In conjunction with the ‘Identities versus Globalisation?’ art exhibition opening at the Chiang Mai Art Museum, the Heinrich Böll Foundation organised the conference

“Debating the politics of culture, identity and globalisation”

Concept note and speaker abstracts for the Symposium

“Encounters with ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘globalism’ –
a debate concerning the politics of culture and identity in globalisation from the arts' perspective”

Saturday 7^th February, 13.30 to 17.30

To engage in this symposium, we shall ask ourselves: What can an assessment or a reflection of our personal encounters with multiculturalism and with the two poles globalism and particularism (and be it the notion of our own, very personal particularity as an individual, as an artist specifically in a given life world) reveal? How do we define ourselves and our lives in the dialectic process of globalisation viewed as a two-fold process involving the universalisation of particularism and the particularisation of universalism?

Globalisation is often seen as a process of global Westernisation. Those who take an upbeat view of globalisation consider this not only as a good, but even as a gift from the West to the rest of the world. Globalism in this context carries the notion of Westernism. From the opposite perspective, Western dominance, sometimes seen as a continuation of Western imperialism, is the devil of the piece. For some proponents of this interpretation, globalism (as the designated ideology of globalisation) manifests itself in a post-colonial situation as yet another “apocalyptic Western claim on modernity”, on the definition of the present. “It questions our right to form and assert our own non-western contemporaneity” (Ranjit Hoskote: 2002, Beyond the House of Wonders: Some Remarks on the Possibility of Inter-cultural Communication). With this notion, we find ourselves not only in a display of ideological differences, but also with two different approaches to assessment: one choosing a historical perspective, the other looking only from the perspective of current realities of undeniably imbalanced global power relations dominated by the West. Continuity and historicity of the process of globalisation as well as of identity building in its course are challenged by the immediacy and intensity of global cultural confrontations.

Let us now reflect on multiculturalism, a world view which rests on the pluralistic assumption that every culture has its own trajectory, norms and values; and which tends to hold the notion of “tolerance” that no culture can be judged by the rules of another. … “If we remain content with this superficially liberal view, a pluralism that verges on rampant relativism leads us straight into the wilderness”(Hoskote) of universal meaning and of the impossibility of finding common ground. Consequently, if everyone is entitled to their view, within their parameters, we have to renounce the gesture of intervention, connection and debate. “Celebrating differences as a value in itself, without sensitive understanding of difference”, argues Hoskote, leads to a notion of globalism “as a phantasmagoria of illusions,… multiculturalism can become a supermarket of mirages”, leading to a form of privatism and thus to the loss of conversation and inter-cultural dialogue.

Looking at multiculturalism and related tensions differently, a contribution of Appadurai, an Indian political sociologist, may be of help. He sees the central problem of our global interactions in the tension between cultural homogenisation – based on a vast array of empirical facts - on the one side and cultural heterogenisation on the other. Mostly the homogenisation argument is presented in the form of Americanisation, closely linked with that of “commoditisation”. These arguments nevertheless fail to consider alternative fears of subjugation. (Appadurai, Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy, 1990) What about the Sinisation of South East Asian economies over the last two centuries up to today, the Japanisation of Korea, the Siamisation of Cambodia and Laos? May be the Indonesianisation is currently more worrisome to the people of Irian Jaya than that of Americanisation, which seems to be a partly contested sweet-bitter reality for the people in the Philippines!? Would Hoskote qualify these forms of influence as “non-western neo-colonialism”? What is more, the proponents of the homogenisation argument fail to consider that migration, be it forced or wanted, leads to a rapid process of “indigenisation” (Appadurai) of the new influences, of its “repatriation” (Stuart Hall) in the new “host culture”. This leads to a new “cultural mix” which is often referred to as the hybrid culture of multiculturalism, bearing a new syncretism of ethnic and cultural elements.

The tension that Appadurai sees as the central problem of global intercultural interactions contests settled contours of national identities, it leads to the invention of imagined communities and identities and carries along the pressure to formulate distinctive “otherness”. But it also provides the opportunity to bring the issue of national identity and the cultural “centredness” of the West into the open and challenges the center - periphery or “West and the rest” reality of current globalisation. Certainly still powered in many ways by the West, globalisation may well contribute to a “de-centering of the West” (see Stuart Hall: 1992, The Question of Cultural Identity”).

But what, then, is the alternative to complicity in the process of globalisation, the modes of globalism and multiculturalist positioning from the art's and the artists´s perspective, asks Hoskote. How can conversation be kept alive? Is communication between cultures at all possible? Does it not always rest on translation: the act of making the other “bearing across” to oneself and oneself to the other? The risk of distortion, misunderstanding, the temptation to familiarise with the alien, the strange without bearing witness to the strangeness are inherent to the process of intercultural translation. Nevertheless, Ranjit Hoskote encourages us to go beyond the ´House of Wonders-syndrome´ in its various forms.

These kinds of debates over globalism and multiculturalism find their best expression in the art works produced under such complex conditions. Conditions of uncertainty and doubt provide for instability and “search energy” that sustain a lively art-practice as it can be witnessed in the exhibition “Identities vs. Globalisation?” as a multifaceted display of questions and answers to the described uncertainties, questions and tensions. The loss of unitary and consistent sense of the artistic self, the loss of context and criteria can be considered as an enabling gesture, a move towards freedom and emancipatory conditions.

We have requested two artists and two art theorists to prepare for their particular contributions to this symposium, and encouraged all other participants to contribute their perspectives as well.

Farah Wardani, an editor of the Art Magazine “Carbon” and close affiliate of the Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, has been re-examining postcolonial identities in her research work over the last years. In her paper entitled “A Dislocuted Generation” (a play of words on the term ‘dislocation’, replacing ‘locate’ with ‘locute’) she looks at the conflicting signifying process between Indonesian language and visual culture in particular, and its relation to the issue of Indonesian identity building.
The search for ‘Indonesia-ness’ has become an exhausting and sceptical journey. The process of paradoxical cultural translation gives great influence to the evolution of the building of identity – an issue that has been endlessly argued and re-questioned in Indonesia. Farah Wardani compares the world today with a Babelian space that appears to get smaller and unified, as an extension of the history of colonialism and post-colonialism. In such condition, the world is getting more conscious of its own pluralities, where differences are easier to be encountered and interacting with each other. She encounters a global campaign of world multiculturalism, built upon instability and paradoxes of the translation of differences. The citizens of the world remain to always be in the process of translation, the state of being translated and translating the other.
Language is one great factor in the dilemmas of creating the Indonesian identity. The Indonesian language is a relatively new language derived from many languages, initially being formulated just at the end of the 19th century. The implementation of this language as the lingua franca of the archipelago is very much related to the issues of power, and its development also has been trapped too much in the hegemony of (foreign) text.
At the same time, visual culture is rapidly growing as an effect of globalisation. The construction of Indonesian language and the process of visual culture are clashing onto one another, a conflict between the signifier and the signified, or in other words – borrowing Sarat Maharaj’s term, a dislocution of text and context. The word ‘Indonesia’ itself, an invented word that signifies an ‘imagined community’, becomes more alienated from the signified which has become increasingly multidimensional and packed with hybridisation processes.
It can be seen that in this globalisation era, hybrid meanings are emerging, and also hybrid existences. Built upon double standards and the tension between traditional-modern values, a new hybrid generation of Indonesians are growing, with questions on their identity that has been continuously developing yet never eloquently articulated, whether visually or verbally.

Eddin Kho, a writer, poet and translator from Malaysia will explore in his paper “The Revenge of Tradition – the spectre of Globalisation and Imagined Identities in Southeast Asian Art” the internal contradictions brought on by forms of opposition, in art, towards globalisation. By examining distinct and disparate attempts at asserting identity and tradition - broadly in Southeast Asia but more particularly in Malaysia and Indonesia, he will attempt to maintain that questions of ‘identity’ and ‘tradition’ in these countries (and more widely the region) remain tentative notions, subject to radical transformations induced by changes in the political climate and shifts in ideological priorities. He asks, What kind of emphasis and character is asserted at particular historical periods? How deeply is a displayed symbol of “identity” truly representative of a “tradition”? Does the process of “identity” renewal inevitably provoke the complimentary process of social and cultural making? Eddin Kho will dwell, especially, on the role of religion in the shaping and contemplation of notions and perceptions of identity in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Chong Kam Kow, Director of the Malaysian Institute of Arts, Kuala Lumpur, looks at the process of modernisation and industrialisation and how related changes in national and individual identity evolve as a direct result of development. Information technology provides new facilities for rapid communication such as internet, satellite T.V., mobile phone etc. for people of all walks of life. These new facilities promote better understanding of cultures, values and life styles of people in different places. In the modern world of both, developed and developing nations, people are provided with a lot of new opportunities, choices, alternations and supplements. Chong Kam Kaw argues further that the increased practice of shared values, the acceptance of new cultural elements, the choice in global food offers, global brand goods, western movies, music and art forms etc. have definitely altered our value judgement, social behaviour and life style.

This development has at the same time alerted and concerned many intellectuals, artists, social reformists, educationists and parents. In visual arts, there are more and more artists taking up the issues of identity and globalisation in their visual expression. The increased influences on culture, quality of life and acceptance of shared-values and changes of moral judgements have sensitised many artists and made them aware of their own identities and positions in this process. People in general seem to re-evaluate more and more their past cultural wealth and moral practices.

Chong Kam Kaw however notes, that in the history of human civilisation, the alteration of life styles, values and changes of identity was always determined by cultural behaviours and social conditions of any people. The adoption and acceptance of new elements and values must be seen as an enriching process in the modernisation process. The gradual alteration of identity must be viewed as an evolving process that is unavoidable in our pursuit towards better living conditions. People tend to be sentimental or nostalgic about their past and misperceive changing identity as diminishing or lost identity. A power pointed slide show presenting art works displaying the artistic expression of the relationship between globalisation and fluid identities in art expression in the SEA region will serve to underline the arguments and counter-arguments to be presented for discussion.

Suthee Kunawachayanont, an artist and lecturer at Silpakorn University Bangkok will complement the particular Thai perspective to the debate by considering recent developments within Modern Thai Art. He will assess how these fluctuating fashions relate to the globalisation and identity building of Thai culture, and in turn, its influence on the arts. Then he will elaborate upon the tendency of local artists to communicate and relate more to the international art world and its ramifications. Eventually raising the question whether or not the Thai government provides sufficient support for the creative arts and culture in the globalisation era. He also asks whether national identity can serve as a tool to sustain the distinctive flavour of Thai arts.

Both artists will examine the question whether or not they see their national or the regional art scene under pressure from the influence of “homogenising globalisation”.