Week 9: Reaction to Miwon Kwon, “The Wrong Place”
Kwon is concerned with problem of what constitutes a “right” place and a “wrong” place, and whether one is more desirable than the other. Conventionally, a “right” place is a place where one has ties, and is able to develop a sense of identity, whereas a “wrong” place is one of discomfort and dislocation.
I believe that it is possible to develop strategies that allow an individual to change a "wrong" place into a "right" place, or vice versa, and that these strategies are a valid field for artistic exploration.
Kwon highlights a number of trends that lead to increasing encounters with “wrong” places: for example, the increasing frequency, and desirability, of travel leads her associates to spend more time in “wrong” places. There is also the trend of increasing global homogenization, which makes all places into “wrong” places.
Kwon uses the example of Michael Majeski, in Dom Delillo’s “Valparaiso” as a vehicle for exploring “wrong” vs. “right” places, and making the argument that these might not be as clearcut as appears at first sight.
My perspective on this cannot help being shaped by my own personal experience: I have traveled internationally every year of my life, and lived most of my life outside the country whose citizenship I hold. Though I am a US citizen, from Puerto Rico, I would have to say that a “right” place for me is Tokyo, a city with which I have no cultural or linguistic connection.
However, in some intangible place, Tokyo remains the “right” place for me – it is a combination of social relationships, behaviors, culture and infrastructure in which I thrived, to such an extent that my choice of location in New York was shaped by the presence of a large number of Japanese businesses in the neighborhood.
Clearly I am not alone in this search for familiarity in displacement, as the large number of transplanted ethnic enclaves worldwide attest. While some are the legacy of early waves of immigration (eg. Little Italy), others persist in supporting communities that do not assimilate, eg. Chinatown. Taiwanese artist Yao Jui-Chung (http://www.yaojuichung.com/) has explored this theme of transplanted place in a number of works exploring Chinatowns all over the world, which have required extensive global travel as mentioned by Kwon.
Another approach to highlighting the nature of place is shown in the work of Tazro Niscino (http://www.galeriemichaeljanssen.de/artists/niscino_g.shtml), who selects emblematic works from cities around the world, and builds bland transnational rooms around them. For example, he built one of these rooms around the angel weathervane of Basel cathedral, turning this remote structure into a coffee table decoration.
Niscino turns a traditional emblem of a “right” place, into a mere decoration of a “wrong” place, a bland Ikea-styled room that could be in a modern serviced apartment anywhere in the world. On the other hand, he has turned an otherwise inaccessible “wrong” place, the roof of a cathedral, into a perfectly comfortable “right” place, for most modern travelers.
In Liverpool and Yokohama, Niscino has enclosed landmark works of public sculpture, and turned them into the centerpieces of fully functioning hotel rooms for the duration of the exhibition.
Similarly, the Soi Project at the Yokohama Triennale 2005 reconstructed a popular Bangkok indie bar, the Gig Grocery, within the exhibition, complete with a refrigerator stocked with beer which visitors could take, and a full complement of Thai artists hanging out.
This transplantation of place is such a powerful tool for exploration that it makes its appearance in purely commercial and recreational contexts, such as the “international” pavilions at Disney’s EPCOT. Japan, a nation fascinated by “place”, is full of extraordinary facsimiles of overseas locations, such as the Dutch-themed Huis Ten Bosch in Kyushu, or the Venetian-themed Villago Italia in Nagoya. The goal of these places is to achieve verisimilitude, an illusion of “being there”.
This is a strategy that I am intrigued by, and which Kwon does not explore – the possibility of moving or transplanting a place as a means of exploration.
Another strategy I find interesting is all the ways to make anyplace into a “right” place. I have been much influenced by an article by Martí Guixé, a designer for the Camper, the Spanish shoe company. In “The Road Frequently Travelled” (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/45/guixe.html), he outlines a series of ways to make the most of being where you are, instead of using communication technologies to pretend to be elsewhere (“as if you never left the office!”)
I find that much of Guixe’s advice (carry nothing, flirt with strangers, treat urban locations as interiors, bring back stories, etc) not only makes travel much more comfortable and rewarding, but also artistically productive. I would go so far as to say that if Michael Majeski had applied some of these principles, his story would have ended in a different way!