ART MATTERS AS MUCH AS LIFE MATTERS-IN LIFE DESIGN IS CONSIDERED

ART MATTERS AS MUCH AS LIFE MATTERS-IN LIFE DESIGN IS CONSIDERED

Café, Galeota, free form construction, with natural design.

This was an interesting week/month, all things considered, national election in September, there was the Ministry of Design-Colloquium, Save the Savannah; won their case in the courts against the Ministry of Planning; on the development which was being installed in the Orange Grove Savannah, nine Afro-American were massacred in a black gospel church...they forgave the killer. We sent out letter into the Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation for the consideration concerning our proposal to install the Tacarigua Sculptural Playground Project on the Orange Grove Savannah. I met with ACTT, the Artist Coalition of Trinidad and Tobago. I visited four schools as far as Mayaro, to the North Coast, to Central, in the school drop out project.

 

Community Centre, Tunapuna, a formal structure, which lacked design empathy 

ART MATTERS

As much as life matters, in life design is considered. From the colloquium, I have this uneasy feelings my colleagues have indifferent feelings to art and design having the same tendencies. There is also a standoff on the word “activism”.

Here we’re with the opportunity to create a hybrid scenario, between art and design in the transformation process of our society. Art has the possibility of opening the soul, design have the intention of regulating that soul, through the understanding of process. I will agree with a Minister who in a speech mentioned, I will paraphrase “Trinidadian and Tobagonians, having been trying to create our own path, our rebellious nature, our slackness, is our way of finding that path”.

If we look at the anthropological and pyscological nature of slackness, the women and men who commit slackness, “Warnerism” and others like him, can be considered the noble desire for true altruism, a hyper, neo-real Robin Hood. The fact that people can’t seem to turn their back on such people who act off social-deviant behaviour, I have heard words come from mouths of Minister, Mr. Cadiz, The Honourable Kamla... the mouths of neighbours concerning people who have done harm to people, they come to their defence, either as colleagues, friends, neighbours, groupings, ethnic groups, mothers, dads, brothers, sisters etc.

This masking as professor Gerard Hutchinson, in the article by Dr. Jean Antoine, in the article, TRINIS HAVE TRUST ISSUES –

“The matter for him is about what we consider to be, which is again linked to this issue of masking. Because historically performance is so important in our society and our ability to outface the other a marker of success. We out the eccentric and the showman on pedestals. We revere the ones who can create the greatest publicity. The personas constructed though, he notes, are not real, and when crisis occurs, there is collapse.

Newsday, Sunday March 29, 2015 page43, Trinis have trust Issues, Jean Antoine Dunne, Senior Lecturer, The University of the West Indies.

Heights of Aripo, vending stall, temporary structure, built informally to support a business idea 

 

This “warnerism”, “sagaboy”, “masking”, politics of self, is us, we, I, this full blown idea of consuming the I, rather than the we is the weakness of our cultural space. The spectacle of our performances to gather great gratitude’s and political mileage may be in favour of the I agenda, the pedestal, in the long run the death of the overall conversation of a socio economic identity.

 

Heights of Aripo, RC School, stair way, formal structure

 

 

At Yao Ramesar’s presentation of his films at Studio66, the conversation of economics in culture aroused great passion in the audience... which I stated, that as cultural practitioners, it is always sad that we have to start with making money rather than having a conversation about the professional status of our groups. The ability of me, as an artist to be at the best at what I do, from a philosophical, theoretical, sociological, historical, ethical, moral (not religious), economic position, money will come and when it comes we should have the maturity to deal with.

Yao, is one of the few film makers who have embraced art, speaks of it in is development of his films.

 

Studio 66, Yao Ramesar, film presentation, an example of formal, informal design of space. Yao Ramesar is one of the few film makers who speaks openly about art in the frame of filming

SYNERGY, HYBRIDITY

Why are designers so consumed on a separatist agenda, while designers and artists are embracing the qualities of each group to create sustainable projects. I had the opportunity to share this with some policy makers at a meeting, did they understand, I’m not sure, what was understood was their project in a community fell through, due to a flawed approach, here they had a opportunity to embrace the idea of art-design, “Arsign” which can be implied in a community, with the hopes that it will be sustainable. There is a will to listen.

Worker in full flight, this is an example of informal ways we go about doing things that have serious formality

ACTIVISM

Is frowned upon, why? Our space has been an activist space from the very beginning of its modernity, The Caribbean has been in activist mode, still to this day we’re still trying to get it right. Artists and designers must embrace the fact that what we’re doing is an activist practice, no matter how dumb down your work is or how high intellectual your work may be, what we’re doing is activating space. Tribe as much as Chris Cozier are activating; one on low pop culture, high capitalism, low aesthetics, the other is stimulated through a high level of intellectual conceptual consideration for pop culture. They’re both in the game, what is needed is more conversations to work out what are the benefits of a Tribe cultural shift, or a Chris Cozier’s cultural shift or a By Making, Ccooabel or Sun Eaters Organics, Yao Ramesar’s Films. To find that, we need to embrace activism, in the understanding of our products, or expressions. Truth in activism, finds truth of self.

 

Vending Stall, Maracas North Coast, an example of high informality, from materiality, collage to squatting

“What Professor Hutchinson is suggesting is that as a people we have had to deal with adapting ourselves to being first of all in positions of subordination during the periods of enslavement and indenturship subsequently we had to adjust to new power relations after independence.

The problem is that having lived for generations in scenarios where survival demanded that we hide who we truly are and mistrust those in authority, we are now not able to trust anyone.”

Newsday, Sunday March 29, 2015 page43, Trinis have trust Issues, Jean Antoine Dunne, Senior Lecturer, The University of the West Indies.

 

 

As I walk through my communities I’m confronted with a art-design hybrid, which is consumed in craft, free form, collage, construction, engineering all coming from a proletarian of natural intellectualism, in finding our natural self, we will have to embrace this, creating a hybridity of form, a vocabulary that can speak clearly to the internationalization of political vision, neo-liberalization, capitalism and globalization of imagination.

 

North Coast, La Fillet Village, Blanchisseuse- here is an example of a formal form, being interjected into an informal structure, acquiring qualities of formal structuralism, acquiring architecture. These are great examples of hybrid possibilities

WE WILL HAVE TO TRUST....