It has been almost 5 years since the last essay! Even though I occasionally share stuff I find interesting and related to this project, I haven’t shared my thoughts on what I’m working on and going through. As mentioned in the last essay I wrote, this project is not synonymous …
Previously on DIYCD: Apart from accumulating, arranging and producing cultural content, time is inevitably devoted to figuring out how to maneuver in this new predicament, as it modifies institutionalized routines, expectations and possibilities on a day-to-day basis. It demands that we adjust, but for how long? At what point does …
I want to take a moment to appreciate and substantiate the work by a YouTube channel called The Black Experience Japan. I’ve been following it for some years now and I am amazed by the diversity of stories and experiences that are given time and space to be expressed and …
Swedish Cultural Diplomacy is a government run transmedia program, partly based on the ambition to internationalize Swedish culture. Judging from Kulturrådsbloggen – the cultural attachés’ blog – the cultural attaché appear as bound to a particular cultural infrastructure. This infrastructure consists of the embassy, the concert hall, the opera, the …
Samples have histories. Rappers have histories. Slang, flows, and dance moves and drum patterns all have histories. BARS and neighborhoods also have histories. In Hip Hop, various histories are proudly put on display and celebrated, and sometimes openly contested1. One can apply the same methodology to diplomacy. In this entry …
Let’s venture off to new areas! Here are 16 music videos from 16 different countries across the world, from various artists rapping in their own language and saying “Gang Gang” in the chorus. Now extrapolate! Related:
As soon as the Covid-19 situation in China made headlines back in January, I followed it closely since I had planned to be there in March. That trip was cancelled in February. The ambition was to get familiar with music scenes in at least Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu; to map …
The specificity of the modern political and cultural formation I want to call the black Atlantic can be defined, on one level, through this desire to transcend both the structures of the nation state and the constraints of ethnicity and national particularity. These desires are relevant to understanding political organising …
Hip Hop Intellectual Resistance by A. Shahid Stover is not the point of departure for DIY Cultural Diplomacy, but it may be its attempt. I subscribe to the general postcolonial idea that resistance can vary in form and outcome. The term’s ambiguity is acceptable because it does well with recognizing …