More About The Visit to The Upper Mattaponi: Context

Background
This is turning into a three-part, maybe four- or five- part entry. But before I get into my statement about materiality and material culture, I’ll sketch out some context.

Our visit with Chief Ken Adams was inspired by a call from the INDIGO Design Network out of Australia, Mix08 project (visit the “project” at http://www.indigodesignnetwork.org to review the brief). I received an e-mail notice about the project and was briefly at a loss for connection. Indigenous people in the US? Indigenous isn't commonly a term we use for the Native American, or American Indian population. The term indigenous conjured up something exotic and foreign, like the Maori of New Zealand or the Aboriginal People of Australia. This summer I was in Canada and had read in the news about current efforts to provide restitution to generations of children forcibly relocated to residential schools, isolated from family and community and prohibited from speaking their native language. The personal stories are unbelievably sad.

I read the call from Australia and felt a responsibility to bring this into my Senior Seminar class. I have a tendency to approach projects outside my area of comfort. I tend to see Seminar as a place for all of us to engage in a topic, or concept, and explore it together. This has both exciting and dismal possibilities.

I made a connection with Kareen Wood, director of the Virginia Indian Heritage Program at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (see links) and tireless advocate for the rights and recognition of Indians in Virginia. She arranged the visit with Chief Adams.

Impressions
This is really what I wanted to write about. I tried to provide some contextual readings, about colonialism and “reading culture” (things like an annotated reading to the class of Babar the Elephant, Edward T. Hall, Edward Said, and Barthes) and specifically, about the Upper Mattaponi Tribe, also referred to in the 18th and 19th centuries as The Adamstown Band, a so many had the last name Adams. Prior to the field trip (about 45 minutes drive northwest of Richmond) the students gathered in groups to compile questions. Things as commonplace as what did they eat and where did they work, and harder questions about the Baptist Church that now forms the centerpiece of religious life. The list touched on history, present and future; and on the issues of living on a reservation, and not living on a reservation (the Upper Mattaponi own their land. It is not a reservation, which would be owned by the US government).

Expectations
They asked me what I expected. I told them I really had no idea, and then amended that. I expected Chief Adams would talk with us and tell us about his experience. I expected to be able to walk around on the land and get some sense of what it sounded like, and smelled like, and looked like. I still miss the textures, and smells and sounds, and colors of the hills about Amherst, Massachusetts. As much as I’ve lived in Richmond (longer now than I lived in Shutesbury as a single person up in the hills), I’ve not been able to connect to the landscape. I expected to be visiting someplace that for thousands of years was home to the same lineage of people.

I need to ask them to write about their own expectations.

A Visit to the Upper Mattaponi tribal land

Last Monday my Senior Seminar class at VCU and I piled into a few cars and drove out to the tribal lands of the Upper Mattaponi Tribe of Virginia. I drove up with Kareen Wood, director of the Virginia Indian Heritage Program at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. During the 45 minute drive (x2 for the carload that got lost but eventually found their way) Kareen spoke with me about the issues of ownership, and how the conflict between the native Americans and the Colonists created a deep clash that continues today. The Upper Mattaponi own their land outright, unlike a reservation where the land is "managed" by the resident tribe but owned by the US government. We met with Chief Ken Adams in the parking lot, where a weathered hand-painted sign marked the Sharon Indian School, Home of the Upper Mattaponi Indian Tribe, est. 1919. Most carloads of students flew right past the gravel parking lot beside the small brick building. In fact, that signage and the Baptist church next door fit in neatly with the surrounding material culture: this might have been just another few buildings on the side of a busy rural highway ---which, in fact, they were. More about this later...

On or About Photography

I'm assembling readings for a Sophomore class titled IMAGING. I'm treating it like a Photography class. I am drawn back to, and repelled by, the discredited eponymous discourse on photography by Susan Sontag. One critic suggests it might be better titled “Against Photography” (Sorensen, Sue, “Against Photography”, in Afterimage , Vol. 31, Issue 6) A Wikipedia writer writes, “reviews from the world of art photography that followed On Photography’s publication were skeptical and often hostile.” I would add that they continue to be. But there is something to her polemic that questions ideas about creativity that we hold to be sacred. I’m not saying I would defend her positions but I am forced to consider that there is for me some aspect worth consideration in many of her arguments. I’m considering her statement “The final reason for the need to photography everything lies in the very logic of consumption itself.” Certainly, this can’t be the final reason. And she might be right: there is no thing left unphotographed. But the idea of consumption deserves a little more attention especially given the way her critics dismiss the text as now lacking all credibility. What if she is partly right? Can that be allowed? Aren’t we in some way consuming images --- consuming media --- with an automatic mode of processing given the shear quantity those of us on line are exposed to, and the distractions? To what are we responding? Is there a dialogue? Can this be a dialogue?

setting intentions

Setting Intentions: back to this idea.

I was asked to help coordinate the preparation of the preschool facility for the return of the children for the 08-09 school year at Sabot at Stony Point School
(http://www.sabotatstonypoint.org/).

Two significant connections:

1) it is from Sabot and the reggio-inspired philosophy that I have developed this focus of intentionality as hub for motivation and action.
2) assuming this role of coordinating folks to get work done has led to many unexpected connections: a neighborhood community center for at risk youths was the first to call to claim the free stove and fridge we needed taken away so that we can convert the kitchen to a utility/diaper changing area (somehow disconnecting the stove and building a changing table on top of that chafed against my aesthetics). Building a community center is an enormous undertaking that creates a call to action for an ever-expanding set of skills and talents. Sabot is now a part of this.
Another call came from a theater group : The Conciliation Project (http://www.theconciliationproject.org/) whose mission states, “We believe that there is hope through constructive dialogue and active listening. We believe we must be willing to listen to one another and address our past if we are going to be allowed to have a future.” I couldn’t offer a stove but I did ask how my students can contribute their creative energies.
We’ll meet to consider collaborative possibilities.

What if I established an intention for my semester, or even my entire school year, drawing on the theme of the ICOGRADA design week in Doha, Qatar in March of 2009 (http://www.mousharaka.com/)? Collaboration.

The first time I began to consider the necessity of Intentionality came after a retreat at IMS, the Insight Meditation Center in Barre Massachusetts. Insight, or Vipassana is a Buddhist meditation practice. The associations of intentionality and Buddhism are too vast to describe here. A longer essay for another day.

report from Clifftop

How to reconcile the various fractions or facets of our life into one comprehensive whole as "designer", or is designer just one piece of something else? Do they battle each other? Is being a parent in battle with being a tenured member of the faculty of a university design department? Is playing classical music from written pages in conflict with trying to understand (well enough to play) old time fiddle styles? Is writing a blog just one more facet, or is it the agent tying it all together. Writing about what is being attended to (like laundry or better, the garden) at present. And crafting some sort of public text/image persona that evolves and shifts. In some sense this blog is as comprehensive a story as anything a single incident or image could represent. A journal that is both public and private, both a private statement and a request for some resonance in the internet universe.

I've loaded this single image from Clifftop, the Appalachian Stinrg Band Festival in Clifftop West Virginia. For those wanting more, please check out the wealth of video offerings on youtube. This year's videos of both informal campground jams and competitions are just starting to appear. Clifftop is about music and dancing, and the renewal and continuation of friendships who share a love of old time music and dance. I rarely photograph jams. Either I am playing in one, or I'm more interested in listening. An image of folks playing music doesn't do what this one image of dancers does to explain the cross-generational and gender-equal (this is debatable, of course but note that four of the five finalists in the fiddle competition this year were young women) view of the culture at Clifftop --- here, flat-foot dancing. A man —who could be my father if he were still alive, a woman close to my age, and a girl just about the age of my son Henry dance together. Watch each other, study and learn, and relate in a way that only music can create unspeakable bonds.

Notes from New Views

I just sent my feedback to Teal Triggs. As I'm trying to get done all I want to do before packing up for Clifftop (officially: The Appalachian String Band Music Festival, http://www.wvculture.org/stringband/), I'll enter here some of my comments. I'll continue to add and revise as what transpired at the conference begins to sink in and integrate.

Questions:
1. Please describe and/or visualize, the methods and process by which your Conversation Cluster facilitated your conversation and to develop its findings (If a visualization, please feel free to send this as a separate pdf file).

We began with a lot of questions. I regret I didn’t document this process ---- the questions ---- the way we began to fill out our newsprint posters.

I suggested we might just be asking questions, but even as we agreed we began to make some definitive statements, e.g.: interdisciplinarity is inherent in practice but it is in pedagogy that we feel there can be enhanced intentionality and a richer theoretical and methodological framework.

We asked more questions. We engaged a lot. No one person “had the answer”. We split up into three groups and worked in smaller teams to address questions we found most compelling.

We circulated among the groups.

From my perspective, there was not a single facilitator. Each member took an active roll leading an idea. A very democratic, fluid process.

2. What did you learn from your participation in NV2?
That hierarchy can choke discussion.
To listen better, and to continue to place this as a priority
To trust my instincts
To love the process of group truth-finding
To engage
To work harder to sustain conversation. With the standard format for most conferences, to our solitary presentation, we often arrive (if not slightly nervous or excited) focused on our presentation, our theories, or projects, or presentation. Once we present, there is that sense that “our work is done”. With this format, our work just begins. Or so I felt. I feel a responsibility to continue the discussion and further explore issue raised by my cluster.

3.What challenged you?
I was challenged to listen with an open mind to some participants air frustrations that were what I would have called irrelevant. It challenged me to see how these concerns WERE relevant. I tend to maintain an optimistic view and was challenged to embrace those with pessimistic views or frustrations.

I was challenged by the view that “Graphic Design is in Crisis”. I developed a conviction that graphic design is undergoing an evolution and it is those who operated under previously–accepted assumptions and systems who are in crisis themselves.

4. What did you take away from this event? What was the key benefit or contribution that participating in the conversations provided? How did this add to your engagement with this field of design?

I took away the reminder that graphic design – as controversial a term as it is – is about making things. But just what those things are is up to us. It is the ambiguity of the term graphic that appeals to me and repels others. And this is what creates an exciting tension between discussion, theory and creating.

I am further reminded of how “truth” is built by discussion, and testing, and debate and by the acceptance of debate with out dialectic, or resolution. I think more now about embracing differences and not needing to have consensus or a single. Truth then is a dynamic weaving of truths.

I left with a very rewarding sense of having been part of a rich and intimate dialogue with designers, design educators, and students. The intimacy of the group allowed us to identify issues that are of concern to all of our colleagues and us.

I also believe strongly that this format is a radical new approach to viewing what interdisciplinarity means in design. This non-hierarchical format has paved the way for a huge shift in design conversation. Less about one person’s “wisdom and knowledge” and more about shared wisdom and knowledge. This sort of format seems to be leading in the evolution (not the careening toward crisis) of the profession.

Collaboration with Cuba

After the ICOGRADA conference, Claudio Sotolongo created a project to engage design schools in various corners of the western hemisphere: Columbia, Canada, Cuba, UK, US:
http://designingtheworld.blog.com/.

I just completed text to accompany the publication associated with the project:

The concept of “branding” has, over the past decade (if not longer) shoved itself into an extra-wide seat at the designer’s table, along with such design activities as political statements, publications and book-design and other fine print materials, web and interactivity. This is of growing concern to those of us who fear that the current generation of design students —or the current generation, period — may no longer be able to separate the concept of cultural identity from what they buy, and what they think about buying. This project is an effort to chip away at this link. It is an effort to ask students to look at the much deeper, much more human questions. Who are “my people”? Where do I live? How do I engage with them? What do we do/share/teach each other? How do we contribute to a “way” in which something is done/made/conveyed?

My students surprised me. When asked to define a concept for their piece, all of them seemed to be reacting to a perceived glut of messages of consumption and consumerism. As a group they seemed to say that they too were put off by the alarming quantity and ubiquitousness of the messages telling them what to buy and how to think. Maybe we teach them these things when we ask them to be sensitive to their environment: to take their ear plugs off and give the brain time to think about not only how their environment affects them but how they affect their environment.

To varying degrees students are “tapped” in to the media. One student uses this forum to create a piece about his connection to electronic music-making. For him, this project allows him to make a bridge between two passions: digital image-making and digital sound-mixing. He demonstrates a sophisticated desire to be “plugged in” to current aesthetic trends. Another student, also deeply affected by media, points to the disturbing way US media (television, film, video games) presents random violence in almost a pathologically casual way. Another student, also a musician, makes light of the unapologetically aggressive aspect of metal music. He was concerned about offending anyone with this piece, and had alternative text lines, but I encouraged him to submit this one. Graffiti is another theme picked up by a student who calls attention to the way his friends are treated like criminals: to a city that looks at all “tags” as destruction of property even in places where serious artists with highly-evolved styles have found canvases in hidden culverts, and abandoned buildings other wise giving over to urban blight. This ethics of graffiti is hotly debated around here, and this student uses this forum to make a legitimate statement about legitimacy.

Other students take on more personal issues. One student is active in issues that call attention to inequalities in social welfare — a product of capitalism, one might say —, and is trying to come to terms with her sense of injustice and her chosen profession. She sees this project as way to address her concerns, both personal and political. Another student’s concerns are personal: recoiling from the obsessive consumer culture to promote her love of making things herself. An example of when the personal and the political become one act, one intention.

What makes this project so valuable, partly in hindsight is that it allows us to begin to look at how culture and identity are inextricably linked to consumerism in societies driven by capitalism. Graphic Design is indivisible from politics and economics, especially in such fields as branding and advertising, but this project tells us that graphic designers need not be driven my these forces. The most powerful force we, as graphic designers have to counterbalance is the way mass media chips attempts to chip away at our impulses to build community and identity around what we truly desire, experience and want. This is one project that allows us to see that the drive for authenticity is alive and flourishing with students around the world.