Synopsis

04.12.09
P30600 Major Study _ 2009/2010

Roxanne Walters 08079090

Synopsis

Title : Imagineering Civilisations
Sub-title : Memories of “other” : Archives of cultural memory

Research question

Can architecture be used as an agent for cultural diplomacy?

Statement of research problem and rationale

Can there be architectural construct(s) of culturally affirmative archives? Sites of learning and cultural identification at the intersection between civilizations? As societies re-define themselves in their consciousness and to each other; in response to the changes to art, lifestyle, cultural values and norms as the Creative Industries irrevocably transform the practice/production and dissemination of Art and the meaning of culture.
The cultural institutions of the press, publishing, digital and print media, cinema, radio, television and the record industry, are no longer marginal or minor, but, in themselves and in their frequent interlock and integration with other productive institutions [visual and performing arts, music and film industries] - are parts of the whole social and economic organisation at its most general and pervasive.
The creative industries are and continue to affect culture especially through digital media. The technological advances which support digital media and its capabilities are a primary source of economic development still shaping contemporary cultural experience and identity, informing social change, and influencing international relations and communication. They are changing society’s lifestyle, the way artists produce work, trade and commerce in globalisation.

There is an immediacy with which styles, fashions, modes of speech and behaviour, lifestyle values and choices promoted in music videos, films, reality TV and Docu-dramas can be assimilated. The digital sphere (the free software and applications available) offers interfaces, platforms, and networking allowing users to talk to each other, access otherwise unaffordable information and participate in a huge range of “communities”. They can learn to create music, self-publish, and represent themselves on social interaction sites such as You Tube and Twitter. Arguably, the CD, the DVD, the Cinema Box Office, Television, MP3 and streaming on-line content are the driving agents of production and mass consumption in the 16-35 demographic of western countries. Such that there is an effective social/cultural revolution akin to that of the “Industrial Revolution” due to technological and digital transformations pervasively and irrevocably influencing contemporary art, culture and society.

Whenever society undergoes change – there is the inevitable re-definition of cultural values and norms in the context of a reflexive model of cultural renewal. In any period of transition, society must form new roles of social and public life to ensure preservation. [Richard Sennett]. As social leaders - the role of the ‘Artisan’ to preserve, catalogue and advance social mores, ideals, cultural identities and artefacts are key to such periods of adjustment being achieved successfully.

Therefore, will the rise of the Creative Industries with their new social networking tools, evolving social media technology and digital media/ production software and equipment present an opportunity for the practice of cross-cultural dialogue and perception [cultural diplomacy]?

Can architecture be used to appreciate/consume/appropriate culture?
Can architecture act as a cultural signifier?

What role can architecture play in this process of using culture to explore differences and appreciate commonalities? Can architecture be used to effect an agenda of communication across borders and the sharing of knowledge and information impacting the discourse and relation between cultures?

Historically, this agenda of cultural [public] diplomacy has been pursued by the building of “the grand gesture and iconic construct”. The World Pavilions in the World Fairs (Expo) are such an example. As are the huge over budget, ofttimes failing grand tokens such as Opera Houses, Museums and Art Galleries; remote and artificial in experience in themselves. That is, these typologies, as presently understood, are currently the best repository to experience culture but as an event and an experience- are typically characteristic of the remote.

There now precipitates the need to stimulate a mnemonic architectural response which facilitates intercultural mimesis in an immersive trans-cultural environment.

How then can architecture be used to influence space and our interaction with that space and a foreign culture so that we gain a better understanding of “other” [ culture(s)]? How will nation-states define themselves to each other and themselves in the space between two cultures?
A model that tests the feasibility of alternate mechanisms to promote learning and understanding of unfamiliar customs, revolutionising the adoption and adaptation of culture through the transmuting of culture into objects of art and translating these into key elements of cultural identification is the immersive and participatory environments of the Japanese “Little Worlds”.

Thereby transforming culture from the exotic of phenomenon to that which becomes a way of life.

The Little Worlds were a product of the 1800s Menji Restoration. A period of frenetic enlightenment of the Japanese scholars, artists and aristocracy. Such that as a collective, the populous in the country were able to experience and understand foreign ideas and ideals and implement specific aspects of these into their own culture, propelling themselves as a global superpower in 30 years with the second largest global economy.

The Japanese adopted western arts, fashion, architecture, education principles, governmental and military organisation. Architecturally, they rebuilt western cities as Little Worlds in Japan so that they could study, experiment and train in western lifestyles and ideologies dissimilar to their own. Adapting and assuming certain practices into their own lifestyle whereby modernising their own culture in favour of ensuring continued growth and evolution to foster dynamic cross-cultural dialogues rather than an introverted and disparate existence.

That in 30 years, the Japanese were able to re-define themselves as a technologically advanced society provides an intriguing case study to consider. It is the only known successful attempt to engage with external socio-political influences at such an heroic scale that makes the concept to tacitly re-engage the individual with the person and the personal in the experience of the cultural other worthy of consideration. It is even more noteworthy that despite a period of intense appropriation, the Japanese society largely remained “culturally other” to the West.

This Oriental phenomenon therefore encourages the postulation that a primary strategy which promotes the learning and understanding of culture through adoption and adaptation would be to stimulate an immersive environment to support a lifestyle or a community. Whereby the culture can typically evolve in response to the external influences of the Creative Industries necessary to reduce the otherwise inevitable stagnation consequent of inertia.
Unique of its Occidental cousin Poland - where its cultural capital was completely reinstated without alteration. While this architectural exercise in Warsaw fostered a thriving community practicing the arts – it was an exercise of a culture deeply familiar with its heritage.

The Japanese experiment stands singularly of unique methodology that can be employed to understand “other”.

There now exists a need to identify the dynamics that will shape a reflexive model of cultural renewal in the context of the inevitable re-definition of cultural values and norms arising from the shifting global economy and the resultant emerging new world order catalysed by the Creative Industries.
A primary hypothesis posits that an understanding of the intrinsic factors of financial trends and humanism, combined with a knowledge of media, economic growth and communications theories would underpin an emergent architectural model which would facilitate a primary embryonic way of appropriating culture in this epoch of the Creative Industries.
Imagineering architecture can be an appropriate strategy to root society to its past while tacitly engaging the individual in the cultural other with the person and the personal by activity and activity systems (concrete expressions of culture) in this era of the Creative Industries.
Creating culturally affirmative archives potentially is a primary method of effecting continued and sustained socio- economic development. As the “World Exhibitions” and the “Little Worlds” of Japan were to bridge the gap between rapidly expanding industrialisation and the cyclic, reflexive model of cultural renewal in the context of classical humanism.
Conjecturing the creation of a social centre, a site of learning where the Artisan will study, live and work as a way to encourage and diversify the approach to sustaining cultural diplomacy.

A new architectural response to allow an immersive environment to appropriate culture.

Because what we actually intimately experience - what we know to be real - will always have more truth for us, more claim to our emotions, than what we've only read, viewed or heard about. Moreover what we've experienced repeatedly will always seem truer than what we've experienced only once or twice.

Towards an ethnoscape.