Imagining New Wealth as a Postcolonial Notion through Activist Art and The Cradle Project by Ames Hawkins and Phil Bratta.

Imagining New Wealth as a Postcolonial Notion through Activist Art

and The Cradle Project

by Ames Hawkinsand Phil Bratta

The Presentation Objectives

A Crisis and A ResponseThe Cradle Project is a fundraising art installation designed to represent the plight of the estimated 48 million children who have been orphaned by disease and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.

--Naomi Natale, thecradleproject.orgYouTube Video of The Cradle

Project

The Albuquerque Community:The Cradle Project Volunteers

Above: Naomi Natale; Upper Rt.: Sofia Eleferthiou,Naomi Natale, Cathy Wysocki, Barbara, Grothus; Bottom rt. ,P.D. Rearick; Bottom Left: Wayne Hopkins

The Chicago Community: Art and Activism Studio ProjectCourse designed by Joan Giroux and Ames Hawkins for J-Session 2008 for the express purpose of providing both Art and Design and Cultural Studies students the opportunity to participate in The Cradle Project while learning about art activism and the orphan crisis in sub-Saharan Africa.

Hard to Bare, by Columbia College Chicago students, Mark Moleski, Morgan Minear, and Kristie Reese

Cultural Studies Faculty: Ames Hawkins

Cultural Studies Student: Phil Bratta

Cradle: womb, trap, bed, cage, home, by Jessica Hoekstra, Phil Bratta, and Tannar Veatch

 This cradle represents a juxtaposition of comfort and negligence, security and danger, absence and presence. The sleeping bag is the womb/cradle. Three of the red ribbons have text that are ideas about comfort, while the fourth ribbon is blank. This fourth ribbon represents the 48 million nameless, faceless, voiceless orphans. The ominous crow and barbed wire represent the harsh and dangerous reality in Africa.

The Class Results: •Two sections of Art and Activism Studio Project—22 students in the whole class

•Nine cradles displayed with the project in Albuquerque

•Students and Columbia College Chicago donated $800 to The Cradle Project

•Collaboration between School of Fine and Performing Arts and School of Liberal Arts and Sciences

•Creation of new syllabus

•Creation of a class manifesto

Art and Activism Manifesto—Columbia College Chicago

I am for an art that gives voice to the voiceless.**I am for an art that dilutes a single voice and amplifies a crowd.**I am for an art that means.**I am for an artist who stretches and strains with ideas and discussions.**I am for an art made by like-minded people with unique ideas.**I am for art that emerges from dialectics and merges with dialectics.**I am for an art that allows a process of collaboration, an art that shows vibrant and creative sparks to flame and enhance a fire of human justice. **I am for an art of collaboration as unity, an art of unity as power.**I am for an art that values collaboration of artists as their work increases the magnitude of voices that need to be heard. **I am for an art that brings us the first step to helping others, that helps us help our selves, that helps us learn about ourselves.**I am for an art that comes in different shoes, that establishes a collective stream of creativity through our differences.**I am for an art of working in a collective, an art of many voices saying the same thing.**I am for an art that makes me different than I am now, an art that through understanding others and growing knowledge of the world makes me a far better person.**I am for an art of pressure, an art of the group, an art of knowledge, an art of understanding, an art of creativity.**I am for an art of materials that tell a story.**I am for an art that you can’t separate from real life.**I am for an art of compromising initial intent.**I am for art constructed from leftover scrap, junk, and other stuff that may have otherwise been thrown away. **I am for an art that passionately doesn’t give a fuck.**I am for an art that burns flags in order to save nations.**I am for an art that questions ideologies and empowers change.**I am for an art that connects the people of the world by expanding global consciousness.**I am for art at the global level, art of a world that can grow together, art of a wiser world, passionate for change.**I am for art that makes us want to participate.**I am for an art that helps us realize the strengths in each of us.**I am for an art made from nothing, art that stands on its own and shines as beacons of hope for a country in need.**I am for an art where we gain a broader perspective of the world around us.**I am for an art that is a link in a chain, a vital link that gives aid. **I am for an art that is many hands turned into one.**I am for an art that promises to unite the world, bringing with it the obligation to be held accountable to those with whom we unite.

The Project Results:•550 cradles made by artists, activists, and students

•Exhibition in Albuquerque, NM June 2008 with attendance of over 2000 individuals at the opening

•Raised $110,000 and counting for The Firelight Foundation

•Publication of The Cradle Project catalogue/book of selected cradles available at www.thefirelightfoundation

Underlying all colonial discourse is a binary of colonizer/colonized, civilized/uncivilized, white/black which works to justify the mission civilatrice and perpetuate a cultural distinction which is essential to the ‘business’ of economic and political exploitation.”

- Bill Ashcroft, Post-Colonial Transformation (2001)

How might we make use of the term “new wealth” through notions regarding survival, success, stability, sustainability? Could it be that “new wealth” isn’t just a capitalist notion regarding the increase in wealth, but a revision of cultural constructions of success through a paradigm of stability? Can we begin to imagine a reciprocal, collaborative and cooperative engagement with wealth that allows for wealth to be understood in non-capitalist models? In other words, is Western capitalism the last word in wealth?

Postcolonial Considerations:

Can “New Wealth” be imagined through postcolonial theory?

Postcolonialism seeks to intervene, to force its alternative

knowledges into the power structures of the west as well as

the non-west.

–Robert J.C. Young, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (2003)

What does it mean for those in the United States to raise money for those in Africa? Can we speak on behalf of others? Does our involvement enable or disable political and economic resistance?

Can “New Wealth” be generated through activist art?Is activist art fundraising a form of “New Wealth?” Is there more to it than that? What effect does the practice of reuse and recycling in the making of art translate to the recreation of wealth?

Shaped as much by the “real world” as by the art world, activist art represents a confluence of the aesthetic, sociopolitical, and technological impulses of the past twenty-five years or more that have attempted to challenge, explore, or blue the boundaries and hierarchies defining culture as represented by those in power. The cultural form is the culmination of a democratic urge to give voice and visibility to the disenfranchised, and to connect art to a wider audience. It springs from a union of political activism with the democratizing aesthetic tendencies originating in Conceptual art of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

--Nina Felshin in But is it Art?

What are our ethical obligations regarding “New Wealth”?

International trade may seem a remote issue, but when commodity prices fall dramatically it has a catastrophic impact on the lives of millions of small-scale producers, forcing many into crippling debt and countless others to lose their land and their homes. The Fairtrade Foundation exists to ensure a better deal for marginalized and disadvantaged third-world producers. Fairtrade makes a real difference to people’s lives: (1) It challenges the conventional model of trade, and offers a progressive alternative for a sustainable future; (2) It empowers consumers to take responsibility for the role they play when they buy products from the third world.”

-Fairtrade Foundation website, www.fairtrade.org.uk

Are we in the “new world” obligated, by virtue of our economic success, to help generate “new wealth” for those who are failing to survive? Doesn’t our survival in the “new world” depend upon the stability of those in the “third world?”

What can marginal voices in developing nations do to generate “New Wealth”?

Can they function outside of western economic, cultural and political modes? Even more, can we in the West imagine ways of listening to marginal voices in such a way that we begin to collaborate on ideas and approaches that serve to encourage economic sustainability and stability, rather than simple growth? How can the reimagining of wealth-in-things help us consider pre-colonial ideas regarding wealth-in-people and wealth-in-knowledge?

Demographic collapse known to have taken place in several parts of Equatorial Africa in the early colonial period must entail a catastrophic loss of wealth for societies where knowledge is a key resource, possibly undermining social reproduction itself. (…) …there must have been considerable fluidity between wealth-in-people and wealth-in-things under the changing historical circumstances of regional relationship and international trade. - Jane I. Guyer and Samuel M. Eno Belinga in “Wealth in People as Wealth in Knowledge: Accumulation and Composition in Equatorial Africa.”

Website: One Million Bones

By studying these tragic lessons from history, we can help our children understand the importance of freedom ... When they recognize that crimes of genocide continue in some corners of the world, even in the twenty-first century, it will raise their awareness and help them understand what can happen when you judge people by their race, their homeland or their beliefs.

—Illinois State Senator Jacqueline Collins

Take Action 

The following links have detailed information about these crises along with actions you can take that will make a difference.

Genocide Intervention Network

Enough

Genocide Watch

Save Darfur

Not On Our Watch

Credits

Photos from The Cradle Project Book by

Other photos by Naomi Natale, Ames Hawkins, and Suzanne Blum Malley

Special thanks to Naomi Natale and The Cradle Project

Works Cited

Ashcroft, Bill. Post-Colonial Transformation. London and New York: Routledge, 2001.

Cradle Project, The. Albuquerque: Firelight Foundation, 2008.

Felshin, Nina, ed. But is it Art?: The Spirit of Art as Activism. Seattle: Bay Press, 1995.

Guyer, Jane I and Samuel M. Eno Belinga. Wealth in People as Wealth in Knowledge: Accumulation and Composition in Equatorial Africa in Journal of African History, 36 1995. (91-120).

Young, Robert J.C. A Very Short Introduction: Postcolonialism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.