Fractured Scenes

Fractured Scenes
Author: Damien Charrieras
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2021-03-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9811559139

Fractured Scenes is the first extensive academic account of music and sound art practices that fall outside of the scope of ‘mainstream music’ in Hong Kong. It combines academic essays with original interviews conducted with prominent Hong Kong underground/independent musicians and sound artists as well as first hand-accounts by key local scene actors in order to survey genres such as experimental/noise music, deconstructed electronic music, indie-pop, punk, garage rock, sound art and DIY ‘computer’ music (among others). It examines these Hong Kong underground music practices in relief with specific case studies in Mainland China and Japan to begin re-defining the notion of a ‘musical underground’ in the context of contemporary Hong Kong.

Crime Scene Asia

Crime Scene Asia
Author: Liz Porter
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2018-06-01
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1925675475

Crime Scene Asia is a casebook written by award winning Australian Author Liz Porter of fascinating true stories throughout Asia. Its opening case begins when the body of a woman is found in a Singapore nature park. Nobody has reported her missing. Nobody knows who she is. The only clue to her identity is a set of tiny numbers etched into a series of implants in her teeth. Police door-knock the dentists of Singapore until they find the one who treated her. Then, following a trail of numbers called from her phone, they unmask her killer. In another case, set 300 kms away, in Kuala Lumpur, a married man is arrested for the murder of his mistress. Police are adamant that he is her killer. But the man’s lawyer can point to forensic evidence that tells a different story altogether. Meanwhile one of the book’s Hong Kong cases tells the story of a humble truck driver facing jail for his apparent involvement in a bombing plot allegedly masterminded by two of the former British colony’s most notorious gangsters. Then the evidence of a forensic scientist sets him free.

China's Avant-Garde, 1978–2018

China's Avant-Garde, 1978–2018
Author: Daria Berg
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2022-11-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000647048

This book examines how China’s new generation of avant-garde writers and artists are pushing the boundaries of vernacular culture, creatively appropriating artistic and literary languages from global cultures to reflect on reform-era China’s transformation and the Maoist heritage. It explores the vortex of cultural change from the launch of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978 to Xi Jinping establishing his leadership for life in 2018. The book argues that China’s new avant-garde adopt transcultural forms of expression while challenging the official discourse of Xi Jinping’s regime, which promotes cultural nationalism and demands that cultural production in China embodies the essence of the "Chinese nation". The topics range from body art, women’s poetry and boys’ love literature to Tibetan fiction and ceramic art. The book shows how the avant-garde use the new digital media to bypass government censorship, transcending China’s virtual frontiers while breaking new ground for an emerging public sphere. Overall, the book provides a rich picture of the nature of China’s avant-garde art and literature and the challenges it poses for the Chinese government. The introduction and chapter 10 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Rethinking Visual Narratives from Asia

Rethinking Visual Narratives from Asia
Author: Alexandra Green
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2013-01-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 988813910X

Rethinking Visual Narratives covers topics from the first millennium B.C.E. through the present day, testifying to the enduring significance of visual stories in shaping and affirming cultural practices in Asia. Contributors analyze how visual narratives function in different Asian cultures and reveal the multiplicity of ways that images can be narrated beyond temporal progression through a particular space. The study of local art forms advances our knowledge of regional iterations and theoretical boundaries, illustrating the enduring importance of pictorial stories to the cultural traditions of Asia. Contributors include Dominik Bonatz (Archaeologist Free University of Berlin), Sandra Cate (San Jose State University), Yonca Kösebay Erkan (Kadir Has University), Charlotte Galloway (Australian National University), Mary Beth Heston (College of Charleston), Yeewan Koon (The University of Hong Kong), Sonya S. Lee (University of Southern California), Leedom Lefferts (Drew University), Dore J. Levy (Brown University), Shane McCausland (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), Julia K. Murray (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Catherine Stuer (Denison University), Greg M. Thomas (The University of Hong Kong), Sarah E. Thompson (Rochester Institute of Technology), and Mary-Louise Totton (Western Michigan University).

Asia's Population Problems

Asia's Population Problems
Author: S. Chandrasekhar
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2022-11-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000777367

Asia's Population Problems (1967) features papers written by specialists – demographers, economists and sociologists – examining the various population issues facing different Asian countries in the decades following the Second World War. Population facts and policies, apart from affecting an individual’s happiness and security and a nation’s economic and social advancement, have come to play an important role in international relations. A proper understanding of demographic trends is key, and this volume aims to supply significant population facts and figures, and also provides the general national, economic and political framework of each country against which certain international demographic attitudes, approaches and policies may be understood.

Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia
Author: Jeremy Atiyah
Publisher: Rough Guides
Total Pages: 1338
Release: 2002
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 9781858288932

The Rough Guides series contain full color photos, three maps in one, and arewaterproof and tearproof. They contain thousands of keyed listings and brightnew graphics.

Redacted

Redacted
Author: Jonathan E. Abel
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2012-08-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520273346

This study examines the contradictory relationships between preservation, production, and redaction to shed light on the dark valley attributed to wartime culture and to cast a shadow on the supposedly bright, open space of free postwar discourse.

Shelley and the Musico-Poetics of Romanticism

Shelley and the Musico-Poetics of Romanticism
Author: Jessica K. Quillin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2016-03-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317055543

Addressing a gap in Shelley studies, Jessica K. Quillin explores the poet's lifelong interest in music. Quillin connects the trope of music with Shelley's larger formal aesthetic, political, and philosophical concerns, showing that music offers a new critical lens through which to view such familiar Shelleyan concerns as the status of the poetic, figural language, and the philosophical problem posed by idealism versus skepticism. Quillin's book uncovers the implications of Shelley's use of music by means of four musico-poetic concerns: the inherently interdisciplinary nature of musical imagery and figurative language; the rhythmic and sonoric dimensions of poetry; the extension of poetry into the performative realms of the theatre and drawing room through close links between most poetic genres and music; and the transformation of poetry into music through the setting and adaptation of poetic lyrics to music. Ultimately, Quillin argues, Shelley exhibits a fundamental recognition of an interdependence between music and poetry which is expressed in the form and content of his highly sonorous works. Equating music with love allows him to create a radical model in which poetry is the highest form of imaginative expression, one that can affect the mind and the senses at once and potentially bring about the perfectibility of mankind through a unique mode of visionary experience.

Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music

Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music
Author: Andrew McGraw
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2022-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 150176523X

Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music showcases the breadth and complexity of the music of Indonesia. By bringing together chapters on the merging of Batak musical preferences and popular music aesthetics; the vernacular cosmopolitanism of a Balinese rock band; the burgeoning underground noise scene; the growing interest in kroncong in the United States; and what is included and excluded on Indonesian media, editors Andrew McGraw and Christopher J. Miller expand the scope of Indonesian music studies. Essays analyzing the perception of decline among gamelan musicians in Central Java; changes in performing arts patronage in Bali; how gamelan communities form between Bali and North America; and reflecting on the "refusion" of American mathcore and Balinese gamelan offer new perspectives on more familiar topics. Sounding Out the State of Indonesian Music calls for a new paradigm in popular music studies, grapples with the imperative to decolonialize, and recognizes the field's grounding in diverse forms of practice.