| The evolution of Hip Hop, taking France and Germany as examples: from its roots as an expression of attitude, particularly among youths from a migrant background, Hip Hop has now firmly taken its place among mainstream music - but can Hip Hop culture reconcile this with its critical stance? In his talk, Alain-Philippe Durand focuses on the Hip Hop scene in Marseille - the place in France where Hip Hop may well be at its most influential and dynamic.
Alain-Philippe Durand, (PhD) is Associate Professor for French, Film Theory and Comparative Literature at the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Rhode Island. He is very interested in the contemporary novel, French cinema, Hip-Hop culture - especially in France and in the French-speaking world - and literary and cultural criticism.
Durand has published two books: "Black, Blanc, Beur. Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture in the Francophone World" (2002) and "Un Monde Techno. Nouveaux espaces électroniques dans le roman des années 1980 et 1990" (2004).
He is currently working on a study on the ways of representing Hip-Hop culture in Marseilles and - together with Naomi Mandel - on an anthology of "extreme literature".
Murat Güngör, born in Tarsus, Turkey in 1969. He studied cultural anthropology, sociology and politics in Frankfurt. From 1990 to 1999, Murat Güngör was an MC and producer: in 1994, he helped establish the Looptown underground label, which released the first Rap album in Turkish in Germany in 1994. Since 1997, he has been co-organiser of the Frankfurt Hip-Hop Word Up contest. He is working in the Hip-Hop scene with his partners Muri Eren and Cem Ciftci on the project: "3 Jungfrauen Hip Hop Network". In 1998, he co-founded the band Kanak Attak, of which he is still a member. From 2001 to 2002, he ran the 3Finger Hip-Hop label at EFA Medien. In 2002, he published the non-fiction work Fear of a Kanak Planet - Hip-Hop zwischen Weltkultur und Nazirap, which covers the history of migration and its significance for the second and third generations. Murat Güngor is currently working as an assistant lecturer at DOMiT (Documentation Centre and Museum for Migration) where he is working on the exhibition project Zwei, drei Jahre Alemanya (Two, three years of Germany).
Diedrich Diederichsen, Professor for Visual Communication at the Hochschule für Gestaltung, Merz Akademie, lives in Berlin. He is one of the most important music theoreticians and critics writing in German and has written extensively on the theme of music movements and the Diaspora. A former co-editor of Spex, he now works as a freelance publicist for the Tagesspiegel, tageszeitung, Texte zur Kunst, Theaterheute and other publications. In 1992, he collaborated on the exhibition Import-Export Funk Office featuring the Afro-American woman artist Renée Green in Cologne. This was to have a lasting impact on him, as the volume "Yo! Hermeneutics - Schwarze Kulturkritik: Pop, Medien, Feminismus", issued in 1993, showed. For the first time, texts by such well-known authors as Paul Gilroy, Michele Wallace, Isaac Julien, Henry Louis Gates jr. appeared in German in one anthology. In 1998, he brought out Loving the Alien - Science Fiction, Diaspora, Multiculture documenting the interdisciplinary event and symposium at the Volksbühne in Berlin in 1997.
Björn Döring was born on 14 May 1971 in Eschwege, Hessen. He studied in Bamberg and Berlin (politics, history, communication science) and has been working as a freelance music journalist in Berlin since 1996. He writes regularly for the following newspapers and magazines (among others): Tagesspiegel, tageszeitung, Zitty Stadtmagazin, Berliner Zeitung, Musikexpress, Rolling Stone and Intro Musikmagazin. Since October 2003 he has also hosted the two-hour music magazine programme Meridian 13 on RBB Radio Multikulti.
In 2000 and 2001, Björn Döring supervised, in his capacity as press spokesman, the Womex world music fair in Berlin and Rotterdam. Among other things, Björn Döring has done presswork for the House of World Cultures for the Blue Stage multimedia project and for the music programme of the Okinawa Festival in the year 2000.
From 1997 to 2001 Björn Döring co-developed, in his capacity as curator, the Fête de la Musique in Berlin, launched projects within the framework of the Tag der Musik and co-ordinated the international cultural exchange between Berlin and twelve other cities in the network Fête Européenne de la Musique (seat in Brussels). Since autumn 2001, Björn Döring has been artistic director of the music festival popdeurope - migrating sounds in and out of europe, held at the House of World Cultures Berlin from 2002 to 2004.
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