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.        

A SECOND READING, NEWSDAY ARTICLE - DCFA: UWI ENGINE ROOM...

A SECOND READING,

NEWSDAY ARTICLE – DCFA: UWI’s engine room.
21 July 2015

The Newsday article -Sunday19 July 2015, Picture is of the President of the Creative Arts Students Association (CASA), Robert Noel

DESIGNING YOUR FUTURE..

In the Sunday July 19, Newsday Section A, page 43, there was the article DFCA (I think they meant DCFA): UWI’S engine room.

I will pull out some extracts from the article –

“Gibbons, in his article, he explained that “in 1998, after comprehensive consultation

with all users, a plan was developed by faculty for what we has re-named the Festival Centre for Creative Arts”. This plan informed the “first phase” construction of the buildings on Gordon Street and Funds “leftover” from an Inter – American Development Bank loan to UWI, (TT$3.8million) were used to construct “a partial, if custom made facility”, opened in 2000 as Centre for Creative and Festival Arts. This facility housed the Music and Visual Arts Units, while Theatre, Dance, Carnival Studies and the Festival Library and Documentation Centre remained at the Agostini Street centre until a future “second phase” would see it move. This second phase never happened and the units remained apart.”

For all late comers or alyuh culture people who sleeping under rock and ting, there will be a new building to be built up on Gordon Street, West of the present Visual Art and Music Unit, this facility will hold Theatre and Dance Unit.

 

“Phase one of the project will see a the two storey building that will house:

a 70-seater lecture room; two smaller seminar rooms; two full size dance studios; and office spaces. Murray said that everything now available at the Agostini Street building, “plus a little extra” will be set up at Gordon Street. In Phase two, construction will see a 200-seater theatre, library and technical theatre space.

Murray said the Gordon Street building will house classrooms, larger offices spaces and dance studios that will be a major improvement over what currently obtain at Agostini Street. The entire project is projected to cost $40 million”

 

Lots of money, lots of development, needed and worthy. But while the Visual Art and Music Units sit on lands that belong to Continuing Studies Unit, and I’m told they really don’t want to depart with the Gordon Street Facility. This was what I thought we would have seen, the Continuing Studies Building, on Gordon Street would have become the Department of Creative and Festival Arts, you would have expanded the facilities to comprehend the needs of the national community.

As it is now there is a whole new building that is being proposed on a whole new site excluding the Visual Arts, Graphic Design, Carnival Studies, Sculpture facilities – Ceramics, Foundry, Mould Making, Music and Documentation. The estimated $40million is being disposed on two units Dance and Theatre, at the dispense of the majority of units.

I’m thinking; here is an opportunity to build a visionary statement in art education, a building that will illuminate the direction of art and design in the development discourse of the national community and inclusion of all units, but what is happening is an upgrade in two and the squatting of others, at $40million.

Here you get an idea of how you can take small spaces and make bigger statements.

This just didn’t happen, this was happening since 1998, which is 17 years Bro! 17 years to prepare for this moment of a one sided development. The question, what it would have taken to raise the required amount of money which would have seen a building belonging to the Department of Creative and Festival Art, inclusive of all units. As a past student of Ontario College of Art and Design University, OCADU, which was settled in the heart of Toronto City, first their building was an amazing example of small space with big impact, holding almost all the visual arts, design components, there was another building which contained the film and animation; their expansion was done by an amazing design, which must have taken serious planning design and implementation. I feel that this move being done is just another spurt development project typical to Trinidad and Tobago, and some time further down the line, DCFA management will be looking for more money to deal with the other. I will feel much more comfortable if there was a serious look at our community needs, a consultation, a plan, and a trajectory towards those goals

The original OCADU, is at the bottom, it was four floors, in the basement, there was foundry, mould making, a presentation room, plastics, a spray room, woodwork, metal work and shop, first floor there was admin, second floor, design and other units, top floor visual arts and other units. But it is a fine example of expanding in small cramped spaces,

 

GOALS

 

·         Art – Painting studios, gallery/reception area*, studio classes, foundry*, mould* rooms

·         Design – 3d development studio*, computer rooms

·         Carnival Studies* – 3D development Studio space, rooms

·          Library/Documentation – video, editing studio

·         Theatre – lighting, set development, event management etc

·         Dance – choreography, physical, etc

·         Sculpture*

*there will be overlapping and synergy between

 

Another look at expansion and how you can.

I will quote Sunity Mharaj’s, article, 14 Sunday July 2015, STILL SEARCHING FOR THE SECOND FORCE, if we consider that art and design being that second or third force...

“With independence, it fell to the PNM to master the institutional apparatus left behind by the colonial power. Right from the beginning, however, it became clear that this would not be enough for a people desperate for a nation of their own. Independence has arrived with its own imperatives for dismantling the colonial infrastructure and re-configuring the society on a new basis that would give everyone a place in the sun. Reflecting this was the series of challenges to the Williams administration – from workers, Black Power, Tobago and Indo-Trinidad.”

 

So here we sit, at least at the beginning of our independence there was art, artists was part of the dialog...somewhere along the way art died in the vocabulary of development...now, 2015 when there will be serious expansion to the Department of Creative and Visual Arts, DCFA, I would have
thought the conversation would have been seriously considered, now! in the 21^st century, here in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean, for the first time in a long time there is a conversation of diversification, innovation and creative industry going on in the politics, and the politics of art and culture, $40million is a serious investment, to not consider overall inclusion of all units and their importance to the national and international discourse, with more and more Caribbean artists blowing up in galleries and intervening in the international art scene, it will be inevitable that we will have artists based here and operating on an international level one day. The economist are telling us it will not be getting easier, we’re spending more than innovating, The University is attempting to become more financially independent and in charge of raising their own funds. This will mean that the management of the DCFA, will have to also become more creative in their own fund raising; they can accomplish this by building synergy with partners here and internationally... Art is the second force. You have to be able to make a 5cent do 10cent work. Whatever is the politics playing in the department, they have missed an opportunity to be a light in art education institution in the Caribbean.....hffff $40million.....

 

Well it seem that the dye has been cast and its happening, let’s see where this all ends up.

 

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....

 

 

 

 

 

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.