Contentious Objections
Live from the Cultural Futures international arts symposium, IMOGEN NEALE compares notes with visiting Philippines-born artist Fátima Lasay. Up for discussion: postmodenism, terrorism, cultural imperialism, and other -isms.
“Obviously, U.S. leaders know nothing about articulation – would have had no respect for the marae protocol – and thus resort to bombing countries like the Philippines, Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Cambodia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. in the need to communicate U.S.-style democracy. And nobody with the “brevity of the contemporary attention span” would even ask what democracy means.” —Fátima Lasay, email correspondence.
YOU'RE NOT WRONG – conferences are often dry affairs where people take their 40min slot and push their research as hard as they can – an academic hard sell session peppered by tea and asparagus rolls if you will. The organizers of Cultural Futures: Place, Ground and Practice in Asia Pacific New Media Arts, an international arts symposium held at Hoani Waititi Marae in West Auckland from 1st to 5th of December 2005, however, wanted to make some significant changes to the menu. Rather than one person dictating their version of one, or a number, of theories to many – inspiring at least half the audience to draw psychedelic doodles of mammoth proportions – this conference was about growth – put an idea out there, water it, prune it and mold it together and see what you, collectively, have in the end. One of the participants was Fátima Lasay, a Philippines-born artist whose pieces investigate themes of ownership, sovereignty, cultural (re)definitions and technologies. Well traveled, well spoken and widely respected, Fátima provides insightful thoughts about everything from the value of the term ‘new media’, Bush’s future career as an arts curator and what formal arts education can really do for us.
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You use the term 'archeology of self' to talk about the ways people can start thinking about who they are, where they are located and how their 'they' or 'self' is situated in the world. Although this is a post-modern concept, the term 'archeology' suggests that the secret of the self, or the key to the location of the self-position, is behind us it has already happened. Would you say that's a correct interpretation now is then and tomorrow is yesterday?
It's not a postmodern concept. The term "archaeology of self" is not about location or a position of the self. I use the concept of "archaeology" as a short description of the dialectics between knowledge, body and language (what I call diwà in Filipino). Meanwhile, the "secret" to the self is in the concept of the indigenous, self + earth. If that "secret" has been lost, then perhaps we need an "archaeology" or "anito", in Filipino, meaning "ancestor worship." In the karanga (ceremony call by a kuia or elder woman of the tangata whenua (host) in the marae protocol), the manuhiri (guests) are called upon to bring with them their dead. In the Tangi Ki Nga Mate, both tangata whenua and manuhiri mourn the dead who are in their presence.
How did you experience at Hoani Waititi support or challenge this idea?
It inspired and challenged me. The powhiri and the marae are incredibly articulate cultural systems. It inspired and challenged me to see that diwà is about articulation too.
I saw the powhiri as a powerful articulation of conflict and interaction. It articulates the occurrence of difference without disregard for conflict and without falling into the dogma of both pluralism and universalism. The marae protocol and the social and economic organizations surrounding it are born out of the possibility of antagonism, conflict and difference. Even when the kopere (symbolic stick) is picked up by the manuhiri, the tutungarahu (war dance of defiance) is performed as show of force against any unpeaceful intentions.
Such an elaborate and formal ceremony is necessary before we could be given the temporary status of tangata whenua, before we could enter the marae. It is necessary because knowledge is vulnerable. The protocol is observed by those who know this.
What the vulnerability of knowledge means is that the separation of knowledge from body and language is what destroys life (buhay), life force (bisa), and corrupts disposition and will (kalooban). The separation of knowledge from body and language is manifested today in the pervasive philosophy of postmodernism, in particular, in postmodernism’s skepticism and relativism, an extreme emphasis upon the relativity of knowledge to the point of dogmatism. Indeed, knowledge is vulnerable when it is separated from body and language. Body is vulnerable when it is separated from knowledge and language. Language is vulnerable when it is separated from knowledge and body.
If the transmission of knowledge is supported by the imagery of the marae, then all the art forms found in marae are equally significant in the Iwi vista, that are, poupou (carving) and tukutuku (tapestry). Then perhaps the creative process is not only carving (body) but also weaving (language), the strategic interaction between poupou and tukutuku. These are important aspects in the transmission and creation of knowledge (In one karakia, knowledge is described as being handed down through three baskets!) Hence, the marae become life-giving and life-force-giving, articulating the Iwi vista, the Iwi worldview.
Fátima Lasay: "Mga Awit Mula sa Gimokud" (Songs from the Gimokud(Two Souls)), sound installation, Lac Geronde, Sierre, Switzerland
It does seem like an oxymoronic statement: New Media = Old Ways of knowing, wouldn't you agree?
I think that it is a statement from the new media circuit trying to save itself from lack of knowledge.
At the conference one speaker argued that the term 'New Media' was poisonous; that the elitism and meritocracy it wrapped around art was completely counterproductive taking it further away, rather than closer to, the people. In your experience, does the term 'New Media' help or hinder?
Taxonomies are always rather suspect because they inevitably impose a point of view. I have used the term "new media" in my work and writing in the past and in my experience it has been more restricting than helpful. Perhaps it was useful career-wise because it was like a passphrase, but in terms of the creative process, it was simply conceptually empty. Not because of elitism or meritocracy, but because of the (historical and cultural) dogmas embedded within it. Through the medium of language, we are able to internalize concepts and externalize them. "New media" is a term and system that simply does not fit in my triad of knowledge, body and language.
Your exhibition pieces often have a musical or soundscape base to them. This means that audiences have to put some work in. Amongst other things, they have to stand around, listen, look and concentrate. That's a tall order given the brevity of the contemporary attention span. How do you feel about your form – is it demanding or is it a simple sound spectacle?
I don't make soundworks or any creative work for audiences anymore. I have just "retired" from teaching at university in late 2004, likewise retired from new media art and contemporary art. My last exhibition piece in the Philippines was done in mid-2003, and my last exhibition pieces outside the country were done in April 2004. However, I continue to work with sound in more contemplative ways.
In terms of soundworks, you mention the “brevity of the contemporary attention span”, which I find amusing because indigenous knowledge is passed on through oral (language) systems. The poupou, tukutuku and the whare whakairo are language systems too, obviously not fitting contemporary attention! So if one considers film or video or the computer as a medium for articulation rather than communication, then this means film, video or computer is a form of language rather than a static form of commodity. In articulation, concepts are internalized and externalized through the medium of language. However, in communication (as what takes place in the image industries and the “information age”), there is no conceptual process but only the process of consumption (audience, viewer, consumer). So you are quite right about the “brevity of the contemporary attention span” that is gratified by “communication” and repulsed by articulation.
Obviously, U.S. leaders know nothing about articulation – would have had no respect for the marae protocol – and thus resort to bombing countries like the Philippines, Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Cambodia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. in the need to communicate U.S.-style democracy. And nobody with the “brevity of the contemporary attention span” would even ask what democracy means.
The Philippines tends to get submerged by the attention given to China, India, Hong Kong and Taiwan – for example. How responsible do you feel, as an artist who engages with issues of identity, interculturalism and the notion that there is perhaps a base of knowledge, language, movement and meaning that we all work from?
I don't feel any responsibility for placing the Philippines in the international limelight. I answer only to my ancestors who have no ambition to partake of the national economic system, the alien political system nor the international new media art industry. I don't feel submerged in the personal interactions with peoples I have met from New Zealand, India, Taiwan, Myanmar, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. Only our political and cultural bureaucrats are the one who feel submerged, which accounts for such dangerous stunts as the "creative industry", the "strong republic" and the "war against terror."
Fátima Lasay: "Mga Anak ng Ubas" (Children of the Grape), sound installation (detail of spirit boats), 2004.
As someone who curates shows what do you think a) builds that crucial bridge between art, artist and audience? And b) negates the link that makes the show a superficial spectacle rather than an engaging experience where the spectator becomes spect-actor?
I don't curate shows anymore either. The last exhibition I curated in the Philippines was in 2003, and the last overseas was in October 2004, just before I officially retired from teaching. There is something fundamentally dangerous about the dominant academic and contemporary art systems. These systems impose a standard of learning, a gradation among age groups and a criterion of "creative excellence" that transcends ethnic specificities. I believe that this is the danger. Others see this as useful, of course, because nationalized and internationalized standards and gradations – like taxonomies – are always useful for large-scale production and management. But I refuse to believe that education and art should be subsumed within large-scale production and management. It didn't matter to burn wholesale villages full of children in Vietnam as long as the U.S. government believed they were saving the people from communism. Does it matter now that the Philippine government either fence out or tear down urban shanties in order to upgrade the place for George W. Bush's state visit? Does it matter now that the U.S. bomb Iraq to give the Iraqi people democracy? Surely Bush is a great curator who has created an engaging context and a situation for global terrorism where the U.S. refuses to admit and be held accountable for being the lead "spect-actor."
Often, the indigenous (self + earth) notions of culture and ecology are seen as obstacles to commercial development, and their subjugation throughout colonial history from military force and financial power, to the use of the image and symbolic industries has consistently been comprised of the alienation of the mental from the physical, of content from carriage, of theory from practice. Curating, which re-creates contexts and situations for art, artists and audience, basically thrives upon the alienation of the creative process from the artwork. The power wielded within the curating system is like paper money - the money economy pushed by the unfettered printing of US currency after the Second World War as part of the Marshall Plan. Thus, it is not surprising that only recently, the US ambassador to UNESCO had to remind everyone that the UNESCO was intended to be the intellectual balance to the Marshall Plan, a massive post-war economic aid given by the US to favored countries in Western Europe, in particular as reward to those embracing capitalism and rejecting communism. The Marshall Plan was selective aid, US financial power, determined to complete US economic and cultural imperialism after the War. So, as "intellectual balance" to financial and political dominance, indigenous cultures are being destroyed in order to stimulate demand for their re-creation as merchandise. This is exactly the same kind of "reconstructive aid" that is being pushed in Iraq, and in international new media art exhibitions and festivals.
To what degree would you say that a piece of art or an arts conference is based on performance? The performance of a role or the performance of a position for example?
If it was performance – on any level – then it would be destructive to the creative process. Performance is about action, stage, viewer. If it was about articulation (or diwà), then what is crucial is not action, stage or viewer, but rather knowledge, language and body - the linguistic vividness of our internal representation of the external world, a vividness created without need for an audience, a stage or a viewer.
'Indigenous' is also a word you use with some frequency. Like identity, culture or art, this is a problematic word embedded with notions that collapse ideas and those that throw them wide open. When explaining what you mean, or what your intentions are to someone who may be hostile to the position you are about to take, where do you begin?
I begin with the indigenous. It is articulated so beautifully in the powhiri, in the formal reconciliation of tangata whenua and manuhiri.
The conference was, at its core, about sameness with difference or difference with sameness. It seems like a foregone conclusion we are different but we are, essentially, the same. How do you think this idea leads to new ways of thinking or engaging with new people and new ideas?
I didn’t think that the conference (or my presence in the conference) was about “sameness with difference or difference with sameness” or that we are “essentially the same.” Actually, I think that “we are different but we are, essentially, the same” is a rather fascistic idea.
CULTURAL FUTURES
Cultural Futures: Place, Ground and Practice in Asia Pacific New Media Arts ran in Auckland from December 1-5, 2005 – the first significant event of its kind to take place in Aotearoa / New Zealand. The ground-breaking symposium aimed to develop international awareness of locally produced work and link off-shore practices to conversations around New Zealand's shifting cultural and creative identities...[Read More]
Fátima Lasay is an artist, independent curator, and educator of digital media. Her work looks into communalism, sovereignty and autonomy in the practice and theory of technology-based arts, and cultural [re]definitions of technologies within the context of development and neocolonialism. She has presented her work in Denmark, India, the Netherlands, Singapore and Taiwan, and has conducted workshops and worked with artists in Burma, Switzerland and the Philippines. Fátima obtained her degrees in Industrial Design (1991) and Master of Fine Arts (2002) from the University of the Philippines (UP) where she also organized the first digital media festivals (2000-2003). She served as lecturer (1996-2000) and assistant professor (2000-2004) at the UP College of Fine Arts. Fatima will be participating in a pilot international masters program for the arts under a bursary at the Ecole Cantonale d'Art du Valais (ECAV) in Sierre, Switzerland. She joined the Leonardo Electronic Almanac in 2000 and currently serves as member of its International Advisory Board. Fatima is also on the Steering Committee of the ISEA2006 Pacific Rim New Media Summit (PRNMS) and chairs its Working Group on Education.
digitalmedia.upd.edu.ph/digiteer
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