POST-ELECTIONS DEMANDS - Ital Social, through Ital Art, Ital Design



The Tacarigua Sculptural Playspace Project -
is an attempt at looking at how we can design with memory in mind, reignite learning in away that communities can get the best out of  development. 

POST-ELECTIONS DEMANDS

ON THE CULTURAL SECTOR...
Ital social through ital art, ital design....

 

Dear Dr. Rowley

Office of the Prime Minister,
St. Clair.
Port of Spain

 

Cc, Mrs Kamla Persad-Bissessar- Leader of opposition

Ms. Nyan Gadsby Dolly – Minister of Community, Development, Culture and the Arts
Mr. Lincoln Douglas
Anthony Garcia – Minister of Education
Mr. Tim Gopeesingh
Ms. Camille Robinson-Regis – Minister of Planning
Dr. Bhoendradat Tewarie

 

 

Dear Prime Minister, Dr. Rowley,

As the dust settles the shock and de awe die down, Mr. Jack Warner, bow out of de politics, we go  now sit and look, with popcorn, at de extradition case...I hav ah request,

Dat! de understanding of social responsible development, becomes forms part of de discourse in de parliament, let it be in de mind...in de head...your heart. I feel dat de UNC, de PNM, de MSJ, understand dat de nation hav to diversify, hav to innovate.

Everybody talking, buh nobody  listening.

wha de scene with dat! ah feel...we like to tink big infrastructure! We like bling, shinny ting in we face. Me, dread tink, dat is ah idea, ah plan....buh de whey I seeing it...smal ting good too, small ting infrastructure can work jus as good an effective, like agriculture in communities, back yard farming, empty spaces can be utilized through community gardens, which can be developed through primary and secondary and dem NGO’s, which will need shaping and development as people don’t understand how these things operate, sharing, communalism, we doh no how to talk, how to cry, yuh see how Kamla behaving, dat is ah woman, dread in pain, we loss all we corporative skills, we hav to build back we social tapestry, Dread Rowley.

 

Environments goes a long way in setting the tone - I'm aware that there is the education facility unit which looks at education structures.

Invest in innovation, leh it come from de belly nah, of all we! cultural achievements, we communities...invest in de science! of communities, Dread Rowley. De intellectual nuances of cultural, not de base primitivism of culture... you no, when we like to get al emotional and ting, buss up we mout an ting on ting we ent hav no clue bout, buh we hav to say ting, because da is wha we do..U is ah PHD, Dread Rowley, bring into de politic, de science, logic, language, manners, conversation wid de people, Dread Rowley, de social revolution of business, of science of innovation, fix it dat ah man could get he idea installed in he communitee, dat we could see ah designer mak over ah shop....leh we make breadfruit bread, cassava bread...check de list...

 

 

1.      Schools – is where the innovative language can originate; it’s the incubator, where analysis and upgrade is the natural form of the system; from primary to secondary, here art opens up the student to discussion, with teachers properly trained in the vocabulary of understanding; psychology, sexuality, gender,  history (Trinidad and Tobago history), critical thinking (research, presentation, vocabulary, development),  etc. To naturally nurture and guide their students in understanding of the academics which surrounds the things, which attracts us.

2.      Students – a well balanced student, is a confident student, willing to developed their thoughts, their innovation, art/design, allows ideas to be developed, using their academics, the math, the English, the science, the agriculture, wood-working, welding...etc.

3.      Environment –  we have to interrogate the learning environment; we need class rooms without walls, room of conversations (we need a circular form, where we can see all), rooms of innovation and development, where intergeneration can happen, where children can speak to peers and develop concepts in inter-generational development, these spaces have less bullying and more corporation, leadership, caring and empathy.

4.      Environment 2 – this innovative environment must be supported with tools, workshops – woodworking, metal shop, fabric, music – of all instruments, a student must be versed in the idea of conceptualization, from the brain-psychology, the proposal (english), plan drawings development (technical, critical thinking) development-2 – science, business, marketing, physics, workshops (woodworking, metal shop etc). Each step links the brain to the hand, the hand to the world...

5.      Environment-3 - Home Education – innovation can happen where a student have the support of family and community, we have to reconnect education into the living environment, teachers have to be trained to believe and speak properly to the dreams of children and their parents, parents have to understand the language of learning in the children, through the PTA, immersion of school activities and community activities.

6.      Environment-4 - Community- Here we must install prototypes of innovation, a bench, a vendors cart, a communal space, projects which epitomize the excellence in the language of design, the science of materials, the cutting edge of modular living, corporative businesses who. Let’s invest in social art-design in our communities, let’s build and install them, allow us to see, and touch, to live and be part of them, lets critic them. What this does is open the door to understanding design in living, art as life and the investments needed to create innovation.

 

This rethinking of our primitive concept of education; where results are the primary origins, Dat! Gone through Dread Rowley, as my colleagues in education, will state, Dem! scholarship winners does burn-out when dey enter academic world, where critical tinking an innovation is de ting. Innovative people are the ones who most likely have a well balanced education, home, play, culture, sport, academics and sprituality.

 

All children should have the ability to conceptualize and build, no matter what. This implies an amount of confidence and understanding of their environment.

So Boss! and you is de boss!.... For now! All I saying –

·          Make schools smaller more integrated into community (architecture, not dem ball head architects-we want Ital design),

·          Allow de child to be confident, when dey confident dey willing to learn,

·         Invest in dey ideas. So yuh put rooms where dey can make dey ideas,

·         Encourage discussion on their ideas.

·         Make de family ah part of idea making, community part of dat! Making, so when something come good we might be able to support de idea, venture capitalism, being developed.

·         Put idea in community, so we could touch it, live it, talk it, change it, evolve it

 

This is the new concept of innovation education, where art and design can play an integral part in reprioritizing our education.

 

Constructivism is a political understanding of the natural harmony of the world and to treat to that, its the woodman knowing that the forest needs protection, the metal smith to understand how toxic his craft can be to him and his environment.

 

Thanks

Embah’s Art, The National Museum of Trinidad and Tobago, Artists Coalition of Trinidad and Tobago, The Artists Society of Trinidad and Tobago..Civil Society in defining legacy

photos courtesy - Ashrap Richard Ramsaran

Embah’s Art,

The National Museum of Trinidad and Tobago, Artists Coalition of Trinidad and  Tobago , The Artists Society of Trinidad and Tobago...Civil Society in defining legacy

 

On the passing of Embah and the termination of Camile Selvon-Abraham, a disturbing thought came up. Over the years the National Museum of Trinidad and Tobago, have never found it fit to do a retrospective of Embah’s contribution to the aesthetics history of this country and the wider region. Why?...Embah is arguably one of our great painters, a solid philosopher and a historical treasure trove of facts and figures of events. Embah’s art holds within it a sovereignty to self, when I peer into his work, I can see me, that innocence of self when you stand naked before the alter, before you take on words of the world, becoming that evolved human, global, neo liberal, educated self. Embah, kept it real at a high level of concentration, deliberate, forcing us to think of the primitive, placing at our feet the sugar cane plantation, which we have been running and fuming about, ever since emancipated and indentureship.

I met Embah as a child on the walls at home, it seems that Embah would approach workers in Tatil building to buy his paintings which my father did, so I was exposed to Embah’s work from a young child, in some way his paintings gave validation to the primitive; the child, that primal me, which exist and still exist in me as an adult, an artist...a worker, that part in me which loves, but is afraid to show it due to a modernization, which spelt the death to emotions. Embah’s primitivism told me not to be afraid of the line, the mark or the colour that is me; when we were told to conform, speak, and perform in a colonialist manner. Embah made the primitive right and challenged almost single handily the notion of an empirical art education, based deep in the bowels of Western visual conceptualization. I’m not sure if Dad, bought Embah’s work because he sympathised with the artists plight or he truly loved the worked, for whatever reason, I’m forever grateful to be part of the work in such an intimate way, Embah’s paintings allowed me certain visual confidence to step into my aesthetic skin, which was confrontational to the traditional representations our society was accustomed. So when I was told why don’t you appeal to the market, or when I was told that I should understand how it works, etc etc...they should understand origin. I will also say that I was also confronted by Leroy Clarke and Leo Glasglow...but it was Embah’s work that excited me.

 

photos courtesy - Ashrap Richard Ramsaran

 

THE NATIONAL MUSEUM

I always thought that Embah had the opportunity to excite our society, Peter Doig and Chris Ofili, both technically sound fine artists, expats, with international art careers invested time in Embah’s art...so why our National Museum of Trinidad and Tobago or the Artists Society of Trinidad and Tobago , never saw the fit to invest in presenting Embah to the national community or to the world. The most I can think...Embah represents a primitivism, the middle class, in charge of promoting culture, feels ashamed of, they repel or wish to repeal all that is with the natural expression, the jammette, the child to adult, and our natural instinctive qualities to simplicity, or is it just plane short-sightedness or laziness.

 

TTHE SURREALIST?

The surreal act of tapping into the deep inner core of our mental and physical is art function. As I perused the Menil Collection, Houston, Texas,

 

The Menil Collection -  “an ongoing collection by anthrolpologist Edmund Carpenter as a tribute to Dominique de Menil and realized by the Menil Collection staff, the exhibition opened August 4, 1999”. Catalogue cover.

 

In the exhibition I witnessed, art and sculptures from tribal culture of Africa, the Pacific and Oceanic regions, which stimulated the surrealist painters to reach deep into exploring the inner mental capabilities of expression, in the quest of finding a new aesthetics.

 

            “In Oceanic art, one finds the greatest sustained effort to express the interpretations of the physical and the mental to resolve the dualism of perception and representation.

-          Andre Breton

-          WITNESSES, to a Surrealist Vision, The Menil Collection, menil.org

 

Here I was in the middle of surrealist masters, artists who revolutionized the Western aesthetics, with a stimulation of tribalism, from the heart of the Third World, a gallery staff, willing to understand, listen and present this to their community.

Our National Museum has never been able to intellectualize these conceptions. You noticed that the exhibition was conceptualized by an anthropologist, and has been on display since 1999, that is over 16 years. Let’s understand the length and breadth of conceptualization, the investment into projects. This is the ingredients of a National Museum.

But I’m getting ahead of myself...when I saw this collection, I understood Embah as a surrealist, an artist who was caught in the mist of the mind, in the power of the other, seeing that deeper meaning in things, you can call it up-cycling, for an ecological, political conversation. But Embah was caught in a intellectual, philosophical, spirituo-political conversation with objectification. If we take into consideration his understanding of his African traditions and knowledge, I can say that Embah is a surrealist. But also, for me a collage artist caught in materiality and convergence of materials, Embah works hold deep natural traditions of survival, necessity, using the everydayness of objects and implying into them, Obeah, further implication on the everyday, like his xylophones, musical sculptural metaphors for alters, for our Obeah, they were imbued with his Obeah, you could have interacted with the work, the sounds coming out created another dynamic, another look of we Obeah. Embah was able to put the everydayness on another level, through the magic of his art, Obeah of being...

DESIGN

Structurally, Embah speaks of our natural ability to be innovative, from a design position Embah’s works pulls to our direct visual core, a conversation of the throw away object and how we as a people, have been able to make a 10cents out of a 5cents. We have built our homes, we have built our economics and cultural space out of reuse, our traditional space has been built on the fact that nothing almost never goes to waste. Embah’s work acknowledges these facts. Embah’s work can be seen from an anthropology of ecology, design and architecture through art.

I’ll expect that a National Museum will speak of these issues more in-depth, with more passion and curiosity of Embah’s contribution to the intellectual, philosophical legacy to our aesthetics. Not only for Embah’s art, but for art and design.

ACTT

Is doing their thing, there thing is good... but there needs to be some kind of re-structuring of ACTT, as a representative of cultural groups, we need to see how best this can happen. It must start somewhere in the office. I’m not sure if a letter was written on behalf of Camille Selvon Abraham, there has been stillness and silence from the umbrella group...elections is here, have we gazetted our demands. ACTT needs to re-ACTT

THE ART SOCIETY

Well the art society is all about the private concerns of certain artists, if you’re about that, being a member matters, if you’re about the wider expanse of the politics of art and design in our society the Artists Society of Trinidad and Tobago, lives in an antiquated dream, lost to them is the modern political nuances of art, design, sculpture and craft. On this eve of elections, culture sits at the lowest ebb, the bastard child in the cabinet, used as a slush fund, to play politics with; because culture is soca, chutney and calypso. I’ll ask, did the Artists Society of Trinidad and Tobago, gazette their membership vision for their sector? Or how we can contribute in the development of our society?

 

I just hope one of you will be able to do a proper retrospective of a Master Artist, whose contribution goes further and deeper into our skin than we’ll like to acknowledge.

 

RIP, EMBAH, 2015.