ART, THE CONTEMPORARY, CLASS, POLITICS AND NEO-LIBREALISM - The Titting Axis Visual Art Conference

Art, the Contemporary, Class, Politics and Neo-Liberalism

The Tilting Axis Visual Arts Conference.

 I begin this with a paraphrase from an artist’s comment at his 2014  retrospective.

 

       “I’m of the firm understanding that my art over the years haven’t affected my        community”

(Makemba Kunle- National Museum of Trinidad and Tobago, 2014-The Unfolding of an Artist’s Life, Aesthetics and Revolution)

This statement is important in light of the recently held Tilting Axis, visual  art conference hosted by Fresh Milk,  http://freshmilkbarbados.com/about  as well as
the upcoming participation of a contingent of Trinidad and Tobago musicians  at the South by Southwest Music Festival,  http://sxsw.com  March 21 2015, Austin, Texas, MIX cover story, (Sunday Express, 8 March 2015, Nigel Telesford, http://www.trinidadexpress.com).  
I’m thinking there are some interesting issues that emerge as we seek to explore the notion of sustainability and connectivity that art in this sub-region is making or not making.

  “It is not just about contemporary art. One of the tasks we have undertaken at the    Perez Art Museum Miami is the building of Caribbean art histories in the           consciousness of the American public, we see the Perez Art Museum as strategically placed to undertake this”

(Tobias Ostrander-Chief Curator of the Perez Art Museum, Miami.

  B4-Sunday Arts, Sunday Guardian March 8 2015, www.guardian.co.tt )

 

This development is important for deep reflection in light of the comment made by Makemba Kunle, artist and one of the Directors/Founders of the Studio 66 project, https://buzz.tt/venue/studio-66-art-gallery-648 , Barataria. How do we build a consciousness in the minds of our own, in light of a new burgeoning middle class, who in their imagination live not here within their geographical borders but within the neo-liberal, global economy of capitalist, consumption and imagination; where art seems built more to negotiate foreign markets and cultural borders rather than local cultural context and people..

Art has grown ever more estranged from its local and ancestral political and location as we can see in this year’s carnival presentations where there has been an acknowledgement of certain confusion happening:

“National Carnival Commission (NCC) Chairwoman (my words) Lorraine Pouchet in her comments described as “obscene” the amount of money spent on Carnival “without the kind of returns we would like to see”.

“And I think we need to look at a more equitable distribution of our taxpayers’ funds in creating the type of event and industry that we would like to see coming out of the very souls or our people,” she said

She said it had been traditionally forgotten that Carnival belongs to all people of this country, not just interest groups. She said she was “extremely sad” that the country has been losing its traditions of dance and the NCC wants to develop programmes to take into the schools”

By-Julien Neaves-Page 46 Newsday Sunday March 15, 2015- Arts and Entertainment-http://newsday.co.tt  

This confused state of cultural alienation and anomie is being fuelled mainly by absence among all classes of any historical connection to a philosophical, conceptual or intellectual politics of Caribbean aesthetics. There is also no connection to the historical struggle that went into the shaping of our cultural innovations over the last two centuries. Our contemporary middle-class cultural politics, owes it allegiance only to capital as reflected in the class differentiations now characteristic of our cultural events - VIP, VVIP, VVIP... a neo-capitalism that has sunk its teeth into our imagination.

 

 

TILTING AXIS
the warm welcome of the Tilting Axis- Visual Art Conference-2015, means something, when we put into context all the other discussions and political action taking place at this time., Conversations around innovation, diversification, the EU investment into civil society (Trinidad and Tobago), the re-conceptualization of craft education programme, SKILL and Education, both primary and secondary; there is also an intellectual re-conceptualization discourse happening about the Caribbean and innovation, coming from the International Relations Department, UWI.  All this could provide a context for the discourses of Tilting Axis within the frame of a larger developmental conversation and yes, this is a warm welcomed sign.

But this sign set in motion other questions that need to be asked around class and the construction of art in the Caribbean. Studio 66 is a metaphor of class aesthetics. There are many reasons why people or organizations could not or would not be present.  The event already had a significant number of people - 30, there could have been a lack of funds, conflicting schedules etc. But this also brings up the glaring issue of where individual artists or groups of artists sit within the evolving political realities of modern contemporary art here in the Caribbean and who is shaping this reality.

The middle-class is caught in this schizophrenic voice, of being of, and not being of; what they produce, our voice has no value in the neo-liberal capitalist conversation of the Western art gallery system, biennials, ART BASEL’s etc.; their power sits within the geographical space whence it came, which is void and confused of this particular contemporary voice. It is a simulacrum, a theatrical set, a performance; as was done when we displayed our bodies for consumption in the early era of the 50’s and 60’s. These performances are done all at high stakes, for careers and reputations.

 

“For middle-class agents to become effectively political involves then decisively breaking with the biases associated with their own class, because in a society where the relationship between capitalist and worker is the most important one, the middle-class occupies a vacillating centre position.”

(Ben Davis-9.5 Theses on Art and Class, pg23/Art and Class)

 So when a child, of a doctor, who was visiting my studio one day, responds, “so you don’t have a real job?”  or when my musician colleague tells me that when he says to the immigration officer that he is an artist, their response is “Wha!?” Here sits Art, at two extreme points, one of awe, one of disbelief. The motivation of any conference is to set the constructive value of the politics of art to community, the value of art to ourselves, paraphrasing what Oslander described as:  “the building of Caribbean art histories in the consciousness of the American public”  and I will paraphrase, “the building of Caribbean art histories in the consciousness of the Caribbean public.”  This means therefore that when there is the next sit down in 2016 as mentioned in the article; there must be action taken to develop a social art-design activism involving interactions with the working-classes, civil society, and academia. This is already happening in a small way, as we speak in some of our communities.

Caribbean art’s powers sits in its obeah, its ancestral ties to an earlier time when art sat as totems, forces laying claim to space, mind and body.  This would set the stage for a different intellectual and aesthetic paradigm of art, one that is more communal, social and interactive.  This means having conversations on new ways of injecting art into our social space. It means finding systems, maybe like a sou-sou or friendly societies, panchayats, gayaps etc.  These can become the templates for our arts councils.

 

Contemporary Art-

 

“6.9-On the other hand, contemporary visual art also faces a dilemma if it does not engage with other, more dominant creative industries; in that case, its audience becomes narrowed to only the very rich and those who have the privilege to have been educated in its traditions, which makes clear the narrow horizon, and consequently, lack of freedom within which this supposedly free form of expression manoeuvres.” 

         (Ben Davis-9.5 Theses on Art and Class, pg33/Art and Class)

 

CONCLUSION
In setting up a discussion on sustainability and connectivity, contemporary art negotiators must be cognisant of the entrapment of the pervasive neo-liberal, capitalist, global agenda for art and aesthetics. This is necessary when the imaginary of art has almost no political voice within our geographical borders; at least within my borders of Trinidad and Tobago.  Since independence, The Trinidad and Tobago Art Society for example has developed projects that have set public art and design two steps backwards, while the Trinidad and Tobago Institute of Architects sits silent on the role of art and design within their work.

 If the architects of Tilting the Axis really wish to tilt the axis, there must be a collective understanding of the deconstructive and reconstructive approach to power. In reframing capital, society, masculinity and femininity, we must in our backyard spark an imaginative revolution of how art renegotiates space in our region. Art must be the totems on the walls of our modern structures; posters in our chattel communities. Artists must become the shamans, not the colourful court jester. Most importantly there must be a serious approach to deconstructing the schizophrenic duality, with which we as the middle class continuously battle.

 

“9.2 Whatever these specific struggles are, it is an organized working class that is best placed to challenge dominant ruling-class relations [4.6], which is the precondition for challenging dominant ruling-class values of art and improving the situation of art.”

Ben Davies - 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, pg36/Theses on Art and Class

The idea of reconstructing real power means the total deconstruction of self, the analysis of power as self and the eventual repositioning of self within the community communal aspirations of the political, social, economic, historical and the aesthetics, in the one voice.