Go back

	(go back) The hegemony of the art system based on the polarity between the USA and some countries of Western Europe is still very much intact, even though some personalities from former socialist and some so-called Third World countries have been discovered and appreciated since the 80s. These evaluations were in any case built up according to the yardstick of "our" culture, which isolates individual artistic figures from their original contexts and often merely engulfs and swallows different sensitivities inside a standardised scenario. This leads us to reflect that some concepts, more popular today than ever before (such as integrated communications, the global village and media transparency), should be approached with caution. In actual fact, just as very little information on the politics, economics and day-to-day events of certain areas of the planet reaches the West (the ethnic and political strife between Burundi and Zaire being a case in point), so there is practically a complete lack of information on the cultural and artistic activities of world areas in great ferment. Confirmation of this is the example of tumultuously growing Eastern economies such as Korea and Taiwan, or even Japan itself. This is a cultural and information hiatus that affects visual arts particularly, since other creative disciplines such as music, literature and films started embodying proposals from other world areas some years ago. It suffices to think of mass phenomena such as World Music, the Nobel Prizes awarded to Third World personalities, or the massive presence at festivals of non-western film productions. Meeting with these cultures must not mean merely widening the range of information available; we must overcome our intrinsically Western outlook on differences, stop considering them as "exotic" and embody their "otherness". Some steps in this direction have of course already been made: exhibitions such as the albeit controversially accepted "Les Magiciens de la Terre", or events such as the Havana Biennial, not all that well-publicised in the Western media, Korea's Kwangju Biennale, or magazines such as Third Text and Revue Noire, have already raised the issue. The will of non-western countries to preserve their identity from a Western cultural model that is levelling onto univocal consumption-based thinking, and maintains all opportunities for expression, is emerging quite clearly. Russian artists such as Brenner or Kulik (invited by Victor Misiano) have started from this barely defined quest for an identity, and taken up the burden of acting as agents provocateurs; international exhibitions such as the May 1997 Havana Biennial define their activity around historical memory, as a value to counter false universalism. Attention to these themes was never very lively in Italy; the only event that comes to mind is the exhibition "Molteplici Culture", even though few cultures from developing countries were present, as well as some other minor isolated episodes. Perhaps this is because our country has historically been a place to emigrate from, rather than to immigrate to, with all its ensuing consequences on the development of cultural models. Last year's Venice Biennale included a collateral exhibition co-organized by Fumio Nanjo, which will probably serve as a point of reference, and whose title, "Transculture", is quite indicative of its content. The concept of trans-culture in fact supplies a possible reply to the Western dilemma between integration and the misunderstanding of other cultures. Trans-cultures are not simply "other" cultures, in the sense they are not Western and therefore tied to traditional and folkloric elements of their country of origin; nor are they simply Westernized cultures validated into the dominant one. Trans-cultures are new and born from the cross-breeding of differing elements, produced by men and women who have witnessed exchanges, meetings, travels, and transfers from one continent to another, and who reflect the outcomes of educational and learning influences with unpredictable results. Trans-cultural art is combinatorial art in all senses, media and culture alike. It was on the basis of these concepts and the ensuing debate that we organized a series of meetings, by privileging those personalities who could bring to Italy first-hand information on contemporary art of their countries, and bear witness to the exchanges of influences that are taking place today. The result was quite surprising, since at least two things can be demonstrated, as can be seen upon reading the contributions in this book. There are trends inside the so-called dominant cultures towards the collapse of a monolithic idea of one's identity, on the one hand_to the extent that so-called Western culture might be said to be just a name, because of a multifaceted assembly of differing trends, productions, and disciplines. On the other hand, the so-called non-Western cultures prove that they have vital proposals leading to the organization of important exhibitions, the success of top level artists and the presence of critics and curators capable of supporting them. This comes from their capability to state their ties with their original cultures, but also from the ability of interweaving them with suggestions from hegemony cultures in art, literature and filmmaking. No univocal culture exists which the West can juxtapose as a certain reference point to the rest of the world; at the same time, there's no absolute originality of non-Western cultures which would end up by having purely folkloric value. There's ceaseless hybridization instead, one that is not only geographical but also historical, since different cultures follow different calendars; hybridization, cultural cross-breeding, and asymmetry are building up a new panorama of art. This series of conferences (and this book) does not of course pretend to fill vast gaps or to be exhaustive; it merely intends to be a step towards a more open culture of images capable of offering a new image of culture. Roberto Pinto and Marco Senaldi Not all the texts collected here are exact replicas of last year's contributions in the conference series. Preference was sometimes given to re-elaborating contributions, or replacing them with texts on the same subject but capable of working independently, without the audio-visual means used as active support in the conference, and with information obtained during the conference itself.