Tactical decolonization: A vocabulary and framework for comparing cultural manifestations

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MDLAB Conference, LAU, Beirut, 2019
ABSTRACT
This document started as working guidelines of activist praxis for the artists’ collective 
جمع اليد (Jamaa Al-Yad: http://www.jamaalyad.org) founded in Beirut in 2009. Part of our primary research directive was examining liberation movements and their creative output, as well as the reasons for their often demise, with a goal of emulating effective methods while avoiding such ends. With members currently in various places outside of Greater Syria, we have also developed concepts of “acculturated” and “assimilated” colonization that work among nation-states and across ideas of a global North–South divide. Part of our focus now involves a “reverse Orientalizing” that is aimed at elaborating for those in the neo-liberalized global North their own internalized colonization.

The document evolved through collaborative development and an extensive self-evaluation after each project’s completion. These guidelines were most notably employed in 2010 as the primary framework for a design class taught at the American University of Beirut entitled: “Design III: Mediating the Real World”, and in 2018 for a relief printmaking class taught at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, BC, entitled: “Relief Printmaking: The Art of Protest and Resistance”. In June of 2019, they formed the basis of a workshop given at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, for the MDLAB Conference that took place there.

The following is taken from the most recent printmaking class’s syllabus:

Evaluating illustration as a material practice of protest and resistance requires an examination not just of images produced, but of producers, media of application and dissemination, context of production, as well as audiences engaged with. To further elaborate is how cultural norms inform and shape artistic practice, and how adherence to, as well as resistance against these norms further mold popular imaginary concerning local and global events. In this light, such practice relies on technique and medium to embody as much meaning as the subject matter illustrated.

Current art education, reflecting dominant cultural norms as well as economic and political incentives concerning pedagogy and learning, focuses on the artist as a unique individual divorced from audience: an independent and exalted actor with absolute “agency” and “free will”. This is a willful contradiction and deceit that avoids seeing the artist as a conduit of a given class context, often of a hegemonic dominant cultural discourse. It further obviates engagement with audiences in creative labor. Students will be expected to challenge a passive channeling of the status quo and to actively question their role and engagement in terms of their own practice.
Collective and collaborative practices will be foregrounded in this class. Furthermore, this class will focus on the historic role of the craftsperson and artist, art as a material practice, the non-neutrality of tools and means of dissemination, the definition of and engagement with audiences concerning their artistic output, and the shared and co-extensive labor of artistic endeavors. The goal here is not a purity of practice, but instead a weeding out of the taints, leanings, and extirpative intent of the dominant cultural mode. Long-term, this will lead to a robust practice solidly grounded in dialectical frameworks, discussions, and critiques as well as valid media and praxis.

Included here are the vocabulary and framework as evolved to this point; a case study and evaluation of one of Jamaa Al-Yad’s projects; and a worksheet for analyzing manifestations in an active and activist manner. To note: The suggested practice case study (Positive-Negatives) was chosen for its self-presentation as progressive and beneficent. Examined using the vocabulary and framework provided, it can instead be seen to evoke a neo-liberal, reactionary, and colonizing stance via liberal tropes and extracted narratives derived from the global South but for a global Northern audience.
PDF available from the following link: https://www.academia.edu/39698979/Tactical_decolonization_A_vocabulary_and_framework_for_comparing_cultural_manifestations