»Assembled in Mexico of US Components. Fits Sizes: 34-36«. Garment labels such as this one embody the global sweatshop economy, in which commodities are sourced from one country, assembled in another, marketed from a third and sold in a fourth. Through the hegemony of states and transnational corporations, thousands of labourers are disenfranchised, denied the basic constitutional entitlements that they ought to have as citizens. Inter-cultural exchange can ensure analogous hierarchies, »designer« art being one of its outcomes. Here is a hypothetical label:

»International Art / Assembled in China of US Components / Marketed at the Ecinev Biennale / Fits All Sizes: XL«.

Globalisation has empowered artists – and not only from the Third World – to travel frequently across the globe exchanging data, ideas and art. XL (extra large) art that is politically correct and au courant with the latest trends can be shopped at the various biennials and triennials. However, while artists circulate in the nexus formed by dominant cultural institutions and locally dominant artists, we must not ignore the fact that there are alternative, albeit dispersed, networks of artists that »glocally« resist the commodification of art through collaborative practice, based on shared and disrupted histories, cultural overlaps and disputes. As Jean Fisher succinctly puts it: »While international biennials and conferences privilege the institutionally 'acceptable', they also provide sites that the 'unacceptable' can take advantage of - they enable an exchange of ideas and experiences not always under institutional control.» (»Toward A Metaphysics of Shit«, in: Documenta 11_Platform 5: Exhibition Catalogue)

In 2001, the Indian sculptor and installator Navjot Altaf was invited to a residency at Liverpool's Hope University, as part of the Cyfuniad II International Artists Workshop, Wales. She was keen to make this cultural exchange meaningful, rather than treat it as one more »acceptable« transitory break in the normal course of art practice. Since she had been interacting with artists from countries as diverse as the UK and Kenya, Germany and Ghana, Botswana and Brazil, she decided to make a work, »Are we communicating?« to problematise the basis of the coming-together of artists in a foreign cultural context. Navjot documented her colleagues' views on multiculturalism - that suspect issue which blurs rather than clarifies cultural negotiations, and which is nuanced differently according to state policy, demographic, linguistic and religious differences, and differing national mythologies. Her concern for context-specific knowledge and practice (note: not the context-free pattern legitimised by global junkets) is exemplified in her various collaborations with people from diverse backgrounds: technicians, filmmakers, musicians and rural artists.

Outside the workshop site, Navjot familiarised herself with the late-industrial landscape of Liverpool: despite, or perhaps because of, her post-colonial status, she felt at home here, as the fantasised sites of her childhood unspooled in past-forward mode. The textile mills, the historic waterfront and docks of Liverpool dropped like pages from old British History textbooks that she had internalised as a child at school in the early post-independence period. Except that these structures of trade and livelihood had now been transformed into restaurants, museums and shopping malls, in a process of gentrification.

Initial nostalgia gave way to critical inquiry. Navjot became acquainted with two British artists, Lin Holland and David Lewis, who were among the chief organisers of Cyfuniad II. The possibility of collaboration came to mind when she saw a film that Holland had shot at a cotton mill in Modinagar on a visit to India. They discussed a contemporary parallel reading of the legendary textile trade between India (specifically, Bombay and Ahmedabad) and the UK (specifically, Liverpool). Their goal was not to document the historiography of the cotton trade from the late 19th century to the present (on which there exists a large body of scholarship), but rather, to offer a nuanced subjective account of the effects of that trade. This account originates in the fact that the artists' biographies resist the dichotomous model of coloniser-aggressor versus colonised-victim, through which we usually construct the colonial period. Such a division between First World and Third World can erase the many experiential realities that elude this binary. It would be more instructive to examine the location and background of individuals in their societies. Navjot's project research, for instance, is veined with what Jose Rizal called »the spectre of comparisons«, where the colonised or post-colonial subject habitually compares her/his own location with the great Western metropolitan centres. But equally, Holland and Lewis can also be regarded as post-colonial subjects who map themselves in a history of internal colonialism, even though they may be perceived as »white« and therefore presumably privileged, from the Indian viewpoint. Residents of Liverpool, they come from working-class backgrounds: their foreparents were also victims of the British Empire. This shows that the phenomenon of colonial oppression must be painted in shades of grey, across a spectrum of class, region and caste specificities. Thus, the collaboration between Navjot, Holland and Lewis consciously stands colonialism on its head.

With this complex framework in mind, we can assimilate the various elements of »Three Halves«, the travelling exhibition that will have been shared, by the time it completes its circuit in 2004, with viewers at Hope University, Liverpool; the Sakshi Gallery, Bombay; and the Bolton and Helmshore Museums, Lancashire. The name of the project allows the intercultural dialogue to spiral out rather than become a full-circle closure. The project functions like an ongoing archive-constellation of data, maps, critical texts, films, audio recordings with labourers who had worked in the Lancashire mills a few decades ago; as well as obsolete objects like spindles on loan from the Helmshore Museum, along with reproductions of collector's items like textile labels borrowed from the Harris Museum, Preston and from a private Indian collection. Our experience of the show is non-linear: spatial and temporal frames connect and separate, go on standby mode till another overlap occurs. The viewer's gaze is punctuated by counterpoints in theme and medium. Walking through the exhibition, we process our responses through a series of audio/visual screens. I use the metaphor of a screen deliberately, because, while a screen inhibits and creates a caesura in a spectator's gaze, it also adds another historical and formal dimension to spectatorship.

This project is a synergy of distinct visions, where no knowledge or form is too major or minor and no version of truth is given more weight over the other. Since this art exchange results neither in saleable artworks nor in politically correct »designer art«, it corrects stultified popular perceptions and offers a rewarding experience for viewers both in India and the UK. Moreover, by defying the label culture ¹ in labour and art exchange, the artists have revealed a long known but »unacceptable« fact: that there never was a single centre and periphery - and in the era of globalisation, there is definitely more than one centre and more than one designated periphery.

 

 

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