On the reception of aboriginal art in German art space

German art history and ethnology have led to a binary reading of art that has inhibited the exhibition of Aboriginal art as contemporary art in the twentieth and early twenty-first century. This thesis addresses the question of how Australian Aboriginal art is displayed in the institutional spaces of art galleries and museums in Germany. I argue that there is an underlying current in Germany that divides the representation of art into European and “other”, particularly Aboriginal art. Within German culture, ethnological museums are ranked differently from art institutional spaces. The art museum or gallery is at the top of the hierarchy, enhancing the self-reflexive notion of culture, while the ethnological museum provides the context against which European, specifically German, identity and culture are pitched. Aboriginal art that is contextualised as ethnographic and not as contemporary continues a Modernist perspective on cultural exchange, one that emphasises an essential difference between European and non-European art in a universal progress of humanity. This essentialising of culture in Germany does not reflect the globalised situation that evokes regional cultural inflections based on experiences and expressions of hybridity and fragmentation. In order to understand how German art institutions and ethnographic museums stand for a Eurocentric art discourse, the thesis analyses the cultural parameters of nineteenth century Germany, the socio-political cataclysm of the Third Reich in the twentieth century, and the reversion to Modernism in its aftermath. In comparison, I outline the exhibition history and reception of Aboriginal art in Australia where the positioning of Indigenous and European traditions has shifted markedly into a postcolonial, postmodern situation since the1980s. My study investigates this categorisation into two entities through Western concepts of literacy and orality. Since the Enlightenment, the Western emphasis on alphabetic literacy as a system superior to oral transmission of knowledge has governed the way we make sense of the world around us. The written word underpins modes of exhibition display and reception, so that representation is read as text. As a consequence, institutions and galleries, as part of visual culture, treat knowledge that is transmitted orally as inferior. This thesis explores strategies that allow the viewing of art outside the conventions of the written word. I examine the modes of display and reception of Aboriginal art through fundamental ideas first put forward by Edward Said in Orientalism (1978), and also through Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things (1970). My main focus, however, relates to Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts surrounding Cultural Capital, Symbolic Capital and Symbolic Violence in his publications The Field of Cultural Production (ed. Randal Johnson 1993) and Language and Symbolic Power (trans. by Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson 1991) which allow an analysis of power relations in cultural exchange within the hierarchies of art institutions

Unpenning Words: Releasing Literature from Within - Dreaming Inside-Voices from Junee Correctional Centre

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Transforming the rhetoric: making images as practice led research

The role of photography as documentary practice plays an elementary role in visual culture and - through its story telling qualities - it is evocative of emotions. Photographic imagery helps the individual as well as the body politic to learn and to internalise global events. Over the past eight years, following the events of 9/11 in 2001, western society has undergone significant political, legal and social changes. Images of terror circulated the world almost instantaneously and circulating still. Artists and scholars have addressed the notion of fear as a result of the existing imagery as part of a rhetoric of terror after terrorist attacks such as the 9/11 events in the USA, or the bombings in Madrid, London and Bali, by investigating the question what is the current climate in which we work and live? The underlying common notion for this practice led research is that language (spoken, written, imaged or performed) can be formative and informative. These considerations lead to a number of questions: If the scholar has a `specific public role in society\u27, as Edward Said insisted (Wallen, Closed Encounters: Literary Politics and Public Culture, University of Minnesota Press 1998: 215), how can s/he creatively connect with issues that affect society? Is s/he, to say it with Said, endowed `with a faculty for representing, embodying, articulating a message, a view, an attitude, philosophy or opinion to, as well as for, a public\u27? (1998: 215). I will discuss the photographic work of the artists Mary Rosengren, Juilee Pryor, Mehmet Adil, Brogan Bunt among others, who were part of an exhibition called Tactics against Fear Creativity as Catharsis in 2007 at the FCA Long Gallery, University of Wollongong.The idea behind this exhibition was to provide alternative readings to popular culture and a public language of fracture, hostility and threat by exploring tactics of fear in visual culture from a personal perspective grounded in institutional spac

The virtual museum of the Pacific: new context, new knowledge, new art

In a post colonial world, traditional representations of cultural artifacts in museums are challenged by rapidly proliferating online presence of collections and associated narratives. The Virtual Museum of the Pacific (VMP) project, which can be characterised as a digital ecosystem, is developing a social media platform designed to enable a variety of user communities to engage with the Pacific Collections of the Australian Museum. This engagement has the potential to disrupt the museum’s control over the display and interpretation of its ethnographic collections. There is a growing trend for artists from Indigenous or creator communities, whose cultural heritage is heavily represented in museums, to explore collections to rediscover their ancestral heritage. In contrast to the primitivist assumptions that informed Modernist artists who drew on collected artifacts in their work, the work of these artists renews and re-contextualises processes of creating objects or challenges assumptions about museum displays and how they frame knowledge. The VMP is an interdisciplinary Australian Research Council Linkage Project developed by a University of Wollongong research team in partnership with the Australian Museum. Based on a system known as Collection Web, it combines content management systems for objects with accessible social media user interfaces and aims to support users to extend the annotation of objects in culturally specific ways. Currently, user evaluations are being used to inform the system’s development and foster a more dynamic exchange of knowledge between institutions and communities of users. A survey of staff working in education and community access at the Australian Museum shows that the potential of such a forum has been identified by staff working in education and community access at the Australian Museum. There is also a strong view that collaboration with artists from creator communities is the key to transforming the VMP into an innovative access tool for the Museum’s Pacific Collections

Intersections: What is the current climate in which we work and live?

For many, the events of 11 September 2001 predisposed Western societies to collective fear not dissimilar to that felt at other moments of crisis in history. A few years on, the shockwaves have flattened and the notion of terror has institutionalised fear on several levels: the emotional, the social and the political. Fear, it seems, justifies varying degrees of administrative arbitrariness; as long as there is a commonly acknowledged threat like terrorism, public opinion (when informed by fear rather than knowledge) can be swayed to overlook the politicised abuse of the law. The protection of law from arbitrariness and from the fear that makes arbitrariness possible is, then, a pressing issue in the current climate. This paper explores intersections of visual culture and a general rhetoric of terror as myth-making processes to see how these translate into public opinion. First I examine some historical evidence for the political management of fear in Socratic philosophy, while the second part looks at visual and literal rhetoric

The art of others: Nolde, Preston & views of Indigenous Art

The emergence of Australian Aboriginal art in post-colonial Australia reflects a history of cultural separation between European and Aboriginal art. Up to late 20th Century—Aboriginal culture was \u27invisible\u27 within the wider \u27nation-building\u27 identity. The definition, role and status of Aboriginal art has changed dramatically in Australia over the past thirty years, but in Europe no similar shift into a postcolonial ideology is evident

Tactics Against Fear - Creativity as Catharsis Exhibition

Over the past six years, following the events of 9/11 in 2001, western society has undergone significant political, legal and social changes. The notion of terror - in action, word and image, has institutionalized fear on several levels: the emotional, the social and the political. Fear, it seems, justifies varying degrees of administrative arbitrariness, which as long as there is a commonly acknowledged denominator like terrorism, public opinion (when informed by fear rather than knowledge) can be swayed to overlook politicised abuse of the law. The protection of law from arbitrariness and from fear that makes arbitrariness possible, then, is a pressing issue in the current climate we live in. The idea behind this exhibition, Tactics against Fear –Creativity as Catharsis 2007 is to provide alternative readings to popular culture and a public language of fracture, hostility and threat by exploring tactics of fear from a personal perspective grounded in institutional space. The artworks invite to experience an audio, visual, textual, tactile, and performative response from the specific vantage point of the Faculty of Creative Arts (FCA) at the University of Wollongong. Here, 19 FCA staff and FCA postgraduate students - writers, journalists, composers, musicians, poets, graphic designers and visual artists respond to the current climate of the rhetoric of fear around the ‘war on terror’ through interdisciplinary collaboration. Artists and scholars have addressed the notion of fear as a result of the existing rhetoric of terror after terrorist attacks such as the 9/11 events in the USA, or the bombings in Madrid, London and Bali, by investigating the question what is the current climate in which we work and live? These considerations lead to a number of questions: If the scholar has a ‘specific public role in society’, as Edward Said insisted (Wallen Closed Encounters: Literary Politics and Public Culture, University of Minnesota Press 1998: 215), how can s/he creatively connect with issues that affect society? Is s/he, to say it with Said, endowed ‘with a faculty for representing, embodying, articulating a message, a view, an attitude, philosophy or opinion to, as well as for, a public’? (1998: 215). The art works, coming from a creative rather than from a scientific, legal or historical speaking position, explore today’s popular visual culture from various angles. However, the underlying common notion is that language – spoken, written, imaged or performed – can be formative in the development of fear. In that sense, the exhibition investigates tactics of fear as a result of the current rhetoric of terror in the realm of visual culture

On the Reception of Aboriginal Art in German Arts Space. Art Historical and Anthroplogical Perspectives

The reading of art is located in deeply entrenched ideas of culture and contextualised by specific historical frameworks. This book addresses the question of how Australian Aboriginal art is displayed in the institutional spaces of art galleries and museums in Germany. It argues that there is an underlying current in Germany that divides the representation of art into European and \u27Other.\u27 In German culture, institutional representation of art is hierarchical; the art museum at the top enhances the self-reflexive notion of culture, while the ethnological museum provides the context against which European, specifically German, identity and culture are pitched. German art history and ethnology have led to a binary reading of art that has largely inhibited the exhibition of Aboriginal art as contemporary art. However, Aboriginal art that is contextualised as ethnographic and not as contemporary continues a Modernist attitude on cultural exchange, emphasising an essential difference. This essentialising of art overlooks the globalised situation that evokes regional cultural inflections based on postcolonial expressions of hybridity and fragmentation

A Tale of the Stinging Nettle

A Tale of the Stinging Nettle - Wall installation – knitted merino wool and bamboo yarn – concertina book 2009 Friederike Krishnabhakdi-Vasilakis Coming out of my research on the hierarchically perceived relationship between oral and written dissemination of knowledge in Western society and how this determines the reception of Aboriginal art, I explore aspects of the fairy tale and knitting as social experience, where the rigidities of oral and literary knowing dissolve. The fairy tale is a mapping device of the unconscious; of origin and place. Fairy tales travel across time and space and adopt various forms across cultures, embodying displacement and placement at the same time. Before folklorists such as Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm wrote them down – fairy tales were passed on orally. Through the merging of the tactile (knitting), optical (photography), and cognitive (book) the memorising and discursive properties of these transformative media and their interrelationship come to the fore. Stinging Nettle is central in Anderson’s fairy tale and I use its materiality as meaning-making medium through the organic dye for wool and bamboo yarn. Printing is instrumental to discourse – however other such instrumental processes often precede the printing process. Internal narratives of the photograph and the external of the written text are juxtaposed with the hand-made garment. I employ knitting as social process - during which stories are told and retold - and as ReSearch of memory. Making of the garment becomes a thought process in itself and a frame for the social act of passing on knowledge wrapped in stories.https://ro.uow.edu.au/ditto/1007/thumbnail.jp