Author: alisdairgurling

Abstraction | The widening gap between universities and the land they rest on

I will explore how indigenous concepts of knowledge are at odds with traditional academic modes of acquiring knowledge through research, and how that nexus of ideas have been explored in three-fold as part of the Shapes of Knowledge exhibit at MUMA.
This is not an all encompassing analysis of indigenous design or rights, I am under qualified to give that.

Exploring the gap of knowledge production through the lens of Brian Martin, analysis of the meaning of the event

Dr. Brian Martin, a professor at Monash, is a descendant of the Muruwari, Bundjalung and Kamilaroi peoples and former deputy director of the Institute of Koorie Education at Deakin (1). He specializes in indigenous relations, and how they have been improperly engaged with for hundreds of years in Australia. He was thus a valuable speaker at Threefold, a series of three public talks on different ways of exploring knowledge and identity. These talks were an interactive extension of the Shapes of Knowledge exhibit (2) run by Dr. James Oliver, which explored how different entities produce and share knowledge. This particular event featured many speakers that presented on their particular corner of oppression in the world at large, and how universities are woefully unable to engage with it. The talks were pithy, engaging, and intellectually rigorous responses to the key question ‘Where is the university?’(3).

Methexical Countryscape Kamilaroi #9, 2017

Most of the speakers gave a ten-minute performance. Martin, in contrast, did only two things. First, he played a video of his work, which featured him laying out single panels one by one to create a photorealistic charcoal sketch entitled Methexical Countryscape Kamilaroi #9. The work was simple, elegant and impactful, harnessing the full scale of artistic endeavour for political impact and sociopolitical engagement. This demonstration had no music or other distractions, which magnified the clear message that the ancient construction, and more recently, systematic destruction, of the natural environment had critically changed Australia and the relationship people have with country. Second, he quietly said one sentence: ‘The university is an abstraction from the land’.


‘The university is an abstraction from the land.

Prof. Brian Martin

During a later discussion, Martin broke down what he meant by this statement. The university is a physical distortion of the land that it resides on. Indeed, in order for the university to exist, destruction of place necessarily occurred. And with each extra story of each new building, the physical distance between the earth and dirt the land began as, is increased. Furthermore, the way university systems operate acts to mask the value of traditional indigenous knowledge production. The bureaucracies act as the foundation for the traditional model of tertiary education, value analysis, and vicarious inquiry rather than lived experience.


John Berger in his book ways of seeing explores the varying ways we can perceive and synthesize knowledge. Our perception of objects and our subsequent analysis of the significance of an object differ wildly depending on who is viewing it and the context they are coming from when they engage with it. This can be used to explore the alternative perceptions of land that exist between contemporary Australian culture and historical indigenous understanding. On the one hand, land is seen as financially valuable and as an object of power and control. This perception may be driven by a colonial conquest that is core to Australia’s history. On the other, there is a respect and interdependency of the indigenous community and land that has existed for an order of magnitude longer than a western capitalist viewpoint. This plays into the idea that “the relationship of what we see and what we know is never settled” (4) because these different narratives struggle to adequately engage with each other.
Universities remain bastions of the intellectual class and attempt to integrate their expertise and wealth of knowledge into society’s perception of success. As intellectual capital has been increasingly valued by society, perversely, societies own biases have reflected into university culture. Historically, universities have not been particularly culturally diverse, and when diverse or minority academics have been successful, they have done so in spite of an educational paradigm that did not value lived experience as a unique and worthwhile form of knowledge production. Establishment tertiary education has also transitioned more to integrating with industry and capitalist ideals. Entrepreneurship, graduate employment prospects, and tangible outcomes are increasingly the metrics of success through university. This commodification of intellectual output was laid out by Noam Chomsky in his 1967 essay ‘Responsibility of Intellectuals’(5) where he argues that intellectuals are increasingly becoming subservient to power rather than shaping power structures in society (). This, he argues, coincides with the decline of conventional consumerist western consumption and is a signal of late-stage capitalism.
Given that the alternative narratives between indigenous and western concepts of information, knowledge, and place are often incompatible, bureaucracies in institutions are sometimes implicitly prioritizing certain rights. A pushback against this is the indigenous design charter (6), that asserts that indigenous respect and engagement also extends to control over built environments, goods, and outputs. We see this in projects like the Mulka Project (7). Core to the successful implementation of such a charter is the concept of preemptive engagement. That is, rather than seeking consent for actions or decisions taken, like creating a new program or product, in order to be truly culturally sensitive those in power need to allow the indigenous experience to shape their decision making and task prioritization. It is not a final hurdle, but rather a first step.  

Drawing upon Indigenous ways of knowing and political philosophy in the 21st century offers a critical lens to view the widening gulf between reality and the abstract ivory towers of the university.

References:


1. starweekly.com.au/news/referendum-exhibition-comes-to-werribee/

2. monash.edu/muma/exhibitions/exhibition-archive/2019/Shapes-of-knowledge

3. monash.edu/muma/events/2019/threefoldparallelperformance

4. waysofseeingwaysofseeing.com/ways-of-seeing-john-berger-5.7.pdf

5. nybooks.com/articles/1967/02/23/a-special-supplement-the-responsibility-of-intelle/

6. design.org.au/documents/item/216

7. monash.edu/muma/exhibitions/exhibition-archive/2019/Shapes-of-knowledge/the-mulka-project


In a man’s world. The story of Bell Kogan

How one woman broke into a part of design where women were seldom allowed to explore and decided she was there to stay.

She is known as the godmother of Industrial design, and for good reason. Bell Kogan had an extremely prolific career traversing the intersection of product design, art, and graphical thinking. Considered the first female industrial designer in the US (1) he pushed into the world of industrial design during the time when there was a shift towards professionalism (2), and was a trailblazer by allowing minority actors and disadvantaged people (in particular women) to engage in the new immature industry that was manufacturing in the 1950s. Unfortunately, the canon of design tends to gloss over women and Kogan is no exception. She has been maligned by history, and although this small blog can do no major part in addressing that wrong, it can at least be said that students nearly half a century later consider, value and recognise the significance of her work both for its own merit and what it signifies.

Belle Kogan in 1955

This portrait of Kogan in 1955 shows a powerful and focused designer at apex of her craft. She is pictured using tools that no doubt for the time would have been considered objects solely for the hands of men, like slide rules and protractors, to create complex sketches and drawings. The contented and focused smile that sits on her face perhaps demonstrates the ease with which she plays across plays the craft which she is so excellent in.

When Pierre Bourdieu discusses the economy of cultural goods across all cultural practices, the natural progression is that a culture will accept the producers of that work (3). Kogan, while avidly contributing to her epoch of the design canon, wasn’t promoted to the upper echelons of her profession while her male counterparts were.


‘[Design] didn’t just happen’

Belle Kogan


A 1935 display of Kogan’s designs at the Exposition of Arts and Industries at Radio City Forum, New York City

This collection of Kogan’s designs shows the variety of homewares that she created in ceramic, glass, and metal (particularly silver plated brass). These designs with there expertly and seamlessly fit it in to the decorative art that was so prolific and influential in that area.

Her full name clearly posted on the back of this prominent placement signifies a U-turn in recognition for two reasons:
Up until this point, women were consistently undermined as cultural producers in three major ways. Firstly, women systematically faced barriers that prevented them from pursuing design education. For instance, women in the bauhaus were funneled into traditionally feminine disciplines like weaving over male-centric ones like architecture (4). When this barrier is surmounted, the work of female industrial designers was frequently attributed to men. This perpetuated the false narrative that women were incapable of complex design. Otherwise, works frequently went nameless and uncredited. When Kogan began to receive greater recognition, by extension all women may have been recognized as able contributors to the field of industrial design. When a physical good was manufactured and distributed, it in turn became a physical manifestation of women’s design ability.

Gold-plated No. K-1 Zippo, 1938

This gold plated lighter from the final years of the 1930s is one of the most enduring legacies in the history of American Art Deco design. It’s a modified zippo lighter with a simple geometric pattern which complements the clean plane on the surface of the cuboid lighter. What’s curious is that it is easy to imagine a misogynist of the era using such a lighter every day to light cigarettes and cigars in gentleman’s clubs where Kogan was no doubt unable to enter. Such men were likely oblivious that a woman was responsible for this quintessential piece of American manufacturing. Had they known, they may have been less likely to use it as a tool to prop up the patriarchy. It’s this kind of subtle influence and demonstration of complexity in labour that creates a mechanism to transition the misogynist actors of old into the progressives of today. The importance of cultural producers like Kogan, who by virtue of their existence paddle a progressive message, cannot be overstated.

Rendering of Sugar Bowl, 1958

Sweetening the Deal

The rendering of the sugar bowl highlights Kogan‘s ability to take elegant and minimal decorative design and sketch workable technical drawings that could be taken straight through to the manufacturing stage. Her ability to run the gamut of the design process was a critical element of Kogen successful design practice (5).

Why we must remember Belle Kogan today

The makeup of current design industries and educational establishments are finally tilting away from the historical hegemony of generally old, white, European men, making now the time to truly acknowledge the creative outputs of disadvantaged groups that have always been poised for recognition.

References:

  1. https://www.idsa.org/content/belle-kogan-fidsa
  2. Women designers is there a gender trap?, 1990
  3. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste by Pierre Bourdieu, 1984
  4. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-women-bauhaus-school
  5. https://www.inclusity.com/belle-kogan-1902-2000/