Right one thing I found this week, was when I went to print some A4 colour sheets for a lessen it didn't work! for the whole university they only have three computers which you can print from, and these always are pc's not macs, and when I tried to print my documents it send that the system didn't have enough memory to do so. Which was strange, also she said it might have not have worked because I saved my work from my Mac Laptop, which the PC had problems dealing with, so I don't know what I'm going to do when I need to print things of for my assessment.
Anyways went to Adonikas leaving party last night, as shes doing a trip round europe, so her time in Lisbon has now come to a end, which is a real shame, as shes one of the people I've met which I've got on with the most, but hopefully in september shes going to come to Norwich before she goes back to Canada, so should be fun!
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Hi Jo
I have further broken down some of the text to save you some time, as I said before, the essay is open for negotiation but its useful in thinking about ‘difference’ in terms of a conceptual space, where interventions, analysis, can happen. Let me explain.......
The 'Beyond the pale: Art in the age of multicultural translation' text, I admit is quite tricky, but if we begin to think about what is being said, it might be easier to break it down into point form...
1) It approaches the term beyond from this notion of difference. That is not simply to say black is different to white. It is saying in when considering difference, we might arrive at similarities or to say it in another way - black might define white and vice versa. When we think about black, we say it is dark. Fine but what is dark. We need to think about it in relation to light. We need to know what light is to know what dark is. If we say it is at the other end of the tonal scale to white. Again, fine but then both are situated on that scale, so technically they are part of that same thing. If we say it is devoid of colour, then so to is white.
So when considering the differences then we also find the similarities.
One helps define the other.
So when we think about culture in terms of the 'beyond' it is distant from us and yet we need to think of it relation to us. When we think of another culture we think of it in terms of our culture as well.
I hope I'm making sense so far....
So when we think of the beyond as something in the in the future then we also think of the present and the past to understand it.
Everything is inter-connected.
2) This is essentially Bhabha's point. When she cites the work of Rennee Green she quotes her as saying ".... I used architecture literally as a reference, using the attic, the boiler room, and the stair well to make associations between binary divisions such as higher and lower and heaven and hell. The stair well became a liminal space, a pathway between the upper and the lower areas, each of which was annotated with plaques referring to blackness and whiteness...."
So the stairway became that space where the dialogue of difference too place, and yet it had to be connected to the upper level and the lower level.
So if that is true, then when you try and define the ‘beyond’ then you are also defining the here and now.
Bhabha equates this ambivalent nature of the beyond to Heidegger’s (German Philosopher) notion of the boundary, as being not something that stops but rather something that begins (See the quote at the beginning of the essay) This notion is echoed when Bhabha talks about borders and borderlines.
3) So... When Bhabha talks about artists working on the periphery of institutions, or social, racial, sexual, or cultural differences, then those artists are doing so by considering those differences, that process of considering the differences also highlight the kind of links that I’ve been talking about and has the effect of also defining the artist. If that makes sense.
To quote Bhabha ....... ‘Being in the ‘beyond’ then, is to inhabit an intervening space, as any dictionary will tell you. But to dwell ‘in the beyond ‘ is also, as I have shown, to be part of a revisionary time, a return to the present to redescribe our cultural contemporaneity; to reinscribe our human, historic commonality; to touch the future on its hither side. In that sense, then the intervening space ‘beyond’, becomes a space of intervention in the here and now.......” Think back to the example of Rennee Green, the staircase is acting out that space of intervention.
In your case, your essay might be that space of intervention.
With ‘The Tourist Gaze’ John Urry is saying similar things. When we visit a place, as a tourist, there is an expectation that it is different – the people, the sights, the food and the language are removed from our normality. Much the same way as you have posited yourself in Lisbon.
And yet those differences are so because of the comparison that we make with our everyday life, we judge one against the other.
It goes beyond to talk about the museum as a place that has become more about the everyday and the and the real, rather than encompassing the semi-religious experience of viewing the artefact, as the original in all its rarity, and pricelessness, whether they religious or historical. They are no longer about the authentic historical artefact, but might be more about preserving historical references of how ‘real’ people lived. You might also think of the museum in terms of the institution, where they can shape how we see history or different cultures.
There is also notion on how photography works in relation to this gaze, can I refer you to page 138 of the text.
The ‘Strangers’ text, again, goes someway in illustrating this notion of difference, by considering the stranger we must also consider ourselves. There is a section in the text where Bauman talks about seeing people trying to become part of a society of group, as often getting things wrong, not quite getting it right, and when the group sees these attempts, they are made to feel uncomfortable, because what they see is a distorted mirror image of themselves. Again its these links that create greater understanding.
Let me know what you think. It would be good to start getting some ideas down.
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