And the Final is Finished!

Our Anthropology of Art final was not written but spoken. We were asked to prepare a presentation that illustrated our acculmative understanding of what is Art and why should anthropologist care about it as it relates to your topic of choice. Though my skin is unmarked (though that choice reflects its own fact), I chose to look deeper into the ideas behind tattooing; what ideas come into play when a person looks at them. I started off looking to compare and contrast temporary vs. permeant tattooing role in societies but the answers to their roles were much more similar and intriguing then I would have initially thought. Tattooing is intently tied into how a society defines what is human and what is animal. 


Though I was excited to share the new depth that tattoos encompassed, jitters broke out as I tried to push back the fact it was a final.  My kind classmates allowed me to go first on our busy monday of power points. Halfway through nerves overtook my sight and I entered a pre-rehersed spew of information that was only periodically broken by my mind throwing on the breaks to elaborate. 


Here's my scrip and link to the presentation, just in case someone stumbles upon this blog in the future and wonders what this person was rambling on about....


So here is the visual aspects...
And the script...

Understanding Tattoos 101

HI, I’m Christina

“The impulse to create art is one of the defining signs of humanity, the body may well have been the first canvas.”

PRESS

Tattooing…

PRESS

…Is a communication between the self and society.

PRESS

Abstract: This presentation aims to understand the cultural ideas that define the enthno-aesthetics of Tattoos, in order to recognize the exchange of meaning between the individual and culture. A tattoo represents a forum for nonverbal communication between the individual and external society. By analyzing a variety of articles, the concept emerges of the skin as part of a boundary phenomenon, in which there is "the exteriorization of the interior, and simultaneously the interiorizaton of the exterior". Tattooing, a communication between the self and society, is visibly marked on the skin to be interpreted by those were being initiated into the community. The skin works as a medium between the self and culture. Although, the idea applies to all forms of personal adornment the permanence of tattoos makes it particularly significant. In this presentation, we will explore the ability of tattoos to bridge the gap between the social and individual aspects of the body and how the ritual of tattooing expresses power depending on the individual’s role in society and participation in the creation of the tattoo. The specific details of these conditions define a tattoo’s potential as an example of art.   

The reasons for getting tattooed is varied but certain ideas always have an effect of the meaning behind them.

Tattooing is a visual elaboration of a person’s social reality, which is drawn onto the skin. The skin is an ambiguous terrain at the boundary between the self PRESS and society PRESS. Inscribing the skin is an act that is at once personal and cultural.

How tattoos are interpreted is defined PRESS by how society relates to the body.  PRESS

The body is the locus of social control, defining how individuals can exert control over the events around them.  

PRESS

Human Bodies are never blank or unmarked, even when not explicitly marked by clothes or modification because of layers of meaning that we superimpose on a body to make it human.  

PRESS

As such, the body is not simply the platform on which a tattoo is placed but the placement is significant in the meaning of the inscription or art that is transcribed.

PRESS

In Papua New Guinea, Maisin women cover their entire faces with curvilinear patterns in a puberty ceremony. Until they are tattooed, they are thought to have "blank" faces

PRESS

Body Art is a visual language where one needs to understand the metaphoric vocabulary and the ritual involved. Because of this Tattoos are culture specific.

Colour, shape, common metaphors, group identifiers; all are part of the enthno-aesthetics of tattoos.

When a design leaves its area of origin, it can lose its original meaning or gain new depths. PRESS The spiral flower design of Dyak people of Borneo, is a symbol of the tribe and spiritual protection that has been widely copied outside of Indonesia,

PRESS without a connection to the tribe.

PRESS

The Ritual of Tattooing is an expression of Power.

In tattooing, who’s expressing power is defined by who calls for the inscription upon the body. Tattooing is an exertion of power onto a person when the tattoo is forced.  However, Tattooing upon the self is often seen as a self-empowering process, or culturally powerful.

This is where tattooing breaks into two categories, an Art form vs. Forced branding.

PRESS (to branding)

The Greek word for tattooing is stigma; Stigmatize translates to being tattooed, reflecting the Greek’s punitive use of tattoos.

PRESS

Throughout western history, military deserters were often marked with a capital D to designate perceived cowardice and anti-nationalism, PRESS this example was of a British deserter Mark taken post-mortem.

PRESS

In Germany, SS authorities introduced the practice of tattooing in order to identify the bodies of registered prisoners who had been killed.

What these tattoos have in common are that all are predesigned, lacking all personalization to the identity of the person.

PRESS

Brandings are to be contrasted with cultural artistic expression through body art, the creation of which the person whose skin is to be illustrated actively participates.  

PRESS

To be considered art and not just marking, body arts have to some measure of freedom and intentionality in its creation.

Cultural tattooing, as in coming of age rituals, is an art when they are specifically designed for the one being tattooed, reflecting the individual’s personal history.

           

Permanent or temporary, Tattooing is like clothes, its something we all have done at one time or another

King gorge, American youth, Native Americans

An ending thought: “a tattooed body, as transgressive body, seeks recognition, but not necessarily recognition that rectifies subjectivity once it is recognized. A tattoo adds to the body”, Around the world, it’s making special.   

Viewing Art as an Act of Consumption

Late last night I came out of another world. The world was wacky, illogical, dangerous, silly, loving…

And completely familiar.

It was a play, my friends perforce of Some Assembly Required to be exact. Plays take the behavior of art to an extreme. As they enact making special, the play creators develop an entire world.  First there is the theater itself. This space is set aside specifically for the presentation of visual/ audio arts in western culture. The stage should fit the play. Gist Hall Theater is small, allowing the audience to feel as if on the stage itself, preparing them for their role in the play. For a play to do well, the audience needs to feel connected, and the performers along with the show techs direct the audience thorough their part. In this play, the expert use of lighting lead the audience’s eyes so completely that even with my ADHD, I only looked into the shadows when they wanted me to. Some Assembly Required presents a satire of Christmas Eve; bringing together the realistic with the ridiculous presenting us in the audience those paradoxical moments we react to in art. 

Days of Our (Objects) Lives

Its not just people who have social lives,  but objects too. Objects gossip about their

Can't Leave Ourselves Out...

In An Anthropologists Look at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance, Joann Kealiinohomoku delves into the issue of ethnocentrism in the study of western practices, in particular Dance. In Cultural writings, you receive a feeling that pre-colonial societies exist statically in the third dimension; that time does not affect the bubble in which these societies operate. We excuse this as saying we are writing in of the ethnographic present, which removes the need to look at the evolution to and from that point. Reports continue in that tone into the defining point in comes the west; now writings stress the rapid changes occurring as if this is the first time any non-western society has ever had to evolve.

Kealiinohomoku highlights mental paradoxes in dance theory, starting with the comparison of primitive to primeval and the importance of clear definitions (one of the first things we struggled to do at the beginning of the semester with the idea of Art). Primeval is what used to be, something that we cannot directly study. Primitive is the idea that something is not highly evolved, and as such is a substitute for primeval. However, nothing is actually primitive because everything does evolve, just not in the same way. Primitive dance is an over generalization, treated as a monolithic wholes where multiple cultural traditions are lumped together despite more differences then similarities. These over generalizations result from outside experts discuss forms in which they are not. In dance, books are written in an “us” western dance- ballet in particular- and a “them” which is everything else grouped into ethnic or primitive dance. These writings express that the same rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to you or that your ideas; that ballet can not be ethic, nothing so homely as that, as it has risen above its cultural roots to express “universal” ideal.  It is this idea that the article calls the “experts” out on. Ballet themes are directly related to European environment, language, beauty and life ideas.

         Ethno-aesthetics is as relevant when looking at our own culture so that we do not idealize one cultural tradition over another.  ”Nacirema” culture is presented as parody to highlight the importance of ethno-aesthetics, the biggest danger often being that without a cultural awareness as you can add meaning where there is none and miss what meaning there is. Researching the Nacirema forces us to view the “us” through the frame of the other.  Below is a description of an activity in which I participated in for four years.

Aqueous Subcultures of the Nacirema

This section documents one of the various subcultures that can be observed within the Nacirema’ populous.  This particular subgroup is referred to as Remmiws and Revids. Although the majority of the Nacirema embrace their land-based heritage, these particular people will spend the majority of their waking hours engaged in aquatic based activities. It is not uncommon for them to spend 2-6 hours daily in this saturated environment, often beginning and ending their days in the same aqueous activity.

            The location in which theses feats are performed takes the form of an enclosed lake or sea inlet.  The length is very perspicuously 25 or 50 yards, though the width and the depth are variable. If the lakes depth is adequate, a climbable tower or cliff will be constructed at the water’s edge, with platforms at five, seven and a half, and ten meters. Boards will then be added at 1and 3m, protruding over the water. These structures are used primarily by the Revids (whose specific activities we will address later). Remmiws use a smaller version of these towers, called Skcolbs, which are about 1m high and about 2m apart, located at the end of the 25 or 50 yards. The tops of these skcolbs are angled towards the liquid surface.

            When Remmiws get together, they begin their daily ceremony by standing on the skcolbs and bowing to the tranquil water. Gripping the front edge firmly they push off, launching themselves headlong into the lake in unison. Once submerged, they engage in one of the four specialized motions that have been passes on through the generations.  Newly ordained Remmiws are first taught a stylized “crawl” that propels them forward, performed both on the back and the stomach. Once sufficient mastery of these motions is possessed the Remmiws is taught the two more advanced motions. These are beautiful to behold when mastered, reminiscent of a frog or dolphin in their apparent mastery of this foreign environment.

            At times they are aided by the use of specialized tools, which appear to have the goal end of expediting their mastery. These include a tomb of a light substance reminiscent of some basalt which are held, two thin boards which are then strapped to the hands, and longer boards that are made to tightly sheath the feet.

            Some Remmiws will then specialize further and train to become a Revid, though it is not necessary for the Revid to be a master Remmiws. Revids climb the tall cliff-tower mentioned earlier, again salute the water, and then hurl themselves down from the height. While airborne the Revid sculpts their body into a number of fluid poses, stunning to the sight but with tragic consequences if executed erroneously.  Because of the height from which they hurl themselves, the lake surface can cause perennial damage to the body if not met properly according to Revid traditions.

            Other subgroups within the main group of Remmiws and Revids include the Olopretaw teams, the ice bear clan and the rogue depth dwelling Revids.

Having being a spectator to these acts of extremity, one might come to question what drives these people to perform such endeavors.  The answer seems to be religious. As we are well aware, life arose from the thalassic realm and only birds have yet to master the Aeolian. Performing these ceremonies it seems they are attempting to get in touch with these realms. Remmiws reach back into the aqueous past for forgotten knowledge, while Revids push into the future for answers carried on the wind, which we do not yet grasp. Perhaps they carry the end goal of pushing their evolution into these environments. Regardless of the questions they leave in our minds, their acts hold a serine grace in their own right. 

Exhibition of Wonder and Place

The Concept of ethno-aesthetics incorporates the source of art into its analysis. Art or Artifacts do not exist in a vacuum but are intrinsically tied to the mindsets of the people who create the art and their environment; “The local or indigenous categories through which the formal qualities of objects, activities and practices are engaged”. Ethno-aesthetics calls on the viewer to understand the source culture’s ideas of beauty, shared metaphor and ties to the world (spirituality); what makes things special to them.

Discussing ethno-aesthetic analysis takes an “awareness of and willingness to participate in indigenous aesthetic expression increasingly signifies belonging and accountability within native communities (Steven Leuthold).” To create ethno-aesthetic art, one must become part of a culture, adopt the common themes of that culture then use those motifs to communicate their personal message. By forwarding ethno-aesthetics you make people adopt a new cultures mindset and this helps preserve them. 

Without the proper background knowledge it can be difficult to understand ethno-aesthetic art. Watching the movie, The Fast Runner, in class left me wondering what was going on more often than not. I had no idea what was normal or not, so I didn't know how to pick out what was special or different about a scene, the part that gave it its meaning, because everything was different to me. However it also gave me a chance to see how they view their world. Their realities; the endless fields of snow, the stark blue-and-white of daytime, the flickering shadows and dark but being inside at night. Western films placed in Alaska always how one scene that just shows off the lights in the sky and openness and cold, but The Fast Runner did not, as for the filmmakers seeing that is an everyday occurrence one that loses its meaning into repetition, it's home and doesn't carry this wild for foreign sense of tundra but it does for us. By studying this film in trying to make sense of their sense of making special, even see what's important in the life you will never lead. It immerses you in a degree of cultural relativism, that hard to achieve otherwise.

When the idea of globalization is applied to the analyzation of art, people think of Western ideas pushing out indigenous ideas. Terms like “whitewashing” get thrown about, and the ideal Western versus indigenous are set against each other; it's one or the other. The actuality is that most cultures will go to hybridization period in which they are exposed to another culture and incorporate some of their ideas. This has likely already happened in their history. Take the lithographs of Jose Guadalupe Posasa for example. He’s work was influenced by symbols from multiple mezzo-American societies, colonial religious iconology, the style of Mexican graphic artists of the time, photographs of Casasola, foreign weeklies, and local murals. And we give all this history the title Mexican. He is truly expressing what Tomás Ybarra-Frausto calls “visual bilingualism”. I would call it “visual poly-lingualism”.

Posasa knew that art represents ideas and is not just an object, which was why he produced art to communicate his ideas to the common illiterate population. The practices of museums need to do this same thing (except that we are expected to be literate now).

Amalia Mesa-Bains champions that practices of museums goes beyond objects, it has to with ideas; cultural museums energizes themselves by being aware of what contributes to the culture and highlighting that background, telling a story with an exhibit. Being aware that there are not just two sides, that hybridization is a constant part of cultural evolution and presenting the back-stories; the ethno-aesthetic approach to art brings inanimate objects to life. 

Extra Sources:

Leuthold, Steven. Indigenous Aesthetics: Native Art, Media, and Identity. http://art.nmu.edu/stevenleuthold/personal/indigenous_aesthetics.html

The Evolution of Arts ad Cultural Arena over the Last Three Decades: A Dialogue between Amallia Mesa-Bains and Tomás Ybarra-Frausto

Ethno-aesthetic Analysis: Calavera Revolucionaria: Jose Guadalupe Posada. 

The Steps of Society

For this week's free write, I'll be thinking out loud about the ideas expressed in the Anthropology of Art, Chapter 2: Art and Social Life. In this chapter it discussed the rejected idea of comprehensive progress files complexity of political relations. Sahlins concept of the domestic mode of production, and puts forward the fact that the majority gatherer societies expend less energy on subsidence behavior than the average “modernized” society, with the lower levels of society I expected to produce the subsidence for the top, such as the example of French farming before World War II where 20% of the population produces subsidence for the rest.

 How does this relate to the arts?

Arts “realize and sustain their current political systems by consciously-operated procedures”. This regardless of whether level the society is thought to be at. However the relationship between how the art supports the political structures of that society changes. To help express the relationship that I gathered from reading this chapter is the diagram above. In a hunter-gatherer societies, arts embedded in average workers ritual activities, with the political head taking important role in that ritual. Arts are closely tied in to religion, and the population socially aware that they support the political standing of the participants. The society's economic ability to allow its society to participate in art, and it is expected that the majority of the population participate in ritualistic arts.

In our modern idea of nation-state’s, the arts are separated from ritual and religion and become arts with a capital A. These Arts are only for those the economic ability to patronize them. The arts are not a grounding piece the majority of society, but the ability to interact with acts goes to show the privileged status of the participant. Painting, drawing, dancing- in order to be considered Art had to be produced by one who had the time to develop that behavior. Arts are for the upper class, not the average population. It is from this upper class that the politician of modernized nation-states are expected to come from. An appreciation of arts in politician supports the idea that they have the education a.k.a. proper breeding, that are necessary for one to be in power. The historical idea arts being an upper-class activity have even been used to reverse in American politics, such as the political campaign of Teddy Roosevelt in which he allied himself with the average man, downplaying his exposure to the arts and highlighting his husbandry, a subsidence activity.

Waiting for Harry

The film Waiting for Harry is anthropologist LES Hyett’s documentation of an aborigine funeral. They take us through the process of re-entombing the bones of Harry's uncle, following the proper burial rituals of that culture. When most noteworthy points of the film was the clear commitment that Henry had to documenting the funeral and the culturally important record for the tribe. Twice during this 52 min. documentary, he is shown speaking to the tribe but the film was for them, not just for whites or anthropologists or the film crew. They are aware of the films longevity and ability to document just not just the moment, but the words and thoughts of those in it. If funeral is not a short ritual. The process of re-entombing took longer than 3 weeks to complete. To authenticate the funeral it was necessary for many “important” people to be present, Harry being the most important of these important people. It is necessary for Harry to prove the symbols drawn on the coffin, for him to approve the painting of the bones, and for him to be present at the actual funeral. There are several very distinctive traits of ritual, and through that art, which we seen the film. The place in which the coffin is prepared is built particularly for that purpose, and is seen as a special man's place where women don't go. Religion, reflection, and art are seen to be the epitome of behavior., and generally reserved for men. Only at one time in the film did we observe a women creating an object, but perhaps this creation is the to them as a craft, not an art, if there is no metaphorical meaning to the object as there is with the painting of the coffin and the metaphorical animals portrayed. The songs connected to the meaning of the dances and other the artistic behaviors, giving the events multiple layers. The use of body paint was seen repetitively in the film and I wonder about the meaning of the red orcher that was used on the bones compared to the weight he that was used by the living dancers. To drawn symbols on the coffin were explained to us but the meaning of the colors used, if there were any.  Music was heard throughout the film.  Perhaps because the movie was made for the tribe themselves, they didn't feel it was necessary to elaborate on the “common knowledge” metaphors and meaning.