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- Convenors:
-
Ayami Nakatani
(Okayama University)
Sachiko Kubota (Kobe University)
- Stream:
- Worlds in motion: Cultural Heritage, Artefacts and Tourism/Mondes en mouvement: Héritage culturel, artefacts et tourisme
- Location:
- FSS 12003
- Start time:
- 4 May, 2017 at
Time zone: America/New_York
- Session slots:
- 3
Short Abstract:
This panel explores the changing expressions and local meanings of textiles and crafts which move across the boundaries of particular areas or groups in the process of global marketing, heritage formation and incorporation into the fashion worlds.
Long Abstract:
This panel explores the changing meanings and practices involving handmade textiles and other crafts within the spectrum of producing and consuming ends. In many parts of the world, cloth making has provided an important source of income for villagers and small-scale entrepreneurs. At the same time, such textiles are often embedded in local cultural realms by constituting daily clothing and ceremonial wardrobes.
In the accelerated process of globalization, however, such textiles and crafts have been incorporated into the global market in various forms including souvenirs, fair trade items, and materials for international as well as national designers' clothing. Part of the consequences of this development can be seen in the cases in which local producers cease to use their own products in their day-to-day lives and turn instead to modern, Westernized clothes. Also, when these textiles lose cultural and economic appeal for both producers and users who no longer understand their socio-cultural significance, the production of such textiles inevitably declines.
On the other hand, urban population may become aware of the value of their traditional clothing as part of their own "heritage" by realizing that people from outside their communities/nations appreciate those items. There is also a negotiated process concerning the introduction of new techniques, changes in labour organisation and the appropriation of authentic motifs. How do the producers respond to these changes, which may, in turn, transform local understanding of the objects they produce? We invite papers that deal with various aspects involved in such processes.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Kala Shreen (Centre for Creativity Heritage and Development) Shreen Raghavan
Paper short abstract:
The Kanchipuram silk sari is an indigenous textile of Tamilnadu, India. This paper will discuss the dynamic values of this sari such as craft, art, designer wear, heritage piece and glamorous attire generated by fashion stores in the context of its retailing and branding.
Paper long abstract:
The Kanchipuram silk sari is an indigenous textile of India originating in the town of Kanchipuram in the south-eastern state of Tamilnadu. This sari does not have a fixed status or value in its movement across time and space. While tracing the trajectory of this sari, in the context of its retailing and branding, one can observe fluid boundaries between various categories such as craft, art, designer wear, luxury couture, heritage piece and glamorous attire.
The publicity materials generated by the fashion stores create the status of an authentic craft and masterpiece for the Kanchipuram sari by highlighting the artisan's weaving lineage and the dexterity required for the handmade weaving process.
The promotional narratives draw attention to the individually designed and woven saris thereby transforming it into unique, designer wear and its concomitant redefinition as a work of creative art.
In contemporary times, the aesthetics of Kanchipuram sari demonstrates that this textile is not a static continuation of tradition. It is rather dynamic as seen in the various adaptations of traditional elements and the resultant hybridity. This amalgamation of tradition and innovation is a mediated form of heritage in the Tamil fashion world.
The public endorsement and perceived patronage of these saris by film stars featured in commercials transpose their 'reel-life' charisma to the garment, creating an aura of glamour for the sari.
Based on discourse analysis, this paper will thus discuss the dynamic valuation of the Kanchipuram sari as produced by fashion houses in Tamilnadu.
Amanda Stinchecum (Independent Scholar Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies)
Paper short abstract:
Two Okinawan weavers use traditional materials and techniques to make cloth based on a contemporary sensibility in tune with global fashion, contrasting with local textiles made by government-subsidized cooperatives and commercial workshops, limited by regulations and lack of creative vision.
Paper long abstract:
My paper focuses on two independent weavers in Okinawa prefecture, Japan. Using traditional materials and techniques of weaving and dyeing, each makes textiles based on a creative sensibility very much in tune with contemporary clothing in Japan and with global fashion. Problems associated with choosing this path include the absence of financial support for textile makers whose work does not fit comfortably within the category of "traditional"; the cost of textiles made entirely by hand, nearly excluding them from the rapidly-changing world of "fashion"'; the fragility of the cloth, particularly when subjected to machine stitching; and the fugitive nature of natural dyes, requiring special care to wear and maintain.
The work of these two artists contrasts with efforts to expand into "fashion" of more commercialized and tightly organized workshops, and also with government-subsidized, rigidly regulated cooperatives that produce hand-woven "traditional" textiles in Okinawa. This type of subsidy often imposes onerous conditions on production that requires strict repetition of design and technique. Within this context of producing goods based in a re-imagined past, a certain amount of disregard for materials and methods detract from the appeal of these products. Although some commercialized workshops, on the other hand, have achieved a degree of stability, without the artistic vision embodied by the independent weavers, the indifferent design of products that attempt to go beyond strictly delineated traditional forms tends to limit their markets to the realm of souvenirs.
Chie Miyawaki (Anthropological Institute)
Paper short abstract:
The purpose of this presentation is to examine the current situation concerning the transformation of Hmong dress in China which is faced with a dilemma between fashionable ready-made dress supported by economic power among local Hmong people and traditional hemp dress as heritage movement.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation aims to examine the current process of the transformation of Chinese minority dress in relation to the nation, other minority groups, and outsiders. This study focuses on the Hmong, who are officially recognized as the "Miao nationality" in Yunnan, China.
The Hmong, living in Wenshan Prefecture in Yunnan Province, traditionally make their dresses by themselves using hemp as main material. The characteristics of Hmong dress include its pleated skirt made by delicate and gorgeous cross-stitching and indigo batik techniques. Such a transformation is reflected in the changes of daily lives of the Hmong.
Since the 1970s, Hmong women have made dress for their family by hand, including dyeing, weaving and embroidery work. In the past decades, however, Hmong dress has transformed dramatically in its material, methods of fabrication, form and design, and in the ways in which it is worn. Today, they make fewer number of dresses at home and buy ready-made Hmong dress at markets. Now they are aware of the eyes of outsiders through the Intangible Cultural Heritage movement and the exhibitions at the museum.
This presentation thus describes how the Hmong dress built and maintained their the channel of distribution and consumption of traditional Hmong dress used to be maintained in the past two decades, and also examines the current situation in which fashionable ready-made dress as ceremonial wardrobes are becoming popular among Hmong young women in Wenshan. At the same time, they have also begun to recognize hemp dress as rare and precious items.
Ayami Nakatani (Okayama University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper deals with the ways in which particular types of Indonesian traditional textiles are produced and marketed within the changing frameworks of post-colonial project of national integration on the one hand, and national as well as regional discourses of cultural heritage.
Paper long abstract:
In this globalised world, it is truism that all types of products are marketed and consumed across borders. The relationship between particular consumers and producers is thus spatially distant, temporary and brought together "in such a way as to conceal almost perfectly any trace of origin, of the labour processes that produced them" (Harvey 1990).
However, the relationships between producers and consumers are not simply separated and opposed to each other, especially in the case of handicrafts. Those who buy hand-made textiles produced in far-away places, for example, often desire to gain knowledge about the detailed context in which they were produced. More recently, a contemporary discourse of cultural heritage seems to function as a powerful tool to draw the producing and consuming ends closer to each other.
This paper deals with the ways in which particular types of Indonesian traditional textiles are produced and marketed within the changing frameworks of post-colonial project of national integration which strengthened regional identity on the one hand, and national as well as regional discourses of cultural heritage which provided renewed context for "fashionalization" of hand-woven materials. It pays a particular attention to the roles of mediators, such as fashion experts and non-profit organizations, who have tried to intervene with the design and marketing of textiles; their active engagement can partly be attributed to the political and economic climate of the time, but their diverging interests also reflect the contested meaning of cultural heritage.
Michele Hardy (University of Calgary)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation will discuss the recent ‘ethnic-turn’ in embroidery produced in northern Kutch, India. With the introduction in 2006 of a State-run mega-festival, local women’s relationship with embroidery—increasingly charged since Partition—is shifting in profound and unexpected ways.
Paper long abstract:
Since 2006 Rann Utsav, a large and very popular cultural festival has taken place along the southern reaches of the Rann of Kutch. The Rann is a large salt flat—romantically termed 'the white desert' by festival organizers—that stretches along the northern frontier of Kutch, separating India from Pakistan.
The festival marks only the most recent chapter in a narrative of change that began with Partition in 1947, the erosion of the environment in the early 1960's, changes to livelihoods in the late 60's through today. Within this period, embroidery has shifted from a medium intimately associated with women's bodies and community identity to a commodity produced for sale. The festival is attended by thousands of (mainly) Indian tourists many of whom are anxious for a souvenir—Kutchi embroidery being particularly well known and highly desirable.
Local embroidery produced for the festival market draws on a repertoire of established stitches, colours, motifs and designs—selected to attract buyers as well as distance those buyers from the embodied intimacy embroidery once represented. Contemporary embroidery produced by the Mutwa, for example, negotiates with an evolving sense of 'ethnic' textiles, fed by popular Indian films, advertisements, television programs etcetera that is at odds with the specificity of their 'traditional' embroidery. In this presentation, I examine the 'ethnic-turn' in embroidery and how it has been driven not only by market-forces but local embroiderers' growing ambivalence and a desire to be modern on their own terms.
Yoko Ueba
Paper short abstract:
This report clarifies changes in production techniques and sales methods used for dyed and printed textiles produced in western India, which are traditionally used for goddess rituals. It identifies how they are strategically produced to fit value orientations in both local and global markets.
Paper long abstract:
This report concerns dyed and printed textiles used in goddess rituals, which are produced in Ahmedabad in Gujarat State in western India. While in the local cultural context, these fabrics have been traditionally produced for the ritual use, they have been altered to be more appealing to global markets. Changes in production technology and strategic choice of sales methods are examined from the perspective of dyeing techniques. This report examines whether the nostalgia evoked by these textiles in global markets becomes the standard to influences to local market.
Textiles used in goddess rituals have been produced using printing and dyeing techniques to tell stories through pictures of goddesses or events described in Hindu myths. Traditionally these textiles are used to demarcate outdoor sacred spaces for rituals dedicated to female deities by members of untouchable castes, who are forbidden to enter Hindu temples, and this continues to be an important role in the local culture. In contrast, the same images of goddesses and their religious significance evoke a nostalgic gaze in consumers both inside and outside of India, spreading their presence as souvenirs beyond in the local area in which they are produced.
Producers of these textiles carefully consider how they would be used, either in the orthodox traditional manner by local buyers or for other purposes by tourists from different places with different values. Both production techniques and sales methods are strategically adjusted to fit these separate markets.
Patricia Reinheimer (Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro)
Paper short abstract:
Olly, a German-Brazilian artist, wove her career by incorporating the environment into her work. The alterity of people and things was transformed into themes, colors and textures, creating a world of her own, as part of a new social class that stood out from the produced and consumed things
Paper long abstract:
Olly was born in 1914 in Mittweida, Germany. Until the end of the twentieth century, Mittweida was relatively important due to the textile production with mechanical looms. In 1936, she moved to Brazil and, in 1950, began an artistic career, having weaving as her main technique. Ingold uses weaving as a metaphor to elaborate an ecology of life which assumes that skills are neither innate nor acquired but cultivated, incorporated into the human organism through practice and training in the environment. In order to understand Olly's skills, it is necessary to understand the socio-technical meshes to which she belonged. Participation in the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro art studios was a way of putting her body (and mind) in contact with artistic materials and techniques that allowed a new relationship with her surroundings. Acquiring artistic skills widened her horizons, including in her perception things that were previously unnoticed. Her collections of pre-Columbian pottery, indigenous things, string literature, among others, were a way of incorporating these experiences into her creations. Likewise, photographing a manhole in the middle of the street to use as a theme in her works was a way to incorporate the city into her work, maps incorporated the world in it. It is about this process of weaving her world, incorporating alterity as theme, color and texture that this communication intends to elaborate.
Sachiko Kubota (Kobe University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper focus on the historical changes of basket production of Australian Aboriginal women and its change of acceptance. In 1980s, they were traded as souvenirs but in 2010s, they are exhibited as art works in galleries. I argue how these changes happened and what is the social outcome.
Paper long abstract:
In the late 1980s, I started my research in northeastern Arnhem Land of Australia focusing on the change of women's role and status in the society. Research area is owned by an Indigenous group of Yolngu. One of the activities I have focused on was arts & crafts production especially of women with comparison to men. And I found the clear difference by gender in their type of production, income and social value placed on them. Women's production, such as baskets and net bags were largely seen as 'crafts', not important, and secular. Whereas men's production was seen as the works as sacred with important cultural significance and command much higher price. Both of them were seen as ethnological items or souvenirs items though.
This situation surrounding Aboriginal arts & crafts production has experienced a large change since then. First, Paintings by them became internationally famous and some artists are acclaimed very high profile and price. In other words, they became fine arts in world art scene. And second, women as well as men are started producing paintings. Back in 1980s, paintings were supposed to be produced by men only in most of the area. With the changes in paintings and their fame, the basket production has followed to change. In this presentation, I will discuss the current changes of Aboriginal crafts and try to discuss the social meaning of it.
Jean-Yves Durand (CRIA-UMinho)
Paper short abstract:
A continuous ten-year ethnographic research shows how Portuguese embroiderers resist and adapt to new conditions, and how these can cause deep esthetic changes in the pieces they produce now for a living.
Paper long abstract:
"Lenços de namorados" (lovers' scarves) are a specific type of handmade embroidery from rural Northern Portugal. Their production has been "certified" by the State and they have gained some visibility on the tourist market these past years. Their patterns have started to be used by designers in innovative ways, but they are also reproduced on industrial products that are made abroad. The embroiderers (nowadays almost exclusively women) try to find ways to protect what they feel is "theirs", for instance by publicizing their work on the internet, which also increases the risk of plagiarism and of deterritorialization of the production. Traditionally, these scarves were generally anonymous but some embroiderers now sign their creations, which paradoxically, are a lot less creative than they used to be, as a result of the need for an increased productivity that is inherent to what has become a full-time commercial activity.
For the past ten years, an ethnographic research has followed the evolution of this activity. It is now possible to see how the embroiderers try to resist and adapt to new conditions, and how these can cause deep esthetic changes in the pieces they produce for a living.
Matori Yamamoto (Hosei University)
Paper short abstract:
In the Pacific Festival Arts, delegates from Pacific countries make cultural exchange to promote each country’s cultural identity. Fashion show is one of the popular item. I will make analysis on the specific fashion show and examine their self-representation and identity.
Paper long abstract:
The Pacific Festival of Arts is an event held in somewhere in the Pacific once in every four years by the Pacific Art Council in cooperation with the SPC. Country delegates from all over the Pacific come together for their activities of the cultural exchange. The first festival was held in Fiji in 1972. At that time, only three countries: Western Samoa, Tonga and Fiji were independent, and other small Pacific countries were under colonial rule and in the process of making preparation for independence. Nevertheless, some countries are still dependent in the Pacific. The Festival was started in order to promote each country's cultural identity. In the Festival, various kinds of art forms and genres were displayed and performed and fashion show is one of the popular items to be shown. In the fashion show, each country displays special material or special design of their own. Some cloths are very modern with traditional taste while some are authentic product of their traditional life. Although most of the Pacific societies have no cloth in their traditional culture, each society had different design on tapa printing and today the traditional design is printed on calico cloth. I will make analysis on the fashion show in the latest Festival of Pacific Arts held in Guam 2016 and examine their self-representation and identity. Production of their own designs and prints are just started and not yet recognized in the world market but already having a good reputation in some domestic market.