The Cannibalism of Art – The Story of Basketry 101.
Installed on The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus,
Trinidad and Tobago circa 2010.
Project
Title: UWI Sculptural Project.
Client:
University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus. Project Convener: Dean Arlen.
Participating Artist: Edward Bowen, Shastri Maharaj, Che Lovelace, Susan Dayal, Paul Kain, Dean Arlen and Lesly Ann Noel.
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| BASKETRY 101, INSTALLED 2010. |
I write this, 7 years and 3 years post the installation of Basketry 101 on the campus. A sculpture sits beaten, rusted and worn. The sculpture’s situation is a reflection of failure, failure of our people, to place systems within The University of the West Indies to protect this acquisition. It presents the dysfunction of people within that institution to take care of one of its own artistic production. Basketry 101, has been abandoned, why? What makes people who belong to an institution whose remit is the pursuit of knowledge and intellectual development disregard this very remit? The University of West Indies is a noble institution that has included intellectuals like Lloyd Best - Economics, Prof. Julien Kenny – Life Sciences and Environmental Studies, Prof. Rex Nettleford – Dance, Prof. Kamau Brathwaite – Literature, Prof. Bridget Brereton – History, Prof. Patricia Mohammed – Gender and Cultural Studies etc. Its halls are filled with ideas, concepts and contributions to the idea of humanity. What has happened, flies in the face of this noble pursuit in studio scientiae. What has happened; what is happening tells a story of the wider society, small things leads to bigger problems. Artists complain constantly about this uncaring system that beats into us, yet we fail to put a voice to the things that we care about, our own vocation.
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| THE PRESENT TENSE. |
Where
can the change come from? Basketry 101 was installed through the commitment of
people who cared about art, they weren’t artists, they belonged to The
University of the West Indies not the Department of Creative and Festival Arts,
DCFA, nor the Trinidad and Tobago Art Society, or any other cultural
organization, they belonged to a group of people who wanted to see something
happen, they supported an energy, an idea, a possibility,
in
studio scientiae et ethicae illustratio
Even
if this possibility came with the economic, intellectual and social biases that
contemporary art exudes. Alas it happened, there was an installation of a major
piece of sculpture onto the grounds of The University of the West Indies, by a
notable designer who belonged to our community, who belonged to the University
of West Indies, St Augustine Campus, and this was a revolution, a big step in
the politics of aesthetics on the Campus. The sculpture, with its own critical
analysis considering space and materiality, was installed with the silence of a
knife through butter; you could have heard the pin drop. Not a sound from the
Department of Creative and Festival Arts or The Office of the Principal. It was
like it was all done under duress. Like there was a gun to their necks. There
was a silent shunning of the work, the energy of it all seemed obscene.
“non fuit consilium nostrum” -“It wasn’t our
project”
POLICY imparts empathy where there is an absence.
Policy
directs the institution and in extension, people, to a more profound, humane
behaviour towards the things that may not be considered important at that
time. The catch 22 to that is you need
progressive people to direct and implement progressive policy.
BELOW ARE SOME RANDOM ACQUISITION POLICIES. THAT CAN GUIDE HOW WE MAINTAIN ART COLLECTIONS. THESE DOCUMENTS ARE NOT LONG. SIMPLE TO THE POINT.
UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON www.uh.edu/af/docs/SWAAC/policy.pdf
University Museum of Art at Loyola University Chicago
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA.
POLICIES ALSO GUIDE ACQUISITIONS AND DEACQUISITIONS OF ART WORKS
A 2NDThought.
People, artistic
people and the artist community portray a constant silence about the things that
are important to us. Our ability to be inconsistent about the things that we
do, to belong to a community yet be so self-involved that we become invisible
to the imagination and growth of that community. We become irrelevant due to
inertia, protesting only when it affects our bottom line.
Ibi
semper est artifices vocem - There has always been an artists’ voice.
But when a Pat Choo-Fun
sculpture is painted over and another sculpture sits there rusting away, what
does that really mean? For us? For the state, private sector, community?
Where
can stimulation come from? Post-NAPA, has proven that the relationship with
power has become more hostile, confusing and desperate, even while the state
has acknowledged the potential benefits of the arts to the society and for the
first time moving to harness its magical powers through the creation of a
company that will harvest this magic. There is still an acknowledged hostile
approach to negotiation with the arts sector, due to the fact that we have been
a passive negotiator in the politics of cultural thought and praxis. Will articulation
come from…
The
Art Society is an organization with a well developed structure, membership and community
and political weight. But for some reason it has not been able to engage the
imagination of the political executive and the wider community, due to their
in-articulation of the art language, philosophy and critical analysis of
endeavours.
The
Artists Coalition of Trinidad and Tobago, ACTT – in its short history has placed
the arts on the table of national development and in the imagination of people.
ACTT, has taken real cuff and pain and has taken on the fight, have been
offered gifts and positions, an acknowledgement of persistence to power, in the
discourse of cultural shaping. The primitive conceptualization of our cultural
politics has set the course for an incorrect relation with the arts and their
contribution to our evolving culture. This will only be challenged by the
natural unravelling of our current social and economic reality, the current
tense situation. The politics is hard and entrenched, behaviours violent,
ignorance is applied, arrogance applauded. The future of ACTT will lie in it
morphing into an independent Arts Council, starting on its own terms but which
will eventually be supported by state but on their own terms.
The Trinidad and Tobago Film Company – has
managed to explode onto our space a different language of plasticity, poetics
of movement, re-represented industry and technology to a new and old generation
of industrialist, a possibility of representation. But we have seen them come
under fire from the state and have held them at bay; the state has rethought
its position and formed another company that will confront the TTFC.
The
Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival has presented art to the community, and has
sparked their imagination of the possibilities of indigenous representation and
diversification.
The
University of West Indies, Film programme (which will be moving into their own
building); the Animation programme at University of Trinidad and Tobago, UTT,
and the Animae Caribe Festival is another powerful story that has highlighted
the fractured relationship between the state and the academic art community, as
this has come under fire for being acquired under duress.
We
have seen film come in and take centre stage in the development discourse,
while the plastic arts have continue to be marginal, in the corner, to be given
only paltry concern, the mad child that you hide in the room chained to the bed
post. Film’s monumentality in the imagination of people and in the politics of
Trinidad and Tobago, rests on the shoulders of the people who have laboured in
Banyan, Gayelle, the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company and The University of the
West Indies, Film Programme.
Imaginatio
populum ædíficant- People build Imagination
It
jus doh fall from a breadfruit tree, Buu-Dooop. We have to build things, engage
with the institutions that you belong to.
The
failure of Basketry 101 is the failure of the plastic artists to coalesce
activities that build imagination within people that makes people want to be
involved with you, invest, even try to intervene and therefore have you on your
toes to defend our imagination.
To
build imagination means that artists need to collaborate within the institutions
to which they belong. Start talking to departments; organize co-operative
collaborations and agreements of understanding with industry, other
professionals and organizations that can place the artists and their work within
the larger conceptual framework of institutional and national development.
ARTISTS NEED TO CARE.
iungere circuli- join the circle.
THE ARTIST PROPOSALS
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| SUSAN DAYAL |
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| DEAN ARLEN |
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| PAUL KAIN |
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| EDWARD BOWEN |
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| SHASTRI MAHARAJ |
Dean Arlen
July 19 2013.
