[Reader-list] Sixties Conference note & Schedule

[rohitrellan at aol.in]

Revisiting the Global 1960s and its CulturalAfterlife 
An Interdisciplinary InternationalConference 
March 4th and 5th, 2011 
  
School of Arts and Aesthetics 
Jawaharlal Nehru University 
New Delhi, India 
  
  
Widelyrecognized not just as a decade but as a cluster of experiences 
that stretchedover a period of time, the sixties as we now know it drew 
into its fold,radical politics, Black power, sexual liberation, 
youthful rebellion, feminismand more. Intellectual currents flowered 
all across the world alongside apowerful critique of cultural and 
political authority. The fourteen day strikeby students and workers in 
Paris in the summer of 1968 acquired a mythicalafterlife. The American 
war in Vietnam triggered a force field of protest andanger all over the 
world. The spirit of counterculture led to a critique of thefamily, the 
creation of alternative lifestyles and drug culture. Latin 
Americanexperiences of revolutions, military terror and violence; 
colonialism,anti-colonialism and racial oppression in Africa; the 
resonance of the CulturalRevolution in China – these reverberated 
locally and globally. A series ofpolitical assassinations rocked the 
decade. All theories of civilization, race,history, politics, culture 
and identity were put to test. 
  
Itwould not be incorrect to suggest that cultural creativity was never 
quite thesame after the sixties. Music, fashion, design, art, 
architecture, cinema,theatre and performance bear the marks and the 
traces of this turbulent periodof global upheaval. If Minimalism in art 
practice emerged as a challenge to PopArt then Conceptual Art posed a 
critique of formalism. Modernism and theAvant-garde faced a crisis with 
the rise of Postmodernism while in India, thedominance of the 
Progressives began to be challenged by an alternativemodernism that had 
a polemical take on indigenism; one aspect of this developedinto 
neo-Tantric abstraction. This decade also saw the first explorations 
ofkitsch and popular culture that later provided the point of rupture 
with modernismitself. Politicaltheatre acquired a powerful force and 
Brecht emerged as a new icon for both theWest and the post colonial 
world. Beatlemania and the events of Woodstocktransformed the future of 
rock music as technology reinvented the aesthetics ofperformance and 
reception. All Institutions of art faced political criticism evenas 
cinephilia energized a renewed global art cinema movement. 
MichelangeloAntonioni captured the world of swinging London in Blow-Up, 
Jean Luc Godard playfully moved the camera to mount hiscritique of 
Hollywood, and the release of the first James Bond film gave riseto a 
new territorial and technological imagination. Latin America gave birth 
tothe Third Cinema Movement and a politically charged Aesthetics of 
Hunger whilein Indiathe New Wave presented a challenge to mainstream 
film forms and practices. 
  
Thestudy of the sixties is not new and has produced a vast amount of 
academic,journalistic and popular writing. Numerous conferences and 
commemorations havebeen held in different parts of the world. This 
conference does not wish torepeat the fairly exhaustive assessments 
already in existence. Nor does it wishto undertake a nostalgic journey 
into the past. Rather we wish to bringtogether academics to reflect on 
and assess the transformative force of the1960s specifically on art, 
cinema, theatre, music and cultural theory. Thethree streams of Visual 
Studies, Theatre and Performance Studies and CinemaStudies at the 
School of Arts and Aesthetics in JNU are uniquely placed to hostthis 
interdisciplinary conference in a country where the 1960s remains an 
understudiedarea despite two wars, the crisis of Nehruvian nationalism 
and modernizationprogrammes, the genocide and traumatic birth of a new 
nation (Bangladesh) andrevolutionary upsurges. While the focus of the 
conference remains global wehope it will also play a role in generating 
a renewed discussion on the subcontinent’srelationship to the global 
sixties. 
  
Conference Committee: 
  
RanjaniMazumdar (Convenor), Kavita Singh, Ira Bhaskar, Parul Dave 
Mukherji andBishnupriya Dutt 
 
 
Conference Programme 
  
Friday, March 4, 2011 
  
9.30 - 10.00 - Registration and Tea 
  
10.00 - 10.15 - Deans Opening Remarks 
  
10.15 – 10.30 - Conference Convener’s Remarks 
  
10.30 – 1.30 
Panel 1: Confronting Modernist Practice in the 1960s 
  
Chair/Discussant: Shuddhabrata Sengupta 
  
1. Mark Betz: Black and White in Color: The Long Front of Race in 
Postcolonial European Cinema 
2. Nikhil Yadav: Prayer-Protest-Peace: Civil Rights Movement and the 
Jazz Avant-Garde in 60s America 
3. Avinoam Shalem: Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Great Dam of Aswan and the 
surrealist artist Abdel Hadi al-Gazzar 
  
1.30 – 2.30: Lunch 
  
2.30 – 4.30 
Panel 2:  Popular Culture and the Traces of History 
  
Chair/Discussant: Ravi Vasudevan 
  
1. Stella Bruzzi: Approximation: Mad Men and the death of JFK 
2. Giti Chandra: Music and War: The Silence of the 60s 
  
4.30 – 4.45: Tea 
  
4.45 - 6.45 
Panel 3: Notes from Two Indian Cities 
  
Chair/Discussant: Tapati Guha Thakurta 
  
1. Ranjit Hoskote: “I may yet observe my own birth”: Annotating Bombay 
in the 1960s, the 1960s in Bombay 
2. Rajarshi Dasgupta & Mallarika Sinha Roy: A Culture of Beheading: The 
Theatrical Politics of the 60s in Bengal 
  
7.00 – 8.30 – The Sound of 60s Music: Played by Five 8 and Friends. 
 
Saturday, March 5, 2011 
  
10.00 – 10.30 - Tea 
  
10.30 – 1.30   
Panel 4: Critical Encounters 
  
            Chair/Discussant: Gayatri Sinha 
  
1. Geeta Kapur: Vagabondage: artandlife in the sixties 
2. May Joseph: Between the Hudson River and the Yamuna: Harmattan 
Theatre and Riverscapes 
3. Amlan Dasgupta: North Indian Classical Music and “World” Music” in 
the 1960s 
  
1.30 – 2.30: Lunch 
  
2.30 - 5.30 
Panel 5: The Circuits of Cultural Exchange 
  
Chair/Discussant: Shuddhabrata Sengupta 
  
1. Irit Rogoff: Conceptual Art in the 1960s 
2. Richard Allen: Hitchcock and the Sixties: Sexuality and Film Style 
3. Greg Booth: The Hindi Film Song in a Global 1960s 
5.30:   Closing and Vote of Thanks 
5.45: High Tea 
 
-- 
Ranjani Mazumdar 
Associate Professor 
Cinema Studies 
School of Arts and Aesthetics 
Jawaharlal Nehru University 
New Delhi 110067