Past Events
Photography as art and documentary strategy: recording catastrophe and neglect, resilience and revival in Indonesia.
by Jennifer Dudley
Date: 24 October 2008
Time: 3.30pm-4.30pm
Venue: Humanities Boardroom 209.214
All welcome
Most of us are fascinated by the drama of revolution and large scale social involvement in political change. Since the birth of photography in 1839, such events have always spawned images rich in heroics, triumph and tragedy. However, this presentation builds on foundations established by my thesis which considers some of the less glamorous, more fraught interstices between art and society. These include the contributions made by artists towards the attitudinal and social changes leading to Reformasi and its influence on their work at the time and since. The presentation also pursues a direction revealed in recent research on the television news in Indonesia, published in my 2006 paper, Considering the national interest, conveying the public interest and opinion, flagging critique: screen-based Indonesian newscasting in the era of Reform on URL; http://www.mediaasiaconference.humanities.curtin.edu.au/ (see papers)
In this instance, I reference two photographic projects arising from very different sources. The first is a formally co-ordinated community photographic project run in conjunction with the World Bank funded PEKKA program which aimed to improve the situation of female-headed households in Indonesia. The project was co-ordinated by Maria del Carmen Cossu and one of Indonesia’s foremost commercial and art photographers, Poriaman Sitanggang, who taught photographic skills to an army of widows in several disadvantaged areas of Indonesia. But I also consider the contribution made by the many often un-named photographers who spontaneously recorded the devastation wrought by the earthquake and volcanic eruption in Yogyakarta in 2006, as well as life during the aftermath and the subsequent rebuilding of their communities. Their work was instantly posted on websites associated with the Media Centres integral to the relief effort. How did these photographic projects contribute to the communities in which they transpired and what benefits accrued to those who participated in them as photographers?
Jennifer Dudley is an artist and filmmaker who has recently completed her Ph D in Asian Studies at Murdoch University in Western Australia. Her special area is the contemporary visual arts and documentary film in Indonesia and their social context. Previously she lived and worked in South Australia, New South Wale and briefly, in the Northern Territory. She first visited Indonesia in 1970, returning to live, work and study art in Yogyakarta between late 1972 and 1974. Many visits, projects and art works later, she decided to follow her passions for film and Indonesia, relocating to Fremantle after having been accepted for postgraduate studies at Murdoch. She has taught Visual Art and more recently Media in several different Universities, including Curtin University of Technology.
Her Academic publications are listed on her website, http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~jdudley
RUSSIC Seminar
Montserrat, Small Island, Big Change: A case study of physical, social, developmental and political change in the Caribbean
Date: Friday November 7, 2008
Time: 3-4pm in Humanities Boardroom, Curtin University, Building 209 Room 214.
All welcome
Presenter
Professor Tracey Skelton
Affiliations
Professor of Critical Geographies, Department of Geography, Loughborough University, UK, and
Associate Professor of Human Geography, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Abstract
This presentation will focus on the Caribbean island of Montserrat where I have conducted ethnographic, longitudinal, qualitative research since the mid 1980s. It is structured in two parts.
First it introduces Montserrat and describes the current situation of an island experiencing intense change on all fronts. Geographically, Montserrat is in the Eastern Caribbean island chain and since 1995 has been totally disrupted by an active andesite volcano. Politically, the island is a British Overseas Territory and consequently all re-development initiatives since 1997 have been the responsibility of Britain’s Department for International Development (DfID) (1995 – 1997 the responsibility was with the Overseas Development Administration). It remains a colony in a post-colonial region. Socially and culturally Montserrat is home to people of African descent, descended from Irish and British slavery plantation systems, deeply religious (evangelical Christian sects) and with extremely strong senses of community. Marriage rates are less than 30% and households are matrifocal. Economically, the island was, prior to 1995 one of the region’s success stories and had been out of budgetary aid for over a decade receiving just £1million per year for development aid from the UK Government. Currently the island faces extreme economic difficulties, is heavily dependent on aid from the UK Government and has lost almost half its population to migration as people fled the volcano but mostly the appalling living conditions caused through evacuation.
Second I will explore the ways in which the changes wrought have been due to highly complex and interlocking events and processes from 1995 to the present. These include: the volcanic natural hazard that erupted; the evacuation procedures and crisis management strategies adopted; the particular re-/under-development approaches taken by DfID and the British Government; the interplay of local, regional and global processes in which the island is enmeshed.
Biography
Tracey Skelton is con-currently Professor of Critical Geographies at Loughborough University, UK and Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore. She has had a tangential link with development and debates about global processes for some time. She co-edited Culture and Global Change (with Tim Allen, Routledge, 1998) and edited Introduction to the Pan-Caribbean (Arnold Press, 2004). Montserrat, and its connection with globalisation, development and cultural change, has featured in three distinct chapters in the three editions of Globalization: Theory and Practice (1996, 2003, 2008 edited by Eleonore Kofman and Gillian Youngs, Continuum Press). Her other area of research expertise is in children’s and young people’s geographies; social identity; social exclusion and resistance. She has published work independently (and with Gill Valentine) in geography journals including Political Geography; Environment and Planning A and D; International Journal of Urban and Regional Research; Canadian Geographer; Space and Polity; European Journal of Development Research; Children’s Geographies.
Efficiency and Income Impacts of the Techno-Gabay Program on Rice Farms in Leyte, Philippines
Date: Friday November 21
Time: 3-4pm, Humanities Boardroom, Curtin University Building 209 Room 214
Presenter
Dr Fe Gabunada
Affiliation
Postdoctoral Fellow, Muresk Institute, Curtin University of Technology.
Abstract
Dr Fe Gabunada’s presentation will focus on the findings of a project on the Techno-Gabay Program (TGP) - an innovation systems-based modality for technology upscaling in the Philippines. Fe will describe TGP’s implementation framework and modalities and the key actors and strategic linkages that define the working relationships among these actors. The efficiency and income impacts of the Techno-Gabay Program on rice farmers will also be explored. Following Battese and Coelli’s (1995) specification, the study estimated a stochastic production frontier function with an inefficiency effects model to determine the technical efficiency impact of the TGP. The innovation systems variables that significantly explain farm efficiency were identified and factor shares and payments that show changes in production structure and farm income with the advent of TGP were calculated. Finally, the impact pathway of the TGP from changes in farm efficiency, harvest/ yield and eventually, to changes in farm income of rice farmers will be outlined during the seminar.
Biography
Dr. Fe M. Gabunada is a postdoctoral fellow at Muresk Institute, Curtin University of Technology, working on a Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre – funded project on desert businesses. Prior to her appointment with Muresk, she worked with the Visayas State University in Visca, Baybay, Leyte, Philippines. She obtained her PhD degree at the University of the Philippines in Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines majoring in Agricultural Economics (specializing in Resource Economics). She has more than 20 years of participatory research and development experience, working in interdisciplinary teams for smallholder farmers in the Philippines. Her research interests include production economics, resource and environmental economics, adoption as well as impact and policy studies.
Crossing Borders
4th and 5th February 2007
Curtin University of Technology Sarawak campus, Miri
Call for Expressions of Interest
The Research Unit for Study of Societies in Change (RUSSIC), Curtin University, with the support of Curtin University, Sarawak campus, invites you to participate in a two-day conference entitled Crossing Borders to be held at Curtin's Sarawak campus in Miri.
The main conference aims are:
Provide a forum to share ideas on "Borders" research scholarship, with a special emphasis on Borneo and the neighboring region.
Encourage collaborative comparative research on "Borders" issues, relating to Borneo and the neighboring region in particular.
Develop scholarly networks in "Borders" research.
Assist early career researchers in enhancing their academic knowledge and expertise, relating to "Borders" research in particular.
The conference will bring together participants from different disciplines working on "Borders"-related topics. The main themes include:
(Re-)Defining Borders.
Borders: Sites of Inclusion and Exclusion.
(Re-)Mapping Borders: The Geo-Politics of Space.
Imagined Border Communities.
The (Re-)Formation of Border Identities.
Cultural Capital Production in Border Contexts.
Borders as Emerging Economies.
Borders: Zones of (In)Security.
Borders: Sites of Human-Environmental Interaction.
Borders and the Politics of Globalisation.
Borders within borders.
Changing borders and border crossings.
Borders of distinction: Cultural, language and social capital in Borneo and its region.
Managing and mapping border lands.
Borders as sites of human-environmental interaction.
Borders as imagined futures.
Dissolving and shifting borders.
Borderless worlds.
Please circulate this information to all relevant networks.
Contact: Anne-Marie Hilsdon a.hilsdon@curtin.edu.au
Indonesia Book Launch invitation [25.37 KB]
2006 Seminar Series
"The glaciers on Ruwenzori are melting, Kilimanjoro's snow will be gone and Lake Victoria's water level is receding: What can history tell us about the cost of development?"
Presenter: Adjunct Professor Cherry Gertzel
Date:
15th September 2006
Time: 4.00 -5.00 pm
Venue: Humanities Board Room, Building 209, Curtin University, Bentley Campus.
The paper is a work in progress, and Prof Gertzel will welcome feedback.
Past Seminars:
2006 Semester Series Semester 1
'Redefining the Bumiputra Policy For the Kadazandusuns of Sabah, Malaysia'.
2005 Seminar Series Semester 1
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30 March 2005
' Cocoa price support policy in PNG: big farmers versus small farmers'. -
June 2005
' Filipino Women, Migration and Violence in Australia: Lived Reality and Media Image'.
2005 Seminar Series Semester 2
