I read a lot of books and write down a lot of quotes, photocopy pages. Sometimes I forget where the quotes came from but I remember why I saved them. These quotes sort of stir around an issue I've been thinking of for a while about art and colonialism. I'm going to take a short quote dump:
"Structure without function is- a corpse and function without structure is a ghost."
--Vogel and Wainwright, 1969
This quote really shows how I think about art. Because it seems to be written for utilitarian function. It's interesting to consider non-utilitarian functions through that framework. It still works.
In that context - The structures without function are meaningless and un-communicable but recognizable (as human). The function without structure is an idea, it's invisible, it's fleeting; it is a thought. A thought is manipulation of information and/or experience. And an idea is a series of thoughts manipulated.
"Both [myth & art] serve as means to ordering and explaining a chaotic and threatening environment."
"By appealing to a shared view of the meaning of life in the New World - a kind of myth - leaders could quell or hold in check the atomistic individual wills of their people. This is an appropriate function for myth and for art to play in the universe."
"the technologies and representational conventions of Western cartography and mapping strategies more generally have been extended to and develop within colonial contexts, in which they have been instrumental" -- Richard Phillips
I'm bringing structure to my thoughts first with these quotes, then this writing. Lately I've been thinking about the huge amount of recent dystopia movies. Is this anxiety? I could see it like that, Globalization really means everyone conforming to Western standards in order to keep up economically (and implicitly humanistically as a result of that system). Are these dystopia movies a manifestation of neo- colonial nerves? Are they preparing us for imagery we will soon see in the real world? What are they doing to us? Are they complicit in message? Dystopia became popular in science fiction to undermine fascism, imperialism, sexism, social issues. It's becoming popular today to undermine unregulated environmental waste, corporations, political terror, but they seem fake and insincere. Ultimately we're the ones doing all of these things. The messages are there for those looking but honestly I don't think many people care to see them.
I'm interested in fantasy (which includes dystopian elements) and also interested in trying to see its place in the real world. It's hard to see what I need to do especially when I find real problems in the world that I would love to see not exist. Fantasy, dystopia, and utopia usually borrow imagery from outside the author's culture. It seems harmless at first glance, maybe insensitive, but more-so I think it might be negative. It's visual and identity territory... It's about desiring the exotic. It's fetishizing another human's beliefs and way of life. Consuming a culture.
Well, if fantasy and dystopia are so awful then why not just drop it?
I'd like to say that just because I've thought about these things I'm impervious to fetishizing. But I'm not. I'm just another white America guy who looks out(and up) to other cultures like Japan, West Africa, East Africa, the Middle East, and India. Even there I know that's a gigantic smear of all the cultures inside of those geographic regions. But it's hard for me to tell the difference between all the people in those cultures. My naivety toward the people and their issues gives way to an idealized and utopic view. Do I see less distinction from person to person because I am culturally illiterate toward their specific tendencies? Luckily I don't think this is the reason for my attraction, I've been learning about these cultures and spent time in Ghana. And I'm still, actually if not more whole-heartedly interested in these people and their issues. I'm conflicted though because I find real people and real social issues but I personally became interested for aesthetic reasons. This just seems kind of shallow. And then what do you do? I guess talk about it, make art about it?
On the positive side, I think seeing how other people live has great personal significance. I wish everyone was able to do this. It's like the physical equivalent of a spiritual out-of-body experience. In a sense I am leaving and then coming back to view my own (self and society) in a far more critical manner. I know now the US has its hands in too many interventions and the US has too much power to be overconfident and egotistical.
