[Reader-list] Workshop on "Changing Popular Visual Cultures of Muslim Shrines"

[Tasveer Ghar]

This is in invitation for those situated in and around Heidelberg,
Germany, this week:

Your are cordially invited to workshop on
Changing Popular Visual Cultures of Muslim Shrines: Transcultural
Flows and Urban Spaces

Dates: June 4-5, 2010
Venue: Karl Jaspers Centre, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

Under the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context:
Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows"
Principle Coordinators: Yousuf Saeed, Christiane Brosius

South Asia’s Islamic Sufi shrines (known as dargah, aastana, takia,
mazar, or maqbara) are unique institutions of religious pilgrimage
usually centred around the grave or mausoleum of an important Sufi
saint of the past. The shrines are visited by Muslims and non-Muslims
alike, who come here for spiritual salvation as well as to pray for
their common needs and problems related to health, wealth, marital
issues, and even occult practices. While a Muslim mosque does not
allowed many social and informal activities and rituals, a Sufi shrine
provides a more relaxed space for social interaction, emotional
expression of one’s individual piety, and a physical medium (such as a
grave) or meeting with a living spiritual master for an emotional
catharsis. At the arrival of any saint’s urs (death anniversary) each
year, which brings thousand of pilgrims to the shrine from faraway
places, one gets to see many posters and banners announcing the
occasion to the public, containing the schedule of the events in Urdu
or Hindi, including the names of participants (speakers, qawwals), and
few images and decorative borders. All this usually creates a very
vibrant visual culture around each shrine that by itself becomes a
visual medium of devotion and popular piety.

However, the shrines and their vicinities cannot simply be visualized
in a traditional and romantic way – there is much more happening
around them to make the flow and continuity of this visual culture
asymmetrical. The visual and print culture is undergoing
transformation due to various factors that range from ideological
shifts to the changes brought about technology and what one could call
globalization, besides the structural changes to the shrine and
archeological sites themselves. In terms of the ideological shifts,
the most important is the impact of the reformist or the so-called
Wahhabi/Salafi tendencies in contemporary Islam that tend to undermine
the more liberal and rustic traditions of a Sufi shrine. The
technology on the other hand is empowering the producers of
visual/print culture much better and advanced means to disseminate
popular piety and religious discourse among the faithful. But that
empowerment happens on both sides – in the Sufi-based discourses as
well as the reformist literature/narratives. Thus, the ideological
confrontation has probably been heightened by the advancements in
technology and new media. The media, together with “globalization”
also takes these sites to a much wider range of visitors or would-be
visitors all over the world.

This workshop brings together in Heidelberg, Germany, some researchers
from South Asia and the rest of the world to present their stories of
the popular visual cultures of Muslim shrines and their shifting
asymmetries in the global context, as part of the Cluster of
Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context” Initiative.

The workshop is open to all those who are interested, however please
do drop us an email latest by 1st June 2010 at
mueller at asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de confirming your participation.

Here is the schedule:

4th June (Friday)

Session 1

10: am – tea and welcome/introduction (by Christiane Brosius/Yousuf Saeed)
10:30 am – Yousuf Saeed: Nizamuddin’s Heritage Buildings and Delhi’s
Urban Face-lift
11:15 am – Sandria Freitag: Sufi Shrines and Built Environments in
Visual Culture
12:00 pm – discussion
12:30 pm-1 pm: Lunch break

Session 2

1: pm – Ingvild Flaskerud: The flow of images to, from, and between Shia shrines
1:45 pm - Udo Simon / Jan Scholz / Max Stille: Reconciling
Misunderstandings: Sufism at the Urs of Inayat Khan
2: 30 pm – Discussion, followed by Coffee
3:15 pm - Screening of documentary film Tasveer-e-Aqeedat, about
Delhi’s Nizamuddin shrine (duration 15 mins)

5th June (Saturday)

Session 3

10: am - Jürgen Wasim Frembgen: From Popular Devotion to Mass Event:
Placards advertising the Pilgrimage to the Sufi Saint Lal Shahbaz
Qalandar in Sehwan Sharif (Sindh/Pakistan)
10: 45 am – Yousuf Saeed: Posters Advertising the Pilgrimage
Ceremonies at North Indian Sufi Shrine
11: 30 am – discussion
12:15 pm – lunch break

Session 4

1: pm – Suboor Bakht: “Chalo Bulawa Aaya hai”: Devotional Music Videos
in Sufi Shrines
1:45 pm - Hans Harder: Maijbhandari Songs on VCD: Translating a
Traditional Genre of Devotional Sufi Songs from Bangladesh into Video
Clips
2:30 pm – discussion (on panel 4) followed by coffee
3:15 pm – final discussion (The future of this initiative)

More details at http://www.tasveergharindia.net/cmsdesk/essay/101/

Kindly forward this mail to those who might be interested. Thanks