LASALLE faculty and students are prominently involved in a large variety of research activities and projects, including publication in peer-reviewed academic journals and books.
Journal and book publications
Frida Kahlo and San Francisco: Constructing her Identity
Given Kahlo's special bond with San Francisco and the city's impact on her art and her fashion, presenting the exhibition in this venue carries special significance. Many iconic photographs that show Kahlo as a Tehuana (by Cunningham, Adams, Alvarez Bravo, and Weston) are from San Francisco, and her first self-portrait in full Tehuana attire was painted in San Francisco (now in the collection of SFMOMA). Frida Kahlo's encounters with "Gringolandia" (as she called the United States) were formative and complex. She appreciated the beauty of San Francisco in particular, relished the ethnic diversity of the city, and was mesmerized by Chinatown. She also met fascinating people, many of whom became her lifelong friends. It was in San Francisco, the first city she visited in the U.S., that Kahlo began to fashion her indigenous Mexican identity, deliberately distinguishing herself from the local women, whom she called "scarecrows" and "dull." "The gringas really like me a lot and take notice of all the dresses and rebozos that I brought with me, their jaws drop at the sight of my jade necklaces and all the painters want me to pose for them," she wrote her parents shortly after her arrival.
Citation:
Henestrosa, Circe, et al.. Frida Kahlo and San Francisco: Constructing her Identity. Munich, Hirmer Verlag, 2020.
The Serdang Folk Museum and the Performance of Heritage: Community Museums as an Alternative to National Heritage
This chapter focuses on the Serdang Folk Museum in the New Village of Serdang, Selangor, as a study of the performance of heritage by a community with a specific history and location. The museum asserts an alternative narrative of history to the official narrative presented by government museums, upholders and propagators of National Heritage. The exhibitions of the Serdang Folk Museum and its particular history are discussed against a backdrop of National Heritage via the institutions of the National Museum and the state museum of Selangor, the Sultan Alam Shah Museum.
Citation:
Janamohanan, Sunitha. ''The Serdang Folk Museum and the Performance of Heritage: Community Museums as an Alternative to National Heritage.'' Making Heritage in Malaysia: Sites, Histories, Identities, edited by Sharmani Patricia Gabriel, Singapore, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp. 87-117, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/10.1007/978-981-15-1494-4.
Cybernetic-Existentialism: Freedom, Systems and Being-for-Others in Contemporary Arts and Performance
Cybernetic-Existentialism: Freedom, Systems, and Being-for-Others in Contemporary Arts and Performance offers a unique discourse and an original aesthetic theory. It argues that fusing perspectives from the philosophy of Existentialism with insights from the ‘universal science’ of cybernetics provides a new analytical lens and deconstructive methodology to critique art.
In this study, Steve Dixon examines how a range of artists’ works reveal the ideas of Existentialist philosophers including Kierkegaard, Camus, de Beauvoir, and Sartre on freedom, being and nothingness, eternal recurrence, the absurd, and being-for-others. Simultaneously, these artworks are shown to engage in complex explorations of concepts proposed by cyberneticians including Wiener, Shannon, and Bateson on information theory and ‘noise’, feedback loops, circularity, adaptive ecosystems, autopoiesis, and emergence. Dixon’s groundbreaking book demonstrates how fusing insights and knowledge from these two fields can throw new light on pressing issues within contemporary arts and culture, including authenticity, angst and alienation, homeostasis, radical politics, and the human as system.
Citation:
Dixon, Steve. Cybernetic-Existentialism: Freedom, Systems and Being-for-Others in Contemporary Arts and Performance. London, Routledge, 2020, ISBN / ISSN: 9780367142490.
Traditional Chinese Music in Contemporary Singapore
Traditional Chinese Music in Contemporary Singapore is a collection of essays written by 12 esteemed contributors who are greatly involved in contributing to, building up and maintaining the world of traditional Chinese music in Singapore. Ranging from musicians and conductors to lecturers and educators, these essays present diverse perspectives and incisive insights into this particular sphere of music, and are both a useful entry point for the curious reader, as well as valuable companions to experienced enthusiasts.
Citation:
Loh, Michelle, and Yan Sing Lum, editors. Traditional Chinese Music in Contemporary Singapore. Singapore, Pagesetters Services Pte Ltd, 2020, ISBN / ISSN: 978-981-14-3778-6.
