Karenina.it - Globalization / Interaction

 

GLOBALIZATION &  INTERACTION

 

By Fernando Aguiar

 

1. GLOBALIZATION

 

The globalization of the planet is a fact that can be verified at all levels. With the dissemination of the “media”, specially television and parabolic and, more recently, computers and internet, all aspects of people’s lives in all over the world tend to massiveness, to unite, to be measured by the same patterns, seeing to it that all be informed of the same events at the same time, often in similar ways, like in the case of manifestations in front of a certain country’s embassy, when the government of that country makes something that unpleased the public opinion.

But globalization does not happen only with the “media”, in spite of these means been the most powerful and visible vehicles of the crescent influence.

   Globalization can also be verified in other basic aspects in people’s lives. In the majority of the countries people dress in the same way, eat the same kind of food, and speak the same language. The most paradigmatic examples are the integration in the habits of these people  - especially youth – of jeans, hamburgers, chinese food, coca-cola, pizza and English language. Globalization, strongly impelled by capitalist societies and by multinationals is so strong that, as a friend of mine would have said, “even in China (communist) they open chine food restaurants…”.

   With this influence, inevitable because imposed by publicity used by the great international companies and even by some governments, always in a perspective of profit, we’ll watch the dilution of the specificity of the different cultures with direct implications in each one’s lives, weather in relation to social and economical aspects as well as cultural ones.

   Ever religious factions, in spite of keeping their own convictions, have slenderly dissolved, living together more tolerantly. As an example we have the contacts between the Pope and other religious leaders, which shows that the world is really getting smaller, with evident tendencies for uniformity also in the cultural aspect.

   If the means of communication lead the same ideas and the same concepts, it’s understandable that people have the same type of knowledge and therefore feel, think and react in very similar ways.

   Fortunately this globalization that in many aspects is positive and very practical because it leads necessary knowledge’s and facilitates the communication between people, won’t withdraw completely the most specific characteristics of each culture. Because one of the richness of mankind is precisely the plurality of cultures and the diversity of habits.

   In this context, it is evident that art can’t keep itself away from reality and that artistic activity, as a reflex of live, becomes a manifestation of the feelings, preoccupations and aspirations of all peoples, both in social and aesthetics aspects, and in a technical and artistically support level it ends by responding in the same way and presenting the same type of formal solutions.

   The international diffusion of the magazines of art results in the establishment of parameters that will influence, although subconsciously, the artistic production in various points of the globe.

   In a certain way this is salutary. It is important that artists keep informed about what’s going on in the main artistic centers, though they should have ability to differentiate information from influence and from colloquialism.

 

 

2. INTERACTION

 

The alteration provoked by the factor mention above makes everything change very fast and everything became easily surpassed, in a consuming attitude inherent to the influence of societies.

    Sometimes these changes are so quick end up becoming imperceptible, making that they don’t actually seem like changes (even because they are mostly just partial) but more an evolution in continuity. We all have examples of that in our day’s lives.

   Art, once again, is the reflection on this complexity. The diverse styles and pictorial techniques blend or walk even, many times without differentiate what’s new, that is what reveals something new from what’s new from what is already seen and reused.

   Though art, in many cases, suffers from the faults of globalization (influence of processes, unification of responses, etc), it has another ability that in spite of being connected with globalization, reveals aspects that are more positive and above all, creative ones and that is interaction.

   Nowadays it is common that plastic artists use in their works and sometimes in the same exhibition, several artistic techniques in simultaneous, such as painting, collage, photography, drawing, objects and in certain cases video, sculpture and installation. And for several times they seek inspiration in other artistic sort like dance, theatre, performance-art, cinema or even literature, in an interactive attitude that, when relating particularities from each type of art and techniques, will produce a more creative work and eventually innovative.

   Fortunately art has this capacity and this liberty of interacting aesthetically to create works that hold something new, destroying and surpassing stylish barriers, types and artistically concepts.

   The end of artistic vanguards and we have to consider that the last artistic movement worthy of that name was the Fluxus movement, started in the beginning of the distant 60’s by Maciunas, Dick Higgins, Wolf Vostell, Ben Vautier, Eric Andersen, Emmett Williams and others, and that after Germany and the United States to extend out to other countries made the artists immersed in a sort of prairie without cardinal points where each one could follow his own path without the concern of needing to be integrate in a movement and at the same time, made that the different styles  become all accepted and acceptable.

   This leads to the existence of liberalization and on the other hand, a globalization a vision almost consensual of the same way of understanding art. And if it is important to have this liberty and creative opening, it is also necessary that people and the artists themselves won’t get mixed up so they don’t fall in the exaggeration of  “everything is valid, everything is legitimate, therefore everything is good”. Which is not, obviously, true.

   This globalization doesn’t exist only at a level of concepts and ways of seeing and understanding arts but also at a level of styles and creation techniques and artistic performance.

   Performance-art is a good example of the stimulating possibilities of interaction. Because it look for several aspects in the different arts such as dance, theatre, painting, sculpture, music, mimics, poetry, installation, video, etc., so that through the intervention, at that moment, of the artist him, can produce plastic works with movement and action, resulting in an ephemeral but creative art, interacting also with people’s sense in the search of understanding the artistic product that they are observing.

 

 

 

FERNANDO AGUIAR

 

Born in Lisbon, in 1956.

Since 1972 he dedicates to experimental and visual poetry, using the most diversified techniques and supports as photography, installations, electrography, performance, video or computer.

Published 17 books of poetry, juvenile and anthologies of portuguese and international visual poetry in Portugal, Germany, Spain and Italy.

Some Books:

“O DEDO”, Lisbon, 1981 (Poetry)

“POEMOGRAFIAS – Perspectivas da Poesia Visual portuguesa”, Lisbon,1985 (Anthology)

“MINIMAL POEMS”, 1994, Siegen, Germany (Poetry)

“OS OLHOS QUE O NOSSO OLHAR NÃO VÊ”,  Lisbon, 1999 (Poetry)

“A ESSÊNCIA DOS SENTIDOS”, Lisbon, 2001 (Poetical Performances)