Conference at the opening of the exhibition: Through the surface
Collaborating textile artists from Britain and Japan
The Surrey Institute of Art and Design
6th February 2004

Summary of talk and discussion:

What are mechanisms of cultural difference between world of artist/maker and process and the museum?

• The role of display – to what extent we are dealing with spectacle, to what extent with a process of homogenisation?

What is revealed and what is hidden by display?

• Visible and invisible histories: Japanese concept of ‘Mono’ as a means of referring to hidden values etc.
• Traffic in culture –route to museum – via dealers etc. and values ascribed to objects in transit to museum

Juxtapositions of objects: Japanese concept of ‘noise’ created by new contexts
The Creative process – practical aspects: what makers ‘know’ and how that is revealed (not necessarily by the artifacts on show, or by the means of display)
Does Creativity increase as a result of collaborations?
What does the viewer contribute?

Notes from which talk given:

Situation set up by the ‘Through The Surface’ project: – makers from different cultures have been working alongside each other in parallel endeavor for 2 years or so:
They
– may have ideas in common
– may have shared perceptions
Or, they
– may have had their differences sharpened
Overall, the
– experience may enable each person to see their work in a new context, shaped by comparison with the other
Or, they
– may equally have become less like each other – each person may have had their differences sharpened

But then the exhibition changes the levels at which cultural difference is experienced:

The ethos of exhibition, the spectacle of exhibition will need shaping – each different venue will exert its influence
The expectations of the exhibition phenomenon will add gloss
But:
Raw-ness of personalities and personal engagement and sharing of experiences during the period of working together, will be lost in the homogeneity of design – it will be harder for viewers to engage with intensity of relationships between pairs of protagonists

But something else happens – indeed many layers of other things happen:

There is a wider network of relationships established in the exhibiting venue

• Physical & environmental demands of spaces – different from working environment – cleaned of stuff of thought processes, for example – divorced from mess of everyday life
• Cultural setting – establishing a strong ethos & expectations– very probably quiet, open, (white), reverential.
• Traffic in culture – the entire art-world experience and ethos at the background of the museum – customs, values, celebrations – openings, dealers, trade in artifacts, critics etc.
• Display – imposes rationality, recombining, sorting out, taxonomy – aestheticising relationships, tasteful space
• And then there is the viewer – that introduces a whole complex of further complications – even if the viewer is well versed in viewing – a ‘museum type’ in Baxendall’s terms – associations, experience, purpose of visit – a whole mass of further potential for cultural difference to be added….

Differences between European and Japanese expectations/ experiences of display in the museum:

I would like to consider in this context, some of the perceptions published by Masao Yamaguchi, in his article, ’The Poetics of exhibition in Japanese Culture’, published in Karp and Levine’s Exhibiting Cultures (Smithsonian, Washington,1991) Which discusses various aspects of the cultural difference in exhibiting practices and expectations between Japan and England –
First of all – he speaks of a whole tradition of exhibition practices in everyday life in Japan – in shops, circuses, theatre, even displaying drying washing.
They exist in the West – (he does not say this) but unacknowledged as part of public display – but he talks about the ‘commodities of the museum (in the West) being taken out of the flow of everyday life’

The regrouping and reclassification of display in the museum, removes some of the minutiae of the associations which these artifacts had in the context of the bustle of life.
Yet -
Display is the artistic creation of new sensitivities toward the world.
Two Japanese concepts, he discusses, which are very interesting in our context
‘Mitate’
which is association by naming – eg heap of earth being named after the ‘flowering mountain in springtime’ – and which there by brings to mind an alternative reality

But even more resonant – is the concept of ‘Mono’

- The idea that objects have both visible and invisible histories.

As I understand it, the concept of ‘mono’ gives a term to the submerged part of collective memory
And previous plural existences which escape analysis. It acknowledges that there is an invisible history, mysterious and intangible – but no less there.

We might (in European context) acknowledge this in a vague way – we know that the object we are seeing in the museum can be seen in a certain way at this moment, but has a rich associational life history which can be gradually and painstakingly unpicked.

This kind of phenomenon has been categorized rather summarily by Cziksentmihalyi and Rochburg Halton as ‘emotional overlay’ – applying to the feelings and experiences which surround objects.

This, it seems to me is, a significant aspect of the cultural difference we may be dealing with in this exhibition: – different attitudes to what is hidden in the experience – what has been generated by the juxtapositions of ideas. In western terms it is a question of unpicking evidence in order to reveal it – referring to the diaries, for example – using the exhibition as a means of defining and categorizing, sorting out what went on.

In Japanese terms, the process of display might have generated yet another set of relationships to be investigated – Yamaguchi talks of ‘Noise’ – applying to the unknown quantities and qualities which are generated by the chance juxtapositions between objects and I would be interested to know whether this dealing with the ‘noise’ in the display was a process satisfying in itself, or whether it generates a new set of puzzles or questions – for the designer, the curators, and indeed for the viewers.

In my world, as an educator trained in the western tradition, it does raise a whole new set of questions, which, were I guiding people round the exhibition, I would seek to tease out in terms of the viewers’ own understandings and perceptions – but then I would assume that my viewers would expect to be ‘moved on’ by the experience – towards some kind of revelation, towards some development in their own work – or towards some deeper understanding of the creative process

I would like to ask – when we are dealing with cultural difference in the creative process – how much parity can we assume in terms of the PROCESS itself – and to what extent – assuming that the process of Making is a great leveler – does this mask other differences of philosophy which are more deep seated – what are the differences in the deeper meanings and how are these being investigated – or how can they be investigated?

Veronica Sekules
Head of Education and Research
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
University of East Anglia, Norwich

top

Copyright © 2004, Through the Surface : All Rights Reserved