There’s no rain in sight and it’s so unbelievably hot.
On my way to the office on Friday I had someone stop me and ask for directions. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?! That MUST mean that it looks like I either live here or just know where I am going. Maybe I just exude a kind of competency as I roam the village.
I’ve wanted to mention something about how this whole Peace Corps experience relates to me in a more personal sense relative to some big picture in my life. In terms of my interests or future plans, it helps to know that I studied Art History in college. I still have hopes of pursuing something along those lines post Peace Corps, but have yet to decide what exactly that will be. Being that I am a proponent for the role of art in everyday life, particularly useful as a social catalyst for awareness/change/what have you…I am trying to find a way to make this HIV/AIDS assignment develop and reinforce those very notions.
In designing the calendar for the World AIDS Day event, I quickly resorted to adding Keith Haring pieces for graphic detail on the calendar only to talk myself out of it as a kind of displaced and somewhat irreverent act that would in some ways belittle the significance of his work or entirely change its implications. I doubt that Haring would have been so particular about his work, but even still it comes from a particular time and place that really isn’t applicable to the HIV/AIDS situation here in Botswana. In some ways Keith Haring’s work documented the arrival of HIV in the States, specifically associated with the homosexual population. Maybe not the arrival, but his work helped to recognize HIV as an issue and promote conversations and awareness on a social level around the 1980s. While there’s plenty more information to elaborate on that meager statement, I will leave it at that for the sake of this post.
I’m not so sure that we have discovered a Keith Haring of Botswana or recognized the potential for a figure and a medium as such. I’m also not sure that the proverbial art of Botswana is at a place to serve the people on a social level in the way that Diego Rivera took part in and documented a revolution in Mexico or how Shepard Fairey challenges our notions and criteria for art in the white cube. Yes, these are two very different campaigns, but both acknowledge the instigating power of a little visual stimulation. (Then again, who foresaw what would come from Rivera and Fairey’s work…and I’m sure I am making someone rollover in their grave to even compare the two). I would just love to see a kid painting a bus stop with some witty phrasing about wearing a condom or some cartoon personifying sperm. That at least recognizes that medium as a viable social mechanism for communication. It may very well just be that I’m not literate in Botswana’s art. Or perhaps this conversation is just me trying to fit Botswana’s art into a mold formed in a different time and place. Whatever be the case, I am glad to have this kind of uncomfortable and uncertain take on the role of art in this country and culture. I’m not presented with the supplementary text and the establishments that really cater to the people and beg us to understand and appreciate art as a viable form of communication. There’s really no established forum for that kind of conversation and exploration. So I’m on a hunt for those tangible things that document a mindset, a commentary, an event, a future history; for those things that curators are be able to recognize and acknowledge as worth noting with the ability to explain why. I’m training my eye and learning to read in a totally new way. I’m not sure that I have much to reinforce whatever discoveries I make, but it’s a damn good way to occupy my mind.
On another note, I have found a lot of craft. From what I’ve seen, there’s realism in the 2D and then there’s craft in the 3D. I don’t want to suggest that realism and craft are primitive and less developed forms of art. I just want people here to see the possibilities of art mediums beyond the skill of recreating things on paper as they are seen with the eye. Realism’s been done, right? Sure, spruce it up, add your twist. Does this mean that most art, no matter the place, moves along a pretty established continuum? If that be the case, when and what will be Botswana’s Abstract Expressionism or Impressionism? Or if Abstract Expressionsim is to America as Impressionism is to France. Then what is to Botswana or even Southern Africa in total? And how did Botswana skip all of those other intermediary phases and jump to some variation of pop art. Oh yeah- advertising and commercialism. So for now, it seems the museums of Botswana are filled with the cultural artifacts with heavy histories. It could be that I miss the whole gallery culture in the states. I see abandoned butcheries and want nothing more than to hold an impromptu art opening by day to transition the space into a dance hall as the sun falls.
In another light, I have a revived appreciation for trade labor and I’m enjoying evaluating where to draw the line for trade and craft. I am fascinated by the welder that builds tables and chairs or the tanner that treats the leather. These skills are very much labor intensive and skill based but also still serve such a functional purpose in the products they create and the manner in which these products are distributed. I’m not sure if that nullifies its potential as art, but it doesn’t have the same kind of frivolity and recreational flare that one (the non-committal “one”) may think of when you (the very directive and assailing “you”) consider the stereotypical “artist” that uses metals or leather as a medium. Why do we call them artists, and why don’t we call them welders or tanners? Where do we distinguish those titles?
I just find it interesting that when its business and you’re asked to weld burglar bars to your client’s windows, that’s trade. But what is it when you stylize those burglar bars? It’s one thing to serve the function, but to accentuate and decorate within those minimal parameters of mere function, that’s what I’m interested in. Maybe that’s just good business. And maybe art is good business.
In other evaluations of aesthetics and the like: the Batswana are not afraid of color. Thank goodness! I’ve seen deep-eggplant-purple houses, hot pink bars, florescent salmon (if you can imagine) colored buildings, black trousers with brown socks, & boys with pink backpacks…I’ve seen it all! Colors are neither gendered nor seasonal. I like it here. Color equality at its finest.
On a less exciting note, I’m looking into a Thanksgiving dinner for one. Forgive me for my solemn tone but with the preparations for this World AIDS Day event in my office, I find myself resigned to finalizing budgets and plans for the big day. I am happy to carry some of the weight of the event and feel some kind of responsibility towards it all, but the timing seems to be a bit unfortunate. I had originally been approved to attend a language week in North Botswana with a few other volunteers, spending some time studying Setswana in a setting comparable to the one we had during pre-service training and also helping out with a community project to build a school. Both of which are things I was so excited about, conveniently happening the week of Thanksgiving. I have since been asked to remain in Moshupa to help with the workload that remains before the event. I am not so much disappointed by having to work, because the change of pace and a new sense of responsibility is a nice change of activity from my typical office experience. It’s just the whole idea of missing Thanksgiving in its entirety. Sure, the counterargument goes something like “you know when you signed up for Peace Corps you were asked to consider how you felt about missing the holidays with family and friends.” I had already relinquished those notions of my traditional Thanksgiving celebration with my family and had figured a way to celebrate with my new family of friends here in Botswana. To feel those plans evaporate leaves me feeling a bit sad. Thanksgiving 2011 will probably not be anything particularly special, but that’s not the worst-case scenario. Perhaps I’ll manage to cook a tasty dinner and treat myself to some chocolate and hell, maybe even some ice cream!
More on that when the time comes.
Until next time- I've been checking into some blogs I've neglected for far too long. Well, I've really just recently had a decent connect enough to view these, but check this out: http://katebingamanburt.com/blog I'm really digging all the goodies posted on here.
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