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| Material: Metal |
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| Challenge normativity |
The University of the West Indies
Department of Liberal Arts and Institute of Gender and Development Studies
New Geographies of Postcoloniality and Globalization
Repositioning the Body in Postcolonial Communication:
Confronting the Privatised Consumerist Agenda
(Artists’ thoughts on Installation Proposal)
1. As we sit for dinner - mother, father, cousin, nephew, niece, sister, brother in-law; food is laid out and we prepare to dine in conversation when the iPods, the cell phones, the games shows emerge; in some way setting the rule of some kind of disengagement.
2. A trip up to the Aripo valley in the Northern Range with the cousin and the academic and suddenly, just like that- the iPod. I am incensed. What’s up with dat? I ask inquisitively - there are three of us - join in the conservation. Your mother didn’t bring you up like dat.
3. It is Carnival and we heading in a packed car to Port of Spain. The car stereo is playing music of the season and suddenly, the iPod is whipped out and the young woman sitting at the left rear window retreats into her world. She leaves us.
The three situations above present examples of the privatization of the modern social practice, and the deconstruction of habitual notions and practices of communication.
Free-market globalization and new developments in information technology have allowed for a deconstructivist intellectual position that allows for the liberalization and de-territorialisation (i.e. westernization ) of thought and practice’ Using concepts such as the “global culture” a dialogue that is pervasive amongst artists, politicians, technocrats, bureaucrats and a business sector..., which states that since we belong to the global world population we have every right to absorb and utilize their cultural influence to advance our very own. This statement true as it is for small post colonial state usually comes at the peril of our heritage and our very own cultural self. These debates usually come from a very well articulated, educated and disparaging middle class which perceives itself as modern and global.
This approach challenges traditional notions of “self” which regulates that the “self” belongs to a body, a tribe, a community for the continuity of the very “self” and the very community in which the “self” exists. These new formulations of how we present this “self” belongs to a narcissistic Western philosophy of modernist capitalism that tells us that the “self” belongs to the inner contemplations and ambitions of the individual with no responsibility to a wider community. This prescription has been the result of a consumerist middle class angst aimed at repositioning and maintaining good standing within their social group. This angst is evident in the heavy prescription for young people of qualifications and proper social etiquette in activities such as dance, swimming, choir, football, cricket, basketball and karate Activities which prepare the young to advance within their class and peer group but have no real intention to building community. The above may differ due to class and intention. These activities facilitate belonging in this group but do not provide the philosophical tools to critically analyse their situation.
This preference is reflected in the need to acquire the latest tools and gadgets that will give them the trappings of social mobility and plays into the consumerism that has corrupted our social order. The current tools are the cell (smart) phones, iPods, video games, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, the game box, and other forms of bling.
The concerns of individual social mobility within one’s group are carried out in the interest of privilege and privatized concerns. In other words, my interests become more important than the other: setting the table for confrontation with siblings and peers. These mobilization concerns at times have resulted in the destruction of long-standing institutions resulting in the development of privatized preferences to schools, medical services, members clubs, gangs, sporting and social clubs, blocks, setting a pathway, for new forms of communication?
Personal space is considered a one-inch circumference around an individual. Modern communication technology has increased that space considerably through an alienation of the individual from his or her social space, creating distance between people resulting in a lack of empathy, which increases the political ideology of the ‘self’ and consequently the iPodization of space.
So we have constructed this social bubble that has no correlation with our traditions, our ancestral and heritable grounding around - how we socialize, how we communicate with each other, or how we design our communities, our space and families.
Globalizing Culture or the Americanization of our Postcoloniality through its media and pop culture has created the authenticity of the narcissistic self; presenting the ambitions of the individual as more important than any other concern. It is here the online self is born, to connect, yet disconnect at the moment. To read and listen, to chew and speak, to listen and talk.
Like a partner (friend) said recently in relation to an event affected by low participation - “Two hundred people on Facebook said they were coming, dey all lie.” This disconnect is possible as it is all too easy to press the key, to turn up the volume, to kill another alien, than dealing with the pleasantries and challenges of human communication. How do we find the nature within us, me, and within you? How can we get a glimpse of this unsettling behaviour of our moving away from the skin of the other?
I am proposing that we adjust the dining experience to force people to be seated in close contact of each other; in some way we force them to rethink the relationships between bodies and activities. There are clear ways in which the body operates in this very personal experience. Usually a dining experience is laid out in a grid network and the personal organisation is square or circular and within specific measurements according to the number of people sitting at the table. By readjusting the measurements you can radically alter how the body reacts to the other. By redesigning the utensils you re-order the communal, bringing skin closer to each other.
What if we were to ask each other to discard our cell phones, iPods, laptops, etc. for that moment while they sit in one of our most primal and private of activities- dining?
What will be observed?
I wish to challenge our modernity by repositioning the body back into our living conversations. This should set the stage for the consideration for new alternatives that will challenge our Neo- Postcolonial “Self”, which has branded the privatized body with elements of paranoia, gangster-ism, exoticism, religiosity, fundamentalism, capitalism and politicization. The native body more than ever is evolving into an unconventional form, without the critical analyst that will give it that specific flavour we so ideologically speak of, when we refer to the Caribbean body or “self”.
In essence what I am proposing is the deconstruction of a particular design order for the possible reconstruction of a social design manifesto by re-imaging the primitivism of an indigenous performance such as dining which is an important ritual of our lives. By re-inserting the “self” in a very embroidered manner into the design of this space, creates a highlighted concern about the political body, recognizing that this belongs to us all as it has always been communal and social, creating the possibility to understand the possible in the non-literary and non-linear ways in which we communicate.
Dean Arlen
Artist/Sculptor
25.10.2010
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