Emplacement and Displacement: Perceiving the Landscape Through Aboriginal Australian Acrylic

32 Pages·2016·0.64 MB·English

Western University
Scholarship@Western
Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)
2012
Emplacement and Displacement: Perceiving the
Landscape Through Aboriginal Australian Acrylic
Painting
Fred Myers
New York University
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Citation of this paper:
Myers, Fred, "Emplacement and Displacement: Perceiving the Landscape Through Aboriginal Australian Acrylic Painting" (2012).
Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi). 399.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/aprci/399
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Emplacement and
Displacement
Fred Myers a
a Department of Anthropology, New York University
Version of record first published: 14 Nov 2012.
To cite this article: Fred Myers (2012): Emplacement and Displacement, Ethnos:
Journal of Anthropology, DOI:10.1080/00141844.2012.726635
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Emplacement and Displacement
Perceiving theLandscape Through Aboriginal Australian Acrylic Painting
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2
r
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m Fred Myers
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e DepartmentofAnthropology,NewYorkUniversity
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0 0 abstractAboriginalAustralianacrylicpaintingshavelongbeenconsideredrepresen-
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7: tationsof mythologically investedlandscape. This understanding hasbeen made pro-
0
at blematic by recent writings on‘dwelling’. As common usage of the term ‘landscape’
o] seems to prioritize vision, to suggest that the acrylic paintings are landscapes only
ri
a strengthens the suspicion that they are artifacts of displacement or distancing,
nt
O rather than examples of the emplacement emphasized in this ‘dwelling perspective’.
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r However, this paper will demonstrate that the relationship between acrylic painting
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est and the land is more complex than such an interpretation. It will argue that the
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Aboriginalobjectificationoftheirrelationshiptothelandisnotinherentlyadistancing
f
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y of theland.
sit
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ve keywords Landscape theory, representation, dwelling, emplacement, Aboriginal
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U Australian painting
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d Introduction
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ad In this paper, I take up a number of issues involved in the contemporary
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nl WesternDesertIndigenousactivityofproducingacrylicpaintingsidentified
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o with various ancestral narratives and places in the landscape. First, I ask
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whetherthesehybridobjectformsoffer anIndigenousperceptionoftheland-
scape or whether their emphasis on visuality – one sense of ‘landscape’ much
criticizedasadistinctivelyEuropeanmodeofexperiencingplace – constitutes
an ontological transformation of them. Relatedly, I ask whether the changing
formal qualities of the paintings indicate a change in the nature of people’s
relationships toplace.
ethnos,ifirst2012(pp.1–29)
#2012RoutledgeJournals,TaylorandFrancis
issn0014-1844print/issn1469-588xonline.http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2012.726635
2 fred myers
IndigenousAustralianacrylicpaintingshavelongbeenconsideredrepresen-
tations of mythologically invested place and landscape. Many painters in the
desert communities where the paintings are done continue to regard them as
‘revelations’ of the ancestral foundation of their country (Myers 1989). A
surge of recent writing on people and place has raised questions about the
relationship between ‘representation’ and ‘dwelling’ (Heidegger 1971; Ingold
1996). The so-called ‘dwelling perspective’ aims to transcend an over-reliance
on discursive constructions of ‘place’. Thus, to regard the recently invented
2 genre of acrylic painting as ‘representation’ would imply a falling away from
1
0
2 ‘dwelling’. Further, insofar as common usage of the term ‘landscape’ seems to
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be prioritize vision, to suggest that the acrylic paintings are landscapes would
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e only strengthen the suspicion that they are artifacts of displacement, rather
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De than examples of the emplacement emphasized in this ‘dwelling perspective’.
1 Giventhatpartofthemissionofearlypainterswastousetheirworksprecisely
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0 toclaimadistinctiveIndigenousidentificationwithplace,theironyofequating
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7: ‘landscape’ with distance, in this case, illustrates the need for an alternative
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at theoreticalframeworkwithwhichtothinkabouttheWesternDesertartmove-
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o ment.
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nt IarguethattheIndigenousobjectificationofrelationshipstoplace – invisual
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form,ritual,orsong – isnotintrinsicallya‘distanced perspective’ ontheland.
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er Rather, in making visible what the land is, Australian Indigenous painting
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e ‘reveals’intwodimensionsacomplexrangeofexperiencesandunderstandings
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f thatare not, themselves, onlyvisual.
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y This essay engages with the historical trajectory of acrylic painting that I
rsit have witnessed, among Pintupi people who only finally gave up a foraging
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niv way of life for sedentary residence in government settlements in the 1960s.1
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Overtime,achangeisevident:paintingsbecamemoreabstractandlessicono-
[
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b graphically specific. Howwouldunderstanding thesepaintingsas‘landscapes’
ed – asvisualformsengagingwithwhatCasey(2002:xii)definedas‘aportionof
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oa theperceivedworldthatliesbeforeandaroundus’ – expandconceptionsofthis
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w genre of art practice, and also facilitate more complex appreciation of what
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D these paintings do in the lives of those who make them? Three conditions of
change will bear on my discussion. First, the prior (and continuing) tradition
of Indigenous image-making involved ground designs, body decoration, ritual
artifacts,androckpainting – executedinrelationshiptocyclesofseminomadic
movementovertheland.Second,followingsedentarization,inthe1970s,aprac-
ticeoftwo-dimensionalacrylicpaintingonflatsurfacesdeveloped;theintercul-
tural circulation of these new object forms raised new challenges for painters,
ethnos,ifirst2012(pp.1–29)
Emplacement and Displacement 3
communities, and markets. Third, although the development of two-
dimensional paintings did not replace ongoing ritual forms of activity, this
objectification created thepossibilityof commoditization.
Thetransformationofformalqualitiesintheimagestowardgreaterabstrac-
tion results not only from what I call ‘censorship from below’, but also from
shifting understandings of value in national and international art markets.
This confluence of circumstances and opportunities for virtuosity has allowed
Aboriginal acrylic painting to be taken up as ‘fine art’. I have spoken of these
2 transformations as ‘unsettled business’ (Myers 2002, 2004), as the contexts
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2 andpractices – nolongertiedtothesinglearenaofritual(‘business’inAbori-
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be ginalEnglish) – becomeevermorecomplex.Thischaracterizationsharesasen-
em sibility with Thomas’s (1991) discussion of colonial collections of ‘entangled
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De objects’ in acknowledging a complexity of intercultural circulation that does
1 not inevitably lead to compromise and loss. I argue that the shifts in style
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0 must not be understood as evidence of a simple transition of Aboriginal
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7: people from ‘dwelling’ to ‘displacement’. Conceptualizing such a narrative has
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at important political stakes: characterizations of the ontological relationship of
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o Indigenous Australians to place have had significant value in the allocation of
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nt landrightsandmanypaintershavediscussedtheirpaintingsasobjectifications
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of their specialrelationship.
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f The Situation of Indigenous Land(scape)inAustralia
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y Landscape in Australia is not a neutral terrain politically or ontologically.
rsit The lengthy struggle between Indigenous Australians and the dominant
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ni Euro-Australian majority over the land is well known. In a number of major
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legal and political cases, differences of ontology, power, and understanding
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b have become clear, but they have also been the subject of considerable efforts
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e at mediation and remedy. Even so, in the legislation of the Aboriginal Land
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oa Rights (Northern Territory) Act of 1976 and the Native Title Act (1993), state
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w effortstorepresentIndigenousplace-relationsinEuro-Australianlawareinevi-
o 3
D tably limited.
ThedominantmodelofIndigenouslandownershipwasdrawninitiallyfrom
a seminal paper, in which Stanner (1965) delineated ‘estates’, ‘ranges’, and
‘domains’ as ways of conceiving of different elements of agroup’srelationship
to land. Stanner’s model understood ‘owners’ as ‘custodians’, individuals or
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groups who exercised ‘primary spiritual responsibility’ over Ancestral objecti-
fications. Custodianship extended across ritual forms as well as ‘sacred sites’,
ethnos,ifirst2012(pp.1–29)
4 fred myers
portions of the landscape understood as embodiments, traces, or transform-
ations of Ancestral activity.
Whileuseful,thismodelhasincreasingly beenfoundinadequateinencom-
passing many Indigenous discourses articulating the relationships between
personsandplaces.Oneproblemhasbeentheapparentseparationof‘spiritual’
activity from other forms of interaction, a central concern for Ingold (2000).5
For example, the Stanner model gave little recognition to quotidian political
andeconomicusesoftheland,makingtheseactivitiesseemlackingin‘cosmo-
2 logical’significance.Asanthropologistsandothershavesoughttofindatheor-
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0
2 eticalframeworktoengagewiththeissuesposedinlandclaims,theyhavebeen
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be drawn both to concepts of ‘embodiment’ that eschew the subject–object
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e dichotomy embedded in notions of ‘ownership’, and to Heideggerian notions
Dec of ‘dwelling’ (Ingold 1996).6
1 Beyond land claims, the incommensurability between a ‘dwelling perspec-
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0 tive’ (Aboriginal) and a ‘utility’ or ‘instrumental’ (Euro-Australian, Western,
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7: ‘modern’, or perhaps ‘capitalist’) orientation has been invoked to challenge
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at moregeneraltheoreticalassumptionsaboutlandasanexternalobject.Criticiz-
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o ing the largely unexamined use of what Heidegger called ‘the world picture’
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nta rather than Indigenous ontologiesof person and place, Ingold (1996)wrote:
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r hunter-gatherersdonot,asarule,approachtheirenvironmentasanexternalworldof
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st naturethathastobe‘grasped’conceptuallyandappropriatedsymbolicallywithinthe
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termsofanimposedculturaldesign,asapreconditionforeffectiveaction.Theydo
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o notseethemselvesasmindfulsubjectshavingtocontendwithanalienworldofphys-
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sit icalobjects;indeed,theseparationofmindandnaturehasnoplaceintheirthought
er andpractice.(120)
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[ Indigenous art has been part of such dialogues about land in Australia. In
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b barkandacrylicpaintings, peopleinmanyofAustralia’s remotecommunities
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e haveofferedpaintingsastokensthattheyinsistrepresenttheirrelationshipsto
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oa places and their sovereignty over them (Morphy 1983, 1991, 1995; Myers 1991,
wnl 2002). Most notably, the Yolngu (1963) claim to contest Euro-Australian
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D plans to mine bauxite at Numbulwar, on the Gove Peninsula, was presented
to the Australian Parliament in a form that included their clan designs in the
famous Yirrkala bark petitions.
It may be ironic, therefore, that broad critiques of dualistic formulations of
the relationship of people and land have extended also to critiques of a mode
of artistic practice – the landscape – in which qualities of the environment
ethnos,ifirst2012(pp.1–29)
Emplacement and Displacement 5
areperceivedasembodyingaestheticvalue(forsomesubjects,anyway)asacor-
rective, perhaps, to the overly utilitarian relationship posed by the economic
incentives of mining and development. This mode of apprehension isitself an
example of the problematic dualism. On the one hand, the paintings have
been celebrated for offering an Aboriginal sense of place; on the other hand,
these two-dimensional objects are sometimes considered themselves to be
expressions of a colonized subjectivity, a colonial project, reflecting the
subject/object duality in their prioritizing of vision. For some critics, this has
2 rendered such paintings inauthentic and for others a product of displacement.
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2 Inanothervein,theanalysisofIndigenouspaintingsofcountryhassometimes
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be beencriticizedforconsideringthepaintingsas‘representations’,reproducingor
em imposingadualityonthemthatshouldberejected(Biddle2007).Ratherthan
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De leapingtojudgment,myinterestisinunderstandingwhatthepaintingscanand
1 do communicate.
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7: Acrylic Painting: Objectifying Country in Visual Form
0
at Acrylic painting in Central Australia is a contemporary social practice. It
o] began at the Aboriginal community of Papunya in 1971 under the guiding
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nt hand of the Euro-Australian schoolteacher and artist Geoffrey Bardon. It is
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widely known that most Central and Western Desert painters represent – or
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er perhaps ‘indicate’ (Ingold 2000) – the events or ‘stories’ of their ‘country’
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We (ngurra) that are understood to have occurred in the mythological period
f known as ‘The Dreaming’ (Tjukurrpa), and that the form of the paintings
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y drawsonaceremonialtraditionofimage-makingaswellasonaculturallypos-
rsit tulated significant landscape.
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ni To this very point, the painters of these works insisted to me, early in my
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fieldwork, that the paintings are not just ‘pretty pictures’. They meant by
[
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b such comments that their value did not lie simply in their appearance, but
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e derived from their origin in The Dreaming. Drawing on a repertoire of forms
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oa deployed in body decoration, ceremonial objects, and sand designs, the paint-
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w ingsareheldtobeimagesthatdepict,asbothiconandindex,TheDreaming:
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D the invisible realm in which the visible world acquired its shape and being.
What we might call the everyday world comprises literally the object forms
that ‘make visible’ (yurti) and knowable these otherwise unknown
powers. This process of making visible or (more precisely) sensorily present
– objectifying – isafundamentalcomponentofWesternDesertculturalprac-
tice. To paraphrase and slightly remake Ingold’s definition of landscape, the
painters regard their works as (partly) revealing, ‘the world as it is known to
ethnos,ifirst2012(pp.1–29)
6 fred myers
those who dwell therein, who inhabit its places and journey along the paths
connecting them’ (Ingold 1993:156).
Madeinacrylicpaintoncanvasandproducedforsaletoanartmarketthatis
bothnationalandinternational,suchpaintingsarevalued,locallyandintercul-
turally,byvirtueoftheirconnectionto‘Dreaming-places’andtheiraestheticvir-
tuosity (Myers 1989, 1991, 2002). Regarded by their producers as revelations of
knowledge of inalienable value, these paintings are nonetheless sold and
bought,exhibitedandseenbyWesternoutsiders.Thevisualformofthepaint-
2 ings haschanged observably over the last40 years.
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2 MyfocushereisonacrylicpaintingsfromPapunyaTulaArtists(theAbor-
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be iginally owned cooperative in which acrylic painting began) and the impli-
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e cations of their formal change over time. The formal changes were, first,
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De away from figurative forms, and then, subsequently, away from the icono-
1 graphic styles of the early to late 1970s, and eventually to a variety of what
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0 might be considered more ‘abstract’ visualizations. Thus, in many early
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7: Papunya paintings,one oftenfindsno clearseparation ofDreaming,Ancestral
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at person, land, and sacred objects within the field of the painting. Figure 1, by
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Figure1.Ceremonial
children’sdreaming
(probablytwomenat
Yurkurramuputjunkunya):
YanyatjarriTjakamarra
(1972).#theartist2012
licensedbyAboriginal
ArtistsAgencyLtd.
ethnos,ifirst2012(pp.1–29)
Emplacement and Displacement 7
Yanyatjarri Tjakamarra in 1972, illustrates the lack of distinction between sub-
jects and objects thatis common in early work.
The paintings do not objectify Ancestral presence in a simple fashion any
more than the ritual production of designs did. As significantly, Papunya
Tula paintings are embedded in a complex intercultural world – intended for
sale and to communicate with outsiders (Myers 2002). The engagement with
an outside presence has raised suspicions not only about the artistic ‘authen-
ticity’ of the works, but also about the relationship of such works to those
2 who paint them. Thus, discussion of the evolution of painting form and
1
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2 content among Papunya Tula painters necessitates consideration of the
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be broader field in which Indigenous landscape and its representations are impli-
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e cated.Thisincludescontinuingissuesofcustodianshipofstoriesthatstructure
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De relationshipsandidentities(ofgender,generation,andgeography)intheIndi-
1 genouscommunity.Thesepaintingshavebeennotablefortheircapacitytorep-
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0 resent for some Euro-Australians a possible new relationship with the
4
7: Australian landscape itself (Myers 2001). Are the changes toward abstraction
0
at a ‘distancing’ from some previous ‘dwelling’ perspective? Are they a result, as
o] some argue (e.g. Fry & Willis 1989), of the context of Indigenous/White
ri
a
nt relations? What wouldwemake of such hybridities?
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Inseekingtoanswersuchquestions,whichsuggestanontologicalchangein
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er people’s relationship to place, I rely most strongly on the painters’ own views
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e that, despite outward changes in form, their work continues to reveal
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f their ‘country’ and The Dreaming. Further, I suggest that the continuity of a
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y particularrelationalontologyandthecentralityofongoingprocessesofidentity
rsit production – embedded in the processes of objectifying country into form –
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ni continues tostructuretheexperience ofplace anditsperformanceinpainting.
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Inthis structuring, both experience and discourse are crucial.
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d
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oa What is ina painting: Icon and Index,Body andCountry
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w Insofar as many Western Desert acrylic paintings have been understood, at
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D least partly, as representations of place, it seems obvious that the paintings
might be explored for their association with experience of place. But how?
Approaching the paintings as ‘story-paintings’, as Bardon (1979) once called
them, has the representational problems that a dwelling perspective questions
(Myers 2002). Are the paintings simply ‘representational’ forms, and if so,
how do they relate to the perception or experience of the landscape of living,
acting bodies?
ethnos,ifirst2012(pp.1–29)