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/
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- 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: ask@laurydizengremel.com
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