Peter Deckers Four Corners installation

'One has the tongue, the other the language'. Juan Munoz.[1]

I like to start with a monologue or a ‘soliloquy oru’:

'The syntax of legibility is grammatologically displaced by the discursive nature of the inner-spatial dialectic as the consciousness of the causality and semiological significance of an idiomatic agglutinative monosyllable acts upon the phililogical paradigm.”

Which means: 'The system for reading and understanding is upset in the discussion of points of grammar/grammatical theory by the irregular rambling that is at the centre of a critical examination with an awareness of how the cause and importance of the coded meaning of a colloquial single syllable word is compounded within the exemplar of linguistic practice'.

Those words are pompous, philosophically hollow and near meaningless. But it is a language spoken by some, hated by most. The words need to be translated, from English to English and from meaning to meaning.

A Spanish proverb calls: 'Don't speak unless you can improve upon the silence'

Introduction

 My installation consists of three ‘environments’, one of which is being held outside the Elam campus. Each environment connects and corresponds to a somewhat coded debate of immigration and its functioning fragments.

The totality assembles a kind of rhizomic cluster formulating meaning from the different perspectives.

My paper explores the notion of identity in the formation and disintegration of culture, language and identity (connecting memory and nostalgia as a projecting vehicle).

I do this through a discussion of the connections amongst thoughts on immigration, identity, language and belonging, using my own personal experiences alongside some text from other writers.  As I talk I shall try to show how my installation relates to these concepts.

For the installation I interviewed 18 immigrants, asking them all the same basic observational questions, which they answered in English first and then in their own native tongue.  The questions covered the first impressions, language experiences and also something about their chosen item, signifying their origins. When asked only some ethnic immigrants responded on singing something in their own language.

Each immigrant is represented by sounds of an overlay containing their two edited languages, the edits itself, a brooch made from their silhouette with a photograph of the item of choice and 2 places in the 2 necklaces.

The brooch, sinker and the 2 cut outs for the necklaces are all made from a single plate of silver, where the internal “negative” shape, becomes the external “positive” for the other and visa versa.

The totality of the work might need a little introduction to get familiar to my solutions,

Madan Sarup wrote:

One of the main features of post-structuralist theory is the deconstruction of the self. In place of a stable and unified being or consciousnesses we get a multifaceted and disintegrating play of selves.[2]

The post-structuralist wants to dissolve the subject. This ensemble of selves is projected in an interior and exterior cluster formulating a discussion about cultural adoption.

Value and Authenticity: adaptation of culture

 The projections of the post-structuralist theory quoted by Sarup sum up the tout ensemble of my installation called Greetings from Maoriland. At present such a title is plainly offensive. In Victorian times this was used on postcards creating a kind of exotic affiliation with the colony. Nowadays this will only communicate Pakeha ignorance towards Maori culture. This sort of cultural assimilation deflecting native culture will be reviewed later in this paper.

'The problem of who I am is raised by the facts of what I appear to be: and through it is essential to the mythology of authenticity that this fact should be obscured by its prophets, what I appear to be is functionally how I appear to others and only derivatively how I appear to myself'. [3]Appiah.

Last February my trip to my country of birth Holland dispossessed me a feeling of belonging. For the first time my association felt dislocated: leaving a feeling of emptiness.

In New Zealand I am called a Dutch immigrant, in Holland a foreigner with an accent. Both labels somehow point to a no-mans land status.   This has an affect on my identity.  Of course central to this point is the way language is spoken; the way I speak with an accent, choose words, and its order.  

I have selected a quote from Nietzsche to support this idea:

'We are unable to escape the constrains of language and thus have no alternative but to operate within language'[4].

During the first years of my immigration I used my English language skills on a poor level where I found the only way to interpret conversation was to wait for a word to come along that I understood. The few words were then linked together to form a context, which hopefully corresponded with what was said: of course not without some horrendous misinterpretations. The adapted language stays as a kind of handicap in formulating subtle descriptions.

The sad thing is that the native language also struggles within these dynamics, leaving both languages in a neutral, even somewhat diminished state.

In my installation, the entrance work with the excess noises and voices connecting all the edited out non-information (like uhms, ahs, laughs etc) from the 18 interviewees attempts to highlight my own language experience through the sounds of others. The struggle of each immigrant is eminent.  The non-information is still part of communication and is the part that displays certain signification, colour and texture of the personality of the speaker.  When it is removed from conversation, our usual perceptions of its whole meaning are somewhat disturbed (what it might communicate will be looked at later in this paper). 

The edited speech from the interviews detected three different kinds of speech attitudes when using uhms and ahs in normal conversation. The Chinese have recognised that concept, separated those out and named them as one for thinking; one for stopping, and one almost finished- do not interrupt. The linguistic fall-out between and around words[5] articulates through traces and residue meaning, promising a context and syntax, but never delivers.

My fascination of the English language grew, after I gained sufficient words to engage more subtlety with the language, but it stays a feeble attempt.

'Tell me how much a nation knows about its own language, and I will tell you how much a nation cares about its own identity' John Ciardi.

After the linguistic adjustment, immigrants encounter matters relating to their identity, loss of identity, belonging, and adaptation of culture, as well as loss of culture (of their own).  I believe that these basic elements of human nature and human rights that every immigrant in a more or lesser degree goes through have to be resolved in order not become socially “disintegrated”.

This social construct is most noticeable in countries where recent settlement and immigration is characterised by second and third generation immigrants of parents who were refugees, or gastarbeiters (guest labours).  Holland is an example of a country where this has occurred. The classification “gastarbeiter” reveals the immigrant’s status and position. These people experience, in some form, loss of culture, identity, land, language and often disintegration of their nature. With very little language skills such groups stick mostly together, forming a society inside a society, not only for nostalgic, but more to the point for cultural and religious reasons (the very point Winston Peters tried to cash in on, with his latest bash on his immigration debate).

Though it is a simplification, the indigenous response is often characterised by feeling threatened, which compounds the feelings already being felt by the immigrant group. Old values have to be abandoned or transformed into values suitable to the new situation, as part of the process of cultural adaptation. The Holland experience also shows that these difficulties continue to be experienced by the second and third generation immigrants, who will claim ownership by birthright. The mixtures of diverse cultures at some point will clash.

I attempted the issue of adaptation of culture in the entrance work with the Kiwi slang words, overlaid with the haka, played by the All blacks, together with cultural songs and sayings from the immigrant participants. The mixture draws us to accepting or denying the cultural fuse. The haka played by the All Blacks in front off a crowded stadium is already a historical adaptation and transformation of culture. That particular haka originates from Te Rauparaha’s life and death epic-escape-tale and has very little to do with a present-day ball game. 

In my title I reveal a simular adaptation of cultural context, which borders on accepting or denying, depending on ownership interest. The ownership of the cultural origin by the level of purity safeguards the vulnerability of its status. Such turbulent issues are communicating disharmony in communal identity. Not unlike Winston Peters latest words transmit templates of racism; this separation does create simular divisions. Ignorance plays very much a role in the Victorian misuse of the word Maoriland, so does illformed cultural needs and understanding. The use of Maori imagery and concepts are interesting because of its ownership status. The authenticity into its culture has stringent implications. My use of the adaptation has definite questions, which relates to the willingness towards cultural adoption. Deeper issues are at stake here when taking chunks out of someone’s own culture. The Maori culture is a living culture in its traditions and in its principle for a start, different from the folklore culture of others e.g. the Dutch, or other formats of promotional tourist attractions. But when the All Blacks perform a haka in a public stadium, then I am part of the transmutation of its ownership. Such a cultural shift takes place if the original sign context is substituted for a contemporary setting, disrupting its traditionalistic pattern. The staunch copyright issues to Maori imagery and concepts are understandable with such a thought of cultural dilution in mind.  The inclusion of cultural mixtures (songs, sayings, and even guitar music) contributed by some of the interviewed immigrants will highlight the argument into cultural adoption/adoption even more. But then as an outsider I have observed hymns and other Western influences being used as a tradition for Maori. Is cultural adaptation not unavoidable, in where the shifts make a culture alive?

The issues of immigration are manyfold. The longer I am in NZ the further I grow away from a binding Dutch connection. The memory starts to formulate stories about the past. Would increasing old-age senility have a hoarding effect on such process?  All the older immigrants are telling stories about ‘back home’ (they still or starting to call it “back home”), while the recent immigrants are still in the process of losing their connection with their country of origin and are in a lesser extent willing to participate in such a nostalgic departure.

One trend I have noticed is that memories are noticeably stronger with those immigrants whose disconnected time period from the country of birth is longer, and different from those immigrants who just arrived.

Older immigrants have always objects with memorable meaning. For a newcomer any relationships between subject and the object are almost non- existent, and just plain memories of situations suffice.  In situations like this I had to look for images to put in the contour of three recent immigrants who had no possible tangible item they could affiliate themselves with. One to mention is a Russian immigrant, who had only a couple of memories, but no object of significance; only subjects in the form of a memory. One memory he mentioned was a bridge in the mist, in the middle of Moscow where he had a good time with somebody. In my search over the Internet I came across a published photo from a traveller of a misty bridge in the middle of Moscow: a lucky find. Another recent immigrant had fond memories of a favourite guitar composition he used to play when drunk alone at home in Turkey. By playing it for me, he went a little sentimental, now he has been exposed to it again.

The issues of the older immigrant grow more complex by time.  To have an identity is related to belonging. In the affiliation process the adopted country stimulates a sense of belonging, but according to the interviewed immigrants the label of origin cannot be forgotten or denied, setting up a kind of nostalgic prerequisite for a jumbled future. In my work I have related this to the letter cut outs on the security sinkers underneath the work. The letter (which is a Stencil font) explains the language originating the accent, e.g. E stands for English, S for Spanish, D for Dutch, etc. The stencil letter font is used for labelling packing-crates, in order to identify its content or destination, suggesting some sort of permanency in the rough ride of shipping, which I might add as an immigrant particular. Such a label will haunt the immigrant until death. The second and later generations will remember its original connection, representing the immigrants as their ancestors to New Zealand. In the quest to the title I considered a name, in where the sub-title was called: ancestral closure. This title referred to the fact that I have no children and have therefore no such ancestral objective.  Cultural isolation and the adaptation of another culture play a big role into the identity process and shifts in nostalgia and sentiments. Through the dislocation of the original culture the cultural memory at a certain point blurs itself somehow by the proceeding time. The work with the Kiwi slang words in American computer accent mixed with the songs and hakas refer to such mixture. Language and identity are entangled together. The vocabulary and understanding of local words relate to the culture and identity of an identifiable place. Those words you hear are selected with the American’s lexicon in mind, whose language has undergone simular transformations from its English origin.

I have interviewed at least three artists of great reputation. One is seen as a national icon (Ans Westra, who is one of New Zealand’s most prolific, in particular Maori photo journalist). Does their contribution authenticate my work more? Or has their decision to be included formulated more authenticity?

‘The author is … the ideological figure, by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning’. Michel Foucault.

Ideology works on different podiums here. Celebrities have such an ideological attraction. The suggestive ideas around famous people are apparent, according to the many successful gossip magazines. What makes a celebrity? Proliferation of meaning might be the answer. Would Ans Westra nowadays in New Zealand still be called the Dutch immigrant photographer, or has that label Dutch immigrant for different nostalgic reasons been dropped?

When is the ideological figure being formed? We might have to look into the process of formulating meaning and value judgements. The way the context of perceptual consumption relates for its context of origin so does the souvenir for its assimilation. Both relate to the sensibility-of and a longing-for the myth: the expression of preferences. What substitute for taste, who decides who is a star? There are differences in expression - Plato spoke about objective universals and Kant about subjective universals - but it is a shared idea that correct judgements are based on a correct perception of universals, and incorrect ones on a misperception of them.  Plato called those absolute values the Eye of the Soul and Kant called these the Faculty of Judgement, or taste.  Who decides what to choose is based on a variety of obscuring factors[6], asserted in the different levels of authenticity, proliferating meaning.

The authenticity of truth has to be looked at in this matter. I have made the two necklaces from the cut outs from the silhouettes and connected with links made from a gold alloy. The amount of gold can be questioned, since I have not specified the amount, which will be an issue in England and Holland, where such practice is protected by a authenticated hallmark. My rose and yellow gold is made up from just 4% gold. I can still call this a gold alloy, proliferating meaning without lying.

When buying second hand jewellery the ownership transposes the meaning on authenticity. The attached story of the deceased person might be lost, but the memory of history is a powerful image and respected by many. If a hair lock is for sale, I wonder how many would be happy to wear it. I also wonder how many would buy the silhouettes constituting a contemporary face and a personality?

Susan Steward calls those sort of individual items  ‘the souvenir of the second kind and those are intimately mapped against the life history of an individual: it tends to be found in connection with passage (birth, initiations, marriage, and death) as the material sign of an abstract referent: transformation of status ‘. My question has been validated by that explanation.

Peter Deckers Four Corners installation detail

 Language and communication

'It is in and through language that man constitutes himself a subject, because language alone establishes the concept of 'ego' in reality, in its reality, which is that of the being. The 'subjectivity' we are discussing here is the capacity of the speaker to posit himself as 'subject'. (Emile Benviste)[7]

Inside this 'ego subject projection' the content functions on different levels to the sign platform, communicating a range of messages. The obvious one is the understanding of its content. Here language has the purpose of voluntarily apprehension communicating its intended meaning. Spoken words have their own signifiers, denoting meaning other then its formation of content and expression.  The grammatical arrangement of words, sentence constructions, the voice projection (accents, speech impairments, slurred speech) all are contributing features of placement as additional information to what has been said. The upper class separates itself by its own coded use of language, so does the lower class.  Those with accents classify themselves with some degree of geographical and/or hierarchical position. The nature of such representations is never assigned to the form of correspondence nor conformity. It is additional to its content and expression, in where the listener is made the judgemental bystander.

When language is spoken as a second language or as any other form of a non-standard classification, the ability to communicate on two different planes is executed in certain set abstract modes. Shifting between the modes of standard and non-standard languages is a clear-cut process, which only is blurred when stress and/or fatigue kicks in. The ranges of those abstract modes lie in bilingual communication which includes accents (i.e. imitating, simulating), slang, jargon, dialects, secret languages and other non-standard languages, and also in more behavioural communication where language is spoken according to the level of understanding eg child and parent, worker and boss, pupil teacher, lecturer student, etc relationships. It is possible to shift from one language to the next in an instant, so too is the shift, or position behavioural-language, eg a parent to a child and then to an adult (or me talking on this podium and later drinking coffee and talking to mates in a café).

Identity (nostalgia and memory)

As mentioned earlier the totally of my project is formed around a set of themes forming a rhizomic cluster. On a small scale it deals with my experience, sudden understanding and the implications of being an immigrant to New Zealand. On the wider scale the works refers to the place that was Aotearoa and its response to colonial dominance as “New Zealand”. The first Pacific Island set of immigrants to the land of long white cloud, settled this land as Maori. The title 'Maoriland' relates to this status. The title refers also to the dominance of the subsequent immigrant cultures, where the colonialist interfered with the exiting Maori civilisation, exploiting and modifying its culture. In exploring this I have felt that I am guilty of ignorance, by immigrating without any understanding of the Maori discourse, and the Treaty of Waitangi, etc. For me the word Maoriland had no demeaning connotations in the slightest degree. Before my immigration the NZ government could have at least introduced some sort of information package familiarising me to certain cultural meanings.

My installation is formed with the help of current immigrants living in New Zealand, who are interested in and/or working in the creative industries. Being creative is purely coincidental in their selection for interviews and is of no certain importance, although dynamic creativity also means contributing to a future, making them, in a sense, cultural colonists, which refers in part to my New Zealand label.

Sounds from the 100 tiny speakers emit overlaid whispering interviews in English and native languages from 16 immigrants. The immigrants came from the four corners of the world (as if the world is square).

The brooches that I have created as a response to the immigrant observations contain the silhouettes of the interviewees. Inside the silhouettes are images of a chosen item, such as photos, objects, or other things reminiscent of their country of birth. The chosen items represent a memory and a story attached to an experience. Such stories function in the realm of nostalgia.  By adding their chosen objects to their silhouettes I have attempted to create a personal souvenir, that sets up a discourse between object and subject. Susan Steward explains, that:

'the souvenir speaks to a context of origin through a language of longing, for it is not a object arising out of need or use value; it is an object arising out of the necessarily insatiable demands of nostalgia”[8].

 'Within the operation of the souvenir, the sign functions not so much as object to object, but beyond this relation, metonymically, as object to event/experience'[9].

The narrative of the owner replaces the narrative of the object.

The mutability of an object into a memorabilia is dependent on the association of meaning and connection. If such a transformation takes place, a shift from the nostalgic principles replaces the objects economic exchange value (what it cost) into something irreplaceable, totally endorsed by its memory, longing and sentiments. A wedding ring from the deceased grandmother is probably worth a lot more then the same ring just bought from over the road. The role jewellery plays here is to articulate representation. The metonymic process reduces the object to an attached association. The sense of loss (eg of a deceased grandmother) has been replaced by a miniature version of that person’s persona, frozen in its own world, in its own time: a little private reminder of the only true representation which has been left of that person, a little piece of the ‘real’. The miniature version of that person’s detail is in a sense a miniature version of the object, as if the smallness of the object reflects on how much can be managed of the experience? Or is it just because the object is symbolic of the deceased and has been in close contact to its living body? Does that not establish a mythologic process transforming memory and object to personal value and meaning? Tragic stories like sudden death, but also sudden other shifts of change, not unlike immigration generate a space for transformation. A conversion of the sign value is made possible from economic exchange value into symbolic value. The upgraded sign value projects a sudden production of nostalgia. The associated stories create value displacement as an anchor object for the memory. 

Susan Steward calls this sort of object a souvenir of the second type, attached to a life story, where the “interior significance” is irreplaceable and therefore non reproducible. The original will always supplant the copy. The attached story makes the memento emblematic. The interior significance, of say a diseased is been stored on the emblem, in the case of the ring: the miniature.

Conclusion:

On reflection though I do not think my replicated souvenirs function well as souvenirs, as Steward concludes:

'the souvenir must remain impoverished and partial, so that it can be supplemented by a narrative discourse, which articulates the play of desire'[10].

 My replicated personal souvenir probably has more in common with Victorian cut out silhouettes and coinage portraiture than with partiality of the souvenir memorabilia. This notion is reflected in the installation title, where the memorability of the title has no function any longer other than being oddly curious. With that in mind the brooch-objects are functioning more allegorically towards the constructs of their interiors, and exteriors, formulating mutable meanings and associations. The interior (the portrait object) relates to memory and the exterior (the contour of the face) is the representation of identity or the subject. This combination of interior and exterior is both a completion for the informed, in particular the person involved, but a displacement for others - as if it is an intrusion on a private moment, making the object more like a reverse souvenir, pointing towards that particular individual: towards a precept rather then a non-engagement. The reverse souvenir is marking the present rather than the past.

A second reason as to why my shiny objects could not function as a souvenir (of the second type) is that a preference to old, worn aspects of jewellery often favours above a look of mechanical or immaculate finish. Perhaps our reference for instant brown-toning of photographs, distressed antiques, and pre-faded blue jeans relates to this suffusion of the worn.[11]

The stories, the items and the face silhouettes are all part of the ownership- debate. Who owns the face silhouette: who owns the item replica and who owns the story, in particular an issue if I put my work for sale? Am I the owner, picking and reworking the information?  The same issue of authenticity will arise of that of the Maori if the immigrant-interviewee cannot share my (say, cultural) interpretation of their story and their imagery. Time will tell.

The whole installation is suspended from the ceiling and the only thing touching the floor is the shadow of the individual silhouette. The projected shadows on the New Zealand soil function as the ancestral mark in the formation of the future of this place called New Zealand.

Notes

Appiah, In my father's house,

Mc Evilley, T. (1992). Art & otherness: crises in cultural identity, Document text (Kalat, K. (2001). Biological Psychology. Artform

Sarup, M. (1988). An introduction guide to post-structuralism and postmodernism.

Silverman, K. (1998).

Steward, S. (1993). On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection

 

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