In Progress » Art

No Easy Answers: M.I.A. and the Politics of Pop

DeepthiW — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:26:52 +0000

It has been argued that M.I.A., the London-born Sri Lankan Tamil rapper, should not have to explain why her art contains references to the internationally known terrorist organization familiarly known as the Tamil Tigers. But in a recent interview, M.I.A. called the civil war in Sri Lanka a genocide and compared its history of ethnic conflict to Nazi-Germany. What lies behind M.I.A.’s contentious claim?

When I first heard about M.I.A., the Sri Lankan Tamil rapper from London, it was in 2004 ago amidst the buzz about her forthcoming debut album Arular. I was instantly intrigued — a Sri Lankan musician being featured in Pitchfork? What was her style? Was I going to like it? I wasn’t born in Sri Lanka, a beautiful island with a turbulent political past and present, but most of my extended family still lives there. M.I.A. spent a lot more time there than I did, but her hybrid upbringing in Sri Lanka and London combined with a musical background that included support from Justine Frischmann and Peaches assured me that I was going to connect with her sound.

I instantly took to M.I.A.’s music, which incorporates as many far-flung styles as possible from Bollywood disco to Brazilian baile to Jamaican dancehall and more. But her lyrics puzzled me — sometimes they sounded like nonsense, sometimes they sounded like they were supposed to be politically charged. But I didn’t hear a cohesive agenda or message, beyond, “this is underground, yo!” I knew she was making a lot of references to the Sri Lankan civil conflict, but I couldn’t tell whether her references told a story or not. There’s no doubt, though, that her music, imagery and media interviews have attracted mainstream attention to the country of Sri Lanka, and have publicized her experience of Sri Lanka’s civil war based on an upbringing that took her from Britain to Sri Lanka to India and back again to Britain as a refugee.

Messages of Conflict
M.I.A. has proudly positioned herself in numerous media interviews as an artist motivated by her background as a refugee of Sri Lanka’s decades-old civil conflict. In her music and associated imagery, M.I.A. drops references to her life story, political ties, and other minority stories to straddle a hybridized cultural and political identity that subverts and rejects mainstream Western narratives of gender and politics. She’s forged a complicated identity for herself as both a cross-cultural pop musician and political spokesperson for the Tamil people of Sri Lanka, and she has explicitly acknowledged her power to educate people about the conflict. By scanning music blog postings across the web, it is clear that she is an influential disseminator of information, not just music, to audiences (Bennet, Harthun, Starbury).

She’s recently gained enthusiastic acclaim in the world of music, winning album of the year from Rolling Stone and garnering nominations for both a Grammy and an Oscar in 2009. But even her early collaborations with Philadelphia-based producer Diplo from 2004 and her first album from 2005 were already inviting questions. In March of 2005, Scott Plagenhoef wrote in Pitchfork that “M.I.A.’s detractors claim her flirtations with terrorism and revolutionary politics reveal the biggest case of sufferer’s envy since Joe Strummer but little depth of thought.” Plagenhoef asked, “But if the latter is true, so what? … An argument can and has been made that her political lip service is unique enough to get those topics onto your tongue or into your brain, prodding listeners to at least examine them.”

I can’t say I agree with Plagenhoef’s sentiment that raising a topic is more important than what is said about the topic. But then, I grew up with the topic in question and have been hearing about the death tolls for over a decade. When I was five, my family spent our summer in Sri Lanka, arriving in time for a series of ethnically-charged riots that perpetrated horrific violence against Tamils in the city of Colombo. One day, I saw the shop across the street from my grandmother’s house being attacked with torches by a shouting mob. One of my older cousins, vibrating in her fury, wanted to throw rocks at the crowd around the smoldering building.

Later, my mother explained that it was not the local residents of my grandmother’s neighborhood, but a traveling gang who had destroyed the Tamil shop. We didn’t go back to Sri Lanka for another eight years. I’m ethnically Sinhalese, from the roughly 70 percent majority that dominates the country, while M.I.A. is Tamil and a member of the next largest ethnicity on the island at about 20 percent. So in the mainstream Western media’s understanding of the conflict, it’s ostensibly our peoples who are at war against each other. Religion is often casually thrown into the labeling too, as in “Sinhalese Buddhists” versus “Tamil Hindus.” Of course it’s far more complicated than a simple case of ethnic conflict, but more on that later.

One of M.I.A.’s acknowledged influences is her largely absentee father, who was a member of a Tamil separatist group historically aligned with internationally proscribed terrorist group the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). M.I.A’s art school past informs her self-created album, video and live show art, which features tigers, tanks, palm trees, and other symbols of the Sri Lankan conflict. The tiger imagery is commonly interpreted as a nod to the LTTE, the only Tamil separatist group to feature a tiger in their name. When asked about these visual references in one interview, M.I.A. responded, “How come people are allowed to say M.I.A. equals a tiger print shirt equals suicide bombing? If anyone else wears a tiger print shirt, it means nothing. Converse has put out a tiger print shoe and I wore it in my video and that means terrorism” (Cosyns).

This is arguably a disingenuous way to avoid explaining the significance of the reference, as M.I.A. is clearly a politically engaged musician and performer. A tiger print or image, situated within the rest of her visual symbols, is hard to accept as signifying “nothing,” although the significance is not necessarily positive. For example, one of her videos features children dancing in front of a tiger, which could be interpreted as a reference to child soldier recruitment, known to have been practiced by the LTTE. But M.I.A. has declined to acknowledge any signification at all — and to what end? I still don’t understand.

Another Sri Lankan rapper named DeLon has revived the controversy through a YouTube video remixing her popular single Paper Planes, juxtaposing violent imagery from the LTTE bombings and other violent acts with images of MIA performing and posing. His rhymes over the melody ask why tiger imagery is so common in her works if she doesn’t support the LTTE. M.I.A. has dismissed his video as “self-promotion” and her label Interscope Records has served DeLon with a cease-and-desist, claiming the video endangers “M.I.A.’s reputation as a freedom fighter” (Starbury).

Plagenhoef’s argument back in 2005 was that as a musician, M.I.A. should not need to explain why her art contains references to not only the conflict generally but the LTTE specifically. Today, it is much harder to make the case that M.I.A.’s references to terrorism and revolutionary politics do not need to be interrogated for deeper meaning, as she’s become the most prominent Sri Lankan in mainstream media and has also identified herself as “being the only Tamil…in the Western media,” seeing it as a “great opportunity to … bring forward what’s going on in Sri Lanka” (M.I.A.). In the same interview, she states, “I’ve turned into the only voice for the Tamil people…the twenty percent minority in my country.” Understanding the importance of her role requires visiting the Sri Lankan civil conflict.

The Sri Lankan Civil Conflict
Sri Lanka is a small island country with a bloody history. A civil conflict along ethnic lines has slowly emerged and intensified since the country gained independence from British rule in 1948. During British rule, a strategy of promoting English-speaking Tamils to leadership positions within the society created state, commercial, educational and other professional sectors that were dominated by Tamils (Bowen). In the wake of independence, a Sinhalese nationalist movement combined with laws intended to rectify imbalances created by British policies resulted in widespread discrimination against Tamils, and inspired the Tamil separatist movements of the 1970s (Bowen).

Since then, most of the distinct Tamil movements were destroyed by the LTTE through assassinations of Tamil political leaders who participated in the democratic process or through consumption into the LTTE, who then turned to suicide bombing and other violent means to make their case. The Sri Lankan government attempted to create local power sharing structures to entice the LTTE to lay down arms and transition into a legitimate political organization, but with no success. Today, the war is between the Sinhalese-dominated majority government and the LTTE. By their account, the Tigers are fighting for regional autonomy for the Tamil population. By the Sri Lankan government’s account, which is now dominated by Sinhalese nationals, the LTTE has been terrorizing the country for decades and needs to be destroyed if the country is to move forward.

According to a report from the Council on Foreign Relations, the LTTE is blamed for a dozen high-level assassinations and over two hundred suicide attacks (Bhattacharji). The same report estimates that that the LTTE has murdered approximately 5,000 people just since 2006. And in recent months, the LTTE is accused by the Associated Press among others of using Tamil civilians as human shields and firing at civilians as they flee the area (Mackenize, Nessman).

While one front of Sri Lanka’s civil war is being waged on the ground between the national army and the LTTE, another front has been intensifying in a theater with a much larger scope—the media. In part due to its small size and minor role in the global economy, Sri Lanka has never been heavily or consistently covered by international media services (Gabony). But another factor has been the Sri Lankan government’s hostile attitude towards journalists, both international and domestic, which has made it impossible to report from the frontlines. Reports are instead confined to a few sparse details and casualty numbers reported by spokespeople for the LTTE and the government, whose reports almost always directly contradict each other (Buerk 2008). The BBC, the only media source with significant coverage of the conflict is reviled on both sides for its bias in favor of the opposing side (Gabony). With so many lies and half-truths it is near impossible to discern the full story.

M.I.A. and the Genocide Movement
It is into this contentious space that M.I.A. offered her assessment of the conflict. On January 28, 2009, M.I.A. appeared on the Tavis Smiley show, an LA-based PBS news magazine with a national audience and online distribution. Given the opportunity to educate the primarily US-based viewers of the show, the majority of whom know little to nothing about the conflict, M.I.A. spoke extensively about the plight of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, repeatedly referring to the war as a “genocide.” She stated that from the time that she left the country to now, “there’s been a systematic genocide” and that “Tamils make up twenty percent of the country and they’re getting wiped out.” In another interview with The Daily Beast two days later, she calls the situation “systematic genocide, ethnic cleansing” and compares it to Nazi-Germany. In a recent assessment of that claim by the New York Times, Thomas Fuller writes that “M.I.A.’s claims that the government is carrying out a genocide against Tamils place her on the outer fringe of opinion about the conflict.” In the same article Fuller quotes Yolanda Foster of Amnesty International, who observes, “The Tamil Tigers have a long history of child recruitment, hostage taking, forcing civilians to the front lines. It’s complicated to assign blame.”

M.I.A. is not alone in assessing the conflict as a genocide; newly formed Tamil groups in the diaspora have initiated efforts to reframe the conflict as a genocide. Significantly, high profile efforts to have the conflict officially recognized in the US and in India date back to around the same time as her interview. The group Tamils Against Genocide has been in existence at least since August of 2008, when their legal representative Bruce Fein contributed a commentary to the Washington Times comparing the Sri Lankan conflict to Nazi-Germany and the Bosnian genocide of the 90s. NGOs have been formed in the United States and in India to push the genocide framing through both media and legal channels, with most of the activity taking place in January through March of 2009.

The Genocide Movement Timeline

August 20th 2008 – Bruce Fein, legal representative for Tamils Against Genocide, publishes commentary in the Washington Times. The commentary compares the Sri Lankan conflict to Nazi-Germany and the Bosnian genocide of the 90s and introduces Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s Defense Secretary, as a US citizen who should be investigated for war crimes.
January 26th 2009 – In India, Dr. Ramadoss, founder and president of the Pattali Makkal Katchi party, a Tamil political party in the Indian government, gives a press conference urging the Indian government to recognize Tamil Eelam as the only solution for the Sri Lankan Tamil population.
February 5th 2009 – Tamils Against Genocide files charges with the US attorney general charging both Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Sri Lanka’s Army Commander, Sarath Fonseka, for genocide, war crimes and torture against Tamils in Sri Lanka.
February 9th 2009 – Mr. Fein publishes a second commentary in the Boston Globe.
February 13th 2009 – Dr. Ramadoss describes the conflict as “a clear case of genocide” of the Tamil population.
February 14th 2009 – A new NGO announced in India called Indians Against Genocide
February 20th 2009 – Tamils Against Genocide holds a genocide rally in Washington DC.

Interrogating the Genocide Claim
Genocide is defined by the UN as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” There are significant numbers of Tamils living in Sri Lanka in state-controlled areas without danger. Colombo, the largest city in Sri Lanka, is populated by every ethnic group in the country. Daily life is peaceful and involves much mixing between the groups. In a response to M.I.A.’s interview, Dr. Palitha Kohona, Foreign Secretary for the government of Sri Lanka, notes, “In Sri Lanka, fifty-four percent or more of the Tamil population does not live in the areas controlled by the Tamil Tigers. They live in the south, in and around Colombo, [in areas] under government control.” At this time, the majority of Tamils who were initially part of the LTTE are now participating in building a political process in the East and the North with the Sri Lankan government, belying the claim of widespread discord between the two ethnic groups. The Mackenzie Institute in Toronto which studies political instability and terrorism writes, “Genocide is not happening in Sri Lanka…. Anybody who takes the charge seriously betrays a highly annoying ignorance about the state of affairs between Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).”

The Sri Lankan government is by no means blameless. It has been heavily criticized for its lack of transparency, hostility towards media, and breaches of human rights. Currently, as tens of thousands of civilians are trapped in the conflict zone, reporters, aid agencies, and humanitarian efforts are banned from entering the area (“last Tamil Tiger town”). The Sri Lankan government claims this is because they cannot guarantee anyone’s safety, but such secrecy is inexcusable. The Sri Lankan military, too, has a lot to answer for in the conflict—in the past, both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan military were accused of engaging in abductions, extortion, conscription, and the use of child soldiers (Bhattacharji).

The Final Countdown
After an aborted 2002 peace treaty during which the LTTE rearmed, the army has launched a no-holds barred attempt to destroy the LTTE once and for all. Down to the final months, atrocities are being perpetrated left and right by everyone involved. According to the BBC, the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights Navi Pillay has described the level of civilian deaths as “truly shocking,” and called on the two warring sides to suspend hostilities immediately. The Sri Lankan government refuses to pull back, fearing that as soon as they do, the LTTE will immediately re-arm, as they have repeatedly done. Neither side will let up, which leaves the trapped Tamil civilians nowhere to go but to the grave. We also have no confirmed numbers about how many people are caught up in the fighting, since all numbers come from either the government or the LTTE media machine.

So what do we call this situation? I call it a futile tragedy of epic proportions. I don’t know if M.I.A. is aligned with the LTTE’s objectives, but I do know I am with her in wanting the world to protest the deaths of innocent people, Tamil and Sinhalese both. Sri Lanka is searching for a way to end the conflict permanently, but there is no easy solution here. Suspending hostilities means the LTTE can recover and keep spreading violence through suicide bombs and other terrorist means. Continuing the assault means that civilians in the war zone keep losing their lives. But a genocide? This is not a term to be taken lightly, overused or misapplied. I want the international community to know and care about what is happening in Sri Lanka, but not by framing it as
something it is fundamentally not. Diluting the meaning of the word borders on an immoral act by diminishing the true genocides taking place, ones the world has already turned away from and populations who urgently need international intervention.

Do I think M.I.A. is a terrorist? I seriously doubt it. But I think she is irresponsible with her words through her passion for her people. I want M.I.A. to choose her words as carefully as her beats. Give up a little of that swagger in favor of a more nuanced and historically accurate representation of the Sri Lankan conflict.

Works Cited
Bennet, Miles. “M.I.A. Denies Claims That She Supports Terrorist Groups.” Baller Status. N.p. 8 Aug. 2008. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
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Bhattacharji, Preeti. “Backgrounder: Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (aka Tamil Tigers) (Sri Lanka, separatists).” CFR, Council on Foreign Relations. 10 Feb. 2009. Web. 24 Feb. 2009.
Bowen, John R. “The Myth of Global Ethnic Conflict.” Journal of Democracy. National Endowment for Democracy and the Johns Hopkins University Press, 7.4 (1996) 3-14. Project Muse. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
Buerk, Roland. “Numbers game clouds Sri Lankan war.” BBC News. BBC, 21 Mar. 2008. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
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Cosyns, Simon. “‘I may be a bit mouthy…but I’m no terrorist.’” The Sun. 31 Oct. 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
DeLon. “M.I.A. Paper Planes Diss.” Ceylon Records, 4 Aug. 2008. Web. 22 Feb 2008. .
du Lac, J. Freedom. “M.I.A.’s World Tour de Force.” Washington Post. The Washington Post Company, 21 Aug. 2007. LexisNexis. 23 Feb. 2009.
“English media’s coverage on Lankan issue criticised.” Press Trust of India. 14 Feb. 2009. InfoTrac OneFile. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
Fein, Bruce. “FEIN: A Genocide Inquiry?” Washington Times. The Washington Times LLC, 20 Aug. 2008. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
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Fein, Bruce. “Genocide in Sri Lanka.” Boston Globe. NY Times Co., 15 Feb. 2009. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
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Fuller, Thomas. “The Dissonant Undertones of M.I.A.” New York Times. 10 Feb 2009. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
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Gill, Harjant. “On the Significance of Salting and Peppering Mangoes.” Metapedia. Georgetown University, n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2009. .
Harthun, Jon. “M.I.A. and the art of terrorism.” Three Imaginary Girls. N.p. 7 Aug. 2008. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
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Kohona, Palitha. Interview by Tavis Smiley. Tavis Smiley. KCET, 28 Jan. 2009. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
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“LS members seek govt intervention to end strife in Lanka.” Press Trust of India. 13 Feb. 2009. InfoTrac OneFile. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
Mackenzie, John. “Enough Already with the Genocide Talk.” The Mackenzie Institute. n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
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M.I.A.. Interview by Tavis Smiley. Tavis Smiley. KCET, 28 Jan. 2009. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
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Nessman, Ravi. Interview by Tavis Smiley. Tavis Smiley. KCET, 18 Feb. 2009. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
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Plagenhoef, Scott. “M.I.A.: Arular.” Pitchfork. Pitchfork Media, Inc. 22 Mar. 2005. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
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“Ramadoss: Tamil Nadu Parties should pressurize Indian Government to recognize Eelam.” TamilNet. 26 Jan. 2009. Web. 23 Feb. 2009. .
Starbury, Allen. “M.I.A. Accused Of Supporting Terrorists By Sri Lankan Rapper.” Baller Status. N.p. 6 Aug. 2008. Web. 23 Feb. 2009. .
Tamils Against Genocide. Website. Tamils Against Genocide. N.p. n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2009. .
“Timeline: Sri Lanka.” BBC News. BBC, 6 Jan. 2009. Web. 24 Feb. 2009. .
Touré. “M.I.A. Goes to War.” The Daily Beast. RTST, Inc., 30 Jan. 2009. Web. 24 Feb. 2009. .
“Troops ‘at last Tamil Tiger town.’” BBC News. BBC, 24 Feb. 2009. Web. 24 Feb. 2009. .
United Nations. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 12 Jan. 1951. Web. 23 Feb. 2009. .

Natural Fuse at Towards the Sentient City

DeepthiW — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:45:35 +0000

All of the projects exhibited at the opening of Toward the Sentient City explore the future of the urban environment. Haque Design + Research created the Natural Fuse project, which wires plants into a network in order to both generate power and offset CO2 created by that power. The project addresses not only power generation and balance, but also embeds a community regulator option by creating a system in which if users cooperate on sharing power, the network thrives, if users overload the system, the network will kill off plants.

The project as it was implemented (as might be befitting a pilot or demonstration project) seems more concerned with public education than with technological affordances. The developers mentioned that the transactional model in which the plants are killed if overloaded by “greedy” behavior was inspired by a micro-credit bank in Bangladesh, where if an individual defaults, the whole group is responsible for that loan. The project works on the premise that “we are all part of the production of the city” (Urban Omnibus interview).

But this model explicitly designates actions based on ethical intent (the switch is labeled Off Selfless or Greedy) as opposed to straight power usage. Additionally, intentionally killing off the plant as a result of ethically-driven behaviors rather than simple overuse seems the opposite of useful. Rather than designing the technology in a way that aids the user in making the right decision naturally, the system embeds a possibility that is negative for everyone. In other words, the project acts as a teaching tool about community behaviours rather than as a functioning and efficient community power grid.

William Gaver states that people “perceive the environment directly in terms of its potentials for action, without significant intermediate stages involving memory or inferences.” This is an excellent explanation for why limiting access to smoking in public places has had a much larger impact on decreasing smoking than public education campaigns that stigmatized the activity. I would suggest that the Natural Fuse project in actual implementation would benefit an approach more in keeping with the “ecological” alternative introduced by J.J. Gibson and discussed by Gaver.

For example, showing a healthy plant for the switch in the Selfless position and a dying or dead plant in the Greedy position would be an easy symbol for users to understand, and convey the very literal effects of overuse. It would also not require an inference to make the leap to understanding that the greedy switch would result in killing a plant. Finally, the stigmatization of human action seems an unnecessary element, given the ability to design into the system a way to reduce human action to a sustainable level.

Of course, in actual practice, the plant network would be controlled by a much more sophisticated system of regulators than a simple switch. But a red light indicating consumption levels close to detrimental effect before automatic switch-off might be a more useful inhibitor than relying on humans to flip the switch. People are not always near a switch or monitoring their behaviors, and a self- regulating system may be more ecologically sound in practice than one that requires human action.

Museums, Academically Speaking

DeepthiW — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:55:55 +0000

Starting at the Cité de l’Immigration and moving on to the Musée du Quai Branly provides a route to understanding how the role of “primitive” art in France has changed over the past couple of decades. Originally the Musée des Arts Africains et Océaniens (and where much of the collection for the new Musée du Quai Branly came from), Cité de l’Immigration is a slightly faded building located on the outskirts of Paris. The frescos in the foyer are enormously striking, but viewers may find it difficult to connect more deeply with the imagery and ideas contained within, with little historical context given for the work. The portrayals of labor and colonialism are left to color the experience of the immigration collection on the floors above without explanation.

Moving up the stairs to the permanent collection, the space becomes radically different. This is not one of Paris’ star museums, the collection is modestly sized and displayed. Going to the website later, I discovered that it was divided into three categories: photographs, objects, and artistic representations. And this is what I found most problematic about an otherwise earnest exhibit: the collection is divided by physical nature rather than tied into a more cohesive historical context.

The historical aspects of immigration are covered, in embedded videos and some placards, but the information is often situated away from the relevant items in the collection. If we examine the collection as trying to create what Pierre Nora calls a meaningful lieu de mémoire about immigration, it is difficult to count it a resounding success, although it has its moments. Personal family histories dominate the collection, which offers a more positive representation of immigration than is often found in French discourse around the topic. But without an abundance of contextual information or experiential exhibits, I found it a muted impression of objects and photos that evoke a vague sense of some of the powerful travel histories that have shaped the contemporary world.

The Musee du Quai Branly on the other hand, offers a shock to the senses. The museum is located in the heart of Paris, very close to the Eiffel Tower, signaling a deliberate move from the outskirts of the city to give more prominence to the collection. In many ways, the design of the museum overshadows the objects housed in it. Joan Gonchar describes the organizing principle of the museum’s architect Jean Nouvel in Architectural Record: “In place of a customary museum environment, Nouvel has created a “fictional map” with the collections organized by geographic origin.”

When a building is specifically commissioned for a project, rather than repurposed, it is often as important an object of analysis as the collection itself, carrying as it does messages about both the use and nature of what it houses. In the case of Quai Branly, many surveyors have derived the same message, but interpreted positively or negatively depending on the critic. In a fairly representative piece, Tom Hennes writes in Curator that the museum environment is “unabashedly self-assertive” in its exoticization and othering of the cultures represented within.

The entrance is itself a testament to the nature of the experience. From the very white, very well-lit lobby, a long, winding passage gradually transitions to a deeper, darker, tunnel that takes viewers to the collection, which is presented in a spooky and dramatically lit space that can be confusing to navigate. As Sally Price mentions in “Art of Darkness,” the transition is reminiscent of Conrad’s allegorical novel Heart of Darkness. The transition from light to dark, from the civilization of the lobby to the “jungle” of the interior, can be seen as both regressive and patronizing.

But the artifacts presented within are displayed with the very best of intentions, in that they are beautifully lit, staged with care, and, as our guide explained, preserved with the utmost integrity for a long life. But as Sally Price points out, some exhibits are presented in “tight little cages” which evoke a sense of peep show around the figures.

As for context, again, the museum seems to miss the mark entirely. As is discussed in “Glass, Gardens, and Aborigines,” social criticism is rarely even hinted at throughout the space. Hennes notes that the little explanation that is offered is most often derived from iconic anthropologists and other thinkers of the late colonial period of the 1920s and 30s. To quote primarily from Western thinkers like Claude Lévi-Strauss and Margaret Mead, who were still rooted in a colonial world and have been interrogated for problematic worldviews in more recent times, is to remain rooted in a tradition of exoticizing “primitive” cultures – even if the name “Museum of Premiere Arts” was dropped in favor of Quai Branly.

In fact, the choice of name itself is presented in a revealing way. Our guide explained that to call it primitive was considered insulting so the name Quai Branly was adopted because “it means nothing.” This lack of meaning, or void, is an apt metaphor for what Quai Branly ultimately offers. While the objects are undeniably beautiful and treated with care, any use value or other tradition associated with it is discarded into a void. The fact that no other name could be chosen is indicative of the problematized environment of how the Western world, particularly France, chooses to engage with the rest of the world, by removing it behind glass walls to explore as something alien.

This is further highlighted by the fact that the artifacts of Europe are noticeably missing from the collection. Had the curators decided to include cultures of Europe in the same way, brought into the same setting, the display wouldn’t feel one-sided in its relentlessly superficial and aestheticized approach. But such objects remain at the Louvre, and retain an aura of celebrity and respectability that is comfortably within the same old traditions. Instead the collection at Quai Branly feels part of a long tradition of colonial exploration and conquest. As Sally Price discusses, exhibition of cultural difference was intimately linked to “the celebration of nationalism, colonial conquest, and the civilizing mission.”

Finally, while the uncomfortable juxtaposition of a Tarzan exhibit upstairs (again, strikingly and creatively displayed) was in keeping with the overall blindness to context of the museum, there was one object in particular that stood out to me: this ad for Lavazza coffee.

Displayed as if it were just another object in the exhibit, the ad presents a seemingly European woman on all fours snarling at the camera wearing a small fur, while two cherubic infants are staged in a position to suckle—even if the babies seem more bemused by the setting than ready to feed. The ad is for coffee, and draws on the Romulus and Remus myth of Italian origin, cleverly tying into the Tarzan exhibit. The museum’s commercialization of their displays is almost less offensive than their willingness to include an ad with the same tired tropes of exoticization, hypersexualization, and objectification, again with no discussion of the appropriateness of such a juxtaposition with the collection downstairs.

Signs of the Time, in No Particular Order

DeepthiW — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:04:38 +0000

The recent exhibit at the Whitney was great, but not particularly curated. It was more like they took a bunch of pictures they liked, and just hung em on the wall. Which is sort of…refreshing? My formal review follows.

“Signs of the Time: Contemporary Photography from the Whitney Collection”

The Whitney Museum’s current exhibit comprises one intimate room displaying contemporary photography in a wide range of styles. The artists featured vary in techniques and focus, and the curators explicitly do not try to draw relationships between the works on display in the introduction. As such, it is difficult to assess the exhibit as a holistic collection with a unified message. It makes sense to instead discuss the photographs by artist.

Walking into the gallery, the viewer immediately comes face to face with the largest image in the room. “La Alberca” by James Casebere from 2005 is approximately seven feet by six feet, and features an indoor pool and three wall surfaces that function as mini canvasses, as each is dominated by a very different texture. The wall behind the pool is divided into two textures, with the black and white tiles on the bottom third of the wall slightly smeared by the thick paint slapped across the rest of the wall. Dim lighting characterizes the room but is cut by a shaft of light that spills in from the bottom right, illuminating the surface of the pool with an oily sheen. The image gives the impression of an intimate space while retaining an amazing amount of depth. “La Alberca” is the only digital photograph in the exhibit, and it looks more like a painting than any other, largely due to the detailed textures that look like they pop up from the surface.

There doesn’t appear to be any social or political dimension to the image. I found myself responding to it on a purely aesthetic level, appreciating the balanced composition and muted and strongly defined color palette. More than any other element, the lighting gives the sense of a posed photograph, and evokes a sense of looking into a theatrical space. I found myself wishing I could take this picture home with me to luxuriate in the space.

Anne Collier’s “Despair” from 2006 is the most straightforward piece on display. A white tape cassette on a white background is titled DESPAIR in simple capital letters, with the magnetic tape fully yanked out of the bottom of the cassette into a tangled mess artfully arranged to one side. While nothing about the piece demanded that it be presented in photographic form (the cassette could have been presented in its physical form to almost identical effect), it is immaculately executed.

When I was young, the only music worth stealing from my parents were their cassette tapes and records of the Beatles. I would often put on a blank cassette that had the song “Misery” at the beginning, which I invariably cried through. It was the most profound emotional state I could conceive of at seven. With one simple image, Collier transported me back to that state in an instant, summarizing an emotion in pure form. The relationship Collier draws between music, emotion, and form is well served by her minimalist approach. In fact, the concept behind the work is so simple, it’s hard to believe nobody else did it first.

Adam McEwan goes several steps beyond Collier, with two untitled pieces on display that take the form of fake obituaries. The subjects are Bill Clinton, former president of the United States, and Malcolm McLaren, the influential punk figure and former manager of the Sex Pistols. Each image takes the form of a full page from a newspaper with the name of the “dead” person, a subtitle summation of their primary role, and an iconic photograph surrounded by a lengthy tribute in classic obit style.

McEwan chooses to enshrine Clinton at his most powerful and persuasive, with an image of him at the presidential podium, the official presidential seal partially visible. He is mid-speech, sincerity and urgency shining through his face and upraised hands. In contrast, McLaren is shown staring out impishly at the camera, wearing a white button-up shirt with the words “be reasonable defend the impossible” scattered across in a design that could have come from the influential boutique he ran for many years with his former lover and business partner Vivienne Westwood.

McEwan skillfully subverts our expectations through a format that mimics the broadsheet perfectly, down to the lines on the text edge that sometimes appears in newspapers. He draws on the symbolic power of the newspaper as a sign of truth and facts to force the viewer to reflect for a moment on current reality, to confirm that what he has done is in fact fiction. McEwan also goes beyond the classic interpretive choices available in photography, by choosing a format that allows him to include lengthy prose that is shown at a size that is clearly readable. While the style of the obituaries read straight out of a newspaper, McEwan has interpreted the long-term influence of each figure throughout the prose, leaving the cause of death open to the viewer’s imagination. While the works were completed in 2006, McEwan stops short of recording either life after about 1998, implying that these figures have perhaps finished making their respective influential contributions to society and have lost their relevance in the current age.

At the opposite end of the spectrum lies Walead Beshty’s two “Pictures Made By My Hand with the Assistance of Light” from 2006. The two images are dominated by patches of light and dark, striated into a marbleized pattern and physically crumpled to add a reflective dimension. The images are modestly sized and well executed. Beshty’s works bring texture and form into focus, downplaying the image as content with no recognizable subject matter.

Sam Samore’s works, displayed right next to Beshty’s, are much larger and drastically different in texture and content. “Scenario #12” offers an extreme close-up of a face that could be male or female. The grain of the image reveals imperfections in the face but softens them to make the image beautiful at near or far examination. “Scenario #4” presents two figures facing each other, with the camera position in the classic over-the-shoulder shot of modern cinema.

However, unlike in cinema, the viewer is not put in the place of the figure whose face we cannot see. Instead, we focus on the figure who faces out, whose face is full of emotion but reveals few clues as to what is motivating him. There is an electric connection between the two figures created by his facial expression which makes for a highly dynamic image.

Paul Graham’s series of nine untitled photographs take place on a hazy day in Pittsburgh. Throughout the sequence, a man cuts grass using an aged red lawnmower, grass that in some shots are shown to be next to a parking lot, and in others is shown to extend indefinitely into rolling hills. The man is shown in full in every image with one exception, in which he and the lawnmower are nowhere to be seen. Instead, we see a minivan, inviting us to presume that the vehicle belongs to the man. We are given no real hint as to why he is cutting the grass; there is no uniform or logo on him or on the machine. His clothes are unremarkable. The grass itself is brown and dry in swathes, bright green and lush in others. There is one image which takes precedence over the rest, displayed at twice the size. The figure is shown at profile with a shower of lights surrounding him and weak sun above, evoking a sense of magic in the most mundane act. View the series at Paul Graham’s website, called “A Shimmer of Possibility.”

I enjoyed the exhibit immensely and was able to glean something from each of the works on display. The lack of uniformity was welcome, though if I were a casual observer, I might have left more unsatisfied without a clear message to take away with me. As it was, I came away with a sense of the breadth of contemporary photography and an appreciation for the diversity of form and style these artists have developed.