Cultural Difference APT7 Chia-En Jao

Chia-En Jao

b.1976, Taipei, Taiwan
Lives and works in Taipei

http://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/current/apt7_asia_pacific_triennial_of_contemporary_art/artists/chia-en_jao

Chia-En Jao, Taiwan b.1976 | REM/Sleep 2011 | Three-channel HD video projection, 63:42 minutes, sound, colour, English subtitles | Courtesy and © : The artist

Chia-En Jao is fascinated by the relationship between identity, languages and cultures. In REM sleep 2011, the viewer experiences an intimate moment with Vietnamese, Indonesian and Filipino migrant workers in Taiwan. These workers have been coming to Taiwan as domestic servants, nurses or carers of the aged since the 1990's.

In the video installation, the workers awake from a sleep and recount their fears and aspirations through their dreams to the camera. The migrants are asleep in makeshift beds giving the impression that they are snatching a few hours, or even minutes from their lives as domestic help, i.e., a life of drudgery. Many of them have children at home that are being raised by their grandparents and that they are supporting by working abroad. The dreams they experience are quite disturbing for them. One of the female migrants recounts arriving home and not being recognised by friends and family and feeling as though she had never existed.

As is a consistent theme with migration, migrants are prepared to do the menial jobs for low pay that the people of the host country aren't prepared to do. According to an article on news.com.au this is also the case here in Australia. The article is entitled, "Lucky country becomes lazy: Migrant workers to do 'dirty' jobs." http://www.news.com.au/business/australia-the-lucky-country-has-become-lazy/story-e6frfm1i-1226255836042

In Australia we consider ourselves a multicultural society. Our first generation migrants have struggled in the same way as these workers trying to adapt to a new country, language and culture as shown by Chia-En Jao. Since British colonisation Australia has seen:

• Chinese migration in the 1840's due to the discovery of gold,
• "10 pound poms",
• Southern European migration (Italians and Greeks) which occurred mainly after WWII,
• Vietnamese boat people of the 1970's, and 
• Asylum seekers of today.

10 pound poms - an interesting account of how the British came to Australia looking for a better way of life and what they found.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq0yib40KcI

It is interesting that Chia-En Jao uses dreams to show us the underlying fears and concerns for these migrants. In a study published in 2009, in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology entitled, "Attitudes and Social Condition", Morewedge and Norton concluded that the meaningfulness that their participants placed on their dreams depended upon their belief structure with regard to friends, family and religion. The results showed that people engage in a motivated interpretation of their dreams and that how they viewed their dreams impacted on their lives. This was true for both eastern and western cultures. http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/morewedg/personal/papers/dreams2.pdf

Cultural History 2013 "As Italian as Heinz tinned spaghetti"

Mary Tancred
Cultural History
Task 1 12.02.2013


Object that I identify with:

Pasta

Websites looked at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasta
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-2wXR8PX1o

Context

Pasta has been part of my life from the very beginning. Where I grew up in rural South Australia we could only purchase spaghetti and Leggo's tomato paste at the local supermarket in the 60’s and 70’s. My mother would make home-made pasta, i.e., fettuccini and tortellini.

Meaning


Pasta was a first course in my family of origin. Tortellini were eaten in a chicken broth with parmesan cheese. Pasta was cooked ‘al dente’ and usually eaten with a beef ragu'. It was a staple in our diet. Pasta was part of every meal, either risoni in a soup, spaghetti with ragu' or tortellini - unless we were having risotto.
Enjoying pasta with family and friends is also something that happened all the time as dried spaghetti with a tomato based sauce is so easy to prepare and the ingredients readily available for an impromptu meal.
For me the idea of pasta also symbolises getting together with people.

Histories

According to Wikipedia pasta dates back to the 1st Century BC in the writing of Horace. "Lagana", was fine sheets of white dough that were fried. Palestine had a version of pasta in the 3rd and 4th Centuries AD. An Arab physician in the 9th Century AD describes ittrya as string like shapes made of semolina and dried before cooking. There is also the legend of Marco Polo importing pasta from China. In the 14th and 15th Centuries AD pasta became popular because of its easy storage. Tomato Sauce was only invented in the 18th Century AD and because of the liquid content required the use of a fork. Prior to this pasta was eaten with fingers only.
Today you can readily buy varieties of dry pasta or fresh pasta made with egg.

Ideology

Pasta is a hearty meal and with the simplest of ingredients for example garlic, olive oil and parmesan cheese can provide an impromptu meal when guests arrive and you have hardly anything in your pantry. It is usually served from a huge pot or platter so that you can have as much as you want and can go back for a second helping.

Quality ingredients are the best but you can make do with tinned tomatoes, garlic, dried basil or oregano and olive oil.

Cooking the pasta 'al dente' is crucial.

Other

Heinz tinned spaghetti

Websites looked at:
“As Italian as a tin of Heinz spaghetti” http://www.tripadvisor.com.au/ShowUserReviews-g194863-d1060573-r129375302-La_Tagliata-Positano_Amalfi_Coast_Campania.html (I chose this as my title as I feel that it describes my feelings re my Other)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaghettiOs
http://www.heinz.com.au/Corporate/CompanyHistory.aspx

Context

Heinz spaghetti is a concept that is the “other” for me. Soft, squishy, in a tomato sauce that isn’t  unpleasant but then served on a piece of toast - double carbs. I have eaten it and have enjoyed it. There are also SpaghettiO's, Alphaghetti, Oops and other variations.

Meaning

Wikipedia describes SpaghettiO's as being marketed as “less messy than spaghetti” to parents”. They were marketed as a quick and easy way to feed children.

History


It is thought that Heinz good were first imported in 1880 with the arrival of American miners in the gold fields. Heinz first canned goods produced in Australia were baked beans in tomato sauce in 1935. This was quickly followed by canned spaghetti and a range of soups.

By 1942 WWII dominated Australian industry and tin plate shortages forced Heinz to stop supplying canned products to domestic consumers, and later all production was restricted.  The company did, however, get tin plate to make products for the armed services such as tomato juice, Irish stew, beans, spaghetti, soups, potatoes, carrots and onions. In 1942 Heinz Australia supplied almost 12 million cans to the armed services.

Ideology

It’s represents a MacDonald's mind set to me. That is, an American company convincing us that children will make less mess eating tinned spaghetti, alphaghetti, Oops or Spaghetti ‘Os. The ideology is that it is quick, nutritious and is appealing to children. Heinz is a household name in Australia today.

children eating spaghetti

child eating alphaghetti

The characteristics that Pasta and Heinz spaghetti share is that they are easily stored and can be left in your pantry for quite some time. Both are also easy to prepare. Tinned spaghetti requires merely a can opener and a microwave. Dry spaghetti only needs to be boiled and a sauce added. Both are fast to prepare.


Where they differ for me is in my cultural upbringing and that pasta needs to be 'al dente'. Dried pasta eaten with a home-made tomato sauce for me is considered as making a meal from scratch using quality ingredients.
Eating Heinz tinned spaghetti is akin to eating processed food to me. If I have guests at home I would readily cook them pasta but would not consider preparing Heinz tinned spaghetti for them.

Personal Artwork Analysis, Sub-Culture

Task 3 Personal Artwork Analysis
Mary Tancred
26.10.2012

Elements of Design

• Line - portrait
• Shape - organic (figure) and geometric (frame)
• Form - all the elements combined create an illusion of form
• Colour - bold, intense, some tonal work
• Texture - smooth visual
• Space - positive space where there is the figure and frame and negative space in between the two.

Subject Matter

• Self portrait looking through a frame.

Materials

• Oil on canvas. These are traditional materials used for portraiture. Rembrandt, Van Gogh are two examples of famous artists who painted self portraits.

Presentation and Display

• Part of a series entitled, “Identity”, “Culture” and “Sub-Culture”. This particular painting is my “Sub-Culture” piece.

Genre

• Self portrait
• Figurative
• Art Deco
• Narrative

Codes

• female form
• narrative
• tatoos
• self disclosure
• intimacy
• contemporary hair colours
• feminism
• mother
• rich, intense, opulent
• symbolism of barbed wire, i.e., suffering, confinement
• symbolism of a frame, i.e., a story contained within

Contemporary ideas and events that may have influenced the creation of the work

• parenting
• ageing
• feminism
• individuality
• self disclosure

My biography

• role as mum
• societal pressure - what do you do?
• bananas in pyjamas land
• self discovery

Internationalism

• globalisation - women are not a homogeneous category; and while united as a gender, they are also divided by class, ethnicity, religion, age, ideology and sexual preferences
• Multiculturalism - it is not apparent in this particular piece as the focus is on the role as a mum, societal expectations, rules and norms.

Precedents

• Tamara de Lempika

Andromeda, c1927-28

Woman with Dove, 1931

• Nan Golding

One month after being battered, 1984

• Viviene Westwood

Electronic and Information Technologies

• presentation of the artwork on a blog to various audiences.

Audiences and Venues

• so far you are the audience
• potential for either gallery display or featured on my website, facebook etc.

Assessment Task 5 Draw using contemporary Techniques Swoon

Assessment Task 5
Draw using contemporary Techniques
Mary Tancred
17 Sept 2012

Swoon

Swoon (Caledonia Dance Curry) is a street artist born in New London, Connecticut, USA. She moved to New York at 19, and specializes in life-size wheat paste prints and paper cutouts of people. Swoon studied painting at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and started making street art in approx 1999.

Swoon in Paris

http://vimeo.com/17096911

Swoon at 24th and Hampshire

http://vimeo.com/37646977

Woodcuts on brown paper wheat pasted on urban walls

Swoon invaded the 2009 Venice Biennale with a crew of 30 artists and musicians on boats made of trash. The exhibition was entitled the "Swimming Cities of Serenissima"

Swoon's installation extends from the elevators right through to the lobby. It is also 40ft up to the ceiling. The work entitled, Anthropocene Extinction is made up of intricately cut paper and is currently showing at the Boston Institute of CA until end of December 2012. This particular exhibition looks at the effects of industrialized society on people and the environment. The portrait is of one of the last Australian Aboriginals to have experienced a traditional Aboriginal nomadic culture.

Historical context and links with art styles

• Kathe Kollwitz German Expressionist

• Indonesian Shadow Puppets

• Gordon Matta Clark

• José Clemente Orozco - Mexican Muralists

Relationship and connection to my own practice

• Boldness of Swoon's images
• Images of ordinary people
• Wheat paste image

Critically evaluate the effectiveness of the drawings

• Images are striking
• There is intricate detail but also bold rough strokes
• Cut outs are incorporated as well
• Use of bold colour sparingly

John Heartfield

Contemporary Culture
Critically evaluate contemporary visual culture
Task 2 Artwork Case Study

John Heartfield

Mary Tancred

1. Review the elements of design. (line, shape, form, tone, colour, texture, space)

• Space: the images have been placed predominantly in the centre of the artwork so as to focus the viewers' attention.
• Form: the images except for "Hurray the butter is finished" have strong contrasts in black and white and also have uncluttered backgrounds to once again focus the viewers' attention. In "Hurray the butter is finished" there is a lot of information from the people sitting around the dinner table eating iron to the portrait of Hitler and the swatstikas on the wall.
• Shape: in "The meaning of the Hitler salute", the figure of the industrialist is much larger than the image of Hitler. Hitler gives the appearance of being subservient to the industrialist. Money is depicted in the centre of the photomontage between the two.
• Tone: both "Hurray the butter is finished" and "As in the Middle Ages...as in the Third Reich" use tone. In "As in the Middle Ages...as in the Third Reich", the swastika is all black. The tonal representation in "The meaning of the Hitler salute" and "Never again" is present but both containing more striking contrasts of black and white.

2. Identify the subject matter. (What is depicted or referred to?)

• Nazis, Hitler and Nazi symbols including the swastika.
• Meant to undermine and ridicule the Third Reich. Heartfield was a Communist and opposed the Nazi regime.

3. Discuss the materials. (What is it made out of, what are those materials associated with etc?).

Photomontage is similar to collage whereby photographs or photographic reproductions culled from the press are used. The Berlin Dadaists used this technique for their scathing critiques of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich.

• Heartfield’s process:

• detailed pencil sketch.
• search archives and magazines for pictures.
• hired photographers to enlarge, reduce or reverse existing images or take photos of what was needed.
• after cutting out the parts and assembling the image, a retoucher would paint out or highlight areas as directed by Heartfield.
• a large film negative was made of the image.
• Strips of type were attached to the negative which was then retouched and printed as a positive.
• The positive print was used to make the printing plate.

4. Discuss the presentation and display (What context is it shown in, how it is placed, where it is placed, how is it framed, what is close to it etc?).

• Four images

Hurrah, die Butter ist alle! (Hurrah, the butter is finished) 1935 printed in 1957 (top left)

Der Sinn des Hitlergrusses (The Meaning of Hitler Salute) 1932, printed in 1957 (top right)

Niemals wieder! (Never again) c.1940 printed in 1957 (bottom left)

Wie im Mittelalter...so im Dritten Reich (As in the Middle Ages...so in the Third Reich) 1934 printed in 1957

• Photo lithographs on paper.
• lack and white, cream background, thin pine wood frame.
• The four images were displayed on the third level of the GOMA in the section entitled, "Propaganda".
• They were placed near a didactic with the heading of "Prints and Posters".
• The images were beside the work of several Vietnamese artists' prints representing the War of Resistance against the French in 1953 before the American involvement in the Vietnam War. The works were of a similar tone and colour and size as to the works by John Heartfield. They were also made at approximately the same time in history.

5. What genre/s does it belong to? (What type/s or kind/s of art could it be classified as?).

• Political Art
• Agitprop - plays, pamphlets, films and other art forms with showing a fully expressed political message.
• Culture jamming - coined in 1984 and is a method used by anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert mainstream institutions such as corporate advertising. John Heartfield was a preceding influence.

6. Identify the codes you need to understand or access the work. (What are you expected to know about, or have seen before?)

• Nazis
• Hitler and World War II
• Plight of the German people
• Holocaust

7. Research contemporary ideas and events that may have influenced the creation of the work (What popular concepts or historical events were occurring in or around the time of the works production?).

• World War II
• The Nazi propaganda in Germany at the time. In "Hurray, the butter is gone!", a hungry German family sits around a kitchen table, attempting to eat pieces of metal, including chains and rifles, as Hitler looks on from a portrait hanging on the wall. The wallpaper is of swastikas. This image emphasizes the importance of Germany’s military might and weapons at that time instead of being concerned as to how it was going to feed its people.

8. Research the artist’s biography and cultural background and discuss any connection that this may have to the artist’s work?

• Born as Helmut Herzfeld in Germany in 1891.
• Heartfield had a disturbing upbringing. Heartfield's parents who were socialists as well as political activists had to escape Germany to avoid incarceration. He was eight years old at the time and along with his siblings spent the rest of his childhood living with relatives and guardians.
• Heartfield's reputation as an artist came about because of his innovative use of photomontage and his attack on the policies in Germany at the time.
• In 1914, World War I began and Heartfield was drafted into the army. He feigned insanity and was discharged.
• With German nationalism intensifying, Heartfield felt alienated from his government. He changed his name from Herzfeld and anglicized it to John Heartfield.
• Heartfield became an influential figure in the Dadaist movement.
• Heartfield was an organizer of the first international DADA fair in Berlin in 1920 and edited the Dadaist journal Der DADA.
• In 1924, Heartfield met Bertolt Brecht, a German poet, playwright, and Marxist who had a strong influence on Heartfield's art and his use of it as a political tool. That same year, Heartfield began producing photomontages.
• In 1933, when the Nazi’s came to power he moved to Czechoslovakia. In 1938, concerned that Germany would invade Czechoslovakia he relocated to England. The Nazi Regime banned Heartfield’s photomontages during the Third Reich. It wasn’t until the 1950’s that his work was rediscovered.
• Heartfield published his political photomontages in the Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ). This was a workers' newspaper (500,000 readers in 1931).

9. Discuss the influence of internationalism (globalisation, multi-culturalism and/or the legacy of colonialism in their work).

• The policies of the Third Reich before and during WWII was experienced in Germany and the countries invaded by Hitler. It was not part of the global community although it became part of the global community during and after the War as the effects of war were widespread with the loss of life, the returning soldiers, the world coming to terms with the Holoucast and eventually the idea of the formation of the European United Nations.

• Germany was not a coloniser as England, France and Portugal. It did invade and occupy countries during the War years.

• German artists had to deal with the suppression of their art. Heartfield was banned from publishing his art. It was considered contraband and if you were caught with it, you could be shot. German artists such as Hearfied were pursecuted and they had to escape Germany.

10. Research and identify precedents for the artwork produced by other artists.

• The Berlin Dadaists came together primarily after WWI as a protest as to what had happened to Germany at the end of the war.

• The Berlin Dada group of George Grosz (1893-1959); Hannah Hoch (1889-1978); Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948); Raoul Hausmann (1886-1971); Johannes Baader (1875-1955) and Heartfield collectively developed photomontage.

• In Cologne France, Max Ernst (1891-1976) also experimented with photomontage, frequently using military photographs as source material. Pasting together images of planes or bombs with humans, he created haunting machine figures that reflected the destructive capacity of the new technologies used in World War I.

• Heartfield's art has profoundly influenced modern advertising, which has borrowed his idea of photomontage, combining seemingly unrelated images in a single ad to create fascination, shock, humor, or to put across a message.

• His influence was widespread especially with the generation of young artists who discovered his work in the 1950s and 1960s. Among these were the pop-artists, e.g., Andy Warhol. 

• Heartfield's work has been also quoted and referenced by pop and rock musicians and in theater and film. Below are some of the influences of his particular photomontages:

• Siouxsie and the Banshees

• Discharge are a hard core punk band formed in 1977

• Peter Kennard, Broken Missile, 1980

11. Identify how electronic and information technologies have impacted on the presentation and or creation of the artwork.

• Heartfield’s art is the precursor of the photo-shopped digital image.

12. Consider the differing audiences and venues the artwork has had.

• Following his death in 1968 in East Berlin, the East German Akademie der Kúnste took all of his surviving works. Behind the Berlin Wall, Heartfield's physical archive was kept from everyone, artists and the public alike, for more than twenty-five years. At the end of the cold war, MOMA in New York held a four month (April 15 to July 6, 1993) exhibition of his work.