,’ is she smoldering this flame to make the government recruits feel at home? Wishful thinking. If she wanted to serve her country, why not do two years like the men? Oh, right, women aren’t as adept for combat. As opposed to barbarously blowing things up, we’re better at blowing things in another way.

So, what once was a service to their country, could Korean women be servicing themselves? Gangnam’s 100 massage parlors illuminate the Korean sex culture that exists to solely satisfy males. Suppressed by a phallic tradition of sexuality, maybe this White preference demonstrates a retaliation of sexual expectations. Maybe she knows exactly what she’s doing. Eager to take a few licks at bettering her tongue, she’s in it to win it: lessons on love and on language. Perhaps a bigger dick does better her ego.

Crackdown on prostitute cards
Wednesday, January 27th 2010

source: BBC Online Network Tuesday, May 18, 1999 Published at 10:00 GMT 11:00 UK / http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/346653.stm

Prostitutes argue the cards keep them off the streets

People placing calling cards in telephone boxes to advertise prostitutes could face fines of up to £1,000 or even jail, under new proposals unveiled by the government.

The penalties have been proposed in a consultation paper published by the Home Office, which proposes to make it a criminal offence to leave the advertisements, known as "tartcards", in phone booths.

About 14 million cards, which often include sexually explicit images, are left in public telephone boxes each year.

'Bad impression'

Home Office Minister Paul Boateng said previous attempts to clean up the cards through laws covering littering, criminal damage and indecency, had only led to the people who distribute the cards changing tactics.

14 million cards are left every year

He said: "Prostitutes' cards in telephone boxes are offensive, create a bad impression with foreign visitors and can be a bad influence on young people.

"Those who place the cards in phone boxes can be threatening or violent towards the members of the public and phone box cleaning teams.

"The law should be able to deal with this nuisance - but at the moment it is failing."

The changes backed by the Home Office would make the posting of any unauthorised advertising in phone boxes illegal.

The powers would be locally based, so that they would only be implemented in areas affected by the prostitutes' cards.

The problem began in the mid-'80s in the red-light areas of London and now involves around 1,000 pay-phones in the centre of the capital.

In Brighton and Hove on the south coast, one million cards a year are collected by BT and the problem is beginning to emerge in other cities.

Two years in jail

The consultation paper also suggests the problem could be tackled with a specific criminal offence of advertising sexual services in phone boxes although this could lead to problems of definition and enforceability.

It also suggests civil action could be taken by designating prostitutes' cards as a "nuisance".

Breaches of a civil injunction to stop posting the cards would be a contempt of court, with an unlimited fine and a possible two years in jail.

This option could be used with the criminal offences.

The paper also says a multi-pronged approach could be necessary to address the problem, in particular the use of call-barring by telephone companies.

BT has introduced a policy of barring incoming calls to numbers advertised on cards, but so far this has simply led to prostitutes switching to other phone companies.

The company, which spends £250,000 a year on the problem, is also seeking the power to bar calls from its own phone boxes to any numbers advertised on cards regardless of the phone company involved.

The English Collective of Prostitutes has warned that the measures will cause "serious" problems.

Using the cards means women do not have to work on the street and are independent of pimps, meaning they are safer and freer from exploitation, the collective says.

In a survey two years ago, it was estimated that around 650 women were operating in this way in London, touting for business at the end of 400 different phone lines.

The Eve complex
Wednesday, January 27th 2010

source: draft to "instable causual resoning" by Tilman Porschuetz

Rodin, a sculptor you might be familiar with, shows the ashamed Eve and pictures a pregnant model, which he did not initially knew. He is forced to constantly alter the balance. Not aiming for that purpose, he unknowingly got forced to be the father of modernity. He enjoyed his pleasent job. The model was probably working to make money for the child crowing her stomach and didn’t dare to tell anything.

In paradise no human being was created out of an ordinary reproductive process. The bibel clearly declares all de- sires prohibited. Controlling desire is a man-made motivation. In Eastern and Western societies straight outlines are given for spoling valueable time. The West and the Chrsitian education is even in control of the hidden zones — Family, brothel, swinger club, same sex relations, fetishes, sodomia, drugs, execive lifestyle, anarchy, Taugen- ichts. The more complex and multilayered a social catalog of regulations is communicated onto a broad base, the less intimacy there is. The inflicted strictly hierachical order of social programming provides a variety of “grey zones”, that are unknown, undefined, and for each and everyone to discover for themself.

So, talking about Eve and sexuality, I noticed this general Vorurteil (prejudice) which might be the exact opposite in the experience of sexual freedom in both cultural spheres.

Eve, the creator.

Fuzoku Friday: “Prostitution” vs Prostitution
Monday, January 25th 2010

source: provided by Udo Lee / http://www.japansubculture.com/2009/12/fuzoku-friday-prostitution-vs-prostitution/

The Japanese law draws the line between legal and illegal sexual services by whether or not the ball makes it into the goal, so to speak. And while some businesses, namely soaplands, manage to work their way around these rules, law enforcement chooses to “focus their efforts” on places that are plainly and evidently illegal.

The first clip is from “The Zokufu 24 Hours,” a program on a local Chiba TV station. We find ex-pro wind surfer and host, Saito Ryotsu, here to learn along with viewers “How to Hotel Health.”

We find Saito in front of “Kiken na Baito Ikebukuro East Exit,” a “hotel health” shop near Ikebukuro station (notice the hours of operation.. could it really close this early?). He heads to the reception desk of the shop and meets the owner, who explains that after choosing a girl a customer heads to a particular room in a particular love hotel, after which the girl arrives. The two then have a “little bit of pervy play.” The owner whispers to Saito the specifics, and he laughs in excited disbelief. The girls are aged 18-23 to appeal to customers with a Lolita complex.

Saito chooses then heads to the hotel, and is soon met by 21-year-old “Mei-chan.” Speaking in simple, childish Japanese, Mei says her favorite kind of customers are the really perverted ones who make her to exhibitionistic things like flash out the window. She says she originally wanted to be an “idol” (model and singer), but now found out about “fudols” (fuzoku idol) and is content with becoming that.

Mei explains that when customers come they become her boyfriend. She then takes a school uniform out of her bag and changes for Saito. He then supposedly tries out Mei’s services, which appear to be pretty satisfactory as he declares, “Hotel health is the best!!!” The segment ends with Saito asking the manager for a discount.

Despite how comically the “delivery health” service is to many, on the flip side of the coin we have illegal brothels that provide more traditional services. Here is a news clip about a police bust on a brothel in Kawasaki earlier this year:

In the clip we see police interrogating several women inside a small building, and the narrator explains that all the women in the brothel were Koreans who are suspected of having come to Japan to become prostitutes. An officer asks one woman her name, and although she doesn’t understand Japanese she tells him she arrived in Japan on vacation. We see small rooms lit with pink lights, containing nothing but futons, electric fans and other personal goods.

Customers were charged 10,000 yen for the deed, and investigators find cash inside one woman’s purse. They ask one woman how many customers she’s had today and she insists the bills are her own personal funds. The girls lived in the brothel and advertised services themselves.

The report says that the area in Kawasaki where the bust occurred is full of illegal prostitution. They show a video taken in May of women standing in windows calling out at men. When a man asks one of the women how much, she tells him 20,000 yen. In order to hide activities from the police the brothels have a lookout, who the camera catches nearby. Police catch him on patrol while they bust the brothel, and ask him about wireless radios and a list of license plate numbers found inside. The lookout had the numbers of 70 police cars, allowing him to spot undercover cops then radio back to the brothel and tell the girls to run.

In all they arrested four lookouts and 18 Korean women. This is apparently not an unusual occurance in Kawasaki, and police had busted another brothel in the same area earlier in the year, arresting the Korean who ran the operation and seven Korean and Columbian prostitutes.

Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context",
Universität Heidelberg-07.10.2009-09.10.2009, Heidelberg
Monday, 25th January 2010

source: provided by Alexander Klose / http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/tagungsberichte/id=2857

Bericht von:
Laila Abu-Er-Rub / Cathrine Bublatzky, Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context", Universität Heidelberg

The conference ‘Flows of Images and Media’ was the first in a series of four Annual Conferences organised by the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” at the Ruprecht-Karls-University in Heidelberg. While the overall research agenda of the cluster revolves around the dynamics of shifting, asymmetrical flows between the cultures of Asia and Europe in a global context, this first Annual Conference brought together scholars from the Social Sciences and Humanities to investigate the concept of ‘Transculturation’, which, according to the definition by Nicholas Mirzoeff, “highlights those places where the carefully defined borders of identity become confused and overlapping, a task that requires new histories, new ideas and new means of representation”.[1] Considering the ever increasing variety of shifting, globally available images and their role as cultural mediators between Asia and Europe, the conference organizers, Christiane Brosius and Roland Wenzlhuemer, emphasised the need to ask new questions when discussing transcultural flows. The resulting new approach will need to develop new or modify existing concepts, such as ‘origin’, ‘original’ and ‘originality’, or ‘authenticity’, ‘value’, ‘taste’ and ‘distinction’. The ethno- and euro-centricity inherent to many such concepts enforces conventional categories of distinction between indigeneity and hybridity, high and low art, or religious and secular domains. Against this background of problematic concepts, the papers of the conference addressed various forms of visuality. One major focus was the migration of image itineraries in terms of speed and quality, as well as across times and borders, because such migratory movements cause transcultural shifts and ruptures in global media-scapes (Panel 1). Presentations discussed the agency or non-agency of technologies in transnational flows, and addressed the double role of media in these processes, either as carrier of or as the very content of such flows (Panel 2).

The broad spectrum of talks was arranged around two keynote lectures delivered by Sarat Maharaj and Nicholas Mirzoeff. In his opening lecture “Pandemonium Asia: Shifts and Surges in the Flow of Images, Media and Info-Data” SARAT MAHARAJ (London/Lund) addressed the nature of globally disseminated flows of visualities in their undetermined directions. Our contemporary “post-spectacle era” is, according to Maharaj, characterised by “retinal ubiquity”, “everywhereness” or a “twitter gaze”, created by modern technologies like mobile- and i-phones, twitter or digital cameras. Nowadays, flows of images and media cannot be explained in an exclusively linear or laminar way, because they are turbulent and entangled: they assume the characteristic of “digital liquidity”. In order to “unpack today’s ‘image-info-data-media flows’, the issues of disequilibrium, mistranslation and transformation” become of particular importance. Additionally, Maharaj suggested that the transcultural translation of ‘the other’ needs to be re-thought, since ‘the other’ is no longer to be found at the edge of the former empire, but in our midst.

This kind of historical shift in the perception of ‘the other’ caused by global flows of various visualities and media was discerned as a central theme by several other speakers, e.g. by CATHERINE YEH (Boston), who explored the first entertainment newspaper published in Shanghai during late 19th and early 20th centuries. The newspaper coped with cultural asymmetries between China and the West by presenting the outside world as a source of amusement to the Chinese urban reader and by introducing a modern globalized concept of paradise.

TIMON SCREECH (London) also investigated the transnational flow of visual iconography when he elaborated on the migration of elements from the imagery surrounding the Turkish-Christian “Battle of Lepanto” (1571), an event which served as an icon for the battle against an alleged ‘other’. Screech traced some reinterpreted and re-contextualised elements from the European iconography of this important historical event and showed how they found their way into a Japanese folding screen, which was produced around 1600.

A more recent image journey and a striking example of the controversial cultural impacts that transculturally shifting visualities may have stood at the centre of the presentation given by CHRISTIANE BROSIUS (Heidelberg), who discussed the reception and re-contextualisation of Valentine’s Day imagery in India. Using the circulation of “glocalised” romantic love cards and their appropriation by Indian urban middle classes, Brosius showed how new transnational public spheres emerged, where new forms of declarations of love have become possible; she also demonstrated how these new spheres caused local socio-political problems, such as the public burning of Valentine’s Day cards by Hindu nationalists and the counter-action by the Facebook-campaign ‘Pink Chaddie’.

SUSANNE ENDERWITZ (Heidelberg) analysed the comic books “The 99”, named after the 99 names of Allah, to explain the transcultural phenomenon of Islamic iconoclasm inherent to these comics. “The 99” challenge the prevalence of American Supermen, while simultaneously propagating a hybrid amalgam of universal values.

PATRICIA UBEROI (New Delhi) analysed V. Shantaram’s successful movie “Immortal Journey of Dr. Kotnis” (1946) and its Chinese remake “Nightmare in Red China” (1955). Uberoi discussed the movie as a specific instance in the globalised migration of visualities and emphasised its strong impact on the cinematic identity-construction of Chineseness vis-à-vis Indian self-hood in times of troubled relations between India and China.

EVA AMBOS (Heidelberg) demonstrated how present Sinhalese healing rituals are shifting, because the Sri Lankan media and government transformed the content and visual performance of these rituals so as to aid the reconfiguration of Sinhalese national identity. The dances that are central to these traditionally enacted healing rituals now predominantly serve as demonstrations of national heritage and as a marker of cultural distinction for the Sinhalese self.

SUN LIYING (Heidelberg) illustrated a process of transculturation in her analysis of the way in which images of nude Western women were reinterpreted in China in the mid 1920s. The publication of Western nudes in the Chinese pictorial “Beiyang huabao” from 1926 onwards had a decisive impact on the perception of nude images by presenting them as high-art. The depicted women became popular icons and represented Western civilization to much of the pictorial’s audience.

Two lectures focused on the transcultural nature of cosmopolitan imagery: MADELEINE HERREN-OESCH (Heidelberg) undertook a historical analysis of notions of cosmoplitanism and their changes: After the First World War, a variety of international diplomatic institutions emerged in places such as Geneva and with it a group of border-crossing cosmopolitans. On the basis of official lists of their personal belongings Herren-Oesch showed how these diplomats’ cultural and national background became less important in defining their identity than material and symbolic signifiers shared by their group.

In her presentation on "Visual Flows and the Art of Cosmopolitism” ALEXANDRA CHANG (New York) focused on three contemporary artists of Asian background: Ma Jun, David Diao and Tomokazu Matsuyama. She explored the aesthetic overlaps in their works which not only conflate Western and Asian imagery, but help to create a transcultural space of an ‘elsewhere community’ in order to reconfirm the artists’ ‘home’.

Other speakers dealt with religious and secular transcultural iconoclasms in different historical periods. EVA ZHANG (Heidelberg) spoke on the efforts by Christian missionaries in China and Japan to convert the “pagan” Asians by merging depictions of Guanyin, the Chinese bodhisattva of compassion and Virgin Mary. Zhang exposed the different layers of meaning ascribed to these icons as well as the processes of reinterpreting religious imagery that took place during the early modern Christian missions in Asia.

ALEXANDER HENN (Arizona) discussed the “iconoclash” of religious images, more precisely the pictorial embodiment of Catholic and Hindu saints and deities in wayside shrines in Goa since the 19th century. Particularly the depiction of the goddesses represented in these shrines are in constant flux and mirror the cultural, social as well as the physical mobility not only of religious ideas and practices, but also of people in urban environments.

SUMATI RAMASWAMY (Durham) illustrated the virtual journey of the Statue of Liberty from New York via China to New Delhi, where this icon of democracy transformed into a new goddess for the Indian Dalits (the untouchable caste in India). By drawing on Michael Taussig’s concept of “mimesis and alterity”, Ramaswamy investigated the history of “Miss Liberty” by revealing the transcultural image chain as well as the myriad attributions produced around this figure.

MONICA JUNEJA (Heidelberg) was one of the speakers who raised methodological questions of transculturality. She traced the entanglements of visual regimes and inter-pictorial references across European and Asian cultures in North Indian pictorials from the 16th century, which depict a 13th century Persian literary work about Plato and Aristotle. Juneja focussed on the process of transculturality and how iconographic elements, once transferred to other cultures, become sites of semantic negotiations.

Another contribution that addressed methodology came from HANS HARDER (Heidelberg), who analysed the “Mudgarandcharit”, a half historical, half satirical Hindi text with elements of science fiction written by Ramavatar Sharma in early 20th century India. Harder suggested approaching ‘transculturality’ as a process where cultural flows are packed into frames. Accordingly, he discussed Indian writing as an example of knowledge production flowing from Europe to India and, more specifically, of a transcultural historical panopticum.

By drawing on the concept of “cinephilia”, AJAY SINHA (South Hadley) explored the temporal, rather than the spatial entanglements of transnational media flows. By discussing an Indian contemporary artist, Pushpamala, in relation to Siegfried Kracauer’s concepts of susceptibility and complicity, Sinha disclosed the intertextual and intervisual ties of her works and, moreover, the mimetic relations between images and bodies.

In his evening lecture "The Flow and The Flood: Mediation, Migration, Circulation and Climate Change” NICHOLAS MIRZOEFF (New York) referred to the connections between transcultural images and global imagery. He claimed that modernity and the “biopolitical mediation of the ‘natural’”, or the circulation of goods as the negotiation of resources, is inextricably connected with the process of climate change. This is why, Mirzoeff argues, the global imagination revolves around climate scenarios, in which the projected future emerges from the experiences of the past and present.

Two lectures addressed the question of how technologies and media shape the content of messages: In her diachronic approach to intercontinental telegraphy in South Asia, AMELIA BONEA (Heidelberg) investigated the possibilities and limitations of this medium in nineteenth-century colonial India. Bonea investigated how the new technology of the telegraph influenced the nature of messages as well as the communications of the agents who used it.

MIO WAKITA (Heidelberg) discussed the making of Japanese feminity in Meiji Souvenir photography and demonstrated how photography, as a visual medium of modernity, was adapted in Japan by generating a new visual semantics of images. In her case study of Meiji photographic practices in the late 19th century Wakita traced the asymmetries in the concept of photography and the contested meanings of photographic texts in Japan and Europe.

The Annual Conference ‘Flows of Images and Media’ ended with a lively, innovative and productive plenary discussion about the methodological and analytical ground shared by the many participants from their various disciplines. The papers presented at the conference not only underlined, but also answered the urgency of studying ‘transculturality’. The participants concluded that transculturality needs in-depth investigation not only of visual flows and asymmetries as such, but also of their substance and their various meanings in different cultural contexts. In our “post-spectacular times” (Maharaj), visualities act as mediators, while people become agents behind and within these transcultural flows of agents, objects and processes made visible by media and images. Yet flows are hard to trace: they are not linear, but complex and entwined. Still, the concept provides scholars with a methodological tool that helps grasp the fluid and complex nature of entangled societies in a global context.

Conference overview:
Opening Lecture: Sarat Maharaj (London/Lund): Pandemonium Asia: Shifts and Surges in the Flow of Images, Media and Info-Data Panel One: Approaching the Field of Visuality and Media Monica Juneja (Heidelberg): Plato Plays Music to the Animals: Interpictorial Practice as a Dimension of Transcultural Visuality Christiane Brosius (Heidelberg): Love in the Age of Valentine and Pink Underwear: Negotiating Romantic Love and the Asymmetries of Transcultural Image and Media Flows Madeleine Herren-Oesch (Heidelberg): The Cosmopolitans' Visual Illusions. Conceptual Transculturality in Global History Patricia Uberoi (New Delhi): Inter-Asian Circuits: Popular Prints and their Circuits in China and India Alexandra Chang (New York): Visual Flows and the Art of Cosmopolitanism: Ma Jun, David Diao and Tomokazu Matsuyama Panel Two: Heavenly Bodies Timon Screech (London): The Battle of Lepanto as a Flowing Image Hans Harder (Heidelberg): Transcultural Mock History from India? Ramavatar Sharma’s Puzzling Mudgaranandcharit (1912-13) Catherine Yeh (Boston): Guides to Paradise: Entertainment Newspapers, Visual Wander and the Invention of Leisure Susanne Enderwitz (Heidelberg): The 99’: Islamic Superheroes? Keynote Lecture: Nicholas Mirzoeff (New York): The Flow and The Flood: Mediation, Migration, Circulation and Climate Change Panel Three: Circulating Icons Alexander Henn (Arizona): Iconic Encounters: Images and Shrines in Goa Eva Zhang (Heidelberg): Kannon – Guanyin – Virgin Mary: Early Modern Discourses on Alterity, Religion and Images Sumathi Ramaswamy (Durham): The Work of Goddesses in the Age of Technological Reproduction Eva Ambos (Heidelberg): The Changing Image of Sinhalese Healing Rituals: Performing Identity in New Public Spheres Panel Four: Floating Technoscapes Ajay Sinha (South Hadley): Haunted Relationships and Cinephilic Imagination in India? Amelia Bonea (Heidelberg): The Telegraph as Medium and Mediator in Nineteenth-Century Colonial India Sun Liying (Heidelberg): An Exotic Self? Flows of Western Nude Images in the Pei-yang Pictorial News (1926-1933) Mio Wakita (Heidelberg/Tokyo): Photography in Meiji Japan and the Making of the Icons of “National Femininity”: Re-Examining Female Images in Meiji Souvenir Photography Closing Statements and Final Discussion Sarat Maharaj (London/Lund) Nicholas Mirzoeff (New York) Christiane Brosius (Heidelberg) Nic Leonhardt (Heidelberg) Roland Wenzlhuemer (Heidelberg) Note: [1] Nicholas Mirzoeff (ed.), The Visual Culture Reader. Second fully revised edition, London 2002 (Original publication 1997), p. 477.
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