Intendant Culturele Diversiteit

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INTENDANT
CULTURELE
DIVERSITEIT

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cultural diversity

Cultural diversity

‘Anybody can imbibe different cultures today. They are available for anybody that feels close to those cultures and can integrate. A person in China can perform the Ramayana or the Mahabharata. There must come a moment when that question should not be asked in the future. Perhaps the only Utopia that exists today in this state of complete wilderness is this idea of making a globalised human being with the local inherent in him or her. That is the only way that something called progress can actually take place.’
Nalini Malani

Unexpectedly, during the nineties of the previous century, three elements crept into the international contemporary art world that now dominate` the field. These were globalisation, social political engagement and the rise of video / new media art. The 11th Documenta in Kassel was a good example of this newly existing situation. In contrast to the changing powers of globalisation the international and with that also Dutch politics still always tend to express themselves and to judge in terms of nationalities. As Tiong Ang expressed it in an interview: ‘For some reason governments find it very important that they are represented as a nation at different international exhibitions. This in spite of the fact that artists don’t seem to care for it. National Identity is, of course, difficult to translate into images except if you are interested in cliches and that I certainly am not.’
This archaic approach to politics does not necessarily lead to the gaining of insights into the concept of the new world that surrounds us. A world that typifies itself by a rapidly increasing complexity and in which increasingly more people voluntarily or compulsorily live in multicultural circumstances that can cause the necessary serious disorientation. As Marina Abramovic once said: ‘I used to dream in Yugoslavian but now my dreams are multilingual. I really think I lose my identity more and more.’

That the world of contemporary art is no longer dominated by ‘the West’ seems to be the case from a series of exhibitions following the exhibition Magiciens de la Terre (Magicians of the Earth from 1989, such as Inklusion : Exklusion and When Lattitudes become Form. Also the non-western participation in the excessive growth of the Biënnales testifies to this. In the centuries preceding this one the ‘other world’ is frequently seen from a nervous short-sighted Western perspective, as is also the artists’ testimonies over the ‘Orientalism’. The one-sided visions of the latter make one wonder what the superficial contacts with other cultures achieves. In her book Orientalism Christine Peltre, director of the Kunsthistorisch Instituut at the Marc Bloch University in Straatsburg, defines the one-sided problematic but also confirms that the 21st century will introduce a whole new phase of Orientalism. This phase takes on the form of a critical dialogue, or, as Rachid Boudjedra rightly remarks according to Peltre: ‘This East-West, West-East interchange testifies to a confluence vital to humanity’s future, a future endlessly, elusively, spontaneously developing via the other.’ This is also the summary of Michael Sullivans. In his much earlier published book The meeting of Eastern and Western Art, he emphasises that we must come to a situation in which the eternal contradictory and yet complementary powers can stimulate and enrich each other so that a dynamic interaction exists instead of a sterile synthesis.

Given the present accelerated multicultural processes the question remains, ‘How can we understand each other from various diverse backgrounds?’, the need growing daily. Translated into art history terms the most pressing question is, in my opinion: ‘Is Art History Global?’, referring to the title of James Elkins’ most recent publication. In advance of this questioning of the range of instruments comes the question ‘Is Art Global?’. In 2004 I have experimentally tried to find possible answers and searching questioning by means of the project CC: Crossing Currents-Video Art and Cultural Identity in New Delhi. Around 2000 I confirmed that in a world in which digital art found its way easier than ever into the mondial art circuit there is still a lot of Asian looking art attracting attention at Western presentation locations. Further examination of this shows that Western artists had made this art during their ‘adventurous’ research travels. On the other hand more Asian artists than ever studied at Western art academies. They came to a style that appeared Western in its form of design, composition etc. Both groups of artists had success in the West. Here the question was raised in my mind: ‘How should the Indian art-loving public react to digital works by Dutch artists that once worked in India and to Indian artists that have studied and worked in the West?’. Within the experimental set-up the names of the artists were placed obscurely to prevent a rapid reference to the original cultural background. The more than 4500 visitors ensured a good range of stimulating questions, ideas and ‘mistakes’ to the forefront. This problematic is at artist’s level further developed into a series of interviews in the similarly-named book CC: Crossing Currents-Video Art and Cultural Identity. In this Vivan Sundaram suggests for example: ‘When your work on International Biennials is without cultural specifications it then happens that the Western Public might say since there is nothing Indian or Chinese about it, we are not interested in it.’

Nowadays it is more than clear that profound cultural exchanges are only possible to a certain extent. This is the impression of the art critic Guy Bret during the conference Contemporary Curating in the Context of the Transnational regarding the fact that the expression ‘lost in translation’ can sometimes better be replaced by ‘gained in translation’. This applies for example to a number of ‘Japanese’ works by Van Gogh. We recognise that we are always connected by a medley of cultural backgrounds. Our identity is far from stable and changes as a result of unexpected developments. Perhaps we will never achieve a translation computer within the multicultural fine art world. Something I dreamed of as a student at the beginning of the eighties, as a result of the Iconclass research project at the University of Leiden and the developments within the New Art History. While art history only makes slow progress, other sciences meanwhile follow new paths. H. Procee makes a plea in his research project Over de grenzen van culturen - voorbij universalisme en relativisme for a ‘pluralism’ whereby ‘interactive variety’ is the starting point within the multicultural society for a new philosophy.

The Fund for the fine arts, design and architecture (BKVB Fund) is thoroughly aware that we live in a crucial epoch. A new paradigm of itself stabilising, continually changing cultural diversity is one of the possibilities. This model forms an alternative vision within the globalisation and stands diametrically opposite to what Huntington predicts in his much cited book The Clash of Civilizations. It may have been an extremely successful book but would have been better if it were called The ongoing Clash of Orthodox Religions. That was perhaps less attractive but certainly clearer.

The large scale international pilot project ‘Intendant Culturele Diversiteit’ of the BKVB Fund is a serious attempt to support this new paradigm with partial investigations from the perspective of the creative disciplines. The experimental process into the complexities and mutating cultural diversities is directed towards intendants that lead a multicultural life themselves. The emphasis on the process and the establishment thereof, that makes the research trajectory at least as important as the eventual presentation form. The six chosen projects comprise only a small part of the research field, overlapping each other occasionally and are in some cases even partly contradictory. This latter can only benefit the research.
In order to give the project a serious chance there is a period of a year and a half planned for it. In the projects it is not only the finding of solutions that is considered but also through creation and dialogue the exploration of unexpressed and unknown partial fields, always in cooperation with local experts. Given the open character of the project, failure in the form of possibly not being able to exactly trace or clarify is also a real option. In order to involve the public in the Netherlands and abroad in the process and the projects various public events are organised at irregular times that can vary widely in nature; from rough chunks of study material, refined performances, open hearted discussions, to confrontational exhibitions.

Johan Pijnappel
June 2007

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