The Empress Club pres: Lecture by Larisa Mann aka DJ Ripley (US)

"Intimacy in exilic spaces : property and propriety in the Jamaican street dance"

http://djripley.blogspot.co.at/

Marginalized people have always relied on “exilic spaces” for survival and renewal. Spaces are exilic when their existence depends on remaining *outside* existing rules of order, including property law, propriety, gender, sexuality or national/ethnic categories. Inside exilic spaces, marginalized people build identities and communities of healing and autonomous culture. Exilic spaces can foster a kind of intimacy in which marginalized people can reconfigure or subvert the stigmatized aspects of their social position. “Rudeness” becomes respectability, the “badman” becomes a “don,” the licentious woman asserts her sexual and physical autonomy… and the “imitator” becomes the originator. Exilic spaces don’t erase categories, but provide shelter within which people can perform, subvert and challenge them through playful activities. This play requires flexibility of intellectual property, physical property, zoning law, and international borders. In Jamaica, free street parties are the explosively creative heart of Jamaican popular music. They are exilic spaces where the urban poor majority of Jamaica had authority and autonomy from dominant culture. As media technologies like video cameras and social media increasingly infiltrate every aspect of daily life, the borders of exilic space can break down and street dances can lose their ability to resist mainstream cultural norms. Thus, solving the “digital divide” for poor people can end up harming their ability to survive on their own terms.

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