Second rate peripheries : virtues and contradictions of regionalism

              exemple, je n ai pas besoin de me
"sonvenir'. je le vois sur une sorte
rl écran intérieur. et je n'ai plus qu á
décrire ce que je vois. Pour dccrire une
scéne je n'ai qu'á la revivre' [7].
El Sv s sensibilitv derives from his
personal experiencc of tlie nomadic
routes of art. the inovernents of people.
ideas and actions. both across countries
and cultural histories. Before he
travelled lo the LSA in the early 1980s,
he had covered fourteen African
countries, spending time in Mali and
Xiger where he shot over onc thousand
photographs. His work recaptures the
memory of a practice of spiritual
fervour, an ability to look, listen,
observe and mediate the aesthetics
which surround one. Whether working
from his studio in the rué Madeleine
Xgom in Dakar, or passing through
Johannesburg, El Sv never loses touch
with the environment which surrounds
hirn. He wears his life through the
textura of his painting. an artist's visión
of human contact and experience. In the
context of África, t^l SN'S work engages
as it shifts perceptions. offering
possibilities for a new dramaturgy of
artistic practise perforined, mise en
scéne bv artists, not as lonelv action but
as a celebration of the métissage of
people, practises and art codings.
[3]
Kl Sy iias a solo show at the Goodnian
Gallerv. ,lohanne.sburc;. l l t h P"('bruarv-4th
.Vlarch'lQ95.
* Léopold Sedar Senghor in 'N'egritudc: A
Hiimaiiisin of the Twentienth Ceiitury in
The African Reader: Independent África.
Vintage, Ramdom (lenturv, London.
1970. pp. 172-92.
[1] The institutions set up during the Senghor
period include, for pxaniple. the Maison
des Arts (1960), the Institut National des
Arts, the Manufacture des Arts Décoratifs
(1964). the Musée Dynamique (1966).
the Festival of .Negro Arts held in Dakar
in 1966. and the Salons of Senegaiese
Artists (197.'5). "The role of the .state as a
patrón of the artists since independenre
who has beslowed more than 25% of its
budget for ediication and culture shonid
not he forgotten . 1^. S. Senghor, Preface
to "Anthology of Contemporary Fine Arts
in Senegaf 1989 edited hy F. Axt and El
1 ladji Sy. Mnseuní fuer Voelkerkunde,
Frankfurt.
[2] F^l Sy worked with Seyba l^amine Traore
and tfie theatre group .Nouveau Toncan
[3]
[6]
on the plav Choix de Madior written by
Ibrahima Salí in 1972-73.
Amadou flainpaté Ba writes of the Peul
notion of personhood: 'La nolion de
personne est done, au départ. tres
complexe. Elle implique une multiplicité
intérieure, des plans dexistence
concentriques ou superposés (physiíjuea,
psychiijues et spirituels a differents
niveaux). ainsi qu une dynamique
constante. (...) k aucun moment. la
personne humaine n est done considerée
conniie une unité monolithique, liniitée á
son corps physique, mais bien comme un
etre complexe. habite par une multiciplité
en mouvement permanent. II ne s agit
done pas d un étre statique ou achevé'.
From A. Hampaté Ba, Notes sur la
notion de personne dans les traditions
peule et bambara in Aspec.ts de la
Civilisation Africaine 1972. Présence
,\fricaine. Paris pp. 11-13.
From a conversation with Issa Samb in
the Laboratoire. Dakar, 9/12/93.
tjl Sy in a personal communication to C.
Deli'ss in 10/4/94.
riie exhibition was Otro País. Escales
Africaines" curated by Simón Njami and
Joelle Bus(;a for the dentro Atlántico de
Arte Moderno, November 1994.
Amadou Hampaté Ba in Amkoullel.
lEnfant Peul-.Mémoires' 1991, p. 13.
- > ^ ( ^ ^ -
SECOND RATE
PERIPHERIES:
VIRTUES AND
CONTRADICTIONS
OF REGIONALISM
BY JONATHAN ALLEN
When the CAAM inaugurated that
magnificent exhibtion. "Surrealism
between the Oíd World and the New",
the ideology of tricontinentalilv
resounded triumphantly. .More than a
genuine body of thought or workable
intellectual creed il is a compilation and
synthesis of tenets borrowed from
Canarian-African and Canarian Latin
American studies that have behind them
two solid decades of academic
historv, seminars and hundreds of
specialised publications. To denv an
African connection in canarian fiistorv
woiild be foolish,for we have a de facto
geograhical relation with África,
although the relation that we do have
with this contirierU is paradoxically
unacceptable to puré tricontineiital
theon^ that presupposes the existence,
when not the active présence of cultural
interrelations. However. between us and
África, there has only been cominerce,
(al best), economic colonialism,
exploitation. and right at the beginniíig
of such a fertile story, brazen slavery.
The unpleasant truth is that our cultural
relation. past and presen!, with África,
has been feeble as creativity and
production go. We can only find certain
formalist borrowings from African art in
some of our local artists, and in certain
aesthctic movements such as
"indigenismo". Formalism, that is. and
hardlv ever real penetration in the
history and psyche of a countr\-. Lots of
vague promises of "cooperation'.
(culturally speaking), mutual interests
declared, art and craft and tourist fairs,
trade and more trade. África is hardly
anything more for us. and even less so in
the mind, as there aro no serious African
studies offered in (Janarian secondary
education, and Afican Studies
departments are suU "taking shape" in
both universities. Can someone picase
créate such a department once and for
all! Do picase have the necessary visión!
Such lack of forethought makes it
impossible for us to present the African
or África in Europe, though we claim,
vainly, that we are "'Africans". and that
our ancestors were ethnically related to
the Berber-lJbyan race, (This is no lie.
The guanches were dark-skinncd North-
Africans).
We confuse, dangerously,
geographical location with spiritual
brotherhood and cultural reality. The
simple geographical fact of being
"African" is used as a ticket to
participate in an African reality that is
non-European. I can never forget a
tragic. ironic circumstance that took
place when the exhibition "África
Today" was being put up, that glossy
collection of African art curated by
André .Magnin, which was
controversially received. In the waters of
the Puerto de la Luz appeared the
lifeless body of one Mohained Fofana, an
African nobody knew that had wantcd
to enter Canarias illegally. The facts
surrounding his death have iiot offictally
beeii revealed. Was il an 'accideiit" or
was h a 'crinio involving a brutal,
undcrcovpr.cririiinal repatriation gang?
Sotiio weeks ago. npar where Fofana was
fouiid. thc Pólice evicted tlie illesal
tenants of a derelicl. lumble-down sliip,
soine African men who werp usins the
inhiinian premisos as a boarding place.
At ihe time I avoided saving it
direcdy in a newspaper arlicle, but it
was like accepting and rejoicing over
aesthetics and African culture while
rejecting and destroying the physical
bodv. The roval roads of cultural
A
^ exchange were all festooned for an
1 intercontinental exhibition and there was
A one undaimed African bodv floating in
'^ the water. The linmigration Laws in
Kurope are now tougher than ever, and
^ with illegal inunigrans. once caught and
f, tried. no exceptions are made.
«n Fíepatriation is the bitter fate of those
who don^t niake it. .Nations and counties
„ maintain cruel frontiers and barriers,
^ because the interests of race are
' powerful.
a Stich precedents lead me to a kind of
systematic distrust, or to severe doubt
o concerning tVie implementation of
a multiculturalisrn, or cultural
pluriracialitv in the islands. Not due to
prejudice ñor disdain, not at all. The
mixing of bloods is a possible wav out to
the dead-end of the North-South divide.
Our Canarian self-awareness as
cornmunity and our ideas of self-definition.
onlv limidlv and superficially
incorpórate África, even less now that
we are fuUv integrated in the econoniic
comrnunity of Eiiropc. and that the
commercial independence that had
brought in thousands of millionsof
pesetas in trade benefits, with
Mauritania, to give one example, is no
ionger there as it used to be. \n exchange
we have important infrastructural
financing via different Kuropean
progratnmes. On the one hand we
demand a Canarian foreign policv
dictated by our cultural and
geographical identity. (within the
liraitations of the Spanish constitution as
we are Spaniards). on the other we fear
the effects of immigration froin África,
interracial marriages. the fusión of
cultures and the Afrií-anization of
cosniopolitan societv.
(Jan we therefore sav that the
multicidturai fails in (Janarias owing to
purelv racist motives and to the
distortions of prejudice? Exclnsively no,
although the fact of being such a noii-niixing
societv creates considerable
barriers. Multiculturalism is an "inside"
achievement of a society. it just doesn t
happen as a direct consequence of
geographical privilege, as
tricontinentality would have us happily
believe: neither is it an exciting option in
the catalogue of fin.de siécle pluralily,
thoiigh sometimes it is sold this way,
given our tendency to cominercialise
intellectual innovations. Multiculturalism
is found in uiiiversitv departments. in
town councils, in an alternative,
sometimes radical interpretation of
contemporan,' European ills: social
integration and marginalism,
unemplovment and the linguistic
identitv of complex communities. h
imphcs a tacit thougfi not necessarily
stable balance between the culture that
officially reccives and the new acce[)ted
culture, and it cant't be organized or
turned hito political gain, ñor can it be a
programmed item of party politics.
There was a kind of suspicious
europeanist orchestration about the
whole of "África Today" , a smug
reception of the exotic in new guise, of
up-rnarket African tailored art. "Otro
País",(Another Country), has been a
recent exception at the CAAM, and it
began to undo part of the fallacious first
reception of África. "Another Country"
jtixtaposed parallel worlds and different
latitudes, and so thanks to this
axiornatic idea of an aesthetic
communitv sharing coherence and
influiínces, opened up a new perspective.
Now we have to go one step further, and
throw together the African and the
European, the national and the regional,
the ethnic symbol and dramatized
primitive impulse, (the latter is
European), scarching for deeper themes,
avoiding the localist criteria of "art
from"' which is the final flickering of
European collectionism, of the well
stocked cabinet of curiosities that boasts
its African trophies.
One of the strengths of
inulticidturalism. in what seenis to be
the critical theorizing of Cuban critics
writing for "Atlántica", is the
appropiation of isms and centralist
stvles. in order to mix them and
transforní them with the art production
of non-central, poor and peripheral
countries, (or the "Third World",
whatever that may mean), that
nevertheless are culturally potcnt. This
kind of of appropiation is undoubtedlv
the embleni of militant global periphen',
united in its struggle against an ever
weaker centralist world. whose
contemporary art exhibitions. biennials
and events are more often than not
structured by "weak" thought. This
model of opposition between the Centre
and the Periphery, in art terrns.(given
the mobility of art in the world), is
beconiing dated. and perhaps as a
theory it is a bit dead-end. as all
confrontational modes of analvsis that
pit one side against the other.
Multiculturalisrn is on the right road
to overcoming confrontational
frustations, it is getting rid of
propagandism. Now, we are expectant,
awaiting the resuks of coexistence and
polyracial solutions to oíd problems.
Will multiculturalism in art and in
thought in communities, solve certain
problems? (Jamaicans in Eondon), will
il move Portuguese society to legalize the
status of illegal immigrants that society
has accepted with ease, (of course, ihey
do not have relevan! Jobs), will it
alleviate the tensions of modérate
moslems facing extreme compatriots in
París? Perhaps so. Yet it will not
erradícate what inoves young Europeans
to buril Turks or drown Algerians.
The category of being peripheral and
the fact of living in a pcripherv have to
be revised seriously, for being
"peripheric" does not inmediately
presuppose "cultural difference" with
Europe, (in such peripheral status we
can lisl the Cañarles, Madeira, Cyprus,
Sardinia, Corsica, and other new
"affiliated" European Union members
ex-Warsaw Pact). Perhaps, difference
onlv exists in subtle shades and not as
substantial identitv.
In Canarias we are Africans
geographicallv and genuinelv peripheral,
and our status in the European I nion
specifies these facts in administrative
and political documents that exist to
lessen and compénsate the disadvantages
of distance. However, in aesthetics and
in art, Canarias can hardlv be thougfit
of as a multicultural platforrn acting in
iho European peripher\' with a clearlv
different sensibility; it tends lo include,
tangentially, the African and the Latin
American in a tricontinentality that
enables it to belong to a virtual and
plural communitv, that isn't exclusively
Spanish or national.
In the city of Las Palmas we have a
hindú communitv that is almosl one
liundred years oíd, that has maintained
its traditions and kept them alive, but
that has never really wanted to share
them with a society that bv dav is their
client for cheap radiocassettes. Perhaps
because they have not produced artists,
thinkers, poets, as they are merchants.
Commerce can kill anylhing remotely
multicultural. There are floatiiig
populations of Coreans, Chinese,
Taiwanese, Japanese, who are posted
here to attend their fishing fleets. There
is a palestinian communitv, a jewish one,
a moroccan. These different nationalities
have their residence permits in order.
And then, there are the Africans, who
have not settled in the islands, who come
and go, legally or illegally, who we watch
in the streets selling bad tourisl art.
On the plus side of our cvaluation we
can put the exceptional cultural and
historical relation that we have with the
Saharaui people, an intensely einotional
link, who are beyond doubt the africans
we best accept. Despite all of this we are
not a multiracial society. Whv? In part
due to the fact that the racial groups
and communities in Canarias don't tend
to articúlate and project cultural
messages. ñor do they rnanifest their
differeiices in a intellectual and artistic
dimensión. This limitation of
multicultural dialogue is unhappily
compensated bv a series of diplornatic
cultural iniliatives, "weeks of", "the
cuisine of... ".
F'urthermore, the canarians are
living through a belated phase of self-definition
and self government, that
implies the development of
decenlralization contemplated in our
autonomous charter. A great deal of
energy is employed in long and difficult
State negotiations, and in the drawing up
of legal docuinents and administrative
surveys necessary for the creation of
organic local, regional laws. All natural
conditions theoreticallv favour a
multicultural Ilourishing in the islands
yet creative energy has been displaced to
more pragmatic ends. For the time
being, the multicultural is merelv
another option on the agends of that
vaguesl of finisecular realities
announced in european cultural centres:
"cultural plurality'.
The relation between the islands and
the central administration has never
been easy, and frequently the historical
peripheral marginalism of the islands
brought semi-colonial rule. Besides, the
geographical and cultural distance of
european peripheries breeds
strange hierarchies with peculiar
tendencies.
Cultural and ethnic difference
becomes an obsession, and this creates a
certain "identity-mentality" that often
ignores other more fertile possibilities of
self-definition. Tricontinentality is a
paradigm of all the contradictions found
in the defense of multiculturalism in our
atlanlic world. It has a blinkering effecl
on our idea of the reality of relations
between Canarias, África and Latin
America. They are sporadic, infrequent
and belong more to history than to
actual time.
One of the major problems lies in
our condition of "perpetual colonials',
of a society that is submitted to certain
markels that forcé us to produce certain
specific goods to the detriment of
commercial, economic stability. We lack
the stamina and the serenity as a race to
open the gates confidently to
multiculturalism, for we have been
dccimated by emigration, the
devastating succession of monocultural
regimes in agriculture, and now, we are
the semi-willing victims of a kind of
subliminal colonization enforced by the
tourist industry. We are not on equal
terms with Europe, and we can't reject
certain offers made to us. These
deterininant forces drasticallv interrupt
any process of self-definition, and
genérate a syndrome of dispersión.
There is an environmental sensibility
presently gaining momentum that may
be able to redress the balance of tourist
trends in favour of greater cañarían
quality control, yet its effects won't be
appreciable till the next centtiry.
Our free evolution towards África
has been curtailed initially by adherence
to the European L'nion. We have lived in
a culture of moral and spiritual survival,
even up to this day. colonized as we still
are by multinational econíjmic iiuerests
that have crealed a hybrid tourist
culture. Tourists do not come to know
us, not even to visit. They buy and
consume a vacation package. If we
hardlv have cultural communication
with the germans, scandinavians and
english that come to us by millions
yearly, how are we going to have it with
África?
BRANCUSI
IN THE WORK OF
PLÁCIDO FLEITAS
SUGGESTIONS, INFLUENCES
AND CONFLUENCES
BY ÁNGEL SÁNCHEZ
Few of these interested in the local
tradition of (Janarian twentieth century
Fine Arts would doubt the fact that
Plácido Fleitas, (1915-1972), should be
considered the first abstract Sculptor of
Canarias, although his abstract sculpture
only occupied the last two decades of his
life. His chisel had the power, and the
pioneer's submission, to perform the
journey from classical sculptural volume
to the new avant-garde valúes of
iniaginary forms.
In an artistic milieu hardly at all
devoted to sculpture, and where
tradition crowned as great master the
figure of the religious image-maker,
Lujan Pérez, we must acknowledge the
fact that Plácido Fleitas liad a rough
time. Despite the lack of opportunities,
of a certain credit that he enjoyed in the
rnainland, of publicity coverage, and
perhaps. owing to the isolation that
marked his character, as indeed happens
to the archipelago, it has not been easy
to establish his reputation as a famous
Sculptor, having become resigned all of
US to accepting him as a peripheral
figure. This lack of lame was also
something Fleitas assumed, when he