Jean Hubert Martin, curator of Magiciens de la Terre, at one of the panel discussions

I come as a Balanda, a non-indigenous person of Australia, and pay my respects to the Wurrundjeri, the traditional owners of the land on which Melbourne rests.

As upright vertical beings, we tend to see the world with a top and a bottom. We now stand at the top, or near it, and countries of the south lie at the bottom. Various differences are organised along the vertical dimension. We have the first world that sets the standard in culture and economy, and the third world that attempts to follow-developed and developing.

A world contracted thus…

In the World Republic of Letters (Le république mondial des lettres), Pascale Casanova outlined a ‘Greenwich meridian of literature' that separated centres of culture such as Paris from the marginal literatures of distant nations. Through operations such as translation and prizes, peripheral literatures are consecrated and thus gain legitimacy both at home and abroad.

These vertical relationships radiate from the north like spokes of a wheel, reaching out from a central hub to the outer reaches of the globe. For those on the rim of the wheel (jante), the only way of communicating with other spokes (rayons) is through the hub (moyeu)—through its museums, libraries, universities and galleries.

Like a wheelwright, the South Project attempts to create a rim that will enable the spokes to communicate with each other (trame). It takes advantage of communication technologies such as web-based email to engage directly with artists and organisations across the south. It hopes to realise the growing confidence in countries of the south, their democratic victories over past oppression, and the increasing economic power enabled by China's hunger for raw materials.

The South Project begins

The South Project began formally in July 2004 when artists and writers from 15 countries of the south came together and established a conversation of mutual interest and discovery. The South African writer Mbulelo Mzamane spoke powerfully about the value of Ubuntu, or humanness, and a ‘rediscovery of the common' ( redécouverte de la commune ) to embrace one's own humble setting. These themes resonated strongly in presentations from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, New Caledonia, India, Indonesia, New Zealand and Mauritius. They herald an African Renaissance that promises to enlighten the 21 st century.

Let me state here that the intention of the South Project is not to exclude the north. South is conceived here as a direction, not a place. Mythically, Europe has been divided into a rational Protestant north and a passionate Catholic south. Today, a south resides in each country as the legacy of colonialism: particularly, south Asians in Britain, North Africans in France and Turks in Germany. Beyond this, a south can be found in each of us. As long as we have bodies, as long as we imbibe tea, coffee, sugar, spice or chocolate, we are south.

The practical logic of this project means that our resources are concentrated on artists and organisations that reside below the tropic of cancer, from which the majority of colonial enterprises began. But we do value greatly the intellectual resources of the north, which form a theoretical compass to navigate our journey.

The critique of orientalism established by writers such as Edward Said has a natural extension into the south. In France, painters such as Matisse and Gauguin refreshed their palettes through contact with the sensual cultures of the South Pacific. The post-colonial turn opens up this primitivist engagement to enable more reciprocal dialogue with its exotic subjects.

From this first meeting, a journey has been mapped. Gatherings are planned in each of the regions of the south: Te Papa museum in Wellington New Zealand in October 2005, Santiago Chile in October 2006 and Soweto South Africa in 2007. Along with residencies and discussions, these gatherings lead to multilateral partnerships between southern countries that will culminate in an arrival in Melbourne 2008.

There is much more to say about this journey, but in a limited time let me make some small observations about the condition of artists in the south. It is quite significant that the South Project is presented now in the same forum as Jean-Hubert Martin. The Magiciens de la Terre is for us an important point of reference for how traditional art might be shown in a modern context. In many ways, the South Project has revealed its own opportunities for continuing this methodology.

Mauritius

Let's start with a Francophone country, Mauritius. While this remote paradise has tourist resorts in abundance, it has only one art gallery. The art school known as Mahatma Gandhi Institute shows occasional art exhibitions, often featuring staff of Indian background. On the day I was there, they had just been attacked by an angry delegation of Hindu fundamentalists for displaying a painting of the god Kali in an indecent pose. There seems no safe public space for art. The National Gallery of Mauritius exists only in name. It is understandable that artists talk of Mauritius as a prison.

You have to touch the bottom to push yourself up. Even further ostracised than artists are the Creole descendents of African slaves. Lewis Dick was the seventeenth child of his family. His mother died while giving birth to him. Born on 29 February, he is considered a child of the eclipse and shunned by others. After discovering the magic of carving, Lewis started selling his work. He was eventually able to uplift his village of Bambou by starting an École de Sculpture for young artists.

Earlier this year, we brought Lewis to Melbourne for a series of residencies where he partnered with an artist who practices what is called ‘poor craft'. As is his way, Lewis searched for some wood that suggested a subject. He found a tangled root from which he fashioned the dreadlocks of a Rastafarian Creole hero, Kaya. This was placed in an historical context by Jennifer Bartholomew who created a military jacket and features of the Dodo from used gloves. A door is opened to consider wood carving as a form of cultural expression. While this may seem a conventional form of art after Duchamp, it is a radical step for Mauritius.

Rather that extracting the works of an artist from his or her original context, arts of necessity enable artists to actively engage with the world of the hosts.

Najibabad

A more radical collaboration occurred with two artisans from Najibabad, India. These Rafoogars practice a highly skilled form of darning that maintains precious Kashmiri shawls. At least two hundred years old, these shawls are still in daily use thanks to regular maintenance by the Rafoogars. Nonetheless, growing consumerism has led to increased use of colourful cheap clothing and is thus a threat to the Rafoogars' status.

In a country like Australia, darning is now rarely practiced in domestic life. As art is often borne of rarity, so darning has been embraced by a few textile artists who employ it as an expressive device. During their residency in the Victorian town of Ballarat, the Rafoogars worked with the artist Wendy Lugg on restoring a replica of Australia's most famous flag. The Eureka flag survived the country's only major rebellion and gave birth to the Southern Cross as a national emblem. In addition, the Rafoogars collaborated with the artist on a newly designed flag. In process now is the development of a foundation to support Rafoogars including overseas commissions.

Our world privileges spectacle over participation, consumption over production. The increasing rarity of skill increases the value of what are humble crafts in their local context.

These two residencies are examples of what might be considered part of the genre of ‘world craft' involving a meeting of traditional skill and modernist technique. While it is important that such ventures are open to critical questioning, they do offer more reciprocal forms of art making that those reliant on traditional curating.

Southern Cross

While techniques offer a lingua franca for the south, the canon can be read in the earth & the sky.

Stars continue to be a source of shared meaning, particularly the Pleiades. Across Aboriginal Australia, a story is told of the Pleiades that is uncannily similar to the ancient Greek myth of Artemis and Orion. The Kungkarangkalpa entails the pursuit across the continent of seven sisters by a love-sick old man. In the central desert area, the male figure Wati Nyiru is famous for his magic penis that is able to travel underground. Similar stories of the Pleiades are found in other southern cultures, such as Peru, South African Khoi and the Pacific. There are collaborations between Aboriginal and Maori artists, whose Matiriki calendar is regulated by the progress of the Pleiades through the sky.

These collaborations are part of a wave of collective action, a Mexican wave if you like, that is sweeping across the south. Relational aesthetics provides an important context for networks that seek to operate outside of the gallery and engage in fluid communities. These include the RAIN network, including collective groups in South Africa, Mali, Indonesia, India and Argentina.

From the Western desert, there is a collective action lead by artist Kantjupayi Benson. She organised the women from her community around Blackstone to construct a Toyota vehicle entirely from grass. The Toyota as the major commodity of Aboriginal communities is now rendered back into the land.

Conclusion

The South Project is uncovering interesting new possibilities for engaging artists from remote nations. The arts of necessity grant artists a mobility that enables them to travel and work in other countries. The ‘skill deficit' of the consumer world increases the value of unique techniques that are found in more traditional societies. And the shared circumstances of living at the bottom of the world provide opportunities for exchange and collaboration.

Charles de Gaulle once said 'Brazil has a great future. But it always will have.' Que sera, sera . If the south is to have a future, the time is now.

 

Paper delivered at the colloquium Art contemporain et sociétés post-coloniales at Sorbonne 1, Paris, 1 April 2006, organised by Actaze