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Cities Imaginaries Lecture 2019: Sonjah Stanley Niaah

16 May 2019, 6:30 pm–8:00 pm

Sonja Stanley Niaah image

UCL Urban Laboratory hosts the 2019 Cities Imaginaries lecture with Dr Sonjah Stanley Niaah on the evolution of dancehall performance within and beyond Kingston, Jamaica.

This event is free.

Event Information

Open to

All

Availability

Yes

Cost

Free

Organiser

Jordan Rowe

Location

Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre
Wilkins Building
15 Gordon Street
London
WC1H 0AH
United Kingdom

Join UCL Urban Laboratory for the annual Cities Imaginaries lecture, this year by Sonjah Stanley Niaah, head of the Institute of Caribbean Studies at the University of the West Indies.

‘Prime Time’ Geographies: Dancehall Performance, Visual Communication and the Philosophy of 'Boundarylessness'

The video camera, more popularly known in Jamaica as the ‘videolight’, forms part of the popular mechanism for channelling images and messages of / from Jamaican popular culture into ‘prime time’ visibility, both inside and beyond Jamaica. Using boundarylessness as a theoretical point of departure, this presentation expands research I have conducted on the phenomenon of the ‘videolight’, the making of dancehall celebrities, and the evolution of the dancehall performance aesthetic afforded by the spectacle of, and for the videolight.

Premised on over fifteen years of research examining a period of over sixty years, and using a combination of participant observation, visual ethnography, case studies and content analysis, I establish that dancehall celebrities of urban Kingston are produced and catapulted into the global domain on their own terms using creative performance modes that communicate first at the community level as they simultaneously establish a world wide web of performance practice beyond the inner-city. Ultimately, I analyse the unique ways in which this music and its videoscape provide agency and mobility for largely disenfranchised youth, their messages and lifestyles behind and in front of the ‘videolight’.

While a focus on urban visualscapes characterized by reggae and dancehall has been largely under-represented in the scholarship on cultural geography, communication and visual culture studies broadly, this presentation positions the context of amateur dancehall video creation vis a vis professional video commercialisation in contemporary debates about cultural geography and visual culture.

Sonjah Stanley Niaah is the head of the Institute of Caribbean Studies at the University of the West Indies (UWI) at Mona, Jamaica. She has been teaching and researching Black Atlantic performance geographies, ritual, dance, popular culture and the sacred, cultural studies theory and Caribbean cultural studies for many years. She is the author of 'Dancehall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto' (2010, University of Ottawa Press), and is a leading author on Jamaican popular culture, and Caribbean Cultural Studies more broadly, having published over twenty articles and book chapters in numerous journals and edited collections locally, regionally and internationally.

Cities Imaginaries is the UCL Urban Laboratory activity strand encompassing the curation and creation of cultural representations of cities and urban life. Led by Urban Lab Co-Director Professor Matthew Beaumont, previous annual lectures have been delivered by high-profile cultural figures, including David Olusoga, Urvashi Butalia and Linton Kwesi Johnson.

The lecture will be followed by a second day of activities on Friday 17 May at the Bloomsbury Theatre, featuring afternoon panels and an evening performance event. Booking for the Friday event will be announced separately via our newsletter.

Registration

You can register for the lecture on Eventbrite from Friday 15th February 2019.