XIONG Xiaoyu / Sherry 熊晓宇

“ …at the heart of this critical language, between several discourses, those of sociology, of semiology, and of psychoanalysis—but that, by ultimate dissatisfaction with all of them, I was bearing witness to the only sure thing that was in me (however naive it might be): a desperate resistance to any reductive system. For each time, having resorted to any such language to whatever degree, each time I felt it hardening and thereby tending to reduction and reprimand, I would gently leave it and seek elsewhere: I began to speak differently.”
                                                                                                     --   Roland Barthes (1980), Camera Lucida

        selected artworks 部分作品
An Emotional Poem 情绪诗, 2024
DNA mirror DNA镜子, 2024

Where_is_语言_مرضی_nehmen 나?, (文字将去向哪里?), 2024

1 Question ⋅20 People ⋅ 20 Glasgow ⋅ 20 World,
一个问题,20个人,20个格拉斯哥,20个世界,  2024

A Translation Experiment 一个翻译实验,2023
My  Hamburg, 汉堡,2023.
Glasgow in my Eyes,  格拉,2023
Identity,2023
Who  is Hui’an Woman?,谁是惠安女?,2022
Listen  to Her,看它说,2021
The Bite Ancient City, 跳动的古城,2021
The  Shape of Thought, 思想的形状, 2018
Under the Shadow - Match  Men,  光影之下 -“火柴人”, 2018

    projects 综合项目
    My word, My world, 我的文字宇宙,2023-now
    Art&Heritage Exhibition,艺术与遗产展览,2021-2023
    Soapbox Science & Art, The Choke, 窒息, 2018


      writings 观点写作
    The Malevolence of Words , 书写之恶,2023-2024
    The Rebellion of Words,文字的反叛,2024
    Colonial Arrogance: In the Name of Cultural Appropriation,
    殖民者的傲慢:以“文化挪用”为名,2022

    The Imagination of Words: Living Words, 文字的想象力:活着的文字,2023-2024

    About Me
    Biography

    CV
    Email : xiongxiaoyu66@163.com
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    ©2024

    Colonial Arrogance: In the Name of Cultural Appropriation
    2022

    Introduction

    With the frequent cultural and academic exchanges between eastern and western, it can be clearly seen that in the current Chinese and British societies, cultural heritage is being practiced and applied in different ways. At the same time, Eastern and Western societies have also formulated a series of policies and regulations on the application of cultural heritage to ensure its Legal integration into contemporary society. However, the core of these theories and policies is for promoting the real integration of cultural heritage into contemporary life and become a dynamic in people's everyday life rather than just for protecting the interests of all parties and the correctness of the roots of cultural heritage and deliberately maintaining its solid cultural heritage attributes. Specifically, some Western scholars now extend the application criteria of cultural heritage in contemporary art to their judgments on the social and aesthetic values of works of art, such as Young (2005:p137) claims that  “For all I have said so far, the dilettante whose profoundly offensive use of cultural appropriation produces aesthetic rubbish could still have acted wrongly.” There is no doubt that the statement over narrows down the possibilities for the multiple ways in which cultural heritage can exist in contemporary society. Current scholars seem to have lost their way of protecting cultural heritage. 

    This essay aims to put forward a new point of view as a creative worker: the application of cultural heritage in contemporary art should be free-flowing and changeable, and the evaluation of a piece of art work on cultural heritage should not be based on relevant literature or standards formulated by some organisations. As well as prudently expand the contextual scope of cultural appropriation, the current society should pay more attention to establishing an ethics that adapts to diversity and change, so as to adapt to the uncertainties that may arise in future.

    "Strong" and Weak"
    Cultural heritage is increasingly used in contemporary art and design, while some artworks face controversy over "cultural appropriation", while others are popular. Why does this phenomenon occur? Firstly, cultural heritage in this article will be based on Marilena’s (2010) explanation that both tangible and intangible cultural heritage, with values such as history, aesthetics, culture, identity, and the ability of objects to interact with memory, are within the scope of this article. Contemporary art is always hard to be defined, however, here could be a suitable claim from Griffin(2013: p7)for this discussion, which is “Made legible as ‘art’ only through and within its various apparatuses of production, display, and circulation, in addition to its discourses—then nothing is so crucial to our conception of contemporary art as globalisation.” In other words, contemporary art is an art of connections. The definition of cultural appropriation is still very complex and varied, which is often attributed as the hegemonic and distortive representation of cultures (Gertner, 2019). Such as the appropriation of Italian traditional culture by Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice; A century of white musicians ranging from Benny Goodman to Eminem has been accused of stealing various forms of black music. (Scafidi, 2005) Picasso famously appropriated motifs which originated in the work of African carvers. These art works seem to be permanently attested to the fact of cultural appropriation from different perspectives such as culture and law. However, we can find a phenomenon that all cultural appropriators cases come from countries with a colonial history such as the US, while the most of "appropriated persons" come from colonised countries such as Africa and Asia. The power structure between colonies and non-colonies Inequality is an important factor that gives birth to cultural appropriation. Behind the so-called cultural appropriation are deeper historical entanglements at the national level, human rights issues, and racial discrimination. Culture appropriation is considered by the cultural owners in the colonies to be more in-depth occupation and plunder. For example, the defence of the blues music culture by African-Americans is not only to protect the native culture from being violated, but more importantly, to seek equal performance opportunities for African-American musicians and white musicians, and for the black community to have a fairer social status in the United States. The phenomenon of blues music being used by white musicians became a direct weapon of African-Americans against white Americans. On the contrary, with the improvement of the social status of black Americans, when black community culture such as H-Pop music is popular in the US and China, it is no longer discussed as a case of cultural appropriation, but focuses on their international influence of culture. Another example, Xu Bing’s (1996) art work “Square Character Series” combines Chinese and English. Related social discussions mainly focus on the artist’s personal life experience and thinking, and the contribution of the work to weakening the perceived distance between the East and the West, rather than focusing on culture. problem of misappropriation. Therefore, can it be seen that equality and tolerance among national politics are the core of reducing cultural heritage misappropriation? It may be fair to the work when the society only discusses the work based on the background of the creator of art and the work itself, instead of discussing the work based on collective concepts such as ethnicity or race.

    In addition, Scafidi (2005: p95) mentioned that “…the external use of cultural products may still result in the misrepresentation or misuse of source group identity.”However, the statement did not treat the relationship between contemporary society and traditional culture equally and independently. The two need to integrate and collide with each other, and there is no fixed "weak" side and the ideas from heritage place could also hurt contemporary society. Between contemporary and traditional spaces with different ways of conveying information, allowing friction and collision between the two through art and innovation is an important way to make a more vibrant community cultural heritage continue to multiply. For example, in 2022, Quanzhou City, China was listed as a world cultural heritage city by the United Nations, but as a local patriarchal-centered traditional cultural concept is still active and affects the daily life of contemporary society, which could hurt individuals members in contemporary society. Some of local people are advocating and praising this ‘virtue’ through the multimedia, trying to influence more outsiders, which is undoubtedly also a harm to outsiders. Hence, with the dynamic changes in the rights structure, the unilateral hegemonic and distortive representation of cultures (Gertner, 2019) is not always applicable. Just as we start to protect cultural heritage (Colomer, 2017) with a dynamically changing attitude, we should also examining individuals' adoption (Suh et al., 2016) and interpretation of cultural attributes (Thompson and Haytko, 1997) from a dynamic perspective. If current scholars still unconsciously fix contemporary society and traditional community culture as "strong" and “weak", which is undoubtedly unfair to both parties. As Scafidi (2005) claimed that the task of the legal system should not be to protect a unitary vision of culture but to establish a means of creative self-determination among source communities.

    The Opinions of Insiders
    There are endless academic discussions about the connection between cultural heritage appropriation and art, law, but there are few residents of cultural heritage sites to express their views. To further understand the attitudes of traditional culture owners towards outsiders and external appropriation, this paper takes Gaelic, a Scottish cultural heritage, as an example, and conducts semi interviews and in-depth interviews with residents and communicators of this community. Interviewee A (pseudonym) is a Scot who has worked with the Gaelic Book Council for over 14 years and his work is dedicated to spreading Gaelic to the world. When I interviewed him for the first time, A introduced me to Scottish culture and he think that everyone can learn Gaelic, no matter for hobbies or commercial interests, but also innovation and creation by outsiders using Scottish culture is very welcome. But when I asked about the history of Gaelic oppression and extinction, he avoided talking about it. This coincided with the attitude of the locals I met in Huian, Fujian. Communicators who are committed to disseminating their own cultural heritage tend to disseminate the more positive and sunny side of their own culture to the outside world, rather than the negative part.

    In the second conversation with interviewees, I started to greet interviewees A and C with simple Gaelic. Interviewee C is currently living in the United States and returning to Glasgow to visit relatives. He learns Gaelic to express his nostalgia. The difference between interviewee C and A is that C is more willing to tell me the history of Gaelic being eliminated and gradually abandoned by people and he emphasises a purer Gaelic language environment.

    The third interview with interviewee A was in a Gaelic bar. The dialogue focused on interviewee A’s attitude towards cultural appropriation:
    Me: what do you think cultural appropriation?

    A: well, this’s hard to say. but I am very supportive of the involvement of art workers and commercial activities. This is something that benefits everyone. Just like what you are doing now, you can complete your research and let more people know about Gaelic. 

    Me: Then why do some people object? For example, Dior’s Mamian skirt caused protests from some of Chinese?

    A:Maybe it is because they are Dior, if this is use by some warehouse not Dior, that would be fine…but it is complex.  There are also positive things, Nike use tweed in their products, which is benefit for all parts, like good for locals tweed makers, good for the culture and of course the companies can get lots of benefits.

    Me: So, maybe Gaelic could also be a fashion and popular language like tweed in the future.

    A: Yeah, could be, why not.

    Overall, the three times dialogues shows that the insiders in the heritage sites still show different attitudes towards their culture. Even the same interviewee will be wary of strangers and will not easily show inner emotions. Variously called dissonant, difficult, or negative heritage, such Places of Pain and Shame (Logan and Reeves, 2008) are what they do not want to touch easily, cause it may harm their emotions and interests. This is also a negative case of cultural appropriation that many artists' works are considered to offend (James, 2008) the local culture. However, I do not think that this issue can be used as a reason to criticise art works. The criticality of contemporary art has the function of broadening boundaries and establishing communication, and should not be criticised or even banned in the name of cultural appropriation when it touches the interests of a certain group of people. Stick Out Your Tongue (Ma, 1987) aroused strong resistance from some Tibetan authorities, and the book's ban for more than 30 years is still a compromise between state power and the economic interests of the Tibetan government, while works of art have become victims. However, there is no doubt that the revival of cultural heritage is a general visions of people in heritage sites. Artistic creation on cultural heritage is not intended to meet everyone's expectations, scholars and artists should pay more attention to the daily life and hidden emotions of local people, arouse more people to participate in the discussion, use the human being’s capacity to recall and act out of events and meanings is a way to foster people’s sense of identity and bring the heritages to life.( Valentina et al., 2021)




    Interview A First time

    (Individual interview)

    Interview A Second time (semi-interview)

    Interview A third time

    (Individual interview)

    Do you mind I study Gaelic?

    Of course not! 

    Everyone can speak this language.

    Starting teach me some simple Gaelic words.

    Gave the book of Everyday Gaelic to ask me learn it.

    Has Gaelic had a sadder history?

    No!Haha

    Yes, Gaelic was tried to be wiped out and many people immigrated to USA and Canada.

    History brief documents about Gaelic history to me. 

    Do you think cultural heritage is belong to some groups or for everyone?

    I think it is belong to all people in the world.










    ___________________

    There are postive things I can tell you, Nike and Vivienne Westwood use tweed in their products, which is benefit for all parts, like good for locals, good for the culture and of course the companies can get lots of benefits. 

    Do you like I create some artworks relate Gaelic?

    Of course you can!

    ___________________

    Oh, it’s interesting and I like your painting highlands with Chinese painting style.

    [1] Interview A in Three Times

    Furthermore,James (2008) believes that appropriation of a culture’s art interferes with the function of vital cultural insignia and undermines the culture and local’s economy. Just as interviewee C doesn’t like when he says“Beannachd leat! (Bless to you! ) ”to his friends,his friend replied in English “The same to you.” But, we have to accept that Gaelic integration with English-speaking society is already inevitable. As an intangible cultural heritage, it is essential in understanding cultural heritage’s meaning that its role changes with time, which can be a physical or symbolic space where the exchange of ideas is carried out. In a global multicultural environment, art performances are a way that have celebrated diversity and permit the reconfiguration of differences, and thus accept re-creations under the form of creolisation and hybridisation practices. (Colomer, 2017) Is the view that an important cultural symbol is different from the previous state is a kind of "undermine", is it erecting another kind of authority? Banksy's (2006) work Girl with a Balloon is the best refutation of this view. Likewise, Interviewees B, D and E’s attitude towards Gaelic, they speak Gaelic to me and enthusiastic singing of Gaelic songs, certainly demonstrates they love for Gaelic, and B has also the right to playfully call Gaelic "rubbish" because it's just a language in everyday life for him. The cultural heritage is constantly changing, and the vitality is far stronger than our imagination.

    interviewees

    Age

    Can you speak Gaelic?

    Can you see something in Gaelic to me?

    A Gaelic native speaker, Gaelic communicator

    72

    Yes.

    “Use Gaelic or lose it?”

    (Cleachd Gàidhlig neo caill i?)

    B (Gaelic native speaker / local student)

    23

    Yes.

    Oh! Gaelic is rubbish! Don’t learn it…but I can sing a Gaelic song for you:  “How are you? Very well! I’am very well, thank you! (Ciamar a tha thu? Glè mhath! Glè mhath! Ciamar a tha thu? tapadh leat!)”

    C (Originally from Scotland, immigrated to the United States / Gaelic learner)

    65

    Not very well~

    “Bless to you!”

    (Beannachd leat!)

    Dlocal student

    22

    A little

    Good Afternoon! (Feasgar math!)

    E(Gaelic teacher)

      ~40

    Yes,I learnt Gaelic from 20 years ago.

    Hello! (Halò!)

    [2] Interview  Different Interviewees

    This article analyses and proves the profound connection between contemporary art practice and cultural heritage through literature review, interviews and art practice. Although this article still has limitations, for example, the interview object only includes one heritage site in Scotland, which could lead to incomplete data. But the purpose of this article is to hope that relevant scholars should consider more that cultural heritage is a dynamic and living thing, allowing it to be endowed with different meanings in different space, so as to provide more possibilities for the future of not only for cultural heritage but also human beings.




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