August 12th, 2016
T H E C R A F T S M A N : S O C I A L E T H I C S O F R E S I S T A N C E
“We do not have a conceptual tool that allows us to face a society whose development does not fit this model,
so we force others to adjust to our own."
Civilization: A new history of the western world - Roger Osborne.
How can a certain type of imaginary which is a fundamental part of a cultural superiority speech, part of a bigger colonization agenda, a visual tool that sustain inequality, injustice and xenophobia, be identified? It might be just an image -even worse, a beautiful image-, a text or just a word used in social bases, so, it could be hard to argue that a representation, as simple as its appear, can be a tool that use the silence -in the case of an image- or the repetition in order to alienate entire cultures. And even when these representations have been spotted and how they work have been learned, how do they can be tackled? How the institutions that are behind their conception can be challenged? Is the notion of representation itself what has to be challenged or is how representation has been done? Perhaps is the lack of representation of different cultures what creates the hierarchical structure where the unbalance of power is faced. Maybe personal and collective histories/stories must be kept close to the most skeptical and critical side to reconfigure those imaginary.
I always remember the first time that I had to face those structures, the first time I had to break down the first wall of my own oppression. It didn't begin with the deconstruction of my own beliefs in a theoretical way, or with the decolonization of the language that somebody taught me: it was something more physical and corporeal than any other thing; it was more related with disobedience than with the seeking of something more novel. One Sunday, any given Sunday, I decided not to go to the church.
I was raised in a catholic Colombian family. Even when I was born in the capital city –Bogota-, my parents are from a different place. They were born in Medellin, a warmer and smaller southeastern city in Colombia. In the late 70's Medellin was a violent city, hometown of one of the biggest drug cartels of the world at that time. They used to export drugs mainly to Europe and North America. The Colombian authorities realized -quite late it might say- that cartel’s money had reached the heads of a corrupt state, allowing them to implement their methods to expand their power barely without impairments. As a respond to the situation, the US government, as part of their fight against drugs, felt the need to intervene in the Colombian policies in order to bring stability into the region, or at least that was the public speech. The intervention, as any other euphemism for colonization, was not just rhetorical but territorial. With CIA agents’ arrival to the city, Medellin turned even more violent. The Colombian history and its relationship with drugs and US it’s a lot more complex, but inside that national history, my parents’ inner displacement story was framed. I will always remember that the first time that my father told me their story, he ended it telling me that he felt blessed because, despite the reasons or the consequences, the path for him and his family had been chosen by god. Bogota, or maybe his migration to the capital, offered him something that he considered not an imposition but a better future. Maybe I wouldn't be in Utrecht if they had not left Medellin. In his words, "God wanted it like that". Even when maybe it was the first time I heard that expression, it wasn't the last: On November of 1985, a few years before my born, a Colombian guerrilla movement called M-19 assaulted the justice palace - the equivalent to a parliament in other parts of the world – taken congress members, deputies and everybody else who were inside the building as hostages. That morning a new law which would allow the extradition of drug bosses -or any other convicted person that could serve U.S. interests- would be sanctioned. The disapproval of that law was the main demand of M-19. Under U.S. pressure to pass the extradition law, the Colombian army intervened killing hostages and kidnappers and provoking civil disappearances that until nowadays haven't been clarified. Just before the army entry into the justice palace, the government replaced all the public broadcasting of the event with a football match between local teams. Just after the massacre the president of the country, in national television, said "God wanted it like that".
Colombian Palace of Justice siege (©El Heraldo Newspaper)
Until now, one of the most precious and valuable objects that my family have it’s a statue of baby Jesus. It has a special place in my house, in one corner of the living room, always on a lectern that my aunt bought in one of her travels to Europe. Since I can remember, the first thing that my father does before he goes to his job is to pray to this little statue; my mother does the same and even my brothers used to do the same for a while when they were living in my parent’s house. I was also part of this ritual. Faith has been always a distant emotion to me, as same as the willing of follow or the desire to lead. Perhaps that's why, every time that I was forced to be part of that ritual, I asked for the reasons: Why were they worshiping a small, blonde, blue eyes statue with porcelain skin and with a crown in its head? In terms of appearance, the statue was everything but us. After few years I realized that the statue wasn't a representation of me or of them, at least not an accurate one, but I couldn't understand what it was indeed representing. When I look back, I recognize that moment as one of the firsts when I understand - vaguely I might say- the value and the power of an icon, of an image: Representation was a daily life problem without even noticed it. After a while I discover that the problem was much bigger than my own reality, than my personal routine. The Spanish colonization in Colombia, and in the vast rest of Latin America, was presented as an enterprise which was seeking the evangelization of indigenous cultures. It was a humanitarian mission with religious purposes. The European cultures used, among other things, those kind of representations to vanish entire "barbaric cultures" -as they called them -, kill hundreds and hundreds of human beings, rape women and kids, invade sacred lands, exploit natural resources and stablish their own beliefs and their own power structure, all of that in the name of the same statue that my parents have 500 years later. The otherness was born, in part, due to the immersion of those images into the collective imaginary of native cultures. I am sure that at some point they also said "God wanted it like that". I can say with certainty that that Sunday, when I decided not to go to the church, I started to challenge the notion of representation. The responsibility of the cultural colonization does not relies entirely on religious institutions, off course not, is bigger than that: Every time that I am at Bogota’s streets and I see ads of white, blondes, straight hair girls and then I see my friends straighten their curly hair; Every time that I go to my aunt house and she tell me how proud she is of all the French furniture around her living room; Every time that I went to the school and all the authors that I read were western white males; Every time that I hear at Utrecht’s pubs that the refugees are a threat to a civilized way of life; Every time I hear a politician calling for divine intervention to help the future of his nation; Every time that a non-western artist is labeled as exotic and he/she gain recognition in western markets/institution because of that, every time, I return in my mind several years ago to that Sunday.
Perhaps because of that – or maybe not but at the end is just a matter of narrative -my works are the visual outcome of my need to find the genesis of images that are instinctively consumed, images that define our individuality and our role as social beings. Each work is an attempt to point out how an image –or an idea- could perpetuate a western speech that defines the values that we should have, the hierarchies in which society must operate, what should be considered strange and what is not, what culturally should be prioritized and what should become invisible, who should have a voice and who should be muted, who should be the victim or the perpetrator. Under this line of thought, I am not just trying to build my own identity but trying too to identify and challenge my role as a Latin-American inside the western art context. By a western political construction I am an outsider, so I have to work with the scraps that the colonial structure has left: I work with the practices that I have inherited and the practices that have been stolen, with which is ontologically own and with what has been assigned historically.
Under the dual capitalist logic, the artistic figures of the intellectual and the craftsman can be understood as colonial consequences. The current notion of contemporary art, supported on theoretical discourses implemented mainly by Western institutions, respond to logics that have been executed in different processes of cultural expansion. The impossibility of this cultural coexistence, for example, assigns greater or lesser importance to certain artistic practices: The intellectual, situated in a pedestal, relies more on his ideas, on his social status and on his educational background. It’s the result of theories that have been taught in order to perpetuate westernized notions of knowledge. The most troubling part about this system is that it ridicules artistic practices that do not respond to this logic, creating a hierarchy according to their own, apparently, democratic and postmodern rules [1]. The notion of a form of knowledge higher and better than the one perform by a craftsman – being the intellectual above, in a better social position - has occupied a transcendental part in the construction of a western identity. In its origins, the western history has depicted it in Hephaestus’ myth: Not by chance this craftsman, even being a god, was a cripple. His deformed foot could be read as the craftsman’s social value in a western context. Regarding the role of the intellectual, it seems important to define it or clarify its meaning in this text, due to the high connotations that already possess. To understand the figure of the intellectual is necessary to integrate the concept of “orthopedic thinking” [2] [3] into this work. After the enlightenment process, modern science arose as the only valid source of knowledge. This domination created a particular apathy towards problems that cannot be solved by different methods, to human circumstances which do not answer to the logic of what has been designated as vital by science, to existential issues that reply to other epistemologies, towards situations where analytical approaches cannot be made. A symptom of this way of thinking and understanding of the world is the current hyper professionalization, not only of science degrees, but in the entire schooling system. Despite whatever easily can be assumed, this feature leads human spirit to an ontological precariousness. Mamoru Oshii, one of the contemporary referents of oriental philosophy, referred to this issue in a very simple but eloquent way in one of the best dialogues of his film, Ghost in the Shell: “If we all reacted the same way, we’d be predictable, and there’s always more than one way to view a situation. What’s true for the group is also true for the individual. It’s simple: Overspecialize, and you breed in weakness. It’s slow death”. The intellectual is the subject/concept that embodies the hegemony of this orthopedic thinking, a rationality that does not involved ordinary men and women into its manners. It represents not only an epistemology of knowledge, but also the greedy oppressor, the racist, the cultural colonizer, the centralized system and the social hierarchy’s designer.
Ghost in the Shell (1995, ©Masamune Shirow Kodansha)
When the impossibility of cultural coexistence was mentioned before, it referred to the fact that at certain points in history, ideologically or physically, West has maintained a privileged position on the cultures ladder. Since the several colonizing processes started, there has been an antagonist duality between the concepts of civilized and barbaric, or between the intellectual and the craftsman for the sake of the thesis here exposed. It is from concepts that hierarchies start to denote who is who and which is the role that either develop in society: Through the language the role of the colonizer and the indigenous was delimited; through the act of naming the social position was given; through rhetorical speeches who was above who was designated. In colonial times the barbarian was a figure diametrically opposed to the concepts of culture, civilization and development, western notions to describe a path that the world should took in order to become something better, in order to progress and in order to achieve a capitalistic model. The idea of the other -that one who doesn’t fit into the western category- was a concept that embodied a threat to western history and evolution of mankind. Perhaps, with a fair time perspective, it could be thought that those differences have faded out but, almost 500 years after the first colonization in South America, hierarchies that support the historical order of the western conception of the world can be founded in daily language. At the end of the day, the sole purpose of naming -give a name- is to create an identity, to locate and designate a social status towards that one who has been tagged. When a name is designated to something or someone, the subject is expected to behave in a certain way according its own categorization. The main aim of the act of naming is to create differentiation. Give a name creates a need to identify the otherness while, at the same time, the self-affirmation of who gave the name is constructed alongside the strangeness of the alien. What the other is not, I am. The previous establishment of power politics regulates the ways in which knowledge is transmitted and these, automatically, converges in how the cultures are transformed: The processes by which the traditions survive have been one-sided, not collaborative.
In his book The Craftsman, Sennett build up a deep analysis regarding the role of crafts – in a wide sense- in a fully instrumentalized world, where the rhetorical, theoretical and technological development has left behind the use of the hand as an important human gesture. Even when the author does not make a concrete reference to the role of crafts in arts, is possible to think about crafts as an alternative to an over- speculative, over- intellectualized, over- rationalized and over-westernized contemporary art field. The hierarchy of social evolution in Hannah Arendt’s theory is Sennett’s starting point to challenge the value of the intellectual (Homo Faber) in relationship with the craftsman (Animal Laborans). To Sennett, the western tradition in rationality underestimates the role of a person who is more concerned about how to produce her/his work than why: “The human animal which is the Animal Laborans has the capacity of thinking; the producer maintain mental discussions with the materials more than we other people; but there is no doubt that the people that work together talk among each other about what they are doing. To Arendt, the mind starts to function after the work is done. More balanced is the version in which, within the production process, feeling and thinking are integrated (…) Full of curiosity about the thing by itself, (the cultural materialist) wants to comprehend how that thing can generate religious, social or political values. The Animal Laborans will serve as a guide to the Homo Faber.” [4]
It’s not the intention of this essay to deconstruct Sennett’s work, but it is important to give a framework to the upcoming reflections, especially one that is essential in his book: What can we learn about ourselves in the process of produce things? This text will focus in how the notion of craftsmanship could be an alternative or a part of a post-colonial discourse which tries to challenge a western rational approach towards artistic practices. Perhaps, inside the contemporary art world, the concept of craftsmanship refers to an issue which vanished with the beginning of the industrial era but, beyond being a feature of overspecialized knowledge, craftsmanship it’s a common factor that brings together different disciplines. The craftsman could function as the crossbencher [5] that the contemporary art field is seeking for. The craftsmanship's notion developed here is not limited to the concrete practice of the crafts. This proposition is not meant to preponderate or highlight the production of a certain object in a masterfully way. The craftsman goes beyond the objectual without giving up a deep connection with the practical, with the concrete and with the daily life itself. “The craftsman category covers more than the craftsman-artist; represents in each of us the desire to do something well done, specifically and for no other purpose (…) the craftsman represents the human condition of commitment” [6]. The craftsman yearns, as Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote, to be a thing; the craftsmanship, in Karl Marx’s words, it’s a formative activity. The craftsman’s modes of production challenge those primordial values of capitalism: His/her aspirations are not linked with innovation, prestige, accumulation or individualism. It’s inevitable quoting Marx without delve into the socio-economical roles that the craftsman could perform in the contemporary society. In one hand, although the craftsman notion that here is formulated covers a wider range of aspects and bearing in mind that this kind of parallelism could be not accurate, the craftsman is closer to the farmer’s figure than the CEO’s; his/her connection is more coherent with the proletariat than with the bourgeoisie; replies better to the logics of the oppressed than the oppressor’s. Now, is the craftsman notion more an alternative than an opposition? Understand it as an alternative seems to be a challenge quite hard to defeat due to the discourage policies implemented on it by the capitalistic system [7], but, at the same time, think this model as an opposition end up being futile when decentralize and decolonize are its core values. The western dualistic logic – the one where good and bad are simplified and differentiated – does not seem to have room within his/her practices. One possible outcome of the paradox that we face when try to define the relationships between craftsman –as a concept, not as an individual- and the actual state of the affairs – let’s not forget about the implications and the role of the contemporary art world in the status quo –, is the possibility to understand it as an non-western alternative opposition: The craftsman embodies not only a model which does not reply to the logic of profit but responds to the social ethics of resistance.
Embrace being a craftsman means that the relations, both with the outside world and with oneself, are established by the production of concrete things. How is this crafty mode of production - for lack of a better concept - different from the hyper-production that characterizes Western role models? The craftsman has no interest in the usefulness of the object by itself. This sense of utility is far away from the notion of practicality. In fact, the western notion of utility is more related with the benefit that the achievement of a material or cognitive ideal could provide: The craftsman does not determine the usefulness of the object according to how that specific artefact helps him/her to explain the world around, instead, the utility depends on how it allows him/her to understand his/her relationship with the rest of the community. This is the reason why the craftsman represents a form of knowledge, not a new one but one forgotten by the Western tradition. At this point, when we are trying to articulated the theorical frame – without losing out of sight the fundamental and primordial connection with the practice - where the craftsman could work as an agency, is also necessary to comprehend that his/her modus operandi escapes from the formulation of biased or absolute truths. In fact, the core of this knowledge responds more properly as a series of narratives that challenge the predominant epistemology in a western context than the imposition of ideologies. Sennett highlighted the tendency to discourage, deny and even erase the important aspects of the link between hand and head, between practice and theory. Through the processes of enlightenment, which besides opened the path to the rise of a modern Europe, became a rhetorical tool that expanded and amplified the echo of colonialism into a new dimension. All the thoughts and ideas that have been exposed here are supposed to be framed into a postcolonial discourse and, in that sense, would be necessary to elaborate on the views and the current state of the postcolonial speech by itself, but it has been really challenging to depict this sociological theory just as a theory. When I arrived to Europe – more than a year ago – the ideas that I had about this concept were disconnected from the theory that I started to face in an academic environment. Lately, I have thought that maybe I did not know anything about it, but it’s not true. That’s part of the deal with predominant forms of knowledge: The doubts that grow towards your own conceptions, towards your own beliefs, became like a shadow, like something that you cannot trust because it does not reciprocate what is present as real, even when it’s nothing more than a projection. It’s hard to realize that its reality is, actually, a shadow. Perhaps that’s the maximum expression of an oppressive structure and it might be its quietest and most effective tool: When the knowledge that has been carried within you start to be invalidated by the set of values that the external world preponderates, you start to adapt, to compromise your self-awareness; you start to lose the capacity to self-determinate, to emancipate. After trying to deconstruct the main points of the post-colonialism discourse, is impossible to perceive it as a theory. Is only likely to experience it as a reality, as a practical and daily life condition to which certain southern non-west groups are exposed. The linguistic construction of the word is problematic: What is the post part about colonialism? Is it a reference that implies that the colonialism is part of the past? Is it a concept that allows us to describe the world after colonialism? Does it mean that the colonialism as a territorial conquer is over? Then, the concept ignores Amazon’s exploitation; does it refer to the assumption that colonies does not exist anymore? Might it be more precise to say that is post because, for example, the word colonialism cannot explain phenomena like Brexit where the most colonizer country is claiming, among other things, being colonized by its own former colonies? A more precise word for that case would not be post-colonialism: cynicism seems more descriptive. The division between practice and theory is clear, so is necessary to think in the possibility of praxis: Having experienced colonialism, the craftsmen is a consequence of the practice and a cause of the theory. The craftsman is the paradox which challenges western triumphalism.
If there is something that the postcolonial discourse has done is to place under the spotlight the false premise of modernity. Even when the craftsman has been described as a crossbencher, as a concept-subject who is capable to praxis non-western ideologies which challenge the establishment epistemology, the art field has a potential towards its actions given by a default condition: Art is the major cultural tool use to spread neo-liberal propaganda. Its reputation was built on the idea of high culture; its reputation relies on the notion of avant-garde as a manifestation for the higher good, allowing it to regulate, classify and normalized western cultural expressions which often deny the validation of another ones. The craftsman task is to learn how to manipulate this default status as any other raw material, turn its oppressor nature into the benefit of the oppressed: In other words, loop-holing. Art field, in the craftsman’s hands, acquire another layer of potentiality, it became a field full with opportunities of co-existence, a field where “some issues that cannot be resolved through politics may get resolved in it; (…) Art is concerned with the power of thinking, it is a potential power that is perhaps best described with the word “preserve”: we put down our weapons to discuss, to delay the moment of murdering each other” [8]. How these notions about art and post-colonial politics affect the creation of a cultural identity? How certain types of images represent the values of a colonial discourse over time? How the image perpetuates and affirms a hierarchy of traditions? How an image can establish the way in which power relations in a society develop, whether they are fair or not? It is inside these conceptual gaps, in the theoretical difference between proclaimed values and assumed practical purposes, where the craftsman could dig without formulating definitive truths. The craftsman has made the political and social commitment – the sense a collectivity - a fundamental part of a methodic knowledge that allow it to clash whit what has been define as orthopedic thinking. In order to face this confrontation, its knowledge is shaped by three basic skills: to locate, to investigate and the unveiling. The first involves giving concreteness to a subject; the second implies reflecting on their qualities; the third, extending its meaning [9]. In this sense, his/her artistic praxis is close to the nature of the indicial mark: Instead of naming, its works tries to point. Phillippe Dubois called this feature the principle of designation: "The index makes us -by a blind impulse- turn our gaze and our attention towards the reference and only on it. [The trace] not only testifies, but, even more dynamically, designates" [10]. Through this principle of designation the craftsman offers a reflection space where hierarchies are pointless.
In this idea’s direction, one of the most perdurable practical values that western history has stated is the fact that South America was discovered. Even in the South American traditional schooling system, the colonial process implemented by Spain, Italy, Portugal and the UK -where native tribes were killed, raped and displaced, land were taken and native culture were substituted with western set values which replied to another logics – was, and still is, known as “The Discovery of America”, denoting a physical and cultural dependence through language and education. Working with the craftsman methods, in the work “Discovered/Invaded” I attempted to point out the linguistic truth behind the labels of this biased history: America, from north to south, was invaded, not discovered. Appealing to the current state of the world’s politics, when invasions are done in daily basis disguised as political interventions to stabilize non-western regions of the world, the intention of the work was to reveal that practice as a historical western tradition. The piece is a mixture between performance and painting – the last one having a colonial implication as a medium – planned and designed to be display and executed in public space. The painting was done in a studio space and it was thought as a possible fake representation for a Latin-American identity using mass-media stereotyped depictions of different Latino cultures. A simple google search of “South American landscape” or “Wuayu” (a Colombian indigenous tribe) was the source of the images that were used among other ones to create a new picture. Those images were mixed with western iconography - the picture of the Dutch King, a Dolce & Gabanna ad which used the aesthetics of the Mediterranean to promote their over-expensive clothes and the classical draws of French furniture – and the faces of political figures – Hillary Clinton and Warren Buffet, the world’s richest banker and philanthropist –in order to design an ad-aesthetic painting. After the painting was finished, in order to approach public space as a place where craftsman can disrupt as a social catalyst, it was assembled into a structure which allows the transportation through Utrecht streets. The performative part of the painting – the pushing – represent the sacrifice implicit in the procession’s idea, a tradition claimed by catholic faith but which has different origins. “Invaded; not discovered” was written on the painting in front of the Centraal Museum, an art institution which embodies colonialism and legitimizes theft and disappearance of cultures on behalf of enlightenment.
Invaded / Discovered [performance]
More or less the same praxis logic goes for the “Straight Hair” piece but with a shift in the language: The scope of the denomination could be determinate by the use of everyday language, the same kind that turns out to be quite instructive at the moment of talk about cultural values and traditions’ transposition. The different understanding of ordinary concepts – as straight hair – and the inability of project us into the others can be conceived as consequences of how the power relations were established in colonial times. Those metaphors have the potential of overcome time thereby traditional expressions like “every discussion is a war” [11] are not as naïve an innocent as they are presented. This kind of language, thought as an abstract and symbolical construction, is actually a real and tangible projection of the social being. When an action is structured by a language, due to the pragmatism in the craftsman’s practices, the field of everyday language starts to play a fundamental role in the symbolism of his/her proposal: The exoticism of curly hair by the west can be challenged by the depiction of straight hair as a colonial icon. Propound the straight hair as a characteristic of the purest beauty has been a canon spreaded by tools of emancipation such as paintings, ads or mass media. Social construction of a difference can be perceived clearly in the stereotypes of beauty but, as in every process of cultural colonialism, this construction has been told and expanded unilaterally by a dominant group. The logic of a physical feature as a sign of perfection belongs to a white supremacy discourse in the same way that exoticization of the difference does. Coming back to use of everyday language, in Colombia the expression “ate the tale” is use when a tradition or a story which is often a lie it’s believe or follow. In that sense, the piece “Straight Hair” takes the belief that the straightness of the hair is part of an ideal, beautiful and better social status and challenges it by eating that tale – the hair - and spit it. It is true that everyday language is full of colonial notions but it’s also the language where the symbolisms of the praxis achieve its maximum potentiality: In this case, the hair works as a raw material which has to be molded by the craftsman while the performed action is a metaphor of the co-existence that the intellectual is denying by default. In this series of works not only the language by itself has been an inflection point but also a dialogue has been established between craftsman and intellectual, between every aspect that they represent. Even when this particular conversation is based in the exchange and in the constant challenge of each other position towards abstract and concrete issues, one layer of this swapping of thought reveals certain kind of dependence on the other, a paradox rooted in the validation of an epistemology: How to validate the craftsmanship through an intellectual discourse since it’s the field where validation occurs? This reflection was the departure point of “Power of Balance”. This piece works as a hinge, as a transition point between traditional art practices and contemporary forms of creation. It is an outcome of the search for a novel way of painting. Symbolically, could be the halfway where theory and practice meet, where the craftsman and intellectual share a gesture. The implicit metaphor on the title gives another layer to the piece: is not only how the body tries to balance its weight on a painting bucket until it crash it, but is also about the impossibility of the act, the subversive and violent end of balancing. Power of Balance plays with the idea of balance and emancipation as replies towards power and oppression.
Power of Balance installation
Straight Hair installation
The craftsman as a concept tends to fit better with the idea of collectivity than with the paradigm of the individual. Practice it as a collective, as a small community, disrupt the hegemonic role of individualism as the main figure of a system based in the economic progress at any cost. It is true that neo-liberalism it’s framed in a society, but its biggest lie lies in the idea that inside its free market the individual works towards an improvement of the communal. Its keystone places the individuality in the center of the structure as the principal beneficiary of different practices, making the public work in pro of the private. Think in terms of collectivity not only changes the way of how global notions like justice or society are understood but also test the validation of individual values like progress, success or recognition. The craftsman as a collectivity is enriched from the individuals but its potentiality relies in the outcome as a process not as a result. The collectivity method requires a commitment towards the creation of a new logic that allows it to operate as cohesive organism which stress the importance of acknowledge communal representation as a more pragmatic one in order to present an active refusal to the hegemonic and patriarchal models of existence, instead of falling for the idea of individual development as a worthy goal in terms of rationalism and universalism. The collective that the craftsman undertakes is closer to the idea of a tribe than a corporate-related model: The absence of hierarchy, the participation, the size, and the subversive/theatrical methods are fundamental features to its consolidation. The collective it’s in part a gesture of resign to the idea of individual representation as the only possible way in the seek for social validation. The craftsman as a collective is an emancipation from the individual as an intellectual. The contemporary art field present itself as a sand box where the possibilities of disruption at limitless but at the same time it’s the place which maintain the idea of the artist as a gifted, talented and special individual who can represent counter positions to the hegemonic epistemologies through the perpetuation of the same models. From the professionalization to the daily life artistic practices, the art field preponderates and normalizes the idea of the individual as trained transgressor but, again, emphasizing in his/her individuality and rationality. It is due to this default conditions that the craftsman must pursue a form of co-presentation instead of self-representation, as way of resistance the normalization of non-west practices in all the life’s spheres. In a collective, no matter the medium (painting, sculpture, performance, video, etc.) an action becomes a social construction, not a product of the individual genius. In this sense, “4.30 Saliva” was a collective response, framed in the opening day of the exhibition “Caulfield, Cauliflower and other vegetables: A Possible Dialectics on the Politics of Misunderstanding” hold at BAK in Utrecht, to the professionalization and over-rationalization of the practices exposed in the exhibition: 4 artist stood completely still, leaning in each other’s forehead and holding hands, with their mouths open letting the saliva drop constantly on two black trays while a panel discussion, formed by the curatorial team of the exhibition, was discussing issues related to the show. The gesture of drooling for 30 minutes next to the panel discussion –where none of the artists were invited – was a collective intent ridicule how the academic and curatorial system tends to normalize and mute practices trough the theorization and rhetorical speeches that are disconnected from the symbiosis of art and life. In the same framework, “Unlearning” was a disruptive collective performance where 4 artists interrupted the panel discussion several times interacting with the audience and shouting in 4 different languages (Arabic, Spanish, Slovak and Korean), preventing the normal development of the session. Both performances worked with the notion of the panel discussion as a potentially authority figure to tackle issues of institutional regulations of culture, nature, heritage, family, gender and post-colonialism politics. Both performances use practices related with the daily life as metaphors to de-centralize the source of knowledge and to de-school the academic validation implemented by the art field.
4.30 Saliva [Performance]
Throughout this essay, the craftsman has been presented as a non-western alternative opposition to the figure of the intellectual, but beyond that, it is a collective of non-hierarchical epistemologies. Boaventura de Sousa Santos has referred to the dynamic between infinite and different epistemologies as the ecology of knowledge [12]. One of his key points derives from the possibility of having a better and real understanding of the world through the discrepancy between different knowledges but also by defying the epistemological fascism implemented by western models of learning. The pragmatism at the moment of facing a situation which asks for a solution is the core of his proposition: A problem, of any nature, could be solved in a more inclusive and de-centralized way by the selection of not one but several kinds of knowledge. In this sense, the professionalization and institutionalization could be replaced by a model of practicality where the hegemony is disassembled and socialized. His proposal was made as an alternative to face the uncertainties of the current world situation, where modern and postmodern discourses have not sorted out daily life situations of the excluded, discriminated and oppressed due to theirs class or social group; where rationality promises cannot hold together a broken and uneven reality anymore. Sousa teaches us that only with knowledge is possible to replicate the past but with imagination perhaps we can create a future. On my side, I would like to think that the craftsman keeps repeating these verses in its head, over and over again:
Don’t embrace defeat, even defeated,
don’t feel yourself a slave even enslaved,
trembling in terror, think you fearless,
and charge with fury, badly wounded.
Have the tenacity of the rusted nail,
though old and ruined, become a nail as ever.
Not the cowardly folly of the turkey
that folds its plumage at first tremor.
Proceed like God, who never cries,
or like Lucifer, who never prays;
or be like the Oaktree, whose grandeur
has need of water and won’t beg…
Let bites and yells of vengeance
Rolling on the dust!, your furious head. [13]
[1] “Modern society tends to give particular importance to the difference between skills: “Skills economy” constantly tries to distinguish between smart and dumb.” SENNETT, Richard. The Craftsman. Yale University Press, 2009, p. 297
[2] SOUSA, Santos Boaventura. Theory, Culture & Society. SAGE publications, 2010.
[3] ORTEGA Y GASSET, José. El Tema de nuestro tiempo. Alianza Editorial, 2003.
[4] SENNETT, Richard. The Craftsman. Yale University Press, 2009, p. 17-19
[5] “(…) the function and responsibility of the crossbencher: a mode of conflictual participation, which no longer perpetuates and relies on a process by which others are invited in, but instead acts without consensual mandate as a disinterested productive irritant.” MIESSEN, Markus. The Nightmare of Participation. Sternberg Press, 2010, p. 244
[6] SENNETT, Richard. The Craftsman. Yale University Press, 2009, p. 32, 181
[7] “Even when the work in the new economy jobs is qualified, demanding and requires long hours, it remains a dissociated task; we have found few technicians who believed that they would be rewarded by the fact of doing good work without any other purpose. The modern craftsman can grow this ideal in his heart, but given the gratification system, that effort will be invisible.” SENNETT, Richard. The Craftsman. Yale University Press, 2009, p. 52
[8] CHANG TSONG-ZUNG, Johnson. Farewell to Post-colonialism: Querying the Guangzhou Triennial 2008. Printed Project, 2009, p. 15
[9] SENNETT, Richard. The Craftsman. Yale University Press, 2009, p. 340
[10] DUBOIS, Phillippe. The photographic: From representation to reception. Paidós, 1983, p. 69 (Translated by Author)
[11] From this metaphor, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson made a series of reflections on everyday language: "Try to imagine a culture in which the discussions were not seen in military terms, in which no one lost or won, in which did not exist the sense of attacking or defending (...) Imagine a culture in which a discussion was viewed as a dance, participants as dancers and in which the aim would be to run it in the most balance and aesthetically pleasing possible way." LAKOFF, George and JOHNSON, Mark. Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press, 2001, p. 41
[12] SOUSA, Santos Boaventura. A Non-Occidentalist West?: Learned Ignorance and Ecology of Knowledge. SAGE publications, 2010, p. 116.
[13] ¡AVANTI! By Pedro B. Palacios (Almafuerte)