Saturday, 17 January 2015

Critical Perspectives 6 – 30/10/14 - Cultural Hierarchies, with Rachel Miles




What is CULTURE? - of art? Animation? Education? (They interact with each other)
What is a hierarchy?: power structure; not fixed – LIVE
Both together?
Cultural capital – need to understand this

Culture = The arts; human intellectual achievement – produced via intellectual enquiry; asking WHY – but if nobody sees it, it's not culture
Objects must be considered collectively

Culture is produced within SITES, e.g. a production company – everyone there needs to know the LANGUAGE
How do ideas ARRIVE there?
Some [sites] are more accessible than others – Pixar vs. YouTube (cultures in themselves)

Cultural conditions also exist
Each of the “outlets” represents the ideas, customs and social behaviours of a particular group – someone who posts on YouTube has a different MO than someone who works at Pixar

HIERARCHY – e.g. transport methods (bus, limo, helicopter, walking)
WHY might someone choose to walk?--> Based in a particular culture
Context – in Australia all ambulances are airborne
Language – learning words [? I'm stumped by my own handwriting] into learning critique of tastes

e.g. Maslow's hierarchy of needs – visual example of a hierarchy

Buildings – we judge them in relation to the buildings around them; a cathedral is “higher” than a house
The Mormon church is bright white – why would they make it that way? → A language that denotes a value system
Bower Ashton Campus and University of Bristol are both universities, but very different buildings – one moves with the times, the other is historical (we judge the latter to be “more valuable” - it's protected)

A university is a hierarchy – giving students a place to display their work (CULTURE) and a degree in exchange for three years of study

Who decides what animation or graphic design is? The creator?

In terms of education (hierarchy) it decides who gets the degree
Being engaged in an environment helps you explore your own practice – but no-one can tell you what that practice is

Who says what culture is? “Top 100 design blogs” - who decides what they are? Who's responsible for the orange chairs in Traders? - important questions
Culture legitimises things; we see cultures as realities
“Top 100” lists annihilate the things that didn't make it – what's it being judged by?

BLU- graffiti artist whose understanding of cultural hierarchy allows him to blend media and break rules (“Muto” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuGaqLT-gO4) blublu.org

Cultural Capital – Pierre Bordieu*: who owns the wealth of the culture?
Interested in the construction and performance of class → an aspect of culture
*“A form of value associated with culturally authorised tastes”
“Within the field of education… a degree is cultural capital”

Cultural tastes are quite eclectic, but some forms of them aren't shown – all are valid, but which are you being given? How does that affect your taste?
NORMCORE – the only way to be cool is to be normal, yet it's no longer normal once it's called Normcore – it's a response to something (a hierarchy)
Clothes allow a person to be READ

CLASS is a culture; taste can be understood as an indicator of class (beer and fags vs. pain fried aubergines)
Taste = a well-trained appreciation** of what is aesthetically pleasing – Catherine McDermott
**To spend time with something – whether you have a choice or not
Aesthetics = the study of beauty; a branch of philosophy – forms taste
Magazines present ideas of beauty that we come to appreciate – our tastes are learned, not “natural”

BEAUTY

Ideologies – compare the set of Only Fools and Horses to a real council flat; the former is an IDEA

Our tastes position us within our culture's hierarchies; they demonstrate our “cultural capital” (how much capital we have)

All this is only the tip of the iceberg – sort through this stuff yourself!

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