Silencing
The cultural cringe was a myth designed to stop Australians from
defining their own identity, expressing themselves, and exploring their past
and present conditions in cultural forms of expression and inquiry.
The idea that
Australians are culturally inadequate or cringe in front of dominant
cultures is a part of the myth generated, one may surmise or hypothesize, by a
dominant administration as a form of controlling stereotype and would-be self
fulfilling prophesy - as the media is used …to construct realities through
discourses that in Australia tend to support dominant groups.
This fitted well and
was an attempt to enable the necessary silence that was needed to enshroud the
policies and practices of the stolen generation including the awful mothers
history of rape.
Instilling shame and
guilt are known to psychologically instill silence in the one who feels ashamed,
so by making Australians feel ashamed of their lack of cultural nous, was this ipso
facto a means of keeping them silent?
Too afraid to openly
make cultural faux pas, in the wider world of cosmopolitan urbane sophisticated
culture?
This was an absolute
nonsense of course: all that happened was that it led to another cliché:
the ‘brain drain’. Where the entire forces of the most talented
intelligent creative Australians left the country en masse after finishing
university so that they could continue their lively fervent confident cultural
explorations in the very centres of dominant culture which, the myth would have
us believe that as Australians, they should be cringing away from.
The Brain Drain
They left en masse and pursued successful careers in all kinds
of fields that would never have been possible if they had stayed in Australia.
I speak from first hand experience as a daughter of parents who
did just this (in the 1960s and 70s) and saw my father rise and rise in his
career in a way inconceivable for a boy who grew up in Broken Hill, son of a
civil engineer and quarry manager - if he’d stayed in his home country (albeit
he took his first class Hons BA at the University of Sydney).
No, Australia, we
drove them away, our brightest and best.
And now ironically
perhaps with the changed world of globalization, government subsidies have been
put into place to try to lure them back again our bright creative geniuses and
talent – from the wider cultural world where they are able to explore their
interests with passion and grow and develop surrounded by others. ‘Overseas
researcher homecoming incentives’ they are called or something similar.
There seems to be
something a bit pathetic and futile about this policy of trying to lure back
the brightest and it doesn’t seem to work well in many cases. (Many marriage
break up and family breakdowns seem to follow according to statistics showing
the turbulence that this kind of culture shock can bring).
What appears to be
far more promising and a positive sign of change is the proposed new policy of
supporting the humanities and arts research – which apparently is about to start
next year (Thompson 2012).
Readers may be surprised as I was to discover that (no I was
not wrong, I was right all along I was not paranoid it really was as bad as I
thought it was…) There has been no support, or very little, for arts and
humanities research in Australia. At least by means of grant from the ARC.
What this meant in
practice is that multitude untold numbers of creative socially and culturally
valuable projects that would undertake deep meaningful research into who we
are, where we come from, and where we are going, and which would last three
years and have all kinds of trickle- down effects and influences encouraging
others to participate in arts culture and human interest projects, did not
happen.
Aborted, refused,
denied. Sent away and buried. Silenced.
I speak as one whose
project on The Female Gaze was not
funded four years ago. Since then I have seen versions and variations of
my ideas appear here and there in Australian culture... At the 2010 Sydney
Biennale where, just as in my conceptualization, a ‘fugal’ Australian
contemporary women artist Fiona Foley and Yayoi Kusama were literally
positioned next to each other juxtaposed as in my proposed curated show. I only
wrote about Foley…and urban Indigenous women artists including Bianca Beetson,
Jennifer Herd and Andrea Fisher. (Skilbeck 2011).
My idea was part of
the global wave of what is now called the mother art movement (a form of
matricentric feminism), third wave feminism, I was ahead of the trend. (If I’d
been able to curate the show last year as I’d wanted and publish my book in it
I would have been right at the apex of this new global movement which has huge interest around
the world).
It’s too late to do
it now; the time has past. (Instead I went to a conference organized by a
Canadian research institute, MIRCI, that rebadged itself last year in Canada and
presented my paper this year). But that would have been a fantastic project for
Australia if I’d been able to do it. Last year I would have curated an
exhibition that would have brought people from around the world to Australia. As
I said in my proposal it would have put Australia on the art world map. Well It
would have.
In the new field of
global mother art movements in contemporary art where art is used as research
into cultural and social environmental conditions as well as history and
psychology as mode of necessary working through and processing, a global
movement of postcolonial societies of which Australia is a prime example.
My idea was
silenced.
The myth of the
cultural cringe was a discourse that operated like an edict or a
silencing order.
Ye shall cringe away from expressing your self and views, making
cultural productions or even thinking about what is going on in Australian
culture. Anywhere else it’s ok.
And if you’re the intelligent curious
creative type who is likely to think about life and examine existence,
especially if you like to examine the conditions of your own existence, then
it’s better that you leave now, on a long overseas voyage. Preferably for the
rest of your life. Bye Bye!
This has been borne
out in my own experience here in the mother art movement. Extending from
my failed bid at funding for my Female Gaze project I went on and
continued my research.
This resulted this
year in my becoming involved as curator and media coordinator with a new mother
hood art movement in Sydney, that co generated this movement. But this was in
collusion with an international mother art movement based in North America.
So I read with some hope (although not unbridled joy as
change does not come overnight) about the proposed changes to ARC research funding
policy to include the arts and humanities, outlined in the National Research Priorities: 2012 Process to Refresh the Priorities
Consultation Paper, Feb 2012.
Hopefully this will come
to show that times have changed and the reverse is now coming in
(supported by new research policies): as it is imperative that we (want to) find
out more about ourselves, our past, our identities, who we are, where we came
from, so we can develop more self-knowledge and cultural
understanding; a culture and stories we can share with the world, and be
able to take more creative care over where we are going, including protecting
and sustaining our environments for future life and new generations.
We could hardly do
any more damage to the overall environment than has been done over the
past 200 years (short of a nuclear disaster)
~
The ideas of the myth, the discourse, were internalized and as
with discourse achieved its own social construct, a form of ‘reality’.
So that that’s what people believe now, they continue to
propagate and uphold the myth.
Even those who think
they are breaking away.
Yet there has always
been a tradition in Australia since the 1970s of change coming from with out –
and Australian development of contemporary art in Australia only occurred in
the process and as a result of active ongoing dialogue with art world centres
(Skilbeck 2001)… as the result of very determined action by individuals acting
alone and in groups; I am thinking of the pioneering curators who started up and
kept the Biennale going Leo Paroissein, Bill Wright, Nick Waterlow, the latter
two who came from England and re-linked to their connections there (Skilbeck
2003).
Similarly with the
women’s art and indigenous art movements in Australia, we have developed ‘out ‘
identity and in relation to communication with international art and cultural
movements.
And from the start this was an intrinsic part of the Biennale
content and focus.
So that when Mary
Kelly said to me when she first came to Australia it was for the 1981 Biennale.
She was in the MCA gift shop, and was chatting about the 1981 Biennale, “and
someone said that was the women’s Biennale and some else said it no was the
Indigenous Biennale…” she laughed. I was talking with her, interviewing her
and her son Kelly Barry, at the 2008 Biennale where they had a collaborative
video artwork in installation exhibition.
Australians came to
define themselves, their identity, in relation to international art
movements, that was a trend that continues as my ongoing experiences in the
international Mother Art movement show and continue to show…
© Copyright Ruth Skilbeck, 2012
Skilbeck, Ruth, Mary Kelly and Kelly Barry (2011). 'Ruth
Skilbeck in Conversation with Mary Kelly and Kelly Barrie', Chapter 1 in Real
Mothers in Contemporary Art. Demeter Press, York University, Toronto. 46-52
Skilbeck, Ruth (2011) 'Gazing Boldly Back and Forward: Urban
Aboriginal Women Artists and New Global Feminisms in Transnational Art',
International Journal of the Arts in Society. Vol.5, Issue 6: 261-276
Skilbeck, Ruth (2010). 'Re-viewing Feminist Influences in
Transnational Art: A Multimodal, Fugal Analysis of Mary Kelly’s Texts of
‘Maternal Desire’'. International Journal of the Arts in Society, Vol. 4, Issue
5 2010, 15-28
Skilbeck, Ruth (2003) ‘Contemporary Australian Art Comes of Age’, 4- feature series, Australian
Art Collector. Issue 25. 75-89.
Thompson, Matthew (2012) ‘Top cited academics honoured (but
where’s the humanity?) The Conversation.edu.au
https://theconversation.edu.au/top-cited-academics-honoured-but-wheres-the-humanity-7348
Australian Research Council (2012). National Research
Priorities: 2012 Process to Refresh the Priorities . Consultation Paper, Feb
2012.
http://www.innovation.gov.au/Research/Documents/2012RefreshingtheNRPs.pdf
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