749 2005 Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985 Edited by Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung een PublishingEiri material and orgaizason © 208 by Blackwol Publishing Lit 2380 Main tect Malden, MA 0218-5020, USA 50 Garsington Rod, Oxford OX4200, UK ‘520 Swanston Seat, Caro, Vitra 3055, Australia “The sight of Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung ob denied asthe Authors of the tori Materia n this Work hasten ses in ccrdanes wits he UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 988, Altsighe reserve, No prt ofthis peblction may be reproduce stand in retrieval stem, ‘rteasmite, any form or by any means, elton mechs, phoeopying recording oF tiers, except a permite by the UK Copyright Deg and Pan's AC 1988, without the prior persion ofthe publisher. First plished 205 by lace Publishing Lit tary of Congres Caton Patton Date “Taryn contomporary rt since 185 etd by Zoya Kou and Simon Leung pom. Includes biographical elerences and ines. SBN 9780-631 2968-4 (hardcover lk paper) — IENS7S4481-22867-7 (pb. alk pope) 1. At, Modem 20 century Philosophy. Kozut, Zoy IL Leung Simon, 1964- N79 205 79.015 -ae2 oon catalogue cor fr thistite eavaiabe rom the British Library Setin 14/5 Dame by Graphic Le ong Kong Print and boa in singapore byyMarkono Pit Media Pe Li “The plier’ louse permanent pape rom mills that operate a tstanabe forestry piy, ‘et which hasbeen manufactured fem pulp proceed sng aide and mentary chornedree prac, Furthermore, he publisher ensures tht the tw paper and cover bane Used have met copable environmental aereditationstandares For further information on Blachrell Pblhing va our website: wo blakwvelpublshingcom [7 USFO BIBLIOTECA 6 HAO 2012' fGroup Materia Deo, 1982, poser projet at Union Square, New York City. Photograph pin 1982, pose coursy of Grup Mac epetd wis perweson of Doug And, . 9. PhotPte 2 Christian Pil Malle, Meg over Casing Barner Anti ad Dini of [tence Ap 1993 performance view t border erween Bangs. Aust and Rogel [Gechtensen, ne f eight border rong for the Anstvan contribution to che Ve Biennale 1993, Pho courtesy of America Fine Ars, New York Pica Ipesay of Death he Mi of Sone Ling, 193, gay, tee! scone shat, an 5% formaldehyde slain, 84x 252 84 in (2134 1291.5 212.4 em). Copyiht © Damien Hitt co Selence Lid. Courtesy Jay Joping/ White Cle (London, Photography soehony Olver,wan . fe ) eete 15 Cindy Sherman, One #175, 1987. Cony of thease and Metro Peas Pe 14 Jonge Pardo, #1 Ser View Lane, 1998 Photo by Simon Leung.Pie 16 Mike Kelley, Rule of he Spine, 1952, Courtesy of the art and 19 The Syncretic Turn Cross-Cultural Practices in the Age of Multiculturalism Jean Fisher "blindspox” in the debates on cultural identity and “multiculturalism” as they relate to the work ofthe black and non-European artist, both of which lead back to a question ofthe efficacy of at ise The fist involves the overall lure of| ‘mainstream’ ar criticism and aesthetics to conceptualize arc beyond the boundaries of Burocentrc aesthetic theories and their hierarchical value systems. casein point was the posthumous retrospective ofthe Brazilian artist Hélo Oitiica at the Witte de With in Rotterdam in 1992. These, a Eutopean at critic was overheard comment ing that Oitcica's work was “incoherent” since it covered a plurality of practices and ‘hus “wasnt art” ~ 2 surprising assessment if only considering the protean neo Ducharpian/Dadaist gestures ofthe late 1960s and 70s, where Oiticiea's work may be parly situated. Other erties recognized Oiticia’s relation to conceptualism, but dismissed this as “inauthentic” his practice was merely a reflection of Euroamerican tendencies and therefore wasn't authentically "Brazilian." That Buropean cis, with livle experience of other culture, assume they are qualified to make such assertions isa problem yet co be addressed. Such attudes are commonplace: on the one hand, the erection ofan exotiizing/ marginalizing screen through which the work of the ‘non-European is “read,” distracting atention away from its particular aesthetic com ‘cerns; and, on the other, an ignorance of the diversity of modernism each inflected Alfecenty through the specific contexts of cures ouside the northem mettopolises I part, the tajeccory of this inquity has been prompted by two related ‘hie gy rea eon ofan ey tt speared in Lia Gngano and Steven Nem ew Hit Thee of Ctopay Boston: The late, 990, pp 32-8. Reprod with ‘nt prison oF CA ‘The Syretic TurnBe [As it happens, Oiticics himself refused to call his work “ar” for the very reason thar the term is tainted with academicism, His project was to bring art out of the private domain of the studio into the public arena, using both local vernaculars and. modernist languages, in the belief that the essence of art was notin creative genius or the unique objec, but inthe processes of thought and action ~ in invention, play, and, transformation ~ in which both artist and viewer were participants. OF course, if one’s ides of art was as the privileged bearer of some transcendental meaning, then Oiticica’s work was nat “ar.” We have here, then, two irreconcilable concepts ofa one, the academe museum object with strictly defined codes, and the othe, @ tan farmative and open-ended proces "The second “bindspot” involves the discusion of context itself By the late 1970, many art writers, myself include, impatient with the lack of intellectual rigor of ar criticism and the narrovr perspective of art history, began to adopt an interdiscipin ary approach that extended outside the field of art. Aesthetic theory has been slow to radicalize itself relative co these other feds, such that questions ofthe aesthetic cicacy of a work have tended to be overshadowed by those of contest ~ national for ethnic identity, sociopolitics, and so forth, Tam not advocating a return to some hermetic formalist ritgue, but asking how we might more effectively understand the processes of art, especially where cross-cultural symbolic orders are employed, with ‘out making them a sub-category of, say, anthropology or sociology. Visual art remains ‘a materially baseal proces, fanetioning om the level of aft, aot purely semiotics | ie, a synaesthetic relation is established between work and viewer, which i in es of visual, Iv involves rather enigmatic sensations such as the vibrations of rhythm and spatality, a sense of scale and volume, of touch and smell, oflightnes,silness, | silence or noise, all of which resonate with the body and ts reminiscences and oper- | ate on the level of sense” not “meaning” For such reasons alone the work of art cannot be grasped in reproduction, Whils this is obvious to a practitioner, itis not | always 0 for an anthropologist or literary theorist, for whom artis more a cultural product than a dynamic process oF complex set of immanent and sensuous relations Ione adds to this the fact that work springs from an articulation berween whatever ‘minimal “codes” produce the recognition ofa process or thingas “art,” together with the particular psychosocial history ofits maker, then ultimately the meaning of any rework isnot strictly determinable and is potentially as nuanced as the number of viewers who interac with it, Inofsras it draws on local vernaculars or experience, repetitions, the “grain ofthe voice,” and the response ofthe receiver, artis closer to the parole of oral storytelling than most other visual or literary forms (i is ficult avoid linguistic analogies!) Non-academic at isa speaking not an already spoken. In short, art eriticim tends not to look at or address the experience ofthe work but at 4 commodifabe level of context. “This has deeply affected the relation berween ar fom the black or non-European artist and the Wester are system ~ its historiography, market, aestheti, and critical values ~ where the greater the work's visibley in terms of racial or ethnic context the less tis able to speak as an individual utterance. The galleries and museums have responded t0 the demand to end cultural marginality simply by exhibiting more Jean Fisher ee ron-Buropean artists, although on a selective and representative bass, provided that they demonstrate appropriate signs of cultural difference. This i to exotcize. Globe trotting has become a popular curatorial pastime, resulting in "geo-ethnic entertain ‘pens that maintain the unequal intellectual hieratchies between the are practices of ‘he Buropean and non-European, whilst also masking their unequal economic and power relations, Above al, they evade the complex negotiations that must rake place between European aesthetic languages and those of the rest ofthe world. For the West o frame and evaluate all cultural productions through is own enter and srereotypes of othemess is to seduce them to a spectacle of essentialist racial oF thn typology and to ignore their dividual insights and human values ‘pot meted out to the work of white European artists, “Thus, ane side of the problem has been insiutional ~ a conservatism of tradi sional Wester critical and curatorial practices that have assumed the universality of ‘heir ov criteria, that any form of making can be translated unproblematically into ‘Wester terms of reference, and that any work incorporating cross-cultural codes is igs fact “inanthentic” and inferior to a “pore” cultural entity (the “blind spot” of Magiciens de la terre in 1989). What i valued by art institutions becomes national pawimony, which in tur is intimately ted to myths ofan idealized national identity, not only on the level of assumed echnic characteristics but also through a consensis ‘of what constitutes a sophistiated internationalism (one which pertains throughout ‘he élite of Lagos and Sio Paulo as well as London and Pars). Bur che international: sm in question is also Eurocentric a universalist language of value judgments. Until this is broken down, and Western culture accepts itself as a parochialiom amongst many others, then we cannot have a true mukiculeuralism in which all perspectives have equal value ‘Ar the same rime, for reasons of artistic and economic survival, black and non: European arts have hac to acquiesce to promotion through the commodified signs of ‘edhnicity, which renders them complicit with the Western desire for the exotic other, gains which it can measure its own superiority. The exoticized arts is marked not 252 thinking subject and individual innovator in his and her own right, but as 2 bearer of prescribed and homogenized cultural signs and meanings. To be locked ino the frame of ethnicity is also to be locked out ofa rigorous philosophical and historical debate that risks crippling the work’sintllecwal development and exchud ing i fom che global cicaic of ideas where it rghtflly belongs. But the problem remains how to create « place from which itis possible eo speak and to be heard without compromising one's life experience whatever its source(), ‘rather perverse cm of thought is required that reconceptualizes cultural mar inalty no longer a a problem of invisibility but one ofan excesive vib in terms ‘ofa reading of cultural difference that i 100 readily marketable, This also relates t0 the tendency in colonial thought to equate what is visually verifiable with “truth, where superficial characteristics reflect the inner truth of being. The fac that black sn non-European artists are stil “expected” to produce either “ethnic” or “politica” art, whls other postions are tacitly ignored, suggests that “visibiliy” alone has not ‘been adequate to provide the condivions for an independent spesking subject. Aside The Synretie Tur Be5) Jun Fisher from the problem of instturional “indifference,” we might also look atthe strategies of are practice isl Much art ofthe late 1970s and '80s witha deliberate gender, sex, or racial politcal agenda coming from within the Wester system focused on viability in the form of autobiography: a “bearing witness” to an individual experience ofthe world t0 point ‘ut thatthe ofcal version of realty was not universal. At che time this strategy fad legitimacy. since, within the master narratives of Western art, other realities were excluded and this neded to be debated. However, the autobiographical in itself is no ‘guarantee ofan “authentic voice.” much lst a entique ofthe determinations of the symbolic order, since the self is inescapably socal in its formation. However, if there ‘was no essential, “authentic” sel, then, as has often been said, what was already a construct could be reconstructed to selfdererminable ends Promotion through a politics of racial difference during the early 1980, inspired in Britain by the fustration of a young generation of black artists emerging ftom art schools into an art system from which they were excluded, had limited success; a deliberately provocative tactic of cultural esentalsm helped to force cultural studies ‘onto the academic map and siphoned some institutional money toward so-called ethnic ans” galleries, and magazines. However, these strategies have also been counter productive for art; where the work has been incorporated exclusively into ‘dentity politics, has tended to become a sub-category of sociology or anthropology, iminising ts aesthetic or evtical efficacy. Where art takes up an essentialist position = even if this is a masquerading tactic ~ it sks becoming excluded by the exclusion ary politics it proffers, addressing a limited constituency which cannot alone sustain sn adequate production or promotional support system, An absurd situation arses fn which black artists are expected to make art only about “black” issues - as if, for fnstance, racism was not a subject for presentation in dominant white culture. “Moreover, these issues ae already institutionalize inthe chetoric ofthe mass media, and hence "containable." ‘The problem of identity debated through the conventionally cicculating signs of “otherness” creates a visibility tht is measurable, thereby foreclosing that enigmatic space in which the coherence of my selfhood could be challenged, or different and ‘common sealities imagined. The value of such work was tht it reclaimed ar from is entrapment inthe ahistorical space of formalism and gave back historieal and geo- _zaphic specificity: is failure rested in ts inability to enter a more philosophical and aesthetic debate that would interrogate the deep structures of aur relations to reality Perhaps, one needs to think of cultutal expression not on the level ofthe sign but in terms of concept and deep structure: to consider the work's internal rationale and ‘what governs the aesthetic choices an artist might make about materials and process, and, in particular, like Hélio Oiticiea, vo pay atention to the structures of reception — the work's prychosomatic relation with the viewer. Areworks from symbolic systems alien to ou own do have an effect on us, but we will not mutually benef from such encounters if we allow the prescribed screens of ethnicity or anthropology to inter pret aesthetic experience for us Cover the past few years, the most popularly cited model of cross-cultural expres sion has been Homi Bhabha’s notion of hybridity." On the face off, this seems a ‘sefil model (fits ako possible ro imagine that somewhere in this alienating world 4 human being exists in a “non-hybeid” state), Sarat Maharsj points out, however, that in its popularity hybridity risks becoming an essentialist opposite to the now denigrated "cultural purty" Hybrdiy i, moreover, ate sl flaught with connota tions of origins and redemption: wo discrete entities combine to produce a third that is capable of resolving ts “parental” contradictions, Hybridity, however, in this schema does not extticate us from a selother dualism and the implication of loss and redemption in the formation ofthe third term, 1m looking for a way out of such reductionism, Marcos Becquer and José Gatti proposed that we reconsider the notion of syncretism, which is not synonymous ‘wth hybridity, They argue that syncretism has the advantage of implying not fixed ements but a contingent afiliation of disparate rerms capable of shifting positions oraltering relations depending on circumstances, and whose bounclries are perme- tle. They also argue thatthe term be re politicized from its de politicized passage through religious discourse, as away to think theough the possiblity of individual agency. In any case, conceived as a dynamic proces, syncretism allows that between sparate factors there i no simple translation, but an element of untransltablity, ‘which i a potential space of productive renewal 1c is dificult to make a clear distinction berween hybridity and syneretism in @ ‘work of art; but Twant to offer one in rather anecdotal way. The Mexican film of 102 Neve mn, concered the miraculous appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe in siteenth-century Mexico, proposing, somewhat heretcally, that it was che Catholic CChuseh itself that invented her out of political expediency. The bishop discovers Aztec “idols” hidden behind the images of Catholic saints in the church, assuming that his Indians had not, afterall, Ben converted. His interrogations fll to produce 2 culprit. The clergy, abstaining from punishing the Indians for fear of another uprising, hit ona compromise: the Catholic icon maker was to paint an image of the \adonna using an Indian model, eake i secretly tothe shrine of Tonanzin, the Aztec “earth mother.” and then claim that he had painted it from a vision. In fact, the “Indianized” Virgin di serve to pacify some of the unsest amongst the colonized Mexicans and Spanish colonials freting about their forced allegiances to Spain Guadalupe was 2 Mexican-bom symbol with which all could identify, and as such, redemptive. It was, nonetheless, a “hybrid” manufactured (in this account) by the Church and seamlessly translated into Christian orthodoxy as if Tonanzin’s identity had been absorbed by che Vngin. What remains syncretic in this tle, however, isthe tactic of the Indian painter, who was indeed the maker of both Aztec and Catholic cons, and whose masquerading shrines ~ a doubled system ~ gave the Indians a spiritual choice “The Americas as well as Aftica are replete with such examples in which resisance Co the aggressively imposed culture takes the form of a conscious but concealed masquerade, where the alien sign is used to disguise the meaning ofthe repressed ‘The Syereic Ture GEae referent, or where only those signs whose meanings can be remotivated to the sub fonlinated symbolic order are adopted. It may look like ambivalence ftom the “out ut it is subversive statement for those on the “inside.” Such tactics do nor necessarily produce @ los of cultural meaning, but an elaboration; che repressed cl ‘ments survive in some form within the interstices ofthe instituionalized language, Contaminating ie witha pulsion or murmur always ready to destabilize its syntactical land semantic fields, and hence, its established meanings. ‘Without substnuing one imperfect cotural model for another, we can begin to speculate that whereas hybridity hinges on the visbilty ofa sgn that seeks to establish itself and attempt co resolve ambiguity, syneretism is concemed with con. stantly mobile relations that operate on the stricture of languages and at the level of perfomnance, {Art practice that seks a place from which to speak and be heard almost inevitably _means dissenting from the prevailing insccutionalized language. The issue a take is the structure of spectatorship ~ the mode of adress by which art seeks @ rapport ‘with its audience. Where radical is assumed to ie simply in the “message,” we are in the territory of already circulating signs and meanings, of “information,” of the language ofthe already known (even if unacknowledged) together with ts attendant value judgment, which does not open anew space of te imagination. To produce the lteer means finding a way of speaking that cannot ie only in the common, pattems of signification, bu in attending to how the receiver inhabits language itself. Here I should like to touch on the work of three artists, Jimmie Durham, Gabriel razco, and Santi Quesada, who live and work among a plurality of cultura signs. Durham recognized that ie was precisely che commodified forms of language that somehow needed to be challenged, He played a number of rhetorical strategies throughout the 1980s, one of which was co parody the metalanguage of ethnography = Wester academic discipline historically complicit with the repression of native American cultures ~ exemplified by the installation of fue ethnographic artifacts, (On Loon fiom the Museum ofthe American Indian, 1985. While the work satisted a notion that the “othered” arvst might speak through disguise or masquerade, a8 Durham himself realized, t was still too dependent fr effect on visible signs of other- ness, even if these were reflections of Eurocentic stereotypes. The same problem ‘was inherent in his attempts at undermining Westen aesthetics through a strategy of eo-primiiviem ~ playing the idee sarge, or expressing 2 chilike incompetence, fas in the series of drawings on Caliban’s struggle with the identity imposed by Prospero, For Durham, the neo-primisvist aspect of the work was ultimately too appealing to a white audience seeking a edemprive pre-industrial utopia, Durham has played out the problem of cultural identity to is limits as an infinite mirroring of selves and others, multiplying and inverting expected identities, all of ‘which pointed out the fundamental ikeuthewicity of any identity. The sign as stan ing in for of representing what is crucially absent or an imaginary phantasm can be ‘nothing but inauthentic. Not Lothar Baumgarten's Cherokee presented the incommen surabilty between the phantasmic self and other through the juxcaposition of two ‘marginalized languages, Finnish and Cherokee. Iesignaled a space of untranslatabilty Jean Fisher CHARTER Hitt i Gabe bathe Bn Pragns notte doses Hides Ais. ae Po cor te a onsen tomatinae | an des Selb + Med Ire der 2 sue enpuregy: Up doe et ny let pe i Np May AT eh sda wap ing it, Gere) — me ‘gre 19. Durham, Unite, 192. Peni on paper (2 15 in) from a sere of 1 eawings: IDS?) Pate collection, Belgium. Phot courtesy Ncole Klagsbvun Galley, New Yor that refused to allow us to map ourselves as coherent subjects of knowledge, expos ing our own othemess oF discontinuity within Dusham’s discursive field. At base, Duham’s work s less about “cultural identity” than about effects of language, shift ing the debate from the alltoo-isible exotic and therefore silenced body to the speaking body. Gabriel Orozco made a vietue out of nea invisibility and transience ip much of is Work ofthe early 1900s, His materials have incladed dust, a trace of breath on a piano, consumer ems rearranged in a supermarket, or sand balls camouflaged in rocks, The work emerges out ofa presgiven substratum that one might imagine as cither an effect of viral contamination or the logical effect of energy on matter ~art 4 nothing if noe the mutual articulation of thought, matter, and body, And this is ‘The Syereic Tarn 2)2 gue 122 Santi Quesada, The Fee an On ey, 1996 Bw por (100% 0 em) and polyester eulpre (68 135 #10 em). Courtesy ofthe at. ‘what is expressed in Mis manos zon mi conszin, 1990: hump of brick cay squeezed in ‘the hands and fied to produce a bony hear. I figures the process of ar-making, a8 ‘well a the osification of the over-womn bleeding heart symbol of Meaico. The pro cess of recycling, or emotivation of signs alludes moreover to culture's processes of retum and transformation, and tothe salvaging practices in countries where waste and shit are part of the life process [see plate 8 ‘That culture is a process of renewal, transformed through imaginative work, individual and collective, om language, # central to the work of Sant} Quesada, an axtist who relocate from Cuba to Britain, from Spanish to English. An early painting shows two Figures siting on a beach, an overload of lines drawn into the paint ‘making uncertain their Boundaries. A third, sicclike Figure emerges energetically between them disturbing their sranguilisy with an invective of neologisms, Jean Fiher ‘What these and other structural maneuvers suggest i an understanding of existence not through the objective wosld in itself but inthe sometimes obscured structures of fs relations ~ inthe transactions and transformative processes that ensue from our encounters between things and peopl, or from the continuous recycling of shit and wast into new products ~ a metaphor for the continuous reinvention of language from common resources. This imagination that secks a syncretic solution without the signs of otherness produces chimeras, a8 in Fourteen Drawings and One Melee), 1995; drawn and seulpwural forms that derive from the art's invention of ai “yrfigute” that could stand fo the multidirectional potency of if Or the forms may allude to the circuir of fe, death, and resurrection. The related Thee Faces avd One -eoagy, 1996, in which a syntactical relation is made between the image ofthe artist phocographed “emerging” from the object together with the sculpture itself, would seem fo figure the concept of death and resurrection in language itself, The object, primordial and nov-yet-codiible, itself inabits that space between potentiality and realization, realized, ultimately through the viewer's imaginative intervention: iden tty bom ofthe syncretic imagination may follow many pathways. “This site ofthe as. yet unnameable provides no privileged locus in terms of origin for destination and hence no “authentic” or visible itty by which to trap the subject. isthe “no-place’ where language falters, where it exposes its own indeter tminacy, and therefore isthe space of transaction from which one can begin agai, in the spirit of Helio Oiticca, the collaborative work of aesthetic invention, play, and ‘vansformation Notes 1 Forhis dacuson of pry, ee Hom Bhat, Signs Taken oc Wonders Questions of abn an tory Under aTee Ouse DE, May 1817 na Wiig ‘ut Die Henry Lol Cates (Congo: The Ueno Chicago Pre, 98) 2 Soot Mabaso dye Unto of tb Oe” nb! Vo: Ter tw ciation se Wal re er ont: VR a al Dre 90 pp. 23 1 Maroc an Jon Cat Een of Yop” Thi ea 161789) 8-8 ‘The Syereic Tum ai