Introduction (in: Gimme Shelter. Global discourses in aesthetics)

 When we study history, we soon realize that cultures never have been homogeneous, self-contained and unchanging wholes. All cultural traditions are artificial in the sense that they are never have ‘a pure origin’ but have always been derived from other cultural contexts. This basic factum of human culture is linked to human finitude, not only the finitude of individuals but also the finitude of cultures. That this derivation from other cultures often is forgotten is linked to our finitude too. For example, when the tulip is presented as a traditional Dutch flower, it is often ‘actively forgotten’ that this icon of The Netherlands came – via Turkey and Persia – from Afghanistan and other Central Asian regions to the Western world.  And when pasta is regarded worldwide as typical Italian food, we should remember that several centuries ago it was brought from China to Italy by Marco Polo. When elements are transferred from one culture to another, these elements are grafted into a new cultural context and acquire new meaning. For those who quote the inherently citable elements of other cultures, these foreign elements soon become their own. Italians certainly regard pasta as part of their cultural identity, but we have to keep in mind that pasta thanks its Italian-ness to the very differences that exist between the place it occupies in the Chinese and the Italian cuisine and culture respectively.

Putting this in general terms, one could say that every culture is intercultural in a fundamental way. The ‘origin’ of our culture always lies elsewhere. The play of identity and difference is not possible without the dimension of the in-between. In this sense the world has always been entangled in a process of globalization. 

Globalization 2.0

However, although intercultural dissemination is as old as human culture, the scope and pace has not always been the same in the course of human history. In the twentieth century we have witnessed a constant expansion and acceleration of the process of globalization, which increasingly has become intertwined with the rapid development of new forms of transport (trains, cars and airplanes) and communication (telegraph, telephone, mass media and, especially in the last decades, the Internet). As a result of the rapid growth of these new means of transport and telecommunication, globalization has become a decisive phenomenon in the life of almost every world citizen.

The history of the International Association of Aesthetics (IAA) forms an eloquent example of the rapid process of globalization. Until the end of the last century, the IAA (and its forerunner, the Comité International d'Esthétique) was mainly a European affair. Starting with the Berlin conference in 1913, all IAA congresses in the twentieth century were held in Europe. Increasing encounters between cultures, also in the domain of arts and aesthetics, and a greater concern for international communication and association, led the IAA to enlarge the geographical scope of the congresses. This resulted in conferences in Tokyo (2001), Rio de Janeiro (2004), Ankara (2007), and Beijing (2010).

Globalization processes seem to undermine the very notion of ‘national culture’. In the past, the slow pace of change often made us forget the intercultural exchanges (as the example of the tulip illustrates). However, through contemporary media, the geographical boundaries between cultures and cultural identities seem to dissolve rapidly in favor of other, less clear-cut ones defined by religious, political or life-style preferences. Internet, in particular, has enabled dissemination of professional and amateur cultural production and consumption on an unprecedented scale, providing new venues of cultural exchange but also fostering new types of cultural conflict. Local cultures are increasingly being affected by global processes, but the global might acquire different meanings in different localities.

Gimme Shelter

The title of this conference offers an apt illustration of this development. Many readers, coming from different regions from the world, will have recognized “Gimme Shelter” as the name of a song by the world-famous rock’n roll group The Rolling Stones. It first appeared as the opening track on the band's 1969 album Let It Bleed. Moreover, Gimme Shelter is also the name of the 1970 documentary film directed by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin, chronicling The Rolling Stones’ 1969 US tour. Although The Rolling Stones are an English pop group, the rock’n’roll music they play originated in the US, but has its deeper roots in the traditions of jazz and blues, black music that, brought to America together with the slaves, has its roots in Africa. The dissemination of rock’n’roll was not restricted to the Western world, however, but was a world phenomenon, that, for example, also deeply affected the music and youth culture in Japan and other Asian countries. It goes without saying that these phenomena are closely connected with the aforementioned development of new forms of transport, that enabled rock’n’roll bands such as The Stones to tour around the world, but also with mass media such as the gramophones, radio and television, CD’s, DVD’s and music and film distribution via the Internet.

And of course, the Stones are just one example. If we look at popular music alone, the world has become a database of styles and genres: worldwide people listen to the reggae music of Bob Marley and the songs from the popular Bollywood movies from India or dance on the Cuban salsa or the songs of the Senegalese griots. We enjoy the cuisines all over the world – from Italian pizza’s to Chinese food and from Thai cuisine to Argentinean steaks  –  and we combine, recombine and decombine them in ever new ways.

Without doubt intercultural dissemination is often enjoyable and advantageous for cultures. It can be compared with the introduction of fresh genes into the gene pool of an organism. Often it enhances the creativity and adaptability of cultures and helps them to keep developing themselves.  However, we should not idealize intercultural dissemination as such. The fact that the Stones songs have part of their roots in human slavery already shows one of the darker sides of intercultural dissemination.

Moreover, when we look at the text of the song, we discover another layer of impact of the mass media on popular art and youth culture.  The song text evidently is about the Vietnam War. In the words of Mick Jagger, in a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone: “Well, it's a very rough, very violent era. The Vietnam War. Violence on the screens, pillage and burning. And Vietnam was not war as we knew it in the conventional sense...”. On the song itself, he concluded, "That's a kind of end-of-the-world song, really. It's apocalypse; the whole record's like that”. The song Gimme Shelter makes us realize that colonialism, cultural imperialism and destructive wars are manifestations of intercultural encounters and intercultural dissemination too! The violence was not only in Vietnam, however, as the Gimme Shelter documentary shows, but is part of everyday intercultural dissemination. The documentary culminates in the disastrous Altamont Free Concert, where a member of the audience was killed by a Hell’s Angel who was part of the security guards and several others died in the panic that resulted.

Perhaps December 6, 1969 was not the day that music died, as it has been claimed, but certainly it marked the definitive end of the Summer of Love. On multiple levels Gimme Shelter shows that when differences between cultures are big, intercultural dissemination easily leads to a clash of cultures instead of a melting pot or a peaceful coexistence. Moreover, even when intentional violence is absent, we should also realize that the benefits and costs of intercultural exchange are often far from being in balance.

In need of a cultural shelter

However, apart from the literal references to violence the apocalyptical text of the song Gimme Shelter can also be interpreted in a more abstract way, as a critical reflection on the violence of globalization and cultural dissemination as such and the longing for the shelter of a local culture.

It is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance of cultural traditions. It is almost impossible to conceive of human life without the cultural heritage, customs, practices and habits passed on orally or by other means from person to person and from generation to generation. Especially in a rapid changing world, local traditions may help us orient ourselves when we are confronted the processes of globalization; they give direction to our thinking and to our actions. The inevitability of traditions is linked to the radical finitude of our existence. Our lifetime is too short for us to acquire all the guidance necessary for us to live our lives. Therefore we are always more our traditions than our choices. Cultural traditions are necessary compensations for our finitude. Although traditions are contingent and finite too, we cannot do without them.

Perhaps they only way to deal with globalization is to open ourselves for the cultures of others without giving up our cultural roots, but to use them as means of interpreting the rapid changes that our world and lives undergo. These finite roots and traditions offer a shelter for the storm of globalization that sweeps across our planet. But not in the sense that they should cut us off of the process of globalization (“Get out of my shelter”), but rather they offer us an entrance to the multiversum and polylogue of cultures. In such a multiversum the only real universal and unifying given is human fragility. Art at its best is able to express this experience of fragility and to transfer it from one shelter to the other. And global discourses in aesthetics should aim at helping us to understand that only in this experience of fragility, love indeed is “just a kiss away”.

Global discourses in aesthetics

From 8-10 October 2009, about 80 aestheticians from all over the world gathered together in Amsterdam at the conference Gimme Shelter. Global discourses in aesthetics, in order to exchange views about the impact of globalization on the arts and the aesthetic reflection on the arts. They discussed a variety of aesthetic questions brought forth by the aforementioned process of globalization. How do artistic practices and aesthetic experiences change in response to these developments? How are these changes adequately articulated theoretically? When reflections on the significance of art and aesthetic experiences can no longer pretend to be universal, is there still a possibility to lay claim on a wider validity than merely that of one’s particular culture? What type of vocabulary allows for mutual – dialogical or even polylogical – exchanges and understandings when different traditions meet, without obliterating local differences? Is there a possibility for a creative re-description of globalization? And is there a meaning of ‘the global’ that cannot be reduced to universalism and unification? Can we seek shelter in a legitimate way?

The following collection of chapters certainly does not offer final answers to these questions. However, we hope that they enable the reader to find shelter in the lively polylogue of cultures that constitutes the fabric of which our present world is built. The first part of the volume focuses on the universality versus the particularity of aesthetic judgment and the possibility of an intercultural understanding of art.

This parts opens with  Stefan Deines’ reflection on the cultural limits to the understanding, experience and evaluation of works of art from cultures other than one’s own. Starting from the contextualist approach within the analytical tradition in aesthetics, and in contrast to empiricist, formalist and naturalistic theories, Deines argues that appropriate interpretation and evaluation of art requires a pertinent knowledge of its historic and cultural context. Moreover, a particular ‘knowing how’ is required for being able to register, discriminate and appropriately react to the determining aesthetic and artistic properties of the work in question. Whereas the first cultural limit can be overcome relatively easily, because knowledge about a specific culture can be acquired through scholarly publications or the explanations of a museum guide, the second limit is more difficult to counter, because the required knowing how can only be learned by training and familiarization with a specific practice of art reception from within the culture that generated the work. We do not need to revert to a strong cultural relativism, according to Deines, yet even in contemporary examples of culturally eclectic works like those of Takeshi Murakami, understanding of their various cultural references remains asked for.

Focusing on scenic beauty rather than art, Arnold Berleant raises the question whether we actually need universality in aesthetic judgment. Universality is neither necessary nor desirable, he claims, and the requirement of universality unduly constrains the value and usefulness of aesthetic judgment. Basic to this norm of universality is the assumption that the object of judgment is stable and independent from the position or dispositions of the equally stable judging subject; neither is true. Rather than centering aesthetic events around subjective feelings on the one hand or on properties of works of art or other objects on the other, Berleant proposes to consider both sides as mutually interacting constituents in a complex situational, aesthetic field. Aesthetic judgments like those on beauty or the sublime then become positive designations of a specific aesthetic field – and as each individual perceptual situation is different, aesthetic judgments will be highly variable. Rather than considering this as a weakness, Berleant proposes to take this variability as a starting point to rethink the task of philosophical criticism and investigate the endlessly varied and complex domains of human experience through the comparative analysis of diverse cultural, Western and non-Western traditions.

Lilaina Coutinho, however, still sees a valuable mission for the notion of the universality of the judgment of taste. In the present context of globalization, the concept of the universal as it is used by Kant, in an ‘as if’ construction underlying the judgment of taste, can be a useful tool. Because of its autonomy from the determinacy and interest present in classical logic, the judgment of taste is valuable in the political domain of action and in the consideration of different points of view, so necessary to intercultural exchange. In a discussion of the work of Hannah Arendt and François Jullien, Coutinho proposes to consider the universal as a fictional image, a scenario guiding the action of abstracting ourselves from our subjective experience. The picture of someone who climbs a cliff in order to have an overview of the sea below ­– the global – is one such image; the walker who aims for the ever-reclining horizon another.

Annelies Monseré examines in detail how Arthur Danto and Jerrold Levinson account for the relevance of art-historical context in their philosophical definitions of art and what this means for the categorization of non-Western art. Both developed theories of art which try to identify and understand art within its historical context without denying the possibility of a transhistorical and transcultural concept of art. Against Levinson Monseré argues that his historical definition of art excludes non-Western art, as it cannot account for artifacts that seem to be a candidate for art hood, but that do not consciously refer to a collection of preceding uncontested artworks as Western post-Renaissance artworks do. Arthur Danto, who defined art not in terms of its reference to a history of art but in terms of its specific way of embodying meaning, does not fall into this trap, but his theory is nevertheless problematic, according to Monseré. As he maintains that the transhistorical essence of art only discloses itself through history, fulfilling its historical mission of answering the question what art is, only those artworks that fall within this correct line of historical development are deemed to be historically significant. In spite of the fact that he ascribes non-Western artworks the full status of being art, he still denies them historical significance.

In her contribution, Krystina Wilkozewska continues the discussion about the encounter between Western and non-Western arts and aesthetics. She argues that the birth of the discipline of aesthetics in eighteenth century Europe reflects the autonomization and aesthetization of the arts that starts in the same period. As a consequence Western aesthetics is strongly associated with a limited idea of fine arts and (a Kantian) concept of disinterestness of aesthetic experience. The consequence of these developments not only was a separation of  works of fine arts from ordinary life (by putting them in museums), but also depreciation of what now becomes known as ‘applied arts’, which were considered to serve the non-aesthetic purpose of utility. Wilkozewska explores the possibilities of an alternative approach of non-Western art in the ongoing process of globalization. She distinguishes three stages in this encounter. Whereas non-European art works at first only were considered from a cultural-anthropological perspective as cultural artifacts, from the beginning of the twentieth century on they attracted attention of European artists and aestheticians. However, in this second stage  non-Western art was conceptually colonized by the idea of ‘pure art’ and put in museums. Only in the third post-colonial stage, in which we are now, a more open attitude towards non-Western art has become possible. According to Wilkozewska, this is the task of transcultural aesthetics. Connecting to the work of Wolfgang Welsch and postmodern French thinkers, she sharply demarcates the transcultural approach, which emphasizes relational networks rather than binary oppositions, from multicultural and intercultural[2] forms of aesthetics, which in her view still are based on a modern conception of culture as a whole. In the last part of her essay she discusses some of the difficulties and obstacles that haunts transcultural aesthetics.

In his attempt to conceptualize the encounter between different artistic traditions in our globalizing world, Kees Vuyk returns to Heidegger, one of the fathers of postmodern philosophy and aesthetics. He takes the distinction Heidegger makes between ‘world’ and ‘earth’ as his starting point. Whereas ‘world’ refers to the closely network of significance where man can live and work, earth is defined by Heidegger as “native ground”, which “occurs essentially as the sheltering agent”. According to Vuyk these concept constitute a fruitful starting point for thinking about the role art plays in the globalizing world. However, Vuyk  argues that Heidegger in bringing earth into play, goes one step too far. According to Heidegger every genuine work of art “opens up a world”. Especially in a globalizing world such an artistic recognition of, and  introduction to, a plurality of worlds is valuable. However, Heidegger is of the opinion that a work of art also “sets this world back again on earth”. In the secondary literature on Heidegger, ‘earth’ is often understood as a condition of possibility of the work of art, as a permanent ontological reserve of meanings, which makes so that the work of art cannot be exhausted by interpretation. Against this interpretation, referring to a similar movement in Sein und Zeit, Vuyk demonstrates that ‘earth’ does not function so much as a transcendental condition, but rather as a particular historical condition. For the early Heidegger, the ‘earthy dimension’ of the work of art invites us to take up our historical heritage and destiny. Following a suggestion of Gianni Vattimo and Slavoj Žižek, Vuyk argues that the later Heidegger tried to get rid of this last step. ‘Earth’ should no longer be understood as a condition of possibility, but rather as a “condition of impossibility”, a moment of “unfounding”. In the context of globalization this means that works of art that open alternative worlds makes that our own ordinary world loses its obviousness and no longer appears as an unquestioned native ground. At the same time the work may show us that the earth offers many other places than can give shelter.

Erik Vogt continues  the discussion of Heidegger from a somewhat different angle. The author aims at a deepening of sociological and political-economic accounts of globalization by interpreting it from the perspective of Heidegger’s analysis of the transformation of (the meaning of) Being. In Heidegger’s account, the modern era appears as a Ge-stell, in which all beings are reduced to  the raw material of a standing–reserve for technological control and manipulation. Whereas for Heidegger, a different disclosure of Being can only be found outside technology, in a fundamental different realm such as art, Vogt follows Gianni Vattimo in arguing that this saving power might be located in  the Ge-stell itself. In the postmodern age, in which information and communication technologies globally distribute a multiplicity of images, interpretations and reconstructions, reality increasingly becomes softer and more fluid. Under these postmodern technological conditions, aesthetic experience pluralizes too, both in intra- and inter-cultural terms, leading to the acknowledgment of the historicity, contingency and finiteness of the plural voices that weaving the web of the global world. Such art no longer is authentic (Heidegger) or auratic (Benjamin), but rather decorative. Such a weak, unfounding art is accompanied by an equally weak, post-tourist subjectivity, which is characterized by “the technologically generated aesthetic experience of mobile dwelling”.

In the final chapter of the first part, Jos de Mul continues the discussion of mobile dwelling in a globalizing world. According to De Mul, the constant and rapid innovation of our present world and the accompanying discourse of mobility may easily lead us to overlook the persistence of cultural traditions. However,  in order to understand the present role of traditions, we should acknowledge that important differences exist between pre-modern, modern and post-modern traditions with regard to the form mobility takes. After a short discussion of the role information and communication technologies play in post-modern traditions, De Mul argues that these technologies transform our world, not only our electronic files, into a global database and, as a consequence, generate a mobile stream of post-historic and post-geographic phenomena. In the conclusion he discusses some implications of the postmodern "database ontology" for the arts and aesthetic theory.

The second part of this volume presents a more or less random walk through the immense database of  global arts and aesthetics. Peng Feng takes the first steps with a discussion of the work of the Chinese contemporary artist Xu Bing. The three works described in the chapter exemplify the transition of Chinese art from a focus on Chinese identity to a crossing of cultural borders, which took place in the period between the later 1990s and the first decade of the second millennium. Whereas Book from the Sky shows pseudo Chinese characters which cannot be read by anybody, New English Calligraphy is a fusion of written English and written Chinese, requiring some familiarity with both languages to be understood. Book from the Ground, a work containing a computer program that can translate Chinese and English into a language of visual icons, can be read by everyone, regardless their cultural or educational backgrounds. This work is an example of what Peng Feng identifies as a ‘New International Style’, a truly international perspective that does not recognize any cultural or social divides.

Curtis Carter explores the historical roots of Chinese avant-garde art. He questions the assumption that only Western Modernism would have produced an artistic avant-garde. Not only has twentieth century Chinese avant-garde art become the focus of several important books by Chinese scholars during the past ten years; moreover, indications of artistic avant-gardism can be found throughout the history of Chinese art. The core of avant-gardism, Carter argues, is improvisation, an openness for new forms and ideas, which challenges and seeks to replace existing hierarchal systems of artistic creation. Defined as such, avant-gardism embraces both the aesthetics of innovation and experimentation, and the role as an agent of radical social change which are usually associated with the Western Modernist avant-garde, but does not limit itself to a specific historical period or geographical location. It can also be discerned, for instance, in the Individualist art of seventeenth century China.

The next two chapters, heading westwards  in the global database, discuss two examples of recent Indian arts. In her contribution, Parul Dave Mukherji interviews Raqs Media Collective, a Delhi based group of three documentary makers, curators and media artists that has been active in the international art scene since the 2002 Documenta. Although RMC is addressing actual political and social issues, their activism does not pretend to be able to change the world; what art can do, however, is “to deepen and sharpen our intellectual and emotional responses to our time, our lives and our world”. Rather than speaking out for others, they cherish silence; they define themselves as ‘activist listeners’ rather than speakers. The global scale of capitalism has been a theme in their work from early on, their video Capital of Accumulation for instance connecting the histories of cities as diverse as Berlin, Mumbai and Warsaw. However, although they consider nationalism or national identity to be a ‘ruin’, they neither try to restore nor pass by this ruin, but look for “the life forms that are generated by the very abandonment of the ruin”, as signposts to the future. They see being based in a specific place, such as Delhi, not as opposed to being global; rather, their participation in a global discourse is enabled by the “intense conversation with the city where we happen to live”.

Listening to silence – the silence of nature in particular – may describe the work of Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi (1937-90). Nasreen actively engaged with various artistic styles, from modern Western painting to Japanese calligraphy. Renée van de Vall tries to unravel the subtle ways in which her drawings stage the gaze of the spectator, and doing so produce specific spatio-temporal experiences that have their roots in Indian as well as other pictorial traditions. Drawing on the aesthetics of Alexander Nehamas, Van de Vall proposes to turn around the logic of inter- or transcultural understanding and judgment of art. Rather than searching for the proper conditions for an a-temporal aesthetic judgment, regardless of whether these are supposed to be universal or particular, we might choose for an open-ended dynamics of engagement, triggered and sustained by mutual fascination and curiosity. A dialogical and performative approach to aesthetics opens the theoretical possibility that participants of one culture learn about modes of experience cultivated in another culture through a sustained engagement with its art.

With Istanbul as her primary example, Jale Erzen addresses one of the main symptoms of capitalist globalization processes, the rapid growth of urban areas and the destruction of old peripheral settlements with their social relations and shared memories that gave their inhabitants a sense of belonging and autonomy. As the new housing projects that replace the old settlements do not provide a substitute for the sociality and cultural identity embodied in the architecture of the latter, present day cities become sites for a global and placeless culture of penury. In a discussion of various philosophical approaches that relate the human body and its memory to the urban environment and vice versa, Erzen criticizes the massive erasure of urban memory that takes place on a global scale and pleads for an urban aesthetics that restores a bodily and emotional relationship to the built environment.

Although the urban environment of Tehran might not have been as directly affected by the forces of capitalist economic globalization as Istanbul, Susan Habib argues that its cultural development is certainly ‘global’ in a wider sense – in terms of the perception and comprehension of the global heritage and the acceptance and absorption of other cultures. Iranian painting has always very dynamic and open to influences from both Eastern and Western art as early as the sixteenth century, converting those influences into a distinctive Iranian style. Since the revolution of 1979 Tehran has grown into the largest city in the Middle East. Habib sketches three successive stages in Tehran mural painting since the Islamic revolution, and relates them to the history of Iranian art. The first group, appearing directly after the revolution, carried political messages from the religious leaders to the public. The second group, mostly painted in the 1990s, consists of abstract, two-dimensional, and mostly decorative paintings with or without political and religious messages. The most recent group of paintings is three-dimensional and relates closely to the built environment, adding playful elements and trompe-l’oeuil vistas to the urban scenery. Although they provide points of relaxation for urban life in an over-crowded capital, at the same time they remind of the absence of other forms of public arts and user-friendly urban spaces.

The last chapter of this volume focuses on African art.  Heinz Kimmerle traces how since the late nineteenth century Eurocentric conceptions of art, most clearly exemplified by Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics, have changed towards an intercultural aesthetics. Hegel famously held that art came to its full potential in the classical arts of ancient Greece, in particular its sculpture, in which the absolute spirit would have found its adequate outward appearance. All other artistic epochs and regions fell short of this ideal. The Eurocentric attitude started to change gradually from the last decade of the nineteenth century onwards. Since the 1990s there are more and more examples of equal cooperation between European and non-European artists. Kimmerle describes a series of exhibitions featuring African artists and collaborations between Western and African artists in order to demonstrate that although profound differences continue to exist, an intercultural aesthetics that concentrates on the dialogues between the art of different cultures can make these differences [3]a source of mutual inspiration and enrichment.