talk at Sussex 18 Jan 2008

Venue: Arts A 071, Sussex University at 4pm on friday 18th Jan 2008

Pantomime Terror: Media South Asia as Civil Society Green Zone.

John Hutnyk

Performance studies and scholarship on popular culture has found a new more dangerous context. With terror alerts and constant announcements at train stations and airports in the UK, where the Queen's subjects are called upon to 'report any suspicious baggage'; with stop and search security policing focused upon Muslims (and unarmed Brazilians shot on the London underground); and with restrictions on civil liberties and 'limits' to freedom proclaimed as necessary, it is now clear that spaces for critical debate are mortally threatened in contemporary, tolerant, civilized Britain. This discussion addresses new performance work by diasporic world music stalwarts Fun-da-mental and the drum and bass outfit Asian Dub Foundation, relating to insurgency struggles, anti-colonialism and political freedom in the UK. The presentation will argue for an engaged critique of "culture" and assess a certain distance or gap between political expression and the tamed versions of multiculturalism accepted by/acceptable in the British marketplace. Examples from the music industry reception of 'difficult' music and creative engagement are evaluated in the context of the global terror wars and a new paranoia that appears endemic on the streets of London today...