Using Simulations to Ground Intercultural Inquiry in the Art Classroom

National Art Education Association

Using Simulations to Ground Intercultural Inquiry in the Art ClassroomAuthor(s): Melanie DavenportSource: Art Education, Vol. 56, No. 5 (Sep., 2003), pp. 13-18Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3194038 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 21:22

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

National Art Education Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ArtEducation.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.20 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 21:22:43 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=naea

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3194038?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


UVing SimuIattons/ K- Ground /

*. . ,, ? .., t. .

Anything that humans have ever produced can be Art Classroom seen as a record of the

particular circumstances

contributing to or

surrounding its production (as well as a record of the circumstances surrounding its consumption, discovery, display, reception, or function, etc.).

BY MELANIE DAVENPORT

R ecently, a new challenge has been issued to art educators at all levels, the call to attend to a broader range of visual culture within the art curriculum. Proponents of visual culture art education, such as Jeffers (2002), Tavin (2000), Freedman (2000,2003), and Ballengee-Morris and Stuhr

(2001), see the task of our field as empowering students to engage with, critique, resist, and ultimately manipulate for themselves the flow of images that define and shape their lives and cultural identities. Much of the impetus for the shift toward visual culture art education derives from reassessment of the status of "high" art within art education programs. Consideration of broader content is spurred by recognition that the kinds of objects found in museums, reproduced by publishers, or discussed in art textbooks constitute a relatively small sub-genus within the broader physical record of human existence and activity.

Barnard (cited in Duncum, 2000) has described visual culture as "anything visual produced, interpreted, or created by humans which has, or is given, functional, communicative, and/or aesthetic intent" (p. 33). I prefer to define visual culture as simply the visual manifestation of culture, understanding culture metaphorically as the personality of the group, a "shared model of reality" (Hatcher, 1985, p. 127) that emerges from interactions among group members as they negotiate common meanings.

Because humans cannot exist outside of culture (Geertz, 1973) and because culture(s) can be perceived only through the ways people act (Wolcott, 1991; Holland et al, 1998) and the things that people make (Geertz, 1973; Harris, 1979), the study of visual culture gains importance as a means of understanding the human experience of our world. When analyzed critically and carefully, any object or visual phenomenon-including fine paintings or billboards, sculptures or household appli- ances-can reveal something about the people or society that made it or attached

SEPTEMBER 2003 / ART EDUCATION I

I



significance to it-even, for example, those ubiquitous green or white plastic patio chairs stacked up outside discount markets throughout the United States. They have much to tell us about the aesthetics, values, economy, industry, and lifestyles of people living in the particular time and place in which this furniture has become so popular, inexpensive, and readily available.

Anything that humans have ever produced can be seen as a record of the particular circumstances contributing to or surrounding its production (as well as a record of the circumstances surrounding its consumption, discovery, display, reception, or function, etc.). Decoding this record through critical analysis of the product (and any stories attached to it) can expose previously hidden relationships, processes, and agendas, increasing our understanding not only of unfamiliar producer(s), their intention(s), and their context(s), but also of ourselves and our own.

A visual culture approach to art education, then, reflects a postmodern emphasis upon signs and symbols as cues to cultural meanings, as practiced by scholars in the realm of cultural studies. Because the study of visual culture has received much of its impetus from cultural studies, some

Before asking students to

investigate the visual world around

them, however, I like to ground my students' inquiry in a firm under-

standing of key concepts through a

hands-on role-playing activity.

of the same criticisms that have been leveled against other aspects of cultural studies may apply to visual culture art education as well. Howell (1997), Thomas (1999), and others have pointed out that the focus of cultural studies tends to be limited both geographically and temporally, concerned almost exclusively with the technologically produced visual output of modern industrial societies. Sardar and Van Loon (1999) concurred, adding that it is difficult to "distinguish the significant from the trivial" (p. 33) when studying phenomena that may have existed less than a decade. Recent art educational articles (see Tavin, 2000, Freedman, 2000, Duncum, 2000, and others) tend to emphasize the noiwness of visual culture and focus upon products common to developed, industrialized societies.

In contrast to those for whom the visual has only recently acquired its importance in shaping and encoding culture, Hatcher (1985) reflected upon the importance of visual images as records of knowledge and means of communication in pre-industrial and pre-literate societies. Although the rapid pace of change in the information age gives the impres- sion that this current visual cultural revolution is without precedent, there are important understandings to be gained through comparisons with similar processes in the past (Hatcher, 1985). Sardar and Van Loon (1999) recommend investigating how visual manifestations of culture change over time, because, despite an over-emphasis on contemporary visual phenomena, "Popular mass culture is not a new creation of consumer society-it has history" (p. 33). Thomas (1999) explained,

the bias toward the new, oppositional, urban, and fashionable has meant that a whole series of common cultural practices.. .are never addressed, though they are obviously expressively significant in many ways. One cannot make a claim for distinctiveness of a particular situation in the present, without having demonstrated that what is supposedly novel was in fact absent from the past. (p. 270)

In response to these valuable perspectives, I suggest that the study of visual culture be grounded in historical and cross-cultural contexts. While engaging with emergent, contemporary forms of visual culture is certainly important for developing a critical citizenry, so too is consideration of the visual record of earlier cultural practices and the ways they have intersected and changed across time and space. To this end, I recommend applying an intercultural lens to the study of visual culture.

Defining Interculturality Because artifacts can reveal much about the shared

cultural understandings of diverse groups of people, examples of visual culture become of interest for what they reveal about the people who produced them. From an intercultural perspective, the most interesting insights to be gleaned from studying visual culture concern the ways in

ART EDUCATION / SEPTEMBER 2003



which cultural groups have interacted and cross-pollinated over time, because it is through interaction that cultures and civilizations are constructed. These processes are evident in the visual record of human activity, but popular theory and common practice in art education have not previously highlighted this rich content.

Attending to the culture-forming interactions within and among human groups is significant because the construction of human civilization is a collaborative process in which diverse societies come into contact with each other over time and are transformed in some way by each interaction, spurring the emergence of new forms of human activity, thought, and behavior (Diamond, 1997; Locke & Stem, 1942; Wax, 1993). Localized knowledges evolve under the influence of particular geographical, climatic, political, social, and other dynamics that can be considered global because of the universality of their occurrence, even in the specificity of their manifestations. As humans migrate and come into contact, local knowledges are shared, borrowed, appropri- ated, stolen, adopted, adapted, and, if they are useful in some way to others, spread (Diamond, 1997). In this way, the global and the local are intimately connected, because just as global forces help to shape the distinctive knowledges of any particular local group, so too these distinctive knowledges enrich the larger human community (Cornwell & Stoddard, 1999; Neumann, 1998; Perotti, 1994).

Relating intercultural processes specifically to the forms of visual culture usually considered "art," Hatcher (1985) explained that

objects and how-to knowledge travel readily over enormous distances, but people seem to adopt inventions and ideas if they fulfill a need of some kind; artists were no more passive borrowers in the past than they are now. Sometimes it is astonishing how much of the distinctive ethos of a people is retained and expressed in art in the face of many kinds of contacts, innovations, and influence. (p. 182) She defined the current challenge as finding ways to

understand the complex interactions that determine how human cultures form and evolve. She suggested that studying the visual record of contact and interaction between groups of people can draw attention not only to myriad examples of idea diffusion, but also to the intercultural process of diffusion through which new cultural forms are created (Hatcher, 1985).

Consideration of the "overlappings... the mutual transfer of ideas, customs, traditions, creations, expressions, and different forms of thinking and existence" is the essence of an intercultural approach to education (Neumann, 1998, pp. 170-171). Visual evidence of these intercultural processes is abundant and accessible. The visual culture of one's own school community can serve as a starting place for consideration of intercultural concepts. Learning to read and

appreciate this record can help students attain greater understandings of what makes their community unique and what their community shares with others around the globe. Before asking students to investigate the visual world around them, however, I like to ground my students' inquiry in a firm understanding of key concepts through a hands-on role- playing activity.

Simulation Many teachers of cross-cultural communication skills

and others who promote cultural awareness have found classroom simulations to be effective in challenging students' perceptions of cultural constructs and expanding their appreciation of alternative worldviews. Typically, these types of learning activities separate students into distinct, simulated cultural groups, then structure the interactions between these groups to resemble real-world situations. The misunderstandings built into these interactions provide a firsthand experience of cross-cultural conflict, stimulating discussion and fostering new understandings about cultural differences, conflict resolution, and intergroup communication. Ideally, simulations can plant the seeds of perspective consciousness, or the awareness that one's own culture is not universal, that it is socially constructed, and that it shapes one's worldview (Hanvey, 1975).

To jumpstart my students' engagement with concepts related to art, culture, visual culture, and intercultural processes, I developed the classroom simulation described below, inspired in part by an earlier role-playing activity, BaFd BaFd (Shirts, 1972), with content derived from readings such as Danto's Art and Artifact (1995) and Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997). For my students, participating in this simulation has provided the opportunity to develop personal, yet shared, understandings of key concepts such as: the nature of culture as a dialogic, emergent, construction of shared meanings; the processes, challenges, and benefits of intercultural contact; the nature of visual and material culture versus "art"; and issues related to the interpretation, exhibition, and evaluation of art across cultures. Each student group with whom I have worked has shared remarkable insights and contributed to the further development of the simulation in valuable ways. I will briefly outline specific proce- dures and outcomes of this activity, illustrated with examples taken from different occasions. Tntnnr r.rrntorl hx/ h,,ntor

IaLLUU UteIyl Ie Lt;IdU ULy IIUII t l-

gatherers, representing weather god.

SEPTEMBER 2003 / ART EDUCATION N



After they have produced various items, I ask them to select one to send to the

other group in trade.... Should it

be the biggest, the prettiest, the most

useful, the most spiritually significant, or the least likely to be missed?

Clay pot decorated with ...._~ ~feet symbols produced by

~':'~ti~~ Xilagricultural group.

I begin by asking students to

exposd; th l o_monaities write a definition of art, first are,:::~':.~';:it rel individually and then in small

ra...poplarultre. The majgroups. As they negotiate with others in their groups and discuss these definitions with the class as a

whole, their own cultural embeddedness is slowly, but surely, expose(l; the commonalities within the various definitions are revealed to be products, for the most part, of contemporary popular culture. The majority of my students have at least one culture in common, that of the American mass media, but this is usually the first time they have been asked to think about themselves and their own multi-layered cultural identities and worldviews as produced, at least in part, by the visual/material culture they consume.

After discussing what art is and why they think so, I divide the class into two groups of similar make-up and direct them into separate classrooms for most of the period. Each group is given an economy (agricultural or hunter- gatherer, for simplicity's sake) and an environment (fertile farmland or teeming forested hillside), and a set of questions to answer about themselves to encourage discussion. This simulates the dialogic process through which cultures are formed. After a while, I ask each group what sorts of items they might need to make for their own use and what materials or resources might be available for this purpose in their immediate environments. Although the level of their technological development is for them to decide, most often the agricultural community uses clay or reeds, the hunters prefer leather and pigments or minerals. They make items based upon their own self-determined needs, values, resources, and level of societal complexity. Sometimes all the members work together to produce one large item, like a wall mural; sometimes, each individual produces an item for his or her own use. On other occasions, an assembly-line style of production has been used. All decisions regarding the types of objects, designs, numbers, and methods are made within the separate groups.

After they have produced various items, I ask them to select one to send to the other group in trade. The criteria for making this selection are worked out amongst themselves as well. Should it be the biggest, the prettiest, the most useful, the most spiritually significant, or the least likely to be missed? In this process, a shared aesthetic sensibility is artic- ulated, which further adds to their sense of group identity and cultural cohesion.

Acting as a traveling trader, I deliver the selected items to each of the other groups, then assign them their next task: to interpret this strange item and figure out who those other people might be, why they made this thing and how, and why they sent it in trade. I also ask them to think about how this item could be put to use in their community and what questions they might ask of the other group if they had the chance. As each group settles into the task of interpreting this foreign item and discussing their ideas about the cultural group that produced it, they begin for the first time to see the point of the simulation. They realize that their classmates have evolved into a group very distinct from themselves and "know" things that they do not. They begin to wonder what other differences might exist between themselves and the others.

Clay foot for use in spiritual rituals,

inscribed with sacred word.

In one class of elementary education majors, the agricultural group selected a clay foot to send in trade, precisely because it was distinctive from the other more functional vessels they had created, and because it symbolized their

spiritual relationship to the soil. Upon analyzing this object, the mountain people decided that their neighbors were a bunch of foot . .

'

fetishists. The hunters, meanwhile, had sent a

-

symbolic map of their i territory, showing important landmarks within a triangle :

representing their _ _ h ,. .. representing their Symbolic map of territory, mountain. To the farmers, showing mountain, river,

the drawing looked like a berry bush, and animal. television with a pizza on top, inside a house.




The last phase of the simulation brings the two groups together to share their interpretations and ask each other questions. This encounter is often both humorous and enlightening, as one group returns wearing ornaments or costumes, to a space radically re-arranged by the other group according to their needs. The lively discussions that emerge from this intercultural contact explore such topics as historical interpretation, appropriation, bi-culturality, idea diffusion, connoisseurship and curatorial decisions, as well as the role of art, education, and art education in different societies. They generate and debate questions such as which of these items might be housed in an art museum and which in a "natural history" museum in each community, or what might happen to the visual traditions of each community if the two groups began to intermarry. Students have stepped outside the box of their own previously held assumptions and are ready to interrogate these and other questions in depth, analyzing art, culture, and education from an intercultural perspective. Even after many successful sessions, I am impressed by the insights shared by my students at the end of this simulation experience.

In one class, a preservice art teacher asked, out of the blue, "How can we figure out what something is if we don't know anything about it? We need to know who made it and why, don't we? In order to understand it?" A little later another woman suggested, "I would want to talk to the person who made it and ask them directly. Only the person who made it really knows the whole story." Another wondered, "How many things from other times and places have been misidentified, misunderstood, and underesti- mated?" Future elementary school teachers in particular have made great leaps in their understanding of these concepts. One suggested,"The connections that we made between art or artifacts and the environment where they were created will be a very important idea to bring into our classroom as we teach subjects integrated with art to our students." Another wrote, "I think the activity made it clear that what we call art may mean different things to different groups. This tells us a lot about how the things people make have reflected human life throughout history."

Class discussions and homework essays about the simulation experience and some of the questions it raised typically indicate a high level of attainment of the learning goals I set for my students. The vast majority have begun to grasp that our concepts of what art is and how it functions are culturally constructed and must be understood in relation to the broader visual record of human activities. For most, the concepts of art and culture have been problema- tized, so that further investigation seems warranted. At the very least, students express new appreciation of the diffi- culty of interpretation across cultures and the value of the information to be gained from primary sources.

Implications Becoming members of distinct, emergent communities,

constructing shared cultural understandings through dialogue within the group, creating artifacts of both practical and aesthetic use, and finally, dealing with problems of interpretation and evaluation provides students the scaffolding to construct further understandings about the intercultural processes that contribute to the evolution of visual culture over time. This simulation can provide the foundation for a variety of follow-up activities, depending upon the course content, but for my art education majors, I have used this simulation as the launching point for critical analyses of visual culture within the local community, particularly the myriad examples that clearly reflect cross-cultural interactions that give rise to a new synthesis of visual symbols. For example, the intercultural processes evident in these local murals and popular tattoos take on new significance for students as referents to Western contact with Asia.

Wall mural marking the location of a self-defense center downtown.

Chinese calligraphic tattoo.

SEPTEMBER 2003 / ART EDUCATION



After the simulation, students exhibit curiosity about how Asian imagery has infiltrated U.S. popular culture. Where did these images originate, and how did they function within their cultures of origin? How have these cultures come into contact, under what conditions? What new meanings have become attached to these syncretic images in this new context?

My students have inquired into these and other manifestations of intercultural processes in their visual surroundings, generating lesson plans, websites, research papers, and art works as a result. Investigating the visual culture of the local community can change our perceptions of our connectedness to the rest of the world. Fennes and Hapgood (1997) asserted, "It is not possible to understand other cultures without understanding one's own; it is also not possible to understand fully one's own culture until the encounter with another culture has put it in perspective" (p. 49).

Current attention to visual culture is opening up the art curriculum to a range of popular culture that influences young people and inspires discussion about the values and beliefs that informed their creation. Viewing the visual world through an intercultural lens adds a much needed cosmopolitan perspective (Appiah, 1998) to the consideration of the visual manifestations of culture, past and present, and the interactional processes that shape our world.

Melanie Davenport is the Area Coordinator and Assistant Professor of Art Education at the University of Florida College of Fine Arts, School

ofArt and Art History, Gainesville. E-mail: [email protected]

AUTHOR'S NOTE I prefer, in my own classes, to talk about material culture (Blandy & Bolin, 2003; Bolin, 1995; Harris, 1979) instead of visual culture, not only out of consideration for the visually impaired populations that we work with, but also because visual seems a narrower referent than material, and I consider the broader term more appropriate when discussing the creative output of humankind. In this article, I have used the term visual culture in order to reflect and respond to current discourse.

REFERENCES Appiah, A. (1998). Cosmopolitan patriots. In C.

Pheng & B. Robbins (Eds.), Cosmopolitics: Thinking andfeeling beyond the nation, (pp. 91-102). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Ballengee-Morris, C., & Stuhr, P. (2001). Visual culture and multicultural art education for a changing world. Art Education, 54 (4), 6-13.

Blandy, D., & Bolin, P. (2003, April). Beyond visual culture: Material culture. Paper presented at the National Art Education Association Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN.

Bolin, P. (1995, Fall). Investigating artifacts: Material culture studies and art education. NAEA Advisory.

Comwell, G. & Stoddard, E. (1999). Globalizing knowledge: Connecting international and intercultural studies. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Danto, A. (1988). Art/artifact: African art in anthropology collections. New York: Center for African Art.

Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

Duncum, P. (2000). Defining visual culture for art education. Journal of Cross-cultural and Multicultural Research in Art Education, 18 (1), 31-36.

Fennes, H., & Hapgood, K. (1997). Intercultural learning in the classroom. London: Cassell.

Freedman, K. (2000). Context as part of visual culture. Journal of Cross-cultural and Multicultural Research in Art Education, 18 (1), 41-44.

Freedman, K. (2003). The importance of student artistic production to teaching visual culture. Art Education, 56 (2), 38-43.

Geertz, C. (1973). The impact of the concept of culture on the concept of man. The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Hanvey, R. (1975). An attainable global perspective. New York: Center for War/Peace Studies.

Harris, M. (1979). Cultural materialism. New York: Harper.

Hatcher, E. (1985). Art as culture. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Holland, D., Lachiotte, W., Skinner, D. & Cain, W. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Pres..

Howell, S. (1997). Cultural studies an social anthropology: Contesting or complemen- tary discourses? In S. Nugent & C. Shore (Eds.), Anthropology and cultural studies. London: Pluto.

Hytten, K. (1997). Cultural studies of education: Mapping the terrain. Educational Foundations, 11 (4), 39-60.

Jeffers, C. (2002). Tools for exploring social issues and visual culture. In Y. Gaudelius & P. Speirs (Eds.), Contemporary issues in art education, (pp. 157-168). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Locke, A., & Stem, B. (1942). In the setting of world culture. In A. Locke & B. Stem (Eds.), When peoples meet: A study in race and culture contacts, (pp. 3-11). New York: Progressive Education Association.

Neumann, V. (1998). Intercultural pedagogy as an alternative to a monoculturally oriented education: The case of Romania. In K. Cushner (Ed.), International Perspectives on Intercultural Education, (pp. 170-184). London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Perotti, A. (1994). The case for intercultural education. The Netherlands: Council of Europe Press.

Rockwell, E. (1999, October). Constructions of diversity and civility in Latin America and the United States. Paper presented at the 8th Interamerican Symposium on Ethnographic Educational Research, Bloomington, IN.

Sardar, Z., &Van Loon, B. (1999). Introducing cultural studies. Cambridge, UK: Icon Books.

Shirts, G. (1972). BaFd BaFd: A Cross-cultural simulation. Del Mar, CA: Simile II Publishing.

Tavin, K. (2000). Teaching in and through visual culture. Journal of Cross-cultural and Multicultural Research in Art Education, 18 (1), 37-40.

Thomas, N. (1999). Becoming undisciplined: Anthropology and cultural studies. In H. Moore (Ed.), Anthropological theory today, (pp.262-279). London: Polity Press.

Wax, M. (1993). How culture misdirects multi- culturalism. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 24 (2), 99-115.

Wolcott, H. (1991). Propriospect and the acquisition of culture. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 22 (3), 251-273.




Documents

Using Simulations to Ground Intercultural Inquiry in the Art Classroom