Expanding Internationalism - A Conference on ... - Mary Jane Jacob

discipline of training to the theoretical inquiry of the arts. In his
talk, "Simultaneous Translation: Modernity and the Inter/National," he
advocated a change from a binary system of international relationships
(e.g., us and them, self and other) that implies "social destiny of
difference" and defines cultural universalism, simultaneously translating
cultures in terms of each other, sanitizing cultural difference between
foreign cultures, homogenizing them, and placing them within a hierarchy
of major and minor, or marginal cultures. He showed how modernity, a
Euro-centric notion, can only be insured in a culturally homogeneous
climate such as that of Western nation-states, which itself demands a
binary logic of inside/outside, tradition/progress, and so on.
Emanating
from a colonial perspective, modernity appropriates the "Other" to
establish cultural prerogative and superiority. Bhabha asked for a
rethinking of the language of cultural corrmunity from a post-colonial
point of view that would allow for complex cultural and political
boundaries, and a hybridization of cultural influence.
The next speaker, Guy Brett, a London-based critic who has organized
several exhibitions of Latin American artists as well as published on both
avantgarde and vernacular art, spoke directly to the group in their role
as exhibition organizers, asking them in his talk "The Verb Curate" to
consider a show's context as a major curatorial responsibility. He began
with the premise that the familiar format of biennials is inadequate, and
even that of ":M3giciens de la Terre" (Centre Georges Pompidou, 1989) ,
which departed from previous models, still polarized work by showing it
according to "us and them" lines. Brett suggests that efforts for greater
"international representation" in so-called international exhibitions are
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