Review: [untitled] Author(s): R. Mark Livengood Source: Western Folklore, Vol. 59, No.

3/4 (Summer - Autumn, 2000), pp. 331-333 Published by: Western States Folklore Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1500240 . Accessed: 15/03/2011 20:25
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Recycled,Re-Seen:FolkArt from the GlobalScrapHeap. Edited by Charlene Cerny and Suzanne Seriff. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, in association with the Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, 1996. Pp. 208, 136 illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95 paper) On the outskirts of New Delhi, an inveterate salvager risks his high caste status for the sake of his convictions by crafting toys and utilitarian objects from the metal, plastic, and paper scraps he collects at that megalopolis' bazaars. Meanwhile, halfway around the world, a retired junkyard owner, thoughts of the GuinnessBook of WorldRecordsweighing on his mind, rigs his trailer home with thousands of hooked-together aluminum pop-tops, radiant in the Florida sunshine. And in the Port-au-Prince iron market, two Vodou priests and artists assemble the debris of Haiti's major city-car parts, slivers of mirror, dolls-into "mojo boards" that honor Vodou deities. What links such diverse people and manifold agendas resulting in the production of things in disparate places? According to folklorist Suzanne Seriff it is the "act of recovering and transforming the detritus of the industrial age into handmade objects of renewed meaning, utility, devotion, and sometimes arresting beauty" which contain 'visual, material, and conceptual reference to multiple technologies, histories, and temporalities." She terms this process "intercultural recycling" (9-10). Not to be confused with official, please-separate-glass-from-plastic curbside recycling programs, this vernacular process is FolkArt from the GlobalScrapHeap, a volume that Re-Seen: the subject of Recycled, complements the traveling exhibition opened at Santa Fe's Museum of International Folk Art in May 1996. Co-curators and editors Charlene Cerny and Seriff have grouped the thirteen essays of Recycled,Re-Seen, save the introduction and afterword, into four parts: "Recycling and Transformation of the American Landscape"; "Recycling and the Global Marketplace"; "Recycling in the Streets"; and 'Wearing the Other, Transforming the Self." The reader's Grand Tour of the global, jerry-built village takes off from America, eventually landing him or her in Mexico, Trinidad, and Kenya, among other ports of call. Essays facilitate an understanding of "intercultural recycling" by illuminating the "broad range of motivating factors and aesthetic sensibilities that influence how, why, and for whom these refabricated objects are produced and consumed" (22). In line with divergent disciplinary imperatives, authors utilize historical, sociocultural, and/or behavioral approaches to contextualize the objects of the exhibition. Some writers integrate several perspectives within a single article. Although many contributors discuss individual makers, no matter how briefly, most essays represent a broad cultural approach as authors explore how objects made from cast-off materials symbolically express ethnic or national identity, materialize philosophical and religious tenets, or reflect a group's aesthetic ideals. An exception is "Sci-FiMachines and Bottle-Cap Kings," in which Joanne Cubbs and Eugene W. Metcalf, Jr. focus on the work and lives of two American artisans, investigating the mens' motivations and the role expressive behavior plays in formulating their identities. Regardless of primary perspectives, all of the articles argue, implicitly or explicitly, that intercultural recy-

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cling must be understood in local terms, studied from the inside-out,not the outside-in. In such a diverse collection, some essays are bound to be more compelling in their insights, nuanced in their observations, and engaging in their exposition than others. Fortunately,authors transcend the "argument" that making new things out of old 'junk"is often an economic necessity,particularlyin the developing world, and move on, by and large, to interesting questions. Research findings are presented in different styles, ranging from syrupyto sassy,footnote heavy (footnotes of footnotes) to a form of fieldwork chronicle. Cerny and Seriff have fully exploited these varieties in their thoughtful sequencing of essays;productivejuxtapositions occasion an interesting meter to the publication as a whole. Unfortunately, works cited in severalessaysdo not appear in the substantialbibliography;such inattention to detail is surprising for a volume published by a major press. Allen F. Robertshas composed one of the most spiritedessays,'The Ironies of System in D."Anchoring his discussionin local concepts, Robertsexplores "recycling" WestAfricain a varietyof contexts. He skillfilly synthesizesthe interpretations and ideas of local people with his own and other scholars,presenting them in clean, vivid prose accompanied by evocativephotographs. Indeed, images are an integral part of how an exhibition catalog, such as Re-Seen,conveys information. This seems particularly so if one Recycled, assumesthat many museum visitorsand/or readersof accompanyingvolumes often exert more effort looking at objects or pictures of objects than reading labels or essays.That is, the visualoften takesprecedence over the textual.The images in such publications,therefore, constitutea visualnarrative,if you will, which may be considered for its interface with the text or examined independently. The 136 illustrations Recycled, of Re-Seen be classifiedinto two main catmay egories which facilitate thinking with things in different but complementary ways.On the one hand, glossy color photographs snapped in the studio present objects in the International Folk Art Foundation and private collections. Such images separate artifactsfrom their contexts of manufactureand use and foreground them for aesthetic appreciation.The Corpus Christifestivalheaddressesof highlandEcuador, example,are some seriouseye candy. for This firstkind of image, however,also expeditesclose comparisonsof stylesand betweenobjectsof the same and/or differenttype.One can compare materials, headdresses from relativelyurban and rural areas in Ecuador,for instance. Looking longer at the headdresses one may also sense resonances between them and other objects, such as the Haitian mojo boards, and begin to toss around thoughts about the diffusion of forms and ideas through time and space. On the other hand, color and black and white photographs, contemporaryand historical,clicked in the field present objects,and often their makers and users, in situ.Images of home altars,yard shrines, and artisansposing with or fabricating their creationsabound in Recycled, Re-Seen. transAdmittedly, ferring some of these considerable constructions to a museum would have been difficult, if not impossible. Nevertheless, this second type of image promotes the imagining of objects in contexts of manufacture, sale, or perfor-

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mance. In one color photograph, a person on the street of a town tucked into the Andean Mountains puts the Corpus Christi headdress, now visible as one part of an entire, and equally resplendent, costume into motion. One may ponder: what is the interplay of the alpine sunshine and those mirrors on that headdress? Does the performer strain under the weight of the headdress? How do those local onlookers react to the headdress as the performer passes by? One question that arises is where "intercultural recycling," the primary concept animating this collection of essays, moves us in our evolving understanding of objects, people, and ideas-material living. To be sure, the world's folk artists still use natural materials-clay and wood, wool and reeds, flowers - to create useful and often beautiful objects. A quick scan of many places in the material world, however, indicates that some process of "intecultural recycling"just may constitute the pulse of contemporary vernacular expression. Re-Seenimplicitly develops this notion by highlighting people turning Recycled, all sorts of industrial bits and pieces into meaningful things. Yet in addition to this detritus, makers also "recycle" popular images: electronically reincorporating them into Internet home pages which race around the globe at fiberoptic speed; repainting Nelson Mandela and Nikes into signage in Dar es Salaam, and the Virgen de Guadalupe and Yosemite Sam into murals in Los Angeles. The operative question in this industrial, perhaps post-industrial, age, therefore, may be not "what is 'recycled?"' but rather, "what is not 'recycled?"' In this manner, "intercultural recycling" becomes less a concept to develop than an assumption that informs research. This is something to which Seriff alludes when she suggests that the question needing asking is not whether there is a flow of materials and images across the world (never, however, simply a unidirectional flow from the West to the rest), but instead what are the world's folk artists doing with this flow and why (13-14)? The essays of Recycled, Re-Seen open possibilities for addressing this important question from different angles. With sense and style, Recycled,Re-Seenilluminates the complexity of a pervasive expressive process-one of great consequence to Vinod Kumar Sharma of New Delhi, Ray Cyrek of Homosassa Springs, and Pierrot Barra and Marie Cassise Barra of Port-au-Prince, and all the rest of us who, for whatever reasons, snatch up the world's flotsam and jetsam and create Things. Leelanau Historical Museum Leland, Michigan R. MARK LIVENGOOD