Essay Two
KENT INSTITUTE OF ART
& DESIGN Master Fine Art 1st Year - Essay Two - 7 March 2005
Laury Dizengremel
ISSUES OF INTERNATIONALISM IN THE CONTEXT OF
MY MFA PROJECT ENTITLED 'FACES OF THE WORLD: THE CHALLENGE OF PORTRAYING
HUMANKIND'
Due to a number of
factors (parents of different nationalities, upbringing in several countries),
when I initially enquired at KIAD to enrol for an MA, the Fine Art Department
course leader Richard Davies, himself an artist practicing at an international
level, recommended that instead I consider applying for the MFA International
Practice degree course. Clearly, in view of those factors and my own active
international career as an artist to date, this was a more appropriate route to
select.
By way of an introduction, it seems a good idea to define
"internationalism".
Internationalism, n
(definition)
1. The condition of quality of being international
in character, principles, concern, or attitude 2. A policy or practice of
cooperation among nations, especially in politics and economic matters.
(source: http://
dictionary.com)
However, here is one of my favourite
interpretations of it offered by sociologist John Guiggan in an article on his
website (http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2003/04/02/word-for-wednesday-internationalism-definition/)
: Internationalism is not a political movement like social democracy or
neoliberalism, nor is it a central term in a body of argument, like
globalisation. Rather, it is a general aspiration. So I'm going to offer my own
definition, and try to tease out its relevance to our present problems. As
opposed to globalism, internationalism accepts the reality and legitimacy of
national governments. This legitimacy arises in part from acceptance of the
idea of the nation-state, that particular groups of people (nations) are bound
together by ties of common history and language, and are natural units of
governments.
I go back now to my own upbringing. My French father
was born in Japan and later raised in Greece. My Dutch mother was raised in
Indonesia, ended up spending 4 four years there in a Japanese concentration
camp before studying at Berkeley University and then dancing under Martha
Graham in New York. She then worked in France where she met my father. I was
born in France, moved to the USA with my parents as an infant, returned to
France when I was six, went to live in the USA from the age of 19 until 28,
then spent three years in France and have now resided in England for the last
seventeen years
All of which amounts to a life nurtured by
different nationals and lived, so far, across many national boundaries. Growing
up, I skied in Italy and Switzerland, visited England, Germany and Spain, spent
holidays in the Netherlands - and as an adult artist, I travelled widely for
private and public commissions, with extensive stays in a wide range of
countries including Malaysia, China and Vietnam, Honduras, Canada, the USA,
Germany, etc.
For self-study purposes, taking in many museums and in
the company of other professional artists, during the last three years I have
also visited Italy, Demark, Israel and Thailand. Across the boundaries of
culture and language I have forged intensely strong bonds with people (other
artists, colleagues, friends, clients) from vastly different and sometimes
intensely nationalistic backgrounds.
This could be seen as the
characteristic of an "internationalist" (not that I needed another label in
addition of those we garner through our lifetime!); of a strong advocate of
internationalism in so far as it is defined as relationships between nations,
between people of different nationalities.
My mother in particular
raised my sister and me to think of our selves as "world citizens"; to adopt
different viewpoints; to respect, to fully embrace and appreciate the cultural,
social, religious and political differences of others.
"Internationalism", as I conceived of it for most of my life, was
therefore to me a natural and familiar notion.
However as a result of a
recent lecture at KIAD by Dr. Judith Rugg on the subject, backed by my own
research into the word and its myriad definitions on the Internet, I have come
to realize that "internationalism" now means many things in different circles
(political, social, economic, artistic, environmental) and poses a perplexing
range of issues (exchanges, globalisation, tourism, the pitfalls of cultural
"imperialism", pervading American influences throughout the world,
homogenisation, corporate branding, etc.).
Factually, from Saigon to
Beijing, from Tel Aviv to Bangkok, I have seen streets lined with the same
American style chain restaurants and visited malls in both the Orient and
Middle-East that are depressingly similar to those of Chicago or Los Angeles!
Side by side with dwindling local shopping venues that are both traditional and
familiar (old marketplaces or small shopping streets) and are certainly
possessed of their own individual aesthetic, we find these amorphous, gigantic
and culturally bland temples to consumerism.
But why attempt to ascribe
this to "internationalism" when clearly the cause is more obviously advances in
modernization, just as the revolution of industry transformed working processes
around the world? Rapidly increasing migrations and exchanges of people and
their customs, of products and their consumption patterns, of processes and
their implications, of data and its wide-ranging effects - all of these have
both positive and negative aspects on societies across the globe's nations.
The greatest and most challenging "issue" of internationalism is how to
be global citizens while remaining national, local citizens, and without losing
our local identities. Neither in the past have people been, nor are they today,
free of a sense of "difference" - as is made abundantly plain by wars being
conducted in the name of a variety of pretexts ranging from religion to
economics.
Just as a debate can be conducted about internationalism
versus nationalism, there can also be a debate about internationalism versus
globalization. I came across this very interesting statement by Australian
author Joseph Smith in the intro page of a chapter entitled The Failure of
Internationalism in his book "The Remorseless Working of Things",
(1992): ...let's look at the potholes in the streets. There are potholes
all over the civilised world, but is that any reason for setting up a global
pothole authority to fix our potholes. Would the potholes be filled sooner if
we globalized the problem? The moral is surely obvious: never globalize a
problem if it can possibly be solved locally. It may be chic but it is not wise
to tack the adjective global onto the names of problems that are merely
widespread - for example, "global hunger", "global poverty", and "the global
population problem".
My project has nothing to do with
globalization: it is about a local earth issue - that of humanity. It is a
celebration of our differences, and a call for unity as people belonging to the
human race as a whole. It investigates the ethnic pluralism extant in the world
and our attitudes to "humankind". It seeks to achieve an international,
multi-ethnic, multi-age, multi-gender representation of the humans who inhabit
planet Earth. After travelling around the world to research, identify and
document individual representatives of groups, I aim to feature as many
groupings of humans as possible within any single piece of artwork.
Coming back to issues of internationalism - I feel quite strongly that
while they are constantly evolving, they are not new. Since man started moving
across the face of the Earth, there have been settlements, exchanges within
settlements, with resulting social, cultural and other evolutions due to the
contact with "others".
In my recent research in Honduras into the
various ethnic groups extant in this Latin American country of Mayans,
Amerindians, Spanish and even African descendants, I came upon an interesting
passage in a small book entitled "The Garifuna Story" (p.50) by
Guillermo Yuscaran written in 1990: In addition to Spanish, the Garifuna
speak a unique dialect and maintain customs and traditions which represent a
merging of African and Indian influences. The dialect itself, though its
origins are hotly debated, is certainly a mosaic of other tongues, among them
Arawak, French, Yuroba, Swahili and Bantu. The Garifuna has come to define not
only the language but the people who speak it, differentiating these Caribbean
blacks from those who speak English, such as the Jamaicans.
As a
further comment upon internationalism, it is interesting to note that the
author's name as it appears on the book is not his real one (William Lewis, a
PhD from the University of California of Santa Barbara!) In his book which
contains both Spanish and English versions of his research text, he relays that
there are a quarter of a million of these Garifuna people living in 51 separate
villages from Belize to Nicaragua along the north coasts, most of them in
Honduras, with a very individual culture of music and dance. What is the
Garifuna then but a perfect example of centuries old internationalism breeding
a unique people?
Fireworks and paper came to Europe, the Americas and
eventually Australia and New Zealand from China. Electricity came from the New
World to the Old. Spaniards settled in the Americas, as did many English and
French. Migration and diasporas are far from being new concepts. Italian
composer Lulli wrote operas for the French court. Mexican artist Diego Rivera
painted in New York. American writer Hemingway penned books in Paris. Polish
born Joseph Conrad wrote all of his works in English. Gauguin ended up in
Tahiti. Internationalism has been around forever when you dig into the subject.
What is most pertinent then to my current research is what lessons from
the past and even present can be drawn from the interactions of one nation to
another - one set of people to another.
Whilst the setting up of
nations is a very arbitrary fait accompli, and a necessary one (world
government may be a utopian's dream, but it spells a veritable nightmare for
anyone who realizes that bureaucracy becomes unwieldy past a certain size, and
that local problems can never be satisfactorily solved by remote government),
the breaking down of barriers between humans can only be a positive endeavour.
It is when people fully accept each other's differences that they cease to tear
each other apart. This applies to two members of a family; to friends, to
colleagues within a work place; to various groups within a nation; to one
nation towards another.
Some who speak of "internationalism" today in a
socio-economical and political context uphold it against the old notion of
"nationalism". I do not think it is wise to forget that excessive nationalism
has contributed to the advent of wholesale genocides - but neither do I think
that complete internationalism is possible or desirable with respect to issues
of economy, politics or any except the global environment. Spiritually, I
hunger for a sense of fraternity of the human race as a whole, but I also
realize it can only be achieved if humans manage to set aside any differences
perceived as "alienating".
It is interesting to note that when artists
of a similar discipline from around the world meet at an international event,
they find they share a common language - that of aesthetics and their specific
art - and that this language transcends all usual "language barriers". I have
seen an Iraqi Muslim sculptor on the friendliest terms with a Canadian Jewish
colleague - and a Cuban sculptor exchanging technical carving tips and drinking
tequila with an American one!
According to Jean Leymarie (in the
preface of "Art Since Mid-Century: The New Internationalism", 1971) :
It is for this reason that the most conscientious artists,
seeking to be in direct contact with contemporary reality, and whose field of
experimentation is sociology, concern themselves less with the creation of
works, in the material sense of the word, than with actions, events and
environments. The latter cannot be hung on the stultifying walls of galleries,
but go out into the street and transform life itself
.
His
remarks are all the more pertinent in the context of exchanges between artists.
Since most artists can work across social, linguistic, political and religious
barriers, they are natural "ambassadors" for their own countries and are
therefore capable of generating for the latter a great deal of goodwill and
understanding in foreign lands.
One of my greatest concerns with
internationalism is that aspect of "cultural imperialism" that seems to be an
intrinsic factor of modern development in the world today. It is sad to see
third world countries adopting Western attitudes that enlightened people
(active environmentalists, feminists, etc.) in Western countries themselves
reject. It is even sadder to see that while we point the finger at the newly
burgeoning industries of third world countries creating environmental hazards,
we ourselves first learned that lesson the hard way before beginning to -
literally - clean up our act!
Also - while the advertising boards of
companies who pride themselves on attracting customers without distinction to
race do often feature people from different races, I have yet to see in the
Western world overarching guidelines that call for anything other than a rather
hypocritical and often unrepresentative 2 to 1 ratio (two whites for one black
or asian). Just ask the citizens of Washington D.C. (a predominantly black
city) what they think about that!
So this brings me back to the
challenge I set myself for this project - the creation of artwork in a number
of different media, featuring people from around the world in what attempts to
be a truly even ratio, and celebrating the differences rather than emphasizing
them with an alienating attitude.
A good yardstick to see whether I
have accomplished the above will be how distinctive (imbued with local
flavours) rather than bland (tinged with ethno-centric or imperialistic
homogenisation) the works will be!
Bibliography GUILLERMO
YUSCARAN The Garifuna Story (1990) Tegucigapa, Honduras. Nuevo Sol
Publicationes (1990) HAFTMANN, WERNER Art Since Mid-Century: The New
Internationalism, Volume 1 - Abstract Art. - Preface by Jean Leymarie.
Greenwich, Connecticut, New York Graphic Society (1971)
Other
Sources http://www.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/internationalism.html
SMITH, JOSEPH WAYNE The Remorseless Working of Things. AIDS and the Global
Crisis: An Ecological Critique of Internationalism. Kalgoorlie Press, 1992
http://www.developmentgoals.org/
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ Back to top
- Original Description of MFA
Project
- Research Methodology Chart for MFA
Project
- Action Plan 1 -
- Action Plan 2 -
- Final Description of MFA Project
- Essay One 10 January
2005
- Essay Two 7 March
2005
- Critical
Evaluation 1 8 April 2005
- Critical
Evaluation 2
- Critical
Evaluation 3
- PG Dips
- Research Paper for Viva
- Artist Statement for MFA Final Show Sept.
2006
- Sculpture
- Photography
- Video
- Installation
- Personal bibliography
- Travel links
- Artist and art websites
- Curriculum Vitae
- List of professional commissions executed,
works purchased and works exhibited during course period Sept. 2004 to Sept.
2006
- List of professional engagements (symposia,
lectures, etc.) during course period Sept. 2004 to Sept. 2006
E-mail:
sculptures@sculpture-design.com
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