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.

Scarry

Hey this is going back to our "identity" week - but I thought it was really interesting - partly because I read Richard Scarry books when I was a kid too...

1963 vs. 1991 Corrections

Things like the ribbon addition to correct gender stereotypes are pretty funny, they're just trading one sign for another (driving a steamroller vs. wearing a ribbon).

examples

While reading these articles, a few experiences immediately came to mind. When in Mexico I always wondered why the culture continues to be so Catholic. This question could probably only come from an atheist like myself - but I can't help seeing in the context of the Spanish conquest of Mexico - which was so brutal. And echos of it persist in the sense that Mexico is still colonized by Coca Cola, NAFTA, etc. Things that don't contribute to the independence and prosperity of Mexicans, just keep them in perpetual dependence. So in that context, I always think: I would reject Catholicism, and Coca Cola and the rest.
Mosqueras article was great in the sense that he clearly makes the case that it's silly to think you can cleanly separate what came from the outside, from what is original. I'm sure that within minutes of expose to the foreign, a mixture occurs, and there's no going back. We become hybrids.

The statement from the Mosquera’s essay “to look like no one else or to look like Frida” really made me laugh and say “thank God I do graffiti.” I think statements like those are said when money is trying to be made. If one takes the money factor out, things are looked at a lot differently. I’m not trying to say that Identity needs to be excluded from work,or that cultural identity validates the work, but if the artist feels that it needs to be, then it should and vice versa. If Third World country artist, or any artist, feels some type of pressure from the Western Culture to be a certain way they should give up being an artist.

East meets West, North meets South

Oguibe kind of hit the nail on the head with this bit:
"We see double standards. But that is hardly the most important point. We also find that essential tendency to ignore indigenous historical perceptions and constructs."

The theme as old as time is the one where more "advanced" societies try to save or elevate the "primitive" societies they've "discovered" in "unclaimed" land. Many examples come to mind, most of which we've all read in one history book or another. Problem is, history is often written by the victors according to their specific perceptions accurate or not. Most recently, it's been Europeans running around "discovering" places, claiming them as their own and bestowing their clearly superior culture on the indigenous populations. This colonization has yielded some quite tasty cuisine, inexpensive diamonds, pilfered national treasures and some new takes on art.

Mosquera wrote: "The de-Eurocentralisation in art is not about returning to purity, but about adopting postcolonial "impurity" through which we might free ourselves and express our own thought." Taking this comment and the one that Margo made about capitalist colonization we see a whole new take on the art produced in those areas.

Take for instance the sub-Saharan part of Africa. Colonized, de-colonized and then left with partial infrastructure and poverty. The locals have taken the left0ver telephone wire that would have been considered waste in, say, France and have created a mini-industry by applying their local craft and custom to a new material by weaving traditional Zulu baskets with it. The best part? They're using the Internet (capitalist colonization) to sell these things back to the colonists!

In the modern world, East or West, North or South seems like it lacks definition other than a direction. If you travel eastward long enough, you'll hit the west. If you travel northward far enough, you'll end up going south.

Mosquera calls for a "construction of a contemporary culture- one capable of acting in today's reality- from a plurality of perspectives." For a long time, Western domination in the countries it colonized suppressed the existing culture and tried to conform it to the standards they believed in. (It still happens in a capitalist colonization of culture by the way new McDonalds, Starbucks are popping up all over the world) This domination has set the structures for how non-Western art is viewed within the Western perspective only.

"Third World artists are constantly asked to display their identity, to be fantastic, to look like no one else or look like Frida..."
I found it interesting the way Mosquera points out that art that satisfies the stereotype of exotic is somehow more accepted at the center. He talks about the notion of the "other" as being a threat, rather than embracing it for what elements it might bring.

He also talks about the problems of intercultural communication, and the solution being not only accepatnce of other cultures but an understanding of them in order to "enrich [oneself] with his or her diversity." This is what Oguibe refers to as the Heart of Darkness, the unknown. There is a need to understand the Other, but to also understand where one exists in relationship to that term.

Give me a mutt

Mosquera made such sense of things for me. The Marco Polo Syndrome – where those of us in the egocentric, privileged West view difference as life-threatening rather than nutritional. Growing up in middle class US, and then having a good job and an affluent lifestyle as an adult – it took me some conscious paying attention and traveling to other areas of the world (which most Americans don’t do – only around 20% of Americans even have passports) to realize the value of diversity. My awareness increased when I learned of the richness of art from cultures that were composed of diversity and very tolerant, such as the Tang Dynasty on the Silk Road, and Al Andalus. There is a corollary in nature. The pedigreed dog is much less hardy than the mixed mutt. I no longer would choose to live in an area of the US that wasn’t highly diverse, and I really hope in my lifetime to have the opportunity to live outside the US and learn another language.

While I am very interested in the Eurocentric identification in the art world, I am concerned that the authors didn't clearly acknowledge the inability for international artists to separate themselves from the Eurocentric influence. I was reminded of a short story called Unaccompanied Sonata. In it, when the "artist" was introduced to other works, in an attempt to retain "identity," he unconsciously removed the similarities/crossovers between his work and others. Likewise, are transnational artists able to distinguish themselves apart from their Eurocentric roots without continuing to acknowledge the Eurocentric presence?

“Postmodern interest in the Other has opened some space in the “high art” circuits for vernacular and non western cultures. But it has introduced a new thirst for exoticism, the carrier of either a passive or a second- class Eurocentrism which, instead of universalizing its paradigms, conditions certain cultural productions from the periphery according to paradigms that are expected of it for consumption by the centeres. Many artists, critics and Latin American curators seem to be quite willing to become “othered” for the West.” Mosquera 220.
In a field where “the new”, “the different”, “the avant garde” is supposedly cutting edge that exotic look or feel is something that is so often sought after. The “Eurocentric” reality is this “gotta own”, “gotta have it” mindset that is at the center of killing cultures. To think of objects from another culture as being something that is collectable or even marketable is just a modern notion of European colonization now apparent in “THE ART WORLD”.

I think it is a misconception of historical and contemporary ideas of exotism and the notion of sub-saharan within the African cultures. Rarely do we see the functioning cities, the scholarly societies, contemporary art, that exist within these "primitive" cultures. National Geographics and publications of the sort paint an image of a Third World country so exotic to our own.

"This way history is constructed as a validating privilege that is the West's to grant, like United Nations recognition, to sections, nations, moments, discourses, cultures, phenomena, realities, and peoples". -Oguibe
It is though the Western eyes of the curators, gallery owners, art market, art publications, etc. that creates the discourse of art in our culture. If interested in the exotic, then they will display their ideas of what is exotic, typically this is foreign type, or primitve looking art works. Art work that reflects their notions of modern African Art, etc.

The one statement that really stands out to me in these readings is Mosquera's comment "The contemporary artistic scene is avery centralised system of aparthied". Is it me, or do we re-discover every week how the artworld represents everything evil in our society? It is funny how something so pure as creating, is surrounded by so much impurity. I guess it is money that makes the artworld so judgmental. This post-colonial attitude and approach to art is based on class structures created by wealth. The demands placed on third world art described by Mosquera (originality based on tradition=primative) is based on the worth ascribed by the west, which is a direct efffect of the market that deals with primative or primative based artwork. A pure and true understanding of the "Other" (as described by Oguibe) will only happen when there is a market for that kind of work. It is all good and fine for us to understand this issue as artists but a major shift in opinion about the Third World from the entire West must happen before people will spend money on social-driven contemporary art from places like South Africa.

"the truth of history is that wherever there is a tradition of artistic practice, and that means every society and every culture, there is always a system of appreciation, assessment, definition of values and taste." (Olu Oguibe)

Olu Oguibe talks in his essay about the problematic question, what is modernity, when did it start and where does it belong to and if there is such a thing how did Africa respond to it?

I am asking myself, how do we judge a piece of art to be modern?
To me modernity has to do with funcion and taste in a certain moment- Oguibe mentions " popular art". I think art is linked very closely to a society and often represents its life and values. For example, "township" art reminds me of the very typical paintings and colorful works we find throughout Africa, which are made of local materials and represent the feel, look and funcion as a representation. This is modern to me- it presents the moment and it raises questions for now and future affairs. The art world in Africa is immense.
I believe the West makes a mistake in trying to search for modernity- however the west defines what's modern- in Africa. And why is it so important? Why does the West want to modernize african art?
I found this strong article of Olu Oguibe quite fitting:

"To all intents and purposes, we live in a segregated world where, for instance, the rest may know the West but the West seldom knows the rest, and within the rest only a few know enough beyond their own little home territories. The novelist Chinua Achebe noted long ago that this is indeed the state at which the West has arrived, at that juncture where it no longer has to erase or ignore others consciously, but as a matter of fact. It is a terrible world where this is the case. That it is the nature of our shared condition as cultures struggling to acknowledge one another, even to co-exist, is a tragedy indeed."