Final Organizer Roundtable Discussion

This roundtable by Ohio State University Professors Harmony Bench (Associate Professor, Department of Dance), Yana Hashamova (Professor and Chair of the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures), Hannah Kosstrin (Associate Professor, Department of Dance), and Danielle Schoon (Senior Lecturer, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures), comes at the conclusion of their 2020-21 project Audiences and Online Reception: Before and After COVID, funded by a Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme Special Grants Initiative.

Audiences and Online Reception: Before and After COVID examines the impact of COVID-19 and quarantine experiences on artistic and cultural production by examining historical precedents, considering audiences in their social contexts, and imagining possible futures based on how audiences are currently forming. This project asks: How does COVID-19 impact cultural production, reception, and circulation? How are artists and scholars evolving their creative practices and research methods in response to quarantine experiences? What engagement strategies are cultural institutions pursuing to develop new audiences as their venues shutter? How are online and offline audiences responding to changes wrought by COVID-19? In what ways do audiences participate in creating meaning and social narratives, particularly during unstable political climates past and present?

Hip-Hop in the Time of COVID-19

Members of Tahribad-ı İsyan stand looking at the camera.

Photo courtesy of Tahribad-ı İsyan

My participation in this project is a continuation of my long-term fieldwork with dislocated Roma (“Gypsies”) in Istanbul, Turkey, particularly a young Turkish Roma hip-hop group called Tahribad-ı İsyan, which formed in response to an aggressive urban renewal project that demolished their neighborhood in 2010 (see https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/turkey-tahribad-i-isyans-rap-rebellion). They have since been outspoken against Turkey’s urbanization policies and treatment of ethnic minorities. Turkish hip-hop artists are increasingly experiencing government censorship, yet these two young men continue to rap about social injustice. YouTube has become a prominent way to share their music and music videos online, in Turkey and beyond; music can be a means of expressing what is too dangerous to say on social media. Despite rapping the lyrics in Turkish, Tahribad-ı İsyan sees their audiences growing as their music circulates beyond Turkey. This opens up new questions about the simultaneous limitations and opportunities afforded by our current circumstances.

On November 13, 2020, at 9:30-11:30am EST, Tahribad-ı İsyan will offer a virtual concert on Zoom, followed by a question and answer session with the audience. Preceding the concert will be a presentation by Turkish activist, Funda Oral, about the origins of the group and their social impact. The direct experiences that the members of Tahribad-ı İsyan have had with displacement and their recent experiences with quarantine will serve to prompt important discussions about forced mobility and immobility, the role of technology in mediating the local and the global, and ethical concerns around censorship and personal safety in times of conflict and crisis. Additionally, I hope that this event with Tahribad-ı İsyan could forge new connections between OSU and Columbus’s own growing hip-hop scene, particularly regarding the role that local music plays in challenging displacement and marginalization as we consider what kind of city we want to develop and live in together.

The event is open to the public. It is also directed to my current students in TURK3350: Contemporary Issues in Turkey; SOC3200 Sociology of Immigration; and SOC3302 Technology and Global Society.