Taking this week's articles into mind, how will "universal" values evolve in the future based on the prospective rise of China as a superpower? Western hegemony and capitalist dominance have given rise to the prevalence of Western values in other cultures. It would be interesting to see if Asian cultures would use the Western ideas of exoticism and “othering” against them as a sort of Orientalist backlash. Even right now, power relations are divided so that Western society stands as this cultural and economic “role model” for the world, a sort of exoticizing in itself. It will also be interesting to see the affect technology on the “unity of life” and the evolution of culture based on a more highly integrated world.

I think Gabriel Orozco’s “Mis manos son mi corazon” is a really good example where of where the artist, his work, his process and the meaning behind the work gives it the automatic pass of most art critiques. He has the Spanish name, and work about his ethnic background. I think what the essays were sayings especially Fisher’s is that when an artist, of a non-european background, makes artwork that is not “authentic” is when people start to make a fuss. I agree with the authors challenge to not look at all artwork the same. To not arrive to a conclusion about the artist and his/her work without all the facts, and excluding stereotype mentalities.

White Bread

I'd love to see more real-life examples of hybridity and syncretism. Syncretism implies not fixed elements, but a contingent affiliation of disparate terms capable of shifting positions, altering relations and with permeable boundaries. There is no simple translation, rather an untranslatability – which seems to me the way towards acceptance. And, within that acceptance, lies true subversiveness, which is what the academic argument for idealistic multiculturalism laments the lack of. The quilts that African slaves in the American South made, which concealed instructions to safe houses in “plain sight” of the slave owners, the celebration of native customs the were held on and looked like the conquerer’s own holidays. Such syncretism is irrepressible, and I feel is the place to look for true multiculturalism. Hybridity is a self-conscious, intellectual attempt at definition. Syncretism is just what happens when artists respond to their environments.

The art happens, whether it will sell or be legitimized by museums or the marketplace is a different issue. Fisher and Lee Weng Choy both made the point that elites today are “multicultural”, but Asian and African elites, sophisticated internationals, still buy into the original Eurocentric values--because that is still the economic power structure -- which is what they are all driven by. The idea of progress, of Other, is driven by the spectacle of the global marketplace run by economic elites.

Choy makes the case for Singapore being such a hybrid—an engineered, branded “New Asia”, which is really just a restrained society disciplined to be globally, economically competitive. An American friend of mine lived in Singapore for a few years, and called it Singa”bore”. We stopped-over for a day each on the ends of a trip. That was enough, there was nothing to compel us to return, which is not the case for the rest of Asia.

"For the West to frame and evaluate all cultural productions through its own criteria and stereotypes of otherness is to reduce them to a spectacle of essentialist racial or ethnic typology and to ignore their individual insights and human values..." (Fisher, 235).

I agree with several of the comments below, that we all categorize events and objects in our minds based on our own experiences. We do have our own biases based on where and how we grow up, and I understand the need to examine oneself through comparison to another. But I don't understand the thought that any one group is better than another, and therefore determines what is right or wrong for the whole.

Fisher's article furthers the discussion from last week's "Other", and I think clarified a lot of thoughts I had last week. It is hard for me to imagine people judging one another based on race, skin tone, religion; and in turn putting value judgements on artwork based on country of origin and stereotypes that surround what that country's artwork should look like. Fisher notes that we will not allow art to have a beneficial effect on us if we come at it with stereotypes and categories surrounding it. This Syncretic view seems like a more comtemporary and realistic approach to a global art world.

After reading the Minh-Ha article, I have was stunned at how invisible the colonial discrimination is in films and our Western appreciation of so-called "Third World" films. It seems that our interest in the Third World is to maintain their subordinance through economic poverty, or presenting them as being "included" in the Western form of dress and attitudes. Particularly of interest was the commentary on Vietnam as being mystified to the point of invisibility: a fault of both opponents of the war and proponents. By not being able to accept Vietnam as viewed through their experience, we are idealizing their culture beyond being able to approach their worldview.

New Asia & a New S. p. e. c. t. a. c. l. e

The Choy's article seems to suggest that there is no way for us except to engage and accept the notion of Spectacle as an essential element in order to change our societies. Does Choy’s article suggest that Singaporeans engage with spectacle, both in their society and their art, in a non- Asian form? The example of Lear was interesting to me; does not the Asian version of Lear suggest a new “something” to the Western societies? I think New Asia introduces a New form of Spectacle to the Western societies as well…

I wonder how much the non-european art world "exoticises" european or western art? Exoticism occurs within the Western world as well, American Art viewed from a European viewpoint, for example. It is human nature to try to place the "other" within a context in which it can be understood, to better relate our experience with those of people we know little about, in terms of a cultural setting. I guess the struggle for the West is to recognize how much of that perspective (reading) is based on class structures and opinons formed on colonization. Because we (western-based artists and art observers) are raised in the post-colonial era, those distinctions are so engraved in our way of life that they are hard to recognize. Maybe this whole idea that we need to fix our perspective in order for the Third World to succeed in the eyes of the West is the exact sort of colonial thinking that got us here. Maybe they dont want or need this approval. Wont they develop their own art world (with all of its positives and negatives) when the West falls into ruin and the East becomes the imperialistic force (once again, until it flip flops again)?

lol- I loved Gabe's comment! I totally agree with the fact that we cannot expect things to be restored by themselves when we are detroying everything needed before hand. What an naive statement, wow.

I had a nice discussion with my south american friend these days.
What I found interesting and what made me think back to the articles is that we always refer back to our western philosophies. Everything that we do is seen through our point of view and it is therefore right! Everything we think is the standard and our opinions are the measuremnt to the rest. That is just so wrong to me. There is so much out there in the world! Are we that good? What if we actually put other countries values, opinions on an equal level to others? Impossible.. it is always us and then the rest.
Then I thought of a similar thing that I frequently encounter regarding my descent from Germany. People ask me about Hitler and tell me how bad that was. Yes, I agree it was very bad. So.. what do they want me to do? I feel like being prejudiced for my countrie's past. Being accused for someting that is so thinly grounded- anyone in that situation would have been a part of the regime because we are all way too attached to our own lives! And besides that, don't we all have a past? Have we not all had a past of killings? What about the native Indinans in the US? 95% killed... and how do we think Columbus was a great man? What about Vietnam? There are bad things that happened and are currently happening. One would hope that we learn from our experiences. However, we ignorantly put ourselves as someone better.
I think I have been drifting of a little, but there is just so much.. the world is a totally mixed place, full of cultures, values, traditions and differences.
Jean Fisher talks about the excessive vision, the world is seen and evaluated through one society's eye- people's art works in other places cannot rise up to our standars.
It amazes me to see that the ideal of it all, the "purity of art" is a label of the West and yet, I feel that pure art has nothing to do with a country, but with an individual. There is no way to justify everybody's doing, but we can try.
Should I have sent this... ? Oh god.

Lee Weng Choy's article is a good one, but, personally, I think it is pretty limited by the author’s scope. The article itself is not complete enough to cover the Asian arts, nor can it conclude that Singapore’s art is and will be a model for future’s Asian arts. With none of his references in any Asian language and even few of them from Asian scholars, it is questionable that the author has a deep understanding of Asian arts, and its history, present and the future.

In my understanding, the real new Asia’s art should be an art which takes the legacy of the ancient Asian arts, has new developments, plus it should absorb the good part of the arts of the other cultures. The author may be good at the last but has problem with the first one.

Nonetheless, the world in everyone’s eyes is biased by his or her mind. It is a good article which gives us a picture of Asian arts in the author’s perspective. I just want to point it out its limitation.

progresssssss

"We may recognize that "progress" has its social and ecological costs, but underlying our pact with modernity is a desire that some day in "the future", there will be a time when the unity of life will be restored." Choy pg 252.

I say bullshit! how can anything be restored when we are constantly destroying in the name of progress. Now not to sound cliche but i think the rainforest is one of the greatest examples of this destruction. it is being destroyed at the rate of ( 240 square miles ) every day. This equals 6417 acres per hour, 107 acres per minute or 1.78 acres per second. rainforests.net The concept of progress is a myth made up by those making money off the worlds resources what is being destroyed in a day could not be replaced in ones life time. "there will be a time when the unity of life will be restored". BULLSHIT!

What strikes me about this week's readings is the constant categorization of, well, nearly everything. Even with innumerable shades of gray, the art world invariably polarizes work as black or white whatever the meaning or media. With regards to terrorism, President Bush said: "If your not with us, you're against us." (Or something like that.) As much fun as the liberal art world makes of President Bush, what's the difference between the constant polarization of art (West vs. East, ethnic vs. European, political Vs. apolitical, etc.) and what Bush said at the beginning of his most recent fiasco?

how about syncretic spectacle?

I have some sympathy for the Choy article because I've been to Singapore several times, and although I'm obviously an outsider, I was also struck by the shiny constructed image of "new asia" that is portrayed there. It's very corporate, and sanitized, and it naturally makes one suspicious... it doesn't seem quite right. I think Choy is saying that that corporate-funded spectacle is problematic in that it tends to offer a single monolithic reading, as opposed to varied, multiplied readings. But I wonder if he's equating that with the West, as essentially a western mechanism.
Minh-Ha is also concerned with narrow single readings for work - where the demand for "clarity" and "something to say" translates to a rigid, linear, "owned" reading. She describes work that invites the viewer in to help create it's reading ("boring" work) as lacking in spectacle.
I worry that both of these set up a binary with the spectacle and the West at one pole, and everything else at the other. I liked the notion of syncretism from the Fisher article, and it made me wonder what a syncretic spectacle would be like? Maybe Bollywood? That seems like an example of full-force spectacle, but on distinctly non-western terms...

from exoticism to the market

I lived in West Africa (mostly Ghana) and spent a year living on a boat traveling down the Amazon river through Columbia, Peru & Brazil. The villages a lived in were totally sans technology including electricity and even watches. While in these places, I often thought of the many artifacts from these cultures which I had seen in museum art collections. Breaking out of Eurocentricism has called for the intermingling of art with sociology and anthropology. With this kind of background, I wonder if we have forced meaning on these art collections above and beyond the original intent of the makers (artists?). What we also bring to these collections and which I have no doubt was the main objective of their elevation was the precepts of capitalism. The artifacts which we now deem art, were originally created as communal objects of myth, religion and ritual. I suppose if one defines art by intent rather than product or process, then these collections belong more to history, sociology and anthropology. On the upside, it also allowed artisans/artists to profit and therefoe enhance knowledge, production and profit in countries which economically suffer. Accra, the capital of Ghana, has a very blooming art market which is bringing villagers into technology and other benefits not seen in the primitive and isolated villages. I had an interesting experience in a Ghanain village spent a great deal of time in. A boy of perhaps 14 saw me painting one day, and asked me if I was from New York City. I invited him to paint with me and he painted a crude copy of Picasso's Les Demoiselles dAvignon. I asked him how he knew about Picasso and he said it was the only American artists he knew about. I've since lost that painting unfortunately, but I still have the other painting he brought to my hut a few days later. I will bring it to class this week. He offered it as a gift along with his address in hopes that I would send him some art supplies from New York City. For me, this sums up the Marco Polo Syndrome.