Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Issue 1 | Page 11

Bani Abidi’s sound installation, “Memorial to Lost Words”, featured at the
���� Edinburgh Art Festival, is an ‘anti-monumental’ work that memorializes
but also reorients. One hundred years after that first great war, Abidi replays
the words Indian soldiers wrote in letters to their families during World
War I alongside the counter narration of Punjabi ballads from women.
The juxtaposed audio presents the centenary of World War I in context
of colonialism and empire in a deeply personal way. Its affect evokes the
residual legacy of British rule, making the old new to a modern audience.
Our theme for this issue, “Performing Culture”, takes its cues from the art
of dialectical storytelling. The eight long and short essays are divided into
three sub-themes, each of which has essays that provide counterpoints to
each other. The first, Witnessing + Memory, highlights the ideas of artist
as a witness (Frank Möller) along with an essay on the artist as purveyors
of memory and its re-exploration (Sorcha Carey). The second theme,
Participation + Hierarchy, explores notion of power in cultural performance
both the top-down world of cultural stratification (Nada Švob-Đokić) and
the bottom-up view of culture participation (Christine Adams and Btihaj
Ajana). Our sub-theme of Performance + Heritage speaks to the creation
and proliferation of the museum as multicultural and transnational actors
in the Abbie Chessler and Patricia Goff essays, while Tim Slade recalls the
experience of creating his documentary on human destruction of cultural
monuments.
With this issue, AIA also begins its formal association with the Institute for
International Cultural Relations at the University of Edinburgh where I serve
as Director. IICR brings interdisciplinary and methodological rigor to the
study of international cultural interactions. IICR is situated in a historical
University and a city known for its culture. AIA’s association with IICR, the
University of Edinburgh and the city of Edinburgh provide an interesting
landscape from which to examine international cultural relations and their
performances.
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Scan here to watch a video of “Memorial to Lost Words”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsosRXQavyA