0. The “Unprepared” | In Conversation with Professor Homi K. Bhabha and Eugene Tan 

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Are cultural institutions equipped to deal with the current socio-political contexts? How can art and culture intimate new possibilities for the future and what role can museums play? In the first of a series of talks as part of Proposals for Novel Ways of Being: CIRCUIT BREAKER, renowned Professor Homi K. Bhabha unpacks these questions and shares his reflections on the topic of unpreparedness in conversation with Eugene Tan.

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Below are notes that were taken throughout the lecture and what I felt was important.

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1. INTRODUCTION​

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Professor Homi K.Bhabha started off about his thoughts of unpreparedness being best exemplified by the the COVID-19 pandemic and the global phenomenon of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the wake of George Floyd's death. He notes that though these events have been a constantly occurring phenomenon in the history of civilization, when it actually happens, there is a great sense of fear and anxiety because people are caught in the middle of a transitional moment without knowing exactly how it will end.

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2. RISK AS AN EXISTENTIAL PREDICAMENT

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Gillian Tett, chair of the editorial board of the US Financial Times, wrote an essay titled Against the Odds. Her essay is a reflection of risk as an existential predicament.

She mentions that individuals and institutions are on an anxious knife-edge of hazardous choices. Those who are risk-averse choose a future protected by norms of reasonableness, predictable security and cautious optimism while risk-takers face precarious futures of doubt and danger in the hope that contingency and risk itself may unlock the unimagined realm of agency and opportunity.

 

In the midst of the quarantine cabin fever, she speculates the risks of a post-lockdown future. She asks, how will governments and individuals weigh the difficult decisions facing us when we leave lockdown?

Emphasizing on the culture of risk, she writes, "Medical data and economic trade-offs will certainly play an important part in any decision governments and individuals make. To return to public communal styles of life. But as we juggle with risk, risk models and forecasts will have to come to terms with psychological biases, cultural assumptions and inconsistent incentives because medical science can reveal death rates and frame mortality risks, but models cannot tell us when and how we might feel safe."

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Another instance of unpreparedness is the presumption of public life as a result of an unprovoked death. George Floyd and the 8.46 minutes of agony he suffered at the hands of Derek Chauvin. The world was ethically unprepared to standby and witness another violation of the rights of the black lives that resulted in the death of a black man whose life did not matter in the name of law and order.

Many decided to risk their health and livelihood in the time of COVID-19 in order to stand up as a free citizenry for issues of global inequality, injustice against minorities and tyranny of ethno-nationalist leaders who in these current crises, have behaved deceitfully with issues of public health, criminal justice and state violence.

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2.1 GLOBAL RESPONSE

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The unprepared carries an affected emotional charge of a historical or political moment of suddenness, an illustration of emotion that leads to action and cognition. It is this suddenness that makes the advent of COVID-19 and BLM such a global phenomenon. We were unprepared for the suddenness of both pandemic and BLM protests as they began to entangle in our daily lives. 

 

What does it mean to be unprepared for an event with a long history of happening?

The moment of being unprepared, with the global response as an example, to the last 8.46 minutes of Floyd's life is rarely recognized as a significant feature of history. Unfortunately and quite often, the moment in which these things happen are slowly but surely forgotten in the memory of structural racism.

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However, one of the great things that happened this time was in which the short period of time, the 8.46 minutes got turned into the wall murals of Floyd. Dancers danced for 8.46 mins, theatre pieces were made to the length of 8.46 mins and this is evident to how significant it is that culture plays a role in holding onto those images and moments that can so easily be forgotten.

 

Museums and artists of all kinds hold these memories of the small moment and make them memorable not simply by blowing them up in a large scale, but by appreciating how in a small detail, there lies a story of a much larger history.

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3. THE ROLE OF CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS

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On the idea of cultural translation, the professor emphasizes that the basis on which museums establish a productive dialogue, engaging in issues of equality difference, not the appropriation of identities is what cultural translation is. He indicates that museums are social institutions of translation, because they place various cultures and periods of art side by side with one another, introducing the importance of being able to interpret and translate, not simply one work but the relationship between works from different periods, different cultures and different locations.

The museum is a place for translated conversations which is why there is inequality, where the barriers between cultures are being continually defied and broken down. 

The term, Unprepared, was chosen because it speaks of circumstances of the pandemic and violent racial incidents, in which people find themselves at a loss for action. They're unprepared for an event because at the time, they believe that their destinies are in their own hands. 

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How then can the museum as an institution, and the curator as its agent act as good citizens in this situation of unpreparedness? Is a work of art an icon of civility to which we must aspire?

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3.1 Inclusion and Ethical Audits

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Inclusion should be seen as an internal, moral, aesthetic, ethical and political audit of the cultural reach of any institution. It is an opportunity to engage, not simply as an action of tolerance or placation. Each museum has a place of learning, and is also a site or certain historical lapses or losses, displacements and dislocations of both its objects and audiences. An institution should not assume that answering to the minority's demands for inclusion as an incursion or burden on their shoulders, it should be the museums active agency to audit its own aesthetic and ethical purposes and projects.
Make it your problem, not a problem brought to you. Museums should partake of inclusion as a duty and responsibility.

A museum can link the past and the present, the inheritance of the past and the challenge of the present and to turn them into a new space that addresses the current situation, with the curators as its agents. Archival sustainability, an important feature that a curator must ensure, is that the collection has to change one's understanding within the archive and be able to continually translate and transform the collection and practice.

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To be open to the unprepared but not to be manipulated by the governance of the unpreparedness is to develop a capacity to engage in the ethics of mutual and equal development, and to be committed to the modest art of listening and learning from cultures of difference

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3.2 The Dilemma of Social Justice & Cultural Rights

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Homi K.Bhabha highlights a dilemma that while cultural institutions aimed to achieve social justice, they also aimed to establish cultural rights.

Cultural rights are the idea that the museum has to be a free space or neutral space, where through free discussion between curators, audiences and artists, one can represent a range of perspectives. One can represent a range of artists, not all of which are signed on to the progressive vision of society. One cannot restrict the cultural imprint of the society, if they wish to establish cultural rights. There is a conflict of interest. How do you attain social justice, all while establishing cultural rights?

 

3.2.1  The Challenges of Social Justice

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One the side of social justice, issues may surface from where the museum attains its funding. Trustees that provide funding for these museums might have attained the money from sources that might not stand in line with the social justice vision of an institution, much less their socio-political position. Staff might not agree with the way these trustees conduct their business due to practices.

 

He also points out how social justice plays a role in impacting cultural rights. When a museum makes an acquisition, are they acquiring from the full range of the best aesthetic works that are available that can be afforded? Or are they knitted into a particular market oriented gallery guided notion of what should be bought and who is & is not a great artist? In that context, minority artists fall by. They don't have the platform.

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One should expand their perspectives to see what is going on in the art world and not just the art market, which can be very seductive. The director of a museum must be able to discern the difference between art for investment and art for intervention.

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