Cultures and Globalization: Cultural Expression, Creativity and Innovation (The Cultures and Globalization Series)

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THE CULTURES AND GLOBALIZATION SERIES


CULTURAL EXPRESSION, CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION

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THE CULTURES AND GLOBALIZATION SERIES


CULTURAL EXPRESSION, CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION Edited by

HELMUT ANHEIER YUDHISHTHIR RAJ ISAR Guest editor Christopher Waterman

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Introduction and Editorial Arrangement © Helmut Anheier and Yudhishthir Raj Isar 2010, Chapters © Contributors 2010 First published 2010 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP SAGE Publications Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B 1/I1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road New Delhi 110 044 SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 33 Pekin Street #02-01 Far East Square Singapore 048763

Library of Congress Control Number 2009925322 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-4129-2085-8 ISBN 978-1-4129-2086-5 (pbk)

Typeset by C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain by Ashford Colour Press Ltd Printed on paper from sustainable resources

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CONTENTS

Foreword by Stuart Hall Acknowledgements Contributors List of boxes, figures, photos, plates and tables

Introduction

ix xiii xvi xxiv

1

Yudhishthir Raj Isar and Helmut K. Anheier PART 1

ISSUES AND PATTERNS IN CULTURAL EXPRESSION

Overarching Issues

17 19

1

Creativity: Alternative Paradigms to the ‘Creative Economy’ Rustom Bharucha

21

2

Recognition and Artistic Creativity Joni Maya Cherbo and Harold L. Vogel

37

3

Walking with the Devil: Art, Culture and Internationalization Gerardo Mosquera

47

4

… But What Is The Question? Art, Research and the Production of Knowledge Gilane Tawadros

57

5

Improvising in a World of Movement: Transit, Transition and Transformation Maruška Svašek

62

6

Diasporic Spaces: Migration, Hybridity and the Geocultural Turn Keith Nurse

78

7

Creativity and Intellectual Property Rights Jason Toynbee

86

8

Exile, Culture and Identity Rasoul Nejadmehr

99

9

The ‘Creativity’ of Evil? Dragan Klaic

105

Regional Realities

111

10

The ‘Creator’ as Entrepreneur: An African Perspective Paul Brickhill

113

11

The Turn of the Native: Vernacular Creativity in the Caribbean Annie Paul

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vi  CONTENTS 12

Creative Contemporary Design in the Arab World Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès

13

Cultural Policing in South Asia: An Anti-globalization Backlash Against Freedom of Expression? Laurent Gayer, Christophe Jaffrelot and Malvika Maheshwari

14

The Struggle to Express, Create and Represent in the Balkans Zala Volcic

15

Creative Economy, Global City: Globalizing Discourses and the Implications for Local Arts Lily Kong

131

148

158

166

Genres and Issues

177

16

The Cycles of Creativity in the Music Industry Peter Tschmuck

179

17

Creative Communities and Emerging Networks Clayton Campbell

189

18

Creative Spaces Nancy Duxbury and Catherine Murray

200

19

Literary Hybrids and the Circuits of Translation: The Example of Mia Couto Stefan Helgesson

215

20

Emergences in Digital Culture Ivani Santana

225

21

Fashion and Ethics: Reinventing Models of Consumption and Creativity in a Global Industry Mo Tomaney and Julie Thomas

235

22

Creativity and Innovation: The Role of Philanthropy Diana Leat

245

23

Digital Networks and Social Innovation: Strategies of the Imagination Eugenio Tisselli

261

24

Closing Reflections Christopher Waterman

273

Colour Plate Section

287

PART 2

299

2.1

INDICATOR SUITES

Cultural Indicator Suites: An Introduction Helmut K. Anheier and Michael Hoelscher

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2.2

Creativity Indexes Enrico Bertacchini and Walter Santagata

307

2.3

Measuring Creativity and Innovation Michael Hoelscher

317

Data Suites

329

Policy Regulatory Frameworks, Levi Brooks and JJ Kaye, designers Digest: Regulatory Frameworks Intellectual Property, Levi Brooks and JJ Kaye, designers Digest: Intellectual Property

330 330

Investment Education, Luca de Sanctis Barton, designer Digest: Education Philanthropy, Leon Hong and Camile Orillaneda, designers Digest: Philanthropy Research & Development, Leon Hong and Camile Orillaneda, designers Digest: Research and Development

338 338

Diversity Institutions, Mylinh Trieu Nguyen, designer Digest: Institutions Membership in Organizations, Donnie Luu, designer Digest: Membership in Organizations Practices & Participation Events, Jono Brandell, designer Digest: Events Places: Indicators for six cities, Ryan Weafer, designer Digest: Places Migration, Fei Liu, designer Digest: Migration

352 352

Creativity and Hybridity Creativity & Innovation Indices, design Christo Allegra, designer Digest: Creativity and Innovation Indices Hybridity Languages, Vincent Cordero, designer Digest: Languages The Blogosphere, Lindsay Harvey, designer Digest: The Blogosphere ECO Trends and Innovation, Derek Heath and Katherine Wu, designers Digest: ECO Trends and Innovation Music, Alok Jethanandani, designer Digest: Music New & Syncretic Religions, Christopher Tuyay, designer Digest: New and Syncretic Religions Dance, Sheriah Altobar, designer Digest: Dance Forms

374 374

334

344 348

356

360 366 370

378 382 386 390 394 398

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viii  CONTENTS Hip Hop, Alyssa Wang, designer Digest: Hip Hop Reality TV, Jason Hanakeawe, designer Digest: Reality TV Body Art, Tiffany Payakniti, designer Digest: Body Art Web 2.0, Stephen Sulistiawan, designer Digest: Web 2.0 2.4

Creativity, Innovation, Globalization: What International Experts Think Helmut K. Anheier and Michael Hoelscher

403 406 410 414

421

References: Data Suites & Digests

437

Index

453

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FOREWORD Stuart Hall

This collection of essays follows through the line of inquiry opened up by the two previous volumes in The Cultures and Globalization Series. The aim of the series is to track the complex inter-relations between globalization and culture in its many forms in the contemporary world. Volume 3 identifies a particular site of such interactions defined by the inter-relationships between three aspects of the wider question: creativity and innovation, cultural expressions and globalization. The essays and papers collected here offer, from a variety of perspectives, a rich exploration of this field. They present a diverse set of examples and deepen our understanding and conceptualization of the complexities involved in these relationships. The three terms are fully defined in the wide-ranging introductory essay which frames the volume. Here, we try to set the stage for that investigation by looking briefly at the way the concepts have undergone significant changes of meaning in recent years and how these shifts affect their field of operations in the contemporary period. Creativity refers to the capacity, through imagination or invention, to produce something new and original (hence its close relationship to innovation). Innovation underscores the role which the idea of novelty has come to play in modern creative practices and the high value accorded to originality, Modernism’s injunction to ‘make it new’, the significance placed on breaking traditions and the construction of radically new forms. Cultural expressions refer to the many forms in which the values, experiences, ideas, identities, beliefs, hopes, achievements and aspirations of a people or social group find expression and take significant – and signifying – form. Globalization marks the emerging inter-relationships and inter-dependences – economic, political, cultural – between different societies and parts of the world. Its contemporary form defines the new terrain on which cultural practices interact and the ‘global’ character which creativity, innovation and cultural expressions assume in their contemporary form. In western culture, much reinforced by Romanticism, creativity has been associated with the gifted individual, touched by genius, who is uniquely capable of bringing aesthetic expression to a high pitch of excellence. This excludes many of those civilizations in which the association of creativity with the individual is not so strong (which,

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of course, does not mean that individual practitioners have not been of significance in cultural practices and expression). In western societies, creativity implying a social group, rather than an individual authorship, is relatively new. More recently the terms creativity and innovation have been expanded to include many fields other than the aesthetic; and, more recently still, assimilated to technological, commercial, managerial practices, in self-inflating and commodified ways which make them virtually unusable. All these terms have been significantly redefined in recent decades and in general the principal shift of direction is from the individual to the social and collective. This reflects the application of sociological and anthropological concepts to cultural fields, originally thought of primarily in aesthetic terms. It entails the shift from ‘culture’ as the sum of particular works, texts and objects which constitute an ideal order against which universal judgements of value can be made – what Matthew Arnold once called ‘the best that has been thought and said’ – to what Raymond Williams called the social definition of culture: ‘a particular way of life which expresses certain meanings and values not only in art and learning but also in institutions and ordinary behaviour’1: culture as ‘ways of life’. This has shifted the location of cultural creativity and expressions, from the domain of high culture to the terrain of the popular, collective and everyday life. The redefinition also has to do with the transformation – one might even say the collectivisation or ‘massification’ – of social processes, which emerged in developed western societies at the end of the nineteenth/beginning of the twentieth centuries. This process has given us such terms as mass production, mass society, mass politics – and of course, mass media, mass communication and mass culture. It marked the reorganization of social production and consumption along more ‘Fordist’ lines, and was facilitated by the rise to dominance of the new mass technologies of culture. In his famous essay, ‘The Work of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction’, Walter Benjamin, anticipating the explosion in visual culture which was to come in the twentieth century, saw film as one of the earliest manifestations of this collective and technological transformation. He identified this not only in terms of the collective nature of cultural production and its relationship to its audiences but also in terms of the effects he predicted this would have in destroying what he called the ‘authenticity’ associated with the idea of ‘originality’ in art, the detaching of the work from, and the shattering of, tradition, and the destruction of the ‘aura’ of the individual artist and the individual work of art, still very much alive and kicking today. Theodor Adorno called these new technologies ‘the cultural industries’ but he intended to contrast these typical products of an ‘administered’, one-dimensional mass society with the critical and dialectical function which he thought could only be performed by the individual artist and the work of art. Though the tensions between high, mass and popular culture continue to resonate in cultural debates, few would find it possible these days not to regard these new media and technologies as potential sites of creativity and innovation. So when we say creativity, innovation or cultural expressions today, we must be conscious of the fact that we say them, as it were, after these great transformations in meaning, technologies and relationships have occurred. Globalization is the most radically transformed and transforming of all the terms. Ever since the moment of European exploration and conquest at the end of the fifteenth century, (which Marx identified as the beginning of a struggle to make the globe ‘a world market’), there have been successive waves of what can only be called ‘globalizations’. And since they involved, in different forms, conquest and the crossing of frontiers, the clash of cultures and traditions and the exercise of power in the ‘conscription’ of traditional cultures to modernity, they still have something important to tell us about what happens to cultural processes when distances, societies and economies are brutally condensed. However, there is nothing to compare with the scale and depth of contemporary globalization. The time–space condensations, the new global division of labour, the speed of the flows of capital, investment, profits, goods, services, images, messages

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and stories, the driving power and trans-national reach of the new cultural industries, the emergence of a ‘global’ consumer market inter-connected with the permeation of cultural models, information, goods, symbols, stories and languages across frontiers, the collision when different cultures, traditions, religious systems and forms of life are convened in the same space and struggle for rights and recognition, and – the dark underside of globalization – the trans-national character of migration and the movement and displacements of peoples: these constitute, if not an absolutely new historical reality, then a momentous epochal shift in global relations, which leave no relationships untouched. One feature is the way culture has become part and parcel of, harnessed to and mediating economic, geo-political and social relationships; and consequently the way the exercise of creativity, innovation and cultural expression has become intensely related to and caught up with the ‘play’ of power. These new features of contemporary globalization have transformed the meanings of these concepts out of sight. Globalization has therefore created new sites and arenas which, on the one hand, provide and enhance creative expressive possibilities, with groups and communities functioning as innovators in the role which the Introduction calls ‘social authorship’; at the same time – and for the same reason – they mark arenas of huge tension, resistance and difficulty. One powerful tendency in contemporary globalization follows from the permeation of cultural expressions in the flows across boundaries and frontiers. This is sometimes said to be a precondition of that ‘one world’ towards which globalization is supposed to be pointing us. It is sometimes argued that, in the post-colonial, free trade world, cultural globalization now operates on an ‘even playing field’; that the new global culture has no centre. This is to suggest that the one-way cultural flows characteristic of the imperial and colonizing moments have been surpassed. The most powerful tendency is certainly towards a kind of one-directional cultural homogenization, powered by trans-national flows, the cultural industries of the developed world and the new digital means of communication. It tends to favour the transmission of standardised products, standardized western models and meanings, using standardized western technologies and reflecting standardized western forms of everyday life. This has the effect of eroding local particularities and differences, producing in their place a western-oriented ‘world culture’, which bears the strong imprint of its sources of origin. The interplay between new cultural expressions and the rise of new consumer markets are part and parcel of the same process. The fact that cultural globalization has no one centre certainly does not mean that somehow cultural power has ceased to operate and that the power of the industrial and technological forces of modernity mediated by the western cultural industries have been suspended. The cultural field is not open or equal. It is not an ‘even playing field’. Contemporary globalization in all its aspects is a process of ‘combined and uneven development’ – ‘combined’ because it draws huge differences, disparities, historical divergences and temporalities together; ‘uneven’ because it creates greater disparities and inequalities – in resources, wealth, income, health, welfare, material well-being and cultural power – greater even than the differences and inequalities it claims to be surpassing. Paradoxically, however, creativity itself is not mal-distributed in this way. Those most marginalized in the global pecking order can, precisely, use their powers of creativity and innovation to describe and protest against the grim conditions of life these inequalities impose. The cultural fields into which these global forces penetrate are not an open, unstructured terrain either. They are densely constructed of impacted traditions, aesthetic values, belief systems, ways of life and creative forms and expressions which have long histories and coherences of their own. Though often represented as fixed and unchanging, they have in fact been modified over time, evolving and appropriating new materials. The consequences of the homogenizing processes, like the economic processes they mirror, are neither uniform nor are their effects as easy to predict as the power and

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xii  FOREWORD reach of their economies and technologies would suggest. They have generated powerful defensive responses and resistances – fundamentalist or progressive – in the development of which creativity and innovation are necessary ingredients. In many places, the ‘debased’ cultural forms can and have been appropriated to local uses and meanings, borrowed, translated, indigenized and ‘vernacularized’ so as to express a very different kind of outlook and reality. To take just two examples: in what sense can the ‘soap opera’ about daily life, now a ubiquitous global popular form, any longer be said to be exclusively an ‘American’ form (though, in another perspective, it was indeed one of the great forms of American popular radio and television)? Or, to take another case: that great practitioner and innovator of reggae music, Bob Marley, used the most modern technological means of production (the sound system) and distribution (vinyl, the transistor radio) to make local rhythms ‘global’ and to transmit the styles, ways of life and troubles of Trench Town, a tiny, poverty-stricken and unknown urban community in the little-known island of Jamaica, familiar across the globe. Creative practitioners and innovators have been busy making the same forms and technologies speak of other different worlds. Diasporas where different peoples and cultures meet, occupy the same space and are often obliged to struggle against discrimination and racialized marginalization are, paradoxically, highly productive spaces, creatively producing a variety of new cultural forms and expressions which mark creative cross-overs. By translating between cultural languages, they create genuinely novel forms which, because they are hybridized, cannot be reduced to the original cultural sources and traditions which went into their making. Are these diasporas not also places where groups and communities can gradually lose touch with their authentic cultural origins and roots? This is never quite the zero-sum game which the beneficent term ‘creativity’ suggests. These crossings of cultural forms and models, the samplings and ‘versionings’, emerging where people are obliged to live together, struggle for space and speak across cultural languages are some of the most creative sites in the contemporary world. They may be the only places where displaced traditions – which in any event are not fixed forever in amber, but are more like what Paul Gilroy has called ‘the changing same’ – lose their absolute authority and inner certainties, and become more negotiable, translatable and open-weave. Perhaps this is indeed the nature of culture in modern global conditions: where that which seems unalterably fixed in the past, becomes an opening to the future. All displacements of peoples and migrations, as they say, ‘free’ or forced, always involve gains and losses. Indeed, to take the paradox one step further, the finding of significant form and voice for this sense of ‘loss’ and the ways memory intervenes to give it shape, are some of the most powerful sources of contemporary creative cultural expression. The terms creativity and innovation may soften or disguise the degree to which, in cultural collision of this kind, questions of identity, recognition and power are always ‘in play’. In this globalization ‘game’ there are no absolute winners and losers. Neither homogenization nor diversity can capture its contradictory movement and character. We lose everything if we force the contemporary forms of creativity and cultural expression into one or other end-point of this binary schema. Cultural globalization, like other aspects of the process, is profoundly and unalterably contradictory. We must continue to ‘speak it’ in this way. This volume of essays, in all their diversity of contents and theoretical perspectives, demonstrates the rich value of this paradoxical, oxymoronic approach.

Note 1

Williams, Raymond (1945) The Long Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Cultures and Globalization Series has relied on the support, advice and contributions of numerous individuals and organizations. We would endeavour to acknowledge and thank all of them here. In the ultimate analysis, however, the co-editors alone are responsible for this final version of the publication.

International Advisory Board Hugo Achugar (Uruguay) Arjun Appadurai (India/USA) Benjamin Barber (USA) Hilary Beckles (Barbados) Tony Bennett (United Kingdom) Craig Calhoun (USA) Georges Corm (Lebanon) Mamadou Diouf (Senegal) Yehuda Elkana (Israel/Hungary) Yilmaz Esmer (Turkey) Sakiko Fukuda-Parr (Japan/USA) Mike Featherstone (United Kingdom) Anthony Giddens (United Kingdom) Nathan Gardels (USA) Salvador Giner (Spain) Xavier Greffe (France) Stuart Hall (Jamaica/United Kingdom) Seung-Mi Han (Korea) David Held (United Kingdom) Vjeran Katunaric (Croatia) Nobuku Kawashima (Japan) Arun Mahizhnan (Singapore) Achille Mbembe (Cameroon/South Africa) Candido Mendes (Brazil) Catherine Murray (Canada) Sven Nilsson (Sweden) Walter Santagata (Italy) James Allen Smith (USA) Prince Hassan bin Talal (Jordan) David Throsby (Australia) Jean-Pierre Warnier (France) Margaret Wyszomirski (USA) Yunxiang Yan (China/USA) George Yudice (USA)

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Additional Support Text Boxes Karin Becker, Meghan Corroon, Todd Lester, Mailyn Machado, Ricardo Mbarkho, Peter Moertenbock, Helge Mooshammer, Ari Seligmann, Cylena Simonds, Nicole Vazquez, Indrasen Vencatachellum, Tereza Wagner

Research Coordination for Indicator Suites Meghan Corroon, Michael Hoelscher and Tia Morita

Research Assistance Antje Groneberg, Manar Nidah, Simon Scholtz, Nicole Vazquez, Elise Youn, Filip Zielinski, David Zimmer

Design and Production In this issue, indicator suites were designed by students and alumni of the Design and Media Arts programme (DMA) at UCLA under the direction of Willem Henri Lucas Alumni Christo Allegra, DMA MFA 2010 Jono Brandell, DMA 2008 Levi Brooks, DMA 2006 Luca de Sanctis Barton, DMA 2008 Leon Hong, DMA 2007 JJ Kaye, DMA 2007 Fei Liu, DMA 2008 Donnie Luu, DMA, 2008 Camile Orillaneda, DMA 2008 Mylinh Trieu Nguyen, DMA 2007 Ryan Weafer, DMA 2006 Students Sheriah Altobar, DMA Vincent Cordero, DMA Jason Hanakeawe, DMA Lindsay Harvey, DMA Derek Heath, DMA Alok Jethanandani, DMA Tiffany Payakniti, DMA Stephen Sulistiawan, DMA Christopher Tuyay, DMA Alyssa Wang, DMA Katherine Wu, DMA

Cover, chapter and divider artwork Emilia Birlo with input provided by Paul Kästner, Rudolf M. Anheier, Manual Birlo and Stella Birlo

Administration Jocelyn Guihama

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Financial Support We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the following institutions: Asia Research Fund The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation Compagnia di San Paolo The Fritt Ord Institute The London School of Economics The Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development The Sasakawa Peace Foundation Swedish International Development Agency UCLA International Institute UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture UCLA School of Public Affairs We would also like to acknowledge the support of: • Henrietta Moore and the faculty and staff of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics; • Stuart Cunningham and the entire faculty and staff of the Australia Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation; • Sarah Gardner and Diane Dodd of the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies; • Ursula Fischer of the Centre for Social Investment at Heidelberg University; • the University of Turin. Special thanks are owed to individuals and institutions in Sweden, who made it possible for the co-editors to organize the authors’ meeting for this volume at the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg on 11–12 April 2009. On 10 April, the Series was presented at a public symposium on ‘Cultural Policy and Globalization’ held at the Museum, where participants were welcomed by Dr Lars Nordström, President of the Cultural Committee of the Västra Götaland region, where the city is located. The idea of such a symposium-cum-authors’ meeting was first discussed with Anna Thelin, then working at the Museum, at the 2008 Gothenburg Book Fair, where the Series was presented under the aegis of the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA); the idea came to fruition thanks to the support of the Director of the Museum of World Culture, Margareta Alin, David Karlsson, then Secretary of Sweden’s Commission on Cultural Policy, and Mats Rolén of the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. Catharina Bergil and Anna Thelin expertly coordinated the Museum’s support team which provided flawless logistics. Finally, the co-editors are most grateful to Tereza Wagner, Senior Programme Specialist in the Culture Sector of UNESCO. Formerly responsible for that organization’s activities in favour of artistic creation, she played a key role in helping us identify authors from around the world as contributors to the present volume (see also her text box, 20.1).

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CONTRIBUTORS

Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès is founder and director of the Khatt Foundation, Center for Arabic Typography. She is the author of Arabic Typography: A Comprehensive Sourcebook, Experimental Arabic Type, Typographic Matchmaking, and many other articles on multilingual communication in the Middle East. She holds degrees in graphic design from Yale University’s School of Art and the Rhode Island School of Design and specializes in bilingual typographic research and design. She has taught typography and graphic design at the American University of Beirut. She was chair of the Visual Communication Department for three years at the American University in Dubai where she is Associate Professor of Graphic Design. Helmut Anheier (PhD Yale University, 1986) is Professor of Sociology at UCLA and Heidelberg University. He is the academic director of the Center for Social Investment at Heidelberg University, and director of the Center for Civil Society at UCLA’s School of Public Affairs. From 1998 to 2002 he was the founding director of the Centre for Civil Society at the London School of Economics, where he now holds the title of Centennial Professor. Prior to this he was a senior research associate at the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies, and Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. Before embarking on an academic career, Dr Anheier served as a Social Affairs Officer with the United Nations. Rustom Bharucha is an independent writer, director, and cultural critic. His publications include Theatre and the World; The Question of Faith; In the Name of the Secular; The Politics of Cultural Practice; Rajasthan: An Oral History and Another Asia. He is a leading authority on interculturalism and has been a consultant for the arts service organization Leveraging Investments in Creativity, New York, sponsored by the Ford Foundation. He was on the consultancy team of a report on cultural diversity commissioned by the Arts Council in Ireland. In India, he is the Project Director of Arna-Jharna: The Desert Museum of Rajasthan, committed to the traditional knowledge systems of the desert. Karin Becker is Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Stockholm University and was previously a professor at the National College of Art, Craft and Design (Konstfack) in Stockholm. She began her career in the mass communication and journalism programme at the University of Iowa, specializing in documentary photography and photojournalism, and moved to Sweden in the mid-1980s. Her research focuses on cultural histories and contemporary contexts of visual media practices, in the press, in museums, in private settings and in ethnographic research. Her English publications include Dorothea Lange and the Documentary Tradition (Louisiana State University Press, 1980), Picturing Politics: Visual and Textual Formations of Modernity in the Swedish Press (JMK/Stockholm University, 2000), as well as numerous journal articles and anthology contributions, and she is co-author of Consuming Media: Communication, Shopping and Everyday Life (Berg, 2007). Enrico Bertacchini is a researcher at the Department of Economics ‘Cognetti de Martiis’ at the University of Torino and a fellow of the EBLA Center and NEXA Center for Internet and Society. His main research interests are cultural economics, law and economics and economic issues concerning intellectual property rights and knowledge

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sharing, with a particular focus on biodiversity and biotechnologies. He has recently worked as an external advisor for the Italian Ministry of Culture on the report on the role and impact of creative and cultural industries on the Italian economy released in May 2008. Paul Brickhill has worked continuously for twenty-eight years in African arts and culture. In 1997, he established Book Café, Zimbabwe’s largest performing arts programme, and founded African Synergy in 2002 which focused on intra-African cultural exchange and media. He also co-founded Luck Street Blues in 1995, a jazz band in Zimbabwe, playing tenor sax. He has worked at a senior policy level in book policy in Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique. He has co-authored a 13-country study on African textbook provision (published 2005) and has written about 250 features on the performing arts and publishing. He helped set up the Zimbabwe International Book Fair 1990, the African Publishers’ Network (37 countries) in 1992, and the Pan-African Booksellers Association (14 countries) in 1997. Clayton Campbell is Artistic Director of the 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica; Artist Residency Advisor at United States Artists; Consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency Center; and a past President of the International Network of Residential Arts Centers (Res Artis). He has curated and organized over 250 artist residency projects within 26 countries. A visual artist himself, he also writes extensively for a range of arts journals. In 2002 he was named Chevalier de Arts et des Lettres by the French government for his work in international cultural exchange. Joni Maya Cherbo is an independent educator, writer and researcher who specializes in the arts and cultural policy. Dr Cherbo has had teaching positions at Hunter College, Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, the State University of New York and Purchase, and New York University, Arts Administration Program. She was the research director for the American Assembly’s think tank meeting, ‘The Arts and the Public Purpose’, developed the National Arts Policy Roundtable for Americans for the Arts, and is currently engaged in an initiative to enhance international cultural diplomacy efforts. Meghan Corroon is the research coordinator for The Cultures and Globalization Series. She recently obtained her Master’s degree in urban planning from the University of California, Los Angeles, and is pursuing a second Master’s degree in public health. Her research and professional interests are focused on global city networks and the effects of urbanization on health outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa. She has worked on several international development projects for both USAID and the World Bank. Additionally, she has conducted research for organizations such as WaterAid UK, the International Medical Corps, and the International Council for Science. Nancy Duxbury is an adjunct professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. From 2005 to 2008 she was the executive director of the Centre of Expertise on Culture and Communities, a three-year research project on cultural infrastructure in Canadian cities and communities. Prior to that, she was Director of Research of the Creative City Network of Canada, and Cultural Planning Analyst at the City of Vancouver’s Office of Cultural Affairs. Her research has focused on cultural infrastructure, cultural policy, cultural indicators, the involvement of municipalities in cultural development, and book publishing. She is the lead author of Under Construction: The State of Cultural Infrastructure in Canada, and editor of Making Connections: Culture and Social Cohesion in the New Millennium (2005).

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Laurent Gayer is a research fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), attached to the Centre D’études et de Recherches Administratives et Politiques de Picardie (CURAPP), and a research associate at the Centre D’études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud, Paris. He recently co-edited, with Christophe Jaffrelot, Milices Armées d’Asie du Sud: Privatisation de la Violence et Implication des Etats. Stefan Helgesson is a research fellow in the Department of Literature at Uppsala University. He has published widely on South African literature, lusophone literature, postcolonial theory and theories of world literature. He is the author of Writing in Crisis: History and Ethics in Gordimer, Ndebele and Coetzee (UKZN Press, 2004) and the editor of Volume 4 of Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective. His latest book, Transnationalism in Southern African Literature (Routledge), appeared in 2009. Michael Hoelscher is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Heidelberg University, Germany, and senior research fellow at the University of Oxford. His main fields of interest are cultural sociology, economic sociology, globalization processes, especially European integration, higher education and quantitative comparative methods. His publications include Wirtschaftskulturen in der Erweiterten EU (2006). Yudhishthir Raj Isar is Professsor of Cultural Policy Studies at the American University of Paris and Maitre de Conférences at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). An independent cultural advisor and public speaker, he also serves on the boards of several international cultural institutions and writes on a range of cultural topics. From 2004 to 2008 he was president of the international association Culture Action Europe. Previously, at UNESCO, he was Executive Secretary of the World Commission on Culture and Development; in 1986–87 he was Executive Director of The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Christophe Jaffrelot is director of CERI (Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales) at Sciences Po (Paris), and research director at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). He teaches South Asian politics to doctoral students at Sciences Po. His most recent publications include The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to 1990s; India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India; and Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analysing and Fighting Caste. He has also edited Pakistan: Nationalism Without a Nation; Hindu Nationalism: A Reader and, with Alain Dieckhoff, Revisiting Nationalism. Dragan Klaic is a theatre scholar and cultural analyst. He serves as a permanent fellow of the Felix Meritis Foundation in Amsterdam and is a professor of the arts and cultural policy at the University of Leiden’s Faculty of Creative and Performing Arts. He lectures widely at various universities, speaks at conferences and symposia, and serves as advisor, editor, researcher and trainer. His fields of engagement are contemporary performing arts, European cultural policies, strategies of cultural development and international cultural cooperation, interculturalism and cultural memory. Lily Kong is a professor of geography at the National University of Singapore. She is a social and cultural geographer who has published widely in a number of areas, ranging from cultural policy and creative economies, to music, religion, place histories and national identities. Her work has focused on the Asian cities of Singapore, Shanghai,

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Hong Kong, Taipei and Beijing. Her recent books include: Creative Cities, Creative Economies: Asian-European Perspectives; Singapore Hawker Centres; Landscapes: Ways of Imagining the World; and The Politics of Landscapes in Singapore: Constructions of ‘Nation’ Diana Leat is a visiting professor at the Centre for Charity Effectiveness, Cass Business School, London, and a visiting research fellow at UCLA. Diana has held research and teaching posts at a number of universities and research centres in the UK, the USA and Australia. Most recently, Diana has been Research and Development Director at the Carnegie UK Trust. She is the author of over 100 articles and books on the non-profit sector and social policy. She is a trustee of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund in the UK. Todd Lester is the founding director of freeDimensional. He is currently a fellow at the Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement in Cairo and is a candidate for a doctorate on public and urban policy at the New School for Social Research from which he received a Film Production Diploma. He is a project leader at the World Policy Institute and a member of both the 21st Century Trust and Think Tank 30. He serves on the international advisory committee of the Club of Rome and was recently named an Architect of the Future by the Waldzell Institute. Todd is an adjunct instructor in media studies at the New School. Willem Henri Lucas (designer) is a professor in the Design  Media Arts department at UCLA. He studied at the Academy of Visual Arts in Arnhem, and did his post academic studies at the Sandberg Institute (Rietveld Academy), in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He works for clients mostly based in the fields of Culture and the Arts. From 1990 to 2002 he served as a professor and chair of the Utrecht School of the Arts’ graphic design department. He won several ‘Best Book’ awards in the Netherlands and the US. Mailyn Machado is an art critic, curator and academic. She has a degree in Art History from the University of Havana, Cuba and was also awarded a Diploma in Art Criticism by the University of Girona, Spain. She currently teaches Art Theory at the University of Havana and is the editor of the Cuban magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. Her essays have appeared in many national and international publications. Malvika Maheshwari is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at CERI, Sciences Po, Paris working on the Hindutva movement and freedom of expression of artists in India. Ricardo Mbarkho was trained at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and Ecole Supérieure d’Etudes Cinématographiques, Paris and Institut Supérieur des Beaux-Arts, Beirut. He also completed an exchange study program at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. He currently lives in Lebanon and teaches art, video, and new media at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts, Beirut. Peter Mörtenböck is Professor of Visual Culture at the Vienna University of Technology and visiting fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His recent practical and theoretical work has focused on spatial conflict, urban informality, models of networking and relational theories. He is author/co-editor of Die virtuelle Dimension: Architektur, Subjektivität und Cyberspace (2001), Visuelle Kultur: KörperRäume-Medien (2003) and Networked Cultures: Parallel Architectures and the Politics of Space (2008).

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Helge Mooshammer is director of the research project ‘Relational Architecture’ at the Vienna University of Technology. He teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London and has been research fellow at the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies (IFK), Vienna, in 2008. His research and writing have focused on relational architecture, sexuality and urban culture. He has authored Cruising: Architektur, Psychoanalyse und Queer Cultures (2005) and co-edited Visuelle Kultur: KörperRäume-Medien (2003) and Networked Cultures: Parallel Architectures and the Politics of Space (2008). With Peter Mörtenböck he initiated the ‘Networked Cultures‘ project, an international research platform on the potential of translocally networked spatial practices, based at Goldsmiths College (www.networkedcultures.org). Gerardo Mosquera is a freelance curator and art critic based in Havana; Adjunct Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; advisor at the Rijksakademie van Beeldenden Kunsten, Amsterdam; and member of the advisory board of several art journals. He was a founder of the Havana Biennial, and has curated many celebrated exhibitions. Author of numerous books and texts on contemporary art and art theory, Mosquera edited Beyond the Fantastic: Contemporary Art Criticism from Latin America and co-edited Over Here: International Perspectives on Art and Culture. Catherine Murray is a professor in the School of Communication, co-director of the Centre for Policy Studies on Culture and Communities, and an associate of the Masters of Public Policy Program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. Her research interests include cultural participation and creative labour, cultural infrastructure and creative cities, cultural industries and especially broadcast policy, communication rights and global trade, and research design in policy evaluation. Dr Murray is a co-author of From Economy to Ecology: A Policy Framework for Creative Labour; Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Media in BC; and Researching Audiences. Rasoul Nejadmehr has a PhD in the philosophy of education from the University of London. He is an independent researcher, bringing together philosophical research and studies in cultural and educational policies. He is the author of Education, Science and Truth, published as part of Routledge’s International Studies in the Philosophy of Education. He is a member of the Swedish Committee of the Inquiry on Cultural Policy, commissioned by the Swedish government to survey Swedish cultural policy. He is also a board member of University College Dance, Stockholm. Keith Nurse is the director of the Shridath Ramphal Centre of the University of the West Indies, after having served at the Institute of International Relations as academic coordinator of the postgraduate diploma in Arts and Cultural Enterprise Management. He has taught at the Institute of Business and the Department of Government, UWI, and the Institute for International Development and Co-operation, University of Ottawa. He has published widely on the trade policy and global political economy of the clothing, banana, tourism, copyright and cultural/creative industries; and on the impact of global restructuring on migration and diaspora, HIV/AIDS and security, and youth, gender and poverty. He is the author of Festival Tourism in the Caribbean and The Caribbean Music Industry. Annie Paul works at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, where she heads the publications section of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES). She is also a founding editor of the journal Small Axe (Indiana University Press). Paul is the recipient of a grant from the Prince Claus Fund

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(Netherlands) in support of her book project, Suitable Subjects: Visual Art and Popular Culture in Postcolonial Jamaica. Walter Santagata is Professor of Cultural Economics at the University of Turin, Italy. He also serves as chairman of the Commission on Creative Industries of the Italian Ministry of Culture. His recent books include: La Fabbrica della Cultura (Il Mulino, Bologna, 2007) and La Mode, une économie de la créativité (La Documentation Française, Paris, 2005). Ivani Santana is a dancer and choreographer working in the field of dance-technology. She is a professor in the department of dance at the Federal University of Bahia. She has created and directed the Group of Technological Poetics in Dance since its inception in 2004. She is the author of Corpo Aberto: Cunniningham, Dança e Novas Tecnologias [Open Body: Cunningham, Dance and New Technologies], and Dança na Cultura Digital [Dance in the Digital Culture], and has written many articles for international journals. She was awarded the UNESCO Prize for the Promotion of the Arts – New Technologies 2006, as well as the artistic residence at the Centre Chorégraphique National, Aix-en-Provence, France. Ari Seligmann is an architecture critic engaged in broadening perspectives on global architecture and investigating the impacts of globalization on the built environment. He has participated in various international conferences and his work has been published in a range of journals. He has taught at the University of California, Berkeley; Woodbury University, the Otis College of Art and Design; and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He served as coordinator for the Laboratory for Cross-Cultural Studies in Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA, and currently is a lecturer at Monash University, Australia. Cylena Simonds is an independent curator and writer engaged in the politics of representation and the representation of politics, with special interests in moving image media, diasporic cultures and conditions of practice in developing countries. From 2004–2008 she was the exhibitions curator at Iniva, heading their on-site and touring exhibition programmes, as well as programming off-site public art projects. Her latest project was States of Exchange: Artists from Cuba, which was the first exhibition of contemporary art from Cuba to be shown in the UK since 1997. Maruška Svašek is senior lecturer in social anthropology at Queen’s University, Belfast. Her principal research interests are in emotions, migration, art and material culture. Her current research concerns experiences of belonging and non-belonging amongst migrants in Northern Ireland. She is associate editor of the journals Focaal, European Journal of Anthropology and Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. Her major publications include Anthropology, Art and Cultural Production; and the edited volumes Postsocialism: Politics and Emotions in Central and Eastern Europe and Mixed Emotion Anthropological Studies of Feeling (with K. Milton). Svašek is coinitiator and director of the Cultural Dynamics and Emotions Network. Gilane Tawadros is a curator and writer. She was joint chief executive of Rivington Place and the founding director of the Institute of International Visual Arts, a contemporary visual arts agency in London. She has curated numerous exhibitions and written extensively on contemporary art. Recent titles include Changing States: Contemporary Art and Ideas in an Era of Globalisation and Life is More Important Than

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Art. She is currently president of the International Foundation of Manifesta (Amsterdam) and a board member of the Forum for African Arts (New York), Photoworks (Brighton) and A Foundation (London). Julie Thomas (MA Harvard, MLitt Trinity College Dublin, PhD University of London) is Associate Professor of Global Communications at the American University of Paris, where she teaches courses on fashion, material culture, the museum as medium, and colour. She writes on colour in cultural space, digital interactivity (guest editor with Claudia Roda of the special issue on ‘Attention Aware Systems’ of Computers in Human Behaviour), the museum and cultural identity, and in 2004 organized the international conference Mediating Fashion, Mediating Paris at the American University of Paris. Eugenio Tisselli is a computer scientist and digital artist. He is a teacher and co-director of the Master’s in Digital Arts at the Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona. He has contributed an on-line seminar about digital interactivity to the UNESCO DigiArts programme. He has held the position of associate researcher at the Sony Computer Science Lab in Paris. His artistic work has been featured in multiple exhibitions and festivals throughout the world; it is available at http://www.motorhueso.net. He is the developer of Antoni Abad’s zexe.net project, in which digital technologies and networks are used to give a voice to marginalized communities. Mo Tomaney originally trained in fashion textiles at St Martins School of Art; she has over twenty years’ experience as a successful fashion and textile designer and has an MSc in social anthropology. Consultancies in South Asia and the Far East led to an awareness of labour standards in the fashion supply chain. She has held full-time positions at The Body Shop, where she was a fair trade development manager, and Levi’s, where she worked on fabric development and sourcing. She is currently a research fellow in ethical issues and fair trade at Central St Martins and a senior lecturer at UCCA (Epsom) where she runs an MA in ethical fashion. Jason Toynbee is senior lecturer in media studies in the sociology department of the faculty of social science at the The Open University, UK. His research interests centre on problems of creativity and authorship in the media, with a special focus on copyright and cultural production. Much of his work takes popular music as a case in point. Among Jason’s books are Bob Marley: Herald of a Postcolonial World? (Polity, 2007); Analysing Media Texts (with Marie Gillespie, Open University Press, 2006); and Making Popular Music: Musicians, Institutions and Creativity (Arnold, 2000). Peter Tschmuck is associate professor at the Institute of Culture Management and Culture Studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. He also teaches courses at the University of Economics and Business Administration in Vienna, the University of Innsbruck, the University of Klagenfurt, and the Donau-University of Krems. His research focuses on the structure and processes in cultural institutions, arts management, the economics of the music industry, and cultural statistics. Nicole Vazquez is a 2009 graduate of UCLA’s School of Public Affairs, with Master’s degrees in social welfare and public policy with a concentration in international policy. She worked as a graduate student researcher for the school’s Center for Civil Society during her tenure at UCLA, conducting research, writing, and editing for Center publications and reports. She intends to apply a global framework to civic engagement and

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community development work in Los Angeles by addressing social justice issues that disproportionately affect communities of colour. Indrasen Vencatachellum was born in Mauritius in 1946, completed his Master of Arts at the Sorbonne in Paris, and since 1976 has been involved in international cooperation for cultural development. He was formerly in charge of UNESCO’s Division of Cultural Expressions and Creative Industries. In 1990 he launched the ‘Plan of Action for Crafts Development in the World’, and in 1995 the ‘Design 21’ programme; he was also managing editor for the practical guide entitled Designers Meet Artisans. Harold L. Vogel is the author of Entertainment Industry Economics: A Guide for Financial Analysis and of the companion volume, Travel Industry Economics: A Guide for Financial Analysis. He was ranked as top entertainment industry analyst for ten years by Institutional Investor magazine, was the senior entertainment industry analyst at Merrill Lynch for seventeen years, and earned his PhD in economics from the University of London. His forthcoming book is Financial Market Bubbles and Crashes. Zala Volcic is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland, Australia. In her research she focuses on international communication, media and cultural identities. Her recently published articles include ‘Blaming the media: Serbian narratives of national(ist) identity’, in Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies; ‘Yugo-nostalgia: cultural memory and media in the former Yugoslavia’, in Critical Studies in Media Communication; and ‘Technological developments in Central-Eastern Europe: A case-study of a computer literacy project in Slovenia’ (with Karmen Erjavec), in Information Communication & Society. Tereza Wagner is a senior programme specialist at UNESCO dealing with arts and creative issues. Her graduate and undergraduate degrees are from Paris V University, France, including a doctorate in the anthropology of contemporary arts. She is currently in charge of coordinating events within the Cultural sector of UNESCO. She was part of the team that initiated the UNESCO Prize for the Promotion of the Arts and helped develop the DigiArts UNESCO Knowledge Portal (http://portal.unesco.org/digiarts), a web-based initiative which aims to promote ICT creative tools among young people at school level and disseminate on-line teaching and information on digital creation world wide. She has also published articles on African cinema, African contemporary arts and arts education. Christopher Waterman is an anthropologist and musician who specializes in the study of music and popular culture in Africa and the Americas. He is currently dean of the School of the Arts and Architecture at UCLA, which comprises six degree-granting departments: Architecture and Urban Design; Art; Design Media Arts; Ethnomusicology; Music; and World Arts and Cultures. The school also houses the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music (including the departments of ethnomusicology, music and musicology); five research centres (the Art  Global Health Center, the Art  Sci Center, the Center for Intercultural Performance, the Experiential Technologies Center and the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts); and three internationally acclaimed public arts presenters (the Fowler Museum, the Hammer Museum, and UCLA Live).

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LIST OF BOXES, FIGURES, PHOTOS, PLATES AND TABLES

Boxes 1.1

Cultures and globalization: the knowledge gap

2

2.1 2.2

Digital arts and the cultural expression of young people, Indrasen Vencatachellum Inspiring innovation and creativity in the workplace, Nicole Vazquez

44 45

6.1

Proxy servers: contemporary art practices in service economies, Cylena Simonds

84

13.1

Culture workers in distress, Todd Lester

155

15.1

Kumamoto’s Artpolis: mediating innovative architecture and creative cultural expression, Ari Seligmann

173

17.1

Networked Cultures, Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer

198

18.1 18.2

204

18.4

Méduse Coopérative, Quebec City, Canada and Arts House, Melbourne, Australia The Artscape Wychwood Barns, Toronto, Canada and The Waag Society, Amsterdam, The Netherlands TOHU, Montreal, Canada and Haida Heritage Centre at Kaay Llnagaay, Haida Gwaii, Canada Art in the underground, Karin Becker

19.1

Manga, graphic novels and the album, Meghan Corroon

222

20.1 20.2

Science and art in the digital era, Tereza Wagner Art and nanotechnology, Nicole Vazquez

232 233

23.1 23.2

From mouth to mouth, from hand to hand, from computer to computer, Mailyn Machado A different kind of media creativity in the Lebanon, Ricardo Mbarkho

268 270

18.3

205 207 209

Figures 7.1 16.1 16.2 16.3

Expansion of copyright term in the USA The emergence of cultural paradigms in the twentieth century music industry The elements of a creative path in the music industry A model of paradigm shift in the music industry

88 182 184 185

Photos 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4

Spread Spread Spread Spread

from from from from

the the the the

book book book book

Sabaa+7 [Seven+7] Al-Kharbasha [Doodles] Sabaa+7 [Seven+7] Qalb Al Madina [Heart of the City]

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12.5 12.6 12.7 12.8 12.9 12.10 12.11 12.12

12.13 12.14

13.1

Furniture pieces designed by Nada Debs Arabic Bling-Bling jewellery design playing with Arabic vernacular text and handwritten lettering designed by Nadine Kanso Three handbags from Sarah’s Bag with reference to Arab vernacular visual culture and icons Accessories from Pink Sushi using a mix of Arabic vernacular text, lettering and images. ‘Salon’ installation Africa Remix, Hayward Gallery Left ‘Ahmed Lightin Up’ 2000. Right: ‘Ilham’ 2000 Two examples of Dia Diwan website’s newsletter displaying a range of products and topics Six examples from the winning designs of the ‘Project Muslaq’ Middle Eastern design competition, launched in June 2008 for the special edition of the Khatt Design Collection of vinyl wall stickers (for interior decoration) Cover of Typographic Matchmaking, written and designed by Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès Three different spreads from Typographic Matchmaking, written and designed by Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès Issa Nyaphaga with hands crossed in front of his face, Angele Etoundi Essamba

xxv 135 136 138 139 140 140 143

144 145 145

156

List of Colour Plates 3.1 Apolitical, 2001, Wilfredo Prieto.

287

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4

287 288 288 289

The Visitor, from The Benin Project, 2007, Uriel Orlow. The Visitor, installation view, Friborg. Perdre sa Salive (Wasting One’s Spittle),1994, Shen Yuan. Transmission, 1990, Hamad Butt.

5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4

Hidden Agendas, 2008, painting, George Hughes. Trophy Seekers, 2008, painting, George Hughes. Mother Earth, 2008, painting, George Hughes. A participant from the School of Anthropological Studies in Belfast with the school flag, showing the image in Alder’s book that inspired the flag design. 5.5 Fante Flag, 2009, Marushka Svasek. 5.6 George Hughes during the What You Perceive is What You Conceive performance in Belfast, 2007.

289 290 290 291 291 292

10.1 A scene from the ‘subterranean’ satire Great Escape performed at the Book Café: the two central characters decide to ‘tunnel their way out’ of Zimbabwe… 10.2 Flyer with Kaya logo, Book Café. 10.3 Barsiranai traditional dance group, Book Café. 10.4 African jazz/blues guitarist David Ndoro improvises, Book Café.

292 293 293 294

14.1 Mostar, where the statues of Bruce Lee were unveiled in 2005. Mostar is also famous for its historic bridge which was destroyed by the Croatian army in 1993 and since rebuilt. Photo: Zala Volcic, 2008.

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18.1 The historic Wychwood TTC streetcar repairs barn in Toronto before transformation into the Artscape Wychwood Barns. Photo: Edward Burtynsky. 18.2 Plan for the Artscape Wychwood Barns, opened 2008. Photo: Nancy Duxbury.

295 295

20.1 Versus, 2005, telematic dance, Ivani Santana. 20.2 Versus, 2005, Ivani Santana.

296 297

Tables 6.1 19.1 22.1 22.2

The economic impact of diasporic Caribbean carnivals Manga market data Spending on the arts as a percentage of total foundation spending Foundations’ international giving

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INTRODUCTION Yudhishthir Raj Isar and Helmut K. Anheier

A triad of terms The relationships between cultural change and globalization remain inadequately understood. Often reduced to the seemingly one-way impact of globalization processes on the world’s cultures, these relationships are in reality reciprocal and far more complex and multi-faceted: for one, cultures do shape globalization processes and patterns, and vice versa; what is more, the relationships in turn involve many interactions with economic, political and other factors as well – be they the impacts of regulatory environments, financial flows, migration, technology or social inequality. Addressing the richness of these relationships in the context of contemporary developments is the main purpose of The Cultures and Globalization Series (see text box for more details).

Our third volume takes up the relationships between cultures and globalization with respect to ‘cultural expression, creativity and innovation’. Why this particular combination of terms? The question is not difficult to answer, but before doing so we first need to remind the reader of the two previous themes. The inaugural theme of the Series, ‘conflicts and tensions’, addressed the broad understandings of culture as a ‘ways of life’ or identity-based concept, as commonly employed in the social and human sciences.The exponential growth in affirmations of, or claims to, cultural difference in the face of the forces of globalization has given rise to multiple ‘conflicts and tensions’ in recent years. These various manifestations of identity politics loom large in current anxieties. As we put it, ‘behind the concern for “culture” that is increasingly evoked in contemporary public debate lurks the specter of conflict: the cultural dimensions of conflict on the one hand, and the conflictual dimensions of culture on the other’ (Anheier and Isar, 2007: 19). By contrast, the ‘cultural economy’, our theme in 2008, related rather more to the ‘arts and heritage’ understanding of culture. Here it was a question of the ‘substantive centrality’ (Hall, 1997) of goods and services based on cultural content, or outputs with significant aesthetic or semiotic content. In this case as well, the issue appeared to hinge upon global imbalances and/or divides. Given the existing patterns of market domination how can all societies possibly produce such ‘symbolic outputs’? In both cases, authors analysed the variegated landscape of cultural change in relation to globalization. They demonstrated the ways in which this complex interplay between cultures and globalization is at once unifying and divisive, liberating and corrosive, homogenizing and diversifying. The relationships also crystallize both positive aspirations and negative anxieties. The interplay transforms patterns of sameness and difference across the world, and modifies the ways in which cultural expression is created, represented, recognized, preserved or renewed. It also contributes to generating powerful new culturalist discourses that evoke ‘the power of culture’ – both in relation to conflictual phenomena (our topic in 2007) or when the cultural is at once a resource and a vector of major economic flows (the theme in 2008).1

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Cultures and globalization: the knowledge gap

While a substantial evidence base has been developed on the economic, political and social aspects of globalization, the cultural dimension continues to be the object of many unsubstantiated generalizations and unquestioned assumptions. This is the key knowledge gap the Series is designed to fill. The complex, two-way relationships between cultural change and globalization have remained largely uncharted empirically and under-analysed conceptually. One reason for this dual neglect at the global level is that conventional understandings of culture are still connected principally to the sovereign nation-state. However, today this nexus of culture and nation no longer dominates: the cultural dimension has become constitutive of collective identity at narrower as well as broader levels. What is more, cultural processes take place in increasingly ‘deterritorialized’ transnational, global contexts, many of which are beyond the reach of national policies. Mapping and analysing this shifting terrain, in all regions of the world, as well as the factors, patterns, processes, and outcomes associated with the ‘complex connectivity’ (Tomlinson, 1999) of globalization, is therefore a main purpose of this Series. In sum, the Series aims to meet three goals: to highlight key contemporary cultural changes and their policy implications; to channel and encourage cutting-edge research; and to contribute to the development of information systems in the field of culture. In so doing, it will seek to build bridges between the social sciences, the arts and the humanities, and policy studies. Indeed, our approach is based on our awareness that the social sciences and the humanities have become too compartmentalized – a state of affairs that we seek to overcome by the kind of inter- and cross-disciplinary thinking required for a project of the kind proposed here that seeks to explore the nexus of cultures and globalization. We therefore encourage ‘out of the box’ thinking and approaches that cut across established disciplines and methods. The present volume, as with the others in the Series, is more than a compilation of separate conceptual chapters. An analytical framework and a set of over-arching questions spell out the organizing principles and substantive priorities. The present volume is also more than a compendium of country or ‘area’ studies. While such aspects are important, they take second place here to a pronounced transnational, comparative and evidence-based perspective as our key signature. A key factor responsible for the knowledge gap in the field of cultures and globalization is the paucity of comparative information. It is for this reason that, alongside the ‘narrative’ chapters, all based on freshly observed empirical phenomena, each volume of the Series includes a significant data section. Departing from conventional approaches, we have developed a new way of compiling, analysing and presenting quantitative data on specific aspects of the cultures and globalization relationship. These ‘indicator suites’ make up Part 2 of the volume and are based on the premise that much information on many facets of the cultures and globalization nexus is already ‘out there,’ but is not being processed in appropriate ways. Another point of departure is that for most readers interpretative information graphics are far easier to understand than ‘raw’ data in tabular form. Initiated in 2007, the methodology has been refined with each successive volume. More details will be provided in Part 2, which, among other topics, presents indicator suites on aspects of cultural expression, creativity and innovation, with a special emphasis on hybridity.

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Now let’s turn to the theme of the present volume. Current cultural discourse has turned the notions of ‘creativity’ and ‘innovation’ into keywords in recent years – although neither figured in Raymond Williams’s classic (1988) reference work on the subject. Indeed, the two terms have been taken up enthusiastically by advocates, analysts and policy makers alike, particularly with reference to the cultural economy; both terms have become crucial to how the latter is represented, and represents itself. The notion of creativity draws heavily, though not exclusively, on artistic quality, but in a specifically modernist reading: ‘the shock of the new, the disruptive, the counter-intuitive, the rebellious and the risk-taker’ (O’Connor, 2007: 32). Yet today, judging from the many ways creativity is evoked, it is no longer the privileged domain of art and artists. Instead, the organization of cultural commodity production on a mass industrial scale seems to have pushed artistic practice into the sidelines – despite the continuing popular veneration of the artist as demiurge. Hence it appeared essential to us to continue the Series by refocusing on cultural expression, almost as if it were the missing player at the table. We say cultural expression deliberately, instead of ‘the arts’ or ‘artistic creation’, because the latter two terms foreground the individual creative act or impulse, whereas today the emphasis is placed equally on group manifestations. Besides, in many organizational milieus (art and design schools or architectural collaboratives), genres (film, theatrical and musical performances) and in non-Western societies more generally, artistic work can be a collective project, not just an individual one. This last point is important because the notion of creativity is still tinged with mystical overtones – as Jason Toynbee points out in Chapter 7, ‘the individual artist is the locus of creativity, and her/his genius consists in extraordinary powers of autonomous expression’. However, as several other chapters in this volume demonstrate, creativity is arguably much more a matter of ‘social authorship’ than transubstantiation of the soul or expression from within. This has long been recognized with respect to the cultural traditions of Asia, where creativity ‘involves a state of personal fulfillment, a connection to a primordial realm, or the expression of an inner essence or ultimate reality’ (Lubart, 1999: 340).2 But in the West as well as in the East, a more sociological awareness is now called for. There has been a tendency

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to think of creativity and innovation as things ineffable, embodied only in the individual, as the emanation of an inner inspiration. But recent thinking opens up the analytical frame to include the sociocultural context, interpreting creativity in conjunction with collective action and defining it as a process in which novelty is recognized and acknowledged collectively. As the anthropologists observe, their discipline needs to ‘contribute to debates around creativity by challenging – rather than reproducing – the polarity between novelty and convention, or between the innovative dynamic of the present and the traditionalism of the past, that has long formed such a powerful undercurrent to the discourses of modernity’ (Ingold and Hallam, cited by Svašek, in Chapter 5 below). At the intersection, then, of cultural expression on the one hand, and creativity and innovation on the other, understood in both its individual and social manifestations, our motivations were threefold. First, we wished to analyse the interactions between globalization and arts practice (or, more broadly, cultural expression). Second, we wished to better understand the interactions between the forces of globalization and the emergence of creativity and innovation in cultural expression itself. Third, we sought to join up the two sets of questions. How are artistic practice and behaviour evolving in relation to globalization? Within cultural practice, how is globalization shifting the ground in which creativity and innovation arise and are nurtured? Whilst questions about artistic creativity and innovation are not new in aesthetics and cultural sociology, the encounter with contemporary globalization takes such questions to a different plane. It creates new conditions of great potential as well as challenges of at least equal magnitude; also it makes a far more broadbased perspective on these matters indispensable. These motivations crystallized before we learned that the European Parliament and Council would label 2009 the European Year of Creativity and Innovation with the combined goals of raising awareness of the importance of creativity and innovation for personal, social and economic development, disseminating good practices, stimulating education and research so our project precedes the EU’s, it does not follow it. In sum, the choice of the topic ‘cultural expression: creativity and innovation’ to follow the volume on ‘the cultural economy’ is based on the following reasons:

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i) cultural expression provides the basic human inputs to the cultural economy, and particularly so in the ‘creative industries’; ii) the predominance of the cultural economy in current policies and practices is transforming the conditions for creative cultural expression itself, how it takes place and unfolds; iii) this transformation has both negative and positive consequences, as it encourages some forms of cultural expression and discourages others, opens up new opportunities for some and marginalizes others; iv) throughout this process, creativity must be identifiable and become recognized as such, and requires innovation processes to become culturally and socially sustainable as well as economically viable, while at the same time; v) globalization generates new frameworks for creativity and innovation in cultural expression that vary across fields and genres. ‘Creativity’, ‘Innovation’. We are all too aware of the inflated, and often imprecise, uses of these two terms, particularly in the popular management literature as well as in some cultural policy work.3 Writing as long ago as 1971, Raymond Williams pointed out that ‘no word in English carries a more consistently positive reference than “creative”… yet, clearly, the very width of the reference involves not only difficulties of meaning, but also, through habit, a kind of unthinking repetition which at times makes the word seem useless’ (1971: 19). More recently – and more polemically – John Tusa has observed (2003: 5–6): ‘Creative’, ‘creation’, ‘creativity’ are some of the most overused and ultimately debased words in the language. Stripped of any special significance by a generation of bureaucrats, civil servants, managers and politicians, lazily used as political margarine to spread approvingly and inclusively over any activity with a non-material element to it, the word ‘creative’ has become almost unusable. Politics and the ideology of ordinariness, the wish not to put anyone down, the determination not to exalt the exceptional, the culture of oversensitivity, of avoiding hurt feelings, have seen to that.

What kind of creativity and innovation? Despite and indeed because of such difficulties, we confine ourselves essentially in this volume to the

notion of creativity in cultural expression broadly understood, a field in which its meaning is relatively unambiguous, rather than extending it to practically every sphere of human and social endeavour. We take creativity to be the generation of novel ideas and artefacts; innovation is the process by which new ideas and artefacts lead to new cognitive and behavioural practices such as genres, ways of going and organizing, conventions, models, etc. In much of the current cultural policy literature, however, particularly in relation to city planning and management, the concept of creativity is used both more broadly to encompass far more than the arts (see, for example Florida (2002), and more loosely as well (for example Landry, (2000)). Such usages are somewhat metaphorical, lacking the kind of analytical rigor displayed by the recent boom in creativity research in the natural sciences through to psychology and other cognitive sciences. Different approaches have analysed individual creativity in a broad range of task domains, including of course the arts (Sternberg and Lubart, 1999), linking them to the societal as well. Hence our advocacy of an essentially sociological perspective, rooted in the interactions between individual and society rather than in the individual alone, where Eureka or ‘Aha’ moments are sufficient to convey the idea of the creative act. We have been able to take a cue here from confluence approaches to the study of creativity in contemporary psychology (Sternberg and Lubart, 1999), foremost among which is the ‘systems perspective’ pioneered by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1996; 1999). Here the interactions between, first, the creative person, second, the domain (a specific cultural symbol system) and third, the field (defined as made up of domain gate-keepers such as art critics, gallery owners, star performers, etc.), are what determine the emergence and in particular the recognition of a creative act or product. The creative individual takes information in a domain and transforms or extends it; the field validates and selects the new ideas and methods; the domain then in turn preserves and transmits creative products to other individuals, societies and generations. In this perspective, says Csikszentmihalyi, ‘creativity is any act, idea or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one’ (1996: 28). As Howard Gardner has shown, ‘the development of creative projects may stem from an anomaly within a system (e.g., tension between competing critics in a field) or moderate

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asynchronies between the individual, domain and field (e.g., unusual individual talent for a domain)’ (1993, cited in Sternberg and Lubart, 1999: 10). Similarly, research in organizational sociology and management demonstrates that creativity and innovation emerge at the crossroads of social, cultural and political forces, and more frequently at the margins and boundaries rather than at the centre of systems, be they political entities, organizations or professions (Nelson and Winter, 1982; Pettigrew and Fenton, 2000). Studying the question of how organizations evolve, Romanelli and Tushman (1994) introduce the notion of punctuated equilibriums to refer to discontinuous transformations. They assume that organizations pass through relatively long periods of stability in terms of structure and activity. These are punctuated by short bursts of fundamental changes during revolutionary periods, triggered when several key organizational domains are threatened or otherwise become critically uncertain, particularly in terms of available resources. In response, some but not all organizations will seek to adapt by introducing changes in terms of strategy, structure, incentive and control systems, as well as power relations that are more far-reaching than would have been the case otherwise. Organizational theorists suggest that revolutionary periods are times of greater creativity and improved innovation performance in those organizations that manage to break the structural and cultural inertia of embedded routines. Cultural creativity, too, is surely embedded in social, cultural, and political phenomena and is related to specific configurations in terms of structure, power and meaning. However, while embedded, creativity seems, at the same time, more likely to be fostered in situations of change, tension and discontinuity, when overlapping and criss-crossing configurations create interstitial spaces. In the context of globalization, the question is: what happens to these configurations and relationships? That is the question many of our authors address, while others focus more exclusively on cultural expression alone. In relation to this usage, we should recall the working definitions of the two central concepts that we have adopted for this Series, drawing largely on the systematic coverage proffered by Held et al. (1999). We take globalization to be the highly accelerated movement of objects (goods, services, finance and other resources, etc.), meanings (language, symbols, knowledge,

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identities, etc.) and people across regions and intercontinental space. In other words, the various processes of time–space compression. The working concept of culture we have adopted is the following: Culture is the social construction, articulation and reception of meaning. It is the lived and creative experience for individuals and a body of artefacts, symbols, texts and objects. Culture involves enactment and representation. It embraces art and art discourse, the symbolic world of meanings, the commodified output of the cultural industries as well as the spontaneous or enacted, organized or unorganized cultural expressions of everyday life, including social relations. It is constitutive of both collective and individual identity.

Creativity and innovation in cultural expression To be sure, creativity continues to manifest itself as an individual product, in which latent and manifest talents, expertise and serendipity combine in often seemingly unpredictable ways. Yet alongside and perhaps gradually superseding this image of the individual genius kissed by the muse is a new one: it is based on the understanding that the likelihoods of creativity to emerge, of creative acts to be recognized, and of both leading to innovation, yielding sustained change, are all closely linked to the organization of economy and society as well as patterns in the cultural domain itself.4 In other words, art is itself a ‘set of historically specific ideas and practices that have shifted meanings across the course of the centuries’ (Errington, 1998: 63) and creativity varies across cultures. And as cultures interact with globalization the ensuing cultural change in turn enriches or impoverishes the conditions in which creativity can emerge. As Stuart Hall (1997) has observed, the means of producing, circulating and exchanging cultural products and processes have been dramatically expanded in our time through new media technologies and the information revolution. Directly, a much greater proportion of the world’s human, material and technical resources than ever before goes into the ‘cultural’ or ‘creative’ industries sectors, while indirectly these have become the mediating element in every other process. Moreover, as a result of today’s technological upheaval, the nature and

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forms of cultural expression are changing profoundly. Take, for example, the world of virtual reality in which actors are free to make choices and play roles normally unavailable to them in the social world of everyday life and in which technology turns many individuals into ‘creators’ themselves. From the personal computer and digital camera to the cell phone, humankind inhabits an increasingly networked world in which communication and personal expression and development reign supreme. YouTube, for example, offers those so inclined the possibility of directing and producing their own movies, while Karaoke machines have unleashed the inner singer within each of us and the literary shibboleth of the day is ‘Every blogger is a star’. Yet what are the standards by which creativity is identified and assessed; how do we know if something is truly novel? Do the creators themselves care about standards, or are creative acts more play for entertainment than work inspired by the muses, and more about escaping the status quo than changing it? Market-driven phenomena may well be creating new figures of the symbol creator as a ‘motor of innovation’ and altering the profile of the ‘creative subject’. The World Wide Web with its attendant domains of the internet and cyberspace may signal a ‘brave new world’ to some, though beyond its virtual borders significant areas nevertheless still manifest age-old problems – a persistent scarcity of food, shelter and clothing haunts the planet. Does artistic creativity today channel in relation to this dark side of things some of the visionary edge that has energized the arts since the Enlightenment? Artistic creativity, according to Adorno (1991) and other critical thinkers, reveals and helps us appreciate the possibility of a better world – be it through literature, music, painting or other genres. What happens to this premise in the face of the globalized cultural industries? In this volume, our authors also interrogate the perceptions of globalization as a threat to ‘diversity’, as it erodes cultural identity and distinctiveness across the world. This ‘homogenization-produced-by-cultural-imperialism’ view takes it for granted that distinctive repertoires and potentials of creative expression are being eliminated by globalization. Yet many observers point to the processes of re-pluralization that are occurring, dialectically, as the values of different ways of life have risen into consciousness and have become the rallying cry of diverse claims to a space

in the planetary culture. ‘Before, culture was just lived. Now it has become a self-conscious collective project. Every struggle for life becomes the struggle of a way of life’ (Sahlins, 1994: 6). While the changing relationships between creativity and diversity are particularly clear in domains such as literature, the visual arts and music, the politics of identity maintenance practised by governments tend to privilege not just the arts but also the audiovisual sector and more broadly, the cultural industries (as was analysed in the 2008 volume of The Cultures and Globalization Series). The core tension between current opportunities and threats is now enshrined in the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, whose Preamble observes that ‘while the processes of globalization … afford unprecedented conditions for enhanced interaction between cultures, they also represent a challenge for cultural diversity … ’ The very process of globalization of communication makes the maintenance of cultural identity more difficult. Although the cultural imperialism thesis may be an oversimplification, the question remains as to the real nature of the new repertoires of cultural expression that appear to be emerging. What is the true composition of the hybridities and intercultural fusions that are being produced? Should we expect a global culture that resembles ‘the eclectic patchwork we are witnessing in America and Western Europe today – a mixture of ethnic elements, streamlined and united by a veneer of modernism on a base of scientific and quantitative discourse and computerized technology’? (Smith, 1992: 573). Are globalized consumer industries moulding motifs as well as tastes, and thereby steering most of the creative talent and innovation their way? It is clear that many aspects of contemporary EuroAmerican cultural expression, especially popular music, films, videos, fashion and some foods, are being spread worldwide in the guise of consumer commodities, art styles in media and tourism – well illustrated by Barber’s stark (1995) imagery of McWorld. Or are we moving towards a multi-polar world of cultural expression with competing centers, as Allen Scott suggested in the 2008 volume of this Series (Scott, 2008)? Yet at the same time, expressive forms from many other places are exerting a trans-national influence, and encouraging creativity and innovation, often in hybrid forms that work with, or blend in

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with, Western and other forms and repertoires that are now being re-interpreted in terms of locally specific perceptions, understandings and styles. These new hybridities involve adaptations that are often accompanied by the often very self-conscious rediscovery of and return to indigenous expressive forms; while such processes of culture-based identity building have been ongoing since the nineteenth century, there can be no doubt that they have multiplied exponentially in our time, often occurring with sufficient depth and force to occasion the ‘conflicts and tensions’ we explored in 2007 (Anheier and Isar, 2007). lmages and pictorial representation have never been more dominant in day-to-day life. No longer is the circumscribed world of art and art history capable of decoding and interpreting the extremely visual culture that environs us. Strategies of representation are no longer, if they ever were, neatly divisible into the ‘seeable and the sayable’. Art critic Gerardo Mosquera, a contributor to this volume, wrote earlier of the world being divided into curating cultures and curated cultures (1994). The former have actively created narratives into which the latter would passively let themselves be inserted. Could it be that the forces of globalization continue to favour a ‘one-way decoding’ where ‘other’ cultures are translated into a standard lingua franca, generating easily swappable and exchangeable packets of virtual meaning? At the same time it may well be simplistic to pretend that globalization has not also had unintended spin-offs that empower and connect marginalized groups, communities and individuals in ways never before imagined. How, then, has popular or subaltern creativity globalized itself in different forms and avenues of cultural expression? Finally, copyright, as Sundara Rajan argues, is the ‘legal face of globalization’ subjecting creative products as intellectual ‘property’ to the strict legislation of their circulation and reproduction. In the past, it was argued that copyright was necessary in order to promote creativity; only by guaranteeing the creator or inventor’s copyright could the author of a work be compensated financially for her creativity. Without this financial incentive, it was argued, the creative impulse would wane. Yet it is precisely the copyright regime and the organizations and interests that benefit from it most that seem subject to the punctuated equilibrium observed by the organizational theorists mentioned above. In other words,

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what was meant to protect and provide incentives for creativity now opens up new creative opportunities while also posing new threats. There are other areas of cultural creativity, however, that would seem to resist trends towards greater use of property rights altogether and irrespective of the regulatory framework in place. These suggest the existence of other communal circuits of creativity that ought to be investigated. Humour as manifested in the jokes that circumnavigate public culture and recipes used in the preparation of food are two examples in the sense that they are not attributable to single authors or identifiable with particular property rights yet there is no dearth of new, innovative material in either of these areas. How can we learn more about the way creativity works in such domains and cultural commons more generally, and how are these affected by globalization?

Questions Against this background, we posed several sets of questions as a ‘brief’ for those authors who would be contributing analytical chapters to Part 1: •

•

Creativity. What does creativity mean in a globalizing economic, cultural and artistic landscape? How does creativity manifest itself empirically, and what are the economic, sociological and cultural factors that help account for variations in creativity across genres, fields, regions, and societies over time? Are transnational milieus and clusters of creativity emerging? What institutions, organizations and professions as well as artistic, political or economic interests are behind such milieus, and how are they inter-linked? Is the changing ‘map’ of creativity related to the various drivers and patterns of globalization? How does cultural/ artistic creativity differ from creativity in other fields, in particular the sciences, the business world and in politics? Diversity of cultural expressions. What are the dimensions and manifestations of diversity in cultural expression in terms of artistic languages, repertoires and practices? Are there diversifying genres, or fields, or regions or localities as well as professions and organizational systems or clusters? Conversely, are

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•

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•

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there fields and domains in which diversity is stable or even regressing? How are such patterns related to the other forms of globalization? What are the cultural, sociological, economic and political correlates of the nexus between creativity and diversity, and how is globalization affecting it? Innovation. What kinds of innovation are taking place in cultural expression? As globalization propels the growth of the increasingly powerful cultural industries, how are artistic languages, repertoires and practices being affected? Are the cultural industries factors of dynamism and growth for cultural expression or are they factors of constriction instead? What are the threats to the diversity of cultural expressions in this respect? To what degree does commodification stifle or foster creativity? Artists as entrepreneurs. The Western notion of cultural creativity has long celebrated what some analysts have called the ‘cult of originality,’ and the rejection of the past. In other cultures, by contract, artistic creation is closer to the shared, living identity and re-enactment of past lessons projected and made meaningful to the here and now. Are these visions converging? Is cultural expression increasingly becoming both individualistic and social, community-based entrepreneurship? Hybrids. What new hybridities are emerging? What sorts of boundary crossings, disruptions, flows and displacements are taking place in artistic practice? Is more cross-cultural collaboration being promoted in the contemporary global landscape? What organizational and/or collaborative forms have developed trans-culturally and what factors are encouraging and discouraging speciation processes? Are these hybrids stable, pointing to consolidations in the way creativity and innovation are institutionalized in inter-cultural or transnational contexts? Agency and dominance. In what forms are agency and dominance exerted in cultural expression today? How do certain actors seek to encourage, control or discourage creativity as a matter of policy? How do such effects occur unintentionally? Is cultural expression becoming homogenized across the world as a result of globalization? What countervailing forces are now challenging hegemonic tendencies? Who are the cultural-political

entrepreneurs, institutions and organizations in this respect, and how are they achieving specific goals? • Outcomes. Are some expressive forms and genres being marginalized, or becoming increasingly excluded, while others move to the centre of cultural attention, political salience and economic investment? Who and where are the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’? • Policy implications. Finally, what, are the policy implications that follow from the questions above, and what policy recommendations can be made at local, national and international levels as a result?

Responses As in most such anthologies, not all of our contributors have addressed the questions exactly as they were asked. Most of them have addressed a subset of the questions above, and some have chosen to tackle other, perhaps equally important ones, that are also relevant to the issues at hand. The Series has always been eclectic in its embrace of many different disciplines and intellectual perspectives. It represents no single school of thought. It is also resolutely international in its coverage; in each volume we seek to explore the issues from a true world diversity of geo-cultural perspectives. Hence here too the sheer variety of apparent universals such as cultural expression, creativity and innovation is made plain by the diversity of contributions from all the world’s regions. Although academybased, our enterprise has always welcomed contributions from public intellectuals, journalists, activists and indeed artists. In this volume, as befits the topic, there are even more contributions from artists and/or arts activists than in the previous two; and precisely because artistic expression is the core issue, we are also pleased to include 16 extra pages of colour plates at the end of Part 1. In line with previous volumes, we solicited and then organized the contributions under several different structural headings. The first set includes chapters tackling overarching, general issues across a range of genres or disciplines. Next, and by contrast, we have placed contributions that analyse issues that are specific or at least particularly salient in different world regions – though here too, it must be said, some of the phenomena

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described could well occur, although perhaps less strikingly, in any other part of the world. The third section includes chapters that deal with particular artistic genres or issues.

Overarching Issues Appropriately for a volume which seeks to challenge the monopoly which the ‘creative industries’ discourse has acquired, Rustom Bharucha opens the Overarching Issues section with his ‘Creativity: Alternative Paradigms to the “Creative Economy” ’ an essay that analyses the everyday traditional Indian art of floor-drawing, kalam, which is not linked to an individual artist, but to the cultural expression of an entire community which earns its livelihood through the perpetuation of this practice. He highlights creative principles like impermanence, ecology, and humility that are exemplified by this expressive language, which because it is also religious operates at both ‘material and immaterial’ levels. While it could be argued that a vast body of creative practices in the ‘global South’ are no longer as resilient as the kalam – and therefore, a policy for their preservation and the income generation of their custodians becomes mandatory – the articulation of such policy should come from the communities themselves. However, in the top-down expertise that marks the rhetoric and legislation of many policies that purport to preserve or strengthen cultural expression, people’s considerations are all too often erased. ‘Recognition and Artistic Creativity’ is the topic Joni Maya Cherbo and Harold L. Vogel explore. Their treatment focuses on the USA, yet they also reject the methodological individualism of the Romantic solitary genius perspective. Inspired by Csikszentmihalyi’s systemic approach, they foreground the importance of social recognition in the phenomenon of creativity. Even in contemporary Western society, artistic creativity is a high risk endeavour; most artistic products fail to cover their investment. Analysing the social context, the authors identify the various stages involved in the process of bringing an artistic work to fruition: origination, presentation/promotion, distribution and evaluation. At each stage various social factors can assist or hinder the reception of any artistic product. In different ways, these conditions are being enhanced by an increasing global interconnectivity

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between peoples, as technology enables and encourages access to new audiences and provides outlets for artistic careers. Gerardo Mosquera’s metaphor of ‘walking with the Devil’ further problematizes issues such as these. Based on his long experience as a leading international curator, his chapter analyses contemporary globalized art circuits. It explores the tensions between cultural homogenization and the countervailing efforts of new cultural subjects who are diversifying international art practice, and also discusses the new epistemological grounds in which artistic discourses unfold. The dramatic expansion in the creation and circulation of contemporary art has developed ever-increasing globalized art scenes while stimulating new local energies. However, instead of a global mosaic of distinct artistic practices, what we see is the plural construction of international art and its language. The Devil in his title is an allegory for hegemonic, internationalized Western metaculture (while God is the local and the singular): in an old fable, a peasant invokes both, contradictorily, in order to cross a perilous bridge. But in the new version of the fable, the Devil tells the peasant, ‘Follow your own path, but let me accompany you, accept me, and I will open the doors of the world for you’. And the peasant, somewhat fearful, yet at the same time pragmatic and ambitious, accedes. Walking with the Devil has become a plausible strategy for visual artists everywhere … Gilane Tawadros also walks the terrain of contemporary visual art in her chapter entitled ‘… But What is the Question? – Art, Research and the Production of Knowledge’, but interrogates this domain as a form of knowledge production. How does artistic knowledge production differ from textbased forms of research and knowledge production? she asks. What new insights or investigations are made possible by the processes of making artworks (or, indeed, of making exhibitions)? What are the implications of this for the ways in which we have traditionally understood and validated knowledge? How does globalization contribute to our understanding of visual art as a form of knowledge production? This chapter takes specific artworks and exhibitions as its ‘evidence’ base for exploring these questions and investigates the role that artworks and exhibitions play in the production of knowledge in a globalized world. Maruška Svašek’s ‘Improvizing in a World of Movement: Transit, Transition and Transformations’

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sees improvisation as the key to interpreting how globalizing forces stimulate cultural production, appropriation and recontextualization. To what extent are these processes controlled, welcomed or criticized by the various actors involved? She argues that creativity should be measured across the entire production process, exploring the active embodied engagement of cultural producers with their work in progress and explores three projects in which two flag makers and one contemporary artist from Ghana have interacted with individuals and groups in Northern Ireland. Svašek defines ‘transit’ as the movement of people, objects and images across space and time; ‘transition’ refers to transit-related changes in the products of cultural production in terms of their meaning, value and emotional efficacy; ‘transformation’ concerns the dynamic ways in which people in transit relate to changing social and material environments. Through ‘improvisation’ they react to new challenges and demands, taking on contextuallyspecific roles and identities, and gaining various degrees of ownership over the working process and its outcomes. Transit is also the concern of the West Indian political economist Keith Nurse, who recounts how the intersection of globalization and diasporas in our time has led to new geo-economic, political, social and cultural spaces that link societies, transcend the boundaries of nation-states and hybridize cultural identities. This domain shows how cultural influences move in many different directions nowadays, bringing about rather more artistic hybridization than homogenization. Much of the literature tends to see global flows principally in a North to South or core-to-periphery direction and fails to capture the tremendous impact of migration and the growth of contemporary diasporas on the North. While the periphery is greatly influenced by the societies of the core, the reverse is also the case and as a consequence it is critical to examine the counter flow, the periphery-to-core cultural flows. Nurse therefore analyses the transfer of popular culture forms from the Caribbean and Latin America to the North Atlantic on the basis of reggaeton, which has risen to prominence and influences Latino and worldwide youth audiences, and on the transnational success of Caribbean carnivals. He argues that diasporic cultures in general, often embodied in popular cultures, employ an ‘aesthetic of resistance’ that confronts and subverts

hegemonic modes of representation and thus acts as a counter-hegemonic tradition to the geocultural constructions embodied in notions of empire, nation, class, ‘race’, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity. They express what Stuart Hall (1997) calls the ‘redemptive move’ … ‘born of travelling, rupture, appropriation, loss, exile’. In this sense, the popular cultures of the diaspora are not just an aesthetic and commercial space where artistic expressions and psychic and bodily pleasures are enacted, represented and marketed, but also an arena where social values and meaning are put on public display, negotiated and contested. Nurse concludes that diasporic cultural expressions and practices facilitate aesthethic innovation as well as sociopolitical change in both receiving and sending countries. Copyright, the main form of intellectual property in cultural production, has played a key part in globalization. Although it is presented as an unalloyed good by its powerful defenders in corporations and states, Jason Toynbee’s chapter argues to the contrary that copyright is of dubious value. For in fact, he argues, the expansive copyright regime which characterizes the present era threatens vulnerable cultures – both traditional and hybrid – around the world. He refutes the conventional rationales for copyright, both economic and aesthetic, drawing supporting evidence from the cases of music making in Jamaica and Bollywood films. These surprisingly parallel examples suggest that creative cultures can flourish in, and may even depend upon, the absence of effective copyright. While IP has been expanding since the mid-1980s, no case has been made as to how extensive IP rights actually need to be in order to overcome the economic ‘problem’ of non-rival, non-excludable cultural goods. Copyright has grown longer, and covered more forms of cultural practice and technologies of replication. It has also extended its reach into the poorest countries of the world. Yet there is no evidence that we have seen a concomitant increase in creativity. Indeed, some economists argue that the current ‘big copyright’ regime is leading to less innovation in cultural markets. Two essays on generic issues close this overview section. The first, ‘Exile, Culture and Identity’, consists of reflections on the part of a diasporized philosopher, Rasoul Nejadmehr, now a leading cultural actor in Sweden, whose itinerary has taken him from his native Iran to Scandinavia.

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He explores the cognitive values of being born in a nomadic family, of being a political exile and of organizing a music festival, Culture in Exile. The argument is that exile and nomadic thought are two key inter-connected features in a world characterized by movement and the dissolution of boundaries, where few stable positions can be adopted by the individual. Dislocation is a creative state of mind that enables a radical critique of the dominant discourses on culture and identity. Ever thoughtprovoking, the theatre scholar and cultural activist Dragan Klaic interrogates a raft of recent and ongoing manifestations of evil. How ‘creative’ are these behaviours on the part of both small and big time crooks who indulge in various forms of crime and destruction? Evil, affirms Klaic, can be surprising and innovative, but not creative. Creativity needs to be affirmed in its utopian core, in benefits to be shared as a common good. In this perspective, he sees combating climate change and its consequences as the major challenge to artistic creativity today.

Regional Realities Paul Brickhill, a life-long cultural entrepreneur in Zimbabwe, opens the Regional Realities section with his treatment of ‘The “Creator” as Entrepreneur: an African Perspective’, an exploration of how artists across the continent have succeeded in creating a diversity of hybrid continuously evolving art forms and techniques in the face of grinding economic poverty and an extremely limited infrastructure, both of which have led to the large emigration of many others. How do those who stay and survive as artists make their livelihood? What is the social interplay between livelihood and the creative process? What types of connections and contradictions exist between African art and global influences? In what ways is African art both ‘universal’ and ‘African’? A starting point for Brickhill is storytelling – in which artist and audience are interwoven – for this is how all African art is understood by Africans themselves. The historic migration of peoples has created an awareness of art as being transient, informed by memory, captured by stories, crafted by improvisation and retold in limitless variation of forms. While there is a distinctive connectedness between culture and social life in Africa, individual creative genius also drives the artistic

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process. The author looks at the ways the practices involved are imagined, lived and retained and linked to globalization, taking examples drawn from stone sculpture, township jazz, Ghanaian highlife, Afro-beat, Zimbabwean mbira, marimba, books and literature, stories and story-telling, youth poetry and Nigerian film. In ‘The Turn of the Native: Vernacular Creativity in the Caribbean’, Annie Paul, a writer and critic at the University of the West Indies, takes up similar issues. In the island countries of the Caribbean, ‘low-budget’ people have creatively married oral traditions with the most advanced technology to create a highly mobile, popular, hybrid musical product that is competitive internationally with similar products from the most affluent societies. Utilizing the transistor set, the recording studio and the gigantic sound system, Jamaican music has disseminated itself to a multitude of audiences – spanning the local, the national, the regional, and the diasporic and transnational with an ebullience and success unmatched by the formal, official, ‘standard’ English-speaking circuits of culture. Jamaican music has also subverted standard notions of copyright, creativity and originality, adapting the Western music model to the new hybridities thrown up in the syncretistic plantation spaces of the Caribbean. The ‘vernacular’ that Paul uses refers precisely to subaltern practices of expressive engagement that reflect the dynamic, adaptive, character of Jamaican patois, in constant dialogue and negotiation with the diasporic, the transnational and the global. The experience of socially conscious graphic designers is the topic of Huda Smitshuijzen Abifarès’s chapter entitled ‘Creative Contemporary Design in the Arab World’. Herself a skilled practitioner from the region, she sheds light on yet another variant of the encounter between locally anchored creativity and the challenges of globalization. Historically, the interaction of Arab peoples with others has shaped and consolidated the visual aspects of the rich traditions of Islamic art. This type of mixing and assimilation of foreign aesthetic repertoire is still part of the Arab visual culture. How are these creative practices being renewed today in the Arab world and in the Arab diaspora? The work of a new generation of cultural entrepreneurs, their networks and other cross-cultural collaborations, together represent a striving to shape visual culture in ways that capture and express contemporary

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identity, as young designers embrace Western design ideologies, yet subvert them to their own ends and needs. The resultant hybrid creative practices are being steadily recognized, building up a following, and putting into motion new forms of globalized creative production. Cultural freedom, the artist’s licence to express, comment and critique, is clearly under siege in many parts of the world. One of the factors working against artistic freedom is the perceived threat of ‘contamination’ by globalization. Political scientists Laurent Gayer, Christophe Jaffrelot and Malvika Maheshwari explore how in South Asia, Islamist and Hindu fundamentalist movements have exerted an ever stronger influence, introducing novel forms of ‘cultural policing’ that reject artistic freedom, and in the process erode the colonial legacy of judicial activism. They understand ‘cultural policing’ as all attempts at imposing ways of thinking and behaving on behalf of value systems pertaining to religion or morality that resort to symbolic or physical violence, blackmailing or any other form of constraint. Significantly, agencies of this form of governmentality are non-state actors – fundamentalist groups, guerrillas, militias – which may, however, be used by government in an indirect manner. In this sense, cultural policing represents a certain privatization of the implementation of law and order. Thus, in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, writers, painters and filmmakers have been attacked for ‘blasphemy and outraging religion’. They have also faced the wrath of the moral police for interpreting homosexuality and widow remarriage. The state apparatus in these countries has not necessarily protected the victims of this form of social control; in a sense cultural policing has become part of the state’s authority. South Asia thus finds itself in the situation of negotiating permissible boundaries for artistic creativity, whose integrity is now more than ever dependent on the rule of law. Taking us from cultural constraint to cultural change, Zala Volcic explores ‘The Struggle to Express, Create and Represent in the Balkans’. How have peoples in the countries of the former Yugoslavia managed to symbolize the subsumption of politics to popular culture? Where once the landscape bristled with statues of political heroes and military leaders, now a new breed of statuary has emerged in the form of a bronzed homage to icons of the global pop culture: Bruce Lee, Bob Marley,

Rocky, etc. Rather than dismiss these often kitsch sculptures as symbols of the victory of commercial culture at ‘the end of history’, Volcic sees them as evidence of a particular kind of cultural expression, creating bricolage in a region still searching for a twenty-first century sense of identity. What we are witnessing, the author suggests, is a global diffusion and a local creative appropriation of popular culture. At the same time, and taking a cue from geographers, she analyses the importance of various sites of mourning and remembering, exploring how new monuments are being built, how new holidays and ceremonies are being introduced, how new creative symbols are being developed, and how new hybrid identities are emerging. Another general question is that of how certain discourses of creativity and culture become globalized. Geographer Lily Kong’s ‘Globalizing Discourses and the Implications for Local Arts’ asks how the notions of ‘creative economy’ and ‘global city’ get diffused and circulated across the world. She is concerned in particular with two key elements of these discourses: the development of creative industry clusters and the attraction of the ‘creative class’ as residents. She asks how these Western European notions (cf. our Introduction to The Cultural Economy volume in 2008) have migrated into contexts which are generally quite different from their origins, and the implications of their importation for local creative cultural work. She examines the ways in which monumentality constitutes symbolic capital for the global city, evidenced, for example, in the development of urban mega projects, and interrogates the accumulation of cultural capital through the construction of a largescale cultural infrastructure in the East Asian cities she observes. The global city, it is believed, must endow itself with cultural institutions such as museums, theatres and libraries, in order to support cultural activities, to exude cultural ambience, and to develop cultural ‘ballast’. In the cities Kong has observed, as the creative class component of creative economy discourse and the monumental component of global city discourse intersect, the development of indigenous creative cultural work actually takes a back seat.

Genres and Issues Peter Tschmuck’s exploration of creativity in the music industry opens the Genres and Issues

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section both because it represents another ‘take’ on the creative industries discourse and because it also anchors the creative act in its broader political economy context. The history of the music industry since its emergence in the late nineteenth century reveals a business cycle in which different configurations – from tight oligopolies to highly competitive markets – correpond to different degrees of creative output. While during oligopolistic phases more or less one music style (Swing in the 1940s or superstar-pop in the 1990s) dominates the scene, in more competitive phases such as we are experiencing today there is a great diversity of music expressions. Tschmuck explores the interrelationship between changing industry structure and changing creative expression, and uses this to generate a model of innovation and creativity. He also explicates the new network of production, distribution and reception that dominates the music industry today, reconfiguring the relationships between artists, record labels, music publishers, concert promoters, property rights agencies, etc. In ‘Creative Communities and Emerging Networks’, Clayton Campbell, a practising artist and pioneer of the global artists’ residency movement, reveals analogous transformations in the notfor-profit arts sector, as he examines a range of networks and ‘creative communities’ founded by artists, and discusses how their formation is informed by artist practice. The ‘divergent thinking’ that forms a cornerstone of artistic creativity engages globalization in imaginative ways, as these alternative artist spaces construct new forms of international collaborations and partnerships. Campbell provides ‘snapshots’ of such alternative art centres and networks that take a holistic view of global thinking, share a common concern for social justice, and seek to replace the global models of market capitalism with the global principles of community and inclusion. Reading globalization from the vantage point of the creative artist, the chapter presents examples of how artists themselves are providing innovative templates for interaction, stimulated by the propensity in contemporary art-making towards collaboration and team building. These are communities and networks informed by the direct practice of the artist, and they are stimulating the growth of new kinds of inter-cultural connection. Different sorts of ‘creative spaces’ are explored by Canadian scholars Nancy Duxbury and Catherine Murray. What are the forces structuring

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those sites which appear to foster new types of collaboration between and among individual creative acts? In these creative spaces the design of place, contextualization and aesthetics of space all have a strong bearing on creativity and innovation. This chapter outlines the conceptual underpinnings of creative spaces as physical, embedded places where creative production, exhibition and consumption occur. Their scale can range from the global hierarchy of cities, their emergent rivals and the satellite communities or cracks at the margins and boundaries of systems, to the sub-city-scale hubs and particular places of connection in which global and local flows of creativity and innovation mix and are facilitated. The chapter examines a knowledge production process consisting of ideas (embedded intelligences and imagination), planning (patterns of involvement and intervention), and policy (integration). The authors argue for a ‘cultural ecology’ that is constructivist, holistic, and based on both physical and social infrastructure. They argue that creative space-making as a policy subfield must more adequately incorporate issues of locality, sociality, cultural diversity, and equity while bridging disparate professional vocabularies or grammars of space. Translation is central to understanding how cultural expression travels and is transformed. While much critiquing of the globalization of literature focuses on the hegemony – and homogenizing tendencies – of the English language, Stefan Helgesson’s close comparative study of actual translation patterns tells a different story. Taking the Mozambican writer Mia Couto’s work as its main example, this chapter on literary hybrids and the circuits of translation shows how each translation may allow different meanings and emphases to emerge. Even Couto’s own writerly practice, with its hybridized language, can be read as a translation of sorts that addresses the consequences of an earlier globalization, i.e. colonialism. Hence, translation functions creatively and sometimes critically at many levels of a ‘globalized’ literature. Digital culture is a ‘brave new world’ in the making, explored in this volume by the Brazilian dancer and performance theorist Ivani Santana, who discusses the reconfigurations of cultural expressions emerging as a result of the intertwining of visual and digital culture. Santana illustrates her argument with her personal experience of telematics, deployed in order to stage a dance spectacle with

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dancers and musicians in three different Brazilian cities: dance in Salvador and Brasilia, music in João Pessoa. In Brasilia the public watched the spectacle in a theatre where some dancers interacted with (the image) of their colleagues located in Salvador. While the public was present in Brasilia, the space in Salvador was configured as the studio of an ‘intelligent stage’. The image of the video-scenography was processed in real time; the result on the Internet was the sum of these layers of images. Creativity in fashion is so spectacularly at the forefront these days that our volume would be incomplete without an exploration of this domain. Mo Tomaney and Julie Thomas do not merely tread celebratory ground, however, for their concern in the ‘Fashion and Ethics’ chapter is to raise key ethical debates relating to the production and consumption of fashion and textiles in the context of fashion as a global industry. Fashion, by its nature and definition, gives clothing a status that represents more than just protection from the elements or modesty; rather, it is a vehicle for self-definition, a sophisticated form of self-expression that touches most people, while at its most expressive, clothing and fashion can be used as a creative instrument that emulates or becomes artistry or performance. The consumption of clothing is universal; however, the way people consume fashion is not. The authors also evoke possible new models for creative practice and fashion consumption in relation to craftsmanship, ‘slow fashion’, recycling, the secondhand clothing trade, and the clothing industry. There is an interface between organizational creativity and innovation and the cultural sector. Private foundations have long claimed the privilege of more creative ways of working. In ‘Philanthropy and the Promotion of Cultural Expression’, Diana Leat addresses these claims, as she discusses the role of philanthropy in cultural expression, creativity and innovation. This interplay in the context of globalization is more complex than it might first appear. Foundations are indeed subject to global homogenizing trends in the way in which they work – their standards and processes – but that this does not (yet) necessarily imply a similar homogeneity in what they fund. While some philanthropic giving reflects homogenizing trends there are at least four factors that limit these: the variety of philanthropic structures; real and imagined legal restrictions restricting global reach; a variety of approaches and purposes in funding artistic and cultural

expression; and the resistant creativity of, in particular, endowed foundations. In point of fact, foundations act as small but significant buffers against the centralizing tendencies of the global art and media markets; sources of both innovation and preservation, independent of the market; forces for increased democratization, access to and recognition of artistic and cultural expression and forms; and bridge-builders between traditions and cultures, and between competing frameworks for the evaluation and legitimation of the value of artistic endeavour. Without straying too far from artistry, our core concern, we have chosen to highlight broader forms of expressive social behaviour by asking the Mexican cognitive scientist and digital researcher Eugenio Tisselli to explore the ways in which digital social networks can be seen as ‘strategies of the imagination’ – his chapter’s title. These now pervasive networks offer tools enabling millions of users to publish online all types of content and personal information. Making ‘friends’ on these networks is as simple as pointing and clicking. Yet the participative facade of these online applications conceals a set of disciplining technologies for contemporary capitalism, he argues, where the apparent excess of socialization really stands for the multiplication of weak and disengaged relationships. His chapter explores how the standard modes of operation of digital networks can be and are being overridden through appropriation, and how this appropriation can lead to socially relevant innovation and change. An example is zexe.net: a project in which digital networks and technologies are appropriated and used by marginalized communities to speak out and raise public awareness about their specific issues. Part 1 is brought to a close by Guest Editor Chris Waterman, a professional double-bass player and ethnomusicologist, currently Dean of the School of the Arts and Architecture at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). His own chapter is based on a set of vignettes reflecting different types of engagements between popular cultural expression and globalization processes. These range from a comedy/music group in pre-World War II Japan and their pastiche of American popular culture, to community musicians in rural Peru inserting commentary on 9/11 in their locally grounded creativity, and to a Yoruba taxi driver’s intense emotional identification with the power of

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the praise poems sung at his father’s funeral. For Waterman, all three examples testify to the prosthetic power of the many forms of cultural expression that cut across the local and the global, occupying the interstitial spaces, the in-between, and also challenging the established categories of cultural hierarchies and institutions. These expressive forms, as well as all those discussed by the contributors to this volume, are living testimony to the ways in which cultures, instead of being taken as fixed essences, are lived and experienced as ‘worldly, productive sites of crossing: complex unfinished paths between local and global attachments’ (Clifford, 1998: 362, 365). These are the routes of a ‘discrepant cosmopolitanism’ that ‘gives us a way of perceiving, and valuing, different forms of encounter, negotiation, and multiple affiliation in the place of simple difference’. Indeed it is these pathways of creative expression that challenge those global scripts of the culture concept itself, understood both as ‘ways of life’ and as ‘arts and heritage’, those conflated understandings that, as we observed in our Introduction to the inaugural volume of this Series, have generated such a range of expectations, anxieties and illusions across the world. The expectations are tied to what Stuart Hall (1997) has called the

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‘centrality of culture’. The anxieties arise from its frequent abuse, while the illusions are the result of overblown visions, of simplifications that are reductive, and readings that are instrumental. We can only reiterate our conviction that the expectations can be justified, the anxieties allayed and the illusions dispelled by the patient and methodical marshalling of evidence in informed and conceptually sensitive ways. It is our hope that this volume in its turn will contribute meaningfully to this task.

Notes 1

2

3 4

The theme for the 2010 volume is ‘heritage, memory, identity’ and in 2011 the fifth volume of the Series will tackle the topic of cultural policy. As O’Connor also observes, though, most traditional notions of art also emphasized skill, craftsmanship, balance, harmony, the golden mean, the middle way. All are qualities which tend to be excluded from this new use of creativity (2007: 32). These include Brown and Dugiud (2002), Burt (2005), Kanter (1983), Kao (1991), and Landry (2000). See National Bureau of Economic Analysis (2006) Symposium on ‘New Ideas about New Ideas’, 10–11 March 2006. Available at http://www.nber.org/~sewp/ newideas.html.

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REFERENCES

Adorno, T. (1991) The Culture Industry. London: Routledge. Anheier, H. and Isar, Y.R., (2007) Conflicts and Tensions. The Culture and Globalization Series, 1. London: SAGE. Barber, B. (1995) Jihad vs. McWorld. New York: Times books. Brown, J.S. and Dugiud, P. (2002) ‘Creativity versus structure: a useful tension’, in E.B. Roberts (ed.), Innovation Driving Product, Process and Market Change. San Francisco, CA: MIT Sloan Management Review. Burt, R. (2005) Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Clifford, J. (1998) ‘Mixed feelings’, in P. Cheah and B. Robbins (eds), Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 362–370. Czikszentmihalyi, M. (1996) Creativity. New York: Harper Collins. Errington, S. (1998) The Death of Authentic Art and Other Tales of Progress. Berkeley: University of California Press. Florida, R. (2002) The Rise of the Creative Class. New York Basic. Gardner, H. (1993) Creating Minds. New York: Basic. Hall, S. (1997) ‘The centrality of culture: notes on the cultural revolutions of our time’, in K. Thompson (ed.), Media and Cultural Regulation, Buckinghamshine: Open University Press. Held, D., McGrew, A., Goldblatt, D. and Perraton, J. (1999) Global Transformations: Politics, Economics, and Culture. Cambridge: Polity. Kanter, R.M. (1983) The Change Masters: Innovations for productivity in the American corporation. New York: Simon and Schuster. Kao, J. (1991) Managing Creativity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Landry, C. (2000) The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators. London: Comedia, Earthscan Publications Ltd. Lubart, T.I. (1999) ‘Creativity across cultures’, in R.J. Sternberg (ed.), Handbook of Creativity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mosquera, G. (1994) ‘Some problems in transnational curating’, in J. Fisher (ed.), Global Visions: Towards a New Internationalism in the Visual Arts. London: Kala. Nelson, R.R. and Winter, S.G. (1982) An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change. Cambridge, MA: Belknap. O’Connor, J. (2007) The Cultural and Creative Industries: A Review of the Literature. London: Creative Partnerships, Arts Council England. Pettigrew, A.M. and E.M. Fenton (eds) (2000) The Innovating Organization. London: SAGE. Romanelli, E. and M.L. Tushman (1994) ‘Organizational transformation as punctuated equilibrium: an empirical test’, The Academy of Management Journal, 37 (5): 1141–1161. Sahlins, M. (1994) ‘A brief cultural history of culture’. Unpublished paper prepared for the World Commission on Culture and Development (UNESCO). Scott, A. (2008) ‘Retrospect and prospect’, in H.K. Anheier and Y.R. Isar (eds), The Cultural Economy. The Cultures and Globalization Series, 2. London: SAGE. Smith, A. (1992) ‘National identity and the idea of European unity’, International Affairs, 68. Sternberg, R.J. and Lubart, T.I (1999) ‘The concept of creativity: prospect and paradigms’, in R.J. Sternberg (ed.), Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tomlinson, J. (1999) Globalisation and Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. Tusa, J. (2003) On Creativity. London: Methuen. Williams, R. (1988) Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society. London: Fontana Press. Williams, R. (2001) The Long Revolution. Calgary: Broadview.

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PART 1 ISSUES AND PATTERNS IN CULTURAL EXPRESSION

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CHAPTER 1 CREATIVITY: ALTERNATIVE PARADIGMS TO THE ‘CREATIVE ECONOMY’ Rustom Bharucha

through new modes of production and distribution, even as it upholds the need for context-sensitive economies. Highlighting alternative paradigms of creativity in the cultures of the ‘South’, the chapter concludes with a few reflections on how these paradigms can provide new directions for the shaping of a more dialogic cultural policy.

Building on the premise that creativity is not the prerogative of any particular class, any more so than it can be mobilized equitably by the pseudo-democratic and instrumentalist agendas of the state, this chapter argues against the appropriation of creativity within the premises of the ‘creative economy’. In opposition to the profit-making propensities of the global market, it highlights creative principles like impermanence, ecology, and humility, drawn out of everyday cultural practices in the Indian context, notably floor-drawings. Complicating the argument, it does not rule out the possibilities of either the commodification or innovation of traditional artefacts

Against the growing discourse that has emerged around the ‘creative economy’ (Howkins, 2001), this essay reflects on ‘creativity’ through a web of intersecting concepts and practices. The ‘creative economy’ has been catalyzed by a series of theoretical interventions which have parasitically drawn on the ‘culture industry’ (Adorno, 1991), ‘cultural industries’ (Garnham, 2000; 2005), ‘creative industries’ (Caves, 2000; Hartley, 2004), the ‘creative class’ (Florida, 2002; 2005), and the ‘cultural economy’ (Anheier and Isar, 2008; Cunningham et al., 2008). Oscillating between ‘cultural’ and ‘creative’, ‘industry’ and ‘economy’, this nit-picking juxtaposition of terms has assumed discriminations and implications of power in policy-making and managerial services relating to the profit-making and social propensities of cultural goods and services. Increasingly, the dissemination of this discourse has assumed a global scale, which would seem to have increased in almost direct proportion to its media-driven and corporate hype. The purpose here is to work against this hype in order to highlight those particular modes and modalities of creativity in the cultures of the ‘South’ which do not lend themselves to the imperatives of the global economy, even as they seek out their own modes of sustainability within – and against – the logic of commodification. Arguably, the ‘creative economy’ (and its concomitant ‘creative industries’ and ‘creative class’) have very little to do with the multi-dimensional complexities of creativity as it unfolds and manifests itself in a multitude of artistic and cultural practices. As used by a coterie of predominantly neo-liberal economists, the ‘creative’ component in the ‘creative economy’ is at best a catch-word, if not a logo, clubbing together distinct categories like

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‘skill’, ‘talent’, and ‘innovation’,1 which masquerade an affinity to the world of artists but with no real evidence of the labour and imagination that go into art-making. At one level then, the thrust of my critique in this essay is leveled against the appropriation and decontextualization of ‘creativity’ from its diverse manifestations as well as the phenomenological processes underlying artistic and cultural expression. At another level, however, I am equally concerned with the singularization of the creative economy within the strictures of the so-called ‘knowledge economy’ or ‘information society’, consolidated and driven by the technologies of ‘copyright, patent, trademark, and design industries’ (Howkins, 2001: xiii). This equation of creativity with intellectual property would seem to be totally indifferent to other cultural understandings of the economy, where the mechanisms of markets and trading practices may be mediated by the communitarian values of generosity, altruism, and sharing. These values complicate the neo-classical premises of economics regulating the transactions of everyday life cultures. Indeed, without this melding of cultural values and economic mechanisms, as I will demonstrate in the course of this chapter, a vast body of cultural expressions and rituals from diverse cultures in the global ‘South’ could not have survived over the years. In the process, the livelihoods of artisan communities and subaltern artists from the most downtrodden sectors of society would have been seriously jeopardized. It is necessary, therefore, to keep in mind that while the emergence of the ‘creative economy’ discourse goes back barely to the late 1990s, symptomatic of neo-liberal global capitalism and market-friendly New Labour policies, the temporalities of creativity encompass a much vaster history of time. I will provide a few glimpses of those creative practices whose legacies go back hundreds of years, testifying to the truism that ‘living traditions’ have fairly resilient economies or else they could not have survived and grown over the years. While highlighting the endurance, reinvention and altered manifestations of traditional practices in the cultures of everyday life, I will also attempt to stretch their assumptions of creativity in relation to the more pragmatic possibilities of commodification and innovation. My purpose is not to demonize the commercial or marketing propensities of the creative economy, but to question their viability at

material and social levels. Arguably, the mandate of the creative industries has not been fulfilled, and its attempt to formulate a ‘policy’, as pointed out by Andrew Ross, has been ‘mercurial’ rather than sustainable: The carefully packaged policy of creative industries will not generate jobs; it is a recipe for magnifying patterns of class polarization; its function as a cover for the corporate intellectual property grab will become all too apparent; its urban development focus will price out the very creatives on whose labour it depends; its reliance on self-promoting rhetoric runs far in advance of its proven impact; its cookie-cutter approach to economic development does violence to regional specificity; its adoption of an instrumental value of creativity will cheapen the true worth of artistic creation. (Ross, 2007: 18)

The systematic failure of the creative industries is substantiated by the even more ‘mercurial’ transition from ‘the rise of the creative class’ (Florida, 2002) to the ‘flight of the creative class’ (Florida, 2005), all in a matter of three years. Richard Florida’s predictions indicate the ephemerality of this ‘class’, even as the statistical evidence of socalled ‘creative cities’ indicates that rumours of their economic productivity have been grossly exaggerated: the European Commission’s evaluation of 29 Cities of Culture discloses that ‘their principal goal – economic growth stimulated by the public subvention of culture to renew failed cities – has itself failed’ (Miller, 2007: 45). Even if these cities do manage to generate more jobs as Andrew Ross candidly points out, the ‘polarization of city life between affluent cores and low-income margins’ (Ross, 2007: 28) can only intensify. Florida’s euphoric notion of creativity as ‘everyone’s natural asset to exploit’ (2007: 28) is proving to be thoroughly unproductive and may even disappear in due course just as the bubble of the New Economy promoted by the advocates of New Labour in Britain has already burst. Instead of pursuing this critique of the creative industries and economy,2 my purpose in this chapter is to focus attention on the alternative paradigms of creativity to be found in so-called ‘traditional’ sectors of everyday life cultures in the ‘South’. As we will discover, the ‘traditional’ can also be deeply contemporary, not only in its registers of

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resistance to an obligatory globalization but also in its potentially disruptive and subversive affirmation of value-systems which counter the assumptions of the creative economy. Let me emphasize that I look upon this economy not as a threat but as a necessary provocation which compels me to be more circumspect about what I assume by ‘creativity’ in the first place.

Complicating the epistemologies of creativity If one acknowledges that creativity is not an essentialized quality, or immutable property, but is better regarded as a faculty of imagination which catalyzes a process of interactions, we would still be relying on a thoroughly nebulous notion of creativity. The rigor in articulating creativity can begin to emerge only when this ‘process of interactions’ is contextualized within the specific disciplinary procedures of the arts, encompassing components like training, transmission, technique, and conditions of work, among other factors that go into the production and reception of any work of art. While these components appear to be abstract, they gain very concrete, if not tangible, manifestations within the vocabulary and grammar of specific disciplines. To spell out my position more clearly, the creativity of a musician – and not just any musician, but, let’s say, a cellist – would need to be recognized and accounted for in ways that would be quite significantly different from, say, that of a poet or potter or video artist. The terminology of art practices is, more often than not, a highly honed and textured field of critical discriminations which facilitates the evaluation of the creativity in question. This precision can border on the prescriptive, as we will examine later. Let me provide at this point some evidence of the ‘texturality’ of creativity, drawing on my own affiliation to the performing arts. For my evidence, I turn to a few creative categories from the ancient Indian tract of the Natyasastra (circa first century BC–second century AD), one of the earliest encyclopedias of performance in the world. What concerns me here are not the minutiae of technicality relating to the micro-movements of eyes, neck, chest, hands, hips, legs, feet, down to the most infinitesimal signs of psychophysical expressivity. The terminological virtuosity of the Natyasastra in Sanskrit would be somewhat out of place in this chapter; it would also

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be misleading because the sheer knowledge of all these hundreds of movements and micro-movements does not necessarily ensure the ‘creativity’ of the performance. Rattling off the minute categories can be an act of pedantry, but where creativity counts is in the actual embodiment or expression of these movements. Therefore, while the fingers in one hand or both can be positioned in any number of combinations to create hastas (hand-gestures), denoting a vista of objects and phenomena and emotional registers, it is hasta-prana which makes the gestures come alive through the infusion of breath (prana). (In a sense, this is not very different from that excruciatingly beautiful line attributed to Emily Dickinson when she asked, ‘Do my poems breathe?’) In this embodiment of emotions through breath, one is alerted to the enormously subtle, if not evanescent dimensions of creative expression in performance. Even when dealing with the practicalities of dramaturgical structure, it is telling how the primary ingredients of creativity appear to be elusive, beginning with kama (desire), bija (seed), and bindu (drop), which dilate and catalyze a chemistry of actions constituting the plot of the play. This play, however, only begins to make sense when the entire process is received – or more specifically tasted – by the spectators through the experience of rasa (literally, ‘juice’). I realize that I am merely sketching the mutations of one of the most complex aesthetic categories from the Indian subcontinent, but for my purpose here, I would stress that creativity is not an inherent category, but more of a relational process in which the thing perceived is shared through a transpersonal exchange and abstraction of emotions. Who shares? Is it the actor or the spectator or both? Or some other third entity that emerges out of the imaginary of the experience in which the actor, character, fictional situation, reception, and the suspended historical moment of time, are all immersed in one transcendent moment of bliss? While the philosophical intricacy of such questions cannot be answered within the framework of this chapter, they indicate that creativity is not just the agency of the so-called creator, it also encompasses the capacity to receive – and induce – the process of creativity through the imaginative inputs of the spectator/listener. Creativity is, therefore, a deeply participatory process, which at one level can be linked to the

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more current vogue for ‘interactivity’, as in video games (one of the most lucrative multi-billion products of the creative industries). The difference, however, is that the images of the video game, more often than not linked to raging battles and galactic missiles in outer space or terrorist zones, have already been created by the designer(s), whose creativity is patented and branded. While these images can be manipulated by the reflexes of those who are playing the game, the images themselves are already fixed, though reassembled, quite unlike the emotions and sensations shared in the exchange of rasa which are not spelled out in advance. Rather, they can exist only in the process of their evolution in an imaginary space, where the pleasure of the aesthetic experience is at once ‘disciplined’ and ‘trained’ through specific protocols, and yet free of these constraints in the actual moment of enjoyment.

The problem of exclusivity Returning to my broader purpose of attempting to assess the modalities of creativity in the contemporary world, I would acknowledge that there are at least two difficulties with the invocation of rasa (or, other such traditional aesthetic categories like hana, or ‘flower’, as formulated by Zeami in the context of Noh theatre). One problem could be that these categories are far too refined and, almost inevitably, they are at once exclusionary and exclusivist. They demand specific modes of enculturation which are, more often than not, linked to the privileges of class and a particular education of the senses. Representing a more heightened form of ‘distinction’ than Bourdieu (1984) could have imagined in his examination of social and cultural capital in a predominantly bourgeois milieu, one should acknowledge that the acquisition of rasa (as a discourse rather than a lived practice) can result in a brahmanical assertion of cultural supremacy, which exudes violence in its regimentation of the senses passing as authentically ‘Indian’. One caveat needs to be added here to qualify the argument. Exclusivity, I would argue, is not the domain of traditional aesthetics alone. Indeed, it can exist in all kinds of liberal modes and forms of creative assertion, exemplifying a plurality of lifestyles and democratic interaction with other cultures and ethnicities. What, indeed, could be more

exclusivist than the notion of a ‘creative class’? Despite his pitch for the innovation of new modes of living and generating capital, Richard Florida ultimately lands up asserting one of the most emphatic categories by which people are differentiated and divided: ‘class’. Only his criteria are a lot less exacting than those of Marx. Not only does he have no difficulty in restricting this class to 38 million metropolitan Americans, including architects, doctors, lawyers, and engineers, among other professionals who share some nebulous ‘creative’ affinities to artists, he also hypothesizes his theory on the basis of geographical proximities between metropolitan gay life-styles and wealth-generating creative innovations. It is a sad reflection of the neo-liberal state of our times that an ostensibly gayfriendly and pluralist approach to culture should rest on unsubstantiated differences between those gays who are willy-nilly ‘creative’ because they live in cool cities like San Francisco, while their counterparts in Kansas City or Poughkeepsie lie ipso facto outside the purview of creativity. Both in terms of the politics of sexuality and the equations between sexuality and economics, this theory is frightfully thin. Having acknowledged that the problem of exclusivity does not have to be restricted to traditional contexts of knowledge, let us now spell out yet another difficulty in invoking categories like rasa within the context of creativity in our time. It could be argued that creativity cannot be confined to those art practices which have defined disciplinary procedures, as I have argued earlier. What about those acts of creativity that remain unrecognized, embedded in the habitus of everyday life, where there is no necessary cognizance or recognition of actions relating to cooking, dressing, washing, ritual worship, and the nurturing of children and old people? Are these actions, the outcomes of deeply internalized modes of enculturation, to be automatically relegated to the domain of ‘the social’? And is the social to be equated with the necessities of the functional and the communicative, as opposed to the gratuitous benefits of the creative? Such dichotomies are untenable, as will become evident later, in my description of one particular traditional cultural practice. Before doing so, let me further complicate the thrust of my argument by posing the reverse problematic of exclusivity: namely, the ubiquity of creativity as a universal human resource.

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The problem of pseudo-democracy If the exclusionary dimensions of creativity should compel us to be more critically vigilant of its larger democratic access, it is equally necessary not to automatically uphold the reverse position that ‘everyone is creative’, which amounts to a kind of pseudo-democratic position. And yet, this is precisely the assumption underlying a Green Paper (April 2001) put forward by the British government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport in its advocacy of ‘creative industries’. While the mantra of ‘everyone is creative’ could be rejected outright for its self-serving rhetoric in making all citizens appear to be equal contributors to the national economy,3 it would be useful to juxtapose its hype with a statement that would appear to be similar, even though its context is radically different. I am referring to the much-quoted statement by Joseph Beuys, one of the most prominent German political artists of the late twentieth century, who in one of his many discursive reflections on art practice had suggested the potentiality that ‘every human being is an artist’ (Harlan, 2004: 2). At first glance, it would seem that Beuys is merely echoing the rhetoric of New Labour, playing into populist notions of access and non-hierarchical and nonqualitative assessments of the social instrumentalization of art. However, this would be a serious distortion of Beuys’s position, which can be more accurately assessed through a scrutiny of his practice and politics. If ‘every human being is [potentially] an artist’, this cannot be assumed or legislated outside the actual practice in which the economy of artistic form has to emerge through engagements with materiality, ecology, public discourse, and political engagement. For Beuys, this engagement demanded nothing less than an unsparing opposition to the capitalist mode of production in which the cultures of everyday life are cosmeticized and reduced to consumerist banality. In one of his many measured yet radical statements, drawn out of conversations with the public which he regarded as part of his art practice, Beuys said: The concept of economic growth and the concept of capital and all that goes with it, does not really make the world productive. No, the concept of art must replace the degenerate concept of capital. Art is really tangible capital, and people need to

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become aware of this … [C]apital is human dignity and creativity. And so, in keeping with this, we need to develop a concept of money that allows creativity, or art, so to speak, to be capital. Art is capital. This is not some pipe dream; it is a reality. In other words, capital is what art is. Capital is human capacity and what flows from it. (2004: 27)

The uncompromising tenor of these reflections, and their immersion in an anti-capitalist ideology, which does not stop Beuys from countering another notion of art as capital, is as removed from the slippery rhetoric of Cool Britannia as one can possibly imagine. While it is not possible here to provide a detailed inventory of Beuys’s art practice, which could demonstrate how his politics was actually embodied in his ‘social sculpture’ (or ‘expanded conception of art’), suffice it to say that his alchemical use of substances like wax, fat, felt, bone, copper, fossils, and his active ecological practice in the planting of ‘7,000 oak trees’, along with his blackboard drawings in public forums, provide one of the most exacting, if idiosyncratic, examples of how the socalled ‘ordinariness’ of culture, as evoked by Raymond Williams, can mobilize ‘warmth’ (Beuys, 2004). ‘Warmth’, not in the psychological sense of conviviality and bonding, now fetishized in the much-hyped experiments in ‘relational aesthetics’ (Bourriaud, 2002) in established museums. For Beuys, warmth is made of sterner stuff and has a profoundly social dimension as well as a spiritual propensity in its capacity to incorporate the world within one’s own self-transformative capacities. This process of self-transformation is achieved primarily through the dynamics of seeing whereby the phenomenon being observed is ‘inhabited’ by the observer, who lives its ‘activity’ and ‘interconnections’, creating an ‘inner image of what has been observed’ (Sacks, 2007: 1). Through the process of creating an inner image, the self is transformed at perceptual levels which defy the discursive strictures of the ‘creative industries’ and the ‘creative economy’. What is missing in these new assertions of creativity is a theory of seeing in relation to the ‘inner space of perception and imagination’ (2007: 1). One may not have the courage to affirm the act of seeing quite so unequivocally as Beuys does, but it underlies his advocacy of ‘human dignity and creativity’ in his celebration of ‘art as capital’ (2004: 27). While his vision remains

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intransigent, it provides alternative points of reference which enable us to work against the grain of the pseudo-democratic platitude that ‘everyone is creative’.

Three principles of creativity Having outlined some concepts of creativity punctured by counter-references to the creative economy, I would now like to highlight three principles of creativity grounded in the cultures of everyday life through a focus on one particular practice: traditional floor-drawing. This practice is so widespread and commonplace in different parts of India that its creativity is not even acknowledged. Certainly, it attracts far less attention than the contemporary pavement drawings that one is likely to come across on city streets, where some itinerant pavementartist sketches the figure of a god or a film hero in chalk. While this form of site-specific, freestyle sketching could be regarded as subaltern art, traditional floor-drawings are more likely to be regarded as part of a household routine. Almost exclusively performed by women, they are to be found outside the threshold of homes, where the floor is cleaned and then sprinkled with rice-flour, which is used to create an infinite number of geometric, floral, iconographic, and decorative patterns. The entire process, which can be completed in a matter of a few minutes, with matter-of-fact and apparently improvized gestures, has no other ritual purpose apart from providing a touch of positive energy to the household by warding away evil spirits. While the floor-drawings used in everyday household contexts are identified differently in various regions of India – kolam (Tamil Nadu), kalam (Kerala), alpana (West Bengal), rangoli (North India) – the fundamental ‘creativity’ of this everyday cultural practice can be attributed to the tension between the intentionality of the practitioner and the ‘self-generative capacity’ of the floor-drawing’s form as it evolves in actual practice (Mall, 2006: 74). This evolution is as much an expression of a deeply internalized body-memory of previously learned or copied patterns, as it is a response to the unpredictability of the form as it emerges through a flow of dexterous gestures, occasional mistakes and visual surprises (2006: 74). In this chapter, I will not be focusing on the phenomenology of floor-drawing in which creativity is at

once captured and embodied. Rather, I will concentrate on a far more elaborate ritual performance tradition from the southwestern state of Kerala called kalamezhutu pattu or kalam pattu in which a large-scale kalam (floor-drawing) of a deity is made not by household women but by particular castes of artisans, notably the Mannaan from the low-caste Harijan community.4 The crucial point that needs to be emphasized is that the artistic creativity in question is not linked to an individual artist, but to a specific community which earns its livelihood through the perpetuation of this practice. In this regard, the category of ‘cultural expression’, as defined by the editors of this volume, could be regarded as appropriate for the kalam, in so far as it evokes a ‘collective project’ incorporating multiple inputs at the level of community. More precisely, given the religious dimensions surrounding the worship of the kalam, the expressivity in question operates at both ‘material and immaterial’ levels. I will not be describing here how the kalam is made after hours of painstaking labour, in which the body and visage of the goddess Bhagawathy or Bhadrakali (the auspicious and ferocious aspects of the goddess Devi, respectively) emerge out of the earth in an intricate filigree of five vibrant colours – red, black, white, yellow, and green. Nor will I be providing a detailed contextual background relating to the rituals, songs, chants, invocation of the goddess, and oracular transmission of messages by which the kalam is worshipped as an offering (vazhivadu) by the family or temple sponsoring the performance. What does concern me here, however, is the crucial moment in the final stage of the ritual performance when the kalam is erased, generally by the oracle or ritual attendant who dances on the floor-drawing and wipes the goddess away with his stamping feet and occasionally frenzied movements. It is out of this void, an empty space, which is all that remains of the kalam, that I would like to draw out some principles which seem crucial to my understanding of creativity in contradistinction to the tenets of the creative economy.

1. Impermanence First of all, it becomes necessary to focus on the implications of impermanence as a creative principle. When the kalam is erased, nothing remains of

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its original form beyond the traces of colour smeared on the floor. These traces are collected by the spectators and smeared on their foreheads as Prasad, indicating their physical imbibing of the sacred presence in the ritual. Beyond these traces there is no object, sign, or artistic signature that remains, which leaves open the critical question of whether the kalam can be regarded as a commodity. Certainly, if one had to follow the traditional Marxist definition of commodity as ‘a product intended principally for exchange’ within ‘the institutional, psychological and economic conditions of capitalism’ (Appadurai, 1986: 6), then the kalam is neither an instance of decommodification nor anticommodification. Rather, in its inability to be bought or sold through the very dissolution of its materiality, it would seem to exist outside the logic of commodification altogether. This argument, however, could be complicated by other processual readings of commodity, which leave open the possibilities of objects ‘moving both into and out of the commodity state’ (Kopytoff, 1986, cited in Appadurai, 1986: 17). This fluidity informs postmodern readings of commodity, which are determined neither by the material concreteness nor the price of the commodity, but rather by its potentiality for exchange in situations in which ‘its exchangeability (past, present, or future) for some other thing is its socially relevant feature’ (Appadurai, 1986: 13). In this imagined state of perpetual mobility, the commodity is identified and discriminated not as ‘one kind of thing rather than another’ but rather as ‘one phase in the life of some things’ (1986: 17). While I will leave open the ‘commodity potential’ of the kalam, which I will discuss later within the hypothesis of a reinvented design, I would nonetheless claim that the kalam in its traditional ritual context does not readily lend itself either to the idea or practice of commodity precisely because it does not conform to the principles of ‘exchange’ at a material level. The only transaction that does take place in the course of this offering is, at best, symbolic, in so far as the sponsors of the kalam pay for its performance in order to receive favours from the gods. However, there can be no unequivocal guarantee that their desires will be granted beyond the reassurances of the oracle. One should also keep in mind that the kalam is not just an opportunity for wish-fulfillment but an act of gratitude for favours already received, which rules out the necessity of a

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clearly defined ‘exchange’. Offerings can be unidirectional in their focus and intensity. However, this premise opens up the possibility of whether the kalam would not be more appropriately defined as a ‘gift’, which is the term that is constantly countered in relation to ‘commodity’, at times with unproductive results. Here there is a growing literature with at least two diametrically opposed readings of the gift: those that favour the belief that it is non-returnable, as exemplified in Derrida’s eloquent exhortation that ‘there must be no reciprocity, return, exchange, countergift, or debt. If the other gives me back or owes me or has to give me back what I give him or her, there will not have been a gift’ (Derrida, 1992: 12, cited in Frow, 1997: 107). Against this assertion of non-reciprocity, there is the more coercive view emphasized by the master theoretician of the gift, Marcel Mauss (1967), for whom ‘there is no gift without bond, without bind, without obligation or ligature’ (Frow, 1997: 108). If one had to link the kalam to the Derridean perspective of ‘the first gift’, then one would have to qualify that it is not ‘purely gratuitous, non-reciprocal and atemporal’ (1997: 108), but, on the other hand, if we had to link it to Mauss’s somewhat more paradoxical perspective on the gift, one would have to resist the reduction of the entire kalam performance to a deliberately calculative and strategic act, despite the intentionality underlying the sponsorship of the performance. Certainly, the uppercaste sponsors of any kalam stand to enhance their cultural and spiritual capital and social prestige through the sponsorship of the performance, but these benefits would need to be seen in the context of self-gratification rather than exchange. Returning to the motif of impermanence, but problematizing it in a somewhat different direction from the gift/commodity debate, it could be argued that the ‘invisible’ and non-material dimensions of knowledge traditions are not necessarily divested of economic value. Indeed, the knowledge component of the creative economy is deeply invested in the future, in what does not as yet exist, which could include unknown enzymes, genes, and software. The fact that these phenomena have yet to be discovered or invented does not stop them from being patented in their embryonic states. This investment in the future, or more precisely, the domain of the Not-Yet, needs to be contrasted with the kalam’s deep investment in the Now, in which all times (past, present, and future) coalesce.5

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The impermanence of the kalam, therefore, has to be linked not to an invisible future, but to a vanishing present, which is consciously erased even after it has been brought into fruition. There is a different temporality at work here, which compels one to differentiate between the multitudinous instants of creativity which suggest an ‘eternal time’, and the more pragmatic, long-term investments of the cultural economy which more often than not disappear into evanescence or crash out of existence.

2. Ecology The second principle of creativity that I would like to draw out of the example of the kalam concerns its ecological foundations. Indeed, the colours that enhance the kalam’s vibrant form are made out of natural substances: rice powder (white), burned rice husk (black), turmeric powder (yellow), powdered dry leaves (green), and a mixture of turmeric powder and lime (red). When the kalam is erased, these natural substances are returned to the earth, providing an unobtrusive yet concrete example of ecological art, which is now being explored by many metropolitan artists through different methods of disintegration and self-destruction in the creation of fragile installations, and the use of perishable materials in art works. These experiments, however, continue to be on the margins of the art world, which defines its capital more assertively than ever before through what is visible and permanent. The technologies feeding the ‘mechanical reproduction’ of art in the age of globalization have far exceeded what was available in Walter Benjamin’s time. Today the original art work gains additional market value through the surfeit of discursive and media representations that surround its replication through the catalogue, the poster, the website, CDs and DVDs – apart from the obligatory invitation card specially designed for the opening party of the exhibition. If the art market would appear to disdain the less lucrative path of ecology, it is because ‘alternative’ activist experiments in this field have yet to be adequately projected. Far outdoing the art world in this regard is the thriving business of eco-friendly products in the cosmetics industry, along with other modes of pampering the body through holistic massage services and Ayurveda, in addition to the spaand resort-related pleasures of eco-tourism and

yoga retreats. Tellingly, the state of Kerala is at once the site for the non-commercial, predominantly ritual practice of the kalam, as well as the headquarters of the Ayurveda industry. Cashing in on ‘knowledge about commodities’ which is itself ‘increasingly commoditized’ according to a global ‘traffic in criteria’ (Appadurai, 1986: 54), the promoters of Ayurveda in Kerala have capitalized on ‘innovations’ of traditional health systems ostensibly re-designed to suit New Age lifestyles. However, these innovations can never afford to ignore the lure – and competitive economic value – of ‘authenticity’, which is subjected to what Appadurai has described as a ‘complication of criteria’ (1986: 45). Hence, the ‘prestige economies of the modern West’ can be guaranteed ‘100% traditional Ayurvedic massage’ but with all the amenities of a luxurious spa thrown in as part of the deal, including subliminal erotic pleasures. While the repackaging of traditional modes of expertise, spurious or otherwise, is part of the marketing game, what is harder to accept is the glib use of ‘ecology’ in the discourse of the creative economy where there is no demonstrable evidence of any altered mode of cultural production or distribution. Such is the case with the so-called ‘revitalization of city landscapes’ (Scott, 2008) through a proliferation of ‘new shopping malls, restaurants, cafes, clubs, theaters, galleries, boutiques’, the obligatory manifestations of the hedonistic logic upheld by the creative class. However, this is not an adequate explanation, as the following passage reveals: When the landscape develops in this manner, significant portions of the city (though rarely, if ever, all portions) start to function as an ecology of commodified symbolic production and consumption, in which, and in contrast to the classical industrial metropolis, the functions of leisure and work seem to be converging to some sort of (historically-specific) social equilibrium. Even advertising becomes part of the general spectacle that is one of the important ingredients of this ecology. (Scott, 2008: 314, my emphasis)

Indeed, one is hard pressed to understand how ‘ecology’ can be invoked in such a context without any critical engagement with the energy resources that are surely spent, if not wasted, in the abundance of neon displaying this ‘revitalization’ of the

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city landscape. The society of the spectacle is not known for its economy of resources. More critically, one wonders how ecology can be inserted into this valorization of the cultural economy without any consideration of the social consequences of any gentrification process, in which local inhabitants of particular neighbourhoods are invariably evicted to make room for the lifestyles of the ‘creative class’. The pretence of fashionable ‘slumming’ in formerly derelict and working-class neighbourhoods now sexed up with trendy bars and clubs is scarcely a symptom of revitalization. Indeed, one could argue: revitalization for whom? Neither can social ecology be equated with the ‘social equilibrium’ between ‘work and leisure’ for a particular class, as the passage above emphasizes. If we have to use the word ‘ecology’ in the context of this economy, then we are compelled to address the very palpable social and economic disequilibrium that exists between the ‘creative class’ and the servicing sectors. It is these disparities that need to be addressed, instead of being camouflaged within the up-market, crime-free, enclaves of liberal surveillance, whereby new gated communities are surrounded by the proliferating hinterlands of the poor.

3. Humility Against the implicit arrogance of the creative economy, I would emphasize the third creative principle exemplified by the kalam: humility. I realize that there are possible misperceptions in such a dichotomy of values, which would seem to play into the reductionism which Appadurai so rightly warns against in ‘the tendency to romanticize small-scale societies; to conflate use-value (in Marx’s sense) with the gemeinschaft (in Toennies’s sense)’ (1986: 11). Indeed, one does need to be on the alert in order to highlight ‘the calculative, impersonal and self-aggrandizing features of non-capitalist’ societies, which is Appadurai’s predilection (1986: 11). At the same time I would argue that the ‘calculative dimension’ (1986: 13) cannot be imposed as the only valid way of reading human and cultural interactions within these societies. Indeed, in a more conciliatory register, Appadurai does acknowledge Kopytoff’s somewhat broader perspective of ‘a perennial and universal tug-of-war between the tendency of all economies to expand the jurisdiction of

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commoditization and of all cultures to restrict it’ (1986: 17). This ‘tug-of-war’ raises the critical question of ‘the extent to which the logic of the “cultural” is able to restrict the logic of the economic; and of the possibilities of movement out of the commodity state’ (Frow, 1997: 144). Furthermore, as John Frow pushes the question into an even more precise problematic: ‘To what extent … can cognitive, ethical, affective, and aesthetic processes resist commodification? ... And what sort of value judgment should be made of these processes?’ (1997: 144–5). In response to these questions, let me qualify that when I invoke humility as a creative value within the framework of the kalam, I am not referring to it as a moral virtue, as if all the custodians of the production and performance of the kalam are intrinsically good and simple people uncontaminated by the realities of modern life. This would amount to a caricature of the context being described. On the contrary, I would argue that the practice of the kalam is inserted into modern life, within a specific space–time continuum, and that it answers the psychological and social needs of people facing the pressures of everyday life. Furthermore, I would acknowledge a dimension of social power upheld by the upper-caste hegemony that continues to patronize the practice of the kalam with the support of predominantly low-caste artisans. In other words, even though the kalam is a ‘traditional’ practice in so far as it has a long legacy of conventions and rituals with ‘religious’ significance, it can in no way be regarded as antithetical to modernity. Rather, it is inscribed within modernity whose dominant values are implicitly questioned, even as they are not directly opposed. Humility in the context of the kalam is better understood not in the context of morality but in its denial of authorship and ownership. Nobody owns the kalam; it belongs to all those who participate in its production and performance, including the bystanders, onlookers and spectators who may assemble to see its performance with no caste restrictions whatsoever. This compels one to open the modalities of belonging as opposed to ownership, a distinction that is almost totally absent in the discourse of the creative economy. One could push the point further by focusing on ‘collective belonging’ as opposed to individual spectatorship and critical scrutiny. What is the place for such belonging in the mechanisms of the creative economy, which

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have themselves been decisively challenged through new affirmations of the creative commons, if not an abolition of copyright altogether? Finally, in unearthing the inner values of the kalam, one is compelled to open its dimensions of the spiritual and the sacred as opposed to the institutionally and contextually bound rules and regulations of religious practice. These dimensions call into question the implicit secularity underlying the logic of the market outside its religious inflections in certain Islamic contexts of finance and banking. As an offering to the deity, the kalam submits to a reality that is larger than the efforts that go into the materiality of its production. This scenario inevitably opens up metaphysical values relating to ‘worship’ and ‘sacrifice’ which do not readily enter the predominantly acquisitive and competitive priorities of the creative economy.6 On the other hand, it could also be argued that the dimensions of the sacred are not entirely immune to the possibilities of commodification, as we shall examine in the following section within the larger framework of re-inventing traditions through processes of innovation.

Innovating tradition ‘Innovation’ has become the symbiotic catch-word for ‘creativity’, particularly in the rhetoric surrounding the creative economy and other managementrelated sectors of the arts. It would seem that if you’re not innovative, your creativity is not of much use. Drawing on the proliferation of new technologies available for artistic practices in the age of globalization, the editors of this volume call attention to the truism that, ‘Market-driven phenomena may well be creating new figures of the symbol creator as a “motor of innovation” and altering the profile of the “creative subject”.’ And yet, there are some rash assumptions in assuming that innovation inevitably has to follow creativity, which would seem to deny the fact that all artistic practices are constantly in the process of innovating their rules and regulations. How else would they remain alive and capture attention through the dynamics of surprise? Perhaps one needs to accept that the valorization of ‘innovation’ in recent cultural theory has less to do with the inner mutations of artistic and cultural practice, and more to do with an extrinsic, self-conscious manipulation of particular practices in relation to both marketing demands and the

relentless search for curiosity and novelty in the public sphere. From the encapsulation of the three principles – impermanence, ecology, and humility – which I have extrapolated from the kalam, problematizing their premises both within and against the capitalist logic of the creative economy, it could be argued that, despite all my qualifications, my position remains idealistic, if not utopian. As much as I have tried to argue against the reduction of the kalam to some esoteric folklore steeped in the rituals of the past, I realize that it is bound to seem somewhat quaint and economically counter-productive in relation to the glitz and financial power of, say, Bollywood and Twenty20 cricket, two of the most lucrative manifestations of the creative industries in the Indian context today. The latter refers to the new version of superfast cricket in 20 overs which has been blatantly constructed as spectacular entertainment, sponsored by liquor barons and some of Bollywood’s biggest stars. Sold both as ‘live performance’ and prime-time TV, cricket has now been ‘re-invented’ within a larger spectacle of fireworks, gymnastics, stunts, dance performances, and even imported cheer-leaders. Keeping the sheer innovation of this hybrid Bollywood–cricket entertainment model in mind, one could be challenged into imagining more commercially lucrative avatars of the kalam. For instance, one could think of a ‘designer-kalam’, with all the computerized software and technology that India is now capable of displaying, with a virtuoso play of laser lights and digitalized sound effects. This innovation could look appropriately exotic, yet ‘cool’, in the precincts of a 5-star hotel lobby, exuding the aura of some New Age Orient. Needless to say, unlike its traditional counterpart, the ‘erasure’ of this ‘designer-kalam’ is not likely to be prioritized because the costs of production would be too extravagant to be wished away. Likewise, the expertise of traditional artisans is entirely expendable because this high-tech kalam would demand significantly different skills, if not a totally different conceptual orientation and aesthetics. While my hypothesis of a designer-kalam may seem cynical, I should emphasize that I am not arguing against either commodification or innovation. In principle, it would be both counterproductive and unrealistic to imagine that so-called traditional cultural practices are incapable of transgressing their boundaries or that they are somehow ethically

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and morally resistant to the global economy. This is clearly not the position voiced by many traditional artisans and performers who want to be part of a more established modern and global circuit.7 Drawing on the commercial success of Aboriginal dot-paintings reinvented through the introduction of acrylic paint, for instance, John Frow is clearly on target when he questions the pertinence of conservationist positions: ‘Is the commodity form necessarily and always less humanly beneficial than non-commodified use values, and is its historical extension necessarily and under all circumstances a change for the worse?’ (1997: 136). I would argue that any absolutist position in restricting the mobility and transformation of non-commercial traditional cultures into commodified forms needs to be opposed. At the same time I would qualify that there are certain contexts and particular circumstances in which the transition of these practices into the market economy cannot be readily assumed or endorsed. Having acknowledged the ambivalence posed by the processes of commodification, let me provide a vibrant example of the ‘invention of tradition’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983) through innovation, which contributes enormously to the regional cultural economy of West Bengal in India. I have in mind the sculpturesque effigies (murti) of the goddess Durga in the public celebration of the pujas (religious worship) on the streets of Calcutta, which are now subject to all kinds of experiments and innovations in material and design (Bose, 1997; Guha-Thakurta, 2004). Earlier the effigies were made out of clay with a very precise traditional iconography mastered by the legendary artisans of Kumartuli, a cultural district in Calcutta where these artisans have lived for generations. Today, however, some of the younger artisans of this community have been exposed to modern notions of art education, and along with a growing number of selfperceived ‘designers’ who have graduated from the Government College of Art in Calcutta, have embarked on different experiments in re-inventing the goddess. Apart from clay, she can now be sculpted in terracotta and slate stone, and her styles of representation can be inspired by anything from Mughal miniatures and Madhubani painting to Kerala-inspired dance poses and Kalighat pats (folk paintings) (Guha-Thakurta, 2004: 34–56). Even more ‘innovative’ are the pandals (pavilions) enclosing the goddess, some of which have

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been made of sugar-cane and broken gramophone records, emulating all kinds of grand edifices from the Calcutta High Court to the famous Buddhist stupa of Sanchi (Guha-Thakurta, 2004: 35–6). These spectacular enclosures have acquired all the virtuosity and secular entertainment value of theme-parks, which form the primary motif around which Tapati Guha-Thakurta has envisioned the new manifestations of the puja. However, there is not one mega theme for the pujas, but multiple themes which are the brainwaves of puja committees, which form the nucleus of local neighbourhoods in and around Calcutta. Along with national issues like the communal genocide in Gujarat, or local events like the mauling of a drunk man by a tiger in the Calcutta zoo, the themes for the pujas draw on the most alluring global icons, including the Titanic, the Bamiyan Buddhas, Princess Diana, and even Harry Potter (whose visual representation within a Disneyland version of Hogwarts Castle in a puja pandal was subjected to a law suit by Warner Brothers because of an alleged breach of copyright).8 It becomes clear from such examples that the local imaginary is more than ready to absorb global resources, controversies, and stimuli. The question remains, as in the case of the Harry Potter episode, whether global corporations are as ready to support the localization of their brands with generosity and humour, instead of holding on to the mercenary and mean-spirited norms of ‘intellectual property’. Despite the re-invention of the spectacle of the pujas, whose secularization has been intensified through local corporate support and the shopping frenzy that enormously boosts the sales of clothing, food, sweets, gift items, cosmetics, and electronics (Ghosh, 2006), what needs to be kept in mind is that the goddess Durga continues to be ritually immersed at the end of the pujas, not unlike the kalam which is erased. This continued adherence to ritual practice whereby the goddess is returned to her heavenly abode needs to be kept in mind in order to work against the somewhat too unproblematized transformation of the puja into secular festivity and the equation of the pandals with heterotopias, divested of religious or spiritual dimensions.9 At a museological level as well, which is yet another form of secularization along with the market forces, one should keep in mind that only a few established artists in Bengal have succeeded in

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museumizing the goddess in a permanent abode, though this practice is more evident abroad than in India itself (Guha-Thakurta, 2007). Ironically, the zeal in authenticating the ‘purity’ of the Durga image is more likely to be found outside India rather than in Bengal itself. The agencies of authentication abroad would include NRBs (Non-Resident Bengalis), whose diasporic zeal in holding on to rituals of their childhood, imagined or real, contributes to the perpetuation of traditional iconography in a nostalgic mode. A more self-conscious mode of authentication, however, has been perpetuated by coteries of Euro-American curators, whose affirmation of religiosity in the secular space of established museums has been legitimized as a means of countering the colonial episteme of museology. New modes of recontextualizing non-Western religious and cultural artefacts are now offered as alternative modes of worship in the museum space.10 While acknowledging these innovations in what could be called the ‘god industry’, I would caution against the valorization of all tradition-inspired innovations as ‘creative’ in opposition to those traditional practices which may not be consciously innovative at all. Indeed, the absence of innovation does not imply that traditions are necessarily fossilized because they can continue to grow within deeply internalized rules and regulations, not unlike the kalam which continues to be improvised within set patterns. Indeed, there is a danger in capitalizing on innovation through its compatibility with the larger global cultural discourse relating to hybridity, pastiche, kitsch, and public culture. The fact that a traditional cultural practice on the lines of the kalam may not necessarily imbibe the global through innovations, either in terms of its marketing or reinvented aesthetics, should not be seen as an anachronistic aberration. Rather, I would like to highlight both the flexibility and adaptability of local cultural practices as well as their intransigence and resistance to glib translation. Even as I would leave open the possibilities of their collaboration with national and global agencies, I would also value their right to negotiate creativity on their own terms within their own contexts.

Rethinking cultural policy through creativity Drawing some broader lessons from the kalam in relation to the increasingly vexed and bureaucratized

field of policy making, I would urge a greater sensitization towards the visceral, sensuous and spiritual dimensions of creativity. Let us acknowledge that these dimensions cannot be measured in purely economic terms, which doesn’t mean that the absence of distinct standards of measurement should be regarded as the sine qua non of authentic creativity. On the contrary, it would be disingenuous to deny that the most market-driven cultural phenomena like blockbuster movies or Broadway musicals can be creative in their own right. The point is that not every manifestation of creativity can be placed on the same scale and measured according to fixed criteria. The economic dimension is just one among many other criteria of value, which may be elusive, if not unquantifiable. Nor would I favour an instrumentalist approach towards creativity along the lines of the British creative industries policy of the late 1990s, for the simple reason that there can be no causal relationship made between the experience (and cultural value) of watching a play or listening to music with the social imperatives to remove crime or drug abuse or unemployment. There are very subtle institutional and political mediations that need to be explored between art practice and the possibilities of social transformation, which need to be implemented at concrete levels. Furthermore, if we are concerned about social transformation outside the narrow matrix of ‘problem solving’, then we cannot simply relegate the transformative process to something outside ourselves, to those sectors of society which have been categorized as ‘undeveloped’ or ‘marginal’. Rather, the process of transformation has to begin with ourselves through the embodiment of creative energy and the sharing of its processual dynamics through actual acts of social bonding and dialogue. These human interactions are more likely to provide a ground for change in perception and consciousness than the mere articulation of blueprints of ‘creative cities’. Recommendations for ‘inter-sectoral’ collaborations across new systems of ‘governance’ (Pratt, 2007) would also appear to privilege the already empowered role of policy makers at the expense of benefiting artists and the public more directly. For policy to be shaped in a more grounded and comprehensive way, yet another consideration needs to be a far greater openness to those locations and sectors of the world’s population which do

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not necessarily embrace the cultural values of the metropolitan global cosmopolis. Creativity, in short, is not the prerogative of the city alone, even though it is within this valorized site that ‘creative industries’ have been expected to thrive within highly funded infrastructures of technology, communications and global serving agencies. Instead of privileging these already media-saturated and overly funded sites, far more attention needs to be given to the regional and rural sectors of any cultural economy, not just in the cultures of the ‘South’ but also in the marginalized regions of ‘developed’ nations as well.11 Finally, it would be useful if ‘creative economists’ could acknowledge the numerous local and communitarian economies prevailing in the cultures of the ‘South’, but also to be found in the non-commercial and non-profit alternative sectors of the ‘North’ where there are diverse resistances towards monopolistic markets as, for instance, in the recent upsurge of community-related cultural activities and the ubiquitous phenomenon of farmers’ markets. Thriving bazaars in Indian cities along with markets of epic proportions in sites like the mela (fair) – not just linked to pilgrimages but also to cultural forums representing handicrafts and books – are not exclusively dependent on either the agencies of the state or the market. These local, event-related markets constitute a massive informal economy, which has sustained artists, artisans, and street vendors over the years. Consolidated by communities with a loose network of local organizations, this economy demonstrates a highly interactive mode of independent self-sufficiencies, which is probably one of the closest economic equivalents to what Mahatma Gandhi recognized as swaraj (‘self-rule’). While it could be argued that a vast body of creative practices in the ‘South’ are no longer as resilient as the kalam – and therefore, a policy for their preservation and the income generation of their custodians becomes mandatory – it is necessary to remember, at the risk of reiterating a massively ignored truism, that the articulation of such a policy should come from the communities themselves. However, in the top-down expertise that marks the rhetoric and legislation of such policies, the considerations of people are invariably erased. This erasure is ruthless compared to that of the kalam, which works through cultural consensus and the beauty of a dissolving form. In our search

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for more context-sensitive policies, therefore, let us remember the kalam in its celebration of the immediacies of the Now, constantly dying and ceaselessly renewed, within an endless cycle of creativity.

Notes 1

2

3

4

The categories of ‘skill’ and ‘talent’ were specifically linked to ‘individual creativity’ in the Creative Industries Task Force Mapping Document published by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in the UK in 1998. Without being defined or discriminated, these creative faculties were identified as contributing towards ‘the potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property’. One of the most thorough and politically inflected critiques of the ‘creative industries’ discourse has been provided by Nicholas Garnham (2000, 2005), who points out how its ‘ideological power’ is directly related to its absence of critical reflexivity. Garnham locates this power in the decisive shift from the state to the market under the Thatcher government, which was further ‘accelerated’ by Tony Blair’s New Labour policies. Under the sign of Cool Britannia, ‘creativity’ as opposed to ‘culture’ was prioritized with specific reference to ‘the information society’, ostensibly benefiting all citizens through its focus on ‘access’, ‘excellence’, ‘education’, and ‘economic value’. The ubiquity of ‘creativity’ under the auspices of New Labour’s cultural policy making has received a series of responses from Angela McRobbie (2002, 2004, 2007), with particular reference to youth culture and the fashion industry in Britain. Moving beyond the ‘mantra of losses’ lamented by the ‘Old Left’ in terms of declining trade unionism and the cult of apolitical individualism, McRobbie links the ‘enforced entrepreneurialism’ of the creative industries to ‘extraordinary degrees of selfexploitation’ in highly ‘de-regulated’ and ‘unprotected’ conditions of work. Even while engaging with the possibilities of ‘new productive singularities’, as posited by Hardt and Negri (2000), the evidence provided by McRobbie would seem to suggest that the cult of creativity has resulted in an intensification of atomism subsumed within the masquerades of pleasure and desire. In addition to the Mannaan community, other ritual practitioners of the kalam in Kerala include the Velan, the Malaya, and the Perumannaan, who are all from lowcaste communities. In most rituals, the kalam is erased by the oracle, who mediates between the actual performance of the kalam and the invocation of the goddess. However, in the case of the pampin kalam, associated with the serpent worship of the Pulluvan community, two young girls are made to sit on the drawing of the holy serpents whereupon they become ‘possessed’ and begin to voice oracular predictions. In this state, the girls drag their bodies and roll over the kalam, erasing it in the

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process. For a description of one particular kalam performance, including all its intermediary stages but with a perfunctory reference to its erasure, read Zarrilli (1990). I am extremely grateful to Sri L.S. Rajagopolan and Purushothaman Avaroth for their considerable inputs on the ritual context of the kalam. 5 The categories of the ‘Now’ and the ‘Not Yet’ are borrowed from Chakarabarty (2000), who uses them to situate different moments of time in colonial historiography and global modernity. While the ‘Not Yet’ is symptomatic of those colonial states which have yet to enter the trajectory of world history in terms of democracy or modernity, the ‘Now’ is more linked to the immediacies of political or revolutionary struggle. 6 Significantly, ‘sacrifice’ can be also rendered in an economic context, as, for instance, when Arjun Appadurai (1986: 3–4) interprets George Simmel’s (1978) understanding of economic value in terms of an ‘exchange of sacrifices’: ‘one’s desire for an object is fulfilled by the sacrifice of some other object, which is the focus of the desire of another’. Needless to say, this is an anti-metaphysical reading of sacrifice. 7 In her brief perspective on ‘Globalization and Crafts in South Asia’ (Dhamija, 2008), the author calls attention to an ironic moment in a conference celebrating fifty years of handicrafts development in India, where a traditional designer specializing in jacquard making in Varanasi countered the notion that globalization was having a negative impact on the crafts sector. On the contrary, as the designer argued, ‘It is our fault that Varanasi is in difficulties. It is because we have not globalized’. While the actual negotiation of a level-playing field between indigenous craftsmen and globalizing agencies raises a number of logistical challenges, which Dhamija does not address, the point is that globalization is not rejected outright as a source of exploiting the crafts sector. The more critical question concerns the role of the national government in ‘protecting’ the crafts industry from unfair competition and the export of essential raw materials. When does protectionism cease to be economically and creatively productive? 8 In October 2007, in the thick of the Durga puja celebrations in Calcutta, the puja committee of Salt Lake’s FD Block was charged with copyright violations for its use of Harry Potter memorabilia, including the magic broom, the Hogwarts Express Train, and hanging magic candles. For the pujas in previous years, the pandal (pavilion) of this particular committee had recreated Swami Vivekananda’s residence and a model of the Titanic.

9

10

11

In 2007, Harry Potter was selected by the popular demand of the children living in the neighbourhood. Totally non-commercial in its priorities, the puja committee was relieved when Delhi’s High Court gave permission for Harry Potter to be celebrated under its auspices, ostensibly with the goddess Durga’s blessings. However, the judge also qualified that any public display of Harry Potter after the pujas would require the prior permission of J.K. Rowling. While both Guha-Thakurta (2004) and Bose (1997) are correct in foregrounding the secularization of the pujas, their readings need to be complicated through an acknowledgement of the religious residues underlying the altered forms of the goddess. In the absence of any oral history or multiple modes of perception, the ‘themepark’ rendering of the pujas is privileged somewhat too literally in a predominantly descriptive mode. At a more complex hermeneutic level, Bose’s attempt to read the multiple abodes of the goddess within Foucault’s construct of ‘heterotopia’ fails to engage with the dissonance and subversive possibilities of such sites. The predominantly magical, fabulous, and illusory spectacles of the puja would seem to lend themselves more to simulacra rather than to heterotopias – a distinction that needs to be problematized. While Guha-Thakurta (2007) focuses deftly on the dichotomy of ‘our gods’ and ‘their museums’ to highlight some of the challenges of transporting ancient Indian religious sculptures and icons to festivals and exhibitions abroad, there are emergent modes of religiositydriven museumization in India itself, which are responses to a wide range of movements including Hindutva (the ideology of the Hindu Right), the assertion of Buddhism for dalit (low-caste) politics, and the militant history of religious Sikh leaders. See Mathur and Singh (2007) for a representation of these emergent museums. Stuart Cunningham emphasizes this precise point in the Australian context when he argues against ‘the further consolidation of cultural industries in one or two spatial hotspots in the country – Sydney and Melbourne’ (2001: 30), as opposed to the redistribution of cultural resources at a regional level. While he equates the marginalization of ‘regionalism’ with the ‘class-based dispositions of cultural capital’, it is unclear whether his understanding of the ‘region’ would include rural sectors, which tend to be totally obliterated in almost any analysis of the cultural or creative industries.

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CHAPTER 2 RECOGNITION AND ARTISTIC CREATIVITY Joni Maya Cherbo and Harold L. Vogel

reception. Artistic creativity is seen as being enhanced by an increasing global interconnectivity between peoples, as technology enables and encourages access to new audiences and provides outlets for artistic careers. Globalization is also fostering creative expression through the acceptance of a widening range of artistic fare such as master crafts and ‘native’ art, along with national and international policies designed to assist artists’ careers.

On creativity

Is creativity defined simply by the innate capacities of individuals to discover and invent something new and different or also by how such innovation is received within a specific social context? While the first understanding of creativity is highly valued in the industrially developed world, there have been and remain many societies where other interpretations are the norm – as Bharucha’s chapter has just argued. In contemporary society, artistic creativity is a high risk endeavour as well. Most artistic products fail to cover their investment let alone find recognition. Analsying the social context, the authors identify stages in the process of bringing an artistic work to fruition and illustrate the many social factors that can assist or hinder its

Creativity has become a contemporary buzzword. It is seen as being an essential ingredient for spurring economic growth and gains in productivity. Everything from corporate innovation and technological advancement, to the rehabilitation of cities and advancing education and learning, is seen as dependent on creative endeavours. In addition, in most societies creativity is seen as being a desirable personal trait – and also perhaps as something that can be taught. Yet the term is often too casually applied, and finer distinctions ought to be drawn – becoming a blogger, or creating a movie for YouTube, is not necessarily being creative or producing a creative product. By creative we mean a combination of distinct individual attributes that have produced something which their social world has labeled as creative. Howard Gardner reminds us that individuals are born with different capabilities. Some have enhanced mechanical aptitudes, others visual acumen; some a remarkable ability to retain factual information, others mathematical aptitudes (Gardner, 2006). The arts do not have a monopoly on creativity. Creativity is possible within any of these ‘intelligences’. Individuals are born with innate capacities, but the social worlds in which they live may enhance or hinder these coming to fruition, let alone being acknowledged as remarkable or creative. A mathematically gifted individual may have gone unnoticed living in a farming community in fourteenth-century Europe.

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Creativity can be thought of as a two-sided coin; one side representing individual capacities, the other the reception of something new within its social context. The creative can be conceptualized on a continuum ranging from something such as the ‘Stikki-Clip’, a patented office product, to Einstein’s theory of relativity. In the cultural areas, as distinct from the physical sciences, any artistic product depends more on its reception than its ability to prove something that can be scientifically replicated. Some cultural expressions and products will find acclaim in certain eras and communities while not in others. Had the Impressionists plied their artistic visions one hundred years earlier, when the French Academy was in control of artistic expression and before the advent of paints that could be used outdoors, they would have ended up on the scrapheap of visual arts history rather than among its acclaimed masters. Mozart’s genius today is elevated way beyond the esteem shown him in his own lifetime. Some artists and art works acclaimed in their own eras fall into oblivion in other times or simply become a part of the historical record: the largescale history paintings of the French Academic period provide one such an example. Works created for reasons other than recognition also often become valorized inadvertently. Samuel Beckett, for instance, wrote Waiting for Godot for relaxation and considered it a bad play (Throsby, 2001). How then does a creative expression come to be found boring or irrelevant, derivative or novel, creative or iconic? There is a long tradition of modernist thought that claims that true artistic expression is based on absolute and intrinsic aesthetic qualities which are fixed and inherent to a cultural work. This tradition claims that truly creative works are transcendent, will have universal appeal, and will generally encounter worldwide agreement as to their stature as masterpieces. Some aestheticians and art historians have attempted to codify what constitutes absolute aesthetic value in various artistic disciplines. In the last couple of decades, however, this tradition has been challenged by practitioners from different disciplines, in particular the social sciences and linguistics, who have put forth a more relativistic position. They claim that cultural value is a shifting phenomenon and that no absolute, inherent value can be placed on a work of art, as it is subject to the values, taste, and conditions of its time and place. Acceptance of this

school of thought has led to what some have called a ‘crisis of value in cultural theory’ as it denies any accepted hooks on which to judge artistic products. Although a visual object can be looked at using aesthetic properties – harmony, line, colour, balance, form, etc. – the valuation of these properties is seen as a sociological phenomenon (Peterson and Anand, 2004). Our absorption with creativity and creative genius, both products of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, has blinded us to the crucial role of society in determining the worth of any artistic product. In effect, the valorization of creativity and innovation is a cultural phenomenon itself. In most artistic traditions prior to the nineteenth century, the repetition of established cultural expressions was the norm. Deviations from tradition were discouraged or nominal. While acknowledging differences among individuals in artistic abilities, the focus of this chapter (based on US data) is primarily on what social factors will aid or hinder the ascendancy of select artistic expressions.1

Creative expressions are high risk In the contemporary West, creative products are often defined as ‘experience goods’, meaning that the reception of these products is subjective – no one will know their outcome until it has been put forth for public consumption. Film and music companies, book and magazine publishers, video game designers, casino and theme-park operators, fine artists alike, do not so much sell goods and services as they do ‘experiences’. Creative expressions, therefore, are seen as high-risk ventures because tastes are constantly changing and often fickle: what resonated with the audiences of yesterday, might not resonate as well with those of today or tomorrow. The list of disappointments in all the arts is extensive. Even the most seasoned artistic practitioners have trouble predicting the outcome of an artistic work. For example, Star Wars, Back to the Future, and Lord of the Rings were all at one point or another rejected by major studios as being too expensive or were perceived at the time as being too outside of the mainstream. And even highly promoted works, like the extensively marketed feature film Last Action Hero (1993, Sony) starring Arnold Schwartzenegger, are not assured of success and may indeed turn out to be box-office

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duds. Contrarily, the list of unexpected successes, such as The Blair Witch Project movie, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animations, or the Harry Potter series of books, reminds us of the occasional happy serendipity of artistic fare. On average, out of every ten major-distributed films only three might do better than break even, and that includes the revenues generated in domestic, international, DVD/VHS, television, and nascent Internet markets (De Vany, 2004: 82). The success ratio is actually lower if the number of ‘independent’ films that are produced but not able to find distribution are also counted. In US television as well, Seinfeld began its NBC network run inauspiciously, gaining poor ratings (and with Fox declining a later offer to pick it up). The ABC network was meanwhile uneasy about the contents of All in the Family, which was then selected by CBS because the network badly needed to replace fading shows and update its image. Historically, only about 20 to 25 per cent of all new live theatre pieces that preview on Broadway make back their investment (Rosenberg and Harburg, 1993). West Side Story – which ultimately became one of the most revered and successful musicals – had a tortuous time finding backers and was almost abandoned. In the 1990s, of the 125 new American operas that premiered, only 12 had a second production. And of the 82 new operas presented since 1999 by the New York City Opera’s Vox performance series, only 39 received full stagings. The hit ratio in American publishing isn’t much better. About 35 per cent of popular books are returned to the warehouse unsold (Carvajal, 1996), and in music it is estimated that at most perhaps 2 per cent of the new releases (i.e., excluding catalogues) might account for the more than 80 per cent of the sales. In all the creative fields, only a few artists out of many aspirants become highly acclaimed. Novelists such as John Grisham, Danielle Steele, Phillip Roth, and Harold Robbins have, for examples, all written widely popular bestsellers. Yet even in a group of this kind only a handful have received professional peer-based awards. And few will receive the iconic status of an Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Consider the multitude of visual and performing artists – musicians, actors, painters, photographers – who vie to make a living selling their art. Most have to supplement their income by other work to exist. And success can be transient; today’s hot new artist can be forgotten

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tomorrow, and conversely those previously overlooked can suddenly ‘be found’. Still, those fortunate enough to reach the very top of their profession often remain in demand and command astronomical fees. This is what Frank and Cooke (2005) called the winner-take-all phenomenon. For example, auction prices of newly recognized and select established painters can command millions. In the recording field, the largest advance was reportedly the $10 million per album for six albums (if said albums sold over 5 million units each) on the deal that Prince signed with Warner Brother Records in 1992. And more recently, Madonna’s 2007 package deal with concert-promoter Live Nation Inc. reportedly included a general advance of $17.5 million, advance payments for three albums of $50 to $60 million, and an additional payment of $50 million in cash and stock for the right to promote her tours (Smith, 2007). In films, stars such as Tom Hanks, George Clooney and Julia Roberts receive in the vicinity of $20 million in acting fees, a percentage of the distributor’s gross return after a certain sum has been reached, and an unusually large percentage of the ‘back end’ (DVDs, syndication, etc.) – all for what might amount to at most just a few weeks or months of ‘work’. Indeed, television’s back end syndication payments for project participants (including actors, producers, writers, and directors) can be even more remunerative than their participation in movies. Shows such as Cosby, Seinfeld, Friends, Cheers, Everyone Loves Raymond, and Frasier all earned more than $1 billion each over their subsequent (sometimes third or fourth) syndication cycles. Artistic recognition takes the form of a pyramid with numerous aspirants on the bottom and few on the top. In economic terms, supply far exceeds demand: we overproduce aspiring artists given what the society can sustain. One of the more interesting questions, then, is why so many young people desire to become artists or work in the arts even when knowing that they may not be able to support such a career choice let alone become ‘recognized’. The other curiosity is why most of the West has become so invested in sustaining the careers of artists, which are normally quite fragile, unpredictable, and unsupportable. In the past, official academies and guilds used to control the supply of artists in their respective eras and societies, but this is no longer the case. The explosion of art

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schools in the 1970s in the USA, for instance, made it possible for almost anyone to train for a career in the arts and to dream of artistic success. The current system perpetuates this disjunction between supply and demand.

Conceptualizing artistic careers Careers in the arts do not happen by chance; they are created. To understand the elusiveness of artistic success or how a creative expression becomes designated as creative we need to grasp the complexity of the artistic career path – the many steps that may allow a work of art to come to fruition, to find an audience, to attain a critical reception. Making a career in the arts, becoming established, and building a reputation are all exceedingly difficult. There are many contenders, the career obstacles are formidable and not well understood by most new-comers, the risk of failure is high, and randomness and luck are part of the process. The artist who plies his trade well, maximizing all the opportunities available to him, may still end up disappointed. And some whose work is deeply admired by peers can fail to find larger recognition. Career paths will differ among arts disciplines and within different countries and regions. For instance, in the USA, commercial artists have different career paths from those who work in the nonprofit world; individual artists face different career issues to those who work in teams; and a painter’s career issues will vary from those of novelists or jazz musicians. Even so, there are some conceptual similarities. Artists must obtain training in their craft. They must find time to create – origination – either as solo individuals or as teams. They must also find a way to exhibit and show their work and to create an audience for it – presentation/ promotion. Selling the artistic work is contingent upon effective distribution networks, and evaluation is central to gaining recognition and acclaim. Although the following examples of artistic career trajectories are US-based, the conceptual framework for artists’ careers presented here – along with the high risk involved in creative recognition – are no doubt applicable to most of the industrially developed world. How various nations manage these career passages has a strong bearing on an artist’s potential for career building and creative recognition.

Training Aspiring artists will attend a credited university or college art programme or train in a professional art school not connected with institutions of higher education. Aspiring ballerinas, for instance, generally start training at a very young age and continue into professional dance schools in their teens. Their careers start and end early due to the physical demands of their art. By contrast, architects, who must become certified to practise, require extensive advanced training beyond college but can practise well into their later years. Attending a school of repute can also be a career bonus for artists. Connections and close friendships with fellow artists and professional mentors during the formative training period and beyond can become essential assets, early on putting aspiring artists in touch with wellconnected individuals in their fields. And artists may continue taking auxiliary courses throughout their careers to either enhance their existing skills or learn new ones. After their initial education, for example, it would not be unusual to find actors studying with a renowned teacher or taking seminars on how to audition and put a portfolio together. Origination Origination is the R&D phase of an artist’s career. Research and development refers to the entire range of support necessary for an artist or an artistic team to bring a work to fruition. This can include mentors, working spaces and raw material supplies, feedback, creative partnerships, technical assistance, funding, and so forth. The solitary novelist obviously has needs which are different from those who are part of a team producing a new opera or movie. Financial support is crucial to this career stage. It can come from a variety of sources – foundation grants, state and local arts agencies, residencies, investors, clients, awards from service associations, and paid work that allows time for artistic creation. The Ford Foundation in conjunction with a consortium of other foundations recently made a commitment to fund emerging artists. The Theatre Communications Group gives awards to new directors and theatre writers. Publishing houses offer advances to those writers whose work they think will be profitable. Theatre angels give enhancement monies for promising plays. Local and state arts agencies fund artists, and some municipalities provide cultural districts where art can be bought and sold without incurring taxes.2

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Universities are often generators of new works. Yale Repertory Theatre, Harvard’s American Repertory Theatre, and Brown University’s collaboration with Trinity Repertory or New York University’s Gray Arts Gallery have well established performing arts venues on campus. Universities also support cutting-edge works and are often the first line of origination and presentation. Modern dance, for instance, originated in elite girls’ colleges on the Eastern seaboard. Nevertheless, resources for origination are frequently problematical. Broadway has seen a continual decline of new plays and musicals originating on the Great White Way. Insiders attribute this to conservative producers unwilling to speculate on new and relatively expensive productions. The film and television industries, moreover, spend exorbitant sums on R&D, sifting through an abundance of script submissions, overbearing script notes, producer pitches and pilot programmes, and rewrites. Top writers can receive over $1 million for a draft and over $150,000 a week for rewrites. But even so, there is no assurance of ultimate success. A project can burn through millions and still be discarded, and what survives at the end is not necessarily the best artistically. Presentation/promotion Art must be seen and heard and experienced. It must also be promoted to create an audience. Sometimes presenters are also promoters; other times these functions are done by separate agencies. Intermediaries such as dealers, investors, and agents all become important at this stage. Acting as gatekeepers, it is they who select and promote art work and artists they think have a chance to become successful. Each art discipline has its own traditional venues such as opera houses, galleries, museums, and theatres along with designated alternative spaces where new art can be previewed. As already noted, colleges and university theatres and art galleries will often provide previews of new works. There are also more than 2500 film festivals internationally for aspiring filmmakers, and numerous art fairs and summer festivals for visual and performing artists. Coffee houses will often display new art on their walls and entertain a musical ensemble. Airports have been known to show fine artists. And the Internet is increasingly a presentation and promotion vehicle for visual artists, film makers, musicians and writers. Established arts institutions, such as the large opera houses, will typically feature a new opera as

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part of their yearly programming. Similarly, successful dance companies may introduce a new work in their season. The reputations of these institutions, combined with their marketing, promotional, and publicity budgets, can provide a potential lift to an artist’s career. The mission of select nonprofit theatres is precisely to feature new artists and art work, while in commercial theatres, angels and other financial backers function as promoters of new artistic fare. Gallery dealers are always scouting for new, compelling artists whom they can assiduously promote through their sponsorship of shows and connections to potential collectors, museums, and journal writers. The role of book editors and agents is to discover promising writers and to promote their books in the media and at venues around the country. The same goes for movie agents and the actors they represent. Sometimes talent is so overwhelmingly above average that the artist receives almost immediate and widespread attention and backing. Contracts are granted and extended, endorsement fees are readily forthcoming, and a major career is launched. Singer Luciano Pavarotti was a case in point. Yet other music successes, especially in the pop field, may depend on a carefully designed and nurtured process of promotion. Disney’s recent Hannah Montana (Miley Cyrus) or High School Musical franchises, or the late 1990s bands such as ‘N Sync and the Backstreet Boys, fit this description. On occasion a celebrity has provided a significant promotional resource. Oprah Winfrey’s book club, begun in 1996, has helped many new writers garner attention and sales. In view of the diminishing venue for new writers in part due to the consolidation of publishing houses and bookstores, her club has proven to be an important channel for authors to reach audiences for literary fiction. Distribution Often the agency that presents and promotes the art will act as its distributor but sometimes these functions are separated. In either situation, however, it is the distributor’s mandate to find the most advantageous and lucrative markets, whether domestic or international. Operas, theatre companies and symphonies that have showcased a new work will often look to make additional presentations beyond their halls. Gallery owners will often open or align with galleries elsewhere, or will provide funding to advance a painter

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and exert better control over his output and pricing. Entertainment conglomerates will also test various markets, promoting and distributing films, music, television programmes, and books internationally. No matter what the product is, however, technology is transforming presentation, promotion, and distribution while at the same time diminishing the influence of those gatekeepers of the past. The Internet is already a primary new channel for the distribution of music, films, other visual arts, and books. And its far-reaching effects can be seen from the fact that video stores are being rapidly rendered obsolete, that audiences can now rent DVDs and download favourite programmes and songs from practically anywhere, and that some independent producers are already commercially and creatively active and able to bypass the major studios by using the Internet as a possible distribution pathway. The effects can also be seen in the book publishing industry, where editors and agents are overwhelmed by submissions from eager new authors seeking access to the marketplace. Many such authors will abandon their dreams or hone their writing skills elsewhere, yet some will persist in finding new outlets for their work. The Internet is the logical place to carve out a viable channel to promote and distribute books and stories. Evaluation There are a number of formal and informal reputationmaking awards given by each arts discipline. The Oscars and Golden Globes for film, the Pulitzer Prize for literature, the Tonys for live theatre, The Emmys for television, the Grammys and Country Music Awards in music, and the Pritzker Prize for Architecture – all are examples of a recognition that helps to confirm, and sustain, an artist’s career and reputation. Established theatre, music and visual arts critics who work for journals, newspapers, and media outlets are also creators and purveyors of value. It is often said that praise by a New York Times drama critic can make or break a Broadway or off-Broadway show. However, sometimes wordof-mouth can outstrip the official critics; Rent, for example, while not generally favoured by the critics, nevertheless went on to be a long-running box office success. This is similar to Steven Sondheim’s theatrical pieces, where many received mixed notices from critics who considered his lyrics far superior to what was at first thought to be unusual

and unmelodic music. Their reception and evaluation among his peers, however, were significant, and over time the critics began to acclaim his uniqueness and creativity. Awards followed, and today Sondheim is considered an icon in the musical theatre field along with other lions such as Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenzo Hart, and Jerome Kern. Broadway’s long-running Cats, produced by the formidable Andrew Lloyd Webber, was initially greeted inhospitably by the theatre world’s resident experts. Good promotion and word-of-mouth held the day, however, and Cats has ultimately become the longest running musical on Broadway. The same thing has also frequently happened in films. No one expected Casablanca to attain the recognition that it did. And Star Wars, initially turned down by Universal, touched an audience nerve and became the pivotal film of its time, on a par with the reception Gone With The Wind had received in its day.

Creativity and globalization: trends and policy What are the forces that relate to creativity and globalization? This question may be more amenable to concrete, individual examples of cultural connections, hybrids, rejections, etc. than to an assessment of broader trends. However, with that caveat in mind, we offer a few considerations. Connectivity An essential characteristic of globalization is the enhanced connectivity between peoples, cultures and nations around the globe. All of this is encouraged and supported by the Internet-based expansion of international business firms, increased tourism, the proliferation of civil society organizations, and professional networks. Increased connectivity makes the artistic fare of different peoples, nations and places more available to others and heightens the potential for a cross-fertilization of creative expressions. Connectivity facilitates the formation of creative unions and hybrid artistic expressions, and both multiplies and complexifies the number of possible career paths and outlets for artists. For instance, digital recording and playback devices now allow different world musical expressions to be co-opted, blended, and mixed in ways that have never before been possible. And international

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financial and creative alliances between different cultural traditions are being formed in films and television programming. Hollywood – with the second largest number of feature film releases (around 600 a year) – is beginning to co-finance and distribute joint projects with India’s Bollywood (around 1,100 releases a year) (Schuker, 2008). Technology Technology is key to shifting creative possibilities globally. Creative efforts have always been affected by the technological environment in which they are produced. Outdoor painting had to wait for paints that did not dry out readily. Movies did not exist until lenses, cameras, film stock, lighting, and electric motors had been developed. In the 1930s television could at best be described as a radio service with pictures, but of course it has turned out to be much more than that. And in little more than twenty years the Internet’s effect on the ways we produce and receive and respond to arts and culture and the ways in which we conduct our businesses and our lives has already been at least as profound. The global trends in technology continue, now and in the future, to affect artistic efforts globally – in ways yet to be experienced or understood. Technological advances in products and services related to cell phones, DVDs, iPods, digital books, and the Internet are dramatically connecting individuals worldwide and transforming all stages of creative careers. And the changes extend well beyond the most affluent populations as the new technologies – faster, cheaper, and more portable – empower and enable people in poorer countries to jump directly into the age of digital communications. More than ever before in human history, art, in the form of music recordings, video presentations, reading and visual materials and books, and net conversations, can occur across time zones – anytime and anywhere. An outgrowth of this is that there is an accompanying gradual movement away from textbased to more visually-based information delivery systems. The latest technologies make it possible to involve the consumer of art and cultural products and services in much more intensely visual and audible experiences. This shift is reflected in the global interest in social networking sites and services like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. And it is evident in the growth of video games, and in the declining readership of newspapers and books. For the legacy media and entertainment companies,

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this has created a huge challenge – to adapt to this new world order by developing business models that can sustain and grow profitability. Thus far, however, the dollars being lost in the fading legacy businesses are being replaced only by pennies from the digital arena. As for artists, it is evident that career trajectories at all stages are being affected. Thanks to the new technologies artists can, for example, easily set up their own web sites, show and sell their work, and endlessly chat and blog and evaluate the works of others. Singers and musicians can sell their CDs and link to iPods. Filmmakers can use some of the new software to create and sell affordable films. And authors can digitally post their works to a worldwide audience of readers. It is not yet entirely clear, however, as to how and to what extent such new technologies will transform traditional career paths. Everything is still embryonic. Policy Creative expressions will obviously blossom more readily in situations that value them. Many countries do not put a premium on promoting the new. Some lack an infrastructure that supports artistic creativity, while others value traditional modes of expression over the new. One of the normative assumptions in the West is a belief in experimentation and innovation. Here there is a tacit acceptance that creative content is an engine of the knowledge economy and that artistic skills will be essential to the new order; that artists bring a special worth and meaning to life; that we need to level the playing field to give all artistic aspirants a chance to find their voice and create; and, that many artistic endeavours, even those that do not make it in the marketplace, might be worthy of public support.3 Where experimentation is valued and where artists are supported at various junctures of the career process, the soil is ripe for the creative work of many varieties to root and blossom. Many affluent countries have numerous policies and programmes that that can help to promote creative expressions and artistic careers. Assistance can range from programmes that provide direct funding to artists; tax structures that provide guaranteed minimum wages for new artistic entrants; loans for new art collectors; municipal cultural districts with tax benefits for artists and purchasers; organizations that assist with employment, grants, health, housing and retirement benefits; government-sponsored cooperatives that support indigenous art forms; and so forth.

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Policies that support artistic creativity exist at the trans-national level as well. The World Observatory on the Social Status of the Artist, resulting from UNESCO’s World Congress 1997 on that topic, provides an informational overview of the status of artists worldwide on a variety of issues. Also, the European Institute for Contemporary Culture (ERICarts), a nonprofit research institute established in 1997 and located in Bonn, Germany, started on-going, comparative research for the European Parliament in 2006 on the challenges facing European artists in relation to labour, tax and social security legislation. Inclusiveness Since the turn of the twentieth century, artistic value has widened its boundaries considerably. Expressions once considered as outside of official canons of acceptance – originally based on European high art – have entered the mainstream. For instance, hip hop, pop art, jazz, the tango, bossa nova, the blues, outsider art, photography, and modern dance have all evolved beyond their roots and become internationally accepted, and even sometimes

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acclaimed (Zolberg and Cherbo, 1997). And the trend continues. More recently, vernacular art forms emanating from grassroots community-based arts activities such weaving, wood working, basket making, jewellery design – and also indigenous arts including native American Indian, Alaskan, and Australian aboriginal art – have found worldwide audiences and markets.

Summary The human creative faculty is like a weed, capable of growing practically anywhere. A remarkable voice, an unusual colourist, a compelling storyteller, are often immediately identifiable. Creativity, it seems, is a generic and genetic part of our species. Yet creative potential can remain stillborn or slip through the cracks. What is worth remembering is that no artist or art forms are inevitable successes. The infrastructure that can bring them to acclaim is essential in understanding the life of any creative endeavour.

Digital arts and the cultural expression of young people

The creative potential in all of us needs to be nurtured. Today, the digital environment has opened up new fields of meaning, enabling us to apply, modify and combine elements from various converging sources, drawing them from a variety of different contexts and making them useable. Local culture and environment are among the principal sources for developing the diversity of knowledge and creativity and therefore serve as a key point of departure for creative digital expressions. It is important to help young people realize that the realities and experiences within their own immediate environment can be valid topics to talk about and share with peers from different parts of the world. Digital content can be simply produced through acquired knowledge and trained skills without context. However, creative aspirations and empirical reflections relevant to local cultures can guarantee socio-cultural awareness and promote an equitable digital environment. In this context, is technology merely a useful tool in the digital creative process? Is its contribution limited to giving form to original ideas and acts? In the digital age, it is even more essential to see how creative content is communicated and received by others. Young people should be encouraged in their freedom to actively deliver their creative expressions as much as to develop them, whether within or outside the formal education system. Bridging the digital divide does not necessarily mean possessing the most updated equipment or being an expert in digital software. A greater barrier is the creative content gap. Young people should be aware of their right to the opportunity of developing their own creative talents even with limited digital means. This is truly decisive to the long-term diversity of creative digital expressions. Today we have more trans-spatial connections than ever before in human history. The Internet might not be able to provide a physical meeting space but it has the potential to enlarge the range of participants and audiences, to encounter people from diverse geographical locations and cultural backgrounds. This is why supporting young people’s access to cross-cultural knowledge-sharing and exchange platforms is crucial. This is the lesson of UNESCO’s ‘Young Digital Creators’ programme, an online initiative that encourages young people from all over the world to connect with each other in exploring key societal issues, e.g.,

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‘The sound of our water’ programme that invited young people to reflect on water issues, either connected to daily life or related to specific issues such as environment, culture, industry, etc., and to integrate digital sound into their own creation of a water soundscope. ‘Scenes and sounds of my city’ allows them to create their own digital art pieces reflecting on the urban environment and to discover experiences across a diverse range of cultural identities while ‘Youth communicating on HIV/AIDS’ is designed for young people to express their thoughts and feelings on this world phenomenon in relation to specific social and cultural issues. Indeed, young people everywhere can raise questions, exchange views, make collective reflections, join their efforts and act together, acting as responsible global citizens – provided the development of their digital creativity embedded in local cultures is properly nurtured. Indrasen Vencatachellum

Box 2.2

Inspiring innovation and creativity in the workplace

With fierce competition among businesses worldwide, firms are on a never-ending search for the most effective ways to raise productivity and, ultimately, profit. In recent years the workplace has seen the emergence of various methods to inspire creativity and imagination among employees for this purpose. As playing video games, also known as gaming, has increased amongst individuals of all ages, even non-technology-based businesses in the United States have begun to use this pastime to their advantage by designating office space for the sole purpose of gaming. The experiment seems to be working, as firms report that not only do their game rooms help boost morale and camaraderie, but are also helping to attract younger workers and increase productivity (Edelhauser, 2007). Pandemic, a major video game developer with offices in Los Angeles and Brisbane, Australia, even employs a full-time Quality of Life Manager to coordinate a range of sporting and recreational activities including soccer, softball, and basketball. Further, Pandemic sponsors numerous company clubs and activities such as poker nights, movie nights at local theatres, excursions to local theme-parks, and national league sporting events. These benefits seem to be having some positive impact, as Pandemic was named Best Developer in both 2004 and 2005 by industry experts (Pandemic Studios, 2008b). A company that goes even further in inspiring creativity and innovation in non-traditional ways in the workplace is Google, a global enterprise with offices ‘from Bangalore to Zurich’. It is described as being ‘among the best-run companies in the technology sector’, and ‘a model for smart innovation in challenging times’ (Hammond, 2003). Some of the perks Google employees receive include all-organic food, massages, a gym and free medical care. Google’s Human Resources Director Stacy Sullivan hires 100 people a week for various positions worldwide. She believes that ‘passion is the quality that leads to innovation’ (Gruca, 2006). In addition to the flexibility and financial security they enjoy, employees are allowed to spend one day a week on a project of their choice, and are encouraged to work on projects that will contribute to their personal growth. These projects can lead to life-changing opportunities within the company. For example, an assistant to co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had an idea to form a ‘green strategy’ team. Her bosses fully supported her efforts. The flexibility for mobility enabled her to move up and she now heads the team that continually searches for ways to reduce the company’s carbon footprint (money.cnn.com, 2008). Nicole Vasquez

Bibliography Edelhauser, K. (2007) ‘Video games at work?’, Entrepreneur. com. Retrieved 16 October 2008, http://www.entrepreneur.com/human resources/managingemployees/article179274.html Google.com (2005) Google Continues International Expansion, Opens Offices in Latin America. Retrieved 17 October 2008, http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/latam_office.html Google.com (n.d.) Life at Google. Retrieved 17 October 2008, http://www.google.co.kr/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page= about.html

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Google.com (2008) Financial Tables. Retrieved 18 October 2008, http://investor.google.com/fin_data.html Gruca, T. (2006) Peek Inside Google’s Workplace (CBS Broadcasting Inc). Retrieved 17 October 2008, http://wcco. com/seenon/Google.Silicon.Valley.2.372411.html Hammond, K.H. (2003) ‘How Google grows … and grows … and grows’, Fast Company.com. (Issue 69). Retrieved 17 October 2008, http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/69/google.html money.cnn.com (2008) What Makes Google Great. Retrieved 17 October 2008, http://money.cnn.com/video/ft/#/video/ fortune/2008/01/22/bpw.google.fortune Pandemic Studios (2008a) Lifestyles. Retrieved 16 October 2008, http://www.pandemicstudios.com/corp/lifestyles.php Pandemic Studios (2008b) Press & Awards. Retrieved 16 October 2008, from http://www.pandemicstudios.com/corp/press.php

Notes 1

The concepts of creativity, innovation and research and development are often used interdependently. While there is no agreement on the definition of each, there are distinctions and usages. For instance, creativity is generally considered a property of individuals; innovation is spoken of as the process of taking a creative idea and bringing it to fruition; research and development usually refers to team work within an organizational framework, such as teams developing video games or a movie. All three refer

2

3

to what we have conceptualized as the ‘origination’ stage of creative expression. In 1995, the National Endowment for the Arts in the USA stopped supporting individual artists due to a rash of controversial art. In the real world, budgets are limited and policy tradeoffs must be made. It may eventually be seen as more important for a government to support performing arts centres, or indeed spend more on elementary education, on feeding the poor and homeless, or on providing more healthcare services for the elderly than on supporting artists’ careers.

REFERENCES

Carvajal, D. (1996) ‘Many, Many Unhappy Returns’, New York Times, 1 August. De Vany, A.S. (2004) Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes the Film Industry. New York: Routledge. Frank, R.H. and Cooke, P.J. (2005) The Winner-Take-All Society. New York: Penguin. Gardner, H. (2006) Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice. New York: Basic. Peterson, R.A. and Anand, N. (2004) ‘The production of culture perspective’, Annual Review of Sociology, 30: 311–34. Rosenberg, B. and Harburg, E. (eds) (1993) The Broadway Musical: A Collaboration in Hits and Flops. New York: New York University Press. Schuker, L.A.E. (2008) ‘Spielberg, India’s Reliance to Form Studio’, Wall Street Journal, 20 September. Smith, E. (2007) ‘Madonna Heads for Virgin Territory’, Wall Street Journal, 11 October. Throsby, D. (2001) Economics and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zolberg, V. and Cherbo, J.M. (eds) (1997) Outsider Art: Contesting Boundaries in Contemporary Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Select bibliography for further reading Bart, P. (2006) Boffo! How I Learned to Love the Blockbuster and Fear the Bomb. New York: Hyperion. 46

Becker, H.S. (1982) Art Worlds. University of California Press. Caves, R.H. (2000) Creative Industries: Contracts Between Art and Commerce. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996) Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Collins. ERICarts Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe (2008) 9th edition, European Institute for Comparative Cultural Research, Council of Europe. Available at www.ericarts.org Galligan, A.M., and Cherbo, J.M. (2003) Financial Support for Individual Artists. Report to the National Endowment for the Arts. Kaufan, J.C. and Sternberg, R.J. (eds) (2006) The International Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Larson, G.O. (1997) American Canvas: An Arts Legacy for our Communities. National Endowment for the Arts. Rinzler, J.W. (2007) The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film. New York: Ballantine. Vogel, H.L. (2007) Entertainment Industry Economics (7th edition) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. World Observatory on the Social Status of the Artist, UNESCO. Available at www.portal.unesco.org/culture/en

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CHAPTER 3 WALKING WITH THE DEVIL: ART, CULTURE AND INTERNATIONALIZATION Gerardo Mosquera

its language. Therefore, the work of many artists, more than naming, describing, analysing, expressing or building contexts, is made from these within a set of global codes.

Based on the author’s practical experience as a curator, this chapter analyses problems of art and culture in the context of contemporary globalized art circuits. It explores the tensions between cultural homogenization and the countervailing efforts of new cultural subjects who are diversifying international art practice, and also discusses the new epistemological grounds for artistic discourses. The dramatic expansion in the creation and circulation of contemporary art has developed ever increasing globalized art scenes while stimulating new local energies. However, instead of a global mosaic of distinct artistic practices, what we see is the plural construction of international art and

The relationships among contemporary art, culture and internationalization have been transformed as silently as they have been dramatically in the last fifteen years. The epoch of art trends and manifestos is behind us. The key issue for contemporary art today is the tremendous expansion of its international circulation. There are approximately 200 biennials and other periodic artistic events in the world, only to mention a single aspect in the growth of art circuits. This explosion involves a vast multiplicity of new cultural and artistic actors who circulate internationally and who, previously, either did not exist or were limited to local environments.1 For example, several Asia Pacific countries have virtually passed from traditional culture to contemporary art, jumping over modernism. To a certain degree, they have learned contemporary art through the Internet. This revolution seems to continue in a twofold way. On the one hand, it is developing ever-increasing globalized art scenes as a result of the growth in international art networks, events, communications and global public spheres, together with the activity of emerging cultural subjects coming from all over the world. On the other hand, it will stimulate the new energy that is producing valuable art locally in areas where, for historical, economic and social reasons, one would not expect to see works that could be interesting beyond their circumstances. Most of this activity is ‘local’, in the sense that it is the result of the personal and subjective reactions of artists to their contexts, or because it seeks a cultural, social, or even political impact in their milieus. But these artists are frequently well-informed about other contexts, about mainstream art, or are also looking for international visibility. Sometimes they move in and out of local, regional and global spaces. Their art is rarely bonded to nationalistic modernism or to traditional languages, even when it is based on a

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vernacular culture or specific backgrounds. Contexts themselves are becoming more global through their interconnection with the world. In 1994 I wrote a text on art in Latin America for the catalogue of Cooked and Raw, a huge global exhibition curated by Dan Cameron at the Reina Sofía Center in Madrid. I ended my contribution with a Galician joke my mother used to tell, in the manner of an allegory about a possible strategy for confronting the Latin American predicament – and that of the post-colonial world – in which it was placed between, on the one hand, hegemonic Western metaculture and internationalization and, on the other, the nature of singular contexts, local traditions, irregular modernities, the Non-West: A peasant had to cross a bridge that was in very poor condition. He started onto it very attentively, and as he treaded warily, he said: ‘God is good, the Devil is not bad; God is good, the Devil is not bad … ’ The bridge squeaked and the peasant repeated the phrase, until he finally reached the other side. Then he exclaimed: ‘Go to hell, both of you!’ And continued on his way. (Mosquera, 1994)

This is where the fable concluded in that old text. But something unexpected happened next: the Devil appeared to the peasant and said to him: ‘Don’t be afraid, I’m not resentful. I just want to make you a proposition: follow your own path, but let me accompany you, accept me, and I will open the doors of the world for you.’ And the peasant, somewhat scared, but also pragmatic and ambitious, acceded. Therefore, fifteen years later, we see that Latin American art has followed its own course, but according to the strategies of the Devil, who, perhaps, is not quite so evil after all. Fortunately, the story still has a happy ending, though it is different: both the Devil and the peasant are pleased with their mutually beneficial pact, and proceed down the road together. As a result, Latin American art has ceased to be exactly that. Instead it has become art from Latin America (Mosquera, 1996). From, and not so much of, in or here, is the key word today in the re-articulation of the increasingly permeable polarities between local and international, contextual and global, centres and peripheries, West and Non-West to which the fable referred. So let us now glance at the theoretical context of international artistic–cultural interactions (which always involve relations of power, positioning and marginality) previous to this mutation – in the

Latin American perspective – and the ways in which it changed under globalization.

‘Anthropophagy’, transculturation, appropriation The Brazilian modernists created the metaphor of ‘anthropophagy’ (de Andrade, 1928) in order to legitimate their critical, selective, and metabolizing appropriation of European artistic tendencies. This notion has been used extensively to characterize the paradoxical anti-colonial resistance of Latin American culture through its inclination to copy (only the Japanese surpass us in this), as well as to allude to its relation to the hegemonic West. The syncretic character of Latin American culture facilitates this operation, since the hegemonic cultural elements that are embraced are not completely alien, given Latin America’s problematic relationship with the West and its centres. This relationship is based on identity as well as difference, owing to the specifics of the region’s early colonial history – based on European settlement, the presence of important native populations that were subdued, the massive slavery of Africans, creolization and mixings. On the other hand, the metaphor goes beyond Latin America to point to a procedure that is characteristic of subaltern and post-colonial art in general. Poet Oswald de Andrade coined the term in 1928, not as a theoretical notion but as a provocative poetic manifesto. Its emphasis on the subaltern subject’s aggressiveness by means of appropriating the dominant culture is extraordinary, as well as its bold negation of a conservative, static idea of identity. Andrade even dares to affirm: ‘Only interests me what is not mine’ (1928), reversing the fundamentalist politics of authenticity. Contrary to Homi K. Bhabha’s notion of ‘mimicry’, which outlines how colonialism imposes on the subordinate subjects an alien mask from which they must negotiate their resistance amid ambivalence, anthropophagy supposes attack: to voluntarily swallow the dominant culture for one’s own benefit. We have to be aware that Latin American modernism had built this notion already from its post-colonial situation. This also corresponded with an early international inclination in Brazilian culture, conditioned by the modernizing impulse launched by a cultivated and cosmopolitan bourgeoisie. Starting from its poetic beginning, the metaphor of anthropophagy was further developed by Latin

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American critics as a key characterization of the continent’s cultural dynamics. On the one hand, it describes a tendency present since the initial days of European colonization; on the other, it proposes a strategy for action. It has not only survived the pugnacious modernism of its origins, it has also been impelled by poststructuralist and postmodern ideas about appropriation, resignifying and the validation of the copy, as we can see in the work of such influential scholars as Nelly Richard and Ticio Escobar. The concept was even the subject of the memorable 24th Sao Paulo Biennial, curated by Paulo Herkenhoff in 1998. An emphasis on the resistance and affirmation of subaltern subjects is also present in the term ‘transculturation’, coined by Fernando Ortiz in 1940 to point out the bilateral exchange implicit in any acculturation.2 Although the active role of the recipient of external elements (who selects, adapts and renews them) had been revealed already by anthropological research, the new term proposed by Ortiz introduced an ideological element: it emphasized the energy of the subaltern cultures even under extreme conditions, as in the case of the African slaves in Brazil, Cuba and Haiti. The term established a cultural reaffirmation of the dominated at the level of the word itself, as well as a cultural strategy. In reality, all cultures are hybrid both in anthropological and – as Bhabha (1988) has pointed out – linguistic-Lacanian terms, due to a lack of unity in their signs. All cultures will feed from each other, be it from situations of domination or subordination, and cultural appropriation is not a passive phenomenon. The receivers always remodel the elements they appropriate according to their own cultural patterns (Lowie, 1940), thus these appropriations are often not ‘correct.’ They may be acquired, ‘without an understanding of their place and meaning within the other cultural system, and receive a meaning that is absolutely distinct in the context of the receiving culture’ (Bernstein, 1983–1984: 267). Receivers are usually interested in the productivity of the element seized for their own ends, not the mere reproduction of its use in its original context. Such ‘incorrections’ are usually at the base of the cultural efficacy of appropriation, and frequently constitute a process of originality, understood as a new creation of meaning. If appropriation is at work in all cultural relationships, it becomes more critical under subaltern and post-colonial conditions. It has been said that

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peripheries, due to their location on the maps of economic, political, cultural, and symbolic power, have developed a ‘culture of resignification’ (Richard, 1989: 55) out of the repertoires imposed by centres. This is a transgressive strategy from positions of dependence, since it questions the canons and the authority of central paradigms. According to Nelly Richard, authoritarian and colonizing premises are in this way de-adjusted, reelaborating meanings, ‘deforming the original (and therefore, questioning the dogma of its perfection), trafficking in reproductions and de-generating versions in the parodic trance of the copy’ (Richard, 1989: 55). It is not only a question of dismantling totalizations in a postmodern spirit, it also carries an anti-Eurocentric deconstruction of the selfreference of dominant models (Richard, 1991: 18) and, more generally, of all cultural models. Nevertheless, both anthropophagy and transculturation must be qualified to break with connotations that may prove too affirmative. In the case of the first term, we need to make transparent the digestion battle that it implicitly involves: sometimes the consequences are addiction, constipation, or, even worse, diarrhoea! As Heloisa Buarque de Hollanda has warned, anthropophagy can stereotype a problematic concept of a carnavalizing identity that always processes beneficially everything that ‘is not its own’ (1994: 129). Although the notion refers to a ‘critical swallowing’, as critic Haroldo de Campos has put it, we must be alert to the difficulties of such a pre-postmodern programme, since it does not take place in a neutral territory but is subjected to a praxis that tacitly assumes the contradictions of dependency. It is also necessary to ask whether the transformations that ‘cannibals’ experience when incorporating the dominant culture do not subsume them into it. In addition, appropriation, when viewed from the other side, satisfies the desire of the dominant culture for a reformed, recognizable Other who possesses a difference in likeness, facilitating the relation of domain without completely breaking the difference that allows the construction of a hegemonic identity by its contrast with an ‘inferior’ Other. Yet this quasi-Other acts at the same time as a mirror that fractures the dominant subject’s identity, rearticulating the subaltern presence in terms of their rejected otherness (Bhabha, 1984). In this sense, perhaps Latin America constitutes the perfect alterity, given its cultural kinship with the dominant West.

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If the tension of ‘who swallows whom?’ (Nunes, 1990) is more or less present in any intercultural relationship, it is also true that ‘frequently one plagiarizes what one is ready to invent’, as Ferguson has said (cited by Mercier, 1969: 170).. This emphasizes the agency of the appropriating subject, through its volitional selectivity and its tactical catachrestic3 use of the appropriated element, as Gayatri Spivak has insisted. In this direction, it is important to underline that anthropophagy and transculturation articulate discourses based in early neocolonial modernity and indirectly on anthropology; they thus diverge from similar notions in classic post-colonial theory, whose points of departure were literary criticism and the colonial situation. (Plate 3.1). Regarding transculturation, it must be pointed out that, as Ángel Rama observed a long time ago, the notion ‘does not sufficiently attend to the criteria of selectivity and those of invention’, (1982: 38) and therefore it does not include the neological cultural transformations and creations that take place in response to the new, different milieus and historical situations in which cultures have to develop. For instance, to analyse cultural dynamics in the Caribbean, an emphasis has been placed on mixture and syncretism – these are no doubt crucial elements in the region. Yet the creolizing processes (what Yulian Bromlei calls ethnogenetic separation) through which displaced cultures mutate in reaction to a conflicting new space, is just as important for Caribbean ethnogenesis, and more helpful in understanding the cultural transitions now taking place on a global scale (Bromlei, 1986). As James Clifford has said, perhaps ‘we are all Caribbean now in our urban archipelagoes’ (1988: 173).

Syncretism and hybridization Anthropophagy, transculturation and, in general, appropriation and resignifying are related to another group of notions that have been proposed to characterize cultural dynamics in Latin America. These notions have been stereotyped as epitomes for Latin American identity: mestizaje (miscegenation), syncretism and hybridization. As with appropriation, these notions respond to cultural processes taking place in the complexly diverse milieu of Latin America, with its contrasts of all types, its cultural and racial variety, its multiple, coexisting temporalities,

its wishy-washy modernities. These have shown themselves to be very productive in analysing the region’s culture and its routes. Still, they remain problematic as emblems for Latin America or the post-colonial world, because, in fact, there is no culture that is not hybrid. This does not mean that such notions do not possess a particular utility, since hybridization processes were especially important for the region’s formation in terms of culture, race and class, under a vast span of differences, asymmetries and situations of power. Nevertheless, one problem with all such notions based upon synthesis is that they tend to erase imbalances and conflicts. Even worse, they can be used to create the image of a fair and harmonious fusion, disguising not only differences, but also contradictions and flagrant inequalities under the myth of an integrated, omniparticipative nation, as one can see in the case of Mexico. Another difficulty is that the model of hybridization leads to conceptualizing intercultural processes through a mathematical equation, the result of which is a tertium quid, the consequence of the mix. These types of models obscure a cultural creation that is not necessarily the fruit of a blend, but rather an invention or a specific use of a foreign, unblended element, thus diminishing the notion of creativity as it has been presented in the editors’ Introduction to this volume. On the other hand, such models tend to assume that all cultural components are open to mixing, without considering either those that do not dissolve or the resistances to hybridization because of asymmetries that remain difficult to integrate. More importantly, Wilson Harris (1973) has indicated that in all assimilations of contraries there always remains a ‘void’ that impedes a full synthesis, creating what Bhabha (1988) has called a ‘Third Space’ where cultures can face one another in their differences. On the other hand, co-optation menaces all cultural action based on syncretism, even though the latter has been a path of resistance and an affirmation of the subaltern. The difficulty is that the fusion usually favours the central or more powerful component in an operation that simultaneously contests and re-inscribes its authority. Today, in the global and post-colonial era, syncretistic processes are defined as a basic negotiation of difference and cultural power (Gatti, 1991).4 But these processes are turbulent: it is not possible to assume these comfortably as if they were a harmonious solution

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to post-colonial contradictions. Néstor García Canclini has pointed out that the concept of hybridization ‘is not synonymous of fusion without contradictions; it rather can help to show peculiar forms of conflict generated in recent intercultural dynamics that have taken place in Latin America amid the decadence of national projects of modernization’ (Canclini, 2001: 11). Another problem is that the subordinate appropriating subjects re-inscribe the Western sovereign subject’s model of illustration and modernity, without discussing either the fallacy of these centred subjects or, even more significantly, the extent to which the subordinate subjects are themselves an effect of dominant power and its discourses. This does not deny their possibility of agency; however, it is necessary to make transparent the subordinate subjects’ constitution and actions, and to discuss appropriation in a more complexly ambivalent way. Paradoxically, appropriation paradigms based on the incorporation of differences underline the polar opposition existing between hegemonic and subordinate cultures. These days a dialogical relationship seems more plausible, in which the imposed language and culture are experienced as ‘own/alien’, as Mikhail Bakhtin (1986) put it in his discussion of literary polyglossia.5 Hegemonic cultural elements are not only imposed but are also assumed (Escobar, 1987), reversing the schema of power while ambivalently mutating the appropriating subject toward that which it appropriates. In this way, for example, the syncretism in the Caribbean and Brazil of African deities with Catholic saints and virgins, practised by forcibly Christianized slaves, was not only a strategy to disguise the former behind the latter: it also implied the installation of all of these at once in an inclusive, multilayered system.

Radial globalization Beyond all these interpretations of cultural processes, a more vexing issue persists: the flux of culture cannot always remain circulating in the same ‘North–South’ direction, as dictated by the power structure, its circuits of diffusion, and accommodations to them. It does not matter how plausible the appropriating and transcultural strategies are; they imply a rebound effect that reproduces the same hegemonic structure, even if also contesting it. The current should also be reversed, not just to

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establish a ‘repetition in rupture’, as Spivak would say, but also to pluralize and enrich international cultural circulation. The pluralism I have in mind here is not a neutral, ‘multicultural’ scenario where differences remain neutralized inside various sorts of Bantustans, relativized in relation to hegemonic cultures, nor is it a stock of available, interchangeable options, ready to be consumed. The point here is to accomplish plurality as international agency via a diversity of cultural subjects who, enacting their own agendas, can diversify cultural dynamics productively and for all. Of course, this agency is limited or manipulated by the established power structures, their circuits and markets. Conversely, it can also take advantage of the latter for its own interests and ends, while also establishing the pressure for change. Coca-Cola is perhaps the maximum symbol of socalled ‘McDonaldization’, that is to say, the ‘homogenization-produced-by-cultural-imperialism’ (Isar and Anheier, 2010: 6) which is denounced as a serious cultural problem of globalization. Yet all such expansion – like that of Buddhism in Asia, Latin in the Roman Empire, or Western culture in our global world – results in tensions that can pry open porosities and cracks. Not even Coca-Cola escapes what Isar and Anheier very poignantly call ‘processes of re-pluralization (Isar and Anheier, 2010: 6)’: its flavour varies according to public tastes, the water, and other factors specific to every place where it is fabricated. Furthermore, people will consume it in different ways, as much in the manner of drinking it straight and mixing it with other local drinks, as in its social and symbolic use. It so happens that Los Angeles imports Coca-Cola from Mexico – which is sweeter than the version produced in the United States – in order to satisfy its large population who are of Mexican origin. However, the possible transformations of Coca-Cola challenge but at the same time increase the global dissemination of this symbol of ‘international’ culture. Yet surely other nice drinks need to be globalized, for instance chicha (made from fermented maize), guarapo (cane juice), pulque (agave liquor), or palm wine. But if this happens, will these be as good as they are now? The rhetoric on globalization has propagated the illusion of a transterritorial world – decentralized, omniparticipatory, engaged in multicultural dialogues, with currents flowing in all directions. The mythification of the processes of globalization and the spread of communications have led us to imagine a planet

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interconnected by a grid-like network that extends in all directions. The speed of avenues of optic fibre and satellites makes us forget the congested and polluted avenues of the megalopolis, or the critical lack of avenues and highways in a large part of the world. In reality, globalization is not as global as it appears. Or, to paraphrase George Orwell, it is far more global for some than for others. There is no doubt that the world is now much more global in economic and cultural terms, and also as regards communication. In some way or other, and to a greater or lesser extent, as Manray Hsu has indicated, we all are cosmopolitans today because ‘there is no more world out there’: the ‘being-in-the-world’ of Heidegger is coextensive to ‘being-on-the-globe’ (Hsu, 2004: 80). Hence the only successful major attack ever made on the world’s biggest economic and military power within its territory, which used horrendous violence for an act of symbolic aggression against the icon of global trade, was organized from a remote tribal village. However, what we have in fact at planetary scale is a radial system extending from diverse centres of power of varying sizes into multiple and highly diversified economic areas. Such a structure implies the existence of large zones of silence, barely connected to one another or only indirectly, via self-decentred centres (Mosquera, 2001). On the other hand, national, ethnical and religious separatisms tend to Balkanize the globalized world, while regionalism, nationalism, ethnocentrism, frontiers, migrations and fanaticism continue to be issues as significant as they are polyhedral.

Migrations and urban explosion The times of globalization are also those of movement. Migratory processes are redrawing ethnosocial maps within each country, especially in the most powerful, producing many heterogeneous cultural processes. What Isar and Anheier have called ‘processes of time–space compression’ (2010: 5) are at the forefront here. We are living in an era of ‘roadrunners’ that breaks down fixed identities and generates post-national subjects who find themselves in constant physical and cultural movement – which composer and singer Manu Chao has represented very well in his music and in the various personas that he embodies in his songs.6 Many identity readjustments are taking place: multiple identities, neo-identities, masked or covered identities, mixed identities, displacements among them,

‘ethnic games’ (Necef, 1994) … Immigrants use not only their feet but also other parts of their bodies: a Hispanic baby is born every 30 seconds in the USA – a time bomb that has unleashed apocalyptic fears in Samuel P. Huntington (2004). Going beyond statistics and vaster than an exodus, a diasporic mentality has developed to the point of becoming an intrinsic part of a new ‘global’ mindset. As striking as international migrations are the massive displacements that take place from the countryside toward urban areas in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Because of these movements, together with high birth rates, cities grow vertiginously and chaotically, while brand new ones arise and the urbanized population increases geometrically. At the beginning of the twentieth century, only 10 per cent of the planet’s population lived in cities. Now, one hundred years later, half of the globe inhabits urban environments. Since 1975, the world’s city-dwellers have duplicated, and they will double again from now to 2015. The chief aspect in this vertigo is that two thirds of the urban population will live in poor countries. Obviously, cities are not prepared to afford such demographic shock. Thus, one hundred million people do not have permanent lodgings – a majority of these are children. Many more millions inhabit the improvised, precarious slums that proliferate in today’s cities within contamination, insalubrity and violence. The situation seems untenable, but, as Carlos Monsiváis puts it, ‘the city is built upon its systematic destruction’ (1999: 15). The cultural implications of these trends are obvious. One of the most important here is the complex, metamorphic and multilateral process that entails the substitution of the traditional rural environment with the urban situation, a clash that involves a massive amount of hugely diverse people. Much more than ever before, cities today are complex laboratories that produce heterodox urban culture, neologisms, and ‘border culture’, as much in places where physical borders exist as where they do not or where the border is nothing but a street. The connection between art and the city has not evolved very far as yet, but will probably indicate a main course of action for artistic practice in the near future.

‘From here’ There has not been much progress in either ‘South– South’ or ‘South–East’ (so to speak, now that the

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‘East’ is beginning to leave the ‘South’) linkages, other than economic recessions. Globalization has certainly improved communications to an extraordinary extent, has dynamized and pluralized cultural circulation, and has generated a more pluralist consciousness. Yet it has done so by following the very channels delineated by the economy, thus reproducing in good measure the structures of power while perpetuating the deficit in ‘horizontal’ interactions. Developing ‘horizontal’ circuits and spaces takes on major importance in order to ‘fill in’, at a global level, the reticule of the ‘vertical’, ‘North– South’ radial circulation schemes traced from power centres, extending and democratizing them, while connecting the ‘zones of silence’. And even more importantly – ‘horizontal’ networks subvert the control axes typical of the radial scheme by including a variety of new centres on a smaller scale. This whole process will contribute to pluralize and enrich culture, internationalizing it in the real sense, legitimizing it according to different criteria and to the criteria of difference fostered by the diversification of circuits, constructing new epistemes, and unfolding alternative actions. Only a multidirectional web of interactions will pluralize what we understand by ‘international art’, an ‘international art language’ and an ‘international art scene’, or even what is called ‘contemporary’ (Mosquera, 2003). These dynamics are as necessary as they are difficult, since streams usually flow to where the money is, and the colonizing mentality is more inclined to settle down comfortably in the pyjamas and slippers of complaint rather than focus their efforts on change. Many artists from the most diverse places are reacting to and participating in all these transits. A fruitful tension results from displacements in dominant artistic canons, their transformation by different cultural values, the introduction of heterodox approaches, and the ensuing predicaments for artistic evaluation. Conditioned by the whole constellation of processes and situations sketched out above, readjustments in the equations for art, culture and internationalization are taking place today; these, in turn, contribute to the more general cultural movements. In a process full of contradictions, new generations of artists are beginning to transform the status quo. They are doing so without manifestos or conscious agendas and just by creating fresh work, by introducing new issues and meanings emerging out of their diverse experiences, and by infiltrating their differences in

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broader, somewhat more truly globalized art circuits. Naturally, this is not a smooth path, and many challenges and contradictions remain. Hence the paradigm of anthropophagy and the cultural strategies of transculturation, appropriation and syncretism are increasingly being replaced by a new perspective that we could call the paradigm of ‘from here’. Rather than appropriating and critically re-functionalizing the imposed international culture, transforming it in their own behalf, artists are actively making that metaculture firsthand, unfettered, deploying their own imaginaries and perspectives at a planetary scale. This epistemological transformation consists of changing from an operation of creative incorporation to one of direct international construction using a variety of subjects, experiences and cultures. The work of many contemporary artists – rather than naming, describing, analysing, expressing or building contexts – is made from their personal, historical, cultural and social contexts in international terms. The context thus ceases to be a ‘closed’ locus, related to a reductive concept, in order to project itself as a space from which international culture is built naturally. This culture is not articulated in the manner of a mosaic of explicit differences engaging in a dialogue within a framework that gathers and projects them. It works, largely, as a specific mode of recreating a set of codes and methodologies established hegemonicaly in the form of a global metaculture. In other words, cultural globalization tends to configure an international code multilaterally and not a multifaceted structure of differentiated cells. That codification acts as an ‘English’ that allows communication and this is forced, knocked about, reinvented by a diversity of new subjects that gain access to international networks undergoing outright expansion. In a similar sense, Charles Esche has mentioned a combination of sameness and non-self-conscious singularity in art today (2007: 27). Many artists work, as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari have said regarding ‘minor literature’, as one ‘finding his own point of underdevelopment, his own patois, his own third world, his own desert’ (1990: 61) within the ‘major’ language. Difference is increasingly constructed through specific plural modes of creating artistic texts within a set of international idioms and practices that are transformed in the process, and not by means of representing the cultural or historical elements characteristic of particular contexts – it lies in action

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more than in representation. This inclination opens up a different perspective that negates the cliché of ‘universal’ art in the centres, derivative expressions in the peripheries, and the multiple, ‘authentic’ realm of ‘otherness’ in traditional culture. Obviously, these porous times of migrations, communications, transcultural chemistries and rearticulations of power have strongly confronted the centre–periphery polarity. Artists are less and less interested in showing their passports. Moreover, if they were, their gallerists would probably prevent them from stating local references that might jeopardize their global potentials. As Kobena Mercer put it, ‘diversity is more visible than ever before, but the unspoken rule is that you do not make an issue of it’ (1998: 43) Cultural components act more within the discourse of works than in relation to their strict visuality, even in cases in which these are based upon the vernacular. This is not to say that one cannot point to certain identifying traits of some countries or areas. What is crucial is the fact that these identities begin to manifest themselves more by their features as an artistic practice than by their use of identifying elements taken from folklore, religion, the physical environment or history. This procedure entails a praxis of art itself, insofar as art, which establishes identifiable constants, constructs cultural typology in the very process of making art. Thus there are specific art practices which are identifiable more by the manner in which they refer to ways of making their artistic texts rather than projecting their contexts. This ‘walking with the Devil’ is a plausible strategy in the globalized, post-colonial, post-Cold War and pre-China-centric world of today. Naturally, it is not a matter of a path without obstacles, and many challenges and contradictions remain. More important than the fact that artists coming from every corner of the world now exhibit their work globally is the qualitative reach brought by the new situation, is how artists, critics and curators are contributing to transform the previous hegemonic, restrictive and conservative situation towards an active plurality instead of being digested by it. Pluralism can work as a prison without walls. Jorge Luis Borges once told the story about the best labyrinth – the desert’s incommensurable openness, from which it is difficult to escape. Abstract or controlled pluralism, as we can witness in some biennials and other ‘global’ shows, can weave a labyrinth of indetermination restricting the possibility of real, active diversification.

Although art gains with the rise of artists from all over the world who circulate internationally and exercise influence, on the other hand it is simplified, since artists have to express themselves in a lingua franca that has been hegemonically constructed and established. In addition, any lingua franca before being a language of all is a language of somebody whose power has allowed them to impose it. A lingua franca makes possible intercontextual communication, but at the same time it indirectly consolidates the established structures, while the authority of the histories, values, poetics, methodologies and codes that constitute the language are incorporated. Now the active, diversified construction and re-invention of contemporary art and its international language by a multitude of subjects who operate from their different contexts, cultures, experiences, subjectivities and agendas, as pointed out above, supposes not only an appropriation of that language, but also its transformation from divergences in the convergence. Hence art language pluralizes within itself, although it has been broadly instituted by mainstream orientations. This is crucial, because to control language and representation also entails the power to control meaning (Fisher and Mosquera, 2004). Of course, such dynamics take place inside a porous strain between renovation and establishment, where the hegemonic structures show their weight. Another difficulty is that the use and legitimation by artists worldwide of an international language set up by the Western mainstream implies a discrimination against other languages and poetics. Consequently, artistic manifestations that do not speak in the prevalent codes are excluded beyond their contexts, marginalized in ghetto circuits and markets. This exclusion is even more radical when we see that the international language of art has confiscated for itself the condition of being contemporary and of acting as a vehicle for artistic contemporaneousness. This canon thus relegates art that does not fit into it at best to the sphere of tradition, and at worst as just out of date or definitively bad. It is true that there is a lot of redundant art that does not create meaning, as with so much epigonal nationalist modernism, so many superficial derivative works and, in short, so much purely commercial art. Nonetheless, the problem remains of possibly excluding or undervaluing significant poetics that simply do not respond to the codes legitimated at the international scale. In fact, barring a

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few exceptions, curators, critics and international institutions are not aware of this problem. The paradigms based on appropriation reproduced the situation of domination as they depended on an imposed culture: cannibals are only cannibals if they have somebody to devour. The ‘from here’ paradigm, while not indicating a rebellion or an emancipation, has simultaneously transformed the ping-pong of oppositions and appropriations and the alienation of the subaltern subject into a new artistic-cultural biology where this subject is inside the central production from the outside. The art world has changed a lot since 1986, when the 2nd Havana Biennial held the first truly international exhibition of contemporary art, gathering 690 artists from 57 countries and pioneering the extraordinary internationalization of art that we see today. Because of the silent mutation that has taken place since then, the multiculturalist discourses and practices of the 90s, which involved policies of correctness, quotas and neo-exoticism, are no longer current, to the extent of connoting a simplistic racial, cultural and national programmatism. Until recently, a balanced national plurality was sought at shows and events. Now the problem is the opposite: curators and institutions have to respond to the contemporary global vastness. The challenge is to be able to stay up-to-date in the face of the appearance of new cultural subjects, energies and information bursting forth from all sides. It is no longer possible for a curator to work today by just following the New York–London–Germany axis (as used to be the case not so long ago) and looking down condescendingly from there. Today curators have to move around and open their eyes, ears and minds. We have not done so enough yet, but the stream continues to push us all in that direction.

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So what of museums, Kunsthalles, alternative spaces and other institutions that deal with contemporary art? Their roles and missions have been under constant debate lately. It seems as if these institutions are finding it difficult to address the new problems brought about by the expansive cultural dynamics of these changing times. Perhaps the new situation points to a major shift in their practice, one that will take them from the prevalent space-centred routine to another, more dynamic endeavour, in which the institution will be a moving activity spread all over the globe (what I call the museum-as-hub). If museums have brought the world into their space, perhaps the moment has arrived to launch museums into the world. Has the Devil been useful? Or have we sold our souls? Whatever the answer may be, art from all over the world has reached a crossover involvement thanks to the galloping expansion of the international circulation of art as well as artists’ turning to fully international practices and projections. Perhaps the Devil is now us.

Notes 1 2 3

4

5 6

See http://universes-in-universe.de for an idea of just how diverse the international art circuits are today. See Fernando Ortiz (1940). This adverb refers to the misuse or strained use of words, as in a mixed metaphor, occurring either in error or for rhetorical effect. For a thorough discussion of the idea of syncretism regarding Brazilian religions and culture see Sérgio Figueiredo Ferreti (1995). On this issue see Gerardo Mosquera (2003). For example, listen to his albums Clandestino and Próxima Estación: Esperanza.

REFERENCES

Bakhtin, M. (1986) ‘De la prehistoria de la palabra de la novela’, in M. Bakhtin and A. Caballero (eds), Problemas literarios y estéticos. Arte y sociedad. Ciudad de La Habana: Editorial Arte y Literatura. Bernstein, B. (1983 (December) – 1984 (January)) ‘Algunas consideraciones en relación con el problema “arte y etnos’’ ’, Criterios, 5 (12): 267.

Bhabha, H.K. (1984) ‘Of mimicry and men: the ambivalence of colonial discourse’, October, 28: 125–133. Bhabha, H.K. (1988) ‘Cultural diversity and cultural differences’, in B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths and H. Tiffin (eds), The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 207–209. Bromlei, Y. (1986) Etnografía teórica. Moscow: Nauta.

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Canclini, N.G. (2001) Culturas híbridas: Estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad. Mexico City: Editorial Grijalbo. Clifford, J. (1988) The Predicament of Culture. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press. de Andrade, O. (1928) Manifesto Antropofago, Revista de Antropofagia. Sao Paulo, May 1928. de Hollanda, H.B. (1994) ‘Feminism: constructing identity and the cultural condition’, in N. Tomassi, M. J. Jacob and I. Mesquita (eds), American Visions. Artistic and Cultural Identity in the Western Hemisphere. New York: Allworth. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1990) ‘What is a minor literature?’, in R. Ferguson, M. Gever, T.T. Minh-ha and C. West (eds), Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures. Cambridge, MA: MIT. Esche, C. (2007) ‘Making sameness’, in A. van Helmond and S. Michiels (eds), Jakarta Megalopolis: Horizontal and Vertical Observations. Amsterdam: Valiz. Escobar, T. (1987) El mito del arte y el mito del pueblo. Asuncion: Museo del Barro. Ferreti, S.F. (1995) Repensando o sincretismo. Sao Paolo: Editora da Universidade de Sao Paulo. Fisher, J. and Mosquera, G. (2004) ‘Introduction’, in J. Fisher and G. Mosquera (eds), Over Here: International Perspectives on Art and Culture. New York, Cambridge, MA, and London: New Museum of Contemporary Art and MIT Press. Gatti, J. (1991) ‘Elements of vogue’, Third Text, 16–17 (Winter): 65–81. Harris, W. (1973) Tradition, the Writer and Society. London and Port of Spain: New Beacon. Hsu, M. (2004) ‘Networked cosmopolitanism: on cultural exchange and international exhibition’, in N. Tsoutas (ed.), Knowledge+Dialogue+Exchange: Remapping Cultural Globalisms from the South. Sydney: Artspace Visual Arts Centre. Huntington, S.P. (2004) Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity. New York: Simon and Schuster. Isar, Y.R. and Anheier, H. (2010) ‘Introduction’, in H. Anheier and Y.R. Isar (eds), The Cultures and Globalization Series 3: Cultural Expression, Creativity and Innovation. London: SAGE. Lowie, R.H. (1940) An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. New York: Farrar and Rinehart. Mercer, K. (1998) ‘Intermezzo worlds’, Art Journal, 57 (4) (Winter): 43–45. Mercier, P. (1969) Historia de la antropología. Barcelona: Ediciones Península. Monsiváis, C. (1999) ‘La arquitectura y la ciudad’, Talingo, La Prensa, n. 330: 15.

Mosquera, G. (1994) ‘Cooking identity’, in Cocido y crudo. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. pp: 32–37, 309–313. Mosquera, G. (1996a) ‘Latin American Art Ceases to be Latin American Art’ in ARCO Latino. Mosquera, G. (1996b) ‘From Latin American Art to Art from Latin America’ in Art Nexus, no. 48, v. 2, April–June 2003. Mosquera, G. (2001) ‘Notes on globalisation, art and cultural difference’, in G. Flentge and E. Van Odijk (eds), Silent Zones. On Globalisation and Cultural Interaction. Amsterdam: Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten. p. 29. Mosquera, G. (2003a) ‘Global islands’, in O. Enwezor, C. Basualdo, U. Meta Bauer, S. Ghez, S. Maharaj, M. Nash and O. Zaya (eds), Créolité and Creolization. Documenta 11_Platform 3. Ostfildern (Germany): a Hatje Cantz. pp. 87–92. Mosquera, G. (2003b) ‘Latin Americn Art ceases to be Latin American Art’, in the catalogue for the International Contemporary Art Fair (ARCO). Madrid, Spain: International Contemporary Art Fair, 1997: pp. 7–10. Mosquera, Gerardo (2003c, April–June) ‘From Latin American art to art from Latin America’, Art Nexus, 48 (2): 70–74. Mosquera , G. (2003d) ‘Alien-own/own-alien: notes on globalisation and cultural difference’, in N. Papastergiadis (ed.), Complex Entanglements: Art, Globalisation and Cultural Difference. London, Sydney, Chicago: Rivers Oram. pp. 22–23. Mutations, Actar, Bordeaux (2001) ‘Ciudades del Sur: la llamada de la urbe’, in El Correo de la UNESCO, Paris, June 1999. Necef, M.Ü. (1994) ‘Hur ska det ga med min etniska identitet som turkisk invandrare i den här röran?’, in O. Hemer (ed.), Kulturen i den globala byn. Lünd: Aegis Förlag. pp. 55–65. Nunes, Z. (1990) ‘Os males do Brasil: Antropofagia e questao da raça’, Papeles Avulsos Series, n. 22, CIEC/UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro. Ortiz, F. (1940) Contrapunteo Cubano del Tabaco y el Azúcar. Havana: Jesus Montero. (English edition from 1947, New York: Alfred Knopf.) Rama, Á. (1982) Transculturación Narrativa y Novela Latinoamericana. Mexico City: Siglo XXI. Richard, N. (1989) ‘Latinoamérica y la postmodernidad: la crisis de los originales y la revancha de la copia’, in her La Estratificación de los Márgenes. Santiago: Francisco Zegers Editor. Richard, N. (1991, April) ‘Latinoamérica y la postmodernidad’, Revista de Crítica Cultural, n. 3 p. 18. Segunda Bienal de La Habana’86 Catálogo general (1986) Havana: Wifredo Lam Center.

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CHAPTER 4 … BUT WHAT IS THE QUESTION? ART, RESEARCH AND THE PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE Gilane Tawadros

Anheier suggest in their Introduction to this volume, that there is ‘considerable evidence to show that [processes of cultural identity politics] are occurring with renewed depth and force today’? This chapter takes specific artworks and exhibitions as its ‘evidence’ base for exploring these questions and investigates the role that artworks and exhibitions play in the production of knowledge in a globalized world.

What exactly do we mean when we talk about visual art as a form of knowledge production? And how does this differ from text-based forms of research and knowledge production? What new insights or investigations are made possible by the processes of making artworks (or, indeed, of making exhibitions)? What are the implications of this for the ways in which we have traditionally understood and validated knowledge produced in this way? How does globalization – and more specifically the wider global arena in which artworks are made and distributed – contribute to our understanding of visual art as a form of knowledge production? Is it possible to discern, as Isar and

… he reasoned that the fact that he had spent six months researching the history and culture of Benin and that he went there for work rather than leisure, set him apart from ordinary tourists. But did it really? He wondered whether the fact that the focus of his journey was research would justify the term field-trip used by anthropologists or archaeologists. If it was a field trip he was embarking on – his destination being a different culture to his own and his interest lying in the traces of history in contemporary Benin and its organisation of the past – didn’t this mean that he also had to adopt anthropological or archaeological research methods and aims? He was trained in neither discipline nor did he share their systematic approach or scientific objectives. But then what were his methods? What was he after? What did he hope to find? Or was the point that he didn’t actually want to find anything? That he would only try to experience the place and observe it without finding any answers? Would it be enough if he (or his work) might be able, as a result of his trip, to formulate some questions more precisely? (From Uriel Orlow’s film The Visitor, part of The Benin Project, 2007)

The artist as researcher In The Visitor, the artist Uriel Orlow regards himself, the practice of being an artist and the research that precedes the making of new work as a dispassionate, third-party observer. He reflects in the film on the role and function of the artist as researcher,

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setting out on an enquiry that may not afford any answers but rather results in the formulation of more questions. How is the research of an artist different from that of an anthropologist or archaeologist? How do the approach and objectives of an artist differ from those of a scientist embarked on a systematic enquiry? Orlow’s questions to himself and to his audience probe the very nature of the artistic process and its similarity with and difference from other forms of knowledge production. Significantly, as a European artist travelling to Africa in his quest for answers, Orlow’s questions are invested with particular resonances and meanings deriving from the history of Western colonialism and exploitation of the continent and its assets and, in particular, its cultural assets in the case of Benin and its celebrated ‘Benin Bronzes’. Orlow’s enquiry, then, is facilitated by the ease of modern modes of international travel but is embedded in historical processes and events which mark the early beginnings of the era of globalization and its attendant ‘movement of objects ... meaning ... and people across regions and intercontinental space’ (cf. the Introduction to this volume by Isar and Anheier, p. 5). To Orlow’s questions about the artistic process, we can bring additional ones about the specific nature of visual art and the making of artworks as a distinct practice and means of producing knowledge. What exactly do we mean when we talk about visual art as a form of knowledge production? And how does this differ from text-based forms of research and knowledge production? What new insights or investigations are made possible by the processes of making artworks (or, indeed, of making exhibitions) in an increasingly globalized world? What are the implications of this for the ways in which we have traditionally understood and validated knowledge produced in these ways? Finally, is it possible to develop a shared vocabulary and language for talking about the unique non-verbal insights that the visual arts offer as a primary process of research and investigation, rather than as secondary objects which have long been used to validate and exemplify written discourses across a variety of academic subject areas? (Plate 4.1 and 4.2).

The limits of language Orlow’s Benin Project also raises questions about the relationship between visual and linguistic forms

of articulation, suggesting that the visual is a more open-ended and fluid domain than that of the linguistic which tends to frame and define the visual like a butterfly caught by a collector and fixed on the end of a pin, frozen and immobile. But how then can we understand or describe this space which is beyond text? Where is this non-textual space located and what exists in this apparent no-man’s land of the unwritten, the non-verbal, and the unspoken? Perhaps one way into this space is to think about it in terms of translation – translation from one culture to another, or from one language to another. In most cases, the process of translation involves moving from the familiar, the homely, the comfortable to the unfamiliar, the unhomely, the uncomfortable. And in the process of moving from one to another, occasionally something may get lost but equally something may get added. This is precisely the terrain that the artist Shen Yuan explores in her installations. In Perdre sa Salive or Wasting One’s Spittle (1994), the artist fabricated a series of frozen, wine-coloured tongues from ice and suspended them over metal spittoons. As the ice melts, it fills the spittoon with water drop by drop, first of all revealing a glint of metal and then, over a period of time, the sharp and pointed blade of a kitchen knife. This installation, composed of frozen tongues, kitchen knives and metal spittoons, like many of Shen Yuan’s works, is concerned with the transformation of images and objects from one state to another. ‘To lose one’s spittle’ is a Chinese expression that suggests a state of being excessively modest or submissive, but here the unassuming image of drooling tongues dissolves itself into a spectacle of sharpened knives. (Plate 4.3). However, Wasting One’s Spittle is also concerned with the limits of language: the cul-de-sac of clichéd proverbial sayings; the inability of words to approximate to the visual image and the inadequacy of translations from one language or culture to another. Shen Yuan’s work also reveals something about the limits of globalization, challenging the idea that everything can be translated and consumed in our new global age, unrestrained by the boundaries of time, space or cultural difference. The French title of the work, Perdre sa Salive, introduces another colloquial meaning to the work – that of wasting one’s breath – which becomes knitted into the increasingly complex fabric of the piece and its multiple meanings, translations and interpretations. The artist herself talks about the work in

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terms of the excess of language, of when words spill over to such an extent that they become meaningless and language loses its ability to communicate. Wasting One’s Spittle, as with other of Shen Yuan’s works, reflects on the relationship between the visual and the linguistic; it also reflects on the limits of the linguistic or verbal to describe or communicate adequately our lived experiences. Shen Yuan’s works may be seen to address what Sarat Maharaj (2004) calls the ‘leftovers of translation’; in other words, all the things that are left unsaid or all the nuances of language that inevitably remain untranslated. For Maharaj, works like James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and Marcel Duchamp’s Large Glass – The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Batchelors, Even (1911–1923) and The Green Box provide tools for thinking about the difficulties of translation and the limits of language. As he says (2004: 193): What does it mean to be in the experience of the untranslatable? ... [My] reflections through Joyce and Duchamp strengthened the idea that although certain things can be translated in the domain of the linguistic, culture is far more than simply language and words. This produced in me a deep sense of the limits of words and language as the exclusive model through which we might think about cultural life and the translation of our everyday experience. With Joyce and Duchamp, there emerged, it seems to me, a notion of translation which activates both the visual and the sonic. Beyond the sense of the word and image are sounds which cannot entirely be decoded or deciphered as meaning this, that or the other … the penumbra of the untranslatable that shadow and smudge language and for which we have to venture beyond language – became an increasingly important area of interest in my thinking about cultural translation.

The space of difference The illuminated books of the artist Hamad Butt are books without words. The circle of books that makes up a part of his installation Transmission (1990) is drenched in a violet light that floods the space, while each individual tome, made from glass, carries its own electric charge. It is, as Sarat Maharaj describes it, ‘a whirling, wordless, circuit’. Accompanying Butt’s circuitous electric books – the other part of the installation – is a video work. The source for Butt’s video is a drawing of a triffid on an

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early Penguin edition of John Wyndham’s science fiction novel The Day of the Triffids, first published in 1951. Possibly the ‘outcome of a series of ingenious biological meddlings’ and cultivated on an industrial scale in order to extract its valuable oil, the triffids were tall, large-rooted plants whose venomous sting could blind victims and feed on their decomposing human flesh. When the majority of people on earth are blinded as a result of witnessing an extraordinary comet display, the triffids are in a position to take over the planet. Interestingly, in this context, it is by disabling the faculty of human beings to see and to apprehend the world visually that, according to Wyndham, their future survival is threatened. For Butt, the triffid was a metaphor for a contemporary and equally deadly epidemic that was capable of generating as much fear as Wyndham’s toxic, walking plants. He was interested in exploring what he described as the ‘apprehension of the Triffids of the day’ and the response to its present-day equivalent. Butt’s video isolates the outline of the triffid and animates it through a spectrum of shifting colours, electrifying and magnifying its movements. Seen like this, the triffid mutates into an object of beauty as well as an object of fear. The triffid embodied many of Butt’s preoccupations as an artist – the intersection of art and science, the arcane (alchemy) and the popular (science fiction), sexuality and death. These themes permeate Butt’s works, invoking the precariousness of human existence and the settled sense of security which is shattered so abruptly by the coming of the triffids in Wyndham’s fiction and by AIDS in the contemporary world. Hamad Butt’s works explore the tension between two different forms of knowledge – the rational and apparently ‘objective’ realm of scientific discourse on the one hand, and the realm of the irrational, the emotional and the fictional on the other. As he writes, ‘Scientific discourse, amongst others, has an inherent faith in the transparency of language, a purity of intentions we might call communication, that operates outside the spectrum of gripped truth’ (1996: 36). In Transmission, these different realms converge and collide so that the rational becomes entangled with the irrational and the real becomes intermeshed with the fictional. What is striking about Hamad Butt’s works in this context is the process of translation and movement between what is solid, concrete and material, and that which is not solid, immediately visible or open to being grasped and held. This is not only the

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space of difference but also the space of the artwork. It is the space that needs to be negotiated but is never entirely translatable. It is a space in which the subtle shifts and changes of a culture and society may be registered but not always tangibly or concretely. Stuart Hall has eloquently described this dynamic relationship between the artwork and the world (2005: 19): Despite the sophistication of our scholarly and critical apparatus in art criticism, history and theory, we are still not that far advanced in finding ways of thinking about the relationship between the [art]work and the world. We either make the connection too brutal and abrupt, destroying that necessary displacement in which the work of making art takes place. Or we protect the work from what Edward Said calls its necessary ‘worldliness’, projecting it into either a pure political space where conviction – political will – is all, or into an inviolate aesthetic space, where only critics, curators, dealers, and connoisseurs are permitted to play. The problem is rather like that of thinking the relationship between the dream and its materials in waking life. We know there is a connection there. But we also know that the two continents cannot be lined up and their correspondences read off directly against one another. Between the work and the world, as between the psychic and the social, the bar of the historical unconscious has fallen. The effect of the unseen ‘work’ which takes place out of consciousness in relationship to deep currents of change whose long-term effects on what can be produced are, literally, tidal, is thereafter always a delicate matter of re-presentation and translation, with all the lapses, elisions, incompleteness of meaning and incommensurability of political goals that these terms imply. What Freud called ‘the dream-work’ – in his lexicon, the tropes of displacement, substitution and condensation – is what enables the materials of the one to be reworked or translated into the forms of the other, and is what enables the latter to ‘say more’ or ‘go beyond’ the willed consciousness of the individual artist. For those who work in the displaced zone of the cultural, the world has somehow to become a text, an image, before it can be ‘read’.

Avoiding the easy commensurability of a global culture which celebrates the erosion of the world and the dream, of definitive boundaries between the self

and other, the work of artists like Shen Yuan and Hamad Butt seems to insist on a space of difference which is difficult, slow and uncomfortable. (Plate 4.4).

The untranslatable In 1998, I began working with two artists – Zineb Sedira and Jananne el-Ani – and another curator, David A. Bailey, on an exhibition exploring the ways in which contemporary artists were deploying the veil in their practice. The two artists who initiated the project had themselves been making work that used the veil as a visual motif and also explored the idea of veiling more broadly as a metaphor. The project took a number of years to research and to realize as an exhibition and an accompanying publication that included essays by Leila Ahmed, Jananne el-Ani, Zineb Sedira, Ahdaf Soueif, Alison Donnell and Hamid Naficy. It eventually came to fruition in 2003, opening at the New Art Gallery, Walsall. In the intervening period – from concept to realization – a great deal had happened in the world, not least 9/11 and the subsequent, immense political and social ramifications of the seismic events of that day. Not surprisingly, the Veil exhibition became caught up in the political aftermath. No venue in London or New York would entertain the idea of showing the exhibition. In Walsall, the exhibition and in particular the works of the AES group were censored by the local authority who control the gallery, on the grounds that they might be seen as ‘unpatriotic’ on the eve of the invasion of Iraq by British and American forces. The AES group’s images ended up on the front pages of the local newspaper in full colour, the exhibition became a talking point in pubs and cafes throughout Walsall and 35,000 people came to see it. Many people saw the exhibition as being in some way prescient or prophetic of future events and debates about political Islam, religious difference, the veil and veiling within public and political discourse. Rather than being prophetic, however, I would argue that the process of researching, making artworks and curating the exhibition was a way of ‘reading’ the world through the prism of the visual. As a consequence, the exhibition and the artworks in it invoked the untranslatable, the ‘resistant remainder’ as Stuart Hall calls it – that which is not said, not represented, that which, up to that point has ‘escape[d] representation’ (2005: 19).

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It is not only present and current events that can be ‘read’ through the process of making artworks and exhibitions. It is equally possible to ‘read’ or investigate the past, taking soundings of what lies beneath the surface, mapping the terrain that stretches beyond reach, that is not immediately visible or tangible, or has been overlooked. This is what Uriel Orlow does so effectively in The Benin Project (2007). Through the interplay of the discrete but inter-related elements that make up the work, Orlow explores the neglected narratives and contexts that surround the so-called ‘Benin Bronzes’ and raises questions about ownership, identity and belonging that encompass contemporary political and social realities beyond these particular artefacts. Most importantly, perhaps, Orlow proposes a route for negotiating geographical space and historical time which avoids the traditional linear, progressive trajectory of Western scientific and historical thought and instead maps out a spiral trail that moves from the past to the present and back again, from one physical location to another, retracing some steps but also defining new ones that open up fresh and unexpected vistas.

But what is the question? In Douglas Adams’ comic science fiction novel Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979), mice – the super-intelligent, pan-dimensional species of the universe – set out to find the answer to the ultimate question: what is the meaning of life, the universe and everything? They construct a gigantic computer,

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as big as a city, which begins to calculate the answer. It takes seven and a half million years. Finally, the computer (called Deep Thought) delivers the ultimate answer to the ultimate question: the meaning of life, the universe and everything is 42. Baffled and disappointed by the computer’s response, the mice interrogate Deep Thought who suggests that they have not sufficiently considered the question. Only by thoroughly understanding the question can they find the answer they so desperately desire. Rather than offering up answers, the process of making contemporary art involves asking questions; these can often be unexpected, difficult and uncomfortable questions. At a time when the spheres of politics and the media increasingly appear to present a consensual and homogeneous world-view (with only slightly differing cultural inflections), artists and curators working in a global context have the potential to interrupt this consensus by bringing to the surface awkward questions that disturb our ways of seeing the world. Unlike the established linear trajectory of Western scientific enquiry on which so many of our research models are based, the processes of making artworks and curatorial projects presents a radically different model of enquiry based on the proposition that, unlike science, religion, politics and many other fields of our intellectual and social lives, contemporary artistic practice is concerned with posing questions about the world around us, rather than offering up answers or solutions. Until we understand fully the questions that we are asking – in a profound, critical and selfreflexive way – we are unlikely to find the right answers.

REFERENCES

Butt, H. (1996) ‘Apprehensions’ in S. Foster and G. Tawadras (eds) Familiars. Hamad Butt. Institute of International Visual Arts in Association with the John Hansard Gallery. Hall, S. (2005) ‘Assembling the 1980s: the deluge – and after’ in E.D. Bailey, I. Baucom, S. Boyce (eds), Shades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain. Durham, NC: Duke University Press (in collaboration with inIVA and Aavaa).

Maharaj, S. (2004) ‘Modernity and difference’, Maharaj in conversation with Stuart Hall, reprinted in Changing States: Contemporary Art and Ideas in an Era of Globalisation, (editor, Gilane Tawadros). London: Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA).

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CHAPTER 5 IMPROVISING IN A WORLD OF MOVEMENT: TRANSIT, TRANSITION AND TRANSFORMATION Maruška Svašek

Ireland. It deploys three key notions. ‘Transit’ alludes to the movement of people, objects and images across space and time; ‘transition’ refers to transit-related changes in the products of cultural production in terms of their meaning, value and emotional efficacy; ‘transformation’ concerns the dynamic ways in which people in transit relate to changing social and material environments. The perspective of ‘improvisation’ explores how they react to new challenges and demands, taking on contextually specific roles and identities, and gaining various degrees of ownership over the working process and its outcomes.

‘[A]nthropology can best contribute to debates around creativity by challenging – rather than reproducing – the polarity between novelty and convention, or between the innovative dynamic of the present and the traditionalism of the past, that has long formed such a powerful undercurrent to the discourses of modernity’ (Ingold and Hallam, 2007: 2).

Introduction

This chapter uses the concept of ‘improvisation’ to examine how globalizing forces stimulate cultural production, appropriation and recontextualization. It also explores to what extent these processes are controlled, welcomed or criticized by the various actors involved, and points more generally at the ethical dimensions of transnational projects. It will argue that creativity should be measured by the whole production process, exploring the active embodied engagement of cultural producers with their work in progress; it explores three projects in which Ghanaian artists – two flag makers and one contemporary artist – interacted with various individuals and groups in Northern

In a recent email to the Ghanaian artist George Hughes, I thanked him for his contribution to this chapter. I had asked him to produce a few paintings in reaction to an over three hundred years old West African tradition of Fante flag making, and he had emailed me pictures of the three resulting works (see Plates 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3).1 Like the flag makers Hughes was ethnically Fante, but unlike them, he was an urban Fante who had graduated from the Academy of Arts in Kumasi (which is part of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology), and had emigrated to the United States. I was interested in his appropriation of elements of the flag tradition while simultaneously pursuing his own artistic agenda. For the purpose of this chapter, I also aimed to explore the impact of George’s understanding of ‘creativity’ on his art production, intending to look closer at the dynamics of improvisation in global arenas of connectivity. I wondered whether

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‘innovation’ was central to his understanding of creativity, and if so, to what extent his views had been shaped by particular globalizing forces. In this chapter, I shall compare George’s approach with the activities of two ‘traditional’ Fante flag makers who were invited to Belfast in 2003 to exhibit their work and make flags with various local groups. I shall examine to what extent their outlook differed from George’s, and why. Which global processes have influenced their working procedures? Has their perspective on flag making, like George’s, been informed by an urge for novelty? In the Introduction to this volume, the editors see a close connection between the phenomenon of creativity and the drive for innovation, defining the latter as ‘the process by which new ideas and artefacts lead to new cognitive and behavioural practices such as genres, ways of going and organizing, conventions, models, etc.’ They ask the important question of whether globalization has promoted or hampered the formation of new hybrid cultural forms. I am equally interested in the possibilities and limits of cultural production in an era of connectivity and time–space compression, but critical of the focus on ‘creativity-as-innovation’. Even though this notion of creativity has been appropriated by various people in many parts of the world, it produces a highly selective view on worldwide cultural productivity. The perspective reinforces an ideology that caters for a market hungry for ‘the latest’ consumption goods, and completely ignores the significance of (trans)local forms of improvisation that do not lead to novel forms and conventions.

Innovative art versus repetitive traditional craft? George’s cosmopolitan world view no doubt differed from that of the flag makers, who mostly lived and worked in small towns or rural areas mainly inhabited by Fante people. Fante flag makers receive their training through informal apprenticeships on a one-to-one basis from their fathers or other patrilineal male relatives. They are taught to work within the limits of relatively strict stylistic guidelines. Students at the Academy of Arts, by contrast, were encouraged to develop individual styles and to produce unique works of art. During their study, they became acquainted with a variety

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of ‘isms’ developed in Europe, Africa and America,2 and began to see innovation and individuality as key ingredients of artistic creativity. As a migrant who had moved to the United States in 2000, George had been directly3 exposed to a much wider variety of artists, artistic styles and movements than his colleagues who had remained in Ghana, as he visited exhibitions and had direct access to museums with rich collections. Dominant discourses of contemporary art in the United States also stress the significance of artistic independence,4 strengthening George’s identification as individual art producer. In his most recent catalogue, Gatherings, he wrote: ‘In my work I seek visual possibilities without premeditation, in order to arrive at personal truths’ (Hughes, 2008: 3). At first glance, the artist’s aim for personal truths may seem far removed from Fante flag making practices. It would, however, be a mistake to create a strict dichotomy between Fante flag making – regarded as a repetitive, uncreative local convention – and the creative dynamism of the worldly artist George Hughes. The misconceptions on which the discourse of ‘unchanging traditions’ versus ‘creative art’ is based are worth unpacking.5 As we shall see, they have been fed by ethnocentric assumptions about the superiority of ‘the West’ and the positive force of innovative development in urban industrialized centres. Non-Western/rural traditions are unchanging This idea was propagated by nineteenth-century Western evolutionists who formulated their theory in the context of empire building and colonial expansion. The theory divided mankind into distinct groups who had reached particular stages of development (see, for example, Haddon, 1894, 1895). Only the most advanced peoples were thought capable of progression, and non-Western people were imagined to be dictated by traditional rules and therefore stuck in an evolutionary limbo. The ideology justified colonialism, as the white man claimed to have reached the highest developmental stage, and consequently was destined to rule over the less developed ‘primitive’ races (Binkley and Darish, 1998; Errington, 1998; Price, 1989; Svašek, 2007: 19).6 In the context of modernist ideology, the notion of tradition as a timeless category was opposed to the historical dynamism of modern times, which also created a dichotomy between ‘backward rural areas’ and ‘progressive urban centres’ (Fabian, 1983). Notions of unchanging rural or

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non-Western traditions have also been commoditized in the global tourist industry, promising a taste of ‘authentic pasts’. Non-Western/rural people are incapable of creative production The assumption that non-Western people and rural dwellers were dictated by unchanging traditions suggested that the ‘uncivilized’ were thought incapable of art production, as ‘innovation’ was regarded a central feature of creativity (Clifford, 1988; Errington, 1998; Svašek, 2007: 16–20).7 Even though the inherent racism of evolutionist thought has been criticized widely, and in an increasingly connected world, cultural producers outside Europe and North America have strongly influenced global artistic flows (the Bollywood industry is a clear example here), the most influential positions in European and North American fine art worlds are often still taken by white, middle-class males. Traditional societies are determined by bounded culture The cultural relativist position that dominated twentieth century anthropology was informed by the idea that ‘traditional societies’ were relatively closed systems. Anthropologists who worked in this paradigm attacked the ethnocentric assumptions of the evolutionists, replacing the quantitative notion of culture (as the possession of the civilized) by a definition of culture as a universalist people–place entity (see, for example, Boas, 1955 [1927]); Forge, 1973). According to this view, the world was divided into ‘cultures’ and all cultures had the ability to produce art. Broad definitions of art were used as comparative tools to objectively map and understand human behaviour. The paradigm was partly fed by the romantic wish to map ‘disappearing cultures’, as the societies the anthropologists studied were rapidly changing as a result of globalization and colonialism. The effects of outside influence were regarded as a form of cultural pollution (Svašek, 2007: 23).8 True art is the product of creative genius Three processes were largely responsible for the idea that art should be opposed to craft, and that it should be conceptualized as a field of individual creativity and innovation. In the fifteenth century, Italian artists such as Michaelangelo moved out of the guild system to form their own studios, and their

work began to be perceived as ‘fine art’. Fine artists were thought to have God-given superior creative powers, making them into artistic geniuses (Kempers, 1992 [1987]; Wolff, 1981). During the late eighteenth century, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant developed an influential theory of aesthetics based on the idea that ‘true art’ had inherent aesthetic qualities and transcendental power. In the nineteenth century, the notions of artistic genius, inherent aesthetic beauty and transcendence were linked to a belief in authenticity, stemming from a longing for aspects of pre-modern life that were associated with moral purity. Industrialization, the establishment of socio-economic classes and the transformation of the art patronage system into a critic–dealer system generated a belief amongst members of the higher classes who could afford to buy fine art, that only non-commercial, ‘free’ artists and knowledgeable experts could produce and recognize ‘true art’ (Svašek, 2007: 155–58; Zolberg, 1990). Truly creative art is innovative The nineteenth and twentieth century modernist belief in progress promoted the idea that innovation, as a central feature of creativity, was inherently good. Forms of cultural production that did not aim for novelty were ridiculed for being outdated and ‘stuck in the past’. In the arts, ‘creativity’ was equalized with ‘originality’ and ‘innovation’. In this view, ‘traditions’ were either ‘authentic, unchanging practices’ or ‘boring repetitions’, and copying had to be regarded as the ultimate form of non-creative conventionality (see, for example, Greenberg, 1935). ‘Art’ was now not only opposed to ‘traditional craft’, but also to ‘kitsch’ and repetitive art forms (Calinescu, 1987; Svašek, 2007: 161–8). This modernist perspective was partly informed by a comparative evaluation of the end products. As Tim Ingold and Elizabeth Hallam (2007: 3) pointed out: This backwards reading, symptomatic of modernity, finds in creativity a power not so much of adjustment and response to the conditions of a world-in-formation as of liberation from the constraints of a world that is already made. It is a reading that celebrates the freedom of the human imagination – in fields of scientific and artistic behaviour – to transcend the determinations of both nature and society. In this reading, creativity is on the side not only of innovation against

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convention, but also of the exceptional individual against the collectivity, of the present moment against the weight of the past, and of mind or intelligence against inert matter.

Improvising in transit Arguing that creativity should not be measured by looking at end products and their degree of novelty, but rather by examining the whole production process and by exploring the active embodied engagement of cultural producers with their work in progress, Ingold and Hallam argued that ‘improvisation’ would be a more apt and less biased term to analyse the dynamics of cultural production.9 In agreement with this, I shall use the term in this chapter to examine the production of Fante flags and the artistic development of George Hughes in contexts of transnational movement and interaction. I shall focus in particular on three cases. The first entails interactions between two Fante flag makers and members of Northern Irish communities; the second focuses on George Hughes and his involvement with various audiences in Ghana, the United States and Northern Ireland; and the third looks closer at George’s works in response to the Fante flag tradition. All three cases are examples of cultural production and improvisation in contexts of global connectivity. The perspective of ‘improvisation’ acknowledges that, even when producing an exact copy of an existing model, makers need to actively respond to the possibilities and constraints given by the context in which they work. Imagine, for example, a sculptor who has been commissioned to make a replica of one of his earlier works. The wood used for the replica may turn out to be exceptionally hard, forcing him to invent a slightly different cutting technique to produce a similar effect. Apart from the material conditions, the social conditions may have changed as well. He may be older, having lost much of his strength, forcing him to use different tools. Improvisation may also be necessary as the result of a changed political climate, for example when new rules no longer allow for the production of a particular genre, and the work has to be done in secret. In these cases, even though the end product may be a copy of the original, the maker has actively searched for new working procedures to achieve the effect he was after.

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The notion of improvisation can be stretched as material products have ‘social lives’ beyond the production process (Appadurai, 1986). After all, people do not just produce artefacts but also buy, use and display them, and are captivated, motivated or manipulated by them (Morphy and Perkins, 2006; Svašek, 2007: 67). In this chapter I examine how people improvise creatively as they engage with material realities in different locations. I am especially interested in the influence of globalizing forces on this process, defining globalization as the highly accelerated movement of objects, images and people across regions and intercontinental space. Central to my approach10 are the notions of transit, transition, and transformation. ‘Transit’ alludes to the movement of people, objects and images across space and time.11 ‘Transition’ refers to transit-related changes in the products of cultural production, especially in terms of their meaning, value and emotional efficacy.12 The concept of ‘transformation’ points at the dynamic ways in which people in transit relate to changing social and material environments as they find themselves in different places and historical periods. I shall use the notion of ‘improvisation’ to explore how they react to new challenges and demands, taking on contextually-specific roles and identities. A number of questions are crucial. Who has the economic, social and symbolic capital to organize the transit of objects and object producers, thus enabling transition and transformation, and to what extent do the organizers control the transit-related changes? How do the meaning, value and emotional efficacy of objects in transit change, and to what extent is this process influenced by object producers, dealers, curators and members of the public? How is the result evaluated by the object producers? Which new roles and identities do object producers take on during their work abroad as they improvise in new situations, and how do they value this experience? To what extent are they forced or empowered to improvise, working in new and possibly unexpected ways? Is their outlook informed by culturally-specific discourses of repetition or innovation, and if so, how do their conceptions combine with the expectations of the organizers?

Fante flags in Northern Ireland The first case I shall focus on concerns the production of Fante flags in Ghana, and the visit of two

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flag makers to Northern Ireland in October 2003.13 To get a better view of the transition of the Fante flags and the transformation of the Fante flag makers through the project, it is necessary to take a closer look at the flag making process. The first references to Fante flag making go back to the seventeenth century. In 1693, an English trader14 reported that he had seen a ‘white [flag] with a black man painted in the middle brandishing a scymitar’ (Adler and Barnard, 1992: 11). Fante flags were (and still are) used as symbols of military Asafo companies that are formed by male members of patrilineal descent groups.15 Ellis (1887: 278) observed in the nineteenth century that [t]he companies are under the direct command of the captains, whose office is hereditary, and the captains owe direct allegiance to the chide of their district. Each town, with its dependent villages, has some five or six companies, the members of which reside in distinct quarters of the town, or in special villages. Each company has its own designation.16

Asafo companies have marked their identity through the production and use of colourful flags (frankaa) that are normally kept in sacred shrines (posuban). After the completion of a flag by the flag maker, a libation is poured over it, which allows patrilineal ancestral spirits to enter. This transforms newly produced flags into seats of ancestral force, empowering them with tumwum (spiritual power). Despite the loss of much of their military power after the colonization of the Gold Coast by the British and the independence of Ghana in 1957, Asafo companies have continued to exist, mainly having a social function. Individual companies control certain parts of Fante towns. During celebrations, flag dancers choose flags out of the collection kept in the shrine, and dance and parade with them, followed by other members of the company. The latter will sing abusive songs, ridiculing rival Asafo groups. The participants of the ritual performance frequently cross the territorial boundaries of other companies, angering their rivals. In the past, such confrontations would frequently end in bloodshed (Sarbah, 1968). The danced flags contain challenging messages, visualizing well known proverbs that mock their opponents. One of the flags in the Belfast exhibition, for example, pictured

the proverb ‘When the cat is dead the rats will take over’, depicting a dead cat (the rival company) and rats (symbolizing the company) running over the dead cat’s company shrine (see Plate 5.4).17 The derogatory message, combined with the flag’s spiritual and performative power, makes the flag an effective emotional agent. To regard the Fante flag tradition as an unchanging custom, however, would be missing the point completely. Flag iconography has always responded to historical change. Intrigued by European military and naval imagery, flag makers began, for example, including European-type heraldic figures and the symbol of the Union Jack in their flag designs.18 The Asafo companies also adopted certain European military practices19 and related imagery began to appear on the flags. To understand these changes as a form of cultural pollution of authentic Fante culture would deny the active agency of the Fante, and ignore their ability to improvise in situations of economic and political change.20 Technological change, such as the introduction of photography, has also altered working procedures. Akwesi Asemtsim and Baba Issaka, the two flag makers who were invited to Belfast, explained to me that they would normally show photographs of flags to their Fante clients, who would look through them and choose a design. They said they sometimes made suggestions if their client was not sure, or made slight alterations to existing designs. They also improvised in reaction to the availability of particular colours and types of cotton material in the local textile market. To produce copies of existing flag imagery they used templates – paper cuttings of specific figures. If they wanted to create radically new designs, they had to ask permission from the Tufohen, the highest authority within the company. When I asked them if they didn’t get bored repeating the same imagery, they laughed and said there was enough variety within the genre. ‘Innovation’ or ‘personal expression’, the aims expressed by the artist George Hughes in his art catalogue (see above), were clearly not what they were after. They said they aimed to produce flags that were ayefie (‘beautiful’), but more importantly, that had the potential to be spiritually powerful and serve the expected function within the context of Asafo company practices. Both flag makers emphasized that the tumwum (spiritual efficacy) of a flag was much more important than its visual attraction or degree of novelty.

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Transit, transition and transformation in Belfast In 2003, the art historian Shan McAnena, curator of the Naughton Art Gallery at Queen’s University Belfast, travelled to Ghana, and with the help of a middleman invited Akwesi and Baba to produce copies of existing flags, to be displayed at the exhibition Talking in Colour: African Flags of the Fante. Coming to Belfast, they brought the commissioned flags with them and stayed for a period of three weeks. The event was paid for by the gallery, which is part of and sponsored by Queen’s University Belfast. The transit of objects, object makers and project managers between Ghana and Northern Ireland, and subsequent processes of transition and transformation, were key elements in the project. Transition was inherent as the value, meaning and emotional efficacy of the flags changed when they were moved across national boundaries into the new social and spatial setting of the art gallery. The objects were recontextualized as static works on display, even though the accompanying texts and a video in the gallery corner21 referred to the ritual meaning of the flag tradition and their use within the context of the Asafo companies. Yet, in line with dominant gallery practices, the flags were primarily exhibited to be looked at, not to be proud of, feared, or danced with. Not surprisingly, local spectators mostly admired the flags for their visual vibrancy. I asked Akwesi and Baba whether they were concerned that sacred objects, normally kept within shrines, were on public display. They assured me that the exhibits had no spiritual power, as they had not gone through the libation ritual. Regarded as makers of objects that were largely admired for their beauty, the flag makers’ position was redefined in the new setting. The exhibition put the spotlight on their skills and ability to make visually attractive artefacts. The aesthetic quality of the flags had been ‘recognized’ by a curator who had the power to spend money on the production and transportation of objects. During interviews, the opening celebration and various photo shots, Akwesi and Baba seemed comfortable (and slightly amused) with their new contextual identity as ‘African artists’. Akwesi and Baba were also paid to participate in a number of community activities in which they produced flags with a number of local groups, including secondary school classes, the residents of old people’s homes, a group of Irish Travellers, women

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from the Northern Irish Patchwork Guild, people with learning difficulties, and others. The official aim was ‘to make flags that [embodied] the spirit of the particular association’ (McAnena, 2003: 10). Before the arrival of the flag makers in Belfast, the gallery had contacted numerous communities, which was in line with Queen’s University’s outreach policy. The aim to make museums more eventful and interactive, stimulating dialogue with the general public, is itself part of a global trend, critical of more authoritative modes of exhibition making (Clifford, 1991; Kuo Wei Tchen, 1992; Peers and Brown, 2003; Myers, 2002: 256). The community part of the project was mainly controlled by employees from the Naughton Art Gallery and the various community workers involved. The series of community events served specific social, educational and political goals, most of all defined by the teachers and social workers. Each time, the position of the flag makers was slightly redefined. During a session with some secondary school children, for example, the teacher framed the event as an opportunity to learn something from the ‘Ghanaian guests’ who would ‘show their culture’. In return, he said, the flag makers could learn something ‘about our culture’. The school was an integrated school, and in the context of the Northern Irish post-conflict situation, it aimed to stimulate peaceful relations between children from Catholic and Protestant communities. Talking about the importance of communication between different communities, he linked the flag project to the official educational aims of the school. Unknowingly, the flag makers, who had little knowledge of local Northern Irish politics, were transformed into agents of reconciliation. They did, however, clearly influence the appearance of the end product, as their technical knowledge of flag making and their idea of what was essential to the genre’s style were crucial. Akwesi and Baba improvised while working on the community flags, as the production process differed in many ways to how they worked at home. Meeting the community groups in various social and spatial settings (classrooms, spaces in community centres, old people’s homes and other locations), they entered as outsiders and were never completely sure of what to expect. In transit, their bodies had become ‘foreign’, and needed introduction by personnel from the Naughton Art Gallery. This situation differed radically from being in their

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own studios, where they were in control as they received and communicated with their customers. Baba and Akwesi clearly had to negotiate their place in each event. In some settings, this was relatively easy. In a classroom, for example, the interaction was highly structured and they recognized the rules of educational practice. In other sites, the procedures were more chaotic (Svašek, 2007: 210–13). Their role partly depended on the interests, aims and skills of the people they encountered. The ladies from the Northern Irish Patchwork Guild, for example, had brought samples of their own work. The flag makers looked with interest at the techniques used by the women, who, in turn, admired the Fante flags for the obvious skill with which they were made. During this meeting, the flag makers acted as individual craftsmen communicating with fellow craftswomen. At the integrated school, by contrast, they acted as educators and symbols of a ‘different culture’. Improvisation was, of course, also necessary on the side of the project organizers and the participants. The final products were the result of complex processes of intercultural translation, in which the participants actively appropriated Fante signifiers, adding their own meaning to existing images and including new ones.

Appropriating Shramantin I was directly involved in the production of a flag for the School of Anthropological Studies at Queen’s University Belfast. The process of decision making clearly demonstrated that intercultural translation and improvisation were central to the working procedure. Baba and Akwesi were introduced to us by an employee of the Naughton Art Gallery, we were then presented with a brief account of the significance of the flag tradition in Ghana, and were shown one of the flags as an example. I had brought the book Asafo! African Flags of the Fante, by Peter Adler and Nicholas Barnard (1992), to find inspiration for our flag design. Having followed the project for a week, I already knew that ‘Size doesn’t matter when the antelope is king’ was a Fante proverb used by smaller Asafo companies that wished to claim strength and superiority. Translating the ‘small-versus-big’ narrative to our local situation, I suggested we could adopt the figure of the

antelope to symbolize the status of anthropology as a relatively small but important discipline within a larger academic field. The flag makers helped us trace the figure on paper, and showed how to pin the paper form to a piece of textile and cut out the cotton animal, subsequently stitching it onto the background cloth that we had chosen earlier. As we were struggling with the technique, Baba and Akwesi gave us further assistance. Looking at the various designs in Adler and Barnard’s book, we were also attracted by what we saw as a stunning image of a long-haired female spirit who was breastfeeding two smaller beings (see Figure 5.4). According to the book, this was Sasabansam or Funtum Yempa, who symbolized the proverb ‘A good spirit always looks after her young’ (Adler and Barnard, 1992: 14). In the context of Asafo company practices, she assured the company’s protection, being ‘a powerful and dangerous bush spirit that protects her friends and destroys her opponents’ (1992: 28–9). When I later read about Fante belief systems in a book written in 1887, I came to the conclusion that the image was more likely the goddess Shramantin, ‘a female deity, also of monstrous size and human shape, with long pendent breasts and long hair’22 (Ellis, 1887: 36–7). The exact name and meaning of the spirit were, however, irrelevant to us. Brainstorming about the appearance of our flag, we looked for signifiers that could be translated into something that symbolized our own aims and predicament as the School of Anthropological Studies. We connected the ‘looking after her young’ element of Shramantin to the responsibilities we had for our students. Regarding the portrayal of our students as suckling babies as inappropriate, we decided to replace them for a globe in the figure’s belly, referring to our belief that knowledge about the world is always embodied. When I later asked one of the participants to provide a written statement about ‘our goddess’, she sent me the following text: The world has been swallowed as a symbol of internalizing knowledge about people and places through human understanding. When we are born, we also come into the womb of a world that is pre-formed and births us socially. Socialization naturalizes and shapes our understanding of ourselves and others. Ideas of people, words, technologies, places and

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cultures in the world form our being. The world resides within the woman representing the procreational capacity to continue the rebirthing of knowledge. Thus, we grasp an understanding of our social selves through revealing and concealing our rules of engagement, our systems of interaction and our processes of communication.

The above makes clear that we had radically reinterpreted and changed the original figure, turning it into a signifier of issues that interested us as anthropologists. Our improvised design, however, did not make much sense to the flag makers, even though they assisted us in its making. As we were working on the figure, I knew that they would not appreciate what might have been seen by some commentators as an act of ‘creative innovation’. A few days earlier, when I had discussed various flag images with Akwesi and Baba, they had stressed that they would never reproduce the image of the female goddess on their flags. As a Christian and a Muslim, they rejected the belief in the protective power of potentially evil supernatural forces, even though they did have faith in the ancestral tumwum of sacralized flags. The flag makers did, however, have no ethical concerns in helping us to portray our version of Shramantin. This was ‘our flag’, and they did not feel any responsibility for its content. Instead, they rather focused on its skilful production and its stylistic resemblance to the Fante flag tradition. They advised us on the use of colours, provided us with the right templates, corrected a mistake I had made when drawing the feet of the female spirit, and finished off the flag for us after the session.23 When I approached George Hughes to make some paintings in response to the Fante flag tradition, I also asked him to incorporate the figure of Shramantin in one of his works. I was interested in comparing his interpretation of the goddess with our own, and wanted to assess his willingness to represent her, as I knew that like Akwesi he was a Christian. Before analysing his visual response to the Fante flag tradition, however, I shall first discuss how discourses of ‘creativity’ have informed George’s professional trajectory. Furthermore, I shall examine how the movement of his own works across national boundaries, and his own travels, have led to transition and transformation.

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‘Creativity’ and the wish to escape market demands I first met George in 1989 when he was doing his Bachelor of Arts degree in painting at the Academy of Arts in Kumasi. At the time, I was an undergraduate student in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Amsterdam, doing research on the development of the art market in the Gold Coast and Ghana. Part of my six months of fieldwork was spent with final year art students in Kumasi, hanging out with them, conducting interviews, photographing their works, and occasionally producing artworks myself. Having been trained as a painter at an Academy of Arts in the Netherlands prior to my anthropology study, I felt very familiar with the atmosphere in the students’ studios and recognized their belief in the importance of ‘creativity’ and the development of ‘personal styles’ that would be recognizable in the competitive global market of contemporary art. Following and interacting with the art students, George struck me as an exceptionally hardworking and talented painter who was passionate about ‘making it’ as a professional artist. My impression was shared by George’s peers and teachers, all of whom felt he was an outstanding student, being extremely productive and versatile as he experimented with different genres, techniques and styles. In the educational setting of the art academy, ‘repetition’ was only encouraged as a necessary route to learning a variety of skills, and was not regarded as a creative act in itself. In the interviews I conducted with the students, their teachers and other academically trained Ghanaian artists, interviewees would often contrast their own creative output with what they saw as the repetitive and purely commercial products of the informally trained ‘wayside artists’, who, they argued, were extremely skilful but not very artistic’24 (Svašek, 1990; 1997). As I argued earlier, this myth of the true artist as ‘free creator, unaffected by outside forces’ must be deconstructed, as art producers always operate within professional fields of power, competing for recognition, status and economic gain (Bourdieu, 1984 [1979], Svašek, 2007: 88–92). Several artists whom I interviewed in Ghana indeed admitted that they had to take consumer demand into account if they wanted to earn enough to survive as painters and sculptors.

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After my return to Europe, I gradually lost touch with most of the people I had met during my Ghanaian fieldwork. However, in 2004 while I was writing Anthropology, Art and Cultural Production, I came up with the idea of analysing the longer-term career path of an African artist. Almost instantly George came to mind, as I had known him as the perfect example of a highly motivated and creative young painter. Having lost personal contact, I googled his name, and to my pleasant surprise, landed straight on his personal website. His CV told me that he was now based in the United States, working as Assistant Professor of Painting at the School of Art at the University of Oklahoma. The same day, I sent him an email, asking him about his attempts in the past fourteen years to become a successful artist. He quickly updated me, sending me images, textual accounts, and scanned reviews of his work. Our productive virtual interaction demonstrated the impact of rapid information flows on connectivity, giving a different face to ‘ethnographic fieldwork’. When asked how he defined ‘creativity’, George sent me the following statement by email in 2008: Creativity is the application of knowledge and/or imagination in new or unexpected ways through the ingenious combination of existing materials, ideas and actions recognizable to an informed audience. The degree of creativity can only be determined and measured by unbiased experts familiar with, and empathetic towards, the historical, cultural and professional attributes of the creator and the creative activity or object.

His definition showed his familiarity with the dominant art historical discourses of creativity, and demonstrated an in-depth knowledge of the functioning of contemporary art worlds. He stressed the importance of novelty, but also recognized the contextual nature of what may be called ‘noveltyperception’, namely, what is new and exciting to one person may be boring, passé or unacceptable to others. In George’s case, the urge for the ‘unexpected’ also stemmed, I suspected, from his experience as an artist working in Ghana, when he had felt highly limited by market demands. The art market consisted mainly of expatriate and tourist buyers, most of whom were interested in images that portrayed exotic Africa. This was a complaint I had heard many times during my fieldwork in

1989/90.25 George emailed me in 2005 that ‘most of the clients wanted art that reminded them of their visit to Ghana, like souvenir-type art’. He noted further that ‘[o]nly few of the European clients were interested in paintings beyond the norm. I wanted to do art that was personal and that had the element of surprise. I wanted to explore new subject matter in new ways that required enough time and isolation’. It is interesting to compare George’s perception of the market limitations to that of the two flag makers. While Akwesi and Baba normally worked in response to the expectations within the setting of Asafo company life, they also produced Fante flags for the global market, as the flags had begun to be commoditized as ‘authentic African art’ in the late twentieth century.26 Both flag makers had reacted to this trend, occasionally selling copies of existing flags to local traders who would sell them on to foreign contacts. The production of the copies for the Naughton Art Gallery was in line with this experience of global markets. The flag makers mainly regarded this new demand from abroad as an opportunity to increase their income. George, by contrast, was in two minds about the expectations of foreign buyers. On the one hand, the market for souvenirs allowed him to survive as an artist, improvising and experimenting within the limitations of the genre (depicting, for example, beach scenes with palm trees and canoes). On the other hand, the market constraints bothered him and his hope to become an internationally renowned contemporary artist, unrestricted by his ‘African identity’, fed his desire to leave the country. Forced to follow his works on their way abroad, he had made the decision to leave. Ironically, while his works were recontextualized as signifiers of ‘traditional Africa’, the artist himself had moved to escape this very image. When comparing the two cases, it is important to note that while the flag makers’ trip to Belfast had been something ‘out of the ordinary’, George’s escape was a major professional step, informed by a strong will to present and sell creative products in the global arena of contemporary art.27

Being creative in ‘the international art scene’ For George, emigrating to the United States proved to be a successful move. It allowed him to transform

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into the person he wanted to be: a productive artist whose work was informed by personal interests and obsessions. Employment as a drawing instructor and later as Assistant Professor of Painting at various universities was essential to his success, as it gave him the financial and social space to make experimental work and socialize with other artists, gallery owners and critics. Like many other émigré African artists George has, however, been confronted with people who expect recognizable ‘African’ images from him, rejecting other work as ‘inauthentic’. In an interview with the American art critic Doran Ross (2001: 54) in the magazine African Arts, the artist reacted to demand saying that ‘[a]uthenticity doesn’t necessarily mean that we should paint what people expect you to paint’. In his series of paintings of old cars made in the late 1990s, any obvious references to his African background were absent. The artist does, however, not avoid African imagery. Acknowledging a wide variety of sources, he noted that ‘[a]s a Fanti from the Akan ethnic group of Ghana, I borrow ideas from my heritage combined with Western and Eastern cultural influence’ (Hughes, 2008: 3). The work ‘Mask’, for example, made in 2008, shows an African woman with a painted face and a shadow that seems to be a second skin. The meaning of his ‘African’ subject matter is often highly ambiguous. In ‘Heritage’, made in the same year, a figure with a cubist face holds a gun, with the photograph of two African women stuck in the barrel. This image stems partly from his interest in ‘the predicaments of humanity such as war, violence and subjugation’(ibid.). As a contemporary artist, George aims to be recognized not only in Africa and the United States, but also in Europe and beyond. So far his work has appeared in exhibitions in Ghana, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. In each of these shows, individual paintings have been recontextualized in accordance with the theme of the exhibition and the intentions of the curators. This process of transition is part and parcel of exhibition making, allowing those in charge to compose and improvise within the context of financial, organizational and spatial constraints. Since 2000, George has also created various art performances, each time transforming himself through theatrical acts in front of live audiences. I shall look closer at a performance George did in 2007, when I invited him to Belfast to participate in the Conference ‘Migrant Art, Artefacts and

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Emotional Agency’. The conference coincided with the book launch of Anthropology, Art and Cultural Production, and since George featured in that book, and I was aiming to include an artistic event in the conference, I suggested that he might come over to Belfast to give a paper about his work and possibly do a performance. Embedded in institutional structures that stimulate interdisciplinary cooperation and work trips abroad, both George and I profited from our positions in the academic field. George managed to get some funding from his university for his trip, and I had enough funds to pay for his hotel stay and a small fee. We were both informed by our previous knowledge and experience of intercultural activities. I was familiar with performance art and had seen photo footage and film fragments of George’s earlier work, and thus made preparations, such as ordering a large frame and looking for students who wanted to act as assistants in the performance. George knew what to expect from a conference setting, having spoken and written about his work on earlier occasions. The performance ‘What You Perceive is What you Conceive’ turned out to be a show in which creative invention and improvisation were key elements. George pointed out in an email message to me in 2008: During my performances I have to accept whatever unfolds as necessary to the overall outcome, whereas in my paintings, I can revise and edit the piece as long as I want before showing it to the audience. The performances often involve several materials, preparation and assistance beyond just paint, canvas and myself. The themes may be similar in my performances and paintings. However it is the expressive and material possibilities that differ. In my performances rather than in my paintings, I have more flexibility in terms of the number of interdisciplinary equipment and collaboration that I can include.

In Belfast, George played with stereotypical ideas about Africans as primitive, tribal beings. He appeared on stage wearing a large wig, a golden mask and a loincloth, his body covered in blue paint (see Figure 5.5). At the start and finish of the performance he screamed loudly, ritually marking its beginning and end. Two mask-wearing assistants (one Spanish and one Italian student) held out

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small robotic dogs to the public to touch in an act of ritual inclusion. Placed on a large canvas, the robots then walked around with paint-dripping cloths tied to their tails. After a few minutes, the canvas was raised and during the remaining 20 minutes, George painted and danced on and off while music of various genres played. The end result was a large painting, showing, amongst other things, a staring eye, a butterfly shape and the word ‘Belfast’. After the performance, the artist answered questions from the public, something he had not planned in advance. In a written statement emailed to me in 2008, he explained: The Belfast performance was an aesthetic discourse probing the significance of the irrational in relation to myths that govern our belief systems. These cultural belief systems often determine how meaning is imputed in our everyday interaction with the environment and also with fellow human beings. The performance presented to the viewer with an encounter outside the expected everyday narrative. By borrowing from specific seemingly unrelated objects and practices of varied cultures, the performance challenges our familiar perceptual route to interpretation and also critiques the validity of the generalization of meaning and how it affects us based on our acquired conception and autonomy. The performance act therefore becomes the bridge to the unknown; to an experience familiar only by the bits and pieces of the visual puzzle, one that is capable of stretching our imagination beyond its chartered boundaries. The hybrid of discordant activities within this performance required the viewer to navigate through plasible and irrational mental flights.

Comparing George’s experience in Belfast with that of Baba and Akwesi, it is interesting to note that, while transit and transformation across national boundaries were inherent parts of George’s career path, for the flag makers this was a completely new experience. George’s experimentation with the unexpected was what he had aimed for. By contrast, Baba and Akwesi’s interaction with the Northern Irish organizers and participants forced them to transform into roles they had not played before. It may be clear though that, in both cases, improvisation was an important part of the production process.

George and the Fante flag experiment When in May 2008, I asked George whether he would make some works on the basis of the Fante flag tradition, he was at first hesitant, saying that whilst living in Ghana, being an urban Fante, he had had no direct experience of that tradition.28 Ironically, he had first seen these flags outside of his home country, when he took part in an exhibition in Bristol at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum. At the time, he had ‘studied their appeal to see what characteristics I could use in my work’ and had ‘even bought several postcards to figure out the essential compositional template, that I could borrow to advance my work’. However, that had been years ago and he was not sure whether he would be motivated by the tradition to create art works. He asked me to send him images of Fante flags so that he could see whether ‘ … maybe … they would ignite some inspiration’. His reply showed that his Fante background did not provide an automatic reason to partake in the project, and that, as an artist, he needed to be captured by the images. In his catalogue Gatherings, he alluded to the necessity of personal enchantment and obsession as a trigger of creative production: ‘In my paintings I am interested in representing the way the mind works: the constant flow of intrusive thoughts that pervade my imagination. This compels me to create a hybrid of imagery carefully edited into pictorial summations’ (Hughes, 2008: 3). I sent him the catalogue of the Talking in Colours exhibition in Belfast and the video of Fante flag making that had been shown in the Naughton Art Gallery. I also promised to try to enthuse the editors of this book to organize an exhibition of his works as part of the book launch in New York. The latter clearly appealed to him; a solo exhibition would enable him to showcase his work and reach a new audience. He emailed in response: if a museum came to me and said we would like you as a Fante of a new generation to do six large paintings using your painting style based on Fante flags, and these paintings will be exhibited in the museum space, I will do it in a heart beat. I will take it as a commission and I will do it. I do not even want to be paid for it, but I will do it because they will show it in a good space and people will see it.

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George’s positive response is not at all surprising as the transit of art works to respected exhibition venues is crucial to the development of artists’ reputations, and often increases their works’ meaning, value and efficacy (Svašek, 2007: 4–5). The proposed project would allow him to engage with a tradition, whilst keeping his much valued creative freedom and liberty to pursue personal obsessions, leaving space for improvisation and innovation. Emphasizing that his works would differ from the conventional flag tradition, he noted that, ‘[t]he audience will also see how much the Fante artist of today may have changed through education (formal and informal)’. Due to time constraints, I could not wait for a decision about a possible exhibition,29 and we decided to exchange our services. George agreed to produce three paintings, and I promised to write a catalogue text for him. This arrangement is a good example of how global connectivity effects cultural production and interaction, and again shows that improvisation is essential. I soon received three attachments with images of the works, entitled ‘Hidden Agendas’, ‘Trophy Seekers’ and ‘Mother Earth’ (see Figures 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3). Explaining his working procedure, George pointed out that that he had used prepared canvases with arbitrary colours to serve as multi-coloured underpaintings, something he did normally as it allowed him ‘the challenge of reconciling the discordant colours’. He had also used the same technique during his performance in Belfast. Commenting on the choice of imagery, he wrote that he had ‘tried to follow the template of the Fanti flags: the pattern margins, the lack of modeling, symmetry/asymmetry, the simplified or stylized proportions of the forms and the central placement of the single form pieces’. When opening the attachments, I was actually quite surprised at how closely he had stayed to the Fante flag format. I had somehow expected him to visually explore the agency of the flags in the Asafo context, i.e., to portray them in movement as spiritually powerful and challenging performing agents. It is possible that his choice to create flag designs partly reflected his lack of direct experience with the Asafo tradition. All he had seen of the ‘flags in action’ were a few fragments in the video I had sent him. Following the format of the flag designs, he had started painting patterns on the edges of the canvasses, and had

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continued painting the central part of the picture. The arbitrary colours of the under-painting, he explained, had ‘suggested certain kinds of imagery’, a technique he often used. In terms of content, the resulting depictions were also related to his existing work. He pointed out that, especially in ‘Hidden Agendas’ and ‘Trophy Seekers’, ‘images had been “gleaned” from relevant subject matter within [his] oeuvre’. His interest in war, violence and subjugation was easily connected to the iconography of the animosity of Fante flags, as in the examples of the-cats-versusthe-rats and the small-but-victorious-antelope (see above). In George’s words, his own paintings depicted ‘extraneous conflicts in life over ownership, property, deceit, etc., ending sometimes in death’. Representing the adversary, he chose subject matter that came to his mind as he was painting. The emerging depictions, showing confrontations between a ‘redcoat’ and a soccer player, and between lion and a rhino, were thus personal improvisations on a given theme. Although he was a Christian, George had no moral objections to the portrayal of a female deity. This carefree attitude was in line with his earlier work. He had frequently painted sensitive images, such as erect and sperm-projecting penises, and had included semi-religious ritual elements in some of his performances. Appropriating Shramantin, he turned her into a signifier of fertility (see Figure 5.3). He commented in an email: ‘The “Mother Earth” represents fertility in relation to procreation. The lamp signifies progress into the future and the fish symbolizes sustenance and good health. Her genitalia are replaced with the “akuaba” doll which to the Fante is a doll that brings fertility to barren women who carry and care for it’. As with the anthropologists’ version of Shramantin, George’s goddess had lost her destructive tendencies and had been transformed into a power that was first and foremost productive. Using well-known Fante symbols such as the akuaba figure and the fish, it is likely that the flag makers Baba and Akwesi would have less problems understanding George’s invention than grasping the ins and outs of the Northern Irish deity. What may be clear though, is that in all cases discussed in this chapter, improvisation was not only required of the producers of the works, but was also a necessary requirement for all those who tried to make sense of the ongoing events.

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Conclusion: global fields of transaction and improvisation The initial question was how globalizing forces stimulate forms of improvisation, and to what extent these processes are controlled, welcomed or criticized by the various actors involved. The different cases showed that while improvisation can be considered a central element in cultural production in contexts of global interaction, the underlying creative aims may differ considerably, and people may have a different sense of ownership over the event. Each case showed that ethnocentric assumptions about creativity and innovation should not be taken at face value, and demonstrated the complexity of global interactions. The discourse of creativity as the product of individuality and innovation, dominant in global fields of contemporary art, has often prioritized artists who strive for personal styles and novel forms of expression, even though relative novelty-perception influences what individual actors in the field regard as new and enchanting.30 Artists who, like George Hughes, strive for innovation but are faced with markets interested in specific genres and repetitive styles, are obviously disadvantaged. The pressure on African artists to improvise within the constraints of a commercially successful genre, dictated by the tourist industry, can be experienced as highly frustrating. In George’s case, this led to his transit to the United States, which proved to be a productive move as he managed to realize himself as a relatively successful internationally-known artist. Evidently, many Africans who have tried the same route have failed, as competition in the art world is extremely tough. Artists like George profit from transit across regional, national and intercontinental boundaries. It is highly relevant that global connectivity has become a defining feature of communication within academic fields, and that the call for interdisciplinarity has stimulated a transnational interaction between academics and artists from different parts of the globe. Access to funding is crucial, and obviously those with more permanent or influential positions in local universities, museums and cultural institutions have a greater change to organize and shape international cultural events. As exemplified by George’s performance in Belfast, the different partners may have similar ideas about the project’s aims and outcomes, and both may build on an earlier

experience and knowledge of particular types of transnational cultural and creative activities. Not surprisingly, this may increase their sense of ownership, as was the case with George’s presence in Belfast. If, in addition, both make a financial contribution and contribute with specific social, symbolic and cultural capital, the distribution of power within the context of the unfolding event is likely to be relatively equal. One of the partners may also, however, be unfamiliar with the setting to which he or she is invited, and feel inferior or insecure due to insufficient economic means and a lack of insider knowledge. Expected to take on new roles and identities, the invitee may get confused or feel insulted. Furthermore, products in transit or those resulting from the interaction may be (re)contextualized in offensive ways. The risk of misunderstanding must, of course, be avoided, and ethical guidelines must be followed, making sure that all partners involved are treated with respect and receive both acknowledgment and economic reward for their input in the project. This also implies that the organizers of transnational events and policy makers who finance such intentions should not use the sloganlike rhetoric of ‘creative innovation’ blindly, but rather, must pay attention to the different aims and working procedures of their partners. In my view, the organizers of the Talking in Colours project respected Baba and Akwesi’s professional views, and managed to make them feel at ease in their new working environment. Despite some confusion about their payment and sporadic complaints about the workload, they seemed happy with the arrangement. To them, the project provided an occasion to make money and increase their reputation at home as flag makers with foreign experience, whose work was appreciated outside Ghana. As the flags they exhibited in public lacked tumwum, and they felt no responsibility for the ‘strange’ innovations on the community flags, they had no major problems with the ways in which the flags and the flag making process were appropriated. To the Northern Irish participants, re-interpreting elements of the Fante flag tradition and combining them with known symbols was a playful way of interacting with the flag makers and each other, as well as of reflecting on their group identity. To everyone involved, the project offered an experience of intercultural translation, forcing individuals to think beyond the local. Improvisation and personal interpretation were central to the process.

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Notes 1

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Early records of the flag tradition can be found in reports by European traders and travellers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is, however, likely that the tradition was much older, and that it was related to the arrival of Portugese, Dutch and British ships in West Africa in the fifteenth century, which triggered Fante interest in European military flag traditions (Adler and Barnard, 1992; Labi, 2002). The exposure to Western style art movements and ‘isms’ led to the establishment of several African ‘isms’, such as Ulism and Onaism in Nigeria (Adejumo, 2002: 185). I make a distinction here between indirect exposure, through reproductions in books, catalogues and on the Internet, and direct exposure through face-to-face confrontations with art works, performances and artists. This is generally the case, despite postmodern claims by some artists and critics that undermine notions of authenticity and artistic genius. For a detailed analysis, see Svašek (2007). The theory also claimed that, within Europe, some were more civilized than others. The Irish, for example, were regarded as less civilized, and men and the higher classes were thought to be higher on the evolutionary ladder that women and the lower classes (Svašek, 2007: 16, 48). The Encyclopaedia Britannica, for example, claimed in 1884 that ‘No full-blooded Negro has ever been distinguished as a man of science, a poet, or as an artist (vol. XVII: 318, quoted by Jordan and Weedon, 1995: 286), and the anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon (1894: 271–2) argued in The Decorative Art of British New Guinea that, although certain objects made by the natives showed ‘loving, tender work’ and ‘infinite labour expended with observation’, and in various cases ‘intellects finding the crafty hands’ produced results that he regarded ‘with amazement and hope’, further progression would only be possible ‘if the white man is content to lead them onwards’. Instead of acknowledging that traditions are always changing and that ‘art’ itself is a historically specific and changing discourse and practice, universalist definitions of art were used for comparative analysis. ‘The difference between improvisation and innovation, then, is not that the one works within established convention while the other breaks with it, but that the former characterizes creativity by way of its process, the latter by way of its products’ (Ingold and Hallam, 2007: 2). I began developing this approach in my book Anthropology, Art and Cultural Production (2007), which introduced the terms ‘transit’ and transition’. In the context of this chapter, I have added the concept of ‘transformation’, as my focus here is not only on moving objects and images, but also on moving object/image producers. Transit can take place on levels of local, national and transnational interaction. In this chapter, I am particularly interested in transit across national boundaries.

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This perspective combines my interest in processes of signification, power and emotional agency, outlined in Anthropology, Art and Cultural Production (Svašek, 2007). On the notion of objects as active agents, see Gell (1998). See also Svašek (2007), Chapter 8. He visited Christiansborg Castle after the victory of the Fante General Akwamu over the Danish. The Fante have been regarded by anthropologists as a classic example of ‘double descent’, as they are politically organized along matrilineal ties, while their military system is organized through patrilineal affiliation (Christensen, 1954). At times, new companies have been formed with some of their names referring to particular historical circumstances. One of the seven companies of Cape Coast was, for example, called Brohfo n’ koa, meaning ‘white man’s slaves’ because ‘it was originally composed of men who were employed in various capacities by Europeans’ (Ellis, 1887: 279). For more information on the structure and functioning of the Asafo companies, see Christensen, 1954; McCarthy, 1983; Meyerowitz, 1974: 87–93; Sarbah, 1968; Svašek, 2007: 196–98. The latter are perceived by the Fante as highly intelligent animals, and the company that had produced the flag clearly associated themselves with them. Some commentators claim that the Asafo companies only started using flags after their encounters with Europeans. Major A.B. Ellis, for example, who spent part of his working life in the Gold Coast Colony, noted that ‘[e]very company possess a number of drums of various sizes (…), and those of the tribes living under British rule have company flags, a custom borrowed from Europeans’ (1887: 279). These included marching in procession, and regimental colours, numbers, names and mottos. James Christensen rightly argued that ‘[w]hile the influence of the European powers along the coast on the culture of the Fante cannot be dismissed, it is felt that the company system is an outgrowth of the military tradition of the Akan, and not a copy of the European military pattern’ (1954: 108; see also DeGraft Johnson, 1932: 309–10). This was the documentary Fante Flags South Bank Show. Flags of the Fante Coast produced in 1995 by Tony Knox. ‘Her colour is white. She is never found except in or among silk-cotton trees. Like Sasabonsum, Shramantin also waylays and seizes solitary wayfarers, but she does not devour them. She keeps them for four or five months, and then returns them to their respective villages, after which they become priests and priestesses of Shramantin, who is believed to have taught them the mysteries of her worship. A day, said to be about the middle of July, is set apart as sacred to Shramantin. A sheep is sacrificed, the ground at the foot of the bombax [silk-cotton tree] cleared of underwood and weeds, and the tree smeared with the blood of the sacrifice’ (Ellis, 1887: 36–7).

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I had drawn the feet in opposite directions, whereas in the design in Adler’s book, the feet pointed in the same direction. This category included sculptors who produced solely for the tourist market, and painters who painted portraits and advertising boards on commission. Numerous researchers have identified the limiting impact of tourist demands on the creative possibilities of cultural producers in economically disadvantaged positions, although certain artisans and artists have also pushed the boundaries, creating new and successful genres and styles (Jules-Rosette, 1984; Morphy, 1995; Myers, 2002; Steiner, 1994). Commoditized as ‘African art’ since the 1980s, Fante flags have been sold to African middlemen, to galleries in North America and Europe directly, and through the Internet (Svašek, 2007: 206–7). Feeding the desire to

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possess ‘authentic’ objects, old worn and visibly used flags are the most expensive. The existence of ‘contemporary art’ as a global arena of interaction amongst creative and innovative individuals is, of course, itself an outcome of globalizing processes (Svašek, 2007: 116). He later said in reply to one of my questions about his Fante background: ‘I have no connections with the patrilineal asafo, and have not participated in any of the Fante flag parades’. The Cultures and Globalization project budget is very limited, hence the organization of such an exhibition cannot be envisaged. In my understanding, postmodern strategies of borrowing and pastiche also fall into this category, as artists who follow this working procedure mostly aim for an oeuvre that is personally recognizable.

REFERENCES

Adejumo, C. (2002) ‘African art: new genres and transformational philosophies’, in T. Falola and C. Jennings (eds), Africanizing Knowledge: African Studies Across the Disciplines. New Brunswick: Transaction. pp. 165–90. Adler, P. and Barnard, N. (1992) Asafo! African Flags of the Fante. London: Thames and Hudson. Appadurai, A. (1986) ‘Introduction: commodities and the politics of value’, in A. Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 3–63. Binkley, D.A. and Darish, P.J. (1998) ‘Enlightened but in darkness’: interpretations of Kuba art and culture at the turn of the twentieth century’, in E. Schildkrout and C.A. Keim (eds), The Scramble for Art in Central Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boas, Franz (1955[1927]) Primitive Art. New York: Dover. Bourdieu, Pierre 1984[79] Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Calinescu, M. (1987) Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Durham: Duke University Press. Christensen, J. (1954) Double Descent Among the Fanti. New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files. Clifford, J. (1988) The Predicament of Culture: TwentiethCentury Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Clifford, James (1991) ‘Four Northwest Coast Museums: Travel Reflections’ in Exhibiting Cultures. The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (ed. Ivan Karp and Steven D.

Lavin) Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution, pp. 212–54. DeGraft Johnson, J.C. (1932) ‘The Fanti Asafu’, Africa, 5: 307–22. Ellis, A.B. (1887) The Tshi-Speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast of West Africa: Their Religion, Manners, Customs, Laws, Language, Etc. London: Chapman and Hall. Errington, S. (1998) The Death Of Authentic Art and Other Tales of Progress. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fabian, J. (1983) Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object. New York: Columbia University Press. Forge, A. (ed.) (1973) Primitive Art and Society. London: Oxford University Press. Gell, A. (1998) Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon. Goldfarb Marquis, Alice (1991) The Art Biz. The Covert World of Collectors, Dealers, Auction Houses, Museums, and Critics. Chicago: Contemporary Books. Greenberg, C. (1935) ‘Avant Garde and Kitsch’ quoted by Goldfarb Marquis 1991. Haddon, A.C. (1894) The Decorative Art of British New Guinea. A Study in Papuan Ethnography. Dublin: The Academic House. Haddon, A.C. (1895) Evolution in Art. As Illustrated by the Life-histories of Designs. London: Walter Scott. Hallam, E. and Ingold, T. (eds) (2007) Creativity and Cultural Improvisation. Oxford: Berg. Hughes, G. (2008) Gatherings. Available at Blurb.com Ingold, T. and Hallam, E. (2007) ‘Creativity and cultural improvisation: an introduction’, in E. Hallam and Creativity and

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Cultural Improvisation. T. Ingold and E. Hallam (eds), Oxford: Berg. pp. 1–24. Jordan, Glenn and Weedon, Chris (1995) Cultural Politics: Class, Gender, Race and the Postmodern World. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Kempers, B. (1992[1987]) Painting, Power and Patronage: The Rise of the Professional Artist in the Italian Renaissance (transl. from the Dutch by Beverley Jackson). London: Allen Lane. Kuo Wei Tchen, John (1992) ‘Creating a Dialogic Museum. The Chinatown History Museum Experiment’, in: Museums and Communities. The Politics of Public Culture. Karp, Ivan, Mullen Kraemer, Lavine, Stephen D. eds. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 285–326. Labi, K.A. (2002) ‘Fante Asafo flags of Abandze and Kormantse’, African Arts, 35 (4): 28–37. McAnena, S. (2003) ‘Introduction’, in Naughton Art Gallery (ed.), Talking in Colour: African Flags of the Fante. Belfast: Queen’s University Belfast. pp. 5–8. McCarthy, M. (1983) Social Change and the Growth of British Power in the Gold Coast: The Fante States 1807–1874. Lanham: University Press of America. Meyerowitz, E. (1974) The Early History of the Akan States of Ghana. London: Red Candle.

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Morphy, H. and Perkins, M. (eds) (2006) The Anthropology of Art: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Myers, Fred R. (2002) Painting Culture. The Making of an Aboriginal High Art. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Peers, Laura and Brown, Alison K. (eds) (2003) Museums and Source Communities: A Routledge Reader. London and New York: Routledge. Price, S. (1989) Primitive Art in Modern Places. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ross, Doran (2001) ‘George Hughes: Portfolio’. African Arts 34(1). Sarbah, J. M. (1968) Fanti Customary Laws. London: Frank Cass and Co. Svašek, M. (1990) ‘Creativiteit, commercie en ideologie: moderne kunst in Ghana, 1900–1990’. Unpublished MA thesis, University of Amsterdam. Svašek, M. (1997) ‘Identity and style in Ghanaian artistic discourse’, in J. MacClancy (ed.), Contesting Art: Art, Politics and Identity in the Modern World Oxford: Berg. pp. 27–61. Svašek, M. (2007) Anthropology, Art and Cultural Production. London: Pluto. Wolff, J. (1981) The Social Production of Art, London: MacMillan. Zolberg, V. (1990) Constructing a Sociology of Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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CHAPTER 6 DIASPORIC SPACES: MIGRATION, HYBRIDITY AND THE GEOCULTURAL TURN Keith Nurse

and practices facilitate aesthethic innovation as well as socio-political change in both receiving and sending countries.

Introduction

The growth of diasporas is a key feature of contemporary globalization and represents an important geocultural shift because of the demographic and political impacts of international migration. However, its significance and potential for social change and transformation are largely unmapped. This chapter analyses the expansion and export of popular cultures from the Caribbean and Latin America to the North Atlantic using two case studies. The first is of the manner in which Latin music, particularly reggaeton, has risen to prominence and influences a Latino and worldwide youth audience. The second examines how diasporic Caribbean carnivals have become the world’s most transnational festival. The author concludes by arguing that diasporic cultural expressions

The intersection of globalization and diasporas in our time has led to new geo-economic, political, social and cultural spaces that link societies in the South to the North Atlantic, particularly through global cities such as New York, Miami, Toronto, London, Paris, Madrid and Amsterdam. Growing global diasporas (Cohen, 2008) and transnational identities facilitate new modes of transnational living (Guarnizo, 2003) that in effect transcend the boundaries of nation-states and hybridize cultural identities long associated with specific national cultures. As such, the concept of diasporic spaces breaks out of the confines of methodological nationalism (approaches that privilege nationstates as the bounded containers of culture) and instead embraces ‘the intersectionality of diaspora, border, and dis/location as a point of confluence of economic, political, cultural and psychic processes’ (Brah, 1996: 208). In this framework, diasporic spaces are ‘inhabited, not only by those who have migrated and their descendants, but equally by those who are constructed and represented as indigenous’ (Brah, 1996: 209). The literature on globalization and global culture tends to focus more on the recent acceleration in the flows of technology, goods and resources and less on the movement of people (Ho and Nurse, 2005; Nurse, 2004b). It also sees global flows principally in a North-to-South or core-to-periphery direction. In this sense much of the literature on global culture does not capture the tremendous impact of migration and the growth of contemporary diasporas on the North, or what Patterson (1994: 109) calls the ‘extraordinary process of peripheryinduced creolization in the cosmopolis’. In effect, what Patterson is arguing is that ‘culturally, the

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periphery is greatly influenced by the societies of the core, but the reverse is also the case’ and as a consequence it is critical to examine the counter flow, the periphery-to-core cultural flows. The literature on migration is dominated by the immigration concerns of the main receiving territories and at the same time erases the contribution of migration to the now developed countries. Hence my aim in this chapter is to offer a view from the periphery by focusing on the new modes of insertion of the labour-exporting societies and the impacts in terms of cultural expressions. I shall relate the migration of labour in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to global cultural change by asking what the impact is of (to coin a neologism) ‘diasporization’ on the export and reproduction of popular cultures in the North Atlantic. I shall explore this key question by looking specifically at the contributions of diasporic communities and cultural expressions from the Caribbean and Latin America to the societies of the North Atlantic. The diasporic experience of the Caribbean and Latin America provides for an engaging case study since these regions are ‘twice diasporized’: they are both points of arrival for the immigration of peoples, both forced and voluntary, from Europe, Africa, and Asia for the last five hundred years, as well as points of departure for emigration to receiving societies in North America and Europe that began in the twentieth century (Cohen, 2008). In the context of these migratory flows, regions have developed a capacity to engage modernity and globalization creatively and politically by drawing upon indigenous and imported folk, religious and oral traditions, as a source of cultural identity while participating in the dominant global culture. Therefore, in the cultural expressions of the region, one can say that there are no pure forms and that everything is hybridized or the result of the confluence of several cultural traditions, thereby exhibiting tendencies of double consciousness (Gilroy, 1993). Diasporization is also a highly politicized process on account of the issues of race and ethnic relations (e.g., multiculturalism), especially in the context of high unemployment and slower economic growth in the major receiving economies. Geopolitical and foreign policy relations between receiving and sending countries have been heightened in the post-Cold War context and in

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the wake of the September 11 attack on the USA. However, while there are discontinuities in the diasporization process there are also continuities in terms of how ‘imagined’ and ‘encountered’ spaces are defined. For example, Eriksen (2007: 149) makes the point that: Far from being the fragmented and alienated people one might expect migrants to be, given their ambiguous political and cultural position, they tend, broadly, to reproduce important aspects of their original culture in the new setting. This is often met with animosity in sections of the majority population, who may insist that the newcomers do their best to ‘adapt’ to the host society; but at the same time, this option is often closed to immigrants who face discrimination and differential treatment from the majority.

From this perspective, the salience of diasporization to the global culture debate resides in the fact that with the movement of people has arisen the movement of cultures, particularly popular cultures and forms of expressions. Guarnizo (2003: 667) argues that these cross-border relations ‘emerge, both wittingly and unwittingly, from migrant’s drive to maintain and reproduce their social milieu of origin from afar’.

Latin popular music and the rise of reggaeton A key area of cultural expressions that has benefited from and accelerated the diasporization process has been popular music. In recent years Latin music has experienced a rapid growth in popularity. The music market in Latin America was estimated at US $663.3 million in 2005 and music sales are dominated by three territories: Brazil, Mexico and Argentina account for over 60 per cent of the market. In the US market Latin music sales increased from $550 million in 2002 to a peak of $753 million in 2005, then declining to $464 million in 2007 on account of piracy and Internet downloading and the general downturn in regional economies (IFPI, 2008). A key feature of the growth of Latin popular music in the USA, which is the main location for the Latin diaspora, is demographic shifts in the United States. The US’s Hispanic population, the largest

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minority in the country, was estimated to be 35.3 million or 12.5 per cent of the total US population in 2000 and is forecast to double in share by 2050. Most of this population are concentrated in six states: California and Texas account for 50 per cent; New York, Florida, Illinois and Arizona share 25 per cent; and Puerto Rico has approximately 12 per cent. The Hispanic population is relatively young – half are under 24 years of age compared to 35 per cent in the non-Hispanic population (US Census Bureau, 2007). The regional geography also underscores the market shares among the various genres of Latin music. At 60 per cent of the US Latin population it is no wonder that Tejano and regional Mexican music accounts on average for between 50 and 60 per cent of the Latin music market. The other key genres are Latin pop/rock with 23 per cent and tropical (e.g., merengue) with 13 per cent. A new designation has been created recently to capture the rise of Latin urban music with 8 per cent of the market (IFPI, 2008). Beyond demographics, the growth of Latin music can be credited to the increased popularity of art forms and genres within the diaspora and in the mainstream. Much recent growth can be attributabed to the meteoric rise of reggaeton music: an urban fusion of Jamaican reggae, African American hip-hop and Puerto Rican bomba and salsa. Accordingly, it is observed that ‘reggaeton artists don’t rap their lyrics in Spanish but in Borinquen, a Puerto Rican Spanish Creole with a tempo similar to Jamaican patois’ (Meschino, 2005: 53). Top reggaeton artists like Puerto Rican superstars Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, and Tego Calderon, building on the success in the 1990s of the Panamanian artist El General, have been able to break out of so-called ethnic markets to achieve worldwide appeal and sales. In recent years the Billboard Latin Music Awards have been dominated by reggaeton artists like Daddy Yankee who was the top seller in 2005 with his mega-hit single ‘Gasolina’ from the album ‘Barrio Fino’, which had multiple platinum awards for sales over 500,000 units in several countries, from Australia to the USA. New genres like reggaeton and the impact that they have generated are part of a long history of transnational engagement by Latin American and Caribbean cultural expressions. As Quintero (2007: 91) argues:

Latino youth cultural expressions – salsa during the 1970s and Latin jazz, hip-hop, and reggaeton nowadays, all of them marked by ties to black U.S. culture … have shown on a regional, continental, and even worldwide level, the value of heterogeneity and difference. They have resisted powerful homogenizing forces and through their expression of different ways of thinking and feeling, offered the possibility of another kind of human interaction. This is the source of the worldwide popularity of their dances, in which myth, history, and daily life intertwine in polyrhythmic intimations of utopia.

The diasporization of popular music generates new geocultural spaces that connect both the home and the receiving countries. This is the case because most of the contemporary migrants to the North are subaltern groups from peripheral economies and societies and their different cultural expressions are often racialized and marginalized first in the sending countries and later in the new host societies. For reggaeton the home conditions exhibited tendencies not unlike those of popular music forms from the Caribbean. Meschino notes that ‘comparable to the views of many Jamaicans towards dancehall reggae, older upscale Puerto Ricans initially regarded reggaeton contemptuously because of its ghetto roots and gritty depiction of life in the barrio where the music existed exclusively for several years’ (p. 53). Abroad, the major recording labels avoided signing reggaeton artists because of this image. However today, with a growth in sales, major labels like the Universal Music Group are targeting the Latino youth market through the same reggaeton music. The resistance component of the popular music allows for these groups to ‘talk back’ to the hegemonic groups – but on their own terms. It is the popularity of these modes of cultural expression that ultimately allows for the commercialization of art forms. What this illustrates is that diasporization extends or transnationalizes the home market and creates opportunities for diasporic exports and even a potential entry into mainstream markets. In sum, the reproduction of diasporic cultural identities generates a transnational engagement by artists and cultural entrepreneurs from the sending societies or by those from the receiving countries, whether diasporic in ownership or not.

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Table 6.1

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The economic impact of diasporic Caribbean carnivals

Diasporic carnivals

Attendance

Festival expenditures

Caribana, Toronto Labour Day, New York Notting Hill, London

1 million 3.5 million 2 million

Cnd$200 million US$300 million Stg£93 million

Source: Nurse, 2004a

The diasporic Caribbean carnivals

People carnivalling and playing marse in Brooklyn; they playing marse in Montreal, in Toronto and Miami, they playing marse in Calgary, and in Antigua, in St. Lucia, and Jamaica; they playing marse in New York and Notting Hill, moving and moving and in the moving they throwing out the seeds that defying the holding in the ships crawling across the Atlantic. (Phillip, 1998: 135)

The term ‘marse’ or ‘mas’ is a contraction of the word masquerade. It is a word invented in the Trinidad carnival experience and used to depict a range of carnival-related activities. For example, associated terms are ‘play mas’ – to join a mas band; ‘mas camp’ – the headquarters of mas bands where costumes are made; ‘pretty mas’ – costumes that depict the colourful and fanciful side of life; and ‘jouvay’ mas – emphasizing the emancipatory side of carnival as distinct from pretty mas. The term ‘mas’ is even embedded in the copyright laws of Trinidad and Tobago under the title of ‘works of mas’. These masquerading traditions have been exported way beyond the shores of Trinidad to almost every major city in North America and Europe. Best estimates are that there are over 70 Caribbean-inspired carnivals that are, in large part, modelled after the one found in Trinidad. In each respective site it is the largest festival or event in terms of attendance and the generation of economic activity. For instance, Notting Hill carnival in London attracts over two million people over two days of activities and generates between £20–30 million in visitor expenditures: as such it is considered to be the largest festival of popular

culture in Europe. Labour Day in New York and the Caribana festival in Toronto are similarly the largest events in the USA and Canada, respectively (see Table 6.1 above for further details). As such, the diasporic Caribbean carnivals are arguably ‘the world’s most popular transnational celebration’ (Manning, 1990: 36). These carnivals have grown rapidly since the early 1990s and are now the largest street festivals and generators of economic activity in their respective locations (see Table 6.1). The Notting Hill carnival, with over two million people attending in a couple of days, generates over £93 million in audience and visitor expenditures. Similarly, the Labour Day carnival in New York earns US$300 million, while the Caribana festival in Toronto generates CND$200 million. The globalization of the Trinidad carnival is directly related to the spread and expansion of a Caribbean diaspora in the North Atlantic, especially after the Second World War, in response to the demand for cheap immigrant labour. Organized by the diasporic Caribbean communities, these diasporic carnivals have come to symbolize the quest for a ‘psychic, if not physical return’ to an imagined ancestral past (Nettleford, 1988: 197) and the search for a ‘panCaribbean unity, a demonstration of the fragile but persistent belief that “All o’ we is one”’ (Manning, 1990: 22). In the UK alone, there are as many as 30 carnivals that fall into this category. They are held during the summer months rather than in the pre-Lenten or Shrovetide period associated with the Christian calendar. The main parade routes are generally through a city centre or within the confines of the immigrant community – the former is predominant, especially with the larger carnivals (Nurse, 1999). Like their parents, these diasporic carnivals are hybrid in their form and influence. The Jonkonnu

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masks of Jamaica and the Bahamas are evident in many of these carnivals, thereby making them panCaribbean in scope. Over time the carnivals have also incorporated carnivalesque traditions from other immigrant communities: South American (e.g., Brazilian and Colombian), African and Asian. For instance, it is not uncharacteristic to see Brazilian samba drummers and dancers parading through the streets of London, Toronto or New York during Notting Hill, Caribana or Labour Day. The European populations have not only become participants, largely as spectators, but also appear increasingly as festival managers, masqueraders and steelpan players. Another development is that the art forms and celebratory traditions of the diasporic Caribbean carnivals have been borrowed, appropriated or integrated into European carnivals. Indeed, in some instances, the European carnivals have been totally transformed or ‘colonized’. Examples of this are the Bradford, Barrow-inFurness and Luton carnivals, where there is a long tradition of British carnival. One also finds a similar trend taking place in carnivals in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden, as they draw inspiration from the success of the London Notting Hill carnival (Nurse, 2004a). Growth in the number and size of these diasporic Caribbean carnivals came in two waves. The first wave involved the consolidation of the early carnivals during the 1960s until the mid-1970s. From the mid1970s onwards two parallel developments took place: the early carnivals expanded in size by broadening the appeal of the festival (for example, through the introduction of sound systems playing reggae or house music), and a number of smaller carnivals also emerged as satellites to the larger, older ones. The diasporic Caribbean carnivals have developed in to a means to promote cultural identity and socio-political integration within the Caribbean diasporic community as well as with the host society. The diversity in participation suggests that these carnivals have become multicultural or polyethnic festivals (Cohen, 1993). From another perspective, it has been argued that such diasporic carnivals reflect rather than contest institutionalized social hierarchies. In each of the major diasporic carnivals the festival has been represented in ways that reproduce the colonialist discourse of ‘race’, gender, nation and empire (Bhabha, 1994). The diasporic festival has suffered from racial and sexual stigmas and stereotypes in

the media, which are based on constructions of ‘otherness’ and ‘blackness’. This situation becomes heightened as these carnivals become larger and therefore more threatening to the prevailing order. In the early phase, from the mid-1960s to the mid1970s, the carnivals were viewed as exotic, received little if any press coverage, and were essentially tolerated by the state authorities. From the mid-1970s, as attendance at the festivals enlarged, these became more menacing and policing such events escalated, resulting in a backlash from the immigrant Caribbean communities. These modes of representation have come in tandem with heightened surveillance mechanisms from the state and the police. In the case of London, the expenditure by the state on the policing of a festival will be several times larger than its contribution to the staging of the festival. The politics of cultural representation has negatively affected the viability of such diasporic carnivals. Adverse publicity and racialized stigmas of violence, crime and disorder have allowed for a blockage on investment from the public and private sectors, in spite of the fact that these events have proven to be violence-free relative to other large public events or festivals. Under increased surveillance the carnivals became more contained and controlled during the 1980s. However, by the 1990s the perspective of governments, business leaders and the media began changing when it was recognized that these were major tourist attractions and generated significant media impact and destination branding returns. In each of the major global cities the mayor would be the chosen person to officially open the festivities. Increasingly the political elites will speak of the carnivals as a mainstay and a source of pride for the relevant cities. For instance, the former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, in the foreword to a report commissioned by the Greater London Authority in 2003, is recorded as saying that: The Notting Hill Carnival is here to stay and therefore the true value of this report lies in its adoption of a long-term strategic approach to the Carnival’s development as a major London event that continues to be the subject of international recognition and acclaim. (GLA, 2004: 6)

From the mid-1990s, as one analyst puts it, the carnivals have been reduced to a few journalistic

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essentials: ‘the policing and control of the crowd, the potential for violence, the weather, island images, the size of the crowd, the city economy and, most recently, the great potential benefit for the provincial tourist industry’ (Gallaugher, 1995: 402). In this respect one can argue that the sociopolitical and cultural conflicts based on ‘race’, class, gender, ethnicity, nation and empire embedded in the Trinidad carnival were transplanted to the diasporic context. In many ways these diasporic carnivals have become trapped between the negative imagery of stigmas and stereotypes, the co-optive strategies of capitalist and state organizations, and the desires of the carnivalists for official funding and validation. For the host societies, in both North America and Europe, the diasporic Caribbean carnival allows for an open and public display of the socioeconomic and politico-cultural tensions that exist between the organs of oppression (i.e., the state, police, media, church, schools) and the Caribbean population. The carnivalesque aesthetic and politics will then confront the hegemonic discourse and modes of representation as they relate to stereotypes dealing with ‘race’, sexual behaviour and criminal activity. At one level it has forced multiculturalism onto the agenda. In other ways, it illustrates still how little things have changed in terms of the hegemonic colonialist discourse and imperialist structures.

Conclusion There is no denying that popular cultures have empowered diasporic communities through an expansion of geo-cultural space. The above cases (reggaeton and the diasporic Caribbean carnivals) illustrate the clash of social interests, the proverbial struggle between popular forces and the powerbloc. What they also illustrate is that such antagonisms and contestations propel creativity and innovation in the popular art forms. It can be observed that as a particular art form or genre becomes captive to the market or excluded from some space the popular culture morphs into new forms or establishes new arenas for engagement. In short, it can be argued that popular cultures have

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a life cycle of artistic creation, identity formation, commodification and re-creation. Diasporic cultures, often embodied in popular cultures, employ an ‘aesthetic of resistance’ that confronts and subverts hegemonic modes of representation and thus acts as a counter-hegemonic tradition to the geocultural constructions embodied in notions of empire, nation, class, ‘race’, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity (Shohat and Stam, 1994). It is on this basis that Powell (2002: 15) argues that: Black diasporal cultures are characterized by forms that are not only alternative to mainstream counterparts, but proactive and aggressive in their desire to articulate, testify, and bear witness to that cultural difference.

What is described here is the aestheticization of politics and the politicization of aesthetics (Cohen, 1993). As such popular culture is one of the most accurate representations of the modern condition as it allows for the unmasking of hidden transcripts and agendas (Scott, 1990). The popular cultures analysed in this chapter are an expression of what Stuart Hall (1997) calls the ‘redemptive move’ associated with most diasporic cultures that are ‘born of traveling, rupture, appropriation, loss, exile’. Hall also makes the point that popular cultures are always contested because they operate in a contradictory space of resistance and incorporation, social protest and commercialization (Hall, 1992). In this sense, the popular cultures of the diaspora are not just an aesthetic and commercial space where artistic expressions and psychic and bodily pleasures are enacted, represented and marketed. It is also an arena where social values and meaning are put on public display and negotiated. From this standpoint popular cultures are liberatory and emancipatory, not in the sense of outright victory but in the sense of facilitating dialogue and discourse between groups as well as within groups. This is why Hall (1992) encourages us to move away from the ‘essentializing of difference’ through the construction of simple binary oppositions, to focus on ‘cultural positionality’ where the emphasis is on appreciating the ‘dialogic strategies and hybrid forms essential to the diaspora aesthetic’ (1992: 29).

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Proxy servers: contemporary art practices in service economies

The service, or so-called hospitality, industries are among the fastest growing in the global economy. For example, in the United Kingdom between 2004 and 2005 more than 130,000 people from Eastern Europe registered to work, most of them in hospitality, catering, and so on. These figures reflect only those persons who are legally documented, but they are also indicative of the areas where unregistered workers will find casual employment. Migrant workers, both legal and illegal, are most often employed in service industries regardless of their professional qualifications or skills acquired in their home countries. In this context, it is possible to consider international artists as transient labourers, as they create new work for biennials and exhibitions on opposite sides of the world. In 1994, Andrea Fraser proposed the phrase ‘artistic service provision’ as a descriptor of these practices.1 Today these kinds of projects, in which the artwork itself is produced and consumed at the same time, are even more prevalent. One of the myths of avant-garde aesthetic practice is the illusion that artists freely determinine their practice, producing what they want, where they want — in other words, for their own interests. In artistic service provision the production of ‘prestige value’ is replaced with ‘social use value’. However, even if we subscribe to the fantasy of artists as self-employed agents, they are not employed to serve either themselves or their own interests. When the artist seeks to challenge dominant ideological paradigms, the motivating interests of art institutions, current political agendas and market forces exercise a determining influence on the dissemination and reception of their work. Service labourers do not consume the services they provide. These services are increasingly associated with the struggles of cultural or ethnic others. Embracing the social use value of art does not necessarily free artists from exploitation. In fact, they are increasingly invited to create work precisely because of their perceived interests as social subjects. It is these interests which make it appropriate for artists to be dispatched to address the needs of particular communities, such as migrants. Through public funding policies, museum outreach initiatives, community regeneration strategies, and so on, contemporary art is being instrumentally applied. Although many ‘socially and politically engaged’ artists now employ ethnographic techniques, their own agency as labourers has much in common with the dilemmas of migrant service workers.2 Their services may draw attention to hegemonic systems of exchange, but do the terms of their participation help sustain the very system that they critique? In the globalized art market, establishing oneself as an ‘international artist’ has become synonymous with migrant working practices. While many artists continue to exhibit existing works, a key part of international practice includes participation in biennials and art fairs where they are frequently asked to respond to a specific theme or brief which, more often than not, means responding to local conditions. Of course, art can and does activate communities socially, politically, intellectually and aesthetically, within and in spite of hegemonic systems of control. The global distribution of creative labour, and how we evaluate its ‘service’ to society, also produce the conditions for our politics. But does the interest in as well as the interests of artist practices transform the demands of social and political agendas, if not transcend the vested interests of the market? Cylena Simonds

Notes for Box 6.1 1 2

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Fraser, A. (n.d.) ‘How to provide an artistic service: an introduction’, Engaging Infrastructure, Drawing oN Air (dna) website, available at http://adaweb.com For more on the use of ethnographic strategies in contemporary art see Foster, H. (1996) ‘The artist as ethnographer’, in The Return of the Real, MIT Press

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REFERENCES

Bhabha, H. (1994) The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Brah, A. (1996) Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge. Cohen, A. (1993) Masquerade Politics: Explorations in the Structure of Urban Cultural Movements. Oxford: Berg. Cohen, R. (2008) Global Diasporas: An Introduction. (2nd edition). London and New York: Routledge. Eriksen, T.H. (2007) The Key Concepts: Globalization. Oxford, New York: Berg. Gallaugher, A. (1995) ‘Constructing Caribbean culture in Toronto: the representation of Caribana’, in A. Ruprecht and C. Taiana (eds), The Reordering of Culture: Latin America, The Caribbean and Canada in the Hood. Montreal McGill-Queens Press. Gilroy, P. (1993) The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. GLA (2004) Notting Hill Carnival: A Strategic Review. London: Greater London Authority. Guarnizo, L.E. (2003) ‘The economics of transnational living’, International Migration Review 37 (3): 666–9. Hall, S. (1992) ‘What is this ‘black’ in black popular culture?’, in G. Dent (ed.), Black Popular Culture. Seattle: Bay Press. pp. 21–37. Hall, S. (1997) ‘Caribbean culture: future trends’, Caribbean Quarterly, 43 (1): 25–34. Ho, C. and Nurse, K. (2005) Globalization, Diaspora and Caribbean Popular Culture. Kingston: Ian Randle. International Federation of Phonographic Industries (2008) The Recording Industry: World Sales 2006. London: International Federation of Phonographic Industries. Manning, F. (1990) ‘Overseas Caribbean carnivals: the arts and politics of a transnational celebration’, in J. Lent (ed.), Caribbean Popular Culture. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press. pp. 20–36.

Meschino, P. (2005) ‘Reggaeton’s rise from the underground’, Sky Writings, 159: 52–53. Nettleford, R. (1988) ‘Implications for Caribbean development’, in J. Nunley and J. Bettelheim (eds), Caribbean Festival Arts. London: University of Washington Press. Nurse, K. (1999) ‘Globalization and Trinidad carnival: diaspora, hybridity and identity in global culture’, Cultural Studies, 13(4): 661–90. Nurse, K. (2004a) ‘Globalization in reverse: the export of Trinidad carnival’, in M. Riggio (ed.), Culture in Action: Trinidad Carnival. London: Routledge. pp. 245–54. Nurse, K. (2004b) ‘Migration, diaspora and development in Latin America and the Caribbean’, International Politics and Society 2: 107–26. Patterson, O. (1994) ‘Ecumenical America: global culture and the American cosmos’, World Policy Journal, 11 (2): 103–17. Phillip, N.M. (1998) ‘Race, space and the poetics of moving’, in K.M. Balutansky and M-A. Sourieau (eds), Caribbean Creolization: Reflections on the Cultural Dynamics of Language, Literature and Identity. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. Powell, R.J. (2002) Black Art: A Cultural History. London: Thames & Hudson. Quintero Rivera, A.G. (2007) ‘Migration, ethnicity and interactions between the United States and Hispanic Caribbean popular culture’, Latin American Perspectives, 34 (January): 83–93. Scott, J. (1990) Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. London: Yale University Press. Shohat, E. and Stam, R. (1994) Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. London: Routledge. US Census Bureau (2007) Hispanic Population in the United States, 1970 to 2050. Available at http://www.census.gov/ population/www/socdemo/hispanic/hispanic_pop_ presentation.html (last accessed February 2009).

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CHAPTER 7 CREATIVITY AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS Jason Toynbee

Copyright, the main form of intellectual property in cultural production, has played a key part in globalization. Although it is presented as an unalloyed good by its powerful defenders in corporations and states, this chapter argues to the contrary that copyright is of dubious value. In fact the expansive copyright regime which characterizes the present era threatens vulnerable cultures – both traditional and hybrid – around the world. The argument is made by refuting the conventional rationales for copyright, both economic and aesthetic. Supporting evidence is then drawn from the cases of music making in Jamaica, and the Bollywood film industry in India. Each, in a perhaps surprising parallel, suggests that creative cultures can flourish in, and may even depend upon, the absence of effective copyright.

Introduction Copyright performs a central role in the global system of cultural production. According to one estimate, 5 per cent of the GDP of Europe and the USA is derived from ‘copyright industries’ (IFPI,

2008). But does that mean that creativity – from film making to song writing to designing computer games – depends on copyright? This chapter argues that it does not, suggesting instead that the current intellectual property regime tends to inhibit creativity and reduce public access to culture, with especially severe consequences in the global South. As the standard defence of copyright has it, from the eighteenth century onwards intellectual property (IP) provided the means for the exponential development of creativity, enabling patronage of the arts to give way to a market system in European culture. A golden age followed (schematically, from Romanticism to Rock) in which copy- and related rights fuelled the production and distribution of innovative symbolic artefacts for the benefit of all. However, according to IP defenders, the system is now imperiled by a combination of new ICT technologies, morally reprehensible consumers, and governments unwilling to take the necessary measures to protect creators in this new and dangerous age of globally accessible culture. Over the course of the chapter we will argue that such a defence of IP is mistaken in its premises as well as its practical applications. Most perniciously, perhaps, it has been mobilized as an argument for the extension of IP in the period since the 1980s. Content owners have lobbied governments and international organizations for stronger and longer copyright, and to a large extent they have managed to achieve what they wanted. Today we are confronted with an IP regime which is expansionist, even imperialistic, in its global scope and thrust (Hesmondhalgh, 2008). Now it is fair to say that the editors of this volume for the most part consider globalization to be a good in relation to culture (see the Introduction). This chapter does not challenge such a view – apart from anything else the focus is too narrow for that. It does, however, suggest we need to be extremely wary of the legal and economic frameworks of globalizing culture. By taking up this

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critical approach our hope is to contribute to the renewal of a more rounded modality in cultural studies, one in which tough critique finds its place alongside, rather than as an alternative to, an affirmation of the redemptive power of globalizing culture. We begin by sketching the nature, history and extent of intellectual property in relation to culture. The suggestion is that it has always been subject to a continuous crisis, although this is now intensifying. In the second section we then set out the case for a more limited IP regime on both economic and aesthetic grounds, showing how IP is actually opposed to creativity in many forms of popular culture. The next two sections are case studies. One concerns music making in Jamaica, where it is argued that the virtual absence of intellectual property was a condition for the development of a thriving music scene in the 1960s and 70s. The partial introduction of a copyright regime in the more recent period has done nothing to help music making on the ground, or distribute revenues to creative workers on a wider and fairer basis. The other case study looks at ‘Bollywood piracy’, that is to say the distribution of unofficial copies of films and soundtracks made in Mumbai for markets in the Indian subcontinent and its diaspora. The chapter concludes by looking at some implications for policy. It is suggested that cultural policy-makers, traditionally concerned with issues of national protection and development via quotas and subsidies, need to take on the issue of copyright. For as globalization and the expansion of the digital domain proceed apace, the politics of intellectual property become acute. Rather than merely responding to the lobbies of the rights owning corporations, states ought to reflect on the cultural needs of their citizens and work accordingly to protect them from the depredations of corporate IP.

Copyright and the crisis of intellectual property in culture Although other forms of IP, such as trademarks, have some relevance in the realm of cultural production, copyright is by far the most significant of these. We can make a preliminary definition along these lines. Copyright is a type of property in symbolic products (‘texts’ in the language of cultural

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studies) which is specified according to law. It confronts the reproducibility of such products by vesting the exclusive right to copy, perform or otherwise reproduce these in an owner (or owners). This is usually the author/creator or a corporation such as a publisher or record company who initiates the cultural production. There is invariably a time restriction on copyright – known as the ‘term’. After this period has elapsed private ownership ceases and the work enters the ‘public domain’, becoming freely available for replication and reuse. A key aspect of the new, more vigorous IP regime noted above is that the copyright term has been getting longer. Thus in the USA copyright now lasts for seventy years after the death of an author, or ninety-five years after publication if the work is commissioned in-house by a corporation (a ‘work made for hire’, as the law puts it). Figure 7.1 shows the historical expansion of the copyright term in the United States. As with other forms of property copyright is assignable. In other words, it can be sold or else transferred (‘licensed’) to another party under more limited conditions – say for a certain number of years, in a specific territory, or in respect of part of a work. This assignability of copyright has enabled a trade in creative rights, and is a key factor underpinning the political economy of the production of culture. Indeed, it needs to be emphasized that historically copyright law has developed hand in hand with the mechanical reproduction of culture and the emergence of the cultural industries. It is the knot which ties culture to capitalism. The first copyright law was the British Statute of Anne (1710). It gave an ownership right of twenty-one years’ term over literary works to booksellers and printers. Printing technology pre-dated the Statute of Anne of course, but the crucial factor at this juncture was the emergence of a powerful printing/bookselling (what we would now call ‘publishing’) sector, one that was newly independent of state control in Britain. Until 1662 the state had controlled printing through the granting of a licence to the Stationers Company. Only its members could print books. But with the abolition of this monopoly, the established printers began to lobby for a new form of protection, namely a statutory copyright. In other words – and crucially – modern copyright began as a way of preserving the monopoly power of cultural capitalists in a post-authoritarian communication system. In this context, the notion of the right of authors was little more than a post hoc rationale intended to legitimate what was effectively

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1998

1998 WFH

100

80

60

40

20

0 1790

Figure 7.1

1831

1967

1967 WFH

Expansion of copyright term in the USA

Notes • in 1909 the 28 year term introduced in 1831 was made renewable for a further 28 years. • in the 1967 and 1998 legislation, term begins from death of the author rather than date of publication as was previously the case; this in itself represents a considerable extension of term. • notwithstanding the above, in the case of a ‘work made for hire’ (WFH in the chart) the date of publication still initiates copyright term.

the renewal of the booksellers’ monopoly (Patterson, 1990: 9–14). As we will see this pattern, established at the birth of copyright, has been repeated time and again. Cultural capitalism lobbies the state for new IP measures, while invoking the rights of authors because authors are widely considered the more worthy beneficiaries. In practice, however, the economic power of corporations means that authors will generally assign their rights to a corporation via publishing contracts, record deals, and so on. Quite simply, if you are a vulnerable creator struggling to break into an overcrowded and uncertain labour market (the endemic condition of cultural work; see Miège (1989: 29–30)) then you are hardly in a strong position to bargain about copyright. And yet this does not mean that cultural capitalism exploits copyright without let or hindrance, for in an important sense the copyright system is in a state of perpetual crisis. Technologies of replication are the original cause of copyright. Only by making symbolic expressions copy-able through material means does the ‘need’ arise to stop people copying. In fact the history of communications has been one of the continuous

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development of new media and new forms of replication; hence the periodic demand of cultural industries for the expansion of copyright law to cover such new technologies – whether that be printing, radio, cinema, or MP3 file sharing. This profound instability of copyright is crucial. As cultural capitalism drives ever onwards in the quest for new products, markets and revenues, it keeps having to turn to governments to ensure that the law prescribes ownership in whatever brave new communication medium is being heralded. The problem of this dependence on governments for the legal protection of ownership is then compounded by a conflict of interest between different communication sectors; namely, content producers who make texts – the objects of copyright – and disseminators such as the broadcasters, cable companies and Internet service providers who distribute them. The former will want to charge or otherwise restrict the disseminators in respect of their use of copyrighted content. The disseminators will naturally want to minimize such charges and restrictions. The conflict between Napster and the music industry is a case in point. Napster was a service provider

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which enabled subscribers to freely share digital music files across the Internet. Soon after its launch in 1999, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) brought a copyright infringement case against the company on behalf of the five major global record companies. The grounds of the suit were that Napster was responsible for a mass infringement of copyright that was allegedly taking place. In the original case, and then on appeal, the courts found for the RIAA, and Napster was forced to close in July 2001 after less than two years of operation. Bankrupt, the company was bought by a ‘legitimate’ commercial subscription service, Roxio, in 2002. It is now one of the most successful music downloading services in the world, making profits on its own account, but also posting copyright revenue derived from its paying customers back to record companies and publishers (Burkart and McCourt, 2006: 55–63). The Napster episode suggests that the historical balance may have swung in favour of the copyright owners. In one early inter-sectoral battle the result was very different. At the end of the 1930s music publishers in the USA increased the licence fees paid by radio stations for the broadcasting of copyrighted musical works. In 1940 they doubled them. The stations refused to pay and set up their own publishing organization (BMI) to provide new musical material instead. In this way they were able to break the traditional music publishers’ monopoly, thus effectively winning this round of the copyright wars (Ryan, 1985). Interestingly, this victory by the radio stations played a key role in unleashing a new cycle of musical creativity in North America. The songs which BMI publishers put out included material from the relatively untapped country and western, and rhythm and blues markets. These styles in turn provided key source material for the emerging genre of rock’n’roll in the 1950s (Peterson, 1990). Perhaps the most significant points to draw from these episodes in the ‘copyright wars’ are, firstly, that a more open rights regime can foster creativity in quite concrete ways, and secondly, that the present period seems to be one displaying a particularly vigorous expansion of copyright. This historical tendency towards an increasingly powerful IP regime can be seen at the international as well as the sectoral level. During the nineteenth century copyright laws were enacted in all advanced capitalist societies as print media became a major industry. Yet the exploitation of copyright on an international basis remained problematic. For instance, Charles Dickens and his publishers were unable to

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assert their copyright in the USA. Publishers there simply printed and distributed his work without paying any fees or royalties in respect of what were understood to be purely British rights (Allingham, 2001). Then, towards the end of the century, international treaties were established such that signatory nations recognized the rights of owners in other countries, so enabling a global trade in copyright to develop during the twentieth century. This international copyright regime has never been secure though. For one thing developing countries have tended not to enforce rights. As gross users of cultural products made in countries at the core of the world system, they have little interest in policing such rights – in this context copyright is effectively a tax on culture. The outcome is that today we have a paradox: the most comprehensive IP treaties and agreements such as TRIPS 1994 and WIPO 1996 (respectively Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights and World Intellectual Property Organization; see Sundara Rajan, 2008) combined with high levels of unsanctioned reproduction of cultural artefacts across the world, or what rights owners tendentiously call ‘piracy’. It seems, therefore, that a central theme in the history of copyright is its agonistic nature. As new technologies of cultural replication develop, so too do new crises arise around the specification of culture as a commodity in law, or via conflict over the access to and control of creative goods. Meanwhile, as copyright has been globalized so too has there been an increase in reproduction and the use of copyrighted content without the permission of rights owners. Critically, this has been happening both in the developing world – particularly via ‘old’ technologies of replication like photocopying or cassette tapes – and in the rapidly expanding belt of industrialized countries where digital technologies now make our access to culture more open than ever before. These de facto contradictions and tensions raise important questions about whether the present global copyright regime benefits public culture. But there is also a set of theoretical and normative problems with copyright which underlie the practical difficulties. It is these we turn to next.

The suit against copyright: economics and creativity The rationale for copyright – from a critical perspective, the ideology of copyright – is two-pronged. The

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first aspect is economic. According to this intellectual property overcomes a certain problem in culture whereby symbolic objects can be freely appropriated without reference to creators or other consumers. In the language of economics a symbolic object like a musical recording is ‘non-rival’. That is to say, it can be used by someone without preventing anyone else’s use. And further to this symbolic objects do not degrade though consumption. Using a term from economics again, they do not become ‘exhausted’ when they are used. We are referring here to the primary text of course – the ‘film’, ‘novel’, ‘song’ and so on – which is then copied, broadcast, downloaded or otherwise replicated. It is the ease of replication at stake here which makes symbolic objects tend towards the non-rival. In practice the material medium – television, CD, book, cinema – adds a degree of rivalrousness. But not much. Replication offers a high degree of share-ability, and this is becoming more the case in the digital age as networks positively encourage the mutual exchange of culture. Music file sharing is the now classic case in point. As a second aspect, symbolic objects also tend to be non-excludable. In other words, it is hard for creators to prevent would-be users from using them, a key issue if you want to make a charge. Once again, this quality derives from ease of replication, although it does vary in degree across types of cultural artefact. Thus, cinema exhibition enables a high degree of excludability – ushers will check your ticket before you go in – whereas it is impossible to exclude anyone from listening to a conventional radio broadcast once they have access to a receiver. What does all this have to do with copyright? Quite simply, the argument goes that the non-rival, non-excludable qualities of cultural products make it difficult to sell them for a sufficient return in a conventional marketplace. Take the case of a new computer game. Were it to be released onto the market in the same way as a car, say, so-called ‘free riders’ would immediately appear and either use the game themselves for nothing, or copy and sell it on to others at a price way below that which the creators needed to charge in order to recover the enormous cost of creating it. In this situation the function of copyright law is to extend property rights beyond the first copy (of a manuscript, recording, director’s cut, and so on) to any and every copy over a specified term. Therefore the possibility of making sufficient charges to cover costs, and hence an incentive to create, is restored.

All this sounds fine in theory, and indeed it is widely accepted not only in economics but by states around the world. In effect this economic argument has prevailed in the round of IP expansion which has been occurring since the mid1980s. But the difficulty is that no case has been made as to how extensive IP rights actually need to be in order to overcome the economic ‘problem’ of (non-rival, non-excludable) cultural goods. As we have seen the period since the early 1990s has witnessed an unprecedented expansion of copy- and related rights via international treaty and national statutes around the world. The copyright term has grown longer, and now covers more forms of cultural practice and technologies of replication. It has also extended its reach into the poorest countries of the world. Yet there is no evidence that we have seen a concomitant increase in creativity. Indeed, some economists would argue that the current ‘big copyright’ regime is leading to less innovation in cultural markets. For Boldrin and Levine (2002, 2005) the issue is that IP goods (what we are calling symbolic objects) are not nearly so different from other commodities as is made out in the economic literature. That being the case, through its grant of monopoly IP law simply generates massive costs in the shape of licences and fees and the expenses associated with government lawmaking and policing. Boldrin and Levine take the example of the potato. They point out that, ‘[w]hen you buy a potato you can eat it, throw it away, plant it, or make it into a sculpture’ (2002: 209). But imagine a situation in which rights over the use of potatoes were under monopoly control; every time you ate one you would have to pay not just for the potato itself but also a licence fee to the owner of the potato monopoly. And you would not be able to make a new potato-based product without paying a fee either. In an analogous way, Boldrin and Levine suggest, IP restricts creativity and innovation via the enormous costs it imposes. There remains the ‘free rider’ argument of course, the notion that the non-rival, non-excludable nature of cultural goods means that one cannot prevent others exploiting one’s own creation. But in response to this Boldrin and Levine (2005) argue that, absent copyright, coming first to market provides a sufficient advantage to enable creators to recoup their costs. This is especially so with network systems of distribution. But actually in all cases just being first gives you an effective if short-lived

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monopoly. In this situation the only IP requirement is a copyright limited to the initial copy of any symbolic product. In other words, up until the point at which the work is released it is protected – after that it is in the public domain. The case made by Boldrin and Levine is important because it suggests that a ‘low copyright’ system is not only compatible with a market economy in culture, it actually makes such a market work better. Significantly, the argument of these writers also chimes with the second strand of our argument against copyright ideology. This concerns creativity. When corporate copyright owners make a pitch to governments for larger, longer copyright, or when they call for more vigorous policing of ‘piracy’, they often appeal to the interests of creators. We noted this tendency in the previous section. For, crucially, the economic rationale of copyright coincides with the Romantic discourse of the expressive author which has had such a pervasive influence in all forms of culture since the end of the eighteenth century. Authorship has of course come in for sustained criticism in cultural studies and related fields. The essay ‘The Death of the Author’, by Roland Barthes (1977), is perhaps the best known example. It offers a powerful critique of the author cult, but it does not offer much in the way of an alternative account of cultural production, let alone creativity. Instead – and somewhat enigmatically – Barthes focuses on the productivity of texts and language. We need to begin somewhere else, then, if we are to come up with an account of cultural production which focuses on the process through which symbolic objects are actually created and innovation is carried out. Prima facie it seems clear enough that there are indeed creative roles in the making of culture. The problem comes in defining what these might consist in without slipping back into a Romantic conception, namely where the individual artist is the locus of creativity, and her/his genius consists in extraordinary powers of autonomous expression. As George Steiner (2001: 25–32) has suggested, on this view the creative act is a kind of transubstantiation of the soul. Undoubtedly, such mystical overtones have been very effectively mobilized by defenders of copyright. It is all too easy to imply that vulnerable geniuses, touched by the creative spirit, require the granting of special protection. However, creativity is arguably much more a matter of ‘social authorship’ (Toynbee, 2001) than

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transubstantiation of the soul or expression from within. In the first place, we can note that creative acts are incremental rather than colossal. To make a new aesthetic object is to make one which is marginally different, and a even major figure – say, the Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa – who has apparently made revolutionary transformations can be seen, when their work is examined more closely, to have actually been assembling many small changes in their chosen medium. This cumulative aspect of creativity is connected to a second dimension, namely the collective, or at least interactive, nature of the labour process. To produce a cultural product involves working with other people, both those in obviously creative functions as well as people whose role is more prosaic. The third aspect of creativity which the notion of social authorship brings out is that acts of creation derive not so much from the autonomous generation of ideas from within as the re-use or appropriation of symbolic materials from a ‘historically deposited common stock’ (Toynbee, 2001: 2). To be creative is essentially to select, combine and reframe not only themes and ideas, but also concrete bits of ‘cultural fabric’ (particular scenes in a film, pieces of melody, characters, colours … the list is endless) which are already there. With these factors in mind, it becomes pretty clear that creators can have no legitimate claim to control the product of ‘their’ labour once it is done – the basic moral and aesthetic premise of copyright. To make this claim is to argue not only with corporate defenders of Big Copyright, but also those such as Mira Sundara Rajan (2008) who have suggested that a renewed attention to moral rights (the rights of authors to claim attribution and assert control over their work) is required in order to counterbalance today’s overly economistic IP regime. For the point is that the creative innovations of ‘authors’ are invariably small and depend on an interaction or collaboration with others in more or less creative roles. Perhaps most damaging of all for the case for copyright, is the fact that when you are engaged in what seems to be the most original act of creation, you are actually using materials already there, left by other creative workers. In this section we have criticized some key theoretical and normative strands in the case for strong copyright. And we have seen also how an alternative account of creativity under the rubric of social authorship poses a different way of thinking about

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creativity, a way which contradicts some of the basic premises of IP. Over the course of the next two sections we will show how this critique could help to illuminate cultural production today. We take two case studies of creativity in the global South.

Jamaican popular music: blooming in a copyright desert From the late 1950s onwards a recording industry and a series of popular music styles emerged together in the small Caribbean island of Jamaica. Undoubtedly the appearance of what would become as known as reggae music has proved a major global cultural phenomenon. There can be few other places in the world where such a small population – under two million in 1970, and less than 2.8 million today (Intute, 2008) – has produced so much music. Michael Witter (2004: 32–3) estimates that, despite a decline in its popularity since the early 1990s, international sales of recorded Jamaican music were worth between US $60 and 100 million in 2000. In terms of foreign exchange earned this puts music ahead of sugar, the main product of the island under colonialism. No doubt a number of factors had played a part in the development of reggae music. Urbanization was certainly crucial; the population of Kingston grew from 237,000 in 1943, to 379,980 in 1960, to 870,000 in 2001 (Clarke, 2006: 91, 154, 267). Proximity to, and hence the influence of, the USA with its modern black popular culture has been important too. But there are also a number of factors to do with the way a peculiarly Jamaican music making culture and economy developed quite apart from the global music industry. Although various folk styles, notably mento, preceded the emergence of ska at the beginning of the 1960s, it was this style which marked the inauguration of modern Jamaican popular music. Most importantly, ska was almost entirely a recorded form produced in order to supply the sound systems, or mobile discotheques, which from the late 1940s constituted the main musical entertainment in Kingston. In the development of ska – and then in transformations to rocksteady, reggae, dub and a host of later styles – the incremental and collective aspects of social authorship which we discussed in the previous section were key.

We might call the central process at stake here intensification, that is to say the production of change through the identification of a certain trope, and then making it more and more salient over a cycle of recordings (see Toynbee, 2007: 87–94). The trope in question in the case of ska was an accent on the offbeat. The source music in which this accent was originally found was ‘jump R and B’ – the swinging, brass-laden sound popular in black America during the late 1940s and early 50s – which had become a staple of the Jamaican sound systems. One characteristic of jump was a voiced offbeat in the rhythm – the ‘da’ in the ‘BOOM da BOOM da BOOM da BOOM’ meter that drove dancers wild. What the Kingston musicians did as they started to copy jump R and B records was accent the offbeat, making it louder and more prominent. Dating back to 1959, ‘Easy Snapping’ by Theophilus Beckford (2002) is the tune often credited as the first Jamaican recording with a pronounced offbeat. Of course in the case of a collective and incremental process of creativity it is dangerous to canonize a foundational work. Quite simply, there are always going to be rival claimants from the same period. That said, ‘Easy Snapping’ is a good example. Beckford sings plaintively in a Jamaican accent, while voicing the offbeat with his left hand on the piano. Three years later, on Bob Marley’s first recording, ‘Judge Not’ (1992) the trope had been intensified to such an extent that it is clear we are no longer listening to R and B. The offbeat is now much stronger than the onbeat in the four/four rhythm. Indeed the onomatopoeic name given to the new style represents this rhythm: SKA1 SKA2 SKA3 SKA4. There is also a tin whistle playing riffs in the manner of mento, the national ‘folk’ music style. ‘Judge Not’ can be considered, then, as a snapshot highlighting the emergence of a highly idiomatic popular music style. Critically, though, it is a style wrought by many cumulative changes across the hundreds of recordings made since the canonical ‘Easy Snapping’. It is difficult to evaluate to what extent this process of intensification was self-conscious. It probably began in a relatively unreflexive way, being expressed in musical practice much more than discourse. However its changes were progressively recognized and codified. In the case of ska the term itself was not coined until 1962, by which time, as we have just heard, the style was already mature.

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Regarding copyright the main point about intensification is its essentially social character. Change was generated collectively in that a whole cohort of musicians in Kingston was involved as a group in the research and development of the new sound. True, there was intense competition among sound system operators and producers in particular. But across all roles (musicians, vocalists, engineers, producers, selectors), and despite divergent material interests and contractual relations, there was effectively a common creative culture. Each would work on the basis of taking things a little further than last time – picking up on a trick used on that big dancehall hit, copying but subtly changing something in order to make the effect even more sublime. In an important sense intensification makes copyright irrelevant. It points up the thoroughly social character of the authorship at stake in Jamaican popular music, and thus the inappropriateness of attributing the creative value of a recording to an individual. But there is another creative process we can identify in the Jamaican scene which confronts copyright much more squarely: translation. Intensification is essentially an endogenous creative process. Development takes place within a style through the highlighting of a particular aesthetic zone – in the case of ska this was the accented offbeat. We might call this a vertical principle of change. With translation the creative dynamic is horizontal, leading to an appropriation of musical materials from outside the style. Translation thus involves broadening the range of musical signifying rather than deepening it. In the Kingston music scene since the 1960s translation (and here it is really no different from intensification) can be seen as both an aesthetic and an economic imperative. The economic need is to respond to the high rate of stylistic innovation, generated by the dancehall mode of reception and the voracious demand for new ‘record-texts’, or 45 rpm singles. In this context, the re-use of existing texts, or the production of same-but-different ones, represents a highly efficient means of solving the problem of the demand for innovation. The aesthetic imperative, on the other hand, derives from a tendency towards a peculiarly Caribbean form of cultural hybridity which Shalini Puri (2004) has identified. The Caribbean lies at a cultural crossroads. It forms one corner of a ‘Black Atlantic’ trapezium (Gilroy, 1993) along which African diasporic

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culture has moved, adopting colonial symbols along the way, repeating and changing cultural forms. As Annie Paul shows in this volume (Chapter 11), Jamaican music in particular is driven by a powerfully transgressive urge to express the vernacular Africanism of everyday life – for example creole language or ‘patwa’, and the unrespectable pleasures of the dancehall. Here, then, transgression is closely allied to translation. In fact the initial move which culminated in ska was an act of translation, namely the appropriation of R and B, the music of the black working class of the USA. Since then reggae music has continuously translated music materials from ‘outside’, most significantly in the 1960s with soul music, and especially the work of Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions. Bob Marley and the Wailers (1992) were only one act among many who used the sound of the Impressions as an imago, a reference point for creative musical transformation. Listen to the group’s ‘I’m Still Waiting’ from 1965, a kind of experiment in the indigenization of the sophisticated soul of the Impressions: falsetto voice and bass vocal response, shimmering reverb guitar, slow tempo, but all re-located to the sonic environment of Kingston. This kind of translation does not contravene copyright. One of its doctrines – developed in case law – is pertinent here: the idea/expression dichotomy. According to this copyright only covers expressions, that is to say the concrete works, or work-parts, produced by an author. The underlying ideas, on the other hand, may be freely taken up and used to inspire new creative work. Thus copying an idiom such as that of the Impressions, rather than a specific melody or set of lyrics, is allowed under the law. The difficulty, however, is that this distinction does not fit a culture like reggae music which is focused on principles of iteration/variation. (Actually, as John Frow [1997: 210] points out, the idea/expression dichotomy is itself relational, historically contingent, and can by no means be taken as a general rule in culture.) For there is indeed a translation in reggae music which crosses over into the copying of expressions as copyright law would understand such a practice. Several forms exist. One is the unacknowledged reuse of an existing song. Prince Buster’s (2000) ‘Don’t Throws Tones’ [sic] from around 1965 uses the melody of ‘Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps’ from Doris Day’s very popular Latin for Lovers album,

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released in the USA in March 1965. This adopted English lyrics by Joe Davis, but its melody comes from the song ‘Quizás, Quizás, Quizás’, written by the Cuban songwriter Osvaldo Farrés in 1947. In Buster’s version there is a spoken word introduction by the man himself, a warning to rude boys. This is followed by an instrumental arrangement of the tune. On the CD compilation the writing credits are shown as ‘C. Campbell’ (Cecil Campbell is Buster’s birth name), and the publisher is given as ‘Prince Buster Music (BMI)’. It would, however, be a mistake to see this simply as fraud. Rather it reflects the Jamaican practice of treating the provenance of musical material (in economic terms at least) as irrelevant. What matters in this recording is its trans-aesthetic; the ‘ska-ification’ of a Tin Pan Alley hit which itself translates the Caribbean sounds of Cuba, 90 miles to the North. ‘Don’t Throws Tones’ represents a cultural return, then, under the aegis of that arch trickster, Prince Buster. Under copyright law, however, it would certainly constitute plagiarism. Another kind of translation, the riddim, would probably also infringe copyright, but in a rather different way. It differs from the unacknowledged cover version in that it is designed to be copied. A riddim can be defined as the accompanying rhythm track to a reggae tune. It includes riffs or other motifs. Sometimes it is a single, four beat unit; sometimes longer. In its original version it will include vocals. A riddim at this point is simply the instrumental accompaniment to a whole recording. But if it is successful, the riddim is then separated from its original context in order to provide the backing for other versions, or even completely new songs. A canonical riddim such as the ‘Stalag’, originally by Winston Wright, may have a life of thirty years or more. Perhaps the key point of contrast with the copyright/authorship system (as in the case of rock) is that re-use of a riddim is considered to be an accolade rather than a case of plagiarism. To have your riddim appropriated many times is a sign that you have made a major contribution to the culture (Manuel and Marshall, 2006). We have been showing how the reggae system of production is inimical to copyright in this section. Indeed there has been little or no copyright litigation until recently, despite the fact at independence in 1962 Jamaica inherited British copyright legislation, and in 1993 brought in its own Copyright Act. However there are now signs that in response to the 1994 TRIPS agreement, which effectively

imposes a copyright regime across the globe, the implementation and policing of IP is starting to be taken more seriously (Daley and Foga, 2007). Indeed, Manuel and Marshall suggest that some attempts are now being made to recoup the rights revenue made from riddims (2006: 464–5). Whether the fragile ecology of creative musical work in Kingston will be damaged by this gathering pressure is still unclear. But those who care about the future of this extraordinary music and the culture which has produced it should surely be concerned about such developments.

Bollywood and the pirates Surprisingly, perhaps, there are significant similarities between creative practice and context in Jamaican popular music, and the Indian popular cinema produced in Mumbai, formerly Bombay. But there are also illuminating differences which help to reveal some further dimensions of the global copyright regime. Like reggae music, Indian cinema has colonial roots which in this case stretch back to the early twentieth century (Bose, 2006; Kabir, 2001). By the 1930s studios had been established in the cities of Madras, Calcutta, Lahore, Bombay and Pune. Thus the first phase of film production was marked by geographical dispersion. But it was also combined with a degree of vertical integration and corporatism – the studios employed actors, directors and technical staff on a full-time basis. During the 1930s the Indian film musical – ‘all-singing, all-dancing’ – emerged as a distinct genre. Alam Ara of 1931, the first Indian sound movie, led the way. It was released in Hindi (the adopted national language) and Urdu. In the south, there was also regional production of Tamil and Telegu language films. This pattern persists (Curtin, 2008). After the Second World War and independence from British colonial rule in 1947 the studio system collapsed as new producers and new capital entered the frame. The entrepreneurial system which now emerged depended on freelancing rather than long-term contracts. For Hindi national cinema this organizational informality was also accompanied by an increasing concentration in Bombay (Mumbai). By the early 1960s the ‘multigenre’ movie, still popular today, was becoming the dominant form here. This included song and dance,

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but in addition a structure ‘in which romance is followed by comedy, then family drama, then action’ (Kabir, 2001: 16). A super-star system also became increasingly important. It was typified in the early 1970s by the irresistible rise of Amitabh Bachchan, an action hero still revered today. In terms of the relationship between copyright and creativity, historically IP has been as tangential to Bollywood as it has to the Kingston music scene. This is because, although taking quite distinct forms from those found in Jamaica, translation and intensification are important in Indian film too. As Vijay Mishra puts it: ‘in Bombay Cinema (which began as a colonial form) one of the great borrowed literary forms has been melodrama. The expressive possibilities of this mode … are taken up in a highly localized manner’ (2002: 35). In particular, ‘[m]elodrama acts like a glue that connects discrete texts and generic registers (from realistic to the comic carnivalesque) together’ (ibid.: 39). In the terms we were using in the previous section, melodrama – itself a European form – provides a framework for the translation of other pieces of symbolic fabric, including the Indian epic and –bha –rata, British novels of the nineur-text the Maha teenth century such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, or the contemporary fiction of the Indian writer R.K. Narayan (Mishra, 2002: 35–48). Although these translated components are either out of copyright (the ancient text of the –bha–rata was never in copyright of course) or Maha credit has been given, as with R.K. Narayan in the case of the film Guide, this is certainly not true of a host of other appropriations. Indeed, Raman Minhas (2008: 221) estimates that eight out of ten productions are potentially illicit copies, while the blogger known as IndiaTime (2007) makes a similar point, if rather more polemically: For last almost a hundred years now, Bollywood, and the Indian music industry (especially of the popular variety), have been stealing right and left from everywhere else. Movie after movie made in Bollywood steals plots, screenplays, shots, camera angles, dialogs, and background scores from Hollywood. Thousands of Bollywood songs over last fifty years, have come from Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and the American Billboards.

IndiaTime makes her/his comments in response to a complaint from Vijay Lazarus, president of the

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Indian Music Industry Association, alleging that piracy has now become a serious problem in Bollywood. IndiaTime’s point is well made, but the issue which arises here is more than one of hypocrisy. Critically, it also has to do with developments in markets and technology. Whereas the high point for international sales of reggae music came in the 1970s and 80s following the unique and meteoric rise of Bob Marley as a global superstar, for Bollywood significant international sales and revenue have been a more recent phenomenon. Certainly diasporic Indian audiences have been watching Bollywood’s products for many years as Kaushik Bhaumik points out. However ‘it is only in the 1990s that they emerged as a significant niche in the global market [due to] growing numbers and a radical transformation of youth and middle class cultures’ (Bhaumik, 2006: 191). This trend has occurred in the same period that Internet and DVD technology has transformed the copy-ability of films. Meanwhile India itself has seen the development of a large new middle class with access to digital technology. These factors have undoubtedly fed the recent growth in the Indian entertainment industry – up by 17 per cent in 2007 to reach a value of US $12.82 billion (Asia Law and Practice, 2008), and by a staggering 360 per cent over the period 1998–2005 (Lorenzen and Taeube, 2007: 12). Paradoxically, it is this success which has prompted a recent moral panic about piracy. In April 2008 Ernst and Young India delivered a report on The Effects of Piracy and Counterfeiting on India’s Entertainment Industry, which attributed the potential losses to piracy at 25 to 30 per cent of profits. It also suggested that more than 700,000 jobs in the entertainment sector had been lost as a consequence of illicit copying. However, the research was commissioned not by Bollywood itself, but by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and the US India Business Council, and it was funded by the Global Intellectual Property Center of the Washington, DC-based US Chamber of Commerce (Nelson, 2008). In other words, the report was the initiative of a US content industry lobbying group, and its data need to be read accordingly. That said, it may certainly be conceded that an unauthorized distribution of Bollywood films is taking place, and probably on a considerable scale. Prerecorded DVDs sold by commercial ‘pirates’ are one important medium for this (although Internet

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downloading is also increasing). In the UK market alone a recent report, once again based on industry research, suggests that 70 per cent of Bollywood DVDs found on sale in markets and stalls were counterfeit, compared to only 5 per cent of Hollywood films and music (Cunningham, 2008). In India it is this form of ‘piracy’ which has prompted the content industry to lobby for an optical disc law that would enable the inspection and summary closure of disccopying facilities. To date the government has been resisting this (Hindu Business Line, 2008). No doubt the government is in part deferring to a significant segment of public opinion which would be opposed to the large increases in prices that are likely to follow the suppression of unauthorized copying – should it be possible to do this outside a police state. But actually there is a certain cogency to the ‘pro-pirate’ view which goes beyond simple opportunism. For as Boldrin and Levine (2005) point out, the economic rationale for any IP measure must be based on the maximization of utility. In this context simply to argue that profits or even jobs are lost is unconvincing. The criteria that really matter are whether innovation is taking place and whether consumers are benefiting from cultural production. As these writers argue, absent an IP monopoly, the much smaller revenue stream would still be sufficient to guarantee such conditions; moreover, it is likely to increase utility in that prices would be lower, thus leading to greater (and fairer) public access to symbolic goods. A further point needs to be added. Historically, Bollywood’s economy has depended on the exhibition of films. Indeed this is still a core market for the industry, with 70 per cent of its revenues coming from this source in 2006 (Lorenzen and Arun Taeube, 2007: 10). Here, of course, excludability enters the picture. Quite simply, any restriction of digital copying will have little effect on exhibition where distribution circuits are well established, and the turnstile provides a physical means of exclusion. What’s more exhibition is now being bolstered by a programme of cinema refurbishment and multiplex construction. As Mark Lorenzen and Arun Taeube note, this kind of dynamic entrepreneurialism does not end here. Bollywood is now vigorously selling films to a profusion of Indian cable TV channels both within and beyond India. At the same time it has been a world leader ‘in embracing new technologies for products and platforms’ (ibid.: 11). And all this has taken place on

the basis of Bollywood’s disintegrated and informal industry structure. In sum, there is a good case to be made that, far from its leading to stagnation or even contraction, the increase in distribution of Bollywood product via unofficial channels (‘piracy’, in the rhetoric of the US content industry) has gone hand in hand with massive growth and innovation. Whether or not this unofficial distribution has promoted the official market – this is notoriously difficult to measure – there can be little doubt that the openness and informality of the political economy of Bollywood have been a boon (Lorenzen and Taeube, 2007: 12–16).

Conclusions and implications for policy In this chapter we have examined the surprisingly tumultuous history of copyright, assessed the theoretical rationale for it as well as arguments against, and undertaken two case studies on copyright from the global South. As we implied at the start, there is no attempt at balance here, if by balance is meant coming up with a neutral position. For the objective situation calls for a critical evaluation from which emerge, we suggest, the following theses. •

•

•

•

•

•

Historically copyright represents a legal fix for the cultural industries which have attempted to maintain a form of monopoly by trading in and through it. The economic argument for copyright as a means of giving an incentive to creators who would otherwise be beaten down by free-riders is weak. The suit that copyright rewards vulnerable creators who make the new from their own intellectual and psychological capacities is faulty also. More positively, creativity is best considered as a kind of social authorship, one which thrives on a low IP regime. Examples of music production from Jamaica show that a market system in culture can work well without effective copyright. The case of Bollywood film making suggests that rampant ‘piracy’ can not only exist alongside a flourishing creative sector, but that it may also bring the benefits of access and affordability to many.

There are surely significant implications for public policy here, and we ought to finish by enumerating some of them.

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First, the general watchword for governments, especially in the global South, is ‘be sceptical’ when faced with the advocacy of Big Copyright by international economic organizations and the multinational copyright industries. Extending and policing copyright in developing or newly industrialized countries is no panacea for building a globally competitive cultural sector. Indeed, a strong IP regime is much more likely to damage local creative ecologies. Second, and following on from this point, where possible copyright regimes ought to favour access and openness. There are a number of ways of doing this. Compulsory licensing grants rights to the users of copyrighted material. Even in the United States, for instance, the recording industry is able to record whatever copyright songs it chooses on the basis of a ‘mechanical’ royalty fixed

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by the state. Such publicly regulated licensing could be extended to many other spheres of cultural use and appropriation. ‘Fair use’ might also be strengthened. This is the domain which copyright law recognizes as being beyond its purview – a quotation for criticism and review, copying in an educational context, and so on. Here the way forward is not so much specification, but rather the presumption that fair use is the default position. In any event, such measures will be difficult to achieve, given the current global situation, even if governments have the political will. The TRIPS Agreement of 1994 and the WIPO Treaty of 1996 give very little room for manoeuvre to their national signatories. Still, that is the nature of the struggle for a just and creative globalized world under a neoliberal order – it will be hard. So let us get started right away.

REFERENCES

Allingham, P. (2001) ‘Nineteenth-century British and American copyright law’, Victorian Web available at http:// www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pva/pva74.html (last accessed 8 August 2008). Asia Law and Practice (2008) ‘Counterfeiting and piracy in the Indian entertainment industry’, April Archive available at http://www.chinalawandpractice.com/Article/1899424/ Channel/9938/OUTBOUND-INVESTMENT-TO-INDIACounterfeiting-and-Piracy-in-the-Indian-EntertainmentIndustry.html (last accessed 30 July 2008). Barthes, R. (1977) ‘The death of the author’, in R. Barthes, Image.Music.Text. London: Fontana. Beckford, T. (2002) ‘Easy Snapping’, Various Artists, Studio One Story, Soul Jazz SJR CD68. Bhaumik, K. (2006) ‘Consuming “Bollywood” in the global age: the strange case of an “unfine” world cinema’, in S. Denison and S.H. Lim (eds), Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film. London: Wallflower. Boldrin, M. and Levine, D. (2002) ‘The case against intellectual property’, AEA Papers and Proceedings, 92/2: 209–12. Boldrin, M. and Levine, D. (2005) ‘Intellectual property and the efficient allocation of surplus from creation’, Review of Economic Research in Copyright Issues, 2: 45–67. Bose, M. (2006) Bollywood: A History. London: Tempus. Burkart, P. and McCourt, T. (2006) Digital Music Wars: Ownership and Control of the Celestial Jukebox. Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield.

Buster, P. (2000) ‘Don’t Throws Tones’, King of Ska, Jet Star PBCD 11. Clarke, C. (2006) Kingston Jamaica: Urban Development and Social Change: 1692–2002. Kingston: Ian Randle. Cunningham, A. (2008) ‘Piracy “rife” at Bollywood stalls’, BBC Asia Network available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ entertainment/7458891.stm (last accessed 14 August 2008). Curtin, M. (2008) ‘Spatial dynamics of film and television’, in H. Anheier and Y. Isar (eds), The Cultural Economy, The Cultures and Globalization Series, 2. London: SAGE. Daley, D. and Foga, N. (2007) ‘Jamaica: beyond the TRIPs agreement’, Managing Intellectual Property, America’s IP Focus 2007, 3rd edition available at http://www.managing ip.com/ Article.aspx?ArticleID=1450368 (last accessed 28 March 2008). Frow, J. (1997) Time and Commodity Culture: Essays in Cultural Theory and Postmodernity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gilroy, P. (1993) The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso. Hesmondhalgh, D. (2008) ‘Neoliberalism, imperialism and the media’, in D. Hesmondhalgh and J. Toynbee (eds), The Media and Social Theory. London: Routledge. Hindu Business Line (2008) ‘Government, FICCI differ on optical disc law’, 27 March available at http://www.thehindu businessline.com/2008/03/28/stories/200803285238 1100.htm (last accessed 10 August 2008). International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) (2008) What Is Copyright? http://www.ifpi.org/content/

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section_views/what_is_copyright.html (last accessed 14 February 2008). IndiaTime (2007) ‘For Bollywood, piracy begins at home’, IndiaTime, 28 March 2007 availbale at http://www.india time.com/2007/03/28/for-bollywood-piracy-begins-athome (last accessed 14 August 2008). Intute (2008) ‘World guide: Jamaica’ available at http:// www.intute.ac.uk/sciences/worldguide/html/922_people.ht ml (last accessed 9 August 2009). Kabir, N.M. (2001) Bollywood: the Indian Cinema Story. London: Channel Four Books. Lorenzen, M. and Arun Taeube, F. (2007) Breakout from Bollywood? Internationalization of Indian Film Industry, Danish Research Unit for Industrial Dynamics, Working Paper 7. Manuel, P. and Marshall, W. (2006) ‘The riddim method: aesthetics, practice, and ownership in Jamaican dancehall’, Popular Music, 25/3: 447–70. Marley, B.B. (1992a) ‘Judge Not’, Songs of Freedom, Island TGCBX1. Marley, Bob (1992b) ‘I’m Still Waiting’, Songs of Freedom, Island TGCBX1. Miège, B. (1989) The Capitalization of Cultural Production. New York: International General. Minhas, R. (2008) ‘Bollywood: globalization and the demand for cultural copying’, in Anheier, H.K. and Isar, Y.R. (eds), The Cultural Economy. The Cultures and Globalization Series, 2. London: SAGE. Mishra, V. (2002) Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire. New York: Routledge.

Nelson C. (ed.) ‘Piracy pillages India’, IndUS Business Journal, 15 May available at http://www.indusbusiness journal.com, (last accessed on 30 July 2008). Patterson, L. (1990) ‘Copyright and “the exclusive right” of authors’, Journal of Intellectual Property Law, 1/1: 1–48. Paul, A. (2010) ‘The turn of the native: vernacular creativity in the Caribbean’, in H. Anheier and Y. Isar (eds), Cultural Expression, Creativity and Innovation, The Cultures and Globalization Series, 3. London: SAGE. Peterson, R. (1990) ‘Why 1955? Explaining the advent of rock music’, Popular Music, 9/2: 97–116. Puri, S. (2004) The Caribbean Postcolonial: Social Equality, Post-Nationalism and Cultural Hybridity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ryan, J. (1985) The Production of Culture in the Music Industry: The ASCAP-BMI Controversy. New York: University Press of America. Steiner, G. (2001) Grammars of Creation. London: Faber and Faber. Sundara Rajan, M. (2008) ‘Strange bedfellows: law and culture in the digital age’, in H. Anheier and Y. Isar (eds), The Cultural Economy, The Cultures and Globalization Series, 3. London: SAGE. Toynbee, J. (2001) ‘Creating problems: social authorship, copyright and the production of culture’, Pavis Papers in Cultural Research, 2. Toynbee, J. (2007) Bob Marley: Herald of a Postcolonial World? Cambridge: Polity. Witter, M. (2004) Music and the Jamaican Economy, WIPO/ UNCTAD available at http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/studies/ pdf/study_m_witter.pdf (last accessed 9 August 2008).

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CHAPTER 8 EXILE, CULTURE AND IDENTITY Rasoul Nejadmehr

Culture in exile

This chapter concentrates on the cognitive values of being born in a nomadic family, of being an exile and of organizing a music festival, Culture in Exile. I see exile and nomadic thought as the two main inter-connected features of thought in a world characterized by movement and the dissolution of boundaries, where few stable positions can be adopted by the individual. I insist on exile as a creative state of mind that enables a radical critique of the dominant discourse about culture and identity.

The music festival Culture in Exile was held in Stockholm and Gothenburg, Sweden, from 2000 to 2006. The first edition of the festival tried to highlight the role of exiled musicians in modernizing Iranian music and conveying new influences to a society like Iran, as well as their interplay with musicians in their host countries. The second widened the scope by taking in musicians from Iran, Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, embodying the trans-national cultural heritage of a region extending from the Middle East to Central Asia, based on the common use of Persian as the language of poetry, and the role played by exiles in creating this human heritage over the course of centuries as well as their conveying it to new contexts. The third festival put the focus on exile and resistance. It placed artists from the Middle East and European countries on the same stage, in order to show that resistance has different shapes and is going on everywhere. ‘Women, Voice and Resistance’ was an attempt to make the forbidden voices of Iranian women heard. Currently, Culture in Exile is developing into a working method for the inclusion of marginalized people. This means that it embraces a wide range of activities and networks connecting cultural and academic institutions with NGOs. The leading idea of my work with Culture in Exile is that exclusion has a cognitive dimension related to the way in which knowledge is produced and distributed. While in an age of increasing internationalization the context of knowledge comprises the experiences and achievements of non-Western people, or the concerns of women, gay men and lesbians, the prevailing knowledge paradigm excludes these experiences. It insists on an homogeneity of knowledge based on an intellectual hegemony from a Western male perspective. Famously, Marx based his analysis of modern societies on the ways in which commodities are produced and distributed.

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Nietzsche highlighted the importance of the production and distribution of ideas. Bringing these insights together, we can motivate our activities by references to social justice on the one hand and cognitive pluralism on the other. This enables us to operate with a notion of democracy that embraces social and cognitive inclusion of the margins. My work with Culture in Exile is strongly autobiographical as well, closely related to the question ‘Who am I?’ More precisely, it encompasses the question of identity and our situation as human beings in a globally interconnected and interdependent world. It asks what happens to us as human beings in a world of intensified cultural encounters. What is the role of exiles in ongoing cultural exchanges and cultural intermingling? How can art and music help us orient ourselves in a time of general disorientation?

Exile and nomadic thought Culture in Exile is an attempt to use the notion of exile as a starting point regarding contemporary social and cognitive issues, by bringing into focus the highly significant role played by exiles in the history of thought. In the course of my work with the festival, my view of exile has developed from an exclusive notion of exile to an inclusive one. Edward Said signifies exile as ‘a jealous state’. He defines the predicament of exile as follows: ‘ … it is in the drawing of lines around you and your compatriots that the least attractive aspects of being in exile emerge: an exaggerated sense of group solidarity, and a passionate hostility to outsiders …’ (Said, 2000:178). I myself cannot identify with this state of mind. Neither ‘group solidarity’ nor ‘hostility to outsiders’ signifies my approach. Am I an exile then? Surely. I relate the notion of exile to that of nomadic thought introduced by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus (1987). According to these writers, nomadic thought is characterized by connections, heterogeneity, multiplicity, rupture and engagement with the other. Indeed, their observations confirm my personal experiences of nomadic society’s lack of stability, its being perpetually on the move, ready to settle for new territories, face new challenges and its feature of border crossing. Being based on such a lifestyle, nomadic thought becomes engaged with the world by crossing boundaries and making interconnections with

diverse arrays of ideas and across a multitude of cultures and disciplines. This mindset is indeed similar to postmodern thought in its emphasis on continuous change as well as its lack of stable meaning-creating structures. A nomadic knowledge paradigm is then an inclusive, open and flexible system having close interplays with the surrounding world, where the boundaries between the inside and outside are continuously transgressed. Rather than excluding the other in the name of absolutes like exile, reality or truth, it champions an inclusive mindset, an epistemology of becoming that acknowledges the heterogeneity of knowledge. This point is in tune with my anti-Platonic/Socratic view of knowledge as not being inborn, but something that emerges in the meeting/confrontation between the self and the epistemological other. To include the other in the domain of knowledge is thus a necessary condition of the growth of our knowledge. The notion of exile as used here is also close to Nussbaum’s (1997) notion of ‘philosophical exile’. Rather than merely being confined to geographic displacement, it brings in a cognitive displacement. It destabilizes stable knowledge systems, it involves shifts of perspective and a critical examination of one’s own values in the light of the perspective of the other; the inter-changeability of being the self and the other; the awareness of us being the stranger in the eyes of the other. Strangeness then is not an essential otherness that should be kept away forever; it is with us and within us. The position advocated above may bring to mind talk about ‘routes and roots’. Some leading intellectuals of our time have argued for the primacy of ‘routes’ rather than ‘roots’. Such people can just as easily settle in London as in New York or New Delhi. I can do the same, to be sure, but I believe in some kind of rootednesss in a tradition. However, Deleuze and Guattari teach us to replace the notion of root with that of a rhizome ‘that can rebound time and again after most of it has been destroyed’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987:10). For my part, it has been about a creative rebounding of fragments of scattered roots and connecting these with new elements acquired through new encounters. These fragments contain traces of a past, open to assemble with lines of the present and ready to unfold toward a future. Here as everywhere, I implement a multiple logic. My being a nomad, an Iranian … ties back to my past. These are assembled with my

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being an exile, a cosmopolite and an Iranian/ Swedish in the present. Together, they indicate my path toward the future. This mindset encompasses both routes and roots and transcends them. Nobody can take my Iranian identity from me and I am more Swedish than native Swedes, because I have chosen to be Swedish rather than simply being born into it. Yet belonging to these communities does not mean neglecting my being a part of the human community at large. I believe in a notion of universalism as the inter-translatability of the local styles of life and universal human achievements. This notion of universalism is different from the Eurocentric one, based on an exclusive notion of reason. Inspired by Weber (2002), I can see clear connections between capitalist/Protestant notions of rationality and the prevailing scientific rationality which provides the basis of the Western knowledge paradigm. This notion of reason is exclusive, since, as Weber shows, it was not only initially inspired by the interests of specific religious and economic groups, but also continues to keep the interests of these groups in view. This narrow basis makes the operating notion of rationality quite local, its universal claims notwithstanding. I work with an inclusive notion of rationality based on the translatability of different meaning-creating systems. This notion of universalism is based on border-crossing and sharing experiences and values with the other.

From Stockholm to London … To put my work into context, I first have to say a few words about Sweden and Swedish identity. Although Sweden never has been a homogeneous country (we have Sami, Roms, Jewish and Finnish minorities), the Swedish culture has commonly been considered as homogeneous. The purity of the ‘Nordic race’ has been a political and aesthetical concern. Sweden was the first country in the world to give eugenics an academic status by establishing a race hygiene university department. Today eugenics is officially banished and the state has apologized to the victims of this ideology. But its cultural heritage is still at work, in the form of hidden values, thoughts and institutional structures. Another important point is the Swedish encounter during the Second World War where there was organized sympathy for Nazi Germany in Sweden.

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However, the Swedes never went through the same process of self-criticism as some other European countries. The relics of Nazism were therefore left intact and made Sweden a favourable place for a variety of xenophobic and racist parties. The economic boom after the war and its concomitant welfare have also had a huge impact on the Swedish people as a nation, their self-image and their view on others, especially regarding nonEuropeans. I came to Sweden in 1990, a decade enveloped by economic recession. I escaped Iran after eight years of imprisonment and had no idea about Swedish welfare being endangered. In a society like Sweden everything is of course economically rather than humanly motivated. The questions were: what are immigrants/refugees good for? And at the cultural level: are they a cultural promise or a danger? Obviously migrants as such were seen as a danger and something had to be changed in order to neutralize the risk, though not the established structures and institutions, even though they were too old and in dire need of some renewal. Immigrants were either integrated or assimilated. This was the setting in which I had to live and construct my identity. My first reaction was to surrender myself to the Swedish culture. It provided an alternative, a cultural choice that gave me a sense of personal autonomy vis-à-vis my original culture, a culture that I wished to disengage from totally as it was related to religious fundamentalism, violence and torture. I accepted Swedish culture as a whole rather than embracing some parts of it and refusing others. I had knowledge concerning my Iranian culture and competence as a teacher, but I chose to leave these in order to experience something new. I engaged deeply with learning the Swedish language and in achieving competence in the Swedish culture; I was seeking a Swedish identity and had no time to think about xenophobia or racism. I could not believe that there were such phenomena in Sweden. However, after six years in Sweden I encountered the crude reality of being a refugee. I wanted to go further and claim my rights as a citizen in a democratic society rather than being grateful eternally for receiving asylum. I also had plans to attain a PhD degree in philosophy. Suddenly all doors were closed. Due to this change in my relation to the society, the question of identity emerged at a very deep level. It was like a loss of identity. Am I Iranian? Am I Swedish? What am I? Which kind of

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logic do I have to use in my approach to these questions? A logic of ‘either/or’ or ‘both/and’? I became disillusioned and began to sink to into a passive nihilism. However, Nietzsche has taught us to use each sickness as a remedy against that sickness itself. This is an active approach enabling the individual to start anew whenever old values lead into intellectual impasses. I was prepared to use my nihilistic insights against nihilism itself. My illusions about Sweden had collapsed. I had to reinvent my values anew. I moved to London. My studies there gave me a new perspective on my life. It became a new beginning enabling me to rethink my notion of identity. My contacts with the Iranian community in London brought me in to contact with a new sense of being Iranian, developed in exile. I experienced it as trans-territorial and trans-national. Moreover, being away from Sweden gave me a new perspective on my citizenship in Sweden. It detached Swedishness from territory and origin. Facilitating my encounter with British academe, Swedishness became a performative notion released from the essentialist attachment with the hierarchical order of being a native or an immigrant; it became a Swedishness of my own, related to my life as a political refugee. Becoming de-territorialized and portable, my different identities came together much easier in London than in Stockholm; they appeared as opportunities rather than burdens. I became a nomad anew and on a different plane. My old nomadic experiences were reconciled with the modern cosmopolitism and became the framework of my life and conduct in a post-modern situation. This resembled a homecoming. I began to enjoy my perpetual movement between metropolises in Europe, ready to settle wherever circumstances were favourable. Released from the burden of belonging to a single and fixed identity, I could address my problems from a multiplicity of perspectives. My studies in philosophy strengthened this new ontological and epistemological position. They buoyed up my belief in an ontology of change and process vis-à-vis an essentialist one. They also enhanced my belief in an epistemology of becoming that makes the very idea of boundaries meaningless. Elevating change over permanence enables me to challenge essentialist assumptions about centre and periphery. This also enables me not only for a radical critique of the established cultural practices, but also for a critique of position that

fixes peoples with ethnical affinities other than European in an inferior position based on a set of prejudices and assumptions of what an immigrant is. Through highlighting the indebtedness of European cultures to exiles, the Culture in Exile festival challenges the predominant culture’s talk about non-European emigrants. This is in order to make identities a matter of change, power, position and negotiation. Without such a position, thinking will be constrained by taken-for-granted identities based on commonplace beliefs and ideas. It was in London that I observed how Iranian music in exile has developed certain distinctive features compared to music in Iran, as well as differences between Iranian music in London, Stockholm and in Los Angeles. My encounter with Iranian music in exile drew my attention to the huge role played by exiles in the cultural and artistic life of our age. Through their work, exile has become a constitutive element in our identity and the new European identity is going to be deeply influenced by the artistic and cultural creativity of exiles and emigrants. So why not use art and music as a remedy for my own wounds and to put a perspective on social issues?

Exile, creativity and resistance Addressing the identity crisis from such a position enabled me to start an aesthetic offensive (as it were) on both my original culture and my new culture. This was a response to their driving me into double-exile and alienation as none had accepted me as I was. My old culture expelled me because I deviated from and opposed its values; I was discriminated against by the new one because of my origins. I called this offensive Culture in Exile, meaning exile as the habitat of culture. This home is open and provisional, based on the logic of change and border-crossing. It does not confine its inhabitant within barriers and boundaries, but lets them grow through encounter with the other. This is a reshaped notion of home where one is not ‘at home in one’s home’ (Adorno, 1993:39). For me, it is the aesthetics of resistance vis-à-vis the aesthetics of conformity. It is a way to break down barriers, between the centre and periphery and make the marginalized voice of migrated musicians heard taking a step further toward a polyphonic society where all voices, regardless of their ethnical origins, are heard as if part of one orchestra.

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The festival relates my ideas of exile and nomadic thought to my specific circumstances of being an exile. It creates a basis to address the issue of power and exclusion. The question has two sides: one side is the Swedish society and its established discourse about immigrants and other cultures; on the other side we have immigrants and their readiness, or lack of readiness, to participate in social games. Instead of enclosing ourselves within our cultures, we have to learn to negotiate and renegotiate power and positions, to define and redefine identities and images. We have to communicate, to understand and to be understood in order to become closer to each other, unify our abilities and build up our common home, where diversity is accepted and appreciated. We have to create spaces where we can meet and mutually enrich our experiences and stimulate our creativity. Such an intermingling paves the path for such border-crossing, for a culture that does not demand uniformity. It is a harmonious unity of diversity, a growing interconnectedness of different cultures as well as new elements, without clear origins in any specific culture or territory. It is precisely these new elements that open new horizons in life. Having a nomadic mindset, I do not care about geographical, political, religious and cultural borders. Others have drawn them in order to maintain their hierarchies of power and disempowerment. This enables me to rethink notions like identity and ethnicity; these get a universal dimension without their local aspects being denied. My experiences of being a nomad and an exile merge in a sense of cosmopolitanism as my mindset. It signifies the willingness to become involved with the other, the concern with achieving competence in new cultures, openness toward divergent and unknown cultural experiences. It is a culture of becoming, not of being, of going through metamorphoses rather than a culture of fixed identities; in this culture the multiplicity of identity is not considered as something dangerous. We can use this sense of nomadism as the basis of a notion of globalization different from the one signified by war and the militarization of the world by new liberals and fundamentalists. While the latter try to impose unsurpassable divides between good and evil on us, the former offers new opportunities for bordercrossing through revealing the arbitrary nature of these divides. Through exploring alternative ways of conduct and offering images of a desirable world,

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human creativity has a crucial role to play in this regard. Such a notion of creativity cannot be confined within specialized territories such as the arts, as if the rest of life can do without it. A better alternative, it seems to me, is to connect creativity to human ability to work as Marx suggests. We can then recognize, with Nietzsche, that any human being is a creative artist by definition. Indeed, as Isar and Anheier observe in their Introduction, media like YouTube signify a crucial step toward providing practical prerequisites to such a view of humanity. Rather than being mere curiosity or time-wasting, such non-hierarchical, unconventional and decentralized creative activities demonstrate efforts to resist the dominant will to power and its hegemonic imperatives. Challenging established values, they not only explore new territories of human creativity, but also bring to the fore the endless diversity of human creative resources. This is also to invite the other into conversation through using ever new means of communication worldwide. Indeed, a notion of communication across boundaries is needed in order to connect diverse efforts to make the planet a better place to live in, since creating such a world is beyond the ability of any single group, nation or culture. This view of creativity recognizes and promotes creativity within our everyday cognitive activities and conduct as an indispensable condition for human flourishing in a time of increasing global interconnectedness and interdependencies. Informed by this notion of creativity, a critique of authoritarian efforts to level out differences goes hand in hand with a critique of the form of life to which they belong. The cultural literacy demanded by the world of today requires the ability to put the right questions to the culture of the other: the ability to be critical and selective, to choose from different cultures those elements that suit us in constructing our own perspectives, identity and knowledge. The latter may then be fragmentary and heterogeneous, but there is nothing wrong with that. For any true artist uses her creativity in the work of constructing, to transcend her fear of the consequences. Acting in this way, we can expose ourselves to change and meet challenges without being afraid; we can engage with ideas and become agents of change without becoming fanatics. Open towards the full multiplicity of experiences, are cosmopolitans at home. Culture in Exile manifests such an attitude.

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REFERENCES

Adorno, T. (1993) Minima Moralia. London: Verso. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. New York: Continuum. Nussbaum, M. (1997) Cultivating Humanity: a Classical Defence of Reform in Liberal Educations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Said, E. (2000) Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weber, M. (2002) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Routledge.

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CHAPTER 9 THE ‘CREATIVITY’ OF EVIL? Dragan Klaic

How ‘creative’ are manifestations of evil? In this essay, the author looks at crooks both small and big time as well as various forms of crime and destruction. His conclusion is that evil can be surprising and innovative, but not creative. Creativity needs to be affirmed in its utopian core, in the benefits it offers, all to be shared as common goods. In this perspective, he sees combating climate change and its consequences as the major challenge to artistic creativity today.

The composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was almost tarred and feathered when, a few days after 9/11, he called the attack on the Twin Towers a work of art of cosmic proportions. Some of his concerts

were cancelled and his compositions hastily taken off programmes. Today, years later, when the political and cultural consequences of 9/11 can be assessed more coolly, the conceptual originality and precision of the operation to hijack the aircraft and perform the suicide attacks on symbolic targets of US power do indeed indicate both dramaturgical ingenuity and daring imagination. But was that a work of art or only a major display of creativity? A creativity of evil then? This is a tempting path for reflection, especially since creativity has become one of those extensible, indiscriminately invoked notions, diluted by the common claim that ‘everyone is creative’ or could become creative if they tried hard enough. As pointed out by Isar and Anheier in their Introduction to this volume, such a broad application risks making the term almost worthless. Nevertheless, creativity still occupies a central place in the current discourses linking culture and the economy through the ‘creative industries’ (see The Cultures and Globalization Series, 2: The Cultural Economy) and is commonly invoked as a precondition of a knowledge-based economy, not least by the European Union in its unfulfilled Lisbon Agenda. The decision of the EU to declare 2009 a Year of Creativity and Innovation makes a logical coupling between these two related notions but opens the public sphere to a tsunami of creativity-linked hype. Creativity is often reduced to the arts alone as if other human endeavours do not require creative approaches. To be sure, we can all agree that creativity is not limited to the arts, but from this self-evident truth to positioning it as a public good to be invoked and distributed as some new manna, endorsed by organizational and educational theories and backed up with psychology, is a very big step indeed! From Richard Florida’s loosely defined creative class to the notion of a creative city as advocated by Charles Landry, creativity has become heavily overloaded with positive connotations. So the question begs to be posed: is there such a thing as a creativity of evil? Does creativity drive

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certain destructive forces and permeate some destructive processes as well?

Creativity enmeshed with evil: the twentieth-century history The historical record of the twentieth century offers a rich inventory of innovations that could be considered the fruits of creativity, starting with the introduction of poisonous gas, automatic weapons, tanks and aerial bombing during the First World War. The transport of millions to the Nazi death camps, orchestrated with utter precision, the efficiency of Zyklon B, and the crematoria devised to eliminate all traces of this industrialized crime found their low-tech counterpart in the primitive brutality of the Khmer Rouge killing fields, or the mass killing of Muslims in the Serb detention camps of Bosnia in 1992. More recently, the gruesome one-acters in Abu Ghraib prison, staged primarily to be shot by mobile phone cameras and sent home as souvenirs of Iraq, the minutiae of the Guantanamo detention regime, water-boarding and other carefully designed torture methods practised in those hellish places give an additional, uncanny layer of meaning to the notion of a ‘creative class’. Fifty years ago, the atom bomb and a collective neurosis over the threat of nuclear war gave birth to such figures of popular culture as Dr Strangelove – the super-creative madman of total destruction and a scientific update on Frankenstein, that poor dumb monster of Romanticism. Today, an indicted war criminal such as Radovan Karadžic´, a Sarajevobased psychiatrist and poet, can go into prolonged hiding and reappear in public in Serbia under the creative disguise of New Age guru and doctor of alternative medicine, before he is found and taken to the Hague Tribunal. Cold War confrontations spawned competition in the strategies of subversion and containment, in the invention of high-tech gadgetry, as demonstrated with considerable brio by James Bond and his fellow Cold War secret agents in numerous films. Hollywood film production – always quick to make some profit on the marketing of fear and anxiety – has specialized in the invention of creative ways to outsmart and neutralize, but also torture and kill, opponents and to inflict mass destruction via unprecedented ways and means. This creativity is invested by the studios in order to produce

menacing monsters (King Kong, Jaws, Jurassic Park ...) and evil empires, earthly or galactic, but also persuasive and scary. Could all these cinematic images and narratives have inspired dictators of considerable performative talent, aided by creative sycophants and artistic experts (Madmen and Specialists is the apt title for one Wole Soyinka novel), to create original ceremonies of humiliation and mass obedience? Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies were embellished and made even more persuasive by the cinematographic talent of Leni Riefenstahl. Mao’s parades of the self-repentant enemies of the people in the ‘Great Cultural Revolution’, Idi Amin’s boastful histrionics, Bokassa’s coronation pomp, Kim Il Sung’s moving seas of robot-like gymnasts and the pervasive personality cults practised by Stalin, Eyadema, Sadam Hussein and lesser devil’s disciples could not even be imagined without an anonymous army of designers, dramaturges, directors, film-makers, photographers and other artists. Une trahison des creatifs? And what about architects such as Rem Koolhaas who lend their creativity to repressive regimes (China, the Gulf States) that in turn will willingly fund their ambitious architectural plans? This could be seen at least as a cohabitation of creativity and evil, a topic explored long before us by Molière, Voltaire, Goethe, Eisenstein, Brecht, and many other outstanding artists.

The small fry This big history of evil is enmeshed with creativity. But there is yet another playing field, globalized and digital, where evil and creativity can meet as well, but on different terms, as a small-scale enterprise. For several months I have been analysing the genres, stylistic features and rhetorics of small-time Internet crooks. The pathetic pleas of the sick and the orphaned, begging for a buck to buy medicine or pay for an operation, are soon replaced by the announcements of unexpected lottery winnings, shares of Microsoft just begging to be claimed for almost nothing (save a small processing fee to be sent to a Lagos lawyer … ), and various outbursts of generosity to be enjoyed if one just discloses one’s personal banking data ... Everyone’s email spam box is full of offers from the widows and orphans of deceased African dictators, from weapons, cocoa, gold and oil merchants, bank

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managers, notaries and lawyers, each offering a 20–30 per cent cut of a huge treasure chest, held in some blocked bank account, to any gullible European willing to help move it to a European bank. That some people let themselves be taken in by such offers demonstrates the existence of a global greedy class (including some very stupid people) who exist alongside a globalized creatively criminal class. Recently some private charitable foundations I have never heard of have begun inviting me to international conferences with rather vague agendas, to be held in Oxford, London and San Francisco, all promising significant networking opportunities and fully paid up travel and stay, again for a small registration fee of $250, payable into a West African bank account. I have also been offered several substantial awards and grants for unspecified civic and intellectual achievements by other foundations employing similar terms – a certain Edward Heath Foundation, supposedly set up by the late former British Prime Minister’s family, begged me to accept a seven hundred thousand pound grant to spend as I pleased on my much appreciated projects to further international peace and understanding. Quite creative as a con scheme but obviously too good to be true, especially that in the case of the projects I really undertake in my professional and academic life I often cannot find a mere seven thousand pounds! If I do find some funds to organize a conference or a seminar, and announce it on the Internet, there will be regular offers from fake African public agencies and phony NGOs, all wanting to send a delegation to exchange experiences but in fact looking for a way to get an invitation that would lead to a much coveted Schengen visa. Our conference topic can provoke little interest for those pseudocolleagues, but they will still use it an as an excuse to try to find their way to Europe and to then disappear into the invisible army of illegal migrants. These various forms of Internet tease are usually formulated in a convoluted-form of the English language that seeks to pass as official and technically sophisticated but always fails because of the language and spelling errors, its odd syntax and an inability to reproduce accurately the subtleties of academic or professional jargon. The pretexts will vary, the promised gestures of generosity will shift both in the terms of form and packaging, but the trap remains the same and will contain some form of phishing,

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always requiring money upfront under the promise of riches or some kind of shortcut to a visa. This is the digital proletariat of creative larceny, located mainly in Africa. Yet some confrères were caught recently in my city, Amsterdam, and according to police task units charged with combating Internet crime, they operate from anywhere, regardless of the registered domain of the email address. In addition to all this Internet swindling that clearly seeks personal gain, there is the puzzling phenomenon of malware that destroys computer systems en masse without making anyone better off. Those who have invented such destructive agents as Cornficker, Downadup and Kido (worms that have infected – according to the BBC – more than three and a half million machines) would in an old-fashioned Jules Verne’s novel be secretive fanatics driven by some great injustice and a passionate quest for revenge. Today they are in all probability just a bunch of idle nerds with global outreach for sure, but without any ideology and any higher cause beyond their programming know-how.

Higher stakes The white-collar upper echelon also uses Internet and digital financial transactions but the stakes are much higher – as was demonstrated in the collapse of Barings bank in 1995 through the machinations of a single creative trader who lost £827 million. He was followed by a more audacious trader colleague who spilled an ocean of red ink, worth €5 billion, across the books of the Societé Générale. Add to these lonely riders the Enron top executives and their boardroom peers, masters of sophisticated theft and deception stratagies. And then we have Bernie Madoff, who has topped them all with his Ponzi scheme that burned $50 billion of other people’s money. Is he a genius of evil creativity? Not at all; he is just a Hoschstapler who for a long time preserved an aura of respectability, fencing off any SEC investigation of his business. The difference between him and other small-time crooks in the same business is, according to the New York Times, not in the mechanics but only in the scale of the swindle and the period of time he has been able to perpetuate it. The consequences of these creative schemes are truly global and if they are to be seen as a

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cultural expression, it is surely as an expression of the boundless greed and unstoppable obsession with the growth of globalized capitalism, of its mythologization of corporate success, behind which always stands narcissistic individualism and the egomaniac competitive urge. From Enron to Samsung and Siemens, and thus from Texas to Seoul to Munich, the transcultural red line is drawn by greed and that sense of omnipotence which Ibsen caricatured in Peer Gynt (1867) in the early phase of capitalist colonial expansion: all boasting and puffing ambition and no personal core. Here we have more shallowness than creativity. Is not the current banking crisis caused by the repackaging of subprime mortgages into respectable financial instruments, to be sold and resold as a solid investment worldwide? No wonder that financial fraud is euphemistically called ‘creative bookkeeping’ … In the ‘Murder She Wrote’ or ‘Cloak and Dagger’ departments of creative crime, the elimination of political opponents signals a ruthless political culture and relies on sophisticated original schemes and a long distance operational outreach, again quite transcultural. The CIA’s efforts to eliminate Fidel Castro by putting poison in his toothpaste and shoe polish failed miserably in the 1960s, as creative or original as they may have been. The Bulgarian dissident and BBC journalist Georgi Markov, killed in the 1980s by a poisonous umbrella tip on Westminster Bridge in London, fell victim to a well targeted, neatly carried out operation of Todor Živkov’s secret service, in comparison to the indiscriminately spread radioactive polonium which was sloppily used to eliminate the ex-KGB agent Aleksandr Litvinenko in 2006, thus contaminating London eateries, bars and hotels. Before she was gunned down in the lobby of her apartment house in Moscow, the Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was poisoned by tea, served to her on a flight from Moscow to Chechnya; a hospital stay interrupted her mission – but she survived for a while. And then there is the case of Munir Said Thalib, an Indonesian human rights activist, who was poisoned in 2004 on a Garuda plane. On his way from Jakarta to Schiphol an off-duty pilot, deployed by Indonesian military intelligence, took the seat next to his and put arsenic in his meal. In this perspective, the elimination of former Russian tycoon Mikhaïl Khodorovski as a potential political opponent to President Putin, with trumped-up tax evasion charges sending him to a Siberian penal colony for years, is a rather ‘soft’

creative method, mild in comparison with the simple gunning down of political enemies that is still so frequent on the streets of Moscow and everywhere, and based on sheer brute force without any pretensions to ‘creativity’. Stepping back from all these grim stories, it is easier to acknowledge the creativity of computer hackers whose mischief varies from mere nuisance to serious fraud. Most fraudulent Internet use reinforces the connection between creativity and technology, but requires usually a rather low level of computer literacy. It can be perpetuated on a great series of potential victims globally, quickly and efficiently, with minimal investment. To imagine a lonely hacker compromising or even bringing down the system of a mighty corporation or government agency may in some circles be lionized as a heroic deed of anti-globalist struggle, as an emerging underground resistance movement spreading across the planet. These are commonplaces in the new mythology of popular culture, but the wellorchestrated attacks on the Internet servers of Estonian government agencies and banks after the Estonian government removed a monument to fallen Second World War Soviet soldiers from a Tallinn square in 2007 prompted NATO to set up a secret electronic warfare task force in Estonia, oriented primarily towards the electronic threat from Russia, just as in the Cold War: Dr Strangelove against the ‘Russkies again’, only this time in cyberspace. And before the Georgian–Russian conflict escalated in South Ossetia in August 2008, official Georgian websites were shut down by the DDOS (distributed denial of service), originating from some Russian servers. After the violent anti-Chinese demonstrations in Tibet in 2008, similar cyber-offensives were carried out from China, seeking to lame the pro-Tibetan websites and silence those sites critical of the Chinese government and especially any calling for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. So the agency of new creativity competition in cyberspace is more easy to find in mighty corporate and governmental circles than among shoddy hustlers in the Internet cafes of Lagos …

Moral and political perspectives If I put my mind to identifying an emblematic instance that coupled evil and creativity, I will inevitably stop at the Terror House in Budapest

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(www.terorrhaz.hu), a rather unique monument to a country’s turbulent history and presumed national martyrdom. This building on the prominent Andrassy boulevard in Budapest served in the 1930s as the headquarters of the Hungarian fascist party and during the Second World War it was a place of systematic torture. It continued with the same macabre function from 1945 to 1956 as the headquarters of the feared communist political police, with a different set of political victims tortured and liquidated in the same cellar cells. In February 2002 the Terror House museum opened on the same premises as a pet pre-election project of the ruling right-wing Fidezs party creating an artificial symmetry of fascism and communism, but passing the former through quite quickly, in a summary, glissando manner, and then dwelling extensively on the latter, deploying the most talented Hungarian artists as installationists, designers and composers. The Hungarian people are presented in this elaborate display as innocent victims of foreign totalitarian ideologies, but the suffering caused by the communist terror is given extensive attention and much detail. The narrative twists the details of the historic record but recalls aspects of communist repression in a series of impressive installations of strong evocative power. While the place is a must for the specialists in museology and all who desire to manipulate collective memory from a strong ideological stance, the project suffers from a problematic sustainability. Not only did it not help Fidesz win the elections in 2002, it faces becoming gradually obsolete. In one generation, the remembrance of fascism and communism will fade from the collective memory of Hungarians and the historiography of those two rival ideologies will be completed and nuanced by research coming from a new generation who will have less of an ideological axe to grind. Hungary’s political polarizations will then be driven by a set of new divisive issues. The ideological symbols used in the display will cause more puzzlement than horror, and the historic manipulation – as astute and creative as it has been – will become irrelevant. With Hungary in the EU since 2004 and with democratic elections bringing different coalitions to power every four years, the Terror House will be more of a witness to the passions invested in the post-communist transition after 1989 and in historic revisionism (carried out in Hungary, as Istva´n Re´v points out, in a minute and serial manner) than a

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valid elucidation of its nominal topic. Ultimately, with some luck, the building on the Andrassy boulevard will become the headquarters for a bank or mobile phone company. Adopting a moral perspective, then, one is forced to decouple creativity from all such instances of trickery, crime, menace, murder, destruction and manipulation, regardless of however innovative, original, clever, smart and unexpected they might be. If creativity is to remain a meaningful notion, it needs to be reaffirmed in its positive implications, and even repositioned within its utopian core. It demands some eudemonic aspirations: to produce shared, common benefits and to bring happiness rather than pain, suffering, death and destruction. The 9/11 suicide bombers, the Enron executives and Litvinenko’s liquidators should be seen primarily as millenarian fanatics, greed-obsessed ego-trippers and reckless executors rather than fellow travellers within the creative class. Equally, the awful tableaux of Abu Ghraib belong to military law and not to the creativity department. Ennobling hackers, Internet hustlers and con-men as anti-globalist resistance fighters is the political option of choice in ongoing efforts to realign the anti-capitalism front, but is morally of dubious validity even under the disguise of the creativity discourse. Evil always takes on surprising, radical and even innovative facets. But that does not make it creative. With a political perspective, the real challenge to creativity lies further away from the sinister forces that might want to claim it: primarily in the productive responses to climate change and the reduction of its consequences, with an inevitable realignment of politics, economy and existing lifestyles. Such a far-reaching, world-wide transition is unimaginable without cultural change and an artistic shaping of alternative symbolic capital and could be made much more urgent by the ongoing economic crisis. The real new frontier of creativity lies not in the stratagems of destruction and exercises of evil but at the edge of the present global civilization built on a fossil fuel dependence. In declaring 2009 a Year of Creativity and Innovation, the European Commission risks opening the doors to a vague, superficial celebration of creativity that will pander to the vanity of the creative class but will not change the conditions of cultural production nor boost technological innovation. Worldwide creativity may not be capable of imagining an exit from

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capitalism, succumbing to its worst crisis since 1929, but will be deployed by it in its altered, postcrisis forms. Yet imagining a post-fossil fuel world remains the major creative challenge to be tackled

by a broad cohort of creatives, recruited from politics, business, science and culture – an emerging alliance whose imagery and discourse need to be shaped by creative artists.

REFERENCES

BBC News (2009) ‘Three Million hit by Windows worm’, 16 January. Florida, R. (2002) The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books. Landry, C. (2000) The Creative City. Stroud: Comedia/ Earthscan.

Markoff, J. (2008) ‘Before the Gunfire, Cyberattacks’, New York Times, 13 August. Re´v, I. (2006) Retroactive Justice, Prehistories of Postcommunism. P. Alto; Stanford University Press. Wayne, L. (2009) ‘Troubled Ties Bring Mini-Madoffs to Light’, New York Times, 28 January.

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CHAPTER 10 THE ‘CREATOR’ AS ENTREPRENEUR: AN AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE Paul Brickhill

which the artist and audience are interwoven. The historic migration of peoples has created the sense in which art is assumed as transient, informed by memory, captured by stories, crafted by improvisation and retold in a limitless variation of artistic forms. While there is a distinctive connectedness between culture and social life in Africa, individual creative genius drives this artistic process. Ways in which culture is imagined, lived and retained inside Africa and linked to globalization are examined, with examples drawn from stone sculpture, township jazz, Ghanian highlife, Afro-beat, Zimbabwean mbira, marimba, books and literature, stories and story-telling, youth poetry and Nigerian film.

African art as stories

There are many routes by which one may interpret and understand African arts. This chapter seeks to cognize ways in which African artistic enterprise has been able to create a diversity of hybrid, continuously evolving art forms and techniques amidst economic poverty, the emigration of artists and intellectuals, and a paucity of infra-structure. How do Africa’s artists make their livelihood? What is the social interplay between livelihood and the creative process? What types of connections and contradictions exist between African art and global influences? In what ways is African art both ‘universal’ and ‘African’? A starting point is the elemental nature by which all art in Africa, in all disciplines, is understood as story-telling – in

Audiences in Africa are seldom passive. Creative work takes place in a swell of social interaction. The spoken word is highly developed form of creative expression, and literally, everyone knows how to participate. It is expected. And yet the role of the individual, the innovator, the creator, is accentuated in this process. The creation of art is individual, even where its process is social. African creative expression – in all its specific art forms whether performed, visual or literary – is typically understood to mean a story, in some cases patterned and symbolic from a repeated telling as history or myth, and critically, an audience that participates in some way in the telling. The most commonly held perceptions of how art ‘is art’ conform to this narrative power, that is to say its lyrical substance and emotional content, wrapped around the drama of life retold. Many are tempted, by theory, to weight this sensibility of art-as-story-telling, within a social milieu, towards that dull discourse that all African art must ‘mean something worthy’, centred perhaps on the ‘sacred’, pitched within ethical value systems or having a learning function (as in the reciting of histories). In this trajectory, African art is all about functionality. This has been a common enough

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view amongst academics, taking as their cue the way aesthetics and use-value in craft are fused, in which meals are taken communally, households designed around large extended family structures, in which histories really are recited orally, and remembered, as myth. This is usually juxtaposed against abstract aesthetics, art as disconnected imagination – art as fun, as individual enterprise. Even the spiritual content of African art seems robbed of its pulse, hemmed in by giving it ‘functionality’, rather than calling it what it is – joyous religious expression. Functionality is, in my view, a limited, joyless meandering in understanding the dynamics of African art; it seems to reward the stereotypes of African art in an exotic folk-art guise, evoking a spirit world, supposedly having meaning only around social ‘use’, bereft of individual inspiration and genius. Of course African art is rooted in its social and historical soil, and frequently embedded in spiritual and sacred connotations – how could it be otherwise? Indeed, a resonating feature of modern urban African music and performance poetry is the search for identity amongst the youth, through traditional instruments, language and voice, but fused with contemporary influence. On its vast canvas, African art and artistic enterprise is continuously being reinvented by individual genius, and has been for centuries. It is fluid, permeable, literally a hybrid (one thinks of electrified traditional acoustic instruments). Increasingly it takes digital forms. It is unafraid of copying and subsuming from within Africa and Africanizing ‘foreign’ influences. The embrace between diverse, limitless and changeable art forms and individual imagination is the continuous thread of endless story-telling patterns. In Africa, talking on the cell phone has become almost a cliché: it is the most important cultural device in Africa. It has transfixed the continent in every facet of social interaction. It has changed how Africans communicate, but not the way they communicate or the purpose of communication. Not far behind is skype. Let us return to this opening gambit: all art forms are stories, propelled by individual African genius and innovation in their telling, involving an active audience. All stories unravel the drama and humour of real lives lived – that is their secret. The outlines of some, understood as narratives, are sharp and literal, as in theatre, poetry and story-telling through

music, while others are complex, symbolic and dream-like, because in Africa dreams are still reality. Stone sculpture is a contemporary, world-famous art form in Zimbabwe, about as ‘ancient’ as the 1950s, and as solitary as art can be – hundreds of hours spent chipping at rock and dreaming. It emerged as a relatively small group of brilliant innovators acquired customized tools. The stone carving ‘pedigree’ amongst these modern artists has an enticingly romantic edge. Zimbabwe sits on a vast granite plateau, its stone subtly, and sometimes wildly, hued in infinite suggestive variations. Dzimbahwe, or Great Zimbabwe, is the majestic stone-walled city dating back to the 1400s, in which six 500-year old symbolic birds were found – carriers of spirits carved in stone, the spiritual emblem of the Kingdom of Munhumutapa that founded Dzimbahwe as its capital, and of today’s independent Zimbabwe. Zimbabwean stone sculptors, at a time in the 1980s when commercial art distributors advertised their works with the magnificent boast ‘five of the ten greatest living stone sculptors come from a single tribe in Africa’, protested angrily, not at the outlandish claims on their behalf which were just ridiculous, but at being known by their personal names, as individual geniuses, and not by the laughingly inaccurate ethnic label ‘Shona stone sculptors’. The art itself is anything but literal. It is not traditional. It has no ethnic origin. Surreal, personal, strangely distended and manipulated forms, dream-like images, combining human ‘qualities’ that sometimes have animal features, other times a stylized face or human form – every piece tells an individual story. These pieces conform to a style invented by one artist over years (copied in thousands by pavement artists for the tourist trade and craft exports). The artists sometimes explain their works by saying the shape, colour and hairline cracks of a stone ‘suggested’ an image that grew into an idea, but more often they will say the idea arose from a dream, or a dream-like state. There is an extraordinary power, much written about and analysed, in the way these static objects not only express emotion but also, at different times of the day, and according to the way the light plays and the environment where the piece rests, contrasting emotional possibilities, such as sadness within joy, innocence in vileness. Considering a piece one enters into an inner dialogue; in this way

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each story unfolds as intangible and oddly impermanent. The sensation begs each individual, the ‘audience’, to place themselves inside what may be happening, to imagine the emotional and dreamlike drama. An exquisitely evocative story-telling form in South Africa is jazz, and in the same sense, all improvised music that flows throughout Africa, combining immediacy with emotional engagement. At its base is a rhythmic, repeated phrase, one might say a shade of emotion, with a simple melody that suggests context, perhaps foot-tapping fun, but often a studied theme, like anger or reminiscence. Onto this is constructed the musical voicing, improvised, never to be repeated; the spontaneous invention of sequences of notes that add up to the full emotional engagement, deeply personal for every individual in the audience. In a political context, especially from the 1960s, jazz became the ‘musical language’ of emancipation; its freestyle method unconstrained by musical convention, its title, lyrics and stories recalling ghettoes, life oppressed and the promise of freedom. Generally, stories in African music and poetry are simple, and by repetition and musical interpretation take on profound, multi-dimensional meanings, often couched in one line. Context is vital. In the simplest of traditional songs below, one line – ‘You are running away’ – captures the essence, and expresses a thousand emotions. Shosholoza Shosholoza Ku lezontaba Stimela siphum’ eZimbabwe Wen’ uyabaleka Wen’ uyabaleka Ku lezontaba Stimela siphum’ eZimbabwe

Push hard in the mountains train from Zimbabwe You are running away You are running away on those mountains train from Zimbabwe

This classic tune in Southern Africa has often been adapted by jazz musicians with soaring emotional poignancy. With these simple lyrics, it tells the story of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers from the 1930s who left for the mines of Johannesburg, or to become factory and domestic workers. They came from everywhere, many from Zimbabwe. Later, during the Zimbabwean bush

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war, yet more Zimbabweans found themselves in South Africa for entirely different reasons. The song tells of economic migration, its hardships, and by its association implies all the migrations created from centuries of colonial conquest. It also says much about the movement of peoples in Africa, and each person in the audience will interpret it personally. Africa, and its art, have been about movement of peoples, and this is especially acute in the southern and central regions. There is no individual whose origins have remained static, whose family has not been shifted, displaced, or joined in one form or another of migration. If there is one concept that would capture the soul of the African artist, reflecting life around them, it is transience. In a world that never stands still, has never stopped and will never stop in the future, where everything material is temporary, memory is reality, and it is a collective reality. Memories are about how people relate to each other. Never removed from the ecstatic creator – the jazz soloist, the sculptor, the writer, the actor – is an audience, the two fixated in an eternal dance, for art in Africa cannot exist without both, but more than that the audience is each individual multiplied. In an African setting, performing art is enjoyed in an intimate, socialized space that, as far as is practical, eliminates unnecessary barriers between creator and audience. It is common in West Africa for a ‘theatre’ to be a clearing, made and broken in a day. Grandiose theatre is atypical in Africa, and surely not the place to dance crazily to the patterns and immediacy of an Afro-beat. Even our stone carvers have turned sculpture into a socialized experience, creating colonies of artists, and literally inviting an audience, informally, to sit and chat, and perhaps buy. As much as African art and story-telling are interchangeable and socialized, they do not sit comfortably with boundaries of method. A poet who paints and tells jokes, a filmmaker who sings, a writer who acts, and an audience of artists who know their part in the performance: this is the convention of art. Dreams, spirits, spiritual and emotional states of mind are not defined as separate from that of material, day-to-day reality; in this sense African stories really are life-like and know well that the strangest dramas and funniest stories are the truest. An audience will easily challenge a story with a hollow spirit: art must be completely honest about its emotional engagement or not at all.

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One could perhaps challenge this view of all art as narrative by looking at ubiquitous African motifs and chevrons and asking ‘so what is the story, where is the emotion?’ Repeated patterns arise from symbols, with exactly the same source as all written language in antiquity, and contain meaning, and by implication stories, myth, legend – some known, most now lost, but every one worth pondering over its origins. The same principle would apply to masks and stylized human forms carved from wood throughout Africa: symbols that contain meaning and within that meaning a pretty good story, or else why tell it over and over?

Books and writers The first publishing located in Africa was generally small missionary presses set up in African colonies between the 1920s and 1950s. Scattered, eccentric ‘white’ publishing followed to serve skewed colonial reading interests, and in a few small but politically significant cases by the 1960s, notably Nigeria, the awakening African intellectual. School and tertiary textbooks and library books at every level were imported from a colonial centre. With independence, British multi-nationals ‘set up shop’ in former colonies, in the main merely to take orders from ministry officials and ship books out from Britain. The French and Portuguese hardly bothered – cheaper to send out a rep – but in time they too opened offices. Within a decade state textbook provision started as African governments, responding to an overwhelming hunger for education, began to assert their political patronage and cultural hegemony over the content of school textbooks and school curricula. Indigenous small-scale African publishing enterprises – autonomous from both the state and multi-nationals – then began to spring up in the 1970s, and in the Francophone territories, a decade later. Early efforts at fiction, social commentary and non-textbook publishing were erratic, awkward, tentative – driven forward by passionate African intellectuals, who were often writers themselves. The promise of independent, hands-on African publishing serving a new readership stuttered as state-publishing (frequently in collaboration with multi-nationals) imposed a monopoly over school textbook provision (90 per cent of the book market), thereby making independent publishing unviable.

Governments did little to help local publishing efforts to develop, unless they owned these. But indigenous African publishing, if not individual enterprises, did survive this barren formative period, serving a niche readership with more than a little ingenuity and personal courage, and by the mid-1990s, incredibly, Africa could count up about 800 emergent publishing enterprises in a nascent, almost free-market publishing sector. If publishing is still in transition, finding its place within an African artistic enterprise, a popular reading culture is weak all over Africa, further eroded by the scarcity of libraries, a negligence in state support, and the huge cost of books against personal income. Even at a third of the price of a European equivalent, a book might still represent a week’s wages or more, and if books are to be bought – here usually only textbooks – and are necessary to complete an exam and so enhance job prospects, only then can this purchase be justified. Some would argue and provide considerable evidence that it is not reading but the book buying culture that is weak. Even so a lingering misconception exists that books imported from overseas are superior to local books or those from another African country – and this can be true even where the author and title are identical. Within this mindset, a ‘book’ is something – a cultural brand – from overseas. Interestingly, difficult questions arise. Does Africa undervalue its literary culture, in contrast to the way story-telling, as a performing art, is celebrated? Are the wrong books published? How much is just it about price and poverty? Are writers, silently hoping to attract a noteworthy publisher overseas, showing off to a foreign readership, in effect alienating the emergence of a ‘popular’ local readership (as the lesser economic opportunity)? Of one thing we are certain: producing fiction and ‘recreational’ non-fiction is still a risky and erratic undertaking in African publishing. The iconic African writers who imagined Africa in the 1960s and 70s and told its seminal stories to itself and the world have often (with a few thrilling exceptions) been more successfully published overseas than inside Africa, and more effectively distributed and publicized to the rest of Africa from overseas than from, and sometimes even in, their homeland. We read Achebe, Soyinka, Okri and now Adichie through an English, and not a Nigerian, publisher.

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So it was that the demise in the 1980s of the Heinemann African Writers Series in the UK, which launched a sensational generation of African writers in the 60s and 70s, was a severe loss to African writing inside Africa, to the extent that Africans started, with considerable disquiet, to ask: where are the ‘new voices’? Do we not produce writers of ‘that stature’ anymore, or are they not known to us? It is perhaps too early to say. Anecdotal evidence shows glimpses of ‘the new generation’ of contemporary writers with taboo-shattering intellectual horizons and new questions about identity (Adichie, Chikwava and Agualusa come to mind); one would not seriously question their artistic credibility. But it seems clear that, unlike the previous generation, they are re-located in the African diaspora across Europe. Their potency is not concentrated in the same way that the African Writers Series authors’ seemed to be; their voices are dispersed. For African culture, examined through the lens of globalization, an awkward irony arises: the ‘cultural creator’, our literary genius, who is launched and lauded outside Africa. Africa exports its writers and imports their books (so its intellectuals can reproduce and then re-export yet more writers?). One can only guess at how what they write or do not write is influenced across cultures, because their readership, and the all-important literary critic, are now international. It is interesting to be able say in 2008 that ‘there was a time’ not long ago, around twenty-five years, when a local author could ignite a whole generation. Dambudzo Marechera died at 33, and in his shortened life he created an iconic literature around what one might describe as African anarchism. What seam of imagination did he tap into that so enthralled? A national school competition I had devised in 1985, in Zimbabwe, asked this question: ‘Write a 1000-word essay on your favourite author or book. It can be any author, from any country, at any time, including Shakespeare’. Of the 1100 entries, over a thousand identified Dambudzo and overwhelmingly wrote about his life, what he was, and not his books; he was hero to a generation. Ngugi wa Thiongo had had the same eerie magic in his homeland of Kenya. Yet it was the same Dambudzo who explained with typical ferocious lucidity that he found it difficult to write in his homeland after independence because the new cultural elite defined everything by their nationalist agenda, that he was a writer, not a project – this from the

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man who had authored the seminal book about colonial oppression and the quest for an emancipation of the African mind, his classic House of Hunger. This new junction of the African ‘outer-national’ – the cosmopolitan writer – throws up conjecture about authenticity, hybridity and cross-cutting cultures.

Authenticity and hybridity From an African viewpoint, the oral literary craft formally called ‘story-telling’ (as opposed to the broad definition of art-as-stories given earlier) is so embedded in everyday life that it seems pretentious to call it an ‘art form’. Its impermanence, improvisation, and as oral literature its absence of authorship and copyright (in the Western sense), infused with the idioms and proverbs of local language, by definition imply that no one on the outside can fully comprehend its aesthetic transcendence, its beauty in terms of technique. It is a cultural expression that can only take place within a group of people, and it is lost – in a material sense – as soon as that group of people disperses, from the bus, the market, the house, the bar, or some kind of performance space. It then becomes memory, which is integral to all African art. In 1997 an arts enterprise appeared in Zimbabwe called Book Café. The bookshop from which it emerged started in 1981, after independence, striving to sell local and African books and in that way inculcate an awareness of an African literary culture. By 1997, those kinds of books (except of course Dambudzo Marechera) sold mainly to a few intellectuals and tourists. But in expanding the bookshop into a performance centre, the stories – what one might simply call in its broadest sense ‘literary culture’ – exploded into life, not as written words, but as performance, discussion, debate, raw energy. Its originators had stumbled upon a kind of hybrid, so that a ‘cultural’ bookshop could thrive by seeing literature as the entirety of arts expression, mainly performance art, and by ‘seeing books’ as one component of this ‘complete’ literary culture. Suddenly literature could breath in a less rarefied atmosphere. How do we see things, people, time, identity? A teenage Somali, much less a Somali poet, will recite from memory 30 generations of his clan. A Swazi praise poet at the other end of Africa will

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relate with gestures, movement and a reverberating, musical voice an accurate ‘sense’ of his people, together with names, sequences, events, struggles, battles, deaths, migration and enough anecdotes and jokes to keep any crowd merry. But this is not anecdotal. In one case, ‘captured’ for Western consumption, in the early part of the last century a white explorer, fluent in Zulu, happened across the last mlimo, or spiritual leader of the Matabele people, led out of Zululand by King Mzilikazi. This mlimo said he had known of the white man’s coming in advance from his dreams. We then learn from the explorer that over the following days the mlimo was able to recite, from memory, the history of his people over about seventy years, in enough detail to be transposed verbatim and translated into an eventual 200-page published book, verified by historians as a (mostly) accurate record of events and their sequence, and with a fine, vivid flow and turn of phrase so that, even in the foreign language of English, it reads as a remarkable historical epic. So how is this not literature? Did it only become ‘literature’ in permanent printed form? In Tanzania and Kenya, pastoral, nomadic peoples such as the Balbeck or Maasai will speak of ‘space without boundaries or lines’; they will see no borders, fences, straight lines, roads or buildings, see and their stories talk of life as asymmetric cycles of journeys, trails and paths, punctuated by the seasons, water, grasses, drought, births, deaths, love and all things human. If we return once again to Book Café – contemporary, urban, battered Africa, where rusty street lampposts lean at awkward angles and hardly ever work – and a movement of techno-global young poets, they will speak ‘Internet’, post podcasts of performances, follow the poetry slam movement in France, hip-hop from America, and talk in revered tones of early Jamaican rap and London’s Linton Kwesi Johnson. Their poetry is live. They are unpaid. It is a spectacle, a performance. (see Plates 10.1–10.4). As media and political repression in Zimbabwe intensified, so poetry became, by design and cultural legacy, the medium that seemed to reflect the themes that are important, perhaps vital, to intellectual and spiritual well-being. Anger at repression, the trauma of its insidious lies, the profoundly-felt search for identity over a large canvass of time and space amidst their day-to-day uncertainty, the passion of young lives and loves, and throughout it all, poetry as humour.

It is intense and rough hewn, but for the literary observer the most interesting aspact is the adaptation of theatre and music technique to poetry, and the invention of imagery, new words, and a new use of language and humour to disguise meaning (since ‘talking’ can get you arrested or worse) and also say exactly what is meant, since both poets and their audience know the code. It is a living, changeable, hybrid art form that borrows from the poetry slam movement internationally, from hiphop, from rap, from formal ‘school’ poetry, and also embraces African story-telling techniques. Live poetry has started to rival music, in audience size, amongst young people in some cities in Africa. It is a highly socialized art form, built around the audience as much as the performer. It is a meeting point for young, questioning, urban minds. One is tempted to explore whether the impulse to create in a fluid social context arises from the same tap-root, the same fluidity of form, by which African artists seem to subsume global influences, adapt and Africanize them – the inventive ingenuity of the artist. It is not easy to imagine altering the basic structure, lyrics and ‘thudding echo of the black ghetto’ in American hip-hop. Even underground hiphop and its eclectic innovators who would claim to be the true inheritors of hip-hop’s Jamaican DJ rap origins have barely dented this global ‘US brand’. But altering hip-hop, subsuming and adapting, is what Senegalese musicians have achieved, merging kora, enriching the rhythmic possibility, adding the distinctive West African vocal range across three octaves and re-inventing its lyrical sense. Somehow, it remains hip-hop and yet also doesn’t. It is a local art form, not an imported brand. At one end of the scale is a global pop commodity with millionaire brand-names who barely produce a varied musical note; at the other end is the inventive adaptation of hip-hop so that a local audience calls it ‘African music’ and means it. Adaptability links the artist as entrepreneur and the audience as its local market. As much as American rap and hip-hop derivatives sell massively in Africa, they are outsold by the local hybrid – and in Senegal this is many times over. This hip-hop hybrid is not a singular example; fusion and hybridity are so typical in African art as to be almost its heartbeat. The Southern African ‘tradition’ of mbube (male choral song and dance) emerged in the 1880s from unlikely ingredients: the Welsh male voice choir carried to Africa with Wesleyan

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missionary zeal and African celebratory song and dance, was stirred up in one church pot and then merged to become the new African art form of mbube. A century later Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the greatest exponent of mbube, recorded with Paul Simon and performed in New York’s Central Park. The Paul Simon album ‘Graceland’ that featured Ladysmith Black Mambazo went on to sell a million copies. Interestingly, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Joseph Tshabalala, its leader, today perform exactly the same songs, in the same way, as they did prior to their global exposure. In the same vein of cross-cultural influence, ‘township’ music (variously called marabi, tsabatsaba and kwela when played on a pennywhistle) sat down comfortably with American harmonic piano-based swing in the 1950s. African swing bands added call-and-answer, scatting, syncopation and an expressive emotional engagement. This is the origin of Afro-jazz, a distinctive variation of jazz and contested by jazz purists, since its sensibility can be closer to American spirituals and blues than to modern jazz, but there is no contesting its connectedness as a hybrid art form. The point is that contemporary Afro-jazz, which originated in the 1960s as a musical form, did not grow in a linear fashion from any definable ‘jazz tradition’ within Africa, although there are recognizable technical elements in jazz that are African. Jazz was adapted in the 1950s when township dance-hall musicians heard the records of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, and John Coltrane and mastered American swing and be-bop, learning solos note for note in many cases and becoming inspired by the possibilities, producing the soaring ‘hymns’ of African jazz in the 1970s. African jazz is African. It is completely subsumed in Africans’ musical memory and sensibility. The story of one African musical journey that was transformed into the blues has been well told for fifty years by Alan Lomax: chants, the cotton fields, work songs, spirituals, delta blues and the unmistakeable link to West Africa, where folk guitar today can be indistinguishable from delta blues. The story of highlife – the signature music of Ghana – is instructive. It has had a profound impact over the last seventy years on all West African music. More interesting though are its hybrid origins. Ghanaian highlife has its roots in the early 1900s; around the same time that New Orleans

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ragtime and Caribbean calypso were also taking shape using different cultural influences. The West African coast was a jumble of music styles. In the 1920s acoustic, ‘palm wine’ guitar folk music was popularized by Liberian Kru sailors all over West Africa. Over the years they met and worked with dance orchestras in bustling West African ports. The resulting music was an up-tempo dance sound then regarded as ‘modern’ with an easygoing rhythm built from simple guitar patterns and stories; its influence swept the continent for decades. Highlife kept evolving as a hybrid with wonderfully multi-layered diversions: brass bands from colonial regiments added a robust interpretation through a brass chorus, church choirs infused it with a vocal harmonic range, soldiers from Trinidad gave it a distinctive calypso feel, and during the Second World War American troops in Accra introduced swing and all but called this music jazz, or at least a form of jazz. By the 1950s highlife was popular throughout West Africa and it continued on its dynamic journey, fuelled by elements of Congolese rumba, American 60s soul and Caribbean ska. In the 1970s it subsumed funk and one result was the global success of Ghana’s Osibisa Afro-rock in the 1970s. This story has an interesting postscript. In the 1980s highlife dominated the African music scene in the UK, while the Ghanaian-German community in Hamburg created a hybrid called ‘burger-highlife’, adding synthesizer and rock, that is cited as an influence on a form of German heavy metal music styled as ‘Kraut-Rock’. Today ‘burger-highlife’ is in vogue back in Ghana itself – re-imported, as it were. This music has now spread even more recently to Canada and the USA with Ghanaian migration, and so the remarkable musical journey begun by Liberian sailors a century ago continues. All music is a hybrid within Africa. Africa’s cultures are infused with each other’s artistic innovations, an outcome of cross-fertilization on a giant landscape of historic migrations and movement. The pulse of Congolese rumba, Senegalese djembe, Malian kora, Zambian marimba, Zimbabwean mbira, South African kwela and maskandi can all be traced by patterns of migration, over millennia to recent decades. Nothing tells this story quite as well as marimba, the traditional xylophone of Africa, in its astounding versatility and adventures across Africa and the world. Generally the modern xylophone is associated with jazz. African marimba also features solo

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performances, traditional percussion ensembles, jazz-imbued ensembles; it is fused into Afro-pop, reggae and the occasional orchestra composition and concerto. Marimba originated in Africa. In Africa the term is generic and applied to many variations of the traditional xylophone, the precursor of which developed in West Africa as the balafon. It was exported to South America in the sixteenth century. In Guatemala and Costa Rica the marimba is the national cultural symbol; it is also played right across central America in Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Mexico, as well as among Afro-Ecuadorians. African marimba sounds distinctive in the Americas because marimba music played there has South American origins. African marimba was popularized in North America from the 1980s as a traditional Zimbabwean music form. In fact marimba was only widely introduced in Zimbabwe itself around the 1960s, a few decades earlier. Still, there are ‘Zimbabwean marimba’ bands from the East Coast to California, Colorado, the Pacific Northwest, New Mexico, and even Hawaii and Alaska. In southern Africa its origins are Zambian, Zimbabwe’s northern neighbour. The shilimba, as the Nkoya people of Zambia call marimba, dates back three hundred years, when it was used in royal ceremonies. The marimba of neighbouring Mozambique, called timbila, developed a unique polyrhythmic structure; it is played in large ensembles with a choreographed dance performance, depicting an historical dramatization. As with other parts of Africa, Mozambican musicians believe marimba must have originated locally, and in a way, they are right.

The balancing act – creator and connectedness The Creative Economy Report 2008 released by UNCTAD/UNDP in April showed that the global trade in creative goods and services grew by 8.7 per cent annually from 2000 to 2005, making it one of the most vibrant sectors in world commerce. The exports of creative goods reached US$335 billion in 2005; that of creative services US$87 billion. The trade in creative goods and services is dominated by the ‘developed’ countries, which account for 90 per cent. Common sense would dictate here that the cultural trade of developing countries has also started to grow, perhaps a decade behind, but that the growth is uneven. There are no statistics for Africa,

which in itself tells a story of poverty, the lack of even a basic infrastructure to collect statistics, and a neglect of policy. Anecdotally African publishers say that Africa accounts for 1–2 per cent of the international trade in books; perhaps Africa’s contribution in the international trade of creative products is also about 1–2 per cent. On the other hand, and even without statistics, it can be easily established that Africa provides resources into the economic development of the ‘Western’ creative sector as thousands of its artists relocate to London, Paris, New York, etc – and that their artistic products and the value added (from books, CDs, DVDs, productions, film) contribute to economic activities in Europe and USA. But what is the source of the continent’s continuous artistic output? Within narrow material and technical resources, African artists exhibit a capacity to adapt, sustain and regenerate the economic basis of their art locally. The artistic process in Africa is carried out with a scant institutional infrastructure. Where this capacity exists – for instance the facilities for training, rehearsal and arts development, as well as book fairs and music festivals – it is dependent on cyclical project funding from external sources and so reaches a small minority. There is a widespread absence of a coherent national cultural policy (no African country has yet articulated a national book policy) and no statistics exist on the economics of cultural output (employment, exports and earnings). In the past five years, Zimbabwean musicians, sculptors, and even some film-makers – amidst world-record breaking inflation and surreal economic mishap – have maintained their income rather better than bank clerks, teachers and workers. By mid2008 Zimbabwe was operating at 5 per cent of its productive manufacturing capacity, the economy has contracted by a half since 2000, unemployment had reached 85 per cent, life expectancy stood at 33 years, the main hospital could not perform surgical procedures, universities and schools could not open, the currency had collapsed and a quarter of the population had fled. Artistic output in Zimbabwe seems to tap into resources that remain invisible to economic indicators. Few African artists have any economic safety-net. How has culture proved to be one of Africa’s more durable entrepreneurial activities? The intricately socialized pattern in which the creation of art takes place seems the logical answer. Except in popular myth, this is not limited to some

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exotic notion of ‘traditional rural’ arts, as if these are not continuously adapting amongst urban, contemporary art forms. It may seem an odd example to some, but it is good one: Louis Armstrong might have been African in the way he approached his art and his sense of universality. His visits to Africa (Ghana, Congo and Central Africa) became milestones in the development of jazz there. Africans loved his dazzling personality and local jazz musicians were well aware that his innovations propelled and for some even ‘became’ jazz, or at least a big part of its public persona. Although he never returned to his home, something in the way he never lost his link to the seedy side of New Orleans struck home. In the USA he became ‘Ambassador Satchmo’, and for some he was the ‘entertainer’ who acted the part of a second-class black man in the film Hello Dolly, and was accused of betraying the ideals of the music he had helped create. The key to that contradiction has always been Armstrong’s early poverty, in contrast to, say, Miles Davis, and so vividly reflected in their artistic persona. For an African there is no contradiction; Armstrong succeeded brilliantly, he adapted and made a decent living from his art. Where and whenever possible he performed in an imperfect world. He played honest music rooted in his origins: ‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen’ jazz: spiritual, worldly stories, and if possible jazz to dance as well as listen to, the African touch. Expressing this in a Zimbabwean way: a man is ‘straight’ from a funeral, his niece’s. ‘We die’ he says; it means in two words a whole development thesis. ‘Tamba waguta’ he adds, laughingly, meaning ‘we play when we are full’. Mbira is an acoustic instrument dating back at least a thousand years to Africa’s Iron Age. It has spiritual connotations, and is intimately imbued with a culture of story-telling. Most mbira artists will say it is a calling and not an occupation. It has a defined form, unchanged in the last half-century, and a rhythmic pattern structured by a set of twin shakers called hosho (in 12/8 time) that is quite unusual. This music has been compared by jazz academics to the improvisational techniques employed in jazz, but it is not jazz. For some time, urban people had looked down on mbira as something you hear when you go home to the village and that one does not pay to listen to it; it is rural folk music, not fancy imported stuff with electric instruments. In the last ten years mbira has, incredibly in its context, become a trendy, urban phenomena and the younger generation has been strongly

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attracted. While the form remains unchanged, the environment and sense in which the music is performed have undergone a revolutionary change. The great mbira bands of today perform with amplifiers and have developed an exciting, visual stage performance; the music has an almost overpowering impact. And Zimbabweans love mbira: it touches the soul, and is the perfect meeting point of rhythm, storytelling and fun. In this example, several things have happened. An ancient music with connotations of poor rural life has been reinvented as a hip, modern and still ‘authentic’ musical form. This required a measure of adaptation, so that mbira could be performed from the stage to an audience, with the requisite stagecraft and a certain ‘look’ rather than as just a happy diversion as it might be in a rural setting. To achieve this required electrifying the instruments, by adapting the guitar pick-ups, and amplifying the vocals in the normal way. The music has lost none of its aura of mystery: the art form, built around the telling of stories, remains intact, and if anything the spiritual connotation seems to have been enhanced. These days it is not unusual to see mbira accompanied by a double bass, guitar or synthesizer and once or twice a violin has even made an appearance. Have the mbira artists sold out? It is a matter of serious debate between traditionalists and modern young players who will simply shrug and say ‘I feed my family; I tour other countries, my music is honest, it is mbira, it is my calling’. To which I would add that they have breathed life into an art form that was fading, alongside its rural way of life. The next ‘big thing’ in African music might well be a revival of rock music. It is often forgotten that Africa rocked in the 1970s and 80s. Jimi Hendrix had a lot to answer for. To a generation in Africa, he invented the ‘guitar-man’. He was an iconic rebel and to a 1960s’ generation of African ‘guitar-men’ all this came as naturally as, well, mbira, or kora, or djembe. In the late 1970s, any band in Zimbabwe that called itself a band had their own version of the Hendrix version of Hey Joe, a fairly obscure blues standard, and so that song became the unofficial anthem of many bands. It is an eccentric, even ludicrous idea. Why that song? Why Hendrix? There were plenty of African classics to choose from. Something in that song, which may be as simple as its melody in ‘E’ that guitarists enjoy, was recognizable. Just as recognizable but in reverse is the banjo in popular American folk music, an African instrument

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hardly ever played in Africa today. Art is universal, and African artists appreciate this as much as artists anywhere. By the 1990s stand-up comedy had also arrived in Africa. It is bold, brash and thriving. It is, of course, foreign … or not. You can take it either way, because jokes are the ubiquitous past time of all Africans everywhere. Stand-up comedy in Africa delves into political satire, but above all it tells the audience the sad truth of their predicament, and their predicament is extremely funny, because they are human, their world is mad, and so are they. The first joke any comedian tells is about himself (they are all men, so far anyway). He says ‘I am poorer than you, but by the end of tonight I will be a little richer, because all you deluded people pay me to tell you about yourself’. Humour does not travel as easily as music, and even within Africa jokes only really work in their locality. As with everything, African artists make stand-up comedy African. There are exceptions and distortions, but Africa basically produces art for itself and in its own social context, and that art is constructed around the stories of human spirit and memory that never end. That is where livelihood begins. African stories resonate in Africa’s social cohesion, its memories, its inner connectedness that underpins the transient nature of life. From an economic standpoint, it is more than just a ‘market’ to provide a safety-net against a cultural globalization whose global pop brands threaten, even in remote Africa, the individuality of artists. Simply put African artists, in Africa, are always known as individuals; it is only outside Africa that they become brands. If originality plus technique through hard work is the mark of creative genius, then inventiveness nourishes the entrepreneur, and inclusiveness is intrinsic to African art. It is a balancing act, but that is the same for artists everywhere. Hama ngati batane Hama, ngati batane Nharini, nharini Hama dzangu ngati batane Ku shekera nharini Toda rufaro mudzimba Nharini, nharini Zuva rabuda

Relatives, come together Forever, forever My relatives come together Forever more We are joyous in spirits Forever, forever The sun rises

This 1980s’ pop song made children leap in delicious, perfect delight and adults laugh through twinkling eyes while some did a crazy dance. In children we truly understand what kind of horror war and its spiritual death means and conversely what connectedness brings. It tells a story on the simplest of themes, a time when people were divided by war – which is not mentioned, but implied; the word ‘relatives’ in this context means ‘everyone is related’. Mbira maestro Ephat Mujuru often told stories at Book Café before his tragic death during a long distance flight. My favourite was the one that always started the same way: ‘I had a dream’, he would whisper into a microphone softly so that the audience would lean towards him; ‘now in the dream I dreamt I was dreaming; and in my inner dream I was able to fly and I flew’. After this he visited fantastic places and had unnerving and strange experiences. They were always different, always jarring, but not fearful. The technique was a quite wonderful, visual method of crossing mental borders that would otherwise stretch credulity, a way of talking philosophy not unlike science fiction in its effect. More intriguing is the ‘dream within’ idea. In our outer shell is a material world. When we sleep we may step into a state of inner consciousness; we dream. To dream of dreaming (not something I can recall ever doing) does sound like a rational experience. We can imagine it, at least in an abstract way. It is a metaphor of boundary crossing, one that opens up into a world where people may fly, and, one supposes, do many other things. The idea of connectedness through boundary crossing permeates all African art. In Mujuru’s story he explores the idea by making his audience look inward; this is where universality begins. His imagery is one that any person anywhere can identify with – who does not dream and wonder? African stories thrive in such simplicity and seem to say that if you can imagine something by definition it exists within the potential of human experience, that reality has many dimensions; imagination in and of itself is one real world. Through Western eyes, many Nigerian movies seem an absurd jumble of clichés and caricature. Elsewhere in Africa, its straight-to-DVD films are sometimes referred to, in a light-hearted way, as ‘juju films’. I’m not sure what Nigerians say about that. The reference is to magic spells, or the fear of them, that would seem to the casual punter a common theme in many movies, along with love-triangles,

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powerful and evil men (and sometimes women), and the dilemmas life inflicts that set overnight into emotional and spiritual space. Nigerian films outsell Hollywood in Nigeria and many African countries. Three hundred producers churn out 30 new films every week, distributed in shops and markets. An average film sells 50,000 copies, and costs US$6000 to make, although these figures are all estimates. A hit may sell several hundred thousand copies and discs sell for a couple of US dollars, making them affordable with astounding returns for the producers. Nigerian movies are available in almost every market in Africa. In Africa, Nigerian films imagine real life, the intensity of which is shattering. Moral platitudes, cardboard acting, boring (but cheap) locales and the under-use of technical effects do matter, and some fine Nigerian films are being made to international acclaim – but they do not matter in Africa that much. Alongside cost what matters is only how well the story can be internalized individually, or in the jargon, ‘does the premise work’? African arts in a global culture are ensnared. To seem plausible outside Africa they must first tread

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the mockery of simplistic sound-bite global media, and Africa’s ‘story’ is largely presented as one of remorseless poverty and vile cruelty. So does that premise work? The vibrant social life so loved of Africans – bathed in gossip, humour, anecdote, fantastic stories, farce, mishap, and oneness – is a rarity in the global media narrative about Africa, and when it purports to be so in the human-interest pages, Africans ask ‘who are those people?’ One story says if you look at the lines on an old hand, it reminds one of the footpaths that in Africa criss-cross every possibility: there is no need to find the easiest route as it has already been found over thousands of years by many feet, but which is the first one? The answer implies the obvious. No path can be understood unto itself, just as no one line on your hand is single. Art seems to work in Africa, as a cultural and entrepreneurial enterprise, to the degree that it intersects with an African sense of connectedness. The ways in which people connect are infinite. The direct path is towards the elemental, and in that sense one momentary delight is a revered result in all African art.

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CHAPTER 11 THE TURN OF THE NATIVE: VERNACULAR CREATIVITY IN THE CARIBBEAN Annie Paul

success unmatched by the formal, official, ‘standard’ English-speaking circuits of culture in this postcolonial, post-slave society. The term ‘vernacular’ refers here to subaltern practices of expressive engagement, reflecting the dynamic, adaptive, innovative character of Jamaican patois, a hybrid local/regional oral language in constant dialogue and negotiation with the international, the diasporic, the transnational and the ‘global’. Also discussed in this chapter is Jamaican music’s subversion of standard notions of copyright, creativity and originality as the Western music model was adapted to suit the new hybridities thrown up in the syncretistic plantation spaces of the Caribbean.

Introduction

This chapter explores how, using the medium of music, ‘low-budget’ people persistently neglected by both state and society, have creatively married oral traditions with the most advanced technological innovation, to create a highly mobile, popular, hybrid musical product that is competitive internationally with similar products from the most advanced societies in the world. Utilizing the transistor set, the recording studio and the gigantic sound system, Jamaican music, originating from the patois-speaking ‘black’ subaltern classes, has disseminated itself to a multitude of audiences – spanning local, national, regional, diasporic and transnational territories with an ebullience and

There are not many places in the world where the masses who have been silent for two thirds of a century have found their voice(s) as volubly and effectively as in the Caribbean; here, using the medium of music, ‘low-budget’ people persistently neglected by both state and society, have creatively married oral traditions with the most advanced technological innovation to create a highly mobile, popular, indeed trend-setting, product that is competitive internationally with similar products from the most advanced societies in the world. One of the most paradigmatic instances of such vernacular modernity is Jamaican music, or reggae, a product that has successfully globalized itself, showing a remarkable ability to adapt to and exploit the informal, often illegitimate apertures created by successive waves of migration from the Caribbean to metropolitan centres and back again. As one scholar has noted: Reggae represents third world business success. Jamaica, a small nation of two million people, between the mid-1950s and 2000 produced over 100,000 recordings … With more than one new recording each year per thousand people, Jamaica could be, per capita, the world’s most prolific generator of recorded music. (McMillan, 2005: 2)

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The global reach of reggae can be measured in several ways. An oft-cited yardstick is its existence as a separate category in the American Grammy music awards. Then there is the phenomenon of Jamaican singer Bob Marley, still the only global musical superstar to have emerged from the third world. Marley’s ‘Exodus’ was hailed as the album of the century by Time magazine in 2000, while his ‘One Love’ was hailed by the BBC as the song of the century. According to Toynbee, by 2005, 16.5 million Marley albums had been sold in the United States alone (Toynbee, 2007: 7). Another measure is the number of international bands and musicians who enjoy careers as practitioners of this infectious music today. A recent newspaper article in Jamaica proudly listed the ‘Top 10 Foreign Reggae Artistes’ alongside a blurb that said ‘These days it is far from uncommon to hear a reggae beat set to lyrics in a language and from a culture that is quite different from Jamaica’.1 In fact the 2006 Billboard reggae artiste of the year was a white Jewish American musician named Matisyahu. Indeed dancehall’s seminal influence on the genres of hip hop and rap music is universally acknowledged; it was Jamaican migrants to New York and their style of toasting and chatting over sound system music that gave rise to the more famous American hip hop. 2

The birth of Jamaican music How did all this happen? How did this former plantation society, largely made up of ex-slaves, give birth to such an influential chapter in modern music? The rise of the music industry in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean has to be understood against the background of the evolution of popular or ‘pop’ music in general. The advent of pop music in Europe and the United States is often traced back to the fifties and linked to the spread of transistor radios; this technological innovation not only allowed music to be consumed by individuals in the privacy of their rooms or living space, but it also enabled access to many more stations (Dolfsma, 2004). In places like Jamaica, for instance, music lovers started tuning in to radio stations from the southern United States, developing a taste for rhythm and blues (R&B) music and country and western. R&B in particular was to have a singular impact on the development of Jamaican music, the originary impulse of which was aimed at imitating if not replicating the songs broadcast over American radio to fill an

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incessant local demand for music to dance to. Within a decade, utilizing ‘those deeply tribal instruments: the transistor set, the recording studio, [and] the gigantic sound system’, Jamaican music, originating from the patwa-speaking ‘black’ subaltern classes, started disseminating itself to a multitude of audiences – spanning local, national, regional, diasporic and transnational territories with an ebullience and success unmatched by the formal, official, ‘standard English’-speaking circuits of culture in this postcolonial, post-slave society. How did vernacular Jamaican culture so adeptly manoeuvre its way through the new circuits opened up by a globalizing world?

‘Exodus’ The term ‘vernacular’ is used here to reference subaltern practices of expressive engagement reflecting the dynamic, adaptive, innovative character of Jamaican patwa or creole, a local/regional oral language produced by cultural mixing. A major factor in the growth and spread of Jamaican music was the dissemination of Jamaicans to the industrial cities of the North and other places in search of better lives than the island offered. Through them patwa has remained in constant dialogue and negotiation with the international, the diasporic, the transnational and the ‘global’. Migration, as Stuart Hall points out, is ‘the joker in the globalization pack’: Migrants have an ambivalent position in contemporary globalization. Driven hither and thither by the push – pull of a global system they do not dominate, they are a subaltern element in the process of globalization-fromabove. At the same time, seeking by whatever means – legal or illegal – to evade the consequences of globalization, they move along uncharted routes, and exploit their lateral connections, in order to negotiate or subvert the borders, barriers, legal constraints, and regulative regimes metropolitan powers put in place – a sort of deregulated globalization from below. (Hall, 2003: 195)

As another writer has observed: Migration is one of the central themes of Jamaican existence. To be Jamaican means to move – to Panama and other Central American

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countries in the 1920s, to Cuba in the 1930s, to New York in the 1940s, to London and other parts of England in the 1950s, to New Canada in the 1960s, to New York and Miami and Hartford, Conn., from the 1970s until now. (Channer, 2008)

Creolized languages such as Jamaican patwa have the ability not only ‘to articulate the experiences of people who do not have access to formal languages’, but also to provide creative means of negotiating the obstacles, both local and international, that its speakers often stumble across. They provide ‘native grammars’ capable of creating and exploiting entry points into the world economic system, using the system rather than subverting it, and ‘demanding that it deal with new actors, new operations, and unprecedented and flexible forms of accumulation’ (Diouf, 2000: 696). Like the Senegalese Murid, Diouf was writing about the lifestyle, rhetoric and music produced by subaltern Jamaicans in everyday life, and their performances and rituals of community are not predominantly acts of resistance to the onslaught of globalization but the main idioms used to compete in the marketplace, whether local or global. Jamaican music can best be appreciated by locating it within the transgressive tradition of ‘black’ musics that have emanated from the contact zones of the so-called new world and the African diaspora. Each of these musics, whether blues, jazz, gospel, rap or hip hop, has gone through similar phases of innovation and reception in their host societies where they are initially perceived as noise, then rejected as the embodiment of ‘poor’ taste (reflecting, as they do initially, the taste of poor people), and subjected to policing, censorship, and cultural cleansing, before finally being rendered ‘respectable’ – at which point there seems to be a decline in the creative cycle, allowing it to be overtaken by the next new innovation. Although today reggae is one of the most distinctive global sounds, carrying Jamaican patwa and culture worldwide – even registering internationally as the unofficial voice of the third world – it didn’t start out that way. For years Jamaicans were taught to be ashamed of patwa and the accent that made it so distinctive. Convinced that this was the language and sound of the uneducated and unsophisticated, early Jamaican musicians tried their best to acquire foreign accents considered more

suitable for crossing over. Even Bob Marley tried to fit into this model unsuccessfully. Producers were interested in foreign accents and acts that used English because they felt this would allow the music to cross over more easily than adopting something with an overtly ethnic feel. Much has changed over the last forty years. What started out as mimicry was soon radically transformed when Jamaicans started singing in their own voice, when reggae developed its own accent, as it were.3 Contrary to the assumptions of early protagonists of the Jamaican music industry and mass media, the product was enhanced by the unique accents of Jamaican speech and ethnicity rather than the erasure and elision of cultural difference. Crucial to the development of reggae was the influence of Rastafari, the unique ‘Back to Africa’ religious and cultural movement born in Kingston’s gutters and ghettoes, from the Jamaican ‘underclass’s underclass’, so to speak. The music proved to be remarkably diverse, capable of reproducing and regenerating itself over the decades in brand new forms and distinct genres, ranging from ska (late 50s, early 60s), rocksteady (mid to late 60s), reggae (late 60s into the 70s), to dancehall (80s, 90s, and into the contemporary moment).

Dancehall and its discontents This last avatar of Jamaican music, namely dancehall, produced a style and vocabulary that rapidly spread to the wider Caribbean. By the 1990s, in places like Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, young musicians were trying their best to sound Jamaican in the same way that early Jamaican singers had tried to sound Euro-American. Not surprisingly the sway and influence of Jamaican music, audible in forms such as reggaeton from Puerto Rico and what is known as ‘dub’ in the Eastern Caribbean, are resented by many in the region as a latter-day form of cultural imperialism. The change in sound between classical reggae (exemplified by the lyrics of Bob Marley and Burning Spear, or groups like Black Uhuru and Steel Pulse) and dancehall, which made its entrance in the early 80s with a form of ‘creativity and imagination grounded in extravagance, free flows, excess, surplus and an economy of pleasure’, was so profound that despite its global profile none but the youth could hear anything of merit in the current dancehall

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music (Henriques, 2003: 455). This new music was considered intolerably loud, aggressive and brash by the (by now) middle-aged (and respectable) Jamaican music consumers who had had to defend ska and reggae against similar criticisms by their respective parents’ generations. If they could have had their way as gatekeepers they would have firmly suppressed the growth of the new sound. They saw nothing creative, original or innovative about the latest version of this music. Dancehall’s critics also decried it for its reliance on the ‘riddim-plus-voicing’ system, whereby a producer constructs a digital riddim on which a number of DJs then perform individual songs. Thus a number of hit songs at any given time may all have the same riddim track undergirding them, an innovation which flew in the face of conventional notions of originality and creativity. In 2002, for example, a number of Jamaican songs on the Diwali riddim became international hits, Bounty Killer’s ‘Sufferer’ among them. The riddim was inspired by the handclapping found in Indian Qawwali, the name of which probably got translated to ‘Diwali’. In addition, critics deplored the sidelining of live backing bands by digital tracks and drum machines. Manuel and Marshall claim that the roots of the riddim-plus-voicing system lay in the Jamaican convention of dance music being provided by sound systems and recorded music rather than live bands. This was in contrast, they suggest, to the countries of the Hispanic Caribbean: in the Dominican Republic for instance, ‘dancers could gravitate toward any number of sites where accordion-based merengue groups would be playing.’ Subsequently [in Jamaica] the primary locus of creativity and production became the recording studio, again in contrast to the Dominican Republic, whose recording industry stagnated until the 1970s. A distinctive feature of the record industry in Jamaica, since its effective emergence in the 1960s, is that many records have been produced less for mass public purchase than for use by sound systems; this distinction would apply in particular to various sorts of custom-made ‘specials’, often recorded on acetate which wears out after repeated playing. (Manuel and Marshall, 2006: 449)

It was this availability of recorded music that allowed Jamaican music to migrate along with the

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people who were its most ardent consumers. Wherever they relocated they still needed to dance. And they preferred by far to dance to their own music. Thus by the early 60s ‘a few enterprising Jamaicans had set up their own sound systems in Britain’s cities, playing imported ska’ (Hebdige, 1987: 92). While the BBC initially shunned these musical imports as crude and vulgar and therefore unfit for airplay (astonishingly, for many years Jamaican radio took a similar line: it would be 1990 before a radio station dedicated to reggae would hit the airwaves in Jamaica – the instantly and overwhelmingly successful Irie FM), by the late 60s Jamaican music in England had started to attract white audiences. By this time ska had morphed into rocksteady, with its attendant ‘rude boy’ culture that appealed to the nascent punk movement in the UK. All this time the source for Jamaican music continued to be the studios and dancehalls back home. By the mid-70s, Jamaican music had penetrated the English music scene enough to influence musicians like the Beatles (ob-la-di ob-la-da), the Rolling Stones (‘Cherry Oh Baby’), Paul Simon (‘Mother and Child Reunion’) and Eric Clapton (whose mega hit ‘I Shot the Sheriff’ was a cover of Bob Marley’s song of the same name). More than enough has been written about Marley’s own ascendance to the world stage in the years that followed and the phenomenal interest in Jamaican music this generated to spend time on it here.4 In the 70s also, Richard Branson’s Virgin Records established Frontline, ‘the most consistently credible mainstream British reggae label’ (Bradley, 2000: 455); it had already started exporting Jamaican music to Nigeria where there was a large and enthusiastic market for it. Roots rock reggae had arrived on the world stage on the back of the Conquering Lion of Judah, as it were. Why then, when reggae had achieved such stunning international success, was there a rupture in the Jamaican music scene towards the harsh cacophony of dancehall? This shift was already manifest in Kingston patwa, ‘expressing quite a new social struggle, expressing the movement from Rastafarianism and the religious element to a thoroughly secular and urban culture which marks the movement in Jamaican music from reggae to dancehall’ (Hall, 2003: 204). Roots rock reggae had successfully crossed over internationally, but the socially conscious lyrics it deployed had failed to improve the

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lot of the ‘sufferahs’ whose music it originally was. Jamaica’s dispossessed still possessed little or nothing. In addition the music had become too tame, refined and respectable; it no longer spoke to or for the suffering inner city youth. According to Lloyd Bradbury, ‘whatever the wide world required of its reggae, the music was still essentially dictated by the folks back home’ (2000: 491). This is just the way Jamaican music has always behaved, an aspect surprisingly easy to forget under roots’ peculiar circumstances. As the music appeared to have become an integral part of the world-wide pop mainstream and began to be discussed in terms of ‘units’, ‘territories’, ‘album-chart placings’ and ‘global market forces’, it was perceived as playing by a set of rules that had nothing to do with the Kingston studios and sounds systems. (Bradley, 2000: 490)

Almost concurrent with the death of Marley in 1981, Jamaican music returned to the site of its origins: the neighbourhood sound system, a multi-purpose social phenomenon at the service of Kingston’s underprivileged. Once again it was: … the hub around which Kingston’s various inner cities turned. For the crowds that flocked to wherever the big beat boomed out, it was a lively dating agency, a fashion show, an information exchange, a street status parade ground, a political forum, a centre for commerce, and, once the deejays began to chat on the mic about more than their sound systems, their records, their women or their selves, it was the ghetto’s newspaper. (Bradbury, 2000: 5)5

The business of reggae/dancehall Unlike musical forms such as rap and hip-hop that were rapidly mainstreamed in the United States, thereby generating big bucks for giant transnational record companies, dancehall has remained a collective, almost communal, activity. In his chapter on creativity and intellectual property in this volume Toynbee also discusses the social authorship of Jamaican music and its consequences for copyright ownership (see pp. 89–100).

The communal nature of music production and consumption in Jamaica has had other effects as well. For instance, record sales have rarely been the motivating factor in the production of this music, which revolves instead around cultural products such as live performances, dances and dub plates that in turn generate entire cottage industries around them, providing livelihoods for a range of small hustlers and operators for whom the formal economy of the postcolonial state had not catered in its five-year plans. One of the innovations of dancehall was enabling any youth on a corner with the gumption to grab the mic and voice or perform over a riddim when a sound was playing; this in turn enhanced his chances of being discovered by a talent scout. It was a democratizing force that predated the karaoke era and the culture of citizen authorship that developed with the rise of blogging in the twenty-first century. In fact the new hybrid business models created or spun off by the Jamaican music industry even presaged the shift that would take place in the American music industry in the new millennium. Reeling from low record and CD sales caused by new modes of music consumption via the iPod and Internet downloads, American music companies are now focusing on concerts and live performances as their primary profit creators, even giving away CDs to create interest in particular singers. Success is no longer measured in record sales alone. McMillan (2005) notes that ‘respect for intellectual property’ was not primarly a motivation for the success of the Jamaican music business model. On the contrary ‘writing credits were casually assigned’, and with several persons assisting in the writing of a song ‘[t]he rights to royalties were fuzzy’ (McMillan, 2005: 7). In fact he notes that Jamaica did not start applying its copyright laws to music until the 1990s. In Kingston the music business consists of a large number of small, specialized companies and the tasks involved in making a recording are divided among various firms. ‘Deals that in the United States and Europe would be done inside a vertically integrated firm in Jamaica take place across independent firms. Contracts are sometimes merely oral, with contractual assurance resting on the parties’ ongoing business and social interactions’ (Bourne and Allgrove, 1995, cited in McMillan, 2005: 10).

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In contrast, in the United States and Europe four vertically integrated major companies control 75 per cent of the market share worldwide and also control the promotion and distribution of music by creating ‘demand-side entry barriers’ for new recording companies. Kingston, on the other hand benefited, from industrial clustering, with 25–50 recording studios in existence by the late 1990s and an estimated 2000 singers and groups providing music producers with an abundant supply of artistes to choose from (McMillan, 2005: 11).

Global reggae/dancehall Does creativity in a globalizing world walk hand in hand with ‘diversity’ as suggested by the Introduction to this book? The answer is not a simple yes or no. At the same time as Jamaican music has contributed to cultural diversity by registering a viable third world presence in global pop music, it has also loudly registered its dissent with the agenda of a globalized human rights discourse, particularly in relation to sexual diversity or freedom. The pressure from the North to legalize homosexuality and normalize its attendant lifestyles has met with hostility in many parts of the world, but perhaps is most volubly and violently vocalized in Jamaican dancehall. This made it the target in 2005–06 of a concerted attack by a coalition of international gay rights groups, including OUTrage and GLAAD. While we can celebrate dancehall as perpetuating community among disenfranchised people, the corresponding communalism it has also engendered is worrying. In a curious way the pressure from what is perceived as ‘the West’ or forces external to the nation – foreign gay rights and human rights groups – has served to unify the widely differing factions of Jamaican society in their response. It is as if dancehall is being used to prescribe who exactly is ‘native’ to territories in the Caribbean and who should be exiled from these. There is a profound resentment and denial – across class, race, gender, religious and ethnic variables – of what is perceived as the forceful penetration of local value systems and culture by global forces thrusting alien and corrupt values on a ‘God-fearing, law-abiding’ population. As entertainment lawyer Lloyd Stanbury put it recently:

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There seems to be a much bigger agenda – and based on what I’ve heard, in terms of them not relenting until laws are changed here – I think that supports the view that there is a much bigger agenda. And I think this is something that now transcends the music industry, it’s gone beyond that and all of Jamaica should now be coming out, not only in support of Jamaican music and Jamaican culture but also Jamaican sovereignty.6

Finally, the question of whether the kind of creativity and innovation displayed by the circuits of Jamaican music can be institutionalized and stabilized remains moot. Once again, if we look to its rooted-ness in the model of Jamaican patwa one would have to argue that institutionalizing it may neuter the very versatility and adaptability inherent in oral languages that constantly mutate and update themselves, rendering new vocabularies every few years to register the changes wrought by new technologies. Formalizing and stabilizing this dynamic, mobile, creative sound may prove as elusive and unsatisfactory as trying to turn an oral language into a written one. At any rate the model for any government or private sector initiative to formalize the circuits of Jamaican music should be informed by lessons from other successful performance-oriented cultural products/events, such as the Bahian carnival (and by extension the Trinidadian carnival), also emanating from ex-slave societies.7 It should not be lost on policy makers that the paths that Jamaican music has taken successfully circumvented the inevitable trajectory of cultural production in the country, sidestepping the middleclass middlemen who would have leached it of its cultural specificity and refined it into their notion of what a Jamaican export should be. Traditionally, in countries such as Jamaica, ‘If black culture was the wine, the middle classes were its bottlers’ (Thompson, 2004: 14). The reality, however, is that the Jamaican middle classes and elites (with the exception of Chris Blackwell, who promoted Bob Marley and one or two others) have yet to prove that they are capable of designing an internationally competitive cultural product which is the benchmark of creativity and innovation that Jamaican music represents. A striking example of the disdain with which Jamaican music is treated by the privileged classes is the fact that forty years after

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independence there is not a single purpose-built arena for musical performances in the country. Instead DJs and dancehall audiences continue to be routinely criminalized and demonized by both agents of the state and civil society with the help of legislation such as the Night Noises Act and laws governing ‘obscenity’ and ‘lewd’ performances. Against the supposed homogenizing tendencies of globalization it is possible to argue that the vernacular moderns of Jamaica may wear Nike but they can choose not to speak it, to echo Stuart Hall’s observation at the Documenta11 platform in St Lucia that creole or patwa is ‘our only hope for not all speaking Nike in ten years’ time’ (Hall, 2003: 261). The aggressive, explosive sound of contemporary Jamaican music registers ‘the disruptive force of the local – the vernacular, the indigenous, the “native ground”’ by riding the rhythm of globalization rather than adopting the passively agonistic posture of many middle-class moderns in the Caribbean.

Notes 1 2

3

4 5

6

7

Top 10 Foreign Reggae Artistes, Chat, Tuesday, 17 June 2008. Dancehall is the current avatar of reggae, a far more explosive and aggressive music closer to hip-hop and rap than to roots rock reggae. Michael Bennett and Annie Paul, ‘Reggae’s Voice: The Accent of Difference’, 32nd Annual Conference of the Caribbean Studies Association in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, 26 May 2007. For an excellent critical text on the Bob Marley phenomenon see Toynbee (2007). One of the earliest and most popular sound system operators in the 1950s, Prince Buster’s sound was called ‘Voice of the People’. KLAS FM 89.9, discussion on the targeting of DJs by gay rights groups, Lloyd Stanbury and Donna M, 13 November 2004. See Miguez (2008: 272) on the ‘mercantile logic’ underlying the blocos and trio eletricos of Bahian carnival and the range of commercial activity and cottage industries generated by them.

REFERENCES

Bourne, C. and Allgrove, S. M. (1995) Prospects for Exports of Entertainment Services for the English-Speaking Caribbean: The Case of Music. Office of Planning and Development, University of the West Indies. Bradley, L. (2000) Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King. London: Viking. Channer, C. (2008) ‘“Cool Runnings” Heats Up’, Wall Street Journal, 9 August 2008. Diouf, M. (2000) ‘From the Senegalese murid trade diaspora and the making of a vernacular cosmopolitanism’, Public Culture, 12(3): 679–702. Dolfsma, W. (2004) Institutional Economics and the Formation of Preferences: The Advent of Pop Music. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Hall, S. (2003) Creolite and Creolization: Documenta11_ Platform 3 (Okwui Enwezor et al (eds)). Germany: Hatje Cantz Publishers. Hebdige, D. (1987) Cut ‘n’ Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music. Oxford: Routledge.

Henriques, J. (2003) ‘Sonic dominance and the reggae sound system session’, in M. Bull and L. Back (eds), The Auditory Culture Reader. Oxford and New York: Berg. Manuel, P. and Marshall, W. (2006) ‘The riddim method: aesthetics, practice, and ownership in Jamaican dancehall’, Popular Music, 25(3): 447–70. McMillan, J. (2005) ‘Trench Town Rock: the creation of Jamaica’s music industry’, unpublished, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, CA. Miguez, P. (2008) ‘The Bahia Carnival’, in H. Anheier and Y.R. Isar (eds), The Cultural Economy, The Cultures and Globalization Series, 2. London: SAGE. Thompson, K. A. (2004) ‘“Black Skin, Blue Eyes”: Visualizing Blackness in Jamaican Art, 1922-1944’ in Small Axe, vol. 8, No. 2. Toynbee, J. (2007) Bob Marley: Herald of a Postcolonial World? Cambridge: Polity.

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CHAPTER 12 CREATIVE CONTEMPORARY DESIGN IN THE ARAB WORLD Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès

between globalization and this particular language of cultural expression.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, socially conscious visual artists are re-evaluating the effects of a global multicultural society. Historically, the interaction of the Arab peoples with other cultures has shaped and consolidated the visual aspects of the Islamic Art tradition. The mixing and assimilation of foreign aesthetic traditions are still part of Arab visual culture. Today, these long-standing creative practices are being reiterated and renewed, both in the Arab World and the Arab diaspora. Both the work of a new generation of young designers and cultural entrepreneurs and the activities of creative networks and other cross-cultural collaborations are shaping the interactions

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, socially conscious visual artists are re-evaluating what many economically developed countries aspire to: a global multicultural society. What does this type of society entail and how can it be forged in terms of creativity? The process of globalization is irreversible, but within it the contribution of different cultural groups needs to be rethought. Historically, the interactions between civilizations have generally brought about considerable cultural enrichment. In the case of the historical Arab/Islamic Empire, the interaction of the Arab peoples with others, from the Levant itself all the way to Spain, has shaped and consolidated the visual aspects of the Islamic Art tradition. This type of mixing with and assimilation of foreign aesthetic traditions (including reactions to them that have included the rejection of some of their aspects) has always been an integral part of Arabo-Islamic culture and is now becoming a ‘global’ norm that enriches in some cases while it homogenizes and impoverishes in others. Human nature leads us to mimic our environment and to imitate the stronger parts of our society and this naturally lends itself to a similar process in terms of creative production. However, the threat of homogeneity in creative expression and the reduction of cultural diversity are alarming socio-cultural trends that need to be reversed before it is too late. Luckily, several grassroots initiatives now emerging are using pragmatic strategies to ensure an innovative use of the mix of influences, tailored to the lifestyles of contemporary (and often nomadic) international societies. How are these creative practices being played out in the Arab world and in the Arab diaspora? In this chapter, I shall briefly analyse the effects of globalization on youth culture and contemporary creative visual expression in the Arab World, and then describe a series of cases that exemplify the bottom-up strategies that are being employed to

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develop culturally-relevant creative work, as well as establish creative networks and cross-border collaborations for this purpose. These efforts should not be read as mere ‘cultural survival kits’, but rather as creative scenarios for what could become full-fledged and mainstream practices in the visual and applied arts.

Mapping creative initiatives in the Arab world There are several ways to begin mapping trends in visual expression and their creative outcomes. Some can be traced back to aspects of globalization. One of the most visible is the new megalomaniac museum and cultural development projects that have been mushrooming in the oil-rich Gulf States. Billions are being spent on boosting the image of ruling elites and governments, highlighting the ‘politically-correct’ way of investing in their ‘own Arab culture’ in order to counter-balance their image of ‘consumers’ who import ‘Western culture’ at very high prices. In addition, the idea of ‘cultural tourism’ as a viable economic development tool (another outcome of globalization) can be traced back to Western cultural entrepreneurial efforts, triggered by cultural institutions and artists in search of new markets. This very dynamic activity and wealth has also stimulated young cultural entrepreneurs and activists to develop strategies for sustainable grassroots cultural production. For a large part, this role has been delegated to (or assumed by) highly-driven, smart and well-educated young Arab women, who are often encouraged and supported by their male counterparts.

Creative expression and cultural traditions This new subtle and peaceful ‘feminine cultural revolution’ is what I will now highlight through real-life examples, against the backdrop of stereotypical assumptions about culture in the Arab world. I would like both to challenge these misconceptions and to offer in their place a more factually accurate image of what is happening on the ground. The first such assumption is that visual creative expression is stifled in the Arab world because the representation of living beings is prohibited by the Islamic faith. This is a misunderstanding regularly

cited by average Western as well as Arab people. This prohibition was in fact issued in the canonical Hadith (the traditions of telling the Prophet’s life stories, which also contained moral doctrine and codes) in the thirteenth century, long after the founding of Islam. As Oleg Grabar argues in The Formation of Islamic Art (2007), the prohibition was later justified by a number of cited excerpts taken out of context from the Quran, when ‘the Koranic meaning is clearly that of opposing the adoration of physical idols, and not of rejecting art or representations as such’ (2007: 79). These prohibitions were most likely motivated by the political situation of the of the early Islamic empire and its attempt to forge a unique position for itself in territories dominated by a well-established Byzantine Christian empire that it aimed to defeat and in the process to win over as many adherents as possible to its own faith. The Muslim caliphs needed a unique visual ‘identity’ that would set them apart from the highly developed Byzantine culture of image-making – which, as Bedouin from Arabia, they could not compete with since it was not part of their native artistic vocabulary. It was this powerful tool of the Christian world that they rejected and feared for its seductive powers of conviction (Grabar, 2007: 94–5). They naturally reverted to their own most valued arts of poetry and language. Thus the Arabic script became the official ‘visual branding’ of the Islamic Empire and many years of creative invention and beautification were invested in its development as the ultimate form of artistic creation. In addition to the art of calligraphy non-representational ornamentation also developed, with its series of spiritual theories and design genius that married art to mathematics. This abstract ornamentation and decorative approach, known as ‘arabesque’, was applied along with Arabic calligraphy to the book-making arts, architecture and the making of all other utilitarian objects, uniting practical needs and visual pleasure. This can be considered the precursor of what we today call ‘design’. In fact the Islamic Art tradition is ‘design par excellence’. Focusing on design in the Arab world is thus the most natural way of bringing traditional creative aesthetics into the realm of modern creative creation and production. What defines the overarching artistic tradition that links the diverse parts of the Arab World and that created a visibly unified visual culture which remains extant to this day, is the Arabic language, Arabic calligraphy and non-representational or

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arabesque ornaments. These defining elements are still the preoccupation of Arab visual artists and designers – and even more so in these post-9/11 years, which have spurred moderate Arabs to feel the heat of their culture coming under threat, stamped by mainstream media elsewhere with the ‘terrorist-fanatics’ seal. The reaction has been to reassert a more positive and more ‘representative’ counter-image of the widely spread and diverse Arab cultures through creative work that speaks with different voices and portrays varied creative practices. The result has been a cultural renaissance amongst young Arab visual artists who have begun elaborating creative strategies to preserve the Arab cultural identity through modern and nonconformist work and projects. In the attempt to revive and rejuvenate the Arab cultural heritage, serious creative efforts have been directed at the Arabic language. The goal is to make the language attractive and accessible to a majority of Arab youth (mostly in affluent and westernized Arab societies). Amongst this group, the language

Photo 12.1 Dar Onboz. Spread from the book Sabaa+7 [Seven+7]. Folk tale: Nadine R.L. Touma. Drawings: Fadi Adleh. © 2007, Dar Onboz.

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is often seen as ‘un-cool’ and restrictive for modern communication needs. They are generally disinclined to learn it properly (partially due to poor and oldfashioned educational systems). The way forward has been to try making the language attractive both to children and the more culturally self-conscious Arab young people. Educating the young: the children’s books of Dar Onboz The first strategy for beautiful and inspiring children’s books that combined visual aesthetics with the wonderful traditions of Arabian storytelling can be illustrated by the publishing activities of the Beirut-based Dar Onboz, a small, independent, but highly active publishing house, established and run by three enlightened Arab women (artists in their own right), Nadine R.L. Touma, Sivine Ariss and Raya Khalaf. Through Dar Onboz, they have established a network of local talent (illustrators, animators, musicians) and brought forward a dialogue about the educational issues pertaining to teaching the Arabic

Photo 12.2 Dar Onboz. Spread from the book Al-Kharbasha [Doodles]. Text: Nadine R.L. Touma. Artwork: Rena Karanouh. © 2006, Dar Onboz.

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Photo 12.3 Dar Onboz. Spread from the book Sabaa+7 [Seven+7]. Folk tale: Nadine R.L. Touma. Drawings: Fadi Adleh. © 2007, Dar Onboz.

language, with the aim of bringing back to children the joy of learning it. They set out to encourage children to read beautiful, enchantingly illustrated books in their own language or have their parents read these for them (see Photos 12.1–12.4). Their poetic narratives in book form sometimes contain animated films and music CDs, carefully prepared to suit specific age-groups. They are more than mere publishers, but rather activists that work with schools and libraries on designing (and conducting) workshops about new methodologies of reading and learning Arabic in ways that will appeal to a child’s imagination. Through their unconventional methods they have used the artistic book as a medium for developing and reconnecting to an old and meaningful aspect of traditional Arabian creative expression – namely poetry and storytelling. They remain one of the very few Arab publishers to pay meticulous attention and care to all aspects that constitute high quality books, from the textual and visual content, to the beauty of the printed physical object.

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Photo 12.4 Dar Onboz. Spread from the book Qalb Al Madina [Heart of the City]. Text: Nadine R.L. Touma. Drawings: Ghassan Halwani. © 2008, Dar Onboz.

Arabic language and non-representational ornament in fashion The reputed Egyptian jewellery designer Azza Fahmy (http://www.azzafahmy.com) is an upscale trendsetter working with the Arabic language and the Islamic art heritage, marrying tradition with contemporary design. She started three decades ago as an apprentice in male-dominated jewellery making workshops in the old Cairo souk of Khan El Khalili, learning to handle the tools and like a true craftswoman to make jewellery with her own hands. Later she studied the more theoretical aspects of jewellery design in London, and returned to Cairo to open her own small workshop. For inspiration, she began exploring the artistic and cultural history of Islamic design and then launched her first collection entitled ‘Houses of the Nile’. Later she was inspired by the poetry of Salah Jahin’s Ruba’iyat which she engraved on bracelets and rings. She also expanded into using the visual language and literature of other periods in Egyptian Islamic

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Photo 12.5 Furniture pieces designed by Nada Debs. Top left: ‘Floating table’ in wood patt#H10 (Size: 45 x 45 x 45). Traditional Islamic geometric pattern in mother-of-pearl and tin inlays in African walnut wood, supported by an acrylic base. Top right: ‘Buffet’ (Size: 130 x 45 x 90). A contemporary piece using traditional craft and modern materials; lacquered wood base and Plexiglas panels with mother-of-pearl inlay. Bottom: ‘Patchwork Cabinet’ (Size: 150 x 45 x 58). A patchwork of modern patterns using traditional craftsmanship. African walnut with different patterns in mother-of-pearl and tin inlay. © Nada Debs, East & East SARL.

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history (Fatimid, Ayyubid, Mamluk, Seljuk) as well as Indian Mogul material. Azza Fahmy’s contribution to the contemporary Islamic art tradition is commendable, as she has revived the heritage through her use of Arabic literature and calligraphy and by bringing this to the international design market. She is one of the first in the Arab world to mix materials such as silver and gold, integrating this mix into contemporary designs and techniques. Another utilitarian design approach can be seen in the furniture of Nada Debs (http://www. nadadebs. com) who mixes Middle and Far Eastern aesthetics to create furniture and accessories of refined beauty and inventive structure. She combines traditional non-representational arabesque patterns with the purity of form and construction of Japanese Zen aesthetics. She not only mixes artistic traditions, but also natural materials (such as wood and mother-of-pearl inlays) and traditional techniques, with new synthetic materials (like plastics) and their production processes (see Photo 12.5). Through her Lebanese cultural background and experience of growing up in Japan, Nada Debs manages to create a harmony between these seemingly opposite traditions, and demonstrates the enrichment that globalization may bring to artistic creation.

Vernacular colloquial language: a socio-political statement Using vernacular Arabic as the text for decorating objects rather than the traditional classical Arabic proverbs and Quranic verses has become a widely spread trend in contemporary Arab design. The emphasis is on making the language more accessible and ‘hip’, using colloquial expressions from various local dialects to bring the message closer to Arab youth (as seen with RAI and other musical genres). This has allowed for a certain freedom to address contemporary social issues in playful yet effective ways. Designer and visual artist Nadine Kanso took this approach when she designed her series called Bil Arabi (meaning ‘In Arabic’), where gold and precious stone jewellery that normally would carry proper names or religious sayings in beautiful calligraphy instead uses humorous and poetic Arabian colloquial expressions (sometimes via a single letter) in an unconventional setting. Her fashion ‘statement’ is light and lyrical but at the same time political, bringing the Arabic language

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Photo 12.6 Nadine Kanso. Arabic Bling-Bling jewellery design playing with Arabic vernacular text and handwritten lettering. Left: ‘Wal3aneh Beirut’ (Beirut on Fire), gold necklace. Top right: ‘Essa Letter ‘7A’, gold ring with ghutra fabric. Bottom right: ‘Bhibak’ (I Love You), gold necklace. © Nadine Kanso.

closer to chic young Arab ladies’ skins and hearts (see Photo 12.6). The same attitude applies to the work of visual artist Susan Hefuna who takes vernacular Egyptian language and incorporates Arabic texts into otherwise traditionally designed and produced wooden Mashrabiyas. Of course these pieces are taken out their traditional context of architectural screens that separate the public from private spaces and transformed into art objects with no utilitarian value. Here we see a blurring of the boundaries between contemporary artistic creation and more traditional design and crafts disciplines.

Globalization and multicultural contemporary Arab visual culture A second mistaken assumption has been that the Arab world has always been overly influenced by

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(its colonizing) Western cultures, and that therefore a return to a ‘pure’ Islamic Arts tradition will best serve the goal of maintaining cultural diversity in an increasingly homogeneous world. As mentioned earlier, art and visual culture in the Arab world have from the outset been hybrids of various ideological, cultural and aesthetic traditions. ‘Pure’ official art forms have co-existed with other, more day-to-day cultural expressions that have varied from one region to another. How do Arab visual artists and designers today appropriate this hybrid aesthetic tradition and how do they see themselves innovating from within this tradition to create work that befits contemporary creative needs? The Arab world’s wealth lies precisely in its former culture of assimilation and openness. In fact, this specific trait of the early Islamic empire is what allowed its spread in a mostly non-violent

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and non-destructive manner, incorporating the cultures of the conquered lands within its fold, building a powerful state, and eventually a rich and unique visual culture that was embraced by all social/religious groups of this newly formed empire. Since the inception of the early Islamic empire, nomads have played an important role in spreading the faith from the Arabian desert into the more urban centres of the Levant (Grabar, 2007: 28). If nomads then were the carriers of change and cultural information, then the average nomadic life of young Arabs today can also bring about the transfer of information about and amongst both the Arab world and global society at large. This nomadism applies not only to the movement of people but also to the mobility of information, namely the continuous change and modification of content and form across virtual or physical divides; it is in fact utilized as a source of inspiration and a way to inculcate a more flexible notion of cultural identity in the Arab world, of how it shifts and incorporates various ‘other’ cultural traits – Western or even Far Eastern – within the murky waters of hybrid ‘global’ crosspollination. Contemporary Arab nomads: embracing hybrid visual identities One example of turning the successive migrations and uprooting of many Arab young people into a social tie across national borders is provided by the mission of the well-established magazine Bidoun, whose name means ‘without’ in both Arabic and Farsi, alluding to the stateless contemporary nomads, artists and cultural activists who refuse to be pigeon-holed and stereotyped. Their mission statement (and their tenacious commitment to it) sums it up elegantly: In our contemporary context, it [Bidoun] connotes the statelessness in which many of us find ourselves – sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not. Bidoun is not limited by political boundaries drawn onto maps. Its very essence is the fluidity of geographies and a challenge to the myth of singular and absolute representation. Yet we are cautious as regards our role as culture broker. While we acknowledge the reductionist tendencies of Orientalism, Bidoun also resists

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obsessing over cultural difference. (http://www.bidoun.com/about/)

In this atmosphere of freedom to mix cultural symbols and aesthetic styles – so natural to Arab culture, but also a trend on the rise internationally in design and art circles – attempts have been made to revive unique Arab popular icons, and to take advantage of the vogue for ‘multi-culturalism’ by exporting these to the rest of the world. This approach of forging an Arab visual language with ‘retro’ sources of inspiration (rediscovering one’s long-discarded cultural history) has become a widespread preoccupation in recent design trends. This iconic language is often mixed with bilingual (often dual-script) text that originated from visual and printed communication in the Arab world. Fashion is one of the most potent means of self-expression of Arab youth (regardless of national or social norms) and an obsessive preoccupation in more affluent parts of the Arab world, where ‘what you wear defines who you are’. Trendsetting fashion design sometimes crosses over to other media, as exemplified by the first ‘pan-Arab, fashion, culture and lifestyle magazine’ Alef, which proclaims itself to be ‘devoted to covering … a modern and progressive Middle East and to spotlight the cultural and creative contribution of people of Arab origin’ (http://www.alefmag.com).

Young Arab designers: mixing heritage with modern icons and symbols Fashion is an accurate indicator of the growing trends in creative expression in the Arab world. Fashion items seem to play with typically traditional clothing items (like the men’s headdress called Ghutra or Kaffiya and its specific but subtle variety of regional patterns and colours, or the masks worn by older women in the United Arab Emirates (Burqa) and other iconic imagery from Arabian ‘pop’ culture). This trend started after 9/11 and was championed by young Arab designers from different countries (who were not always aware of each other’s work). Fashion in the Arab world became more than something you wear but conversation pieces that would trigger intercultural dialogue and present models of symbiosis

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Photo 12.7 Sarah’s Bag. Three handbags with reference to Arab vernacular visual culture and icons. Top left: Classic Grafitti. Top right: Classic Oum Koltoum Squares. Bottom: Peeper Eye (white and blue). © Sarah’s Bag.

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between local visual forms and international ones.

of pride, dignity, and empowerment’ (http://www. sarahsbag.com).

Sarah’s Bag (Sarah Baydoun and Sarah Nahouli). The two Lebanese Sarahs have employed a similarly playful design approach for their coveted Sarah’s Bag line of fashion accessories (see Photo 12.7). They mix the glamour look with traditional fabrics and cultural icons. But under the playful and sexy surface lies a fully-fledged feminist and politically engaged fashion with a social responsibility. Their commercial practice is committed to invigorating the traditional crafts while helping ‘women at risk from economic deprivation or the stigma of having served time in prison to learn valuable skills in return for a reliable income and a stable source

Pink Sushi by Emirati Raghda Bukhash. Raghda Bukhash managed to start a trend in the UAE, launching her label Pink Sushi at the Third Line Gallery in Dubai in 2001. She uses a mix of the vernacular visual language that the average Emirati-Arab youth will have grown up with and that has shaped their identity: packaging with glaring colours, traditional fabrics and dresses, Japanese Manga cartoons, and Arabic music idols (see Photo 12.8). Essa by UAE-based Essa. Designer Essa’s (and his brand by the same name) trademark is to use the typically Arabian male

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Photo 12.8 Pink Sushi. Accessories using a mix of Arabic vernacular text, lettering and images. Left: pillowcase embroidered with slang expressions and packaging inspired Arabic lettering. Right: My bags & I series, ‘glitzoumakki’ handbag made from ghutra fabric. © 2006, Pink Sushi.

ghutra fabric to make extremely extravagant feminine clothing. He creates colourful and playful women’s shirts, skirts, dresses and even kimonos, adding embroidery and flowers made of the ghutra and other fabrics. Sugar Vintage by Emiratis Leila Al Marashi and Hedaya Al Rahma. This appropriation of traditional men’s clothing for contemporary hip Arab women is taken to an even more adventurous level with the clothing label Sugar Vintage. They began attaching burqa masks onto t-shirts then moved on to transforming the traditional dish dashah (a long men’s dress) into mini-dresses for ladies, poking fun at the changing roles in the social ‘fabric’ of today’s progressive Arab cultures.

Hassan Hajjaj: mixing fashion, photography and interior design. Mixing fashion, photography and interior design, Hassan Hajjaj cross-pollinates not only visual languages and materials, but also creative design and art practices. His work defies classification in the traditional sense. He makes confections out of fabrics, found objects and consumer goods of Moroccan as well as Western origins, an accurate reflection of the new displaced Arab cultural nomad’s repertoire of symbols. These mixed symbols belong to a generation that is shaping today’s Arab visual culture. His work may speak of his own personal experiences, his roots, his journey and artistic experiments, but it also connects to the larger Arab diaspora. His constructed interiors of recycled signs and packaging turned into furniture,

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Hassan Hajjaj, ‘Ahmed Lightin Up’ 2000.

Photo 12.10 Hassan Hajjaj, ‘Ilham’ 2000. Photography in wooden frames with actual packaged products. © 2000, Hassan Hajjaj.

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and his self-made frames for his photographs (in turn collaged symbols and constructed realities), are at the same time nostalgic but inventive, like an idealized memory of an eclectic identity (see Photos 12.9 and 12.10). Thus the multi-cultural and hybrid visual language of contemporary design in the Arab world can be seen as a ‘natural’ recent development that resonates in a long forgotten cultural heritage. Appropriating and recycling popular icons or design items for the creation of new work is, of course, not limited to the Arab world and this trend is observable worldwide. A particularly clear example of this symbiotic relationship between cultures is laid bare in the work of designers showcased in the book Arabesque: Graphic Design from the Arab World and Persia (Wittner et al., 2008). This crossing of boundaries is not limited to the visual aspects of each artefact but also extends to the process of creating, producing and disseminating artistic and design products. A new generation of Arab cultural entrepreneurs A third faulty assumption is that the Arab world consists of predominantly conservative societies where young people and women play a marginal (even insignificant) role in economic development and creative activities. Yet in reality contemporary modes of life in most of the world have become cosmopolitan, with corporations and branding taking over most aspects of daily life. This is even more the case in the Arab world, where governments are only happy to support creative production and cultural activities that will boost their international public image and will make the headlines and/or prove to be a lucrative economic investment. Cultural activists are becoming aware of this and are learning to use commercial or branding strategies to disseminate culturally sensitive products, develop local talent, and maintain cultural heritage and regional artistic production – making the latter mainstream and desirable to a largely consumer society. There are several young groups and individuals operating on this level. Their activities are made possible by the new communication networks whereby online communities are developing around small upstart businesses with cultural agendas, thus nurturing the possibilities for developing collective creative projects and

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promoting a positive image of creative developments in the Arab world. Collective practices in the Islamic Art tradition of artistic creation Islamic Art has a strong historical design tradition that is intrinsically rooted in the concept of the collective endeavour (where individuality was discouraged). In today’s design practices, a balance has been struck between these two poles. A growing number of individuals are represented on the web side by side with online communities and networked alliances between designers from various corners of the world. This is thanks to technology as well as new media practices where open-source and user-created content is often the norm. The online community becomes a collective work in progress that informs itself and gives a sense of belonging to a rich and diverse community of people with shared interests. For the Arab world this open connectivity is particularly attractive to a people who generally cannot travel freely because of financial or political restrictions. Meeting, reading and shopping online are natural extensions to their physical lives and sense of place in this large global society. The new Arab cultural entrepreneurs in the Gulf States Arab young people (and young women in particular) are slowly claiming an active role in shaping the new visual culture. There are subtle but creative ways in which they are operating to promote high design standards. They have gone beyond selling products to breaking down stereotypes and becoming centres for the promotion of local design talent. I will present a few of theses cultural entrepreneurs below. In addition to the individual designers I presented in the earlier part of this chapter, many more women have founded youth-targeted and locallyoriented design businesses from the Levant through to the Gulf, with shops like D’NA (by Dina Abdulazziz in Saudi Arabia), to 5Green and 50°C (by Shahi Hamad in Dubai), to O’de Rose (by Lebanese Mimi Shakhashir in Dubai) and others. Three Dubai-based active commercial spaces, with particular dynamic activities that promote new creative design developments, are The Third Line gallery, Traffic and S*uce.

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The Third Line. Two young and energetic women, Sunny Rahbar and Claudia Cellini, founded in partnership with Omar Ghobash The Third Line gallery in 2005. Through their range of activities and their focus on promoting young Arab and Iranian artists, they have influenced the growing art scene in Dubai and raised the bar a few notches higher. They have engaged in events not directly related to their art business, operating as a semi-public cultural space. One such event is the Pecha Kucha Dubai, which they hosted and organized in collaboration with S*uce, 50°C, Traffic and the AAuae (Architectural Association), providing a unique podium for local young designers from various disciplines to present their work publicly in an informal setting (http://www.pecha-kucha.org/ cities/dubai).

challenging is to look beyond the national borders to try to forge creative networks across cultural divides – be it amongst Arab countries, or between Arab and Western nations. New communications media have come in handy for creating these networks and networked communities. I will cite two examples – a commercial retail site and a nonprofit online community and cultural foundation – both with similar goals but very different operating strategies: Dia Diwan and the Khatt Foundation. Globalization, as we have seen earlier in this chapter, has been a catalyst for hybrid creative practices in the Arab world. It has facilitated a new Arab visual language as well as cross-cultural and interdisciplinary exchanges. There is a budding fresh type of entrepreneurialism interested in collaborative work and the mixing of cultural agendas with commercial design practices.

Traffic. Rami Farook, the young Emirati founder of Traffic, has created a unique retail-public space concept for furniture and interior design accessories. Traffic not only sells the latest funky international brands, but also maintains a reading room on design-related literature and hosts non-profit design events that champion the development of a higher level of design in the region and socially responsible work targeted at local and Arab youth. In 2008, Traffic initiated the first furniture and interior design competition for regional designers, juried by some for the biggest names in the industry (http://www.viatraffic.com).

Dia Diwan. Founded by a Palestinian-Lebanese-British woman, Rasha Khouri, Dia Diwan has started to consolidate its image of a hip media and fashion outlet for trendy women ‘from the Arab World’. Its carefully selected name portrays the spirit it tries to convey, for the two terms Dia (meaning light, and day or diamond in Latin) and Diwan (meaning either a collection of poems, or a room to convene and discuss serious issues or simply socialize) combine to provide a nice mix of serious and fun connotations about the activities on the site. Dia Diwan goes beyond the mere commercial practices of an online fashion retailer to create an online community that promotes and supports young Arab women, reports on new creative activities, and features up-and-coming designers from the Arab world. The site is a balance between their main retail and other cultural activities. Though their Dia Global Souk, they offer a mix of international and Middle Eastern funky fashion items (sometimes with a social/cultural dimension like Sarah’s Bag), and they also act as a platform for launching the careers and facilitating the distribution of products of new talent from the Arab world. In their lighthearted interview section entitled ‘What’s In Your Handbag?’ they provide their audience with inspirational features on Arab women role models. As an online enterprise they lead a double life of both fashion portal for young Arab women and a window into the less-known lifestyles of the typically educated young women from the Arab world (see Photo 12.11).

S*uce. Founded by three young women – Lebanese Zayan Ghandour, Emirati Fatima Ghobash, and Palestinian Dina Saleh – S*uce (pronounced ‘sauce’) is another retail fashion space for young Arab women with an agenda all of its own. They have undertaken the task of becoming a ‘design launchpad’ for young regional talent, promoting and selling the work of designer brands like Essa, Sugar Vintage and 7 Minutes; they also commission special editions and products that support good causes. The new Arab creativity: beyond borders and into cyberspace Being locally active is vital for building creative communities in the cities of the developing Gulf States. However, equally important and highly

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Photo 12.11 Dia Diwan (www.diadiwan.com). Two examples of the website’s newsletter displaying a range of products and topics. Left: Introducing Dia Diwan newsletter. Right: 9 June 2008 newsletter. © 2008, Dia Media Holdings Limited. The Khatt Foundation. The word khatt in Arabic is rich with associations that define the overarching aims of the Khatt Foundation. The word means writing, script, lettering, calligraphy and typographic style, but also line (as in a trace on a page, a line of thinking, a direction, a direct line towards a defined goal, etc.). As a strong visual emblem of Arab and Middle Eastern culture, the Arabic script (or khatt) is what the Khatt Foundation has chosen not only for its name but also as the building block for the advancement of the applied arts in the Arab world. The foundation is dedicated to design research and programmes that focus on rejuvenating the applied arts traditions of the Arab world. It aims to actively promote and stimulate innovation in design practices and to bring an awareness of the vital role that design can play in building a sustainable environment. It also aims to stimulate the creation of socially-relevant artefacts that are designed and produced regionally to the highest professional international standards.

Founded by myself in 2004, the foundation has established itself as a platform for launching innovative design projects that address the immediate needs of design in the region. In partnering with established institutions, it has turned the results of these projects into viable products available on the market (see Photo 12.12). The foundation’s educational objectives are achieved through creating networks of global designers and providing information about resources, projects, news and events regarding design and the visual arts in the region. Acting as a facilitator for cross-cultural exchange and collective creative projects, the Khatt Foundation has initiated a number of unique design initiatives project (such as the ‘Typographic Matchmaking’ project) that have caught the imagination of young Arab designers. It has forged creative networks across national borders, treading on ‘uncommon’ territories, and fighting against the passive consumer habits of most Arab societies. These creative networks (exemplified in the foundation’s

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Photo 12.12 The Khatt Foundation (www.khtt.net). Six examples from the winning designs of the ‘Project Muslaq’ Middle Eastern design competition, launched in June 2008 for the special edition of the Khatt Design Collection of vinyl wall stickers (for interior decoration). © 2008, The Khatt Foundation.

own online community) have proven to be a motivating and flexible means for collaborative work. The Khatt online community has become a virtual design centre with over 1060+ members since its inception in August 2007. It has spurred creative interaction, open dialogue and the fermentation of innovative ideas. The latest example is the launch of the design competition Project Mulsaq, which resulted in the production of interior design accessories to be promoted and marketed internationally. This virtual centre operates on the principle of sharing knowledge, and with contributions from its

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members, collectively building an information resource about design and visual culture in the Arab world and the Middle East. The Khatt Foundation’s online network has become a dynamic portal to the unexplored world of design in the region, and a friendly meeting place for the younger generation of Arab and Middle Eastern designers. The Typographic Matchmaking project (see Photo 12.13) addresses the bilingual, dual-script needs of contemporary design in the Arab world, by creating Arabic fonts that set the benchmark for future developments in this specialized design field.

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Photo 12.13 The Khatt Foundation (www.khtt.net). Cover of Typographic Matchmaking, written and designed by Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès (BIS Publishers, 2007). © 2007, Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès.

Photo 12.14 The Khatt Foundation (www.khtt.net). Three different spreads from Typographic Matchmaking, written and designed by Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès (BIS Publishers, 2007). © 2007, Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès. 145

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Five renowned Dutch designers were paired with five up-and-coming Arab designers to collaborate on designing well-crafted Arabic fonts that modernize Arabic typography. The design and development process of these new fonts was finally documented in a unique book entitled Typographic Matchmaking (see Photos 12.14). The project was then publicly presented through a series of events designed and organized in collaboration with the Dutch Mediamatic Foundation to present this intercultural project to a Dutch audience with little knowledge about the Arab World. The events included a symposium on Arabic visual culture where the book and project were presented and the launch of the Khatt Foundation’s online network (www.khtt.net), while the El Hema exhibition showcased the use of the newly developed fonts on Arab–Dutch products and fashion items. The exhibition items were little by little ‘sold’ as products to the visitors who literally took the work ‘home’. This project with diverse aspects was a non-conventional way of showing untypical but ‘quite real’ Arab culture. The book also had several other launch events in Dubai and Beirut (the design centres of the Arab world). The project in all its aspects focused on the dialogue between Western and Arab visual culture through typographic as well as product design, and was executed by a total of roughly 20 designers of various Western and Arab nationalities working together to create concrete and useful artifacts.

Conclusion This brief sketch of creative production in contemporary design in the Arab world has highlighted some crucial aspects of creative practices in this artistically versatile region. It has shown that today’s Arab designers have been striving to create designs that balance local concerns with one’s own creative heritage and the need to be fully connected to the greater global design scene. They endeavour in the process to remain open to other influences and to keep a fresh experimental outlook that allows for a play with (old and new) materials, aesthetics and design approaches. Whilst upholding the unique traits of culturespecific creative traditions, designers in the Arab world have resisted being defined along the lines of stereotypical cultural representations. They battle to demystify simplistic notions and misconceptions

about artistic production in the region. This new generation of designers in the Arab world is a group of well-educated and connected individuals who use global communication networks and design tools to form alternative communities, support and inspire each other, and develop new creative strategies that are creating a new wave of (predominantly feminine) ‘visual’ cultural revolution. This work can generally be described as a clever and informed mixing and sampling of artistic heritage with new materials and production techniques. It represents the hybrid associations and experiences of the nomadic lifestyles of most Arab youth. Arab designers have appropriated commodities and commercial strategies to disseminate socially conscious (or culturally sensitive and critical) designs with messages that go beyond the actual banal everyday object or fashion(able) item. Their work is only made possible by the new communications media and speaks loudly of the inherent need to uphold the unique aspects of their cultural identity without alienating the Arab world and cutting it off from the larger global society. They strive to bring their resolutely ‘international-Arab’ products into the global design arena, doing this in a playful and often lighthearted manner. This new generation of designers in the Middle East is striving to shape the visual culture in a way that best represents its modern identity. Young designers are embracing Western ideologies, appropriating them and subverting them to their own needs and ends. They are developing hybrid creative practices by mixing East and West, old and new, in the search for an honest and inspiring new visual language. Their endeavours are being steadily recognized, building up a new following, and generating new forms of creative production that are clearly an outcome of our globalized world culture. There is definitely a growing understanding of the power of design in the Arab world and a need to guide this energy, which has such lasting longterm social and economic implications. New creative initiatives have been launched that have adapted traditional creative practices to shifting aesthetic trends and local pragmatic needs. By establishing creative partnerships, these efforts are bound to result in a wealth of interdisciplinary projects that will stimulate further design innovation and creative thinking in the Arab world.

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REFERENCES

Ayad, M. (2008) ‘The Ghutra effect, Essa’, Canvas Magazine, 4 (4), July/August. Grabar, O. (2007) The Formation of Islamic Art (revised and enlarged edition). New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Websites www.alephmag.com www.azzafahmy.com www.bidoun.com www.daronboz.com www.diadiwan.com www.hassan-hajjaj.com www.khtt.net www.nadabebs.com www.pink-sushi.com www.sarahsbag.com www.shopatsauce.com www.thethirdline.com www.viatraffic.org

Obrist, H. U. and Hefuna, S. (eds) (2008) Pars Pro Toto. Heidelberg: Kehrer Verlag. Wittner, B., Thoma, S. and Bourquin, N. (eds) (2008) Arabesque: Graphic Design from the Arab World and Persia. Berlin: Die Gestalten Verlag.

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CHAPTER 13 CULTURAL POLICING IN SOUTH ASIA: AN ANTI-GLOBALIZATION BACKLASH AGAINST FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION? Laurent Gayer, Christophe Jaffrelot and Malvika Maheshwari

community have been under attack as well. Interestingly, the state apparatus has not necessarily protected the victims of this form of social control and in a sense cultural policing has become part of the state’s authority. With a growing intolerance and increasing scrutiny of artistic expression and freedoms, South Asia is in the midst of negotiating permissible boundaries for creativity and culture which more than ever are now dependent on the rule of law.

Introduction

Despite South Asia’s colonial legacy of judicial activism and the application of the rule of law, freedom of expression has been severely restricted in recent years as Islamist and Hindu fundamentalist movements have exerted an ever stronger influence. Writers, painters and filmmakers have been attacked for ‘blasphemy and outraging religion’. They have also faced the wrath of the moral police for interpreting homosexuality and widow remarriage. Two factors have made cultural policing all-pervasive in recent years: first, religion ceased to be the only ground on which this attitude developed, and second, those who have not complied with the social rules of their

The notion of cultural policing is often used in the social sciences in a rather loose way. The definition we shall adopt in this chapter relies on three features: i) cultural policing will be taken to include all attempts at imposing ways of thinking and behaving on behalf of value systems pertaining to religion or morality; ii) its modus operandi may resort to symbolic or physical violence, blackmailing or any other form of constraint; iii) its agencies are nonstate actors – fundamentalist groups, guerrillas, militias – who may, however, be used by the government in an indirect manner, and in this sense, cultural policing represents a certain privatization of the implementation of law and order. In South Asia, the phenomenon is developing very fast, so much so that some of the armed movements which have implemented forms of cultural policing have sometimes become states within states (e.g., the LTTE in Sri Lanka), or have even seized power (e.g., the Maoists in Nepal) (Gayer and Jaffrelot, 2008). In this chapter, however, we shall focus on groups of vigilantes exerting social pressure on behalf of public morality and religion. South Asia lends itself to an interesting comparison in this respect since it harbours several fundamentalist or ethno-nationalist movements which have all become adept at cultural policing against artists’ freedom of expression, notwithstanding the differences that prevail in their social and political environments. In fact, religion does not make any significant difference in the form that cultural

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policing takes in these three South Asian countries and this phenomenon is not only a reaction to globalization – or Westernization.

Targeting deviant artists in India India – ‘the world’s largest democracy’ – has developed a strong judiciary which for decades has preserved its citizens’ freedom of expression, a right enshrined in the constitution adopted in 1950. Besides, Hinduism has been a religion of tolerance. But the last few years have seen the development of Hindu and Muslim fundamentalist movements acting as the brigades of a new cultural policing. The Hindu nationalist movement Founded in 1925, the historical matrix of Hindu nationalism, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or National Volunteer Corps, assigned itself the task of defending the Hindu community against Muslim threats, both real or imagined. Hence its paramilitary overtones, which, however, went together with a quietist attitude as far as Hindus were concerned (Jaffrelot, 1996). The RSS hoped to spread its message by example and not via constraint. Things changed in the 1990s with the rise of the Bajrang Dal (BD), the new armed wing of the RSS. Artists were its first targets.1 To begin with the BD targeted Muslim artists, especially the celebrated painter, M.F. Husain. A recipient of the highest civilian award in India, the Padmavibhushan, and a former member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament, Husain came under attack by the BD in the 1990s. In 1996, militants attacked a gallery in Ahmedabad (Gujarat) where his works were on display. They destroyed canvases and wall hangings in retaliation for a painting dating from 1976 that depicted the goddess Saraswati – in their eyes she was too scantily clad. Two years later they ransacked the painter’s Bombay apartment in protest against his canvas ‘Sita Rescued’, which depicted the famous scene in the Ramayana where Sita is freed from the demon Ravana – again, because she was scantily dressed. A recent exhibition of reproductions of Husain’s works and photographs, organized by SAHMAT to protest at the artist’s exclusion from the India Art Summit in August 2008, was vandalized by a group of right-wing members. The mere presence of one of Husain’s

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works in the public sphere invites a violent reaction by the right wing. However, Hindu artists have also been targeted by the Bajrang Dal for the way they have allegedly hurt the religious feelings of the majority community. In February 2004, militants filed a complaint against canvases that a Hindu artist, Shail Choyal, had painted for an information campaign run by the nongovernmental organization ‘CARE’ about nursing newborn children. They particularly criticized the painter’s depiction of Hindu divinities such as Ganesh and Krishna. Their complaint was registered with the police who, in the company of some 50 Bajrang Dal militants, searched the offices of the director of the Udaipur art centre where the canvases were stored, seized them and put the director and the painter behind bars. They were later released on bail, but the BD then organized a protest march during which their effigies were burned.2 This cultural wrath is not limited to famous painters: it even hunts down amateur artists at the local level. For instance, in Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh), an Indian Institute of Tourism and Travel Management employee was accused by the BD of having staged a play, Kal, Aaj aur Kal (‘Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow’), that allegedly showed disrespect for Sita, Ram and his brother Laxman. On 14 March 2004, members of these two organizations burst into the employee’s home to blacken her face in public. Her father as well as her brothers and sisters stepped in. They were beaten and thrown out of their house, while their home was ransacked – all under the passive gaze of attendant police officers.3 Besides disrespect for religious figures, attacks on so-called Hindu social ‘traditions’ by artists have also incurred the wrath of the Bajrang Dal. Ponga Pandit, a play criticizing the caste system, and particularly the status of untouchables, was targeted in 2004 when militants prevented the director, Habib Tanvir, from performing it in Gwalior. One bone of contention was a conversation between a Pandit (Brahmin) and his Jamadarni (an untouchable assigned the most thankless household cleaning tasks) hinting that it was not birth but merit that should determine a person’s place in society. The depiction of the role of women in society by film makers has also resulted in intimidation tactics by the BD. In 2000, Indian/Canadian director Deepa Mehta tried to make a film on the life of Hindu widows in Benares in the 1930s. At that time – and even now, to a lesser extent – these women were

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condemned to celibacy, begging and prostitution. Usually they gathered together in ‘homes’ where they lived on public charity and eked out a living by making fuel out of cow dung. The screenplay showed an ‘illicit’ relationship between a Brahmin widow and an untouchable and the rape of another. Ashok Singhal, a Hindu nationalist dignitary, immediately declared that the film insulted ‘ancient Indian culture and traditions’ and threatened ‘more violent protest’ if Deepa Mehta tried to shoot it in India.4 She proceeded to do so nevertheless after having secured all the necessary authorizations from the central government and the authorities of Uttar Pradesh. The set that was built on the banks of the Ganges was totally ransacked by Bajrang Dal militants. Deepa Mehta then decided to continue shooting in the neighbouring state of Madhya Pradesh. But here again, the Bajrang Dal resorted to force to prevent the film shoot from taking place. For Singhal, Deepa Mehta’s project was ‘a conspiracy by the votaries of western culture to tarnish the image of widowhood in India’. Indeed, opposition to Westernization is itself part of this brand of cultural policing. This translates into violent protests during celebrations of Valentine’s Day or the holding of the pageant electing Miss India. However, the impact of globalization is not the only – nor even the chief – triggering factor within this cultural policing. These Hindu nationalist militants aim primarily at Indian citizens who are simply too ‘secular’ (or ‘progressive’) for them. Whether Muslims or Hindus, they are in tune with an old tradition of social reform against the caste system and with the long-standing openness of the Hindu religion. The sculptures of goddesses that adorn Hindu temples are not just scantily clad, they are also erotic. If Husain’s Saraswati is naked it is because she has often been depicted this way, as many other sculptures, some dating as far back as the twelfth century, can attest. Far from being in sync with the tradition they claim to defend, these Hindu nationalists are imposing a doctrine they have built themselves. The ideological basis of their attitude explains that one can find the same modus operandi (irrespective of any religious background) on the Muslim side.

From Rushdie to Nasreen: Indian Islamists against writers The Indian Islamists do not have a coherent organization like the RSS network. Their movements

are smaller and scattered throughout India. But this weakness has not prevented them from launching recurrent campaigns against ‘deviant’ artists over the last twenty years. The first major episode of this recent history was of course the Rushdie affair. Indeed, before taking on a transnational dimension following Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa, the campaign against The Satanic Verses had actually started in India. The publication of several articles criticizing the book in the local press led two Indian Muslim politicians, Syed Shahabuddin5 and Khurshid Alam Khan,6 to take a strong stand against the book. With the support of the Jama’at-e Islami Hind, they launched a successful campaign against it and convinced the Indian government to ban the book in order to avoid further trouble.7 The more recent incidents of cultural policing can be better understood with the ‘Rushdie affair’ acting as a backdrop. Sahitya Akademi (Academy of Literature) award8 winner Mohammed Alvi faced the ire of the fundamentalists in 1995 for couplets penned in 1978 in his book Chautha Aasman. The Darul-Uloom-Shahe-Alam (DUSA) of Ahmedabad issued a fatwa against the writer for ‘committing a sin for negating or doubting the unique qualities of Allah in his couplets’. The seminary issued the statement that ‘religious poets like Alvi should learn from the case of Salman Rushdie who is suffering for his sins till this day.9 The writer was asked to pronounce an apology, denounce and disown the verses, remarry his wife, and reaffirm his faith in Islam through a formal ceremony. Alvi yielded to the pressure. The Taslima Nasreen affair is another case in point. Following the outrage that her first novel provoked in Bangladesh in the early 90s (see infra), she has lived in the USA, France and Sweden before moving to Calcutta. In 2003 the communist government in West Bengal banned Nasreen’s novel Dwikhandita on the grounds that it contained ‘deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any group by insulting its religion or religious belief’. The book was banned allegedly at the behest of a few intellectuals close to the party in power. The Shahi Imam of Calcutta’s Tipu Sultan mosque offered prize money for blackening her face and beheading her. The All India Ittehad Millat Council of Bareilly offered Rs. 500 000 to behead her. The ban on the book was subsequently lifted by the state High Court in 2005. In the same year Nasreen was also booed off stage while

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reading her poem America during the anti-war protests at a North American Bengali Conference at Madison Square Garden in New York. In August 2007, the members of the Legislative Assembly of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MiM) attacked the writer in Hyderabad at a book launch of the Telugu translation of her novel. Interestingly the MiM leader Asaduddin Owaisi commented, ‘My party is not a fascist party. I am for freedom of expression; I am for freedom of press. But every freedom has some limitation. […] You cannot criticize my Prophet Mohammed, that is my identity...’10 The Andhra Pradesh government charged her under the Indian Penal Code, Section 153 (A), ‘for promoting enimity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, language etc’, and the attackers were arrested and released on bail thereafter. By November 2007, Nasreen was forced to leave Calcutta at the directive of the left-wing government. They cited safety reasons owing to the growing protests and violent agitation by the Muslim organizations demanding a stay on the extension of her visa. The Ministry of External Affairs assured her that she would be provided shelter in the country but also advised the writer that she should ‘refrain from activities and expressions that may hurt the sentiments of Muslims in India and harm relations with friendly countries’. Despite agreeing to remove the offending passages from her book, Nasreen succumbed to the mounting religious and political pressures and left India for Sweden. After renewed threats and protests in Sweden as well Nasreen has now recently moved to France, where in July 2008 she was made an honorary citizen of Paris and offered accommodation by the city. M.F. Husain has suffered from Islamic policing as well. In 2004, Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities, a film directed by the artist, was pulled out of movie theatres after Muslim organizations like the All India Ulema Council, Milli Council, All India Muslim Council, Raza Academy, Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Hind and Jamat-e-Islami objected to it on the grounds that the words used in one of its songs were from the Quran and that it was blasphemous to use them to describe the beauty of the female protagonist of the film.11 Anti-West sentiments? Fear of the ‘corrupting’ influence of the ‘West’ that has the potential to damage the purity of religious

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belief and faith is one justification often invoked by religious fundamentalists and in this respect cultural policing has not remained confined solely to artists and writers. Thus, in September 2005, a senior cleric of the All India Sunni Ulema Board issued a fatwa against the tennis player Sania Mirza for wearing sports attire that infringed the principles of Islam. ‘The dress she wears on the tennis court … leaves nothing to imagination. She will undoubtedly be a corrupting influence’, commented Hasseb-ul-hasan Siddiqui, leading cleric of the Board.12 The members of Jammat-e-Uleme-eHind issued a warning that they would prevent Mirza from playing if she did not wear ‘proper clothes’. However, on the Muslim side, the impact of globalization is rather ambivalent: while the latter exposes Indian society to Western culture, it also makes Islamic solidarity easier. An important aspect of the cultural policing by Islamists in India is the strength and sanction they derive from the larger ‘global Islamic community’. Despite India being home to the world’s third largest Muslim population, ‘Indian Muslim leaders have time and again surrendered their intellectual and theological leadership to outsiders’.13 Allegiance and a spirit of unity with the ‘brothers of the same faith’ across national borders have in ways disavowed the community’s stake in the prosperity of the nation.

Pakistan and Bangladesh: parallel fights In Pakistan, and later on in Bangladesh, the Islamists patronized by military rulers took it upon themselves to castigate communist artists14 and to enforce a strict moral order derived from their rigorous readings of the Quran and Sunnah. In these two countries, the Islamists had become well entrenched in the local society during the 1980s. And in both cases, the student wing of the Jama’ate Islami (JI) had taken upon itself the task of eradicating ‘obscenity’ from the campuses and more generally from the supposedly ‘corrupt’ urban centres. In Pakistan, the stronghold of the Islami Jamiat-e Tulaba (IJT) since the early 1970s has been Punjab University located in Lahore. The IJT, which was the only organization to escape the ban on student unions enforced by general Zia-ul Haq in 1984, had also exerted a strong influence on educational institutions in Karachi. The patronage of the

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state and the active participation of the JI in the Afghan jihad, which brought it a flow of weapons, contributed to transforming the IJT into a student militia, brutally controlling social life and the content of the curriculum in that country’s universities. In Karachi, the IJT set up a ‘Thunder Squad’ in 1972, in order to intimidate and reform ‘wayward students’ on the city’s campuses.15 This militia generally recruited its brute force outside of the colleges and universities, notably among the city’s badmash (‘bad guys’), and although educational institutions were its main theatre of operations, its violence occasionally extended to public spaces in the city centre, such as the attack by IJT militants against several luxury hotels on New Year’s Eve 1982. At the end of the 1970s, the IJT succeeded in enforcing a ban on musical performances on campus premises in Karachi, while convincing the university authorities to remove the study of the performing arts from the curriculum. At Punjab University, the IJT has been equally determined in its campaign against the performance or teaching of music on campus premises, and in September 2006 it protested against the creation of a Master of Musicology at the university, describing it as ‘unIslamic’ and ‘against the ideology of Pakistan’, while accusing the university administration of promoting ‘Western culture’. This claim was supported by the Punjab University Academic Staff Association (PUASA), which reaffirmed on this occasion its firm opposition to all forms of ‘negative activities’, such as music and drama, in the university.16 A leading academic institution, the Pakistan Study Centre of Karachi University, has managed to retain discussions on the performing arts in its courses on Pakistani culture and society, but until today strictly refrains from playing music and only enjoys a relative freedom due to its isolated position on the campus.17 Visual arts faculties, for their part, have enjoyed a relative autonomy, although the IJT has occasionally disrupted exhibitions of students’ works by claiming that some of them ‘hurt the religious sentiments of the public’. One such incident occurred on November 4th, 2003, when an exhibition organized by the students of the newly formed Visual Arts Department of Karachi University was attacked by IJT activists. The exhibition presented the students’ final works and, apparently, did not contain any offensive content, but the organizers had been using some music in the background which was considered blasphemous by the Islamists, particularly so

since the show was presented during the holy month of Ramzan. A group of 10 to 15 IJT militants then ransacked the premises, damaging or destroying musical instruments, sculptures and paintings, as well as some computer equipment. The Rangers, a paramilitary force in charge of campus security, failed to intervene on time, although their headquarters was situated in the vicinity of the department. And although the IJT later claimed that it was the Rangers’ intervention that had prompted their activists to resort to violence, this claim was rebuffed by several eyewitnesses, who maintained that if the paramilitary force had intervened more quickly, violence could have been averted. More established Pakistani progressive artists also remain the target of verbal attacks and pressure tactics from Islamist organizations. Most exposed to the Islamists’ critics and protests are promoters of the performing arts, and of the theatre in particular. One of the country’s preeminent authors and directors, Madeeha Gauhar, has regularly faced the ire of the state as well as that of the Islamists for her provocative plays. The theatre company she founded in 1984, Ajoka, presented its first play on the lawn of the author’s mother’s residence in Lahore and did not receive the attention of general Zia-ul Haq’s intelligence agencies before its last performance. However, a second play that was to be performed by the company was banned by that military regime. Civilian authorities were not always prone to a greater tolerance towards Ajoka’s dissenting voice and Nawaz Sharif banned its play Takey da Tamasha, an adaptation of Bertoit Brecht’s The ThreePenny Opera. More recently, in April 2007, another play of Ajoka’s, Burqavaganza, which ridiculed the all-female cultural police force of the Lal Masjid (see infra), was banned by the government of Pervez Musharraf after religious and Islamist parties claimed it contravened Quranic injunctions on the veil. On a larger scale, Pakistan has recently been witness to a violent campaign by radical Islamists against all profane forms of artistic expression and entertainment, such as music and television, which when viewed using their perspective combine indecency with the threat of Western cultural imperialism as well as a cultural influence from India. Indeed, for Pakistan’s Taliban, the main threat to their society’s identity and purity does not really come from the (far) West but rather from the (near) East, and they concentrate their efforts upon the eradication of the

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ubiquitous music shops and video stores selling the latest hits coming from Hindi pop music and Bollywood cinema. Initially confined to the tribal areas and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) bordering Afghanistan, this violent campaign against music and video stores has occasionally expanded to the capital, Islamabad. Between January and July 2007, two religious clerics heading the so-called Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) complex, challenged the government’s writ by refusing to evacuate the land that they occupied illegally and later on by setting up a private militia in charge of ‘repressing vice and promoting virtue’ in the streets of the capital. For the first time in Pakistan, this force of vigilantes was exclusively composed of young women, recruited in one of the religious seminaries of the Lal Masjid complex. This ‘burqa brigade’, as it was nicknamed by the Pakistani media, decided to ban the sale of music and films in the capital by attacking CD and DVD shops. For several months, the government chose not to respond to these provocations and it was only after the burqa-clad vigilantes kidnapped some Chinese employees of a ‘massage parlour’ that General Musharraf took the decision to retaliate, under pressure from Beijing to punish the culprits. The military operation that followed, in early July 2007, temporarily eradicated the threat of Talibanism in the Pakistani capital. However, in the Pakhtun areas bordering Afghanistan, the local Taliban have become a power to reckon with and they are determined to pursue the same agenda as the Lal Masjid clerics, by banning all forms of ‘unIslamic’ activities such as music and cinema. And whereas the ‘burqa brigade’ of the Lal Masjid used only lathis (long sticks, similar to those of regular policemen) against recalcitrant shopkeepers, in the North West the Pakistani Taliban resort to more expeditive means, such as bomb blasts. The jihadis have also been enforcing a ban on the use of music during social gatherings such as weddings and in public as well as private modes of transportation. In the tribal areas of South Waziristan and Bajaur, and increasingly in the whole Pakhtun belt, vehicles are regularly checked by the local Taliban and, if found, audio cassettes are taken away and destroyed on the spot. Musicians and singers are also threatened with the destruction of their houses if they do not give up their profession. In the whole North West, cultural activities have come to a standstill due to the growing influence of the Pakistani

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Taliban and many music shop owners have given up their trade to re-open as less controversial vegetable shops or general stores.18 In Bangladesh, private but publicly authorized forms of cultural policing have also been on the rise for the last two decades and have targeted ‘blasphemous’ contemporary artists, such as author Taslima Nasreen, as well as traditional performers. Nasreen, a former physician, became the target of the Islamists in the early 1990s for her attacks on Islam and its treatment of women.19 The offices of the newspapers she used to write for were vandalized and death warrants were issued against her. The publication of her first novel, Lajja [Shame] (1993), which depicted the ordeal of the country’s Hindu minority, only made matters worse. In 1994, the Islamists drew huge crowds onto the streets, calling for her death. They then declared a general strike that paralysed the country for several days. After a short period in hiding, Nasreen surrendered to the country’s High Court and was allowed to leave the country. Although Nasreen’s ordeal rapidly became a cause célèbre around the globe, the attacks against Bangladeshi traditional performers were more lethal and yet less publizised outside the country. In January 2005, a series of bomb blasts targeted traditional theatre plays, following a common scenario, with the bombs exploding at the moment when female actresses appeared on the stage, during musical interludes, or during scenes presenting actors playing cards. By pinpointing – and sanctioning – the most secular and ‘obscene’ parts of these performances, the perpetrators of these attacks aimed to castigate Bangladeshi folklore and its alleged ‘anti-Islamic’ outlook.20 Hence, rather than rage against the threat of Western cultural imperialism, Bangladeshi jihadis have waged war against Bengali traditional culture, and far from being at odds with globalization, they have been one of its major agents in the country by promoting a universalist, supranational Islamic identity against the more particularistic Bengali identity. In the same vein, the musical performances of Baul singers have also been the target of the Islamists’ wrath, as they epitomize and promote a composite Bengali culture, where the boundary between Islam and Hinduism tends to blur. The attacks on Jatra and Baul performances did not create many victims (three persons were killed in two different incidents in January 2005), as they had relied upon unsophisticated explosives. However,

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other more lethal attacks followed targeted against traditional cultural events and cinemas across the country. On 28 September 2002, a bomb went off at a folk festival (mela) in the district of Satkhira, killing three people. On 17 January 2003, another bomb attack targeted a village carnival in the district of Tangail and killed seven people. The deadliest of these attacks targeted four cinemas in Mymensingh on 6 December 2002 and took the lives of 27 victims. The response of the state Notwithstanding its democratic credentials, the Indian state has often failed to protect artistic creativity. In the late eighties, it bowed to the pressure of the anti-Rushdie lobby and agreed to ban The Satanic Verses. This prompted some British Muslim organizations to campaign for the same to happen in the UK, thus setting off a transnational cultural policing offensive (René, 1997). In a similar vein, the Indian federal authorities have blatantly failed to protect the country’s leading contemporary painter, M.F. Husain, as well as a myriad of less illustrious artists. Regional authorities have also condoned cultural policing by sympathizing with allegedly ‘outraged’ religious communities and denying security to progressive artists and writers. This policy of appeasement has been primarily dictated by electoral motives. In some cases, state governments also endorsed the campaigns against ‘blasphemous’ artists to divert the attention of the public away from greater controversies. This was the case, in particular, with the West Bengal government in 2007, which found in the campaign against Taslima Nasreen an opportunity to relieve itself from the pressure of the Nandigram affair and to divide its opposition by appeasing the Muslim organization that had joined in the protests.21 In Pakistan and Bangladesh, the response of state authorities to private cultural policing activities has been hesitant at best. In these two countries, the favourite response of state actors to the privatization of cultural policing has been to close their eyes to this for as long as they could. Such was the case with security forces mandated to maintain law and order on Pakistan’s campuses, as the attitude of the Rangers in the 4 November 2005 incident detailed above vividly demonstrates. This was also the initial response of Pervez Musharraf’s regime to the raids of the burqa-clad female students of the Lal Masjid against the CD and DVD shops of Islamabad in 2007. And it is only when the burqa brigades

kidnapped Chinese prostitutes – and thus threatened the ‘all weather relationship’ between Beijing and Islamabad – that the army was ordered to intervene. On several occasions, the state has even aligned itself with private censors. This has been the case of Pakistan’s academic authorities since the late 1970s, who have taken for granted the rigorist interpretations of Islam by the IJT by banning music on campus premises. More recently, this was also the case of Pervez Musharraf’s government in April 2007, when it banned the Ajoka theatre’s last play, Burkavaganza. In his attempt to justify the ban, the Culture minister, Syed Ghazi Gulab Jamal, declared: ‘the burqa is part of our culture. You can’t allow anyone to ridicule your culture’, thus endorsing the Islamists’ representation of progressive artists as anti-Islamic as well as anti-national elements. A similar alignment of state authorities with Islamist censors was also witnessed in Bangladesh, where Sheikh Hasina’s government endorsed the accusations of blasphemy targeting Taslima Nasreen after the publication of Lajja. The book was banned and an arrest warrant was issued against the writer, who was only allowed to leave the country after the ‘international community’ – particularly with in the European Union – exerted strong pressure on the Bangladeshi authorities. And although Nasreen made several requests to return, in order to visit her relatives, successive governments have consistently refused to renew her passport. More recently, the Interim Authority that enforced a state of emergency in the country in January 2007 has banned ten foreign – particularly Indian – cable TV music channels, such as Music India, The Music and Trendz TV, claiming that their programmes offended local customs and sensibilities. On the very few occasions when the state took the decision to act against cultural policing, in order to recapture the monopoly over physical violence, it was surprisingly successful. Such was the case in Bangladesh, where the government of Khaleda Zia, during its last months in power in 2006, was constrained to act against jihadi organizations via international pressure. Once this decision was endorsed by the country’s central authorities, the Islamist armed groups that had been terrorising the county for almost a decade (the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh [JMJB] and the Jama’at-ul Mujahidin Bangladesh [JMB]) were rapidly dismantled and their leaders detained. The Interim Authority that took over and placed the country under emergency

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rule the following year was even more firm in its handling of the jihadis and the entire leadership of the JMB and the JMJB was promptly hanged. This brutal end to a decade of intimidation and killings on the part of jihadi militants was certainly the most efficient way to erase all traces of collusion between the perpetrators of violence and leading political personalities (particularly in the higher echelons of the local branch of the Jama’at-e Islami, as well as in the Bangladesh Nationalist Party of Khaleda Zia). And although the Bangladeshi public is fully aware that jihadi militants have been instrumentalized by some politicians to intimidate or eliminate their rivals, light remains to be shed on these dangerous liaisons.

Conclusion: searching for the rule of law The pervasiveness of cultural policing in South Asia amounts to a sheer privatization of violence in

Box 13.1

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defiance of the rule of law. In Pakistan and Bangladesh, the state has used the Islamist movements instead of countering them; in India too, local authorities – the administration as well as the police – have often bowed to those Hindu nationalist movements which have taken the law into their hands, either because they feared retaliation or because they shared their views and considered that they were helping in maintaining public and social order. One difference remains between India and its neighbours however, and that is the robust judiciary it has inherited from the British Raj. Judges will try to defend the fundamental right of freedom of expression as much as they can. In a recent judgment (May 2008) the Delhi High Court rejected criminal proceedings being carried out against M.F. Husain, for instance. The future will show whether the judiciary will display more resilience than its Pakistani and Bangladeshi counterparts in this domain as in others.

Culture workers in distress

freeDimensional (fD) is an international network that upholds social justice by linking art spaces and cultural resources to human rights activism. It does this in three ways. First, it provides resources and a safe haven for oppressed activists and culture workers. Second, it provides technical assistance to community organizing by and on behalf of vulnerable groups within the same communities of fD member centres. Lastly, it engages the creative industries and mainstream media to illustrate critical, contemporary issues and thus influence policy makers. freeDimensional was born of a dilemma: the need for accommodation experienced by culture workers-in-distress. Therefore, fD has developed a system to partner residential artist communities with human rights organizations in order to facilitate rapid response safe havens and related services. Since 2005, it has recruited approximately 50 community art spaces on five continents into a horizontal network for this purpose. During this period, it has also supported over 30 journalists (print, publishing, cartoon/caricature), artists (novelists, poets, painters, filmmakers, musicians), and activists (advocating for prison reform, environment, transparency, LGBT rights, youth engagement, and ethnic self-determination) from over 20 countries with this service. Here are some examples of fD residents: • •

•

Shakeb Isaar, a young music presenter from Afghanistan who stayed at the Nordic Artists Centre in Dale, Norway, after his on-air colleague was shot and killed in Kabul. Joelle Khoury, an avant-garde composer and women’s rights activist from Lebanon, who stayed at the Milkwood Center in the Czech Republic where she was forced to flee after heavy military strikes in Beirut. Pierre Mumbere Mujomba, who was threatened and his landlord kidnapped after the performance of his play, The Last Envelope, in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mujomba received the 2007 Human Rights Watch Hellman-Hammett Award and a residency at the Omi International Art Center in upstate New York.

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Rodolfo Montiel Flores, who was the 2000 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for his antilogging activism in Mexico. Rodolfo lived at the Montalvo Arts Center in California while awaiting US asylum after receiving a presidential pardon from a Mexican prison. Issa Nyaphaga, who is a cartoonist who was imprisoned and tortured for his journalistic drawings in Cameroon. Issa was in residence at Art-in-Community (AiC) in New York City.

The case of Issa Nyaphaga shows the potential of the process. Issa was provided three months of accommodation and support in freeDimensional’s New York City residency in Spring 2007. By inviting him to Art-in-Community, fD sought to ease his transition from France to the USA and to learn from the decade of activism on refugee rights and free expression that he had been engaged in with Journalistes Africains en Exil (JAFE) in Paris. Issa Nyaphaga has been an artist since he was seven years old. He was born in Douala, Cameroon, in 1967 and grew up in the small village of the Tikar tribe, called Nditam, at the very heart of that country’s equatorial forest. The Tikar are primarily farmers during the rainy season and painters in the summer. Issa was initiated into traditional painting in his early childhood. He learned how to mix mud, natural pigments and other coloured substances, which are then used to decorate the walls of houses. He painted with his hands and fingers. Later on he was influenced by various traditional and contemporary styles before finding his own voice in cartoons, caricatures and other visual arts. In 1990, Issa began working as a political cartoonist for a satirical newspaper, Le Messager Popoli, in the country’s largest city, Douala. He was opposed to the political regime in Cameroon, and was tortured and jailed for working on publications that spoke out against its rule. In 1996, he escaped from his country to seek asylum in France where he lived until 2007 when he first moved to New York. Issa Nyaphaga is not only an artist, but also an advocate of freedom of expression. He has endured censorship in the form of his father’s disapproval of his becoming an artist, and later in the form of jail and torture inflicted upon him by the Cameroonian government for his political cartoons. Between 1998 and 2008, Issa published more than 10,000 humoristic illustrations, drawings and comics in newspapers and magazines. Today, he paints cartoons on large canvases and his works are based on global culture. freeDimensional has now worked with Issa in all three areas of their work – residency, community outreach, and policy advocacy. Here is one snapshot of how freeDimensional worked with Issa Nyaphaga in 2008. During the Action Lab on Economic Migration Project, Issa provided a cartoon on the rising death toll from nautical economic migration for a newspaper and media campaign that fD had launched with its partner centre, Atelier Moustapha Dime, during the 2008 Dak’Art Biennale. In early Fall Issa then travelled to New Orleans for the Artist As Refugee symposium at the Louisiana Art Works, and to Bilbao, Spain, for the Censorship Festival. During both trips he was accompanied by an fD staff member, where they helped to secure a show for his art and to have his work included in New Orleans’ first Biennale (Prospect 1) as well as creating new and unique opportunities for the network (fD is now the international nominator for a six-month artist residency affiliated to the Bilbao Censorship Festival). Most recently, fD has partnered with the Harlem Studio Fellowship to secure a three month Photo 13.1 Picture of Issa Nyaphaga with residency for Issa, leading up to his first solo hands crossed in front of his face, Angele show at the ArtBreak Gallery in NYC in Etoundi Essamba January 2009. Todd Lester 156

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Notes 1 The word ‘bajrang’, meaning ‘strong’, is associated with the monkey god, Hanuman – sometimes also referred to as Bajrang Bali – who is generally depicted brandishing a club. 2 PUCL, ‘Cultural policing by Bajrang Dal and the Rajasthan police’, (http://www.pucl.org/Topics/Religioncommunalism). 3 P.S.Tripathi, ‘A law unto itself’, Frontline, 23 April 2004, p. 41. It would require a certain fastidiousness to inventory the long list of such acts. One final incident should, nevertheless, be related: on 29 January 2004, a gang of BD militants stormed the Garden Art Gallery in Surat (Gujarat) and destroyed eight canvases by M.F. Husain, K.H. Ara, N.S. Bendre and Chittrovanu Mazumdar. 4 Quoted in The Hindu, 5 February 2000. 5 Shahabuddin was the head of the All India Majlis-e Mushawarat (All India Assembly for Equality), a conglomerate of smaller groups acting as a lobby group claiming to defend Indian Muslims. 6 Khan, a former minister, belonged to the Congress. 7 Yet the protests and riots in Bombay and Kashmir against Rushdie’s book killed 15 people and injured several others. 8 The highest literary award in India. 9 The Statesman, 31 May 1995. 10 www.twocircles.net, 14 August 2007. 11 Tribune News Service, 6 April 2004. 12 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4229052.stm 13 ‘Indian Muslims and their Linkages’, The Hindu, 6 June 2008. 14 The writer Faiz Ahmed Faiz, in particular, was attacked by the JI for his communist leanings, but also for having claimed in the early 1970s that ‘The roots of Pakistani culture lay in India’.

REFERENCES

Gayer, L. and Jaffrelot, C. (eds) (2008) Milices armées d’Asie du Sud: Privatisation de la violence et implication des Etats. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Jaffrelot, C. ( 1996) The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s. New Delhi: Penguin India. René, E. (1997) “L ‘affaire Rushdie”. Protestation mondiale et communauté d’interprétation, Les Cahiers du CERI, n° 18.

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15 Nadeem F. Paracha, ‘Student Politics in Pakistan: a Celebration, Lament and History’, available at http://nadeemfparacha.wordpress.com/student-politicsin-pakistan-a-celebration-lament-history/ 16 Amir Mir, ‘Protest against start of music classes in varsity’, Gulf News, 11 September 2006. 17 Interview with Dr Jaffer Ahmed, Director, Pakistan Study Centre, Karachi, University, June 2008. 18 ‘Intensified campaign against music’, http://www. freemuse.org/sw19164.asp 19 In her own words, Nasreen said that ‘Islam oppresses women’ and she ‘criticized verses in the Koran that treat women as property, as sexual objects’; even more bluntly, Nasreen claims that ‘it’s not true that Islam is good for humanity. It’s not at all good’; see her interview with Irshad Manji on 28 October 2002, available at http://www.muslim-refusenik.com/news/Taslima_ Interview.html 20 Jérémie Codron, (2005) ‘Les milices islamistes du Bangladesh, symptômes d’un Etat faible?’, in L. Gayer and C. Jaffrelot (eds), Milices armées d’Asie du Sud: Privatisation de la violence et implication des Etats. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. 21 The construction of a chemical hub in Nandigram lies at the heart of a bitter conflict between the Communist Party of Indian (Marxist) government of West Bengal and its Trinamool Congress opponents. In 2007, police firing and CPI (M) militiamen’s attacks led to the death of at least 20 villagers. The CPI (M) government was then projected as a ‘fascist’ party in the national media. By refusing to provide security to Nasreen, the West Bengal authorities tried to divert public attention away from this embarrassing affair, but also to appease the Jamiat-e Ulema-e Hind, which had joined the anti-CPI (M) forces in Nandigram.

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identity in the global world. What we are witnessing, the author suggests, is a global diffusion and a local creative appropriation of popular culture.

Introduction

The Balkans, and within them the countries of the former Yugoslavia, have managed to symbolize the subsumption of politics to popular culture. Where once the landscape bristled with statues of political heroes and military leaders, now a new breed of statuary has emerged in the form of a bronzed homage to the icons of a global pop culture: Bruce Lee, Bob Marley, Rocky, and so on. It may be easy to dismiss these often kitsch sculptures as triumphal symbols of the victory of commercial culture in the era of the ‘end of history’, but they must also be seen as evidence of a particular kind of a cultural expression, creating bricolage in a region still searching for a twenty-first century sense of

In the witty and perceptive documentary film Whose is This Song? (2003), the Bulgarian filmmaker Adela Peeva (2003) explores an internal battle of different cultural expressions over Balkan culture. Shortly after the start of the new millennium, she travelled to Turkey, Greece, Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria, tracing the origins of a popular melody (‘Clear Moon’, in Bulgarian) that has been claimed by different national communities in the Balkan region. Each country has a different version of how the song came to be and what story it tells. It concerns beautiful gypsy woman who stole the hearts of a town’s menfolk; it is about Islam and the marching armies who spread their religion into the Balkan region; or it is about celebration of a local festival day. It becomes apparent during the course of the film that the melody has been so widely appropriated that not only is its cultural provenance obscured, but so is its significance and even its genre. In Turkey and Bosnia, it’s a religious and a military song; in Albania, it’s a love song; in Serbia, it’s a drinking song; in Macedonia it’s a Dervish chant; and in Bulgaria it has become a nationalist anthem. In Bosnia Peeva is told that the song is Bosnian, since it brings East and West together, and cherished by Muslim, Greek Orthodox and Catholic alike. The female singer with a traditional scarf scorns the notion of the song being Serbian. She sings ‘only authentic traditional songs and of course this is one of them.’ Peeva makes the mistake of playing the Bosnian version of the song in a bar full of Serbs, and they explode with anger. She never discovers the song’s origin, focusing instead on the wide range of meanings it has come to have in the region. She portrays Balkan culture as

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a kind of a hybrid culture – one that challenges and resists spatial and temporal dichotomies. The more general conclusion she derives is that, despite recent attempts to assign a wide range of cultural products to their appropriate country in that fragmented region, it is impossible to assign national rights over Balkan cultural products and expressions. Acrimony amid countries in the region, some of whom have recently been at war with one another, combined with the new economic imperative to ‘brand’ national identities for the global market in this era of globalization, have resulted in battles over the true provenance of products and practices that have earned iconic status as national signifiers. These include plum brandy, the cheese pastry called burek, the pepper spread ajvar, the folk dance kolo, and the meatballs called cevapcici. Much the same can be said of the contested history of the region, which is both shared, and, at least in its multifarious accounts, very diverse. After the violent Yugoslav wars, and after the fall of Milosevic’s regime in Serbia in 2000, different artistic practices and projects have attempted to recreate the relationships between the former, now seven new nation-states (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo). Some media scholars point to the special importance of popular culture in restoring ties after the wars (Baker, 2006). At the same time, cultural and historical geographers are exploring how monuments and shrines are particularly important as historical, cultural and spatial anchors and as sites of mourning and remembering (Forest and Johnson, 2002; Hann, 1998). These scholars present cases from different parts of the Balkans – how new monuments are being built; how new holidays and ceremonies are introduced; how new creative symbols are developed; and how new hybrid identities emerge – all in order to either rewrite history, deal with the traumatic past, forget it, or reconcile it with the present. Hann (1998) shows how by co-opting, contesting, ignoring, or removing certain types of monuments through both physical transformations and ‘commemorative maintenance’, elites continue to be engaged in a symbolic dialogue about how to remember. They do so in an attempt to rewrite the socialist past and to negotiate, forget and/or remember the violent histories of the recent former Yugoslav wars. In keeping with one of the observations of this volume’s editors, namely that the cultural imperialism

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thesis may be an oversimplification, this chapter explores a new repertory of cultural expression in the Balkans – the appropriation of global pop culture icons for political purposes. Such repertories directly address the editors’ introductory query, ‘What new hybridities in cultural expression are emerging? What sorts of boundary crossings, disruptions, flows and displacements are actually taking place with regard to the “artistic work” and “artistic practice”?’ At the proverbial crossroads of Europe, and the locus of post-Cold War anxieties and struggles, the Balkan region is rich with the forms of cultural bricolage, pastiche, and collage that both draw upon exogenous cultural influences and repurpose them for local use. In this chapter, I am interested in a specific cultural phenomenon and a new trend in artistic creation (monument building) in the former Yugoslav countries. Specifically, I analyse how different Hollywood and other global popular culture icons (such as Bruce Lee and Rocky Balboa) have mushroomed in these states, in the wake of almost a decade of wars that killed as many as 250,000 people in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo (Skjelsbaek and Smith, 2001). On the basis of an ethnographic study of the monument sites, I suggest we have to understand the cultural expressions that are under way in the Balkans as a rather complex renegotiation of historical meanings and local/global relationships, especially in the light of a global popular culture and its power. I argue that these countries have managed to symbolize the subsumption of politics to popular culture. Where once the landscape bristled with statues of political heroes and military leaders, in the aftermath of the fall of socialism and the end of subsequent wars, a new breed of statuary has emerged in the form of bronzed homages to Bruce Lee, Rocky, Tarzan, Winnetou, etc. It may be easy to dismiss these often kitsch sculptures as triumphal symbols of the victory of capital in the era of the ‘end of history,’ but they must also be seen as evidence of a burgeoning bricolage in a region still searching for a twenty-first century sense of identity. One could argue that glocalizing practices have narrowed the gap between self and other by attempting to re-conceptualize the political and ideological differences within the former Yugoslav spaces, and their turbulent histories. However, when analysing the new monuments devoted to popular culture icons, I take a critical approach in

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regard to history, globalization and contemporary artistic expressions. Importantly here, I suggest that this mushrooming of monuments devoted to global pop culture icons must be situated in relation to other global developments such as the rise of neoliberalism in the region: in a situation of increasing economic insecurity, the emergence of new economic opportunities and wealthy elites coincides with rampant unemployment, the dismantling of a once taken-for-granted social safety net, and a growing divide between the privileged few and the struggling many. The region is going through ‘neoliberal’ restructuring and economic ‘civilizing’ (Fine, 2001: 8). I follow Zizek (2006) here when he writes that neoliberalism promotes the depolitization of politics. He sees artistic expressions as inherently bound up with the production of capital that strengthens capital itself regardless of our position in relation to it. He writes: Capitalism is the first socio-economic order which de-totalises meaning: it is not global at the level of meaning (there is no global ‘capitalist world-view,’ no ‘capitalist civilisation’ proper – the fundamental lesson on globalisation is precisely that capitalism can accommodate itself to all civilisations, from Christian to Hindu to Buddhist); its global dimension can be formulated only at the level of truth-without-meaning, as the ‘Real’ of the global market mechanism. (2006: 181)

What we are witnessing, then, is a particular global diffusion of popular culture and a local appropriation of it. The cultural mix and cultural creativity happen not only in between cultures, but also in between the global and the local. Appadurai (1996) claims that we have to interrogate the familiar binary of local or national versus transnational and global. Recognizing globalization and localization as interlinked processes marks a radically different way of thinking about cultural exchange, creativity, change, and cultural expression. In order to understand the new ways in which globalization influences national cultural policies, practices, and material spaces, one must come to an understanding of the local discourses and local creative expressions. For example, Todorova (1997) argues that an understanding of the subjective positioning of a particular region within the world order and against the West is crucial to making sense of such globalization/localization processes. To explore the

relationship that the Balkans have with the West has become one of the crucial themes in the discourse about identity and cultural expression in the region. As I will argue on the basis of an ethnographic study, the West and its global popular culture become used, appropriated and exploited in various Balkan/local contexts. Put simply, this chapter tries to focus on how global culture and some of its icons have been rewritten into local Balkan cultural practices, especially after such violent wars. It has three main parts. Firstly, the process of Othering the Balkans will be presented shortly. Next, I shall explore the role of art in the reconciliation process and map some contemporary Balkan artwork. Lastly, on the basis of ethnographic fieldwork conducted mostly in the spring of 2008, I briefly analyse some of the recently erected local monuments as well as their reception. In a nutshell I wish to demonstrate that in order to understand the current cultural expression in the Balkans one must pay attention to how actors inside the Balkans understand, interpret, negotiate, and imagine global and Western cultures, and how that in turn shapes their understanding of the (geo)political situation in the region. What is needed is a careful examination of local agents’ contemporary discourses.

The Othering of the Balkans Many scholars have addressed the paradoxical positioning of the Balkans: geographically part of Europe, but conceptually excluded from the European cultural, political, and economical space (Todorova, 1997). Critical efforts have been invested in demystifying the ‘Balkans construct’, and the hegemonic Western discourse which creates it – namely, the Balkans were/are seen as the dark side of Europe and they have historically been ‘invented’ and ‘represented’ as uncivilized, barbaric, and irrational. Todorova traces the genealogy of Balkanism through the travel writings of Western authors to explore how the term ‘Balkan’ has been negatively constructed over the past three centuries. The Balkans were defined as the European ‘remote area’ and continue to be seen as the dark side of Europe (see also Wolff, 1994). The mainstream Western images of the Balkans portray the region as dominated by violence, savagery, primitiveness, bloodshed, irrationality, and uncontrolled passion.

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In addition popular culture, especially literature, has been influential in creating an image of the Balkans as mystical and treacherous, dangerous and seductive for the European order, while threatening to pollute the European ‘Self’ (Goldsworthy, 1998: 42–111). The novel Dracula, written in 1897 by an English/Irish writer (Bram Stoker), is frequently cited as an example of the exoticization of the Balkans. A recent example of ‘balkanist’ discourse comes from the 8 March 2008 issue of the Weekend Australian, where Frank Campbell writes about Kosovo: Another Balkan backblock has declared independence. No matter that the gross domestic product is less than the takings of a milkbar … or that the European Union has to supervise and fund it, possibly forever … My grandfather, who fought in both World Wars, said of the Balkans: ‘They need their heads knocked together.’ … Calabria does excellent vendettas, Afganistan superb tribal strife, Ulster built dreaming spires of bigotry to die for, but none can match the rich cultural heritage of the Balkans. They combine intense and infinitely divisible nationalisms, complex religious hatreds, a schizoid imperial past, banditry, endemic poverty, and linguistic schism, all fermenting in a maze of stark mountains avoided by every sane imperialist.

However fantastic, ideas about ‘East’ and ‘West’ do create and shape the perceptions of the places involved, the lands of the former Yugoslavia among them (Wolff, 1994). Thus many argue that former Yugoslav wars served as more ‘evidence’ or proof of how the Balkans are ‘uncivilized’. What I shall argue, however, is that while one needs to take the Balkanist discourses seriously, in response to these processes a re-appropriation of the global/Western cultural icons is occurring. But to begin with, I shall focus on some of the issues connected with the role of art in a post-conflict reconciliation. I want to explore the question of how some Balkan artists mediate complex cultural affiliations and how they remember the wars.

The role of art in post-conflict reconciliation Reconciliation and reparation have emerged as master narratives of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as individuals and nations

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struggle to overcome the legacies of suffering ‘ranging from rape and domestic violence to collective atrocities of state-sponsored dirty wars, genocides, and ethnic conflicts’ (Scheper-Hughes, 2002: 374). Research on post-conflict processes looks at the ways in which people attempt to recreate their social fabric in a manner that is appropriate to the changes in their social environment. The main question that the literature explores is ‘What conditions might make possible reconciliation after violent conflict?’ (Borneman, 2002: 281). And furthermore, in the era of globalization, what is the role of art, and specifically the public monument, in this process? In the last decade, scholars from a variety of disciplines have explored how countries recover from episodes of mass violence (Fletcher and Weinstein, 2002: 574). Reconciliation and the role of art in it occupy a special place. Many local art and media scholars engage with a famous statement of Schiller’s (1989: 6): ‘If man is ever to solve that problem of politics in practice he will have to approach it through the problem of the aesthetic, because it is only through beauty that man makes his way to freedom’. As Borneman, an anthropologist, suggests, we should not think about reconciliation in terms of permanent peace or harmony, but ‘as a project of departure from violence’ in a shared present (Borneman, 2002: 282, 300). Adorno (1986) for his part believed that it was not possible to create a sense of ending for as long as the past lives in the present in the form of objective conditions (e.g., National Socialism and Fascism). He suggested, wishing to turn the page and wipe the past from living memory is extremely dangerous because ‘the past one wishes to evade is still so intensely alive’ (Adorno, 1986: 115). Sampson, while using his experience in Kosovo, argues that the stances that reconciliation requires, such as voicing, talking, truth-telling, active listening and response, all run contrary to the realities of continuous lawlessness, injustice, desire for revenge, pain, violence, and hatred (Sampson, 2002). As is often the case with art, many of the works produced in the region engage with the social and political events of their time: the Yugoslav wars, globalization, reconciliation, and the rise of neo-liberalism. The art of Sokol Beqiri, a Kosovo artist, for example, conveys the eerie feeling of the schizophrenic coexistence of daily life – brutal scenes of warfare to the background accompaniment of mass

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mediated entertainment. One of his works features a Western TV children’s programme full of happy pink alien puppets being interrupted by scenes from an interview made with the artist, in which he emotionally collapses while explaining what producing art meant in war-ravaged Kosovo. This juxtaposition underlines the dichotomy between the relative comfort and security of life in the affluent, media-saturated West, and the brutal insecurity of life in wartime. Likewise, in her Bosnian Girl photograph, the Bosnian artist Sejla Kameric explores prejudice against Bosnian women. She layers her own image over graffiti, written by an unknown Dutch soldier on a wall of the army barracks in Potocari, Srebrenica, in 1994. The graffiti reads: ‘No teeth? A moustache? Smells like shit? A Bosnian girl!’ Another Kosovo artist, Erzen Shkololli, explores the tension between the traditional rituals, ceremonies and objects of his local culture. In the Transition triptych (2001) he portrays a hybrid subjectivity composed of three different, juxtaposed, real-life portraits of the artist himself: a picture taken during his circumcision ceremony, a studio photograph depicting him as a Young Pioneer (Yugoslavia’s socialist youth group) and a recent passport photograph with the 12 stars of the EU in the background. In a video work entitled I am Milica Tomic´ (1998–99), the artist challenges the dichotomy between global and local identity. In her video, we see a rotating figure of the artist, who says: ‘I am Milica Tomic´ – I am a Serbian’. In the following scene, this equation between her subjectivity and her attached national identity is fragmented by the following utterances: ‘I am Milica Tomic´ – I am a Korean’, ‘I am Milica Tomic´ – I am a Norwegian’, and so on. The recycling of the expression in different languages stresses the arbitrary character of the layers of belonging in a global world.

Artists and creative expressions Balkan perceptions and appropriations of the West have also helped to shape local narratives of collective cultural and social identities. Balkan visions of ‘the West’ cannot be understood as simply mirroring the imagination of the Western hegemonic discourse about the Balkans. In order to understand these visions, more attention needs to be

paid to local cultural expressions and dynamics in the production of self-narrations. For example, many Balkan artists seem to play back to the West its thirst for ‘the authentic’ – film directors, painters, and musicians play upon ‘being exotic, barbaric, violent, irrational’ for the West, and they know how to make this Balkan marginalization an asset. Many accuse the film director Emil Kustorica for successfully commercializing the ‘Balkan’ stereotype in his films, attempting to appropriate negative cultural stereotypes of the Balkans (impatience, chaos, romance, passion, and sentiment, wedded to blood, martyrdom and alcohol) and selling them to the West. However, there are different artistic projects and policies adopted by the Balkan states with the aim of resisting and negotiating the Western stereotype and starting to co-operate across the borders. Cinema has attempted to show how the Balkan countries share a common socio-cultural legacy and modern-day trends. Many films have been co-produced by different nation-states, such as Eskiya/ The Bandit, (1996, Yavuz Turgul, Turkey/Bulgaria); Bure Baruta/Powder Keg, (1998, Goran Paskaljevic´, Greece/Turkey/France/Serbia); Sijaj u ocima/Loving Glances (2003, Srdan Karanovic´, Serbia/Croatia/ Slovenia); and Omiros/Hostage (2004, Constantine Giannaris, Greece/Turkey).

Local celebrations of global pop icons After the collapse of socialism, and the end of various wars, we have seen many images of crowds toppling statues, vandalizing buildings, and destroying street names. Just as important as the destruction, however, are efforts to recreate new ‘creative’ spaces. Many political projects and artistic engagements aimed at reconciliation are taking place, including a new trend in monument building. After the wars that aimed to eradicate the multicultural character of this former country, now the monuments to globally recognized imaginary heroes who fight for equality and justice are being built to celebrate that very character. These figures include Bruce Lee in Mostar (Bosnia), Rocky Balboa in Zitiste (Serbia), Winettou in Plitvice (Croatia), Bob Marley in Banatski Sokolac (Serbia), and also Tarzan in Medja (Serbia). Although mainstream popular attention has focused on the

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removal of ‘old’ overtly political monuments, these new shrines have been created in the past six years. The result of this is a rearrangement of public memorials that draws symbolic and spatial parallels between global and local events and characters. One thing can certainly be said for these new statues of Bruce Lee and Rocky: they inspire a strong reaction, either positive or negative. The first thing a visitor to these parks notices is that there is a genuine sense of cultural energy in these sites – people take notice, they are aware, and they have an opinion about the global pop icons that have taken root where generals and politicians once stood. There is an inclusive and populist ‘empowerment’ rhetoric of liberal democracy detected in some of my respondents’ rhetoric. Passers-by frequently invoke notions of ‘empowerment’ and a ‘new community’. For example, a young Croatian artist claimed in Park Zrinjevac, Mostar, ‘It’s empowering to have a monument dedicated to Bruce Lee here in Mostar, which is still such a divided city. Bruce Lee is a hero … he fought for justice and peace. We desperately need new icons here … we need global heroes here in Bosnia, where ethnic tensions are still so alive.’ (See Plate 14.1). Taking the analysis further, one can observe an interpretative discursive struggle taking place. There are roughly two dominant competing narratives: a celebratory one and a critical one. In Mostar, a city still divided between Christian Croats and Muslim Bosniaks, a bronze and gold-plated statue of Bruce Lee was created by a young group of activists.1 According to one of them, the purpose of having Bruce Lee ‘among us’ was to bridge the ethnic divide by paying tribute to a man who brought cultures together and embodied the fight for justice. A young respondent, a student, claimed that ‘This is just so cool! Bruce Lee was the best … listen, we don’t have anyone here to look up to anymore. This artistic project is great.’ A former soldier himself claimed that ‘I want to forget the wars and all that happened here in Mostar. If we change the buildings, the physical environment, we can more easily forget everything … I want to start anew, like a normal human being who is capable of erasing the ugly scenes of wars from my memory’. Another respondent, a woman, pointed out that the purpose here is to understand Lee as a clean human! I mean … he’s ... not Croatian, nor a Serb … he is not a Catholic, not Orthodox, not

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Muslim … what a relief!!! A clean human, finally! I am sick and tired of all these political discussions … how are we going to name our streets … and airports … well, it is a problem that they wanted to name Sarajevo airport after Alija Izetbegovic, a war-criminal! I say: let’s pick some more global popular icons that stand for peace and bring them here – like, we could name our airport after John Lennon … why not?’ 2

Secondly, however, many locals are concerned about ‘global commercialism that pollutes our culture’ and say that the statues are an irresponsible joke. An elderly woman said: ‘I don’t understand who this Lee guy is … What is he doing here? We have our own culture here. We don’t need Mickey Mouse here …’ Another respondent claimed that ‘This is just stupid. It’s all connected to the USA and their imperialist popular culture. Lee is not connected with this town in any way …’ In Zitiste, Serbia, one finds similar interpretations of the Rocky monument. Zitiste is a small town, with high unemployment. According to a younger mother, maybe this monument, devoted to Rocky, will prove to the world, to the West, that we the Serbs are not barbaric and violent, but only that when we have to fight, we fight to defend ourselves, and we fight for justice, like Rocky did. In acknowledging this Western hero, I think we also show that we are also Western, and in a way … democratic.

One of the main protagonists and advocates of the Rocky monument claimed that we collected, by ourselves, more than 6000 euros … we believed in the project from the start. It is basically a group of roughly 15 people, who are fed up with a Serbian government, disappointed by our past and present, but do not want to give up! So basically, we believe in Rocky, in his strength, and his powers, he fought well, and yes, Hollywood offered us solutions to our dreams ... during the 1990s, many of our politicians and soldiers were criminals who stole and killed. I think many of us seek alternative role models and this might be a rejection of Serbian nationalism.

However, here also, many disappointed voices can be heard: ‘I don’t like Rocky. Why do we have to

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have a monument devoted to a violent American? We have suffered enough here,’ claimed a younger woman. ‘We need to find our heroes … and it is important to find the right way of expressing ourselves, remembering, and representing our grief …’ The views of Zizek might be useful in interpreting this current trend: fetishism does not operate at the level of ‘mystification’ and ‘distorted knowledge’: what is literally ‘displaced’ in the fetish, is transferred onto it, is not knowledge but illusion itself, the belief threatened by knowledge. Far from obfuscating ‘realistic’ knowledge of how things are, the fetish is, on the contrary, the means that enables the subject to accept this knowledge without paying the full price for it … (2008: 300)

A fetish, in short, facilitates a kind of knowing without knowledge – the ability to face an unpalatable reality without having to fully absorb its consequences at a cognitive and emotional level. To put it somewhat differently, the fetish highlights a split at the subjective level which allows the subject to be aware, in a factual sense, of a traumatic event, but to continue to function without having to absorb the full import of this event. The two key elements that emerge are this ‘split’ mode of knowing and that of a disavowed trauma, contradiction, or conflict. What then, might it mean, to approach the popularity of global Hollywood icons in post-socialist regions as a variant of fetishism, understood in the sense described by Zizek? Our first impulse might be to think of them – in the terms enlisted by native informants – as a means of coping with past traumas: wars that wracked the region, the various failures of socialist regimes, and so on. The story here would then be a relatively straightforward one: we need to start anew, move beyond our history, forget our mistrust of discredited symbols of justice, leadership, and heroism, in order to embrace new ones in keeping with a globalized capitalist economy. Zizek’s observations, however, suggest a somewhat different reading: that the trauma to be overcome is not a historical or primordial one but rather a contemporary one, it is a knowledge of the present – of the current state of affairs – that must remain disavowed. In this regard, we might think of the failures as not of a defunct socialism and its discarded utopias, but of the promise of a global

capitalist utopia in the era of the ‘end of history’. Perhaps the knowledge that is disavowed is not of the failings of past regimes, but of the failed promise for which these were forsaken, and of the versions of multi-cultural liberalism that have been imposed from the outside. The contradictions of the post-socialist region already mentioned appear to be capitalism in its rawest form, without the welfare-state reforms that cushioned its blow in many Western democracies during the course of the twentieth century.

Conclusions I have argued that in the Balkans the imagery of Western global pop culture icons in all their complexity is neither simply absorbed, nor one-dimensionally rejected. The West and its cultures are creatively reworked through pervasive images, fantasies, experiences, and state ideologies. No doubt images of global pop cultural icons generate creative expressions and discourses of healing, raising questions about local cultural expressions, globalization, and the structuring of grief alike. And this is precisely where, I would argue, a so-called danger, or better said a threat of these monuments lies in the benign form in which it allows different actors to rewrite, reshape, and/or erase the years of war in Yugoslavia, and to focus solely on celebrating the global commercial culture. Hence policy makers in the region should begin to focus systematically on creating spaces and institutions for public discussions about the importance of art and fostering public interests and launching public actions regarding public monuments. Here I would propose a specific policy measure: the creation of a new regional political body, a kind of a commission, to deal with the role and importance of public monuments. It could be a public, informal body, a forum of experts and citizens alike, led by a shared interest in open social and cultural issues that require public debates, actions, and dialogues with the authorities. This commission would advise different national governments in the region on how to foster diverse cultural expressions. In particular, it would produce and organize debates, exhibitions, art actions, workshops, seminars, lectures and presentations in the region. It would serve as a kind of mobile

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cultural centre, promoting the projects of regional artists whose initial research or inspiration is monuments, national or ideological symbols, local or global, patriotic and new collective icons or personalities. Only through such an approach, I would argue, can one come to terms with the larger interactions between processes of globalization and cultural expression, and begin to formulate strategies that will benefit the region. Critically reflective cultural initiatives are of fundamental importance for the reconstruction of the public sphere and, with it, democracy.

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Notes 1

2

There were some scandals connected to Bruce Lee shortly after the statue was unveiled – both Croats and Muslims complained that Lee, a martial arts icon, was a provocation because he pointed towards them in an aggressive martial pose. This prompted his creators to rotate the statue in a neutral direction. In Bosnia, there are heavy and controversial debates over how to remember. For example, when Serbs built a monument for their dead outside Srebrenica on the tenth anniversary of the Bosnian Serb massacre of some 8,000 Muslims, this was viewed as a provocation.

REFERENCES

Adorno, T.W. (1986) ‘What does coming to terms with the past mean?’ in G. H. Hartman (ed.), Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Appadurai, A. (2000) ‘Grassroots globalization and the research imagination’, Public Culture, 12 (1): 1–19. Baker, C. (2006) ‘The politics of performance: transnationalism and its limits in former Yugoslav popular music, 1999–2004’, Ethnopolitics, 5 (3): 275–93. Borneman, J. (2002) ‘Reconciliation after ethnic cleansing: listening, retribution, affiliation’, Public Culture, 14 (2): 281–304. Fine, B. (2001) Social Capital Versus Social Theory. London: Routledge. Fletcher, L. and Weinstein, H.M. (2002) ‘Violence and social repair: rethinking the contribution of justice to reconciliation’, Human Rights Quarterly, 24 (3):573–639. Forest B. & Johnson, J. (2002) ‘Unraveling the threads of history: Soviet-era monuments and post-Soviet national identity in Moscow’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers (92) 3: 524–47. Goldsworthy, V. (1998) Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Hann, C. (1998) ‘Postsocialist nationalism: rediscovering the past in southeast Poland’, Slavic Review, 57 (4): 840–63. Kaplan, R.D. (1993) Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History. New York: St Martin’s Press.

Manz, B. (2002) ‘Terror, grief, and recovery: genocidal trauma in a Mayan village in Guatemala’, in A. Hinton (ed.), Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide. Berkeley and London: University of California Press. Sampson, S. (2002) ‘Weak States, Uncivil Societies and Thousands of NGOs: Western Democracy Export as Benevolent Colonialism in the Balkans’, in Sanimir Recic (ed.) Cultural Boundaries of the Balkans. Lund: Lund University Press. Scheper-Hughes, N. (2002) ‘Coming to Our Senses: Anthropology and Genocide’ in The Anthropology of Genocide, ed. Alex Hinton. Berkeley: University of California Press. Scheper-Hughes, N. and Bourgois, P. (2004) Violence in War and Peace. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Schiller, F. (1989) On the Aesthetic Education of Man (edited and translated by E.M. Wilkinson and L.A. Willoughby). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Skjelsbaek, I. and Smith, D. (eds) (2001) Gender, Peace and Conflict. London: SAGE. Todorova, M. (1997) Imagining the Balkans. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wolff, L. (1994) Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Zizek, S. (2006) The Parallax View. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Zizek, S. (2008) In Defense of Lost Causes. London: Verso.

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evidenced in the construction of large-scale cultural infrastructure. These lend support to the accumulation of cultural capital for the global city (aspirant) but also cause the development of indigenous creative cultural work to take a back seat.

Introduction

This chapter examines the diffusion and circulation of knowledges of the ‘creative economy’ and the ‘global city’. First, the author focuses on two dimensions of the ‘creative economy’ normative policy script that has travelled from the USA and Western Europe to East and Southeast Asia, namely, the development of creative industry clusters, and the attraction of the ‘creative class’ as residents. Using the examples of Singapore and Shanghai, she demonstrates how the logics of creative clusters and creative class do not always translate into sustainable aesthetic practices. Second, she examines the ways in which monumentality constitutes symbolic capital for the global city, as

In the last two to three decades, the cultural economy has been hailed as a transformative component of total economic activities, particularly in the USA and Western European cities. This cultural economy has more recently been styled the ‘creative economy’ following former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s ‘Cool Britannia’ initiatives (see Oakley, 2004). Its seemingly persuasive logic has led to the emergence of a normative policy script and its enthusiastic adoption in various parts of the world. The creative economy strategies adopted in cities such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei, Shanghai, and Seoul from the late 1990s and early 2000s demonstrate the ways in which knowledges of the creative economy have been enthusiastically circulated, particularly amongst cities in Asia which are or have aspirations for ‘global city’ status (Kong et al., 2006). In this chapter, I pick up on the themes addressed in the 2008 volume in this The Cultures and Globalization Series in which the spotlight was on the cultural/creative economy, and examine the diffusion and circulation of knowledges of the ‘creative economy’ and the ‘global city’. I consider the implications of these two travelling discourses for creative, cultural/aesthetic practice. First, I focus particularly on two key dimensions of the ‘creative economy’ normative policy script that has travelled from the USA and Western Europe to East and Southeast Asia (see also Bharucha’s reasoning in Chapter 1). These are: the development of creative industry clusters, and the attraction of the ‘creative class’ as residents, both often deemed key elements in the making of ‘creative cities’. I also examine the

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ways in which these knowledges migrate into contexts that are sometimes quite different from their origins, and the implications of their importation for creative cultural work. Second, I examine one key dimension in the circulating discourses associated with global city formation, that is, the ways in which monumentality constitutes symbolic capital for the global city, evidenced, for example, in the development of urban megaprojects (e.g., Olds, 1995, 2001). In particular, I focus attention on the accumulation of cultural capital through the construction of large-scale cultural infrastructure. The global city, it is believed, must at the very least display cultural institutions such as museums, theatres and libraries to support cultural activities, exude a cultural ambience, and develop cultural ballast. These in turn should sustain global flows by attracting capital investment and drawing in tourists and skilled migrants (the ‘creative class’) as contributing to an urban image befitting a global city and supporting a culturally enriched lifestyle. In this way, the creative class component of creative economy discourse and the cultural monument component of global city discourse intersect. The question then remains of how such cultural monuments contribute to the cultural and creative life of cities and cultural and aesthetic expression. To address the questions outlined above, I draw on evidence from studies of creative clusters and cultural monuments in Singapore and Shanghai.1 The experiences of these two cities suggest that while globalizing discourses have had significant sway in shaping culture and urban policies, resulting in policy interventions in cluster formation and major initiatives in monument construction, the effect on local/indigenous aesthetic production is not always encouraging. With the creative clusters, a variety of forces is at work: the concentration of artists facilitates affordable rentals, provides suitable environments for reflective artistic pursuits, and produces a reputation effect. These may have positive outcomes for aesthetic production. On the other hand, the reputation effect may, in some instances, attract art lovers and buyers, leading to a commercialization of the site, turning it from one of artistic production to one of cultural consumption, with attendant dangers of artistic work responding to commercial dictates rather than inspired artistic imperatives. This can have deleterious effects on the creative quality

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of art. At the same time, the commercial forces may enhance rivalries as artists compete for projects, which may reduce or even remove any impetus for shared initiatives and mutual learning. Again, this can detract from artistic advancement. In the case of cultural monuments, the huge investments made in their establishment generally dispose programme managers towards proven international hit shows. Such programming also lends support to the accumulation of cultural capital for the global city (aspirant). However, the development of indigenous creative cultural work takes a back seat as a consequence.

Creative clusters The terms ‘creative cluster’ and ‘cultural cluster’ have oftentimes been used interchangeably in the literature. If some distinction is to be made, it is that studies stemming from Europe (with the exception of the UK) commonly use the term ‘cultural clusters’, while those from the USA and Australia appear to favour the term ‘creative clusters’. Often this is a reflection of the lack of conceptual clarity around the ideas of ‘cultural industries’ and ‘creative industries’ themselves. These differences are not merely semantic and not inconsequential. The nature of clustering does differ depending on the specific activities under consideration, and cultural clusters focused on the performing and visual arts, for example, may have quite different dynamics at work from clusters focused on television and film work, or fashion and design, just to use a few examples. All may be termed ‘creative clusters’, but the nature of activity is not all the same and the specific dynamics deserve careful scrutiny and analysis. Certainly, they differ from business and industrial clusters as elaborated by Michael Porter (1998, 2000) and Alfred Marshall (see Markusen, 1996) respectively, though there is a tendency in the literature to conflate and subsume. Despite the absence of a clarity of concept, and the lack of a groundedness in solid empirical bases (Martin and Sunley, 2003; Simmie, 2004), the globalizing discourses about cultural/creative clusters have seized the attention of policy makers and led to their heightened popularity in a number of places. When interrogated, their explanatory value, their assumed promise and potential, and certainly their contributions to high quality, and especially

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indigenously-inspired, creative work remain variable at best, and unsubstantiated at worst. Drawing from research on two Asian cities, namely, Singapore and Shanghai (see Kong, 2009a: 2009b), this section demonstrates the ways in which globalizing discourses are turned into policy, but either achieve different and unexpected outcomes or display different logics from those developed in the original hearths. The cluster logic of received wisdom posits that concentrations of related activities produce ‘creative milieux’ (Hall, 2000) or ‘creative fields’ (Scott, 1999; 2006) in which exist structures that encourage learning and innovation, and social relations that exhibit trust, mutuality and co-operation. These institutions and networks are socially constructed and culturally defined, and deeply embedded in local contexts. Cultural and artistic communities located in physical propinquity are thus ‘not just foci of cultural labour in the narrow sense, but are also vortexes of social reproduction in which critical cultural competencies are generated and circulated’ (Scott, 1999: 809). They attract other talented individuals, who migrate to join these communities. These communities are ‘collectivities’ whose members are engaged in ‘mutually complementary and socially coordinated careers’ and are ‘repositories of an accumulated cultural capital’ (Scott, 1999: 809). Institutional infrastructures such as schools, training and apprenticeship programmes, workers’ organizations and industry associations serve to sustain cultural capital within the community. These features serve as an overarching order, the ‘industrial atmosphere’ that Marshall (1919, cited in Scott, 1999: 809) referred to decades ago. In addition to coordination, cultural communities that group together benefit from sharing codified as well as tacit knowledge. The latter implies that knowledge is embedded locally, and thus cultural producers need to be ‘inside’ the circuit of knowledge. Consequently, the cultural sector relies on a network of creative producers. Collective learning and the transfer of knowledge arise from such frequent interactions within a cluster (Bassett et al., 2002: 172–3; Capella, 1999). Further, with ‘insiders’ knowledge and immersion in the local scene’, the ‘vital innovations and mutations’ take place, and the ‘creative work gets done’ (O’Connor, 2004: 136). Such work involves the transformation of signs, the creation of ‘a style, a look, a sound’ by local culture, made possible

because the city (and the cluster) has acted as a ‘crucible’ (O’Connor, 2004: 134). Such placefocused cultural work results in cultural products often becoming associated with particular locales, and the consequent ‘reputation effect’ becomes the source of location-specific monopoly rents (Scott, 1999: 810). The promise of clusters has led to quite frenetic development in China, orchestrated by various city governments. Keane and Potts (forthcoming) documented the ‘several distinct, although overlapping stages’. A first wave comprised spaces dedicated to industrial design, antiques, animation, and sculpture. A second involved artist zones and cultural districts, followed by media content clusters (especially animation). Stand-alone cinema, television and animation production centres followed, and finally, the incubator model emerged, ‘often with a purported emphasis on R&D, and often with the declared intention of making science parks more “creative’’’ (Keane and Potts, forthcoming). Within China, Shanghai led the pack with the ‘outbreak of specialist agglomerations’ in disused industrial space in 2005 (Keane and Potts, forthcoming). Fourteen clusters2 quickly became 18, then 36, and 70 by 2007. Beijing followed suit in 2006 with its first wave of ten cultural creative clusters.3 There are yet others in cities such as Hangzhou and Chongqing. As Keane and Potts (forthcoming) point out, ‘China’s city officials and planners seemingly had been convinced by a more dynamic vision, that of the global creative city’ (Landry, 2000; Wang, 2004). Probably two of the best-known clusters had in fact grown organically in the first instance, attracting media attention with their successful growth and vibrancy, which in turn led to the municipal authorities’ interest in their potential. These are both visual arts clusters; namely, Beijing’s 798 district in Dashanzi and Shanghai’s Moganshan Lu. The 798 district is located in the north-eastern part of Beijing, near Capital Airport, adjacent to Beijing’s Airport Expressway, and within half-an-hour’s drive from the city centre. It comprises a complex of disused and decommissioned military factories of the unique Bauhaus architectural style. It is home to some 60 artists’ studios and an equivalent number of galleries, restaurants, bars and bookshops, and is often compared to New York’s SoHo or Greenwich Village. It began organically with the neighbouring Factory 706 being used by Beijing’s

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Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1995, and then a slow trickle of others in the artist class moving in. In 2001, Mr Tabata Yukihito from Japan’s Tokyo Gallery set up Beijing Tokyo Art Projects (BTAP) inside a section of Factory 798’s main area. This was the first renovated space that eventually became synonymous with the 798 Art District. In 2002, artist Huang Rui and photographer Xu Yong moved in next to BTAP, a moment which has since been associated with the beginnings of the famous 798 today. Moganshan Lu is Shanghai’s equivalent of Beijing’s 798. 50 Moganshan Lu is a collection of former factory buildings along the banks of the Suzhou River in Shanghai’s Puxi. The buildings span from the 1930s to the 1990s. Today, they house more than 130 studios and workshops, of which about 60 per cent are art galleries featuring artists and exhibitors from 17 countries (e.g., France, the USA, Israel, England, Italy, Canada, Switzerland, Japan, China, and Taiwan). The rest of the space houses other kinds of design studios, e.g., media, fashion, and product design. There is also an advanced art education institution. Of the 60 per cent of art galleries and design workshops/ studios, about three quarters of these are purely workshops/studios while the rest are galleries. Like 798, Moganshan Lu also had organic origins in 2001, beginning with a small group of artists and art galleries who were attracted by the cheap rentals, then growing rapidly over two years with the addition of design firms, art organizations, and more recently, architecture firms and others in the creative industries. Today, it has become quite commercialized, and has witnessed several turnovers of occupants as rentals have grown. Unlike China, in Singapore official discourse about creative clusters is most commonly non-spatial, or at best, aspatial (Kong, 2009b). The ‘creative cluster’ is used as the defining nomenclature for industrial groups in the area of ‘arts and culture’, ‘design’ and ‘media’. This aspatial use of ‘cluster’ does not, however, imply that there are no spatial clusters in Singapore, only that they go under a different terminology. Singapore’s clusters are most evident in the National Arts Council’s (NAC) Arts Housing Scheme, in which old buildings (disused warehouses and old shopfronts) are identified and converted into suitable housing for arts use. These old buildings may house a single arts group, or they

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may be multi-tenanted, with several arts groups and artists of the same or different art forms. Some are stand-alone buildings, such as in Telok Ayer Street (the Telok Ayer Performing Arts Centre), the Substation, and the Telok Kurau Studios, while others constitute what might be characterized as ‘arts belts’ of several arts housing properties in close proximity to one another (and on the same street), such as those in Waterloo Street, Chinatown, and Little India. All have been identified through collaborative and strategic site planning by the Urban Redevelopment Authority with the National Arts Council. The official vision for these various arts clusters echoes the cluster logic of a globalizing discourse. In the NAC’s vision for the Little India arts belt, it states that ‘the diversity of arts groups housed here presents a good opportunity for exchange of ideas and learning from each other’ (see www.nac.gov. sg/fac/fac0303.asp). Similarly, the chairman of the NAC wrote about the Telok Kurau Studios as a ‘centre for synergistic, creative relationships where new and interesting Singapore art is conceived, developed and shared amongst its established tenants’ (TKS, 2007: 3). Further, a high ranking officer in the NAC offered the view that ‘arts housing is not just a space for the production of work but also an incubatory space where artists can engage each other through practice and discourse’ (TKS, 2007: 5). Whether these views represent rhetoric, hope or the evaluation of cluster achievements, the key message remains: productive relationships develop when a group of creative workers with similar interests are housed in a cluster, resulting in creative output (Kong, 2009b). What these views are premised on is difficult to say. In much of the academic literature, there is in fact insufficient detailed empirical analysis to offer concrete evidence of such value. Recent analysis of the workings of various clusters in Shanghai and Singapore suggests that cluster logic is not inevitable, and more empirical work will need to be done to achieve a deeper understanding. The case of Singapore’s Telok Kurau Studios demonstrates how creative aesthetic work is accomplished in spite of a cluster, not because of it. In a detailed study of these artist studios located in a former school compound on Singapore’s east coast, I explain that in this case it is not the synergistic relationships envisaged of clusters that has supported the creative aesthetic work of the artists,

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contrary to the claims of cluster proponents (Kong, 2009b). Instead, the relationships within the cluster are marked by hostility and rivalry. There is a lack of dense and mutually supportive intra-cluster relationships and a glaring absence of co-operation. Fights have developed over who has how many studios, who should pay more for utilities, who stays overnight, and ultimately, who gets which project. Even though some of the occupants believe that the cluster can have value, with joint exhibitions and the sharing of ideas, in reality, this does not happen. In short, there is no causal relationship between geographical propinquity and the development of positive social relations. Indeed, the close proximity ‘puts strains on relationships which may not be as immediate or as apparent if it were not for co-location’ (Kong, 2009b). Nevertheless, the cluster continues to exist and to enjoy its status as an important site for the practice of visual arts in Singapore. This is because of the reputational effect that occupants of the cluster enjoy, drawn from the concentrated location of a significant number of award-winning artists, which offers all the occupants a valued cultural capital. It is also because the environment of quiet and isolation allows artists to give vent to their ‘individual genius’. Importantly, the subsidized rentals of this NAC arts housing facility make co-location a prudent decision (Kong, 2009b). The case of Shanghai’s Moganshan Lu further demonstrates the value of a reputational effect for artist clusters. The area has developed a reputation as the creative space for avant-garde art in Shanghai. The original attraction for artists, however, was environmental and economic. In particular, it was the spaciousness of the former factory spaces and the affordable rentals that attracted the first batch of artists and the subsequent transformation of these old warehouses caught the attention of both local and foreign media. Through their extensive reporting, the fame of 50 Moganshan Lu spread significantly. The growing phenomenon also attracted the attention of the municipal authorities and this has led to the area being identified as one of the creative districts in Shanghai, and a new name – ‘M50’. Like Telok Kurau in Singapore, Moganshan Lu is also believed to be a site of important artistic work in Shanghai. Some of the artists themselves believe that many of the cutting-edge artists in Shanghai are gathered at Moganshan Lu. It is

‘thought to be a cluster that has “real content,” as opposed to the many “creative clusters” that the Shanghai government has publicly identified, some of which are sites of consumption rather than artistic creation’ (Kong, 2009a: 9). Yet, its longer-term cultural sustainability rests on a fine balance between commerce and art. With its growing fame and popularity, there is a danger of excessive commercialization affecting artistic levels. The commercial pull may be attractive for new artists precisely for the commercial opportunities that it represents, but it is off-putting for some more established artists who are not reliant on walk-in visitors and chance buyers, and are concerned that their space may ‘degenerate’ into a commercial development rather than a creative cluster (Kong, 2009a). In short, their preference is for Moganshan Lu to remain a site of aesthetic production rather than become a site of cultural consumption. Moganshan Lu has undeniably been a space supporting artistic and creative work, and the clustering of artists, galleries, and related visual arts and design activities has given it an identity, momentum and reputation, which in turn have attracted new artists, art lovers, and art buyers. Yet the commercial activity that has come from its very success poses a danger that can threaten to erode the cluster’s cultural and creative sustainability for a variety of reasons. The growing rentals in a cluster that has gained popularity make it difficult for some artists to stay. Others are beginning to move away as a reaction to the increasingly commercial character of the site. Significantly, some now believe the quality of creative work is being compromised as artistic work responds to commercial dictates rather than artistic imperatives. Ironically, for yet others, the cluster’s transformation from one of purely artistic production to one that also incorporates cultural consumption is necessary to ensure its continued existence (Kong, 2009a). What I have sought to demonstrate in this section is that the value of creative clusters as advertised in globalizing discourses of the creative economy needs to be understood in more nuanced and unequivocal terms than has hitherto been the case. In order to be effective, the deliberate creation of clusters as part of cultural and urban policy must engage with the complexities of cluster dynamics, and importantly, must also recognize that the effect of such complex dynamics on creative, artistic work

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does not necessarily reflect the cluster logic that may apply to businesses and industries.

Cultural monuments In this section, I turn my attention to a second dimension of travelling discourses, that which emphasizes the symbolic capital of global cities. In particular, I examine the ways in which monumentality, in particular large-scale cultural infrastructure in the form of museums, theatres, and libraries, becomes an instantiation of global city status. This idea is linked to the creative class thesis in creative (and global) city discourse, in which it is believed that an exciting urban and cultural landscape sustains global flows by attracting skilled migrants and capital investment. As with my examination of the creative cluster discourse, in this section my focus will be on how such cultural monuments contribute to the cultural and creative life of cities, apart from the accumulation of symbolic capital that they represent. The use of monuments to accumulate symbolic capital for cities is a form of urban boosterism, designed to project a positive image of a city in order to attract investors, professionals and whitecollar workers. Such boosterism typically relies on landscape and place strategies like architectural iconism and monumentalism, and the construction of urban flagship megaprojects, as well as activities-based strategies to create a vibrant city for living, working and playing, for example, through the hosting of hallmark events, the encouragement of arts and cultural activities, the hosting of worldrenowned performances and exhibitions, and a lively entertainment scene. Together, these contribute to the accumulation of cultural capital for the city, though scholars would argue that material strategies effecting landscape and place change take precedence because of the ‘central importance of the materiality and visibility of the building’ (King, 1996: 101). In other words, a city is more likely to be deemed a global city if it has imageable and striking buildings, often designed by famous international architects, and distinctive heritage structures (Kong, 2007). Architectural iconism and monumentalism are often, though not invariably, associated with ‘culture-led’ regeneration efforts given the belief that cultural policy has a substantial impact on

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place image and thus attracts visitors and businesses to their shores (OECD International Symposium, 2005: 7). An example of such a cultural flagship boasting a high profile innovative design is the controversial Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao by Frank Gehry. Such strategies are designed to boost city competitiveness, contribute to economic regeneration, and offer a source of civic pride and social cohesion (De Frantz, 2005). In Singapore and Shanghai, similar strategies have been adopted since the turn of the century. In the city-state of Singapore, the National Museum is a clear example of such a strategy. Self-described as ‘iconic’ (see the National Museum of Singapore’s website), the structure was originally built as the Raffles Library and Museum in 1887. The neo-classical building was renovated and large modernist extensions added to double its capacity in 2006. It boasts of ‘cutting edge and varied ways of presenting history to redefine the conventional museum experience’, and sees itself as ‘more than just a space for exhibitions and artefacts’. It has been styled a space with ‘challenging and vibrant festivals and events that will unleash new creative possibilities in culture and heritage’ (the National Museum of Singapore’s website). Coupling this museum initiative is a theatre initiative in the form of the Esplanade – Theatres by the Bay. Opened in 2002, it is envisioned to cater to the 240 million people in the Southeast Asian region, and is a tangible expression of the cultural ambitions of Singapore to be a ‘Renaissance city’ and a ‘global city for the arts’ (Kong, 2000). So named because of its waterfront location by the Marina Bay, the Esplanade was designed by DP Architects in Singapore and Michael Wilford and Partners in London, and sports two distinctive domes, with a cladding of remarkable aluminium sun shades that make the domes look like the popular tropical fruit, the durian. Looking north-east, Shanghai aspires to be not only the cultural centre of China but also to be among the best internationally, alert as it is to the value of ‘creative capital’ as a way of enticing capital of a more conventional sort. Drawing from authors like John Howkins and Richard Florida, Shanghai is seeking to attract the creative classes, and has used as one strategy the development of cultural infrastructures like the Shanghai Museum, the Shanghai Grand Theatre, and the Shanghai Library, all constructed only since the mid- to late 1990s.

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The Shanghai Museum is an iconic building designed by the Shanghai Institute of Architectural Design and Research, and has a round top and square base in the shape of an ancient Tang vessel. It has been highly acclaimed as the ‘finest museum of Chinese art in the world’ (Yatsko, 2001:142). Built in 1995 in its present location, it is strategically sited in People’s Square, very near the geographical and political centre of the city (given its proximity to the Shanghai government’s headquarters). It also occupies one of the most expensive plots of land in Shanghai. The Shanghai Grand Theatre, a luminous structure of white steel and glass, is located nearby, and captures similar symbolic capital. Designed by ARTE-Charpentier Studio in France and ECADI in Shanghai, it was opened in 1998, and boasts state-of-the-art theatres and sound systems. While acknowledging that global cities have world class cultural infrastructures, and that the Esplanade is a good representative of this in Singapore, the arts community has nevertheless argued that providing the ‘hardware’ without concomitant attention to the ‘software’ is regressive for the development of local/indigenous arts. Kong (2000) drew on the views of the artist community in arguing that the development of large cultural infrastructures has attracted large exhibitions and shows (such as the Guggenheim, Tressors, Cats and Les Miserables), but has left little room for local communities to develop their own art forms. While a global flavour is apparent, so too is the absence of well-developed indigenous arts. Such a reality, in which Singapore is ‘a kind of emporium for the arts’, offering yet another retail space (quoted in Kong, 2000: 419), is believed to stymie local styles and local creative arts. Yet, in as much as a global city is not only about hardware, it is also not only about showcasing the works of international artists. No global city is worth its salt if it does not have a strong base of indigenous works that can express local flavours and national identities (Kong, 2007). Kong (2007) explains why members of the Singapore arts community are pessimistic about the possibilities for creative indigenous works. Principally, it is because with heavy financial investment in the Esplanade the pressure to succeed is high, in order that rental costs and eventually investments may be recovered. However, few local groups are able to afford such spaces. Thus, ‘profitmaking theatre’ is favoured above ‘exploratory,

indigenous forms’. Those creative artists willing to explore new forms then feel the pressure to abandon more of those projects and produce more audience-determined works. Many in the arts community have therefore expressed the view that the global/creative city discourse that has in large part prompted the construction of the Esplanade has not been helpful for the development of indigenous creative cultural work. For Shanghai, the presence of the state-of-theart Grand Theatre has also not yet stimulated indigenous creative production, nor is this necessarily the intention. In an analysis of the programming, Kong (2009a) demonstrates the dominance of foreign productions in the Grand Theatre. Given the types of performances, it is no surprise that the audiences are mainly expatriates and visitors to Shanghai, as well as local workers who are obliged to attend when their ‘work groups’ present tickets to them, and for whom the performances seem to mean very little. The Grand Theatre’s presence has thus not particularly contributed to the nurturing and development of local cultural content and creative work. Yatsko (2001) explains this lack of creative originality in terms of a lack of openness in cultural perspective, and the use of culture as a propaganda tool for the nation, which has resulted in strict government controls over cultural life. It is not yet clear that there are the necessary conditions to foster creative productions and sustain a vibrant cultural life, despite the existence of this state-of-the-art cultural infrastructure. With similar aspirations, convergent strategies, and comparable outcomes, Singapore and Shanghai have both used the construction of iconic cultural monuments to shore up cultural capital in support of their (aspiring) global city status. The impact of globalizing discourses about what constitute global cities is thus real, with very material manifestations in their cityscapes. While Singapore and Shanghai have succeeded in constructing a state-of-the-art cultural infrastructure, indigenous aesthetic impulses have not concomitantly been facilitated through these monuments. The travelling discourses have thus achieved only a partial effect.

Conclusions The migration of what might be considered as largely ‘Western’ discourses about creative

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economies and global cities is so widespread – particularly reaching to Asia, Australia and New Zealand – that these have largely become globalizing discourses. Their influence in a number of Asian contexts has been pronounced in recent years (Kong et al., 2006). Just how far can these discourses travel, and to what effect (Kong et al., 2006; Wang, 2004)? In this chapter, I have demonstrated that the impact on creative/cultural life and activity is more nuanced and often less encouraging than the discursive logics posit. Even though these discourses have been translated into material strategies, such as the development of creative clusters and cultural monuments, they do not always translate unequivocally into an indigenous artistic development. The specific empirical case studies have provided more nuanced insights into the dynamics of artistic

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communities and their intersections with creative clusters and cultural monuments. These insights should inform urban and cultural policy. For example, policies that facilitate the development of creative clusters must recognize the difference between sites of cultural production and those of cultural consumption. Further, policies that privilege the development of cultural monuments need to be coupled by policies that encourage and facilitate the development of local arts. These implications, however, are neither comprehensive nor total. Too few case studies have been undertaken, and there is a severe shortage of micro-level analysis of creative or cultural worlds at a ground level, so that theoretical discourse is insufficiently anchored in detailed ethnographies and policy formulation is inadequately robust. This chapter takes a small step towards providing grist for both the analytical and policy-making mill.

Box 15.1 Kumamoto’s Artpolis: mediating innovative architecture and creative cultural expression As exemplified by Frank Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim Museum (1997) and many other flagship projects around the world, as Lily Kong argues, innovative architecture has come to be considered an urban attraction capable of stimulating tourism and its economic repercussions. However, the Kumamoto Artpolis programme (1988–the present) represents a more diversified strategy for mobilizing architectural innovations as cultural, social, urban, and economic catalysts. Artpolis was initiated by Governor Morihiro Hosokawa and the renowned architect Arata Isozaki, and continues to be managed by the Kumamoto Prefectural government. Through multifaceted efforts, Artpolis seeks to raise the cultural value of public architecture. Its logo reinforces the message that architecture can be a mediator between local and global developments. Innovative projects continue to provide new, and renewed, cultural expression at a municipal and regional scale while creating magnets for a global recognition of a rural region in southwestern Japan. The programme generates hybridities in cultural expression and challenges assumptions about the relationships between local and global developments. Artpolis is not primarily based on celebrating or protecting local talent and traditions. Instead, it attempts to stimulate local production with contributions injected from the outside. For example, the Italian architect, Renzo Piano, expanded perceptions of civil engineering with a bridge in Ushibuka that has become the symbol of the city and a key site for its annual festivals. Kazuhiro Ishii came from Tokyo to create innovative wood constructions in the Bunraku puppetry theater for Seiwa village. His project evolved into a complex that provides civic identity, as well as cultural, communal, and economic engines, through a venue dedicated to showcasing and preserving distinct local artistic traditions. Likewise, Toyo Ito’s Yatsushiro Municipal Museum exemplifies efforts to stimulate the creative development of a new heritage rather than simply safeguarding the existing heritage. Beyond being a mechanism for public works, Artpolis represents a comprehensive effort to produce inventive public projects, publicize architecture, and foster a public engagement with architecture. The programme established a system to commission artists to produce creative projects – from municipal museums highlighting heritage to lavatories in public parks – and support programmes to cultivate a

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broad public interest in architecture through multi-faceted events, ranging from local tours to international symposia. Artpolis also manages an annual award programme recognizing local architects and stimulating architectural production around the prefecture. In contrast to clamouring for cultural institutions by international recognized architects, Artpolis employs architecture broadly as a cultural strategy for regeneration. Artpolis is a government-led programme operating as a gubernatorial initiative and is overseen by the Artpolis Office, which serves as an advisory and organizational body without legal backing. As of 2008 there were 68 completed Artpolis projects, but the expansion of the current programme depends on the ability of the Artpolis Office to secure municipal participants for it. As such, it remains relatively weak and susceptible to political and economic shifts, particularly during the current recessionary times. Despite all the challenges however, for twenty years Artpolis has generated projects and events as platforms to invigorate the region and promote its cultural achievements across local, national, and international boundaries. Kumamoto’s Artpolis is a premier example of employing innovative public architecture as a global mediator while nurturing spaces for local creativity. Ari Seligmann

Notes 1 2

This chapter draws much of the empirical material from the following: Kong (2007, 2009a, 2009b). These were Tianzifang; The Eighth Bridge; the Creativity Warehouse; the Tianshan Software Park; the Media Culture Park; the Leshan Software Park; the Fashion Industry Park; the Hongqiao Software Park; the Industrial Design Park; the Tourism Souvenir Industry Park; the

3

Modern Industry Mansion; Zhoujia Bridge; the Zhangjiang Culture and Technology Creative Industry Base; and the Design Factory (Shanghai Creative Industry Clustering Parks: Shanghai Economic Commission). These include Panjiayuan (a flea market for antiques and replica antiques); 798 art district at Dashanzi; Zhongguancun Creative Industries Pioneer Base; Songzhuang Art and Cartoon Zone; Huairou Film and TV Base; and Beijing Cyber-recreation District in Shijingshan.

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Kong, L. (2000) ‘Cultural policy in Singapore: negotiating economic and socio-cultural agendas’, Geoforum, 31, 409–24. Kong, L. (2007) ‘Cultural icons and urban development in Asia: economic imperative, national identity and global city status’, Political Geography, 26: 383–404. Kong, L. (2009a) ‘Making sustainable creative/cultural space: Shanghai and Singapore’, Geographical Review, vol. 91. No.1: 1–22. Kong, L. (2009b) ‘Beyond networks and relations: towards rethinking (creative) cluster theory’, in L. Kong and J. O’Connor (eds), Creative Cities, Creative Economies: Asian-European Perspectives. Springer Berlin: 61–75 Springer Kong, L., Gibson, C., Khoo, L-M. and Semple, A-L. (2006) ‘Knowledges of the creative economy: towards a relational geography of diffusion and adaptation in Asia’, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 47 (2): 173–94. Landry, C. (2000) The Creative City. London: Comedia.

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Olds, K. (2001) Globalisation and Urban Change: Capital, Culture and Pacific Rim Mega-Projects. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Porter, M.E. (1998) ‘Clusters and the new economy’, Harvard Business Review, 76 (6): 77–90. Porter, M.E. (2000) ‘Location, competition and economic development: Local clusters in a global economy’, Economic Development Quarterly, 14 (1): 15–34. Scott, A.J. (1999) ‘The cultural economy: geography and the creative field’, Media, Culture and Society, 21 (6): 807–18. Scott, A.J. (2006) ‘Entrepreneurship, innovation and industrial development: geography and the creative field revisited’, Small Business Economics, 26 (1): 1–24. Simmie, J. (2004). ‘Innovation and clustering in the globalised international economy’, Urban Studies, 41 (5/6):1095–1112. Telok Kurau Studios (TKS): Commemorating a Decade (2007) Singapore: Telok Kurau Studios. Wang, J. (2004) ‘The global reach of new discourses: how far can creative industries travel?’ International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7 (1): 9–19. Yatsko, P. (2001) New Shanghai: The Rocky Rebirth of China’s Legendary City. New York: Wiley.

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CHAPTER 16 THE CYCLES OF CREATIVITY IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY Peter Tschmuck

Introduction Key forces of globalization are contributing to a transformation of structures and processes in the music industry. While the traditional players, record labels and manufacturers suffer from declining sales and eroding profits, new players like computer manufacturers (e.g., Apple with its iTunes music portal), soft drink producers (e.g., CocaCola), online-traders (e.g., amazon.com), and telecommunication firms (e.g., Nokia) and so on have established themselves successfully in the music market. Not only have large companies reshaped the music business, but also small Internet start-ups and independent record labels have launched new business models for the production, distribution and promotion of music across the world. After decades of oligopolization in the music industry’s market structure and the standardization of music content as superstar pop, the music market has become more competitive and the diversity of music expression has increased. A closer look reveals that the current structural break has historic parallels with the 1920s and 1950s, when market oligopolies were destroyed and music diversity spread. Hence these structural breaks will be highlighted in the first part of this chapter, before I attempt to set out an integrated model of creativity and innovation in the music industry in the second part. The history of the music industry since its emergence in the late nineteenth century reveals a business cycle in which different configurations – from tight oligopolies to highly competitive markets – correspond to different degrees of creative output. While during oligopolistic phases more or less one music style (swing in the 1940s, or superstar-pop in the 1990s) has dominated the scene, in more competitive phases we can observe a high diversity of music expressions. In this chapter the interrelationship of a changing industry structure and the differences in creative expression will be examined in their historical context in order to generate a model of innovation and creativity in the music industry.

A short history of the music industry From its very beginnings, the music industry has been a globalized business. Between 1902 and 1910, US and European record companies expanded their business activities into the most remote regions of the world. For instance, in 1910 a sound engineer of the British Gramophone Company gave an account of a recording tour through the Caucasus, where he recorded the folk songs of native Cossacks onto record (Noble, 1913, cited in Gronow, 1983: 58). But sound

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engineers from Paris, London, and New York were also sent out to Central Asia, India, China, Southeast Asia, South and Central America, North Africa, and so on, in order to record locally performed music. Subsequently, the central record plants in Europe and the USA reproduced these recordings and exported them as records to the music’s countries of origin. The phonographic companies also built new record plants in regions that promised a particularly high profit. In 1910, for example, the Gramophone Company operated record plants not only in Hayes near London, Hanover and Paris, but also in Barcelona, Aussig (Austria-Hungary), Riga, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Tiflis (Russia), Milan, and even Calcutta (India). Yet other record manufacturers, like the Victor Talking Machine and the Columbia Phonograph from the USA and Lindström AG from Germany, as well as Pathé Brothers from France, controlled a worldwide network of local distribution partners and branch offices. As we can see the early music business was organized into a globalized industry that produced and distributed music locally in order to meet highly differentiated music tastes in different world regions. The jazz revolution of the 1920s While the phonographic major companies flourished during the First World War, a fundamental change in the production, distribution and reception network in the music business in subsequent years eroded this powerful position. One such factor was the introduction of broadcasting towards the beginning of the 1920s. Radio was a process innovation serving as the foundation for novel production methods. The altered production logic between broadcasting and the phonographic industry exhibits this. Whereas the phonographic industry focused on the production of music in a material form as records, live broadcast music from concert halls and ballrooms took centre stage for radio as a quasi-service. Record production required control over five basic elements: first, the right to exploit intellectual property; second, the technical pre-conditions for recording; third, the technical equipment to produce such records; fourth, the costly distribution networks for what were then very fragile phonograms; and fifth, the appropriate marketing in order to call consumers’ attention to new music productions. In contrast, radio broadcasting required

controlling the musicians involved rather than the copyright of the music they played. In technological terms, radio needed an appropriate broadcasting infrastructure and had to ensure that (music) recipients had access to the necessary receivers. Distribution occurred directly, and the broadcasting networks were able to regulate this due to the medium’s serial quality. Radio relied on marketing only to a limited degree to disseminate its content, since advertising clients took care of this. In short, broadcasting was based on different laws than those applied to record production. The various phonographic companies had trouble with this new and different logic of production. They recognized neither the commercial potential of music programmes financed by advertising in the USA, nor the political function of music in the context of nationalized broadcasting in Europe. The record majors also failed to realize that broadcasting was the medium of the future and subsequently refused to cooperate with the radio stations. The majors thus saw an audience with purchasing power abandon them, which caused their record sales to decrease between 1921 and 1925. In what followed a wave of bankruptcies and mega-mergers left the broadcasting networks in control – in the United States, for example, the Radio Corporation of Amercia (RCA) bought Victor Talking Machine in 1929, and in 1938 Columbia Phonograph was sold to the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). Gradually, US record companies were subordinated to the production logic of broadcasting and then existed merely as secondary marketers for Tin Pan Alley mainstream music. Simultaneously, the European majors became dependent on national bureaucracies as a result of the changed political circumstances. This was especially obvious in German companies after the National Socialists assumed power in 1933 (Tschmuck, 2006: 41–3). This change in the industry’s structure was not only caused by technological factors but also by aesthetic ones. Since the phonographic majors had been absorbed with trying to figure out how to defend themselves against radio, they had barely noticed the emergence of new, smaller record companies that had begun to market the music of the lower classes of ‘black’ and ‘white’ Americans, who the majors had completely ignored. Pejoratively termed ‘Race Music’ and ‘Hillbilly,’ such music was excluded from radio programmes. As a result, independent labels such as

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Vocalion, Gennett, OKeh, Black Swann, Meritt, and Sunshine were able to develop commercially profitable market segments with the help of original jazz and country recordings. Crucial to their temporary success was the fact that many members of the lower classes owned a gramophone but not a radio, since many of their apartments did not yet have electricity, and many of them could simply not afford to buy a radio (Tschmuck, 2006: 51–4). Jazz, and also country music (but this only in the USA), momentarily increased the range of music providers in the 1920s. Each of the above-mentioned labels worked the market in their own way, and they fundamentally differed from the record majors. This diversity of music providers and forms of musical expression only lasted for a short time, however. In the early 1930s this diversity subsided on all levels, a trend that the Great Depression further accelerated. From then on, the large broadcasting networks were to dominate the music market. With an increasing number of households having electricity, the triumph of radio eventually took hold with the lower classes as well. In addition, the original jazz of African-Americans was adapted by the white music tradition and gradually made ‘palatable’ for broadcasting. In the early 1930s, the different styles were so homogenized that swing emerged, which became the dominating music style aired on the radio (Tschmuck, 2006: 207). To sum up, the jazz revolution originated in the local, sub-cultural sphere of the United States’ American south, but was commercially transformed first to a US-wide and later to a world-wide dominant popular music and dance style. Via broadcasting, heterogeneous local jazz styles (New Orleans Jazz, Kansas City Jazz, Chicago Jazz, New York Jazz, etc.) of the 1920s and 1930s were amalgated into the homogenized Swing and Big Band Jazz of the 1940s. This process of uniformization was triggered by the oligopolization of the music market by a handful of large broadcasting networks and their record subsidiaries. The rock ’n’ roll revolution in the 1950s Just as with the jazz revolution of the 1920s, so the rock ’n’ roll revolution of the 1950s resulted from a complex process of change, during the course of which a number of factors interacted with each other. These included:

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• the advent of the unbreakable vinyl-disc that made capital-intensive logistics useless (Peterson, 1990: 101); • the invention of the magnetophone that enabled music production to take place in a garage; • the licensing of new independent radio stations by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). As a result, in urban areas of the USA, an immense number of small and under-capitalized radio stations emerged that could not afford the cost-intensive livebroadcasts from ballrooms; instead, they played records in order to provide an attractive music programme. Since the major companies avoided cooperating with the independent radio stations and refused to make their records available for broadcasting, the independent radio stations started to work with small and independent record labels like Sun, Chess, Atlantic, and the like, by playing their repertory of folk music, hillbilly, R&B and rock ’n’ roll. Thus, a symbiotic relationship between the small record labels and radio stations emerged. The latter got the music for free in order to promote these aesthetic innovations (Tschmuck, 2006: 209). Rock ’n’ roll could not spread in the post-war baby boomer generation until this symbiosis between independent record labels and radio stations emerged. In a complex process of mutual positive influences, the market segment of ‘rebel music’ grew dramatically. Radio play increased record sales, while the rising popularity of rock ’n’ roll increased the audience for the emerging independent radio stations. In turn, the increasing market share of independent radio stations began to attract advertisers who had previously spent most of their money with the larger networks. As a result, the radio station income of the large networks dropped by 38 percent from 1948 to 1952 (Peterson and Berger, 1975: 165). The advent of rock ’n’ roll can be interpreted as an aesthetic innovation that, in combination with social, legal, and technological changes, played the role of the ‘creative destroyer’. The seemingly powerful music majors lost their dominating market position almost overnight. As in the jazz revolution, local and sub-cultural music practices were the substratum for the emergence of rock music in the so-called rock ’n’ roll revolution, of the 1950s. Once again different local music styles (R&B and later

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southern and northern soul from the USA, and Merseybeat from the UK and so on) reshaped the international music business in an interplay of local music practices and global record production and distribution. Structural changes in the global music industry The technology of digitalization and the Internet heralded a third structural break in the phonographic industry that could well prove much more far-reaching than the advent of radio in the 1920s and the revolution of rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s. Based on what we have said thus far, we can delineate the development of the music industry since the emergence of the phonograph according to three structural breaks and a corresponding succession of three cultural paradigms (Tschmuck, 2006: 211–12). Paradigm 1: The era of music publishers lasting from the late nineteenth century to the early 1920s, which was dominated by the production logic of music publishers. Structural Break 1: The jazz revolution of the early 1920s. Paradigm 2: The broadcasting era lasting from the 1920s to the mid-1950s, which was dominated by the action routines of large broadcasting networks and nationalized radio in Europe. Structural Break 2: The rock ’n’ roll revolution of the 1950s. Paradigm 3: The era of phonographic companies, which saw the perfection of the production and distribution of phonograms. This era began with the rise of rock ’n’ roll and has lasted until today. Structural Break 3: The digital revolution of the late 1990s.

Era of Music Publishers until 1920s JazzRevolution

Figure 16.1 industry

As in previous structural breaks, we can currently observe a new phase of musical experimentation on a local basis that can be shared with a global community via the Internet. Since the music production and distribution is decentralized, the new gatekeepers in the music industry are no longer record companies and broadcasting networks, but Internet service and content providers as well as concert promoters.

The paradigm shift in the music industry So what are the driving forces behind these current developments in the music industry? Here I would like to give a neo-institutionalist explanation that reaches far beyond the music industry itself and even beyond the so-called cultural/creative industries. Generally, an industry can be defined in terms of the technology shared by its members. In the ‘music industry’, the basic technology is still embodied in the production, distribution, and marketing of phonograms. Therefore, the core of the industry is the phonographic industry. But with the Internet and digitalization the core competences of the phonographic companies are challenged by new players from outside the industry. In organization theory, routines are defined as ‘ ... forms, rules, procedures, conventions, strategies, and technologies around which organizations are constructed and through which they operate’ (Levitt and March, 1999: 76). In order to solve problems, organizations will employ a comprehensive repertory of routinized activities for each situation. March and Simon (1958) distinguish between performance programmes that are part of an existing organization’s repertory (programmed activities) and those which are not (unprogrammed activities). The latter – called initiations and innovations –

Era of Broadcasting until 1950s

Era of Phonographic Industry until 1990s

Rock ’n’ RollRevolution

?

Digital Revolution

The emergence of cultural paradigms in the twentieth century music

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cannot be introduced by the simple application of a programmed switching of rules. These appear either accidentally in company with anomalies, or occur if programmed activities fail to meet their ‘aspiration level’ (March and Simon, 1958: 182). Innovation, therefore, is a very rare and unlikely phenomenon in an organization’s internal decisionmaking process. This means that a changing environment does not automatically lead to innovative activities within an organization. Nelson and Winter (1982) applied the findings of behaviouristic organization theory to industrial economics. In their view, industries develop along ‘natural trajectories’ that are based on a certain technological regime. Sahal (1985) also talked about ‘technological guide posts’ that can be defined as basic artefacts (e.g., phonographic records), whose techno-economic characteristics are progressively improved (e.g., the Edison cylinder, shellac-disc, vinyl-disc, music cassette, compact disc, etc.). The development and improvement of these basic artefacts also involve the development of specific competences and rules. However, the evolutionary conception of innovation exclusively deals with technological innovation and totally neglects aesthetic and stylistic innovations. This is a crucial oversight because in so-called ‘creative industries’, where creativity functions as an in- and output, the innovation process cannot be satisfactorily explained without a concept of creativity. Thus, the existing economic explanatory scheme – technological paradigms and trajectories – is inadequate. It is necessary to broaden our perpective so as to consider cultural and aesthetic artefacts and heuristics in addition to technological ones (Tschmuck, 2003: 130). According to renowned psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1988: 325) ‘we cannot study creativity by isolating individuals and their works from the social and historical milieu in which their actions are carried out’. Hence creativity exists not purely in a person’s brain or embodied in artefacts; instead, it results from an interaction between a person’s thinking and the socio-cultural context (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988; 1996; 1999). It must be interpreted in relation to collective action. Collective action can be defined as a process in which motives and identities are constituted, and to which individual actions are related (Joas, 1996). Thus, creative action can be seen as a collective process that is embedded in a pre-structured social and cultural reality. Creativity, therefore, can be

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defined as a collective process of action in which novelty is recognized and accepted. And the outcome of creative action is an innovation process in which novelty materializes itself in various forms, like new products and production processes, but also in the form of new social institutions including new social fields of action (Tschmuck, 2006: 204). The emergence of performing arts institutions as core players in the music industry’s value-added network can be seen as such an innovation process that is triggered by creative forces. But how? In accordance with the evolutionary concept of innovation (e.g., Nelson/Winter, Dosi, Freeman and Perez, etc.), the cultural paradigm of the music industry provides the framework for their actors’ thought and behavioural processes. These thought and behavioural systems determine the ways of production, distribution, and the reception of music. Fundamental routines as well as behavioural heuristics are selected in an evolutionary process. What succeeded in the past was retained; that which failed was dropped. Success, here, depends on the degree to which these systems are adapted to the basic conditions of the cultural paradigm. In this manner, typical thought and behaviour patterns emerge for the respective cultural paradigms, which do not form randomly and arbitrarily but rather along the lines of specific developmental paths. The development of a path depends on the extent to which novelty is realized, recognized, and accepted in a collective process of action. In this sense, I want to designate the developmental paths within an existing cultural paradigm as creative paths (Tschmuck, 2006: 216). Each developmental path is characterized by systems of thought and action. The elements of these action systems are specific business practices (customs), technological possibilities, social actors, and specific music practices. These elements work together in a very particular way, which differentiates them from other creative paths (see Figure 16.2). How elements operate together determines the direction of creativity. The extent to which novelty is realized, recognized, and accepted makes it possible for innovation to occur on all levels of action in the music industry. But in contrast to the usual evolutionary change within a creative path, the new role of performing arts institutions in the music industry is the result of a paradigm shift in which the dominant system of

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social actors

music practices

technological possibilities

business practices elements of action action routines

Figure 16.2

The elements of a creative path in the music industry

the production, distribution and reception of music is destroyed. The carriers of this paradigmatic change are radical innovations that are based on ‘system-alien’ creativity in the sense of collective processes of action that realize, recognize, and accept novelty. ‘System-alien’ creativity breaks up the routinized relationships between individual elements of action, which opens up the space for new possibilities of interaction. In addition, technological possibilities expand, new music practices emerge, the number of actors increases, and new business practices form during this period of paradigm change. The increase of action elements and the break-up of routinized behaviour patterns abruptly lead to an increase in complexity. Complexity means that it is impossible to predict which action elements are going to interact with each other, thus resulting in an increase in the potential for creativity within the entire system of action. However, this also heightens uncertainty about the result of actions and lowers the ability to venture a prognosis. As a result, actors will try to eliminate uncertainty by preferring some interactions to others. Slowly, action-routines and patterns form and thus provide the basis for new creative paths. Over time,

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creative paths are going to stabilize according to the principle of evolutionary selection. A new system of production, distribution, and reception takes shape, and the paradigmatic frame, which determines them, begins to close. This process ends with the establishment of a new paradigm. This does not mean, however, that all creative paths of the old paradigm are bound to disappear; rather, they will now be subordinated to the new paradigm’s system of production, distribution, and reception. Figure 16.3 below schematically represents the process of this paradigm shift in the music industry (Tschmuck, 2006: 218–19). Each phase of the paradigm shift is connected to a different extent of creativity. During the phase of improvisation and experimental creativity, which begins soon after the structural break, multiple and unpredictable links between individual elements of action are possible. Connections are either established with elements of actions that formerly lay outside of the old paradigmatic framework, or these elements are integrated into the system of action. Such unforeseeable links form the basis for those radical innovations that can occur only during a paradigm change. Hence, rock ’n’ roll was the result

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Phase 1: improvisatorial and experimental creativity

Phase 2: influenced creativity

= creative chaos

= emergence of creative trajectories

Figure 16.3

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Phase 3: controlled creativity = routinization and standardization

A model of paradigm shift in the music industry

of an unforeseeable connection of two music styles, R&B and country & western, which up until then had remained strictly separate from each other. The duration of this phase depends on how quickly individual actors manage to decrease the heightened uncertainty resulting from these additional synapses by having recourse to preferred action links. Thus, the broadcasting networks were already able to enforce their logic of production, distribution, and reception in the music industry by the late 1920s, thereby establishing the preference of specific links over others. For instance, established jazz orchestras preferred collaborating with regional franchises of the broadcasting networks (CBS and NBC) to making recordings with smaller independent labels, although this does not mean that such recordings never took place. During the phase of influenced creativity, therefore certain connections will remain the exception whereas others will become the rule. For the emergence of novelty, regularity means that experiments are allowed but only to a specific, predictable extent.

We can recognize that the second phase of the paradigm change in the music industry has set in, because new music genres or sub-genres begin to form that accord with different conditions of production, distribution, and reception. Mutual impregnation is certainly possible, since these creative paths have not yet entirely become routine, but they remain rare, as is evidenced by the few crossover successes between the pop and R&B charts in the 1970s. The phase of influenced creativity corresponds to the oligopolization of market structures. Dominant market actors emerge on all levels of the value-adding chain and begin to dictate the rules of the game. Despite the increasing domination of a small number of actors, however, some individual actors manage to remain a force on the market by taking advantage of market niches. I would call such an oligopoly a dynamic one. It is dynamic in the sense that the majors are not yet able to fully control the value-adding chain; as a result, a steady stream of new actors appear who attempt to

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succeed in the market with various business and music practices. These strongly standardized and routinized creative paths, which allowed only for a small amount of novelty, resulted from a few actors who had nearly unlimited power to control the market. This phase of controlled creativity, which is akin to the lasting establishment of cultural paradigms, is based on a static oligopoly. Market participants strive to prevent others from entering the market and as gatekeepers attempt to control the conditions of production, distribution, and reception to such an extent that unwelcome surprises, such as the emergence of new music practices, are no longer possible. But it is possible to stabilize a static oligopoly only when the paradigmatic frame remains unchanged. This change, however, had occurred in the United States by the end of the 1940s with the harbingers of the rock ’n’ roll revolution. Due to their rigid action and thought routines, the major companies that formed the static oligopoly in the USA were no longer able to integrate new music trends, which were developing on their periphery, into their production system. This, however, would not have sufficed as a cause for the rock ’n’ roll revolution if the entire paradigmatic frame of the music industry had not changed, as we have already discussed above. In a period of barely five years – from about 1950 to 1955 – the majors lost control over the music industry’s system of production, distribution, and reception. This system became reoriented as a result of new actors (i.e., new record labels, independent music producers, independent radio stations, rock ’n’ roll musicians) that entered the industry and operated in various constellations of actions, which made possible the paradigm change from broadcasting logic to phonographic logic. The phonographic companies, having controlled the music industry since this paradigm change, successfully expanded their market position until the 1990s. Despite the increasing routinization of creative paths, they succeeded in integrating new music genres, as is shown by the commercialization of heavy metal, punk rock, and hip-hop/rap. In addition, the phonographic companies implemented new technologies such as the CD, DAT, and Minidisc, which even triggered a new economic boom at the beginning of the 1980s after a period of stubbornly lingering stagnation. Nevertheless, these successes with in the phonographic industry

must not mask the fact that in the 1980s the music industry transformed from being a dynamic oligopoly to becoming static. They continued to integrate the value-adding chain. The phonographic companies assumed control of the most important music publishers and owned most record manufacturing sites, as well as the key distribution networks. Small record labels, which operated in market niches commercially irrelevant to the majors, were tied to the majors’ corporate structures through exclusive contracts. This allowed the majors to claim as their own those music innovations that turned out to be commercially successful. In this context, we must not overlook the fact that new music genres adapted to the routines of the creative paths of pop music. The rough edges of original heavy metal, punk rock, and hiphop/rap were lost in this process, and the initially rebellious acts of the pioneering phase were replaced by acts that were more adaptable to pop’s mainstream. All of this is part of a controlled creativity that does not welcome any improvisation and experimentation and instead allows for novelty to occur only within a very narrow framework. Primarily, the industry exploits their back catalogues in the form of ‘Best of’ and ‘Greatest Hits’ records or the re-release of legendary recordings; only secondarily do they develop new artists, who will eventually be adapted to the mainstream. The majors will weed out whatever does not fit into this framework in advance. Consumer sovereignty is now limited to the ability to choose from a pre-selected pool of products, which in turn encourages conservative buying habits. This serves as a market signal for the record companies to reproduce the established, thus resulting in a cycle of intensifying supply and demand that allows little room for novelty. Up until recently, digitalization had no influence on this routinization and standardization of the music industry’s system of production, distribution, and reception. The CD was merely considered a phonogram with a storage capacity exceeding that of the vinyl record. However, record companies did not realize the real potential of digitalization – the ability to transmit data without physical carriers – in a timely manner. These and other innovations enabled by digitalization opened up new possibilities for action. In order to trigger a paradigm change, however, other factors

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that form the old paradigmatic framework have to be changed as well. This includes creating patent and copyright laws that are no longer based on phonograms, as well as encouraging new consumer behaviour, business practices, and, crucially, new music practices. All of these action elements are gradually appearing. In order to adapt to the requiements of digitalization, new copyright legislation has indeed been passed in Europe and the United States. But these new laws have remained controversial, and in many cases without effect, because they have not yet transcended phonographic logic. The first signs of new consumer behaviour can be observed in reference to the enormous and largely uninterrupted success of Internet music exchange sites. New business models for the distribution of music over the Internet are being tested and new music practices have begun to prevail that make use of the computer as an instrument to produce music. To sum up, in the present stage of the music industry’s development, we can identify all the elements of a paradigm shift. • ‘System-alien’ creativity from actors outside the old paradigmatic framework breaks up production, distribution and reception routines. Thus, computer companies like Apple, with its iTunes music download portal, as well as telecommunication conglomerates but also mobile phone manufacturers (Nokia and Sony Ericsson) and soft-drink producers (Coca-Cola) are still engaged in the music business. • The business-model of traditional record producers, especially music majors, is jeopardized by rapidly declining record sales. Instead digital sales by the new music distributors show rising annual growth rates. • Music as a materialized product embodied in phonograms (e.g, CDs) is replaced by accessing music as a service as the new core competence in the music industry’s business model.

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Artists are enabled to market and channel their music directly to consumers. • The present rigid copyright system, based on the old music industry’s paradigm, is fostered by the so-called ‘infringement practices’ of P2Pdownload services like KaZaa or BitTorrent. • Recipients are no longer passive consumers but already participate in the production and distribution of music in Web 2.0 applications like YouTube, Myspace, Facebook and music blogs. •

In a word, the entire value-added-network of the music industry is being remodelled by the digital revolution.

Conclusion If the hypothesis of a cultural paradigm shift in the music industry is true, we are already faced with a totally transformed network of music production, distribution and reception. This ongoing revolution comprises not only the entrance of new players (computer firms, online traders, mobile phone producers, soft drink companies, etc.), but also a reconfiguration of the relationships between established actors, like record labels, artists, music publishers, concert promoters, property rights agencies, etc. Instead of phonograms, accessing music as a service becomes the core ‘technology’ of an emerging new value-added network. Phonograms, instead, will lose their economic relevance and will become a kind of calling-card and promotion tool for artists’ reputations. Future business models in the music industry, therefore, have to rely upon a multitude of income sources, ranging from the exploitation of copyrights to digital sales on the Internet and mobile devices and to live performances and merchandizing. Those actors who are able to control and gatekeep the new valueadded network, will be the future major companies in the music industry.

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REFERENCES Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988) ‘Society, culture and persons A systems view of creativity’, in: R.J. Sternberg (ed.), The Nature of Creativity: Contemporary Psychological Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.: 325–39. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996) Creativity, Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Collins. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1999) ‘Implications of a systems perspective for the study of creativity’, in: R.J. Sternberg (ed.), Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp: 313–35. Dosi, G. (1982) ‘Technological paradigms and technological trajectories: a suggested interpretation of the determinants and directions of technical change’, Research Policy, 11 (3): 147–62. Freeman, C. and Perez, C. (1988) ‘Structural crises of adjustment: business cycles and investment behavior’, in: G. Dosi et al. (eds), London and New York: Pinter. Gronow, P. (1983) ‘The record industry: the growth of a mass medium’. Popular Music, 3: 53–75. Joas, H. (1996) Die Kreativität des Handelns. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Levitt, B. and March, J.G. (1999) ‘Organizational learning’, in: J.G. March (ed.), The Pursuit of Organizational Intelligence. Oxford: Blackwell. pp: 75–99. March, J.G. and Simon, H.A. (1958) Organizations. New York: Wiley. Nelson, R.R. and Winter, S.G. (1982) An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change. Cambridge, MA: Belknap. Noble, J.T. (1913) ‘Three years recording trip in Europe and Asia’, The Talking Machine World, July: 64–6. Peterson, R.R. (1990) ‘Why 1955? Explaining the advent of rock music’, Popular Music, 9 (1): 97–116. Peterson, R.R. and Berger, D.G. (1975) ‘Cycles in symbol production: the case of popular music’, American Sociological Review, 40: 158–73. Sahal, D. (1985) ‘Technological guideposts and innovation avenues’, Research Policy, 14 (2): 61–82. Tschmuck, P. (2003) ‘How creative are the creative industries? A case of the music industry’, The Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, 33 (2) (Summer): 127–41. Tschmuck, P. (2006) Creativity and Innovation in the Music Industry. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

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CHAPTER 17 CREATIVE COMMUNITIES AND EMERGING NETWORKS Clayton Campbell

This chapter examines a host of emerging networks and ‘creative communities’ founded by artists, and how their formation is informed by artist practice. The author discusses ‘divergent thinking’ as a cornerstone of creativity, and links it to globalization. In this context, he traces the evolution of these alternative artist spaces, and explores how they have constructed international artistic collaborations and partnerships. He provides a series of ‘snapshots’: short descriptions of such alternative art centres and networks that take a holistic view of global thinking, share a common concern for social justice, and seek to replace the models of market capitalism with those of community and inclusion.

The value and reception of globalization are as varied as the many cultures that share to different degrees its benefits or costs. Reading globalization from the vantage point of the creative artist, I shall in this chapter explore a series of groupings initiated by artists that I term ‘creative communities’. I shall present examples of how artists themselves are providing innovative templates for interaction, stimulated by the propensity in contemporary artmaking towards collaboration and team or community building, which supply the building blocks for global networking. Artist-generated creative communities and networks, informed by the direct practice of the artist, are stimulating the growth of new kinds of inter-cultural connections. Cultural institutions can also form around the ideas and outcomes of artistic production as support mechanisms and critical forums for the free flow of ideas. Institutions and the professional cultural managers operating within them may evolve patterns of organizational creativity that parallel the creativity manifested by artists and ‘creators’. This process of developing cultural apparatus can be seen as a version of form following function. As twentieth century artistic practices and the paradigms supporting them shift and adapt to the promise and challenge of globalization, artists themselves are articulating the logic, the political will, and the social and spiritual imperatives which in turn stimulate these creative communities and the networks supporting them.

Divergent thinking A fundamental characteristic of contemporary artists is their use of ‘divergent thinking’ as a cornerstone of creativity. Divergent thinking is the process of always re-thinking any question and refusing to accept at face value whatever proposition has stimulated the question. In contemporary artistic practice and behaviour, divergent thinking is the trigger for creative innovation. The tendency to challenge the given question and thereby reshape

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the investigation at hand is characteristic of the pluralistic, decentralized practice of international contemporary arts, which simultaneously witnesses and foments change in the cultural paradigms to which societies adhere. Contemporary artists are hard-wired to challenge established cultural canons. Their creative scepticism might seem to be an unrelenting process of tearing down and building up; as soon as one set of assumptions is arrived at, creators quickly move to challenge them. Innovation cannot remain static as creativity, like knowledge, is an infinite activity, as limitless as human potential. Entropy and the denial of possibility become the enemy of creativity to an artistic sensibility. The restlessness of an intellectually nomadic generation is a hallmark of contemporary arts and of a tech-savvy generation increasingly conversant in networks of virtual communities. When divergent thinking extends to every aspect of cultural and artistic production, it can generate enormously exciting yet unpredictable possibilities. However, the rate of change and acceptance of the fruits of divergent thinking is much slower in society as a whole than among artists. The best ideas for improvements in the general quality of life proposed by artists and creative thinkers are confronted by political, religious, and social paradigms which often do not budge, or change only at the cost of great resistance and even violence. While artists may upend a paradigm, the pace at which change is implemented is often quite slow. An example of what I mean is the way artists (amongst others) have been proposing the renunciation of violence as a means of instilling order and rule through force, and instead are offering the promotion of the positive benefits of globalization as necessary and vital for the advancement of culture in different regions and social settings. These benefits would include a respect for diverse cultural viewpoints and traditions and peaceful cooperation between nations. Modern European artists (those generations before the 1960s) began proposing this paradigmatic shift after the First World War. International contemporary artists (those generations since the 1960s) are seeking to implement it by adding voices dedicated to gender, racial, class, and economic equity. Continuing with the example, the artist seeks to shift the historic pattern of war and violence by finding new ways to express, demonstrate and deliver positive and non-violent

values. Artists are challenging market capitalism on the grounds that it is antithetical to global partnerships, co-opting their ideas and goods and ultimately stifling creativity via commercial controls over the distribution of and access to their intellectual property. And in an equally profound sense, artists have been challenging the cultural infrastructure in which artists do not have a leading voice in policy discussion and decision making. One of the newer modes that artists will employ to attain such goals is the artistic network or transnational artistic community. Many of these have emerged since the 1960s. Underlying this growth is an ethos that sees artistic practice as a proactive process of generativity in which artists seek to give back more to their community than they take out of it. This represents a major shift away from the model of the heroic, individual artist as a criterion of artistic excellence, to the group or community effort as a more accurate measure – particularly as regards changing realities of cooperation and the promises of globalization. Globalization at its best must foster the participation of many new players from different regions, genders, ethnicities and classes. With the rise of the Internet and instantaneous communications, dominant cultures and power structures must slowly give way to an agenda of pluralism and a respect for difference, removing the fear of the ‘other’. In point of fact, as soon as the term ‘globalization’ became established as part of our general vocabulary, artists began to apply divergent thinking to the construct. One positive outcome has been the expansion and development of creative communities and artistic networks as a direct response to two imperatives: the desire amongst artists to interact globally in an expansive creative forum with many new possibilities and ideas and the desire to shift away completely from the individual model towards a notion of community. Thus, in a profound shift for artists and contemporary culture, a rethinking of the delivery systems that support artistic practice has been going on intensely since the 1960s. Recent generations are aggressively assessing artistic models of production and creation. If artists are proposing paradigm shifts that could alter entire communities and cultures, then they have to establish a true sense of community amongst themselves as a primary living example. How globally-oriented arts efforts are funded and practically supported has seen enormous

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change. Until the nineteenth century, support to the arts consisted principally of aristocratic and bourgeois patronage. Arts and cultural offerings (education, exhibitions, festivals, artistic products, and so on) have now become accessible to large numbers of people in ways never seen before. In the affluent West, the advent of government support for the arts, like public education, is a relatively recent development. It began in the middle of the twentieth century, and has taken hold as, in both democratic and socialist systems, governments became more responsive to the needs of ever larger segments of their populations, recognizing that an educated society is a valuable resource, rather than devoting resources to oppressing an uneducated one. Arts and culture have become one measure of the success and prestige of many social and state enterprises, and have received attendant support. An example of this is the American post-Second World War effort to promote its arts (in particular, the school of abstract expressionism) as a ‘triumph’ of American values and political prestige. This effort was led by the Museum of Modern Art, linked to the Rockefeller family and foundation, and hence the US federal government. The result was a vast upsurge in foundation, private, and government monies supporting the export of US-based arts to ‘foreign’ countries. The National Endowment for the Arts was also established in the 1960s, validating the notion that arts and culture are a measure of national pride. The centre of gravity in the arts world shifted from Europe to the United States for a few decades afterward as New York became the dominant market centre and mediating influence for distribution and validation in the visual arts as well as highly influential in other domains. Economic growth has also yielded tax revenues allowing governments to support arts and culture and afford arts education (the starting point for creative thinking) on a large scale. While much arts education is poorly funded, seen to be inadequate or badly organized, the fact that it even exists is extremely significant. Across the world, robust middle-class and white collar cultures have emerged along with vast pools of new wealth, supporting the emergence of a large international market for artistic goods and services. Artists themselves have developed numerous earned income strategies to support their efforts at virtually every level of community. Patronage and support of the arts is a

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conglomeration of options that differ from region to region.

Alternative art centres as a reaction to cultural power structures By the mid-1960s, the European and North American art establishment – its major museums and galleries – had ceased to reflect the ethnic and gender diversity contained in their general populace. This establishment (museums, symphonies, galleries, theatres, etc.) largely ignored the decade’s social, political, and cultural ferment. In response, marginalized artists created an oppositional network of organizations, exhibition spaces, and cooperative galleries that both paralleled and challenged the status quo. This alternative art movement flourished for more than two decades, repositioning contemporary art-making in Europe and North America, where artists became keenly aware of issues such as centre and periphery or the imbalances of the post-colonial cultural landscape. Concurrent with Western feminist research, artists also began to open the doors to the inclusion of a globalized critical forum that included new players, new practices, and new tools for the production of creative projects. The movement spread to other regions, particularly Asia, while reflecting the specificity of each. For example, since the 1990s, alternative art spaces have been emerging throughout the global South. These kinds of sites characterize the contact point between the practice of visual art and cultural discourse, which is being defined anew. Alternative spaces produce debate and open discussion, often within repressive political systems. Through such alternative art spaces, artists are seeking to build networks of overarching cooperation, in order to achieve a ‘political’ effect and spread horizontal exchange between the practice of art and local cultures. Artist networks and creative communities are chipping away at problems uncovered and/or exacerbated by globalization: dominant languages reflecting the legacy of colonialism; the structure of intellectual and cultural centres versus assigned peripheries; the hegemonic position of Europe/ North America towards notions of the ‘other’; urban versus rural sensibilities or contemporary versus folkloric practices; acknowledgement of difference and decentralized constructs as equally viable

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creative efforts unmediated by a hierarchal canon of homogenized globalization or managed multiculturalism. One of the most popular and enduring forms is alternative spaces which sponsor artist residencies and cultural exchange. These are grounded in the notion that building cultural bridges through visiting artist programmes helps to establish unfiltered and uncensored networks of information and idea exchange. In essence, they help keep the peace. Residency centres have two distinct modes – the ‘retreat’ and the ‘engaged’ residency – and often these two will overlap. These models seek to shelter artists from financial and social pressures for a brief period by providing uninterrupted time and space, something quite rare for most artists, or to offer a purposed residency in which the artist responds to a thematic structure and an agreed-upon premise for work and engagement in community settings that can extend the exchange beyond the walls of the institution. A key quality of residencies is the desire to respect the creative process and provide a nurturing environment for it to flourish. I shall therefore now present snapshots of just a few important efforts underway since the 1980s that have addressed the challenges cited above, illustrating how artists themselves are extending their practices to build sustainable and connective global structures. Res Artis (http://www.resartis.org): The Mother Ship Res Artis (the International Association of Residential Arts Centres) is the key player in a new generation of networks that are the new connective tissue for artist centres, creative communities, and cultural exchange programmes worldwide. It is a foundation based in the Netherlands and has become a one stop service centre connector for potentially all of the 1500 estimated artist residency projects or centres worldwide. Its membership is made up of arts centres and artists’ organizations who encourage the development of contemporary art and artists through residential artist exchange programmes. Res Artis began in 1993 as a volunteer organization to represent and support the needs of residential arts centres and programmes internationally through a dynamic website, exchange projects and face-to-face meetings. Within a decade, it has grown to provide a critical

forum for residency programmes, convening meetings and conferences internationally where the exchange of ideas and creative models test cultural assumptions and broaden the worldviews of participants. Globally it is the largest existing network of artist residencies, representing some 40 countries covering all seven continents. Its membership (many are also members of the different networks and creative communities already mentioned) operate artistic exchange programmes in many international and regional communities that range from formal, well-funded government organizations to grassroots, artist-run initiatives. Apart from convening face-to-face meetings and conferences, Res Artis has two other primary objectives: growing its web presence to be an important portal of information for artists seeking international contacts through residency programmes; and operating a mentoring programme that enables other organizations, networks and creative communities to become involved in the critical issue of globalization and inclusion central to the mission of Res Artis. It has sought to diversify its membership and board of directors, so as to reflect the true demographics of its international membership in Europe, Asia, Africa, South and North America, and Australia. It encourages not only organizations but also artists to be a member and part of the burgeoning network it represents. 18th Street Arts Center (www.18thstreet.org): an artist-centric alternative space The 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, California, is one of the more interesting alternative art centres in the United States and has also been at the cutting edge of globalization. It is a nonprofit residential centre that supports artists and organizations dedicated to issues of community and diversity in contemporary society. Artists from many different ethnic and national backgrounds, working in the visual, performance and media arts, founded the 18th Street Arts Center in 1988 as an intergenerational, intercultural, multidisciplinary complex of artists’ live – work spaces, also serving as the headquarters of High Performance magazine, which documented the alternative art world, and Highways Performance Space, home to a generation of experimental performance arts. Today, the Center is a respected destination for national and international

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artists wishing to publish, perform, work and/or exhibit in Los Angeles County. Since its creation, it has sponsored over 7000 artists and their projects, performances, writings, exhibitions and public events. The Center’s International Visiting Artist Program is also a worldwide leader in artist exchange programmes and provides one of the few international artist exchange programmes in Los Angeles. 18th Street has hosted artists from two dozen countries, including Australia, Austria, Cameroon, Croatia, Cuba, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, South Korea, Sudan, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. Through 18th Street’s exhibitions, workshops, and community festivals, the organization encourages and supports the creation of cutting-edge contemporary art, and fosters collaborations and interactions between artists and arts organizations locally, nationally and internationally. The curatorial focus has remained constant throughout the last fifteen years, with a unique mandate to concentrate on encouraging the careers of emerging and under-represented mid-career artists on the basis of merit, and to support artists working with issues of social justice. In particular, the 18th Street Arts Center was the first artist community in the United States to explicitly state that its mission was to foster artists and arts organizations exploring issues of community and diversity, the cornerstones of global sensibility. At 18th Street, the multicultural urban environment of greater Los Angeles has dictated the necessity for a focus other than the retreat model of artist centres. Artistic practices have been deeply involved, since the 1980s, with explorations of identity, social/political interactions with creativity, social justice issues and community-based and public/educational collaborative projects. This model of a ‘socially engaged’ residency, projectbased and seeking specific outcomes, has become more prominent in urban settings and, in many ways, more desirable to the artists, artist communities, and the agencies funding these efforts specifically because it reflects active artistic practice. Engaged residencies are tangible and measurable, and allow both artists and the centres hosting them to assess, evaluate and disseminate the ideas arising from these residencies. The conventional residency centre invites artists to be in residence for a period of months. Instead,

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at 18th Street, local artists are invited to be in residence for periods of three to five years. This reflects a holistic view of the artist as an individual integrated into a larger community. With this length of time in a financially subsidized studio, artists are expected not only to develop a significant body of work, but also to develop skill sets and personal tools so that when they leave the residency setting they will be fully functional in the marketplace. 18th Street provides services in terms of access to seminars for grants writing, tax preparation, personal financial organization, copyright issues, estate planning, health care planning and insurance and investment planning. Most artists do not receive this kind of support in art academies where little or no effort is made to prepare students for the realities of contemporary life. Funding in the United States for organizations such as the 18th Street Arts Center is complicated and the centre uses virtually every resource available, including private foundation grants, grants from partnering governments arts councils, private or corporate donations, and local government grants. What is missing in this equation is any serious federal government support; compared to other economically advanced nations, the United States government does not offer substantial support for cultural exchange programmes, nor for the arts in general. Therefore in the USA, as opposed to Europe, there is a strong culture of private philanthropy to support arts and culture, and an attendant market. In Asia, Europe, Latin America and Oceania, the trend is towards dynamic government support with a much more limited emphasis on private philanthropy. In both cases however, the funding available is never enough. Electronic Café International (www.ecafe.com): a broader context One of the many artist teams in residence at the 18th Street Arts Center is the Electronic Café International (ECI), pioneers of networks and virtual communities – both at the forefront of globalization and helping to set it in motion. The ECI is the originator of all cybercafés. It is, first and foremost, a networked cultural research lab: a unique international network of multimedia telecommunications venues with over 40 affiliates around the globe. For over two and a half decades, the ECI has functioned not only as a pioneer but also as a leading multicultural community,

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conducting ground-breaking aesthetic research in the exploration of real-time networked collaborative multimedia environments. The ECI network organizes and produces live performances and encounters in a combination of real and virtual spaces. Most ECI performances and activities incorporate the visions of several geographically dispersed collaborators, and occur in more than one place at the same time: technology links performers who perform simultaneously in various locations around the world; patrons around the world participate in interactive events. For example, ambient music is created by DJs in several cities at once, while audiences in different cities dance together in the same live composite image-space. Analog telephone lines, digital ISDN lines, video and Internet networking capabilities are often used in concert to create a hybrid multimedia network not available from any one service provider. This had helped to model emerging telecom environments years before they arrived in our homes. For the last decade, the ECI has been using technology to explore co-creation and collaboration in real-time networked environments. The prerequisites for this are: 1) employing a multitude of disciplines; 2) using the performing arts as modes of investigating new ways of being in the world; and 3) creating a new context so that new forms and content can emerge. At the current Electronic Café International, computer and other industry professionals, educators, students, worldclass artists, children, and the general public get to be the architects of their own visions of a new world of tele-collaborative possibilities. They participate in and model the essentials for an information and telecommunications environment that is both functional and inclusive. Since its inception, Electronic Café International has espoused a philosophy of global cultural diversity and inclusion – in order to realize this philosophy on a truly non-discriminating global scale, a wide variety of technologies are employed. The hybrid mix of technologies incorporated into the ECI network accommodate not only high-end capabilities, but also a long-term investment in low-end multimedia technology. Using all kinds of bandwidths enables the ECI to collaborate with peoples and communities, regardless of their access to the Internet or the web, and it has a network of official venues all over the world, including in New York City, Tokyo, Paris, Palo Alto, Jerusalem, Rio de Janeiro, Copenhagen, Toronto, and Santa

Monica. New ECIs are being established in Dublin, Ireland; Austin, Texas; Moscow, Russia; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Woodstock, New York; Milan, Italy; Barcelona, Spain; Las Vegas, Nevada; London, the United Kingdom; and Mexico City, Mexico. There are also over 30 affiliate ECIs around the world and this list is growing, including Telluride, Colorado; San Francisco, California; Vancouver, British Columbia; Managua, Nicaragua; Linz, Austria; Karlsruhe, Germany; and Havana, Cuba.

AMP (http://www.pluginamp.com/network/): connecting creative communities Organizations such as Electronic Café International have paved the way for new organizations to further connect creative communities and bypass cumbersome and politicized government and institutional structures. Since the inception of virtual networks, new organizations have jumped at the available technology to create networks empowering artists to move freely over a global terrain and connect with each other. One of these efforts is AMP (Artist Resource and Meeting Place), a powerful tool that connects artists and behind-the-scenes collaborators of all genres, including musicians, painters, performance artists, writers, dancers, and many more, with resources, opportunities, and personal connections. Many AMPers also provide free temporary lodging for other members. With thousands of members in 82 countries, AMPers can connect through the website, as well as at AMP-hosted parties and multimedia events worldwide. The AMP builds bridges between artists, audiences, and producers through planning such initiatives as Radio AMP, to feature the voices and music of AMP artists, and the creation of AMP centres that will span the globe. The AMP is free to join and the only ‘cost’ is the members’ energy and enthusiasm in building a global artistic community and helping fellow artists. ufaFabrik (http://www.ufafabrik.de): a social space/intentional community A model of a more holistic and therefore globalized approach to the development of arts and culture is the International Center for Culture and Ecology (or ufaFabrik) in Berlin. It is a reflection of a community that is ethos programmed to create an artist community that is responsive to its larger urban

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surroundings. Begun in 1979 by artists ‘squatting’ on the premises, ufaFabrik, like the 18th Street Arts Center, has evolved into a formal, mature community now supported by federal, state, and self-generated means. The activities of the 30 residents and over 160 co-workers are based on the vision of a meaningful integration of the areas of living and working with culture, creativity and community. New and uncommon ideas have been implemented at the ufaFabrik over the past twenty-eight years, involving ecology and sustainable development, and the testing of concepts for producing culture and social and neighbourhood work. The International Center for Culture and Ecology offers two theatre spaces, festivals, in-house productions, comedy, cabaret, dance, world music, children’s programmes and professional theatre presentations. In addition to being a cutting edge centre for performances and performance art, it has been a leader in international visiting artist exchange programmes. There are numerous aspects to ufaFabrik which are not found in conventional arts centres: an in-house organic bakery and confectionery provides breads, cakes and pastries and an extensive assortment of sustainable products are available from its natural foods store. The bakery is a source of earned income, and creates a sense of community through the simple process of ‘breaking bread’ together and providing nutritious food. A café at the centre of the complex also serves as a community-gathering place. Other activities within this multi-purposed centre are the ufaCircus, which trains performers in contemporary circus practice; the Children’s Circus School that is committed to the development of talented young performers; the Neighborhood and Self-Help Center NUSZ, providing encouragement and assistance in cultural as well as social, health and family matters. Programmes include family care services, a day-care centre and the school station ‘Wonder Island’. The children’s farm allows children, many for the first time, to interact with farm animals. ufaFabrik has also been a pioneer in promoting green sensibilities in an art context. Through numerous ecology projects the grounds remain a green oasis within the metropolis. Seminars, tours and workshops are offered on a regular basis for interested visitors. The offerings of ufaFabrik also change and develop continuously. New creative plans emerge every year and find their way onto the stage, into the community and onto the events

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calendar. What does remain stable are the cooperative structures and an attention to the needs of the guests. It is the residents, co-workers and visitors who shape all the activities of the ufaFabrik. They come from the surrounding neighbourhood, from Berlin, and from around the world. Internationally, ufaFabrik enjoys considerable recognition for its work in the areas of culture, community and ecology, as a living example of the possibilities that exist for creating attractive, socially and ecologically-just ways of living in a metropolis. freeDimensional Network (http://www.freedimensional.org): agent of social change freeDimensional organizes community arts spaces and local resources for the support and protection of individuals who create dialogue on global issues and inequalities through their art and media. It envisions a world in which diverse ideas and rigorous debate are nurtured by inclusive community spaces that are unique to their creative outlook, a process that results in direct action on critical contemporary issues. In an era of globalization, independent art and media are communication tools that can be used to resist entrenched power structures. freeDimensional understands that resistance often results in censorship and can lead to official or self-imposed exile. The creation of local arts and media in communities around the world gives rise to the existence of available spaces that can also be used (in the same spirit) for the creative safe haven of artists, activists and citizen journalists in need of assistance. By focusing on the work of independent artists, activists and citizen journalists (the mouthpieces of society), and scaling up the freeDimensional placement model, it is able to change the conditions that negatively impact vulnerable groups and society-at-large. The freeDimensional network has developed a system to partner residential artist communities with human rights and freedom of expression organizations in order to facilitate rapid responses and creative safe havens. The network also provides administrative support to art and media centres worldwide that seek to create a web of flexible, short-term safe havens for human rights defenders working at the intersection of arts and journalism. Residential artist communities benefit from this unique collaboration through enriched community, youth and environmental programmes and by using their physical space to counter marginalizing issues

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at the local, regional and global levels. The freeDimensional network believes that a practical human rights solution can be realized through collaboration across two sectors of civil society (see the Box at the end of Chapter 13). Triangle Arts Network (http://www.trianglearts.org): Franchising Creative Communities Model #1 The Triangle Arts Trust in London is organized as a network of artists, visual art organizations, and artist-led workshops. Through its activities the trust encourages experimentation, artists’ mobility, exchange, and fresh thinking, with an emphasis on process and professional development. Each centre within the network is independent and set up to respond to local needs. Its programmes consist of a workshop model providing an uninterrupted period of two weeks where 20–25 artists from diverse cultural backgrounds can engage with each other to explore new ideas and expand the boundaries of their practice. Half of the participating artists are from the host country, giving the workshop a strong local base, while the remainder are international. The residencies last up to three months and offer the possibility of a longer-term exchange. The international network provides opportunities for artists to further extend the process of exchange and encourages the sharing of information and skills. During workshops and residencies artists focus on work in progress rather than the finished product. The activities are nonprescriptive and process-based, emphasizing experimentation and fresh thinking. Participants are encouraged to develop work they might not do in their own studios and to participate fully in the intense dynamic that develops when artists work alongside each other in a stimulating environment. The trust promotes artist-led initiatives. Each workshop and residency programme is organized by a working group of local artists who are responsible for both fundraising and logistics. These activities build confidence and self-reliance and attract voluntary input from the local community. The network constantly expands to enlarge the base of over 3000 artists who have already participated in workshops, residencies and exhibitions over the past twenty-five years. Development of the network occurs organically, when participating artists decide to initiate workshops or residency projects

in their home countries. In more recent years, separately-initiated organizations sharing similar values and approaches have partnered with Triangle for international projects. RAIN (http://www.r-a-i-n.net): Network Model #2 RAIN is a network of (visual) artists’ initiatives from countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, set up by artists who are former students of the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. RAIN stimulates pluralistic internationalization, involving artists from all over the world from multiple disciplines or practices. It aims to give an impulse to a further dialogue on ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ art. The issue of ‘centre and periphery’ plays an important role, as the centre in the international art world is still placed in (Western) Europe and North America. This often leads to a narrow approach to ‘non-Western’ art, or to an attitude of juxtaposition which the RAIN network seeks to challenge if not disrupt. Therefore, RAIN strengthens the exchange of art, ideas, techniques, cultural heritage and knowledge between artists’ initiatives in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and Europe, with the Academy in Amsterdam. In this exchange the emphasis is on ‘South-South’ and ‘South–North’ contacts, also taking into account the ‘North–South’ axis which is already represented rather well by other entities. All initiatives are set up by artists for artists. The nature of the initiatives can be very different, although a common denominator for most of the partners in RAIN is the aim to create an alternative (not yet existing) place in their countries for (young) artists to discuss, produce and/or present their work. Concern for the process of creating art and the relation to society is a key element. Arts Network Asia (http://www.artsnetwork asia.org): Model #3 Founded by artist/activist Ong Keng Sen, Arts Network Asia (ANA) is a group of independent artists, cultural workers and arts activists primarily from Southeast Asia that encourages and supports regional artistic collaboration as well as developing managerial and administrative skills within Asia. It is motivated by the philosophy of meaningful collaboration, distinguished by mutual respect, initiated in Asia and carried out together with Asian

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artists; it is thus a forum for Asia’s expression and its relationship to the rest of the world. It recognizes the cultural diversity and pluralisms of Asia, and looks at the continuum that is Asia, from tradition to contemporary urban life. It focuses on collaborations, research, networking, and dialogues across cultures. It is a network where individuals from around the world, through residencies and projects, develop local communities in the continent. It pays attention to the diverse perspectives of a global Asian urban metropolis, the continuities and disruptions with Asian tradition, the multiple contexts of everyday life. Intra Asia Network (http://www. intraasianetwork.org): Model #4 As the arts boomed in Asia, another new network emerged in 2005, the Intra Asia Network, an open source platform for culture organizations. Its mission is to facilitate the artistic mobility of Asia’s cultural producers, practitioners, and creative people, through the development, promotion and empowerment of cultural exchange projects. It also has the shared higher vision of using Asian culture as a medium for balanced social development. It wishes to initiate collaborations by mobilizing knowledge and resources across Asia. Since 2000, Asian culture directors have gathered in cities such as Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, and Taiwan, to discuss the challenges and opportunities of a longterm engagement of artists with society, to have a durable impact and contribution to the rapid economic transformation of Asia. There is a deep awareness of regional diversity, as well as the shared stresses of headlong urban development and the corresponding marginalization of rural hinterlands. Yet many have found mutual shared values and some bilateral projects have been carried out. The network is unique as it is initiated within Asia for Asia exchanges, embracing inclusivity of all cultural workers and creative spaces, artist exchange projects, community engagement initiatives and artist residency programmes. It intends to bring together multiple cultures, functions, sectors, characteristics, and disciplines, into its programmes. The network further intends to reduce isolation by sharing mutual knowledge and resources via enhancing capacity building for many Asian organizations. IAN also wishes to promote practices of standards for ethnical behaviour and

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professionalism, hoping that these will help by acting as a power block for advocacy.

Following the artist lead in a newly minted global sensibility First and foremost, societies look to artists for ideas, questions, inspirations, and now answers. As more and more artists work across disciplines, with combinations of art and architecture, technology, medicine, and ecology, many new productions are positing concrete ideas that go far beyond the notion that an artist’s role is solely to ask questions. This relates to divergent thinking; once an assumption is challenged, a road map is provided towards new models of thought and action. The flow of power and form from the idea is the platform for creativity in the knowledge and information age. The responsibility of being a global citizen is a challenge many artists now wrestle with and their responses suggest that institution-building is secondary to the artistic work practice. If artists are to be, in part, provocative agents promoting the free flow of information in an increasingly restricted global information arena, then it follows that their networks and creative communities will reflect their practices, the new use of tools, and primary concerns with community, equity, and inclusion. My forecast for twenty-first century creative communities and networks is that artists will take more responsibility upon themselves for being world citizens. A confluence of local, regional, and international issues will direct themselves to artists’ attention and will become the core material for their creative output. In a larger sense, a time of reflection followed by clear interactions with a global creative community seems to be a common thread running through all of the emerging artists’ networks and communities discussed. Even the notion of what an artist is will shift to something as yet undefined. It is of critical importance that international networks and creative communities continue to distribute artists’ ideas and keep open uncensored lines of communication between distant communities. Both information and art are sometimes perceived as threats, especially in those societies those where the freedoms of the populace and the distribution of information are controlled. Contemporary arts, employing divergent thinking, instinctively challenge the assumptions underlying the power structures of

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corporate and governmental efforts to restrict access to information and the Internet, thereby limiting the possibilities of globalization. Artists, in the creative communities they work in and through the

Box 17.1

networks they communicate with, can provide constructive dialogue and new directions for thinking through and solving the difficult socio/political/ religious conflicts of our times.

Networked Cultures

In our world of flows, networks have become the most powerful tool in how we organize our lives: they dominate the rise of global capitalism and its shadow economies, the emergent forms of extra-state control and resistance movements, the worldwide expansion of consumerism and communitarian subcultures. The struggle between network formations produces a space that is both fragmented and contested, yet still testifies to the creativity of its inhabitants. Networked Cultures, an international research platform based at Goldsmiths College, London, traces these conflictual negotiations in dialogue with artists, architects, curators and theorists whose work explores the possibilities for a multiinhabitation of territories and narratives across cultural, social or geographic boundaries. Supported by their shared experiences and accompanying field studies, this project has carried out a range of investigations into the complex spatial and social realities of globalization, from city-like informal markets in Moscow and the post-war self-urbanization in Kosovo, to the border economies of the Mediterranean and the parallel worlds of today’s burgeoning megacities. The project does not present this development as a contained movement and nor does it localize it within the particularities of a specific geographic or institutional context. It is far more interested in its propinquity to a plethora of other self-authorized structures, regardless of their scale – grey markets, informal commerce, alternative economies and migratory practices, as well as the innumerable, minor, barely discernible attempts to establish self-determined sociality in the midst of the reconfiguration of our environments. Such an idiosyncratic propinquity confronts us with the fundamental construction of the modalities of cultural and social experience – with a spatial production that is unsolicited and unlimited and that opens up an experiential sphere outside prescribed forms of political representation. Networked Cultures interrogates the meanings of this change together with the meanings of artistic, architectural and cultural engagement in these dynamics. It traces a variety of strands along which the project itself has developed. First, attention is focused on the phenomenon of network creativity by following the routes of networks laid out by artists, architects, urbanists, curators and activists. The site that is hereby opened up marks an arena of engagement with the relationship between space and conflict and leads to an interrogation of contested spaces across Europe and beyond, examining the architecture of conflict and discussing models of geocultural negotiation. Investigating their modus operandi, the focus then shifts to governmentality and self-government by examining the organizational matrix of black markets, informal settlements, and the accompanying parallel economy. Responding to these global realities, the parallel worlds of mobility and migration, ‘travelling’ communities, digital worlds and other counter-geographies are discussed in relation to a politics of connectivity and the emerging ‘archipelago of the peripheries’. The project highlights how networks both structure and constitute an operational field for these proliferating global entanglements of people, places and interests. They become incorporated in space in different ways: in the form of translocal zones of action, community support structures, expanded spheres of influence, spatial superimpositions, and intensive contacts and contaminations. While official reactions in terms of cultural and planning policies for the most part consist of the search for means of stabilization and restraint, the dynamics of deregulation are giving rise to a situation characterized by global parallel systems in which we seek out separate connectivities: parallel architectures, parallel societies, parallel lives. The engagement with these developments on the part of art and architecture in recent years has resulted in a new form of praxis founded on collective production,

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process-guided work and transversal project platforms. Such a ‘disciplineless’ praxis of unsolicited intervention in spatial contexts renders legible the dysfunctional rules of planned spatial and cultural containment and creates an avenue for generating new forms of circulation amidst the political efforts to conceal this failure. It makes use of existing networks, expands and changes them, gives rise to new circuits, and thereby sketches a mobile geography of self-determined utilizations of space and culture. Building on the network logic of this praxis and the new spatial creativity of globalized realities, the Networked Cultures project utilizes a variety of different platforms: conversations with a broad range of practitioners directly involved in the formation and discussion of geocultural networked practices have been brought together in a film archive – Sylvie Blocher, Vasıf Kortun, Irit Rogoff, Stefano Boeri, Tadej Pogacˇar, Ricardo Basbaum, Eyal Weizman, Jochen Becker, Marjetica Potrcˇ, Kyong Park, Branka C´urcˇic´, Ursula Biemann, Igor Dobricic, Ayreen Anastas, Erden Kosova, and many more, have all contributed to sharing knowledge about what it means to participate in networks under the conditions of geocultural upheaval and contestation. These voices are also featured in the publication Networked Cultures: Parallel Architectures and the Politics of Space (2008), which explores the questions raised in more depth through a series of essays and topical case studies: Moscow’s Izmailovo Market, a complex assemblage of cultural layers held together through formal and informal segments of economic activities; Arizona Market, the transformation of a black market into a strategically formalized economic hub in Bosnia and Herzegovina; the rise of London’s Little Algeria in the shadow of Arsenal’s move to the new Emirates Stadium – all these cultural currents are shaped by creative structures based on principles of nonlinear interaction between many different people and produce effects that were neither planned nor intended. Adding to these analyses, the online project platform www.networkedcultures.org fosters communication and collects material on spatial practices which encourage active civic participation in a growing database, an atlas of exchange that reflects networked spatial practices rather than spatial entities. This coming together of theoretical debate, curatorial work and artistic investigation is continued in the ongoing manifestations of the project in institutional and public spaces. Organized in collaboration with Proekt Fabrika Moscow, the Netherlands Architecture Institute Rotterdam, the Whitechapel Gallery London, the Storefront for Art and Architecture New York, the Israeli Center for Digital Art, the Toronto Free Gallery, and many other partners, these installation and discussion events – the Networked Cultures Dialogues – offer a polymorphic range of settings to connect the project contributors with a multitude of local actors. That way, cultural urgencies in cities ranging from Istanbul, Moscow, Budapest and Berlin, to New York, Toronto and Rio de Janeiro are put into dialogue with a global network of self-authorized cultural creativity. Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer

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CHAPTER 18 CREATIVE SPACES Nancy Duxbury and Catherine Murray

places where creative production, exhibition and consumption occur. It examines a knowledge production process consisting of ideas (embedded intelligences, and imagination), planning (patterns of involvement and intervention), and policy (integration). The authors argue for a ‘cultural ecology’ that is constructivist, holistic, and based on both physical and social infrastructure. Creative space-making as a policy sub-field must more adequately incorporate issues of locality, sociality, cultural diversity, and equity while bridging disparate professional vocabularies or grammars of space.

Introduction

If creative expression involves individual acts, in creative sites which allow for new types of collaboration, then it is important to understand the forces structuring these sites. Hence the design of place, contextualization and aesthetics of space become productive factors in understanding creativity and innovation. The scale of creative spaces can range from the global hierarchy of cities, their emergent rivals and the satellite communities or cracks at the margins and boundaries of systems, to the sub-city-scale hubs and particular places of connection in which global and local flows of creativity and innovation mix and are facilitated. This chapter outlines the conceptual underpinnings of creative spaces as physical, embedded

The processes of globalization are creating a new geography of centres and margins, intensifying interest in the processes of spatialization (Sassen, 2006). Contrary to the expectations of the 1990s, the centralization of cultural power in ‘global cities’ has been uneven, resulting in a distributed, ‘polycentric’ networked economy of cultural production and exchange (Davoudi, 2003). If the ‘doctrine of creativity is now an animating force’ for the ‘digital age’ (Schlesinger, 2007: 387), it is increasingly accepted that place is an important driver of creativity (CEP, 2006; Drake, 2003).1 Cultural geography, urban planning and new thinking about the global flows of the creative economy present fundamental opportunities for many cities and smaller communities who are actually enacting the ‘processes of repluralization’ that Isar and Anheier allude to in their Introduction to this volume. As such communities re-stake their ‘place on the map’, by repositioning and reinventing their economic base, many are also thinking about how to construct and foster vibrant creative spaces as a resource for, incubator of, or place for, production, rehearsal, performance or the exhibition of new genres, new artistic works or new practices. Creative cities, creative clusters and, increasingly, creative hubs in cultural policies and cultural policyled urban regeneration strategies are embedded

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with assumptions about how creative space is produced. What are creative spaces? How are they conceived? Who are they for? And what is their relationship to fostering and harnessing the force of creative expression for cultural, social, and economic advancement? Creative spaces are often considered a synonym for cultural facilities, cultural/creative milieus, enclaves, corridors, quarters, districts, clusters, or creative hubs. They are defined as places where creative production and performance occur by chance or design. They are place-based and place contingent. While creative space may be virtual, the focus here is on the physical, material representation of space or how it is conceived. In this way, we are building upon Henri Lefebrve’s (1991) notion of space as a product of the processes and work of creativity performed and experienced by humans.2 Creative spaces in this lexicon are what may be called ‘creative hardware’ (Richards and Wilson, 2007). They are more than just land, buildings, parks, precincts or districts – they are socially constructed products of physical facility/place, people, and programming/operational resources. They carry significant iconic or symbolic value. Creative spaces operate between current reality and possibility. The focus of this chapter is on the creative coming together of different groups, land uses, residential forms, and architectural styles to make creative spaces in an urban environment. Creative spacemaking is a practice rooted in three dynamic, interrelated domains: ideas, planning and policy, and on-the-ground entrepreneurialism. As new configurations and practices of creative space development emerge, various degrees of ‘misalignment’, friction, and disconnectedness among these three domains become evident.

Conceptual background Thinking about creative space is strongly influenced by the disciplines of cultural geography, architecture, industrial design, and urban/community planning.3 Creative space-making is an emergent policy sub-field, increasingly differentiated from, but indebted to, thinking about creative cities, creative industries, economy and society. The goal of creative space-making is to identify and optimize strategies for building, adapting, or renovating the necessary infrastructure and environment in which

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human creativity can flourish. A number of cultural policy paradigms guide creative space-making. The neo-liberal paradigm of the creative economy4 led to urban entrepreneurialism as the competitive response of cities and a new hierarchy of global cities (Sassen, 2006). Creative spaces are treated as sites for spectacle and consumption (Hannigan, 2007). Cities and nation-states design ‘flagship’ spatial amenities to provide magnets for foreign capital, attract the creative migrant class, and expand cultural tourism during the fiscal crisis triggered by footloose manufacturing plants and the loss of jobs offshore. But such instrumentalizing of creative space as an ‘amenity’ in tourism-led growth strategies has failed to explore the relationship of creative spaces to endogenous creative processes. Hence, influenced by high-tech districts and their economic spin-offs, cultural centres or clusters have begun to be conceived of as cultural-economic hubs and generators of growth, with locality conceived of as a resource or visual stimuli, an energizing ‘buzz’ and brand based on tradition and reputation (Drake, 2003). The Blair New Labour turn towards the ‘creative city’ strategy of urban regeneration broadened the traditional aesthetic focus on cultural policy to other ‘creative’ sectors such as design and fashion and examining creativity as an input into other areas of the networked economy (Flew, 2002; Hartley, 2007; Throsby, 2001). Location and place remain central to this largely UK-led creative city/economy policy paradigm, but the target for such facilities switched from the tourist to the attraction of the highly skilled new resident or local creative worker. Built-out spaces featured arts and entertainment districts, anchors in streetscape renewal projects, the promotion of night-time economies, pedestrian plazas, and a new collaboration between private developers/investors and not-for-profit creative groups (Gibson and Holman, 2004). Evans (2007) calls this a shift from a singular cultural branding approach to city spaces that depend on creative diversity and tension rather than predictability or ‘riskless risk’. In this view, cosmopolitan or creative cities offer a more sustainable spatial distribution and diversity of cultural and visitor activity. A survey of the literature from over 38 countries with some evidence of ‘creative economy/cluster or city’ approaches (Gollmitzer and Murray, 2008) indicates that strategic creative space planning is

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increasingly part of urban planning, with a spatial dimension that is city-wide, and works to establish cultural facility priorities. In parallel with these developments, a focus on the changing sociology of the global city led by Sharon Zukin, Peter Hall, Saskia Sassen and others, began to ripple throughout urban studies, building on the earlier community development paradigms of the early 1960s, which focused on urban poverty, social welfare maximization and urban regeneration projects. This ‘progressive’ tradition in urban planning persists today, and now struggles to articulate culture with sustainability and distributive equity as a planning goal.5 The challenge is to frame cultural strategies for creative spaces in urban revitalization that address social and environmental goals without ignoring the economic realities.

A creative ecology approach There are typically three biases to policy ideas about creative space-making. First, the creative clusters or hubs are primarily portrayed through the lens of economics or political economy, with only a limited acknowledgement of ties to the broader socio-cultural communities in which they reside. Second, creative clusters are often described as a bundle of dynamics and activities without a sense of how space(s) may be supporting, enabling, or enhancing the various stages of creative processes. In a sense, creativity is valorized but still plays out in a black box which hides how the various creative stages may be appropriately ‘housed.’ Third, the bulk of the literature focuses on ‘global’ cities exclusively, although this thinking is increasingly taken up in theories about ‘polycentricity’ (Davoudi, 2003), ‘ordinary cities’ (Robinson, 2006), and small cities and communities (e.g., Garrett-Petts, 2005) as well. As a corrective to these biases, a more holistic model of developing creative spaces for cultural development, experimentation, and evolution is emerging. The social and cultural-creative processes of use that inhabit and give life to these spaces are of first concern, acknowledging ‘the simultaneous co-existence of social interrelationships at all geographical scales’ (Massey, 1994), from the intimacy of the home, local pub, or community cultural centre, to the wide spaces of trans-global connections. From a planning perspective, Charles Landry’s Cycle of Urban Creativity was one of the first

models to outline a systematic holistic approach to creativity within an urban context (Landry, 2000).6 More recently, widespread community sustainability initiatives have also encouraged a holistic, systems-based planning approach, frequently including cultural, economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainable development (e.g., City of Port Phillip, 2002; Hawkes, 2001; Infrastructure Canada, 2008; New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 2006; Regional Vancouver Urban Observatory, 2006). Creative space-making includes a more voluntary basis for actions (compared to a heavily legislated, top-down approach) and is rooted in local decision making, participatory planning and priority-setting, integrated planning, and (ideally) horizontal coordination across municipalities and other local agencies within regions (e.g., districts, counties, etc.) (Duxbury et al., 2008). While useful, Landry’s model does not open the black box of the cognitive repertoire for creative space-making. To do this, we must turn to a framework for knowledge production, borrowed here from Yoshiteru Nakamori, which examines the dynamics of intelligence, imagination, involvement, intervention and integration in creative space-making in cities (Wierzbicki and Nakamori, 2005).

Towards a more holistic model of creative processes in creative spaces Peter Hall, among others, has lamented the division of professional intelligences about the place of culture in urban space in geography, sociology, economics, architecture, cultural studies, or urban studies (Hall and Pain, 2006). Too few have taken up the call for a new ‘urban literacy’ that would more broadly disperse and interconnect this knowledge base and the skills to ‘read’ a city’s ‘look and feel’ of its creative spaces (Centre for Public Space Research, 2004). The creative attributes of space, place, and form (or the semiotics of structures and other built ‘objects’) need to be more debated and diffused among the respective design and urban planning communities (Hutton, 2006). Intelligence Spatial vocabularies of power have long been embedded in conceptions of urban–rural, centreperiphery, and downtown slums–affluent residential

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areas (Lee, 2007). At issue is how spaces for cultural/creative rehearsal, production, performance and archiving are included. The traditional ensembles of urban space and form like the piazza, village square, or public commons have been anchored by a cultural performance space (typically a theatre or museum). Intelligence about creative space, usually organized by the predominant aesthetic or professional/artistic disciplines, has traditionally involved large-scale, purpose-built spaces. As more participatory cultural policy approaches developed, spaces became multifunctional, scaled down, or more flexible in use and (depending on urban regime) clustered around public transit nodes or other green space to encourage daily presence. Indeed, variable scale to creative space becomes crucially important in adapting to change over time. Of particular interest in cultural studies are the cognitive repertoires of visual cityscapes in modernist and post-modernist sensibilities.7 Building design in the old industrial economy for cultural institutions was largely about maintaining control, whereas the social order and design values of the new economy stress freedom in the selective areas of labour and identity. In spatial politics, the two most critical dimensions are: (1) to balance the need to be central or to position at the margins of the city, consciously maintaining an alternative, bohemian atmosphere (see, for example, Mercer, 2006); and (2) to establish an identifiable standing place with strongly shared representations and/or an open and flexible space constantly adapting to changes in the wider cultural and urban field (Mommaas, 2004). Diversity is widely accepted as a dominant design ethic: in addition to ‘function mixing’ – old, new, closed, open and so on – there is attention to day/night economies, and chances for accidental encounters to frame intercultural curiosity or a cosmopolitan imagination (Hospers, 2003). However, the growing anxiety about public security after 9/11 shows an increasing preoccupation with the spatial policing of heterogeneity (Cochrane, 2007), surveillance, and social control. Yet creativity thrives in the tension between orderly and disorderly space, so managing the interplay of these zones is crucial. New taxonomies of creative spaces are emerging. They can be assembled on the basis of their role in the cultural-creative value chain (experimentation, creation, rehearsal, performance, exhibition, archiving); their role in creative knowledge production

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(from visible knowledge to invisible or tacit knowledge); cognitive-experiential modes of cultural participation; or fixity or flow in the knowledge economy (Bennett et al., 1999; Castells, 1996; Markus, 1993;). In response to Richard Florida’s creative (2002) class thesis, more attention is being placed to the attributes of emotional affect. Spatial cognition looks at the means by which people construct an image of the city in which they live, and translate this into awareness and identification (Hospers, 2003). With the focus here on the role of cultural amenities on attracting creative workers,8 new studies identify the appealing aesthetic attributes which provoke ‘aesthetic curiosity’ (the unexpected use of the alley, the compatibility with night-life), ‘place’ (the attachment of boundedness, coziness, and authenticity), sociality (opportunities for an informal co-location or the clustering of different creative disciplines), and diversity (historic building and other amenity types9) (Helbrecht, 2003; Hutton, 2006). Imagination The aspirational aspect of the creative space imaginary is a remarkable resource – looking outward, globally and competitively, and inward, locally and co-operatively. Critiques of disembedded visions of ‘starchitects’ in the period of spectacle and consumption are now so well known they have generated a vernacular shorthand: the Bilbao effect.10 Opposing this view, in the organic ecology paradigm (influenced by urban theorist Jane Jacobs), is the postulate that the roots of creative spaces always lie in the existing, historically-developed urban environment (Hospers, 2003). The best strategy is always to assess the actual situation and needs for creative space-making, renovating or adapting in particular contexts.11 In these ways, imagination connects space to place. Places are spaces with meaning and local knowledge attached. Spatial imaginaries are most productive when local and grounded. The leading trends in re-conceptualizing creative space goals also include recovering rurality as lived creative space (Cloke, 2007) or the ‘slow’ urban movement, identifying how to construct ‘empathetic destinations’ to avoid the exploitative tourist frame on cultural development (Richards and Wilson, 2007), and how to define ‘authenticity’ (i.e., unique, local differentiation) in creative city visions. Current trends in physical creative space developments reflect changing artistic practices, a new

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design ethic of intermixture and involvement, and the ‘flexibilization’ of space.12 The models presented here as incubators, creative habitats, multi-sector convergence projects, are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, combinations of operating models are emerging that blur the lines between for-profit and not-for-profit creative enterprises, influencing how cultural-creative activity is organized, how spaces are used and governed, and challenging the funding systems and planning contexts. Incubators Cultural or creative incubators form an ‘umbrella type’ of creative spaces that offer various platforms

of support for creators and enable connection, production, and networking among creators and their publics. Artist co-operatives, media arts centres, and new media artist-run centres, as examples, benefit from coming together to share specialized equipment and production spaces. While some incubators are multidisciplinary in nature, many others are defined by their specialties (e.g., fashion, the visual arts, film), usually serving in a ‘hub’ role for particular communities, operating as extensions of them, and evolving over time. They may be municipality-owned-and-operated, not-forprofit co-operatives and societies, or a combination of commercial and not-for-profit organizations.

Box 18.1 Méduse Coopérative, Quebec City, Canada Méduse (http://www.meduse.org/) comprises ten independent studios (woodworking, stone, metal, engraving, and multipurpose), and a range of services including a photography lab, exhibition and rehearsal rooms, photography, sound, film, video, and radio studios. It contains space for archiving and equipment storage, offices, a central computer server, a café-bistro, and an artist studio-apartment (for international residencies). Approximately 60 per cent of the space is dedicated to development and 40 per cent to exhibition. Arts House, Melbourne, Australia Arts House (http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/info.cfm?top=186&pg=2163), operating from a collection of historic public buildings, is an arts centre operated by the City of Melbourne. It integrates subsidized office/work space for arts organizations and individual artists, performance spaces, rehearsal and development spaces, meeting rooms, galleries, a digital media and sound studio (with recording capability), visual arts studios, a writers’ lab, and a producers’ hub. Arts House also provides support for artists from exploration/creation through to presentation/exhibition, promotion, and touring, and has built a reputation for working interculturally (Beal, 2008).

Creative habitats Evolving from incubators as singular buildings, discourse is expanding to a broader perspective of creative habitats asking, from the perspective of a creative production ecology, what artists need to thrive. Jones (2008) identified the key components of a creative production milieu as: space and place (mixed living/working spaces), networks and a sense of community, entrepreneurial support, and neighbourhoods with distinctive and authentic features. Other desirable features include alternative, experimental spaces allowing for ‘fluid streams’ of activity; the use of ‘non-traditional’ public domain spaces by artists for temporary projects; locally grounded ‘creative spaces enabling networks’; and

artists treated as creative resources for a broader community.13 Multi-sector convergence projects Crucial to a creative economy, convergence centres are vibrant physical places designed to maximize socialization, networking, and the random collisions within them. Cross-sectoral convergence centres are leading to new sustainable operating models of shared sites and spaces. Notably, these projects are often situated within re-purposed heritage buildings – another recurring theme is the restoration or rehabilitation of spaces for repurposed uses. Some projects are designed as ‘public realm’ while others are more inwardly focused.

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Box 18.2 The Artscape Wychwood Barns, Toronto, Canada Toronto Artscape (http://www.torontoartscape.on.ca/barns/), the City of Toronto, and the Stop Community Food Centre are transforming historic streetcar repair barns into a multifaceted art centre, community centre, and environment centre. These will include artist live – work and studio tenancies and features such as a commercial kitchen, a community wood-burning bake oven, communal gardens, and camps for children. The diversity of the components is facilitating interesting cross-linkages (Plates 18.1 and 18.2). The Waag Society, Amsterdam, The Netherlands The Waag Society (http://www.waag.org/) was founded to make new media available to those with minimal access to computers and the Internet. The medialab developed into an ‘avant-gardistic thinktank’, building technology around social and cultural issues, and is active in the fields of networked art, healthcare, education, and Internet-related issues. It operates from its own heritage Waag Building and Pakhuis de Zwijger, a renovated warehouse that also houses the Media Guild. Partners come from

all sectors of society. Involvement In an era when historical recollection of built form and its social context is thin, how do artists, planners, and citizens seek to balance the aims of economic efficiency, social welfare, and environmental sustainability with beauty and liveability? As Uzzell et al. (2002) note, the value framework interrelating the environment and cultural/social/urban development must take into account both the objective environment (physical environment, natural resources) and the psychological and phenomenological environment (perception and evaluation of cultural resources, group reference, expectancies, lifestyles). Design can be ‘an active force in the sustainability of culture by reflecting and representing the respective people and places in which it is working’ (Blankenship, 2005: 24).14 Participatory planning exercises bring collective visioning to communities, developing new techniques to bridge specialized discourses to everyday vocabularies and, increasingly, using expressive tools and social networking sites for citizens to ‘map’ their local cultural iconic spaces. These exercises may also include consultations with artistic groups to identify unmet space needs. Channelling this information through local planning regimes with separate recreational, engineering, social, cultural, and land use bureaucracies imposes complex challenges in reconciling

professional languages and worldviews to influence local politicians. At the same time, a new entrepreneurialism is taking root,15 and online resource hubs in numerous cities (e.g., CAR in Chicago) are helping to build independent entrepreneurial capacity to envision and plan, conduct feasibility analyses, and fundraise for their spatial ventures. Yet sustaining the long-term community involvement of volunteers in public initiatives is challenging (Cochrane, 2007). A multi-generational strategy is needed to maintain the involvement of a largely volunteer or ‘precarious’ base of creative labour in the governance of creative space-making. Intervention Cities are implicated in complex systems of governance, with sharply different constitutional powers and fiscal levers. Not only is there a trend to multilevel governance, increasingly, arms-length creative development agencies (such as Creative Scotland) are interacting with multiple tiers of city, regional, state, national, and private-sector interests, and there is an increased corporatization of form (e.g., arrangements including private sector developers, not-for-profit entrepreneurs, etc.). In cities where the push to develop ‘creative spaces’ has been taken up most keenly, the desire for ‘enabling’ structures, organizational cultures, and the milieu to encourage creative activity have often initially spawned top-down policy-management structures (Schlesinger, 2007). Both in practice and 205

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in the literature, a collective call for replacing this ‘meta-structure’ mentality with more organic, grassroots-directed, flexible and enabling conditions/support is emerging (e.g., Crossick, 2006; Goldbard, 2006; Sandercock, 2003; Schlesinger, 2007; Stern and Seifert, 2007, among others). The most important variables in the construction of creative spaces are city land ownership and control over the use of land, property, and premises. In 2002, London and Toronto identified a range of levers for municipal intervention in creative spaces including: creative cluster strategies, designing creative quarters, liberalizing zoning regulations, promoting positive images of diversity, and direct and indirect support for creative enterprises (Evans et al., 2006). Direct ownership and operation of facilities is the most assertive way to build creative space, as is building public artist housing (or work–live space). Use of publicprivate partnerships and business improvement districts is also increasing. Individual cities, regional and national programmes, and supra-national programmes (such as the EU Cultural Capitals programme) have provided money to enable the development of cultural facilities across many cities and communities of different scales. In the spread of creativity as a mode of policy address around the world, China (Keane, 2007), Singapore, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates have made dramatic infusions of public investment in flagship cultural facilities. However, while knowledge and cultural perspectives on creative space-making circulate in global policy networks, there are few systematic comparisons of cultural infrastructural investments and it is difficult to compile public accounts of cultural assets (Waltman Daschko, 2008). Private or civil society-sector investment in creative spaces is a growing part of the picture. Finance models for creative spaces are typically dependent upon a variety of mechanisms and sources, many enabled by legislation specific to a country or sub-national region. Challenges are emerging with traditional sector-specific funding frameworks that cannot embrace blended for-profit and non-for-profit interconnections, and a reformed private–public financial framework is needed. In the discourse around creative space development and operation, three overarching financial models are emerging: non-profit real estate development, non-profit and community

investment funds, and social enterprise development (Duxbury et al., 2008). Integration Issues of sustainability overarch all development initiatives today. Sustainability is fundamentally about adapting to a new ethic of living on the planet and creating a more equitable and just society through the fair distribution of social goods and resources in the world (Darlow, 1996). The most common definition of sustainable development comes from the World Commission on Environment and Development 1987 report, Our Common Future: ‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising future generations to meet their own needs’ (p. 43). Traditionally, sustainability has been focused on an environmentalism framework, and environmental concerns continue to be the cornerstone of sustainable development. As the concept has matured, however, increasing emphasis has been placed on its interconnection to the social and economic dimensions of development, and space has opened up for debate and further reflection (Kadekodi, 1992; Nurse, 2006a). Culture is gradually becoming a part of this vision and discourse. Culture as a key dimension of sustainability is a thinly distributed but pervasive idea in the community development and sustainability literature (Duxbury and Gillette, 2007), traditionally discussed in terms of cultural capital and defined as ‘traditions and values, heritage and place, the arts, diversity and social history’ (Roseland et al., 2005: 12). The emerging framework incorporates more dynamic and expansive perspectives in which culture is more broadly conceived as ‘a whole way of life’ informing ‘underlying belief systems, worldviews, epistemologies and cosmologies’ (Nurse, 2006a: 36).16 The current literature on culture and sustainability incorporates cross-cutting concerns about cultural vitality, cultural continuity,17 social embeddedness, social equity, and deep environmental knowledge (see, for example, Blankenship, 2005; Chandler and Lalonde, 1998; Doubleday et al., 2004; Nurse, 2006a, 2006b; Rhoades, 2006; Thorpe, 2007; Uzzell et al., 2002). The concept behind this fourfold model is deceptively simple: creative expression and participation, which are at the heart of the dynamism of human settlements, both require unlocking the energies of the social economy of artists, citizens, volunteers

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and not-for-profit groups to work and play in, around, and through the formal creative economy. This social economy in turn adds value which produces economic growth and prosperity horizontally across many economic sectors within the carrying capacity of the natural environment. This ecological value chain is in turn embedded in a supportive culture which celebrates a sustainable ethos, and produces the symbolic capital to sustain it. Specific planning and policy initiatives (e.g., requiring a cultural assessment in reviewing development initiatives and plans, enforcing LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards on cultural facilities, commissioning public art for important social and heritage sites, integrating cultural spaces with affordable housing or social programmes for at-risk groups, valuing the role of volunteer contributions in calculations of economic contributions, or taxing tourism businesses for carbon offsets or reinvestment in arts activities) are all ways to ensure the four pillars are considered equally and integrated with each other and within an ecological and holistic approach. In policy and planning initiatives, culture as the fourth pillar of sustainability in urban systems (and for smaller communities) is gradually gaining currency in places such as Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe, and New Zealand. Jon Hawkes’s The Fourth Pillar of Sustainability:

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Culture’s Essential Role in Public Planning (2001), and New Zealand’s model of four community well-beings (social, economic, environmental, and cultural) have proved influential. In recognition of this need to consider a four-fold, integrated planning approach, the federal government in Canada has tied in gas tax-sharing agreements for its cities with the development of local ‘Integrated Community Sustainability Plans’ – integrated policy/planning frameworks that provide direction for community sustainability planning objectives for the environmental, social, economic, and cultural dimensions of its identity (Infrastructure Canada, 2008). To be sure, there is still resistance in many planning communities more familiar with economic or traditional land use worldviews in community development which treat cultural facilities or creative spaces as an afterthought. Nonetheless we would argue that carefully designed socio-cultural community spaces can contribute to integrating artists and arts within everyday culture and to addressing wider social issues, economic development dimensions, and other challenges of community life. Cultural centres, as a cornerstone component of broader revitalization initiatives, can balance an array of considerations for community benefit and bring together different economic, social, and cultural dimensions in thoughtful, inclusive, and locally grounded manners.

Box 18.3 TOHU, Montreal, Canada TOHU (http://www.tohu.ca) is an ‘encounter’ between a burgeoning arts community looking for a home, an environmentally damaged site in the process of being restored, and a low-income neighbourhood ‘unsure of what to do with its rich potential’ (Brunelle, 2008). TOHU’s three-pronged mission – circus (art), earth (environment), and people (community) – is bound together through an overarching concern for human development. It has a job readiness programme for neighbourhood youth and a policy that all staff working with the public at TOHU live in the neighbourhood. Haida Heritage Centre at Kaay Llnagaay, Haida Gwaii, Canada The Haida Heritage Centre (http://www.haidaheritagecentre.com), celebrating the rich culture, art, and history of the Haida nation, consists of five contemporary timber longhouses housing an expanded Haida Gwaii Museum, an exhibition space, meeting rooms/classrooms, the Performing House, the Canoe House, the Bill Reid Teaching Centre, the Carving Shed, a gift shop, and a restaurant/café. The Haida Heritage Centre contributes to the preservation of Haida culture and to the diversification of the local economy of this small rural community.

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The sustainability of an urban system can be understood as the compatibility and productive intermixture between social, economic, and cultural dynamics and environmental resources in the present and the future (Uzzell et al., 2002). We argue that models of creative space-making must include a duty of care (a fiduciary, long-term public trust approach) which specifically protects intergenerational and class equity as well as ethno-cultural diversity. ‘Duty of care’ traditionally interprets intergenerational equity to refer to historical buildings and creative spaces which archive and preserve cultural expression.18 Indeed, an extensive scaffolding of international covenants adopted by UNESCO19 (which intervenes to protect certain cultural places, notably under its ‘World Heritage’ mechanisms), and at various regional and national levels, has established a fairly robust set of ‘responsibilities’ to protect historical spaces for future generations.20 We propose that holistic creative space policy incorporates notions of stewardship, and enables a framework to address issues of gentrification, multicultural flows, and ‘in place’ intercultural diversity. Gentrification The impact of artist-led regeneration on sustaining creative spaces is of particular interest. Up-scaling can take many forms: the path from ‘unslumming’ (Jane Jacobs) to neighbourhood improvement to gentrification is a continuum. Gentrification is most often linked to the movement of artists into previously poor, unsafe, or unfashionable districts, who then in turn may be displaced by red-hot real estate markets. Intentional gentrification may also involve the deployment of purpose-built cultural spaces to anchor revitalization in certain zones. Numerous projects have shown that the advent of a theatre can drive local restaurants and other amenities and increase property values for residents locally (e.g., Sharpe et al., 2004). Philadelphia’s Social Impact of the Arts Project shows a strong correlation between the presence of cultural providers, dense social networks, and the decline of poverty in low-income areas, and also makes the case for ‘natural’ cultural district development on an evolutionary, small-scale model (Stern and Seifert, 2007). The hollowing-out of artistic presence through the processes of gentrification, both from the perspective of having a voice in the community and the ability to keep spaces as artistic or creative ones, is a central risk to sustainability.

Connecting artists and community through creating small organizations and partnerships can help embed a creative community into the wider socioeconomic milieu. Individual artist ownership of physical spaces and artists’ co-operatives have proven to be effective models in maintaining artistic spaces and a presence in a community over time, often enabled by municipal intervention during development or created by non-profit real estate developers. Progressive social strategies seeking to mitigate the effects of the displacement attendant with gentrification have imposed linkage fees and exactions on developers but have had only limited success in ensuring social goals for creative spaces. Indeed, surveys of local planners find these are rarely top-ofmind in rationales for cultural space development – fewer than 10 per cent of cities surveyed in the USA, for example, look at publicly subsidized housing for creators and artists (Grodach and Loukaitou-Sideris, 2008). Most analyses suggest the principal barrier against excessive gentrification is a more spatially integrated urban policy, one focused on incentivizing and encouraging mixed-use developments, committed to maintaining and renewing social housing stock over time and preventing the speculative flipping of publicly subsidized artists’ live–work studios or spaces. Social inclusion strategies in the construction of creative spaces include: strong public housing with artist access, empowerment zone financing, long-term rent controls, public investment funds for cultural-creative space development, and microfinancing for cultural entrepreneurs. Diversity In most ecological thinking, diversity is the ultimate outcome of dynamic systems. The same is true of culture, where diversity is increasingly recognized as a means of achieving resilience for the cultural ecology as a whole (Bradshaw and Bekoff, 2001). The ‘duty of care’ to the multicultural flows of immigrants and sojourners links the dynamics of globalization with the development of creative spaces and inclusive place-making. The social dimensions of creative spaces deserve closer consideration, with particular attention to the inherent desirability of fostering cultural-creative diversity within these spaces (Mommaas, 2004; Sacco et al., 2007) as well as the broader cultural-creative diversity of communities (Dang and Duxbury, 2007; Duxbury et al., 2006). Related to this is the importance of inter-disciplinarity and hybridity in aesthetic modes of creation and

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innovation. The challenge is to make existing creative spaces inclusive of different cultural groups (see, for example, Duxbury et al., 2006; Mercer, 2006) and to redistribute resources to these. Yet there is a dearth of intelligence about crosscultural form and different religious or cultural interpretations of ‘private’ or ‘public’ space. Blending architectural knowledges (of the use of facades, for example, inspired by Oriental or Islamic traditions), and new experiments of ethnoscapes or their renewal, has the potential to promote intercultural understanding, local neighbourhood identification, and creativity.

Conclusion The integrated creative space-planning approach which we have outlined as a proactive move forward from site-specific ad hoc development examples faces three main challenges. The first is to develop a robust, multifaceted approach to creative space development that is sensitive to the changing needs of the creative activity that animates the physical spaces and to emerging multi-sectoral and blended operational models. The second is to provide a comprehensive planning framework that can facilitate and enable collaborative/decentralized development spurred by grassroots cultural vitality and capacity. The third challenge is to balance the

Box 18.4

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rigidity of ‘must have’ prescriptive approaches with more flexible ones that will embed stable, long-term cultural-creative facility investments within broader planning processes. These challenges reflect the tensions between the planned and the organic, topdown or bottom-up, creator-led or creative coalition-led project designs. Conceptual approaches and practices to creative space are evolving and the emerging models are challenging existing planning, financial, and policy systems. The cases we have cited are modest in scale, grounded, flexible, and consistent with an urban duty of care to protect intergenerational, class, and intercultural equity while fostering creative vitality and enabling it to flourish. A ‘thick’ understanding of local cultural-creative spaces and their human resources forms the policy intelligence foundation on which to integrate culture with economic, education, environmental, social, and health policies. Local cultural strategies need to balance entrepreneurship with a needs-based analysis, to seek ‘authentic’ local differentiation, and to recover a dimension of playfulness in cities, not as an experience of consumption and staged commercial production but as a genuine expression of creativity and a process of intercultural education and re-discovery (Bianchini, 2004). We join forces with many who argue that the design of the built creative environment is an important element of the productive forces of society and not just a reflection of them (Hutton, 2006).

Art in the underground

In recent years there has been a growing interest in and expansion of the place of art in public space. Cities around the world are commissioning works of art for strategically chosen locations in squares, parks, shopping centres, and adjacent to notable architectural features of the cityscape to enhance the attractiveness and sense of safety of these spaces. This is particularly evident in many public transportation systems where collaborations between city planners, artists and architects have turned underground stations into showcases for contemporary art and cultural treasures. The Moscow underground, built during Stalin’s rule, was one of the first, with its stations decorated with mosaic patterns and stained glass. As London adds new stations to the world’s first metro it now hires renowned architects to design them, such as Sir Norman Foster, who designed stations for Bilbao’s system in 1995. In Athens ancient objects unearthed during site excavations are now on display in the metro, and in Lisbon works by contemporary Portuguese artists anchor stations to a national cultural heritage. One of the leaders in this trend, the Stockholm subway system, is often referred to as ‘the world’s longest art gallery’. Beginning with the Central station in 1957, and continuing to the present, Swedish artists

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have been commissioned to decorate the halls and platforms of a majority of the 100 stations. Free tours are held, in English and Swedish, and at each stop, the tour guide describes the artist’s vision and how the underground artwork relates to the culture and history of the city. Art in the underground, like all art commissioned for public spaces, has an important aesthetic function. Consistent with the ‘norm of publicness’ (Miles, 1997: 14), it is intended to be educational and uplifting. If it is too provocative, it runs the risk of losing its public. Public art therefore usually falls within the canon of modernist taste, making a claim for a universal standard of aesthetic quality, a ‘universalizing fiction’ which, as Massey has argued, typically becomes a defence for neutral, non-political, male art. This pattern is evident in a majority of works commissioned for the underground, even when they make a claim to locality through references to local or national traditions and events. Although many contemporary artists push against this tendency, and create works for public space that raise previously unheard voices and submerged conflicts, they remain the exception. At the same time public transportation systems, and metros in particular, have traditionally been magnets for another, contradictory, form of cultural practice and behaviour. Graffiti and other genres of street art proliferate in the public space of the underground, as in other city spaces. Among the forest of tags, stickers and other forms of alternative cultural expression, there appears a critique of what the artists see as power abuse both locally and in the international arena. In their work, they often address issues such as the power of the media, economic inequality, and political oppression. Street artists who work outside of the institutionalized structures of public art have developed global networks that support their alternative practices. Many such artists actively document, distribute and critique their own and others’ work when they travel and, increasingly importantly, through web-based communication. It is not surprising, therefore, that similar tropes, themes and techniques appear on the walls, viaducts and lampposts of cities around the world. At the same time, the web has become the archive for this work, a virtual arena that maintains an ongoing record against the ephemerality of street art as it is removed from the public spaces of the city. In many cities these alternative forms of cultural expression are classed as criminal activities. In Stockholm, graffiti is criminalized as a form of vandalism, and signs are posted at subway and bus stops encouraging witnesses to report activities that appear destructive to the clean and safe appearance of the city. The company that operates Stockholm’s public transportation system spends an estimated 95 million Swedish crowns (around ten million Euros) annually to remove graffiti, stickers, posters and other vernacular forms of visual expression from the subway. Since the company’s zero-tolerance policy was established in the mid-1990s, keeping the underground ‘graffiti-free’ has cost taxpayers and commuters an estimated total of over 1.2 billion crowns (nearly 13 million Euros). This contradiction – on the one hand an established programme of public-funded art in public spaces and on the other the criminalization and systematic removal of vernacular forms of street art from those same spaces – is not unique to Stockholm, but is found in many cities across the globe. In the meantime, street art has been embraced by the world of contemporary art and its institutions. ‘Pieces’ are entering the art market, works are exhibited in galleries and museums (e.g., the August 2008 show ‘Street Art’ at Tate Modern), catalogues are published, and some artists’ names are internationally recognized. Banksy, probably the most widely known, has been quoted in a YouTube interview as saying: ‘Capitalism finds its place in all this. It even finds a place for its enemies’. The comments on the web by street artists are critical of the institutionalization of their practice, and many questioned the interview as a fake: Banksy would never show his face, and anyway, one said, ‘Let’s stick to street art.’ Karin Becker

References http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxzsfZkH9Bw Lewison, C. (2008) Street Art: The Graffiti Revolution. London: Tate Publishing.

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Massey, D. (1994) Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge: Polity. McCarthy, A. (2001) Ambient Television: Visual Culture and Public Space. Durham/London: Duke University Press. Miles, M. (1997) Art, Space and The City: Public Art and Urban Futures. London: Routledge. Stockholm Lokaltrafik årsredovisningar (annual review), 1994; 1995; 2002–2006. Söderström, G. (ed.) (1985/2004) Art Goes Underground: Art in the Stockholm Metro. Stockhom: Stockholmia Förlag.

Acknowledgments The authors wish to acknowledge and thank the editors and authors for this opportunity to participate in rethinking the physical structures in which creativity can be unleashed. Mirjam Gollmitzer, Keith McPhail, Erin Schultz, Eileen Gillette, and Kelsey Johnson of SFU’s Center for Policy Studies on Culture and Communities have been invaluable for their research assistance. Some of the research in this chapter was based on a series of crossCanada regional and national policy and issues dialogues on The State of Cultural Infrastructure and papers presented at the international symposium Creative Construct: Building for Culture and Creativity, Ottawa, 28 April–1 May 2008. These events were made possible principally through support from Infrastructure Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage.

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However, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America are under-represented in the creative/economy/policy literature. Henri Lefebvre (1991) locates the conceptual representation of space in the signs, discourses, and objectified images of spatial order traded by designers, planners, geographers, and other ‘scientists’. Paul Cloke (2007) reminds us that the other equally important dimensions are representational space (how it is lived or experienced) and spatial practices (how it is perceived) (see also Richards and Wilson, 2007). This context may help to explain why visual approaches such as cultural mapping are frequently used to identify and codify cultural resources and assets. Early prototypes of such maps worked to ‘visibilize’ the unseen locations of cultural spaces, highlighting proximity, tracing direction, and occasionally indicating changes over time. Frequently two-dimensional, they use simple inputs of locational coordinates and asset type. Now there are more sophisticated (GIS) uses of the mapping techniques to explore dimensions of density and access, either in terms of audience access, or foot traffic, or of affordability, lease rates and so on. Some are indexical and much more interpretive in nature. David Harvey’s simple characterization of early neoliberalism is premised on the notion that ‘human well-being

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can best be advanced by the maximization of entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterized by private property rights, individual liberty, unencumbered markets, and free trade’ (Harvey, 2007: 22). Harvey was one of the first political economists to identify the urban entrepreneurial thesis in 1989. Evans (2005) helpfully distinguishes between cultureled regeneration, cultural regeneration and culture disconnected from regeneration. The model identifies five stages in the cycle: (1) enhancing the ideas-generating capacity of the town, (2) turning ideas into reality, (3) networking and circulating ideas, (4) providing platforms for delivery, and (5) building audiences and markets. Renewable urban energies feedback into Stage 1. Modernist visions are characterized by mega-structural bigness, straight space (city centre canyons or suburban vistas), rational order, hardness and opacity, and discontinuous serial vision. On the other hand, postmodern townscapes include ‘quaintspace’, textured facades, stylishness, a reconnection with the local (often involving deliberate historical/geographical construction) and a re-emphasis on walking corridors (see E. Relph, quoted in Hutton, 2006: 1822). The Lloyd Quarter in the old harbour of Rotterdam presents itself as a ‘total formula’ for the creative class, supplying it not only with exclusive office and living spaces – a variation on shiny hypermodern objects, maritime-like buildings and reconverted warehouses – but also bars, restaurants, sporting and fitness facilities, and so on. The Lloyd Quarter has been conceived of as a hedonistic ‘special zone’ for the creative class, an exclusive playground fully catered to the needs and desires of its extravagant target group (Boie and Pawels, 2007). Creative workers look for spaces to work in characterized by: ample space (i.e., not less than 800 square feet in live/work studio guidelines), good natural lighting, ventilation, design tending to the upper-levels of historic buildings and with retail activity on the lower floor, and many personalized features of interior design (Hutton, 2006: 1835). Gehry’s design for the Guggenheim Bilbao exhibit is ‘dropped in’ on the landscape, and the development is regarded to be as bold as it is controversial, with mixed economic and social impacts, since it did not grow a local arts market, for example. Andy Pratt (2002) argues that the evidence for a positive impact on policy interventions in creative clusters is weak, and indeed, that creative industries must emerge out of some pre-existing activity or strength to flourish.

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They may be a result of pragmatism, that is, an adjustment to diminishing budgets, or changing artistic/ experiential needs. The situation of artists is often left out of ‘creative city’ discussions. These features were articulated in presentations and discussions at the Creative Construct: Building for Culture and Creativity international symposium, held 28 April to 1 May 2008, in Ottawa, Canada (www.symposium2008.ca). Blankenship (2005) outlines five frameworks for design as key: (1) awareness of the local/personal culture; (2) valuing visual traditions and folklore along with an understanding of their impact/influence on contemporary design; (3) exhibiting confidence that leads to less dependence upon an imitation of large, dominate cultures, and which allows the emergence and integration of local aesthetics; (4) an increase in publications that promote local design and recognize individuals who serve as role models for young designers; and (5) a vision for the future. For example, Urban Splash, working out of Manchester and Liverpool, champions organic development to unique creative markets and mixed-use development. The Capitol Hill Arts Center in Seattle integrated commercial businesses (bars, a restaurant, and a Pilates studio) with cultural components (a studio theatre and other presentation spaces), and evolved into seven roles: rental venue, promotional partner, investment licenser, presenter, sponsor, producer, and community development fund (Kwatinetz, 2008).

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This approach resonates with UNESCO’s (1982) definition of culture as ‘the whole complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterize a society or social group. It includes not only the arts and letters, but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of the human being, value systems, traditions and beliefs’ (p. 22). Chandler and Lalonde (1998) link markers of cultural continuity in First Nations’ communities with rates of teenage suicide in those communities. The authors conclude: ‘Communities that have taken active steps to preserve and rehabilitate their own cultures are shown to be those in which youth suicide rates are dramatically lower’ (p. 191). A recent survey of larger US cities found that 70 per cent worked to preserve a historically significant public space, building or monument (Grodach and LoukaitouSideris, 2008). These include: the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Cultural Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005); the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003); the Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and National Heritage (1972); and the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (1954), among others. See, for example, Paget (2008): The Community Preservation Act of Massachussetts allows communities to generate revenue to acquire and preserve open spaces and affordable housing, and to preserve historic buildings and landscapes.

REFERENCES

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Gibson, C. and Holman, S. (2004) ‘Urban redevelopment, live music and public space’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 10(1): 67–84. Goldbard, A. (2006) New Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development. Oakland, CA: New Village. Gollmitzer, M. and Murray, C. (2008) The Creative Economy and Creative Workers in Canada. (Paper prepared for the Canadian Conference of the Arts.) Vancouver: Centre for Policy Research on Culture and Communities, Simon Fraser University. Grodach, C. and Loukaitou-Sideris, A. (2008) ‘Cultural development strategies and urban revitalization’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 13(4): 349–70. Hall, P. and Pain, K. (eds) (2006) The Polycentric Metropolis: Learning from Mega-City Regions in Europe. London: Earthscan. Hannigan, J. (2007) ‘From fantasy city to creative city’, in G. Richards and J. Wilson (eds), Tourism, Creativity and Development. London: Routledge. pp. 48–72. Hartley, J. (ed.) (2007) Creative Industries. Oxford: Blackwell. Harvey, D. (2007) ‘Neoliberalism as creative destruction’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 610(1): 21–44. Hawkes, J. (2001) The Fourth Pillar of Sustainability: Culture’s Essential Role in Public Planning. Melbourne: Common Ground Publishing. Helbrecht, I. (2004) ‘Bare geographies in knowledge societies – creative cities as text and piece of art: two eyes, one vision’, Built Environment, 30(3): 194–203. Hospers, G.-J. (2003) ‘Creative cities: breeding places in the knowledge economy’, Knowledge, Technology and Policy, 16(3): 143–62. Hutton, T.A. (2006) ‘Spatiality, built form, and creative industry development in the inner city’, Environment and Planning A, 38: 1819–41. Infrastructure Canada (2008) Resource Centre: Sustainable Community Planning and Development. Ottawa: Infrastructure Canada. Available at http://www.infrastructure.gc.ca/links-liens/ resources-ressources_e.shtml Jones, T. (2008) ‘The creative convergence project’. Presentation at Creative Construct: Building for Culture and Creativity, 28 April–1 May, Ottawa, Canada. Kadekodi, G.K. (1992) ‘Paradigms of sustainable development’, Journal of SID, 3: 72–6. Keane, M. (2007) ‘Reimagining chinese creativity: rise of a super sign’, in G. Lovink and N. Rossiter (eds), My Creativity Reader. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. Kwatinetz, M. (2008) ‘Artist centres as cultural incubators: the capitol hill arts centre’. Presentation at Creative Construct: Building for Culture and Creativity, 28 April–1 May, Ottawa, Canada. Landry, C. (2000) The Creative City. London: Comedia. Lee, K.-S. (2007) ‘Questioning a neoliberal urban regeneration policy: the rhetoric of cities of culture and the city of Gwangju, Korea’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 13(4) (November): 335–47. Lefebrve, H. (1991) The Production of Space. (Transl. D Nicholson-Smith). Oxford: Blackwell.

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Markus, T.A. (1993) Buildings and Power: Freedom and Control in the Origin of Modern Building Types. London: Routledge. Massey, D. (1994) Space, Place and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mercer, C. (2006) ‘Local policies for cultural diversity: systems, citizenship, and governance with an emphasis on the UK and Australia’, Local Policies for Cultural Diversity. Barcelona: United Cities and Local Governments. Mommaas, H. (2004) ‘Cultural clusters and the post-industrial city: towards the remapping of urban cultural policy’, Urban Studies, 41(3) (March): 507–32. New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage (2006) Cultural Well-being and Local Government. Report 1: Definition and Context of Cultural Well-being. Wellington, NZ: New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Nurse, K. (2006a) Culture as the Fourth Pillar of Sustainable Development. Paper prepared for Commonwealth Secretariat, London, UK, June. Nurse, K. (2006b) ‘Culture as the fourth pillar of sustainable development’, Small States, 11: 28–40. Paget, J. (2008) ‘Financing capital costs of artist housing and cultural facilities in Massachusetts’. Presentation at Creative Construct: Building for Culture and Creativity, 28 April–1 May, Ottawa, Canada. Pratt, A. (2002) ‘Creative clusters: towards a critical appreciation of concepts and practice’. Presentation at the Creative Clusters Summit, November, Sheffield, UK. Regional Vancouver Urban Observatory (2006) Counting on Vancouver: Our View of the Region. Vancouver: Regional Vancouver Urban Observatory, Simon Fraser University. Available at http://www.rvu.ca/dmdocuments/CoV_Report_ english.pdf Rhoades, R.E. (ed.) (2006) Development with Identity: Community, Culture and Sustainability in the Andes. Oxfordshire: CABI. Richards, G. and Wilson, J. (2007) ‘Tourism development trajectories: from culture to creativity?’, in G. Richards and J. Wilson (eds), Tourism, Creativity and Development. London: Routledge. pp. 1–33. Robinson, J. (2006) Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development. London: Routledge. Roseland, M., with Connelly, S., Hendrickson, D., Lindberg, C. and Lithgow, M. (2005) Towards Sustainable Communities:

Resources for Citizens and Their Governments (Rev. edn). Gabriola Island, BC: New Society. Sacco, P.L., Williams, B. and Del Bianco, E. (2007) The Power of the Arts in Vancouver: Creating a Great City. Vancouver: VanCity. Sandercock, L. (2003) Cosmopolis II: Mongrel Cities in the 21st Century. London/New York: Continuum. Sassen, S. (2006) Cities in a World Economy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Schlesinger, P. (2007) ‘Creativity: from discourse to doctrine?’, Screen, 48(3): 377–87. Sharpe, D., Jones, T., Lea, T., Jones, K. and Harvey, S. (2004) Critique and Consolidation of Research into the Spillover Effects of Investment in Cultural Facilities. Final report submitted to the Department of Canadian Heritage by Toronto Artscape, the Ryerson Centre for the Study of Commercial Activity, and the City of Vancouver. Stern, M.J. and Seifert, S.C. (2007) Cultivating ‘Natural’ Cultural Districts. Philadelphia: The Reinvestment Fund of the Rockefeller Foundation and Social Impact of the Arts Project, University of Pennsylvania. Available at http://www.trfund.com/ resource/downloads/creativity/NaturalCulturalDistricts.pdf Thorpe, A. (2007) The Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability: Charting the Conceptual Landscape through Economy, Ecology, and Culture. Washington, DC: Island. Throsby, D. (2001) Economics and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Uzzell, D., Pol, E. and Badenas, D. (2002) ‘Place identification, social cohesion, and environmental sustainability’, Environment and Behavior, 34: 26–53. Waltman Daschko, M. (2008) The State of Data on Canada’s Cultural Infrastructure: A Review and Analysis of Data Sources available for an Examination of Canada’s Cultural Infrastructure, 1961 to 2007. Appendix A in Duxbury et al., Under Construction: The State of Cultural Infrastructure in Canada. Vancouver: Centre of Expertise on Culture and Communities, Simon Fraser University. Wierzbicki, A.P. and Nakamori, Y. (2005) ‘Further dimensions of Creative Space’, in A.P. Wierzbicki and Y. Nakamori (eds), Creative Space: Models of Creative Processes for the Knowledge Civilization Age. New York: Springer. pp. 91–124. World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) Our Common Future. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.

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CHAPTER 19 LITERARY HYBRIDS AND THE CIRCUITS OF TRANSLATION: THE EXAMPLE OF MIA COUTO Stefan Helgesson

Translation is central to understanding how cultural expression travels and is transformed. While much critique of the globalization of literature focuses on the hegemony – and homogenizing tendencies – of English, a close comparative study of actual translations tells a different story. With the Mozambican writer Mia Couto’s work as its main example, the chapter shows how each translation may allow different meanings and emphases to emerge. Even Couto’s own writerly practice, with its hybridized language, can be read as a translation of sorts that addresses the consequences of an earlier globalization, i.e., colonialism. Hence, translation functions creatively and sometimes critically at many levels of a ‘globalized’ literature.

Literary translation is a thoroughly creative act. As the etymology of the Latin word translatus (past participle of transferre) indicates, translation is a form of displacement, and in this way resembles the transferral of an object from one place to another. When the French artist Marcel Duchamp put a bottledryer – to use a paradigmatic, twentiethcentury example of creative displacement – in an art gallery, it acquired new meaning as an object. This is not unlike what happens in literary translation. A book, a story, or a set of poems is removed from its original context and received elsewhere. But the creativity of translation goes beyond sheer transferral. The material properties of a physical object may remain the same even as its significance changes, whereas literary translation by definition entails a wholesale transformation. The very material of a poem or a story – words – is replaced by another set of words. This makes ‘it’, the poem or story that is supposedly both the same and fully transformed, accessible to a new group of readers. In an Indian context, this rather baffling process has been dubbed ‘transcreation’ (Lal, 1996; Salvador, 2005: 194–5), a term which emphasizes the translator’s active role in mediating literary expression across languages. In my view, such creativity should be thought of as an ambiguous phenomenon. This can be difficult given the strongly positive connotations of the word ‘creativity’, but I wish rather to see it as an inevitable feature of translation that may involve gains as well as losses. Translation is the means by which something new emerges in the dynamic interaction between languages, places and cultures. In so far as globalization – as mentioned in the Introduction to this volume – has been criticized as a ‘one-way decoding’ that flattens the differences between cultures and imposes a single standard of meaning on forms of creativity around the world, the study of translation will show how the decoding, or transcoding rather, is not only a two-way but also a multilateral process engaging a number of different agents and with numerous outcomes. In this way,

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literary translation itself emerges as a form of hybridizing creativity that is impossible to ascribe to any single ‘creator’ or author but instead is an amorphous, temporally drawn-out collective process, where the various players in general don’t even get to meet in person. To take the simplest imaginable example from the work of the Mozambican writer Mia Couto, we can see how a narrative statement such as ‘Recordo meu pai nos chamar um dia’ (Couto, 2000a [1992]: 16) is transformed through the agency of translators into ‘Jeg husker godt at far tilkalte oss en dag’ (Couto, 1994c: 16), ‘Ich erinnere mich, dass mein Vater uns eines Tages rief’ (Couto, 1994b: 14), ‘Je me souviens comme notre père nous rassembla un jour’ (Couto, 1994a: 18), ‘Jag minns hur far en dag kallade oss till sig’ (Couto, 1995: 20), and ‘I remember our father calling us one day’ (Couto, 2006a: 8). Something new happens in every language, although all of these sentences substitute for each other. At the most obvious level, new sounds and combinations of letters are introduced with each language. Less obviously, deeply embedded in context, the unspoken assumptions that make languages possible to use are shifted around or replaced with each new translation, even in such an apparently straightforward statement. What, after all, are the different valencies of the words ‘pai’, ‘Vater’, ‘père’, ‘far’, and ‘father’? Or, if we aim at a more sophisticated level of reading, what are the differences between how French, Norwegian and Brazilian readers perceive the status of a father in a story from Mozambique? What different imaginary maps of Africa are evoked in different cultural contexts? These are intricate and even intractable questions that may lead us into an infinite regress of introspection (as regards personal cultural experiences) or anthropological analysis, and hence further and further away from the literary text. But the questions are nonetheless valid. They show how translation is situated ambivalently but productively between communication and incommunicability. In this chapter, with Mia Couto as my main example, I wish to argue that this unstable, contextdependent faultline between what can and cannot be communicated constitutes the very condition not only of literary translation but also of all literary creativity that is bound up with the differential processes of globalization. I am interested, in other words, not only in how the work of a writer such as

Mia Couto is translated, but also in how his own writerly practice engages critically with a transcultural, even ‘global’, translation process. In translation studies – a sprawling field of inquiry that came into its own as an academic discipline in the 1970s (Bassnett, 1991: 1) – there was a decisive turn in the 1980s towards studying how translation enables communication by accommodating the target culture. Proceeding from the key terms ‘source text’ (meaning the ‘original’) and ‘target text’ (meaning the translation), a theorist such as Gideon Toury stressed that translations are ‘facts of target cultures’ (1995: 29). Lal (whose work is a less known off-shoot of translation studies) likewise argued that the target text should be absorbed into its new context: ‘I mean that it is imperative for a translator to bow to the culture of the age in which, or for which, he is writing’ (1996: 46). Lawrence Venuti, one of the most distinctive translation theorists today, has also observed that ‘[t]he viability of a translation is established by its relationship to the cultural and social conditions under which it is produced’ (1995: 18). Venuti wishes however to resist such accommodation, which he describes in terms of ‘domestication’ and ‘fluent translation’, and has famously proposed that translators should instead pursue ‘foreignizing’ practices as ‘a strategic cultural intervention in the current state of world affairs, pitched against the hegemonic English-language nations and the unequal cultural exchanges in which they engage their global others’ (1995: 20). As we can see, even Venuti’s argument is nonetheless directed towards what he perceives as the needs (and shortcomings) of the target culture, namely the hegemonic English-speaking countries. Foreignizing in this respect amounts to a more refined way of communicating the distinctiveness of the source text across cultural and linguistic distances. The divergent strategies of domestication and foreignization, then, both of which were prefigured by the German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher (2004) in the early nineteenth century, retain a consistent focus on optimizing the impact of the target text in the target culture. A different approach, it seems, would be to stress untranslatability and hence the integrity of the source text and source culture. This figure of thought has enjoyed great currency throughout history. We find it being rehearsed both in European romanticism and modernism (Snell-Hornby, 2006; Steiner, 1975) as well as, more recently, in

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poststructuralism and postcolonial studies (Apter, 2006; Derrida, 2001; Maharaj, 2001; Spivak, 1993). What this often amounts to – and here I am of course simplifying the matter – is a resistance to translation as such that is a refusal to accede to the demands of the target culture. In postcolonial contexts particularly, asymmetries of power between dominated source cultures and dominant target cultures – as, for example, between vernacular Indian cultures and British imperial power – are what have fuelled the suspicion of translation. In Tejaswini Niranjana’s formulation, translation as a practice ‘shapes, and takes shape within, the asymmetrical relations of power that operate under colonialism’ (1992: 2). Accordingly, if anticolonialism was buttressed by what Partha Chatterjee (1993: 120) has called the defence of the ‘inner spiritual self’ against the material force of colonialism, then this was to its very core a form of resistance to translation. In Mia Couto’s work – as shall be seen below – a similar scepticism towards translation is a recurring theme. And yet we do translate. Even the most eloquent sceptics of translation will stop short of denying its existence or pragmatic necessity. Indeed, in so far as globalization is marked by the accelerated transcontinental circulation of people and goods, and the adaptation of local forms of knowledge to transnational norms, ours is a time of translation par excellence. Every interaction involving people or messages from different places will require some form of translation, be it between or within languages. The acceleration of this process is noticeable also in the world of literary writing – not just in terms of the production of target texts, but also even more pointedly in the emergence of source texts that function more or less openly as translations. Consider the following list of writers from the eighteenth century onwards: Olaudah Equiano (Nigeria/Great Britain), José Rizal (Philippines), Raja Rao (India), Chinua Achebe (Nigeria), Ahmadou Kourouma (Ivory Coast), José Craveirinha (Mozambique), Yvonne Vera (Zimbabwe), Rigoberta Menchu (Guatemala), and Assia Djebar (Algeria). All of them write or have written in a transplanted, (formerly) colonial, language. The emancipated slave Equiano wrote in English. Rizal, the great Philippino nationalist author of the nineteenth century, wrote in Spanish, as does Menchu. Kourouma and Djebar chose French as their medium. Craveirinha wrote in Portuguese, and the remaning three in English. It would be misleading

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to say – as is occasionally the case – that these writers use languages that are not their own, since to ‘have’ a language can take many forms, but that they are all bilingual or polyglot. This list is of course arbitrary. I could have included scores of other writers, particularly if we take into account the mother-tongue speakers of French, English, Spanish and Portuguese in former European colonies that produce literature in the European languages that have travelled the globe. As a Mozambican of Portuguese descent, Mia Couto falls into the latter category. This situation has prompted an increasingly sophisticated theorization of literary writing as a mode of translation in its own right. Classics of postcolonial studies such as Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture (1994), Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism (1993) and Elleke Boehmer’s Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (1995) deal broadly, and sometimes explicitly, with this phenomenon. More specific examples would be Salvador’s (2005: 198) analysis of how Raja Rao conveys cultural specifities proper to his mother tongue (Kannada) in English, or Gyasi’s argument in his article ‘Writing as Translation’ that African literature is characterized by ‘the authors’ transposition of African oral and traditional literary techniques into the European [and europhone] written genre’ (1999: 85). From a comparable yet inverted perspective, Brazilian writers and artists have since the 1920s employed the metaphor of cannibalism (see Chapter 3 of this book by Gerardo Mosquera) to describe their own specific process of (re-)creation through an active appropriation of materials from the ‘outside’ (Madureira, 2005), which is less a case of transposing the dominated culture into the dominant code, and rather of reshaping the dominant code to suit one’s own needs. The translational aspects of source texts are crucial to an understanding of the different modalities of literature’s globalization. If writers such as Couto or Chinua Achebe, in their hybrid use of Portuguese and English respectively, are involved in two parallel translational responses to the long history of globalization – I am thinking of how they respond to the history of Portuguese and British colonialism – then their circulation across other languages and their marketability as ‘postcolonial writers’ are more distinctly linked to the current phase of globalization, defined succinctly if reductively by Gayatri Spivak as ‘the imposition of the same system of exchange everywhere’ (2003: 72). Huggan

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(2001) and Brouillette (2007) in particular have offered extensive critiques of the global marketing of postcolonial writing, which involves a transposition of literature that has emerged out of the conflictual concerns of an earlier globalization (colonialism) to the present-day neoliberal world order. Curiously, however, neither Huggan nor Brouillette take translation between languages into account. To clarify: when Couto’s work moves among readerships in Mozambique, Portugal, Angola and Brazil (all of them lusophone countries), then it invokes cultural memories relating to Portuguese colonialism and decolonization. His frequent neologisms, such as ‘desacontecimento’ (‘unhappening’ [2000c: 200]) or ‘fraqueleza’ (literally ‘frailress’, the opposite of ‘fortress’ [1996: 22]), will remind a Brazilian reader of a writer such as João Guimarães Rosa and his postcolonial re-invention of the Portuguese language (Daniel, 1995). In Portugal, on the other hand, the Mozambican context of Couto’s stories and his critical portrayal of Portuguese settlers in Mozambique will mobilize memories of the ‘colonial wars’ and of Portugal’s heavy-handed exploitation of its colonies – or alternatively, which is more common, will simply add to a post-imperial and disingenuous sense of pride that ‘our’ language, thanks to the global reach of ‘lusofonia’, is producing such fine literature in far-flung corners of the world (Margarido, 2000). In Mozambique, of course, Mia Couto will be read in the main as a national writer who adds, in complex ways, to the ongoing construction of that elusive sense of national identity known as ‘moçambicanidade’ (Matusse, 1998; Rothwell, 2004). The work of one and the same author, then, without switching languages but simply by being circulated in various parts of the world, can signify very differently. As soon as Couto’s work moves out of the disparate communities of lusophone readerships and is translated into languages such as German, Norwegian, Catalan or Hebrew, yet other dynamics are brought into play, however. At the most general level, one could say that its entanglement with the diversified ‘long history’ of Portuguese imperialism is filtered and objectified. The challenge to Portuguese linguistic and cultural norms is no longer possible to convey linguistically but instead is reduced to the level of ‘theme’ or ‘content’. At the same time, translators re-create aspects of Couto’s linguistic innovations in ways that neither the source text nor target

culture can fully dictate or contain. It is in this regard erroneous to reduce, as Huggan (2001), Brouillette (2007) and Venuti (1995; 1998) tend to do, the globalization of literature to a matter of Anglo-American hegemony. Translations of Couto cut across 23 languages, without English as a mediator, and result in successive, internally different, hybrid articulations. The Swedish translator Marianne Eyre’s decision to render Couto’s neologism ‘perturbabado’ (Couto, 2000a [1992]: 106) as ‘blygförvirrad’ (Couto, 1995: 109) – in the much later English translation normalized as ‘perturbed’ (Couto, 2006a: 96) – is one example of such a hybrid articulation that neither belongs in any single linguistic or cultural context, nor is a generalizable feature of the various translations. Translation produces in such unforeseeable ways a creative excess, belonging not to any national language or literature, but to a protean realm of ‘world literature’ (see Damrosch, 2003; Helgesson, 2006; and Prendergast, 2004, for discussions of world literature). I will demonstrate some further aspects of this ambiguous process below. To what degree the differential modes of such globalization depend on the individual translator’s idiosyncracies rather than on systemic aspects of the target con