Arts & Culture
Arts & Culture
Fair Observer's exploration of human creativity in all forms including literature, theater, film, opera, art, sculpture, music, dance, cuisine and travel.
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360° Analysis / Ayurveda / Kalaripayatu / Karate / Kerala / Martial Arts / Arts & Culture / AsiaA glimpse at one of the oldest sports of Kerala Having paved the way for Kung fu and Karate, Kalaripayatu is not only one of the oldest and most artistic, but also the most lethal display of athleticism on the otherwise serene topography of Kerala. A trip to one of the most internationally identifiable tourist destinations in India falls bland if you do not get a bite of this age old martial art form. Its primary aim is to coordinate body and mind by means of massaging, learning feats and how to handle weapons such as swords. “Kalari” refers to gymnasium in the local language of Malayalam and “payatu” translates into fight or hard work. Wild conjectures have often...
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360° Analysis / ahimsa / assassination / Gandhi / India / Islam / Muslim / non-violence / rape incident / resistance / satyagraha / BRIC / Arts & Culture / AsiaOn the occasion of Gandhi’s assassination anniversary, Dr. M. Krishnamurthi speaks about the real meaning of Gandhi’s fasts. There is a general impression doing the rounds and assiduously circulated by interested politicians and agitators, that Mahatma Gandhi undertook a number of fasts unto death to press his demand for the independence of India. There is nothing more distant from truth than this belief. Two things have to be made clear about Gandhiji’s fasts. Except for one fast in the early thirties before independence and another one undertaken at Calcutta immediately after independence, all his other fasts were for a limited period (mostly 21 days). They were more in...
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ahimsa / assassination / british empire / Gandhi / India / legitimacy / non-violent / resistance / satyagraha / 360° Context / BRIC / Arts & Culture / AsiaBy Atul SinghOn the 30th January 1948, Gandhi was assassinated. 65 years later Gandhi is still a pertinent, iconic and inspiring figure to India and to the world. Background Nearly 65 years after his death, Gandhi remains a symbol of peace for the planet. His emphasis on “ahimsa” (non-violence) and “satyagraha” (insistence on truth) robbed the British Empire of its legitimacy and eventually led to its collapse. A British trained barrister, Gandhi was a canny political operator. He inspired Indians to refuse to cooperate with the British, stop paying taxes and boycott British made goods. He wore a loin cloth that he spun himself to get the country to consume goods made in India in...
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360° Analysis / Dance / Facebook / google / Internet / Social Media / twitter / Arts & CultureYahia Lababidi speaks about how he finally learnt to make peace with the Internet, and came to view social media as a source of sustenance as well as inspiration. I held out as long as I could before signing up for an email account. At the time, I viewed the idea of electronic mail as invasive, and unnecessary; far preferring the romance and torture of letter-writing which took days or weeks to compose and send. But at the repeated entreaties of a dear friend (and an early adopter of new technologies), I caved in. I remember that pressing the “send” button on that first email felt like diving off a cliff as terrifying, as exhilarating. My threatened, and admittedly...
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Arab / Jack Shaheen / movie / role model / Sheikh / United States / Focus Article / Arts & Culture / Middle EastDr. Jack Shaheen has been shattering Arab stereotypes in American popular culture since 1975. “When I watch a movie and the bad guy’s not an Arab, I’m relieved,” Dr. Jack Shaheen admitted to his audience at Los Angeles’ Levantine Cultural Center during a talk in late December. He grinned, and the audience chuckled a bit, but sadly, his sentiment was sincere. For over 40 years, Dr. Shaheen has studied the image of Arabs in American media. In 2001, he completed a review of more than a thousand films dating from 1896 to 2000 that had Arab or Muslim characters and found that over 90 percent portrayed the characters in a negative light. Based on his study...
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360° Analysis / Democracy / Facebook / Internet / Multimedia / RSA / twitter / Video / Arts & CultureBy The RSA“What you don’t hear about is the distinction between digital renegades and digital captives… we need to know how exactly technology influences civic engagement and the propensity to actually go and engage in protest.” In this cat-and-mouse-themed animation from the RSA, Evgeny Morozov discusses his skepticism of the popular notion that the Internet empowers democracy at all turns. Tracing the current zeitgeist back to the “cyberutopians” of the 90s, he proposes that while social media, particularly Twitter, has enabled protest and rebellion, it has facilitated governments’ efforts toward monitoring such attempts as...
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360° Analysis / Berlin / Germany / Graffiti / Street Art / Vandalism / Arts & CultureBy El BochoGerman street artist El Bocho talks about his latest project “Gewalt" and how he hopes to change society through art. “Gewalt“ (German for violence) is the latest project of Berlin based urban artist El Bocho. He has been doing street art for the last 15 years and is well known for his poster technique. Despite being featured in galleries all around the world, El Bocho wants his art to be accessible to a wide audience which can only be guaranteed by putting it in the public space, for everyone to see. For him it is important to keep up a constant flow of communication with the audience and reflect the urban life in his work. “Gewalt” is a reaction to the...
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360° Analysis / Communication / Facebook / Internet / Social Media / World Wide Web / Arts & CultureBy Erinn WaldoLife without internet has become inconceivable both in business matters and in daily global communication. Language has proven to adjust with the years, evolving with its speakers and allowing countries, towns and cultures to prosper and retain identities. Yet as much as language defines its people, it also divided the world, separating it by misunderstanding. By the introduction of the World Wide Web in the late 1980s and early 90s, those divisions took a dramatic beating. The closely woven culture of a country became spiced with cultures from across the planet. Hip-hop has walked onto stages that once held ancient instrumentations; Bollywood dancers have shed their long skirts. A trend...
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How the web has been changing our habits and producing new paradigms regarding social interactions Background An episode of the brilliant British TV show “The IT Crowd” suggests that there are endless mysteries surrounding the Internet – eerie, uncanny “corners” yet to be discovered. In a sense, this is not far from the truth, for although the Internet is not contained in a small black box, secretly hidden in Big Ben and well-guarded by the “elders of the Internet”, it is not so easy to identify its origins. One of the few things we can assert with some degree of certainty though is what the trigger of its development was: the Sputnik Shock in 1957...
