Strašno cijenim još tvojih misli na ovu temu!! :D Nisam uopce ocekivala odgovor jer neznam - tek sam par mjeseci na tumblru i nisam navikla na atmosferu diskusije ovdje! plus side blog mi je realno samo dumping ground za whatever, nisam misla da itko obraca paznju
I will preface this by saying that i completely agree with everything you laid out and my previous thoughts are really a testament to my tendency to only use my own expirience as a reference point when talking about art or media (horrible habit! Even so, I'll do it again now and it might be completely incoherent as it's pretty late right now and these are thoughts that I'm not nearly close to finishing exploring)
I should also mention that while I do say "americanisation", maybe it would be more correct to call what I feel is happening to my work and a majority of popular media just attempts at mass audience appeal for profit or survival. Aka just tactics that capitalism often pushes us to use - but then again, america is kind of synonimous with capitalism so maybe I am not so wrong in the way I define americanisation, I seriously don't know :')
I have some expirience with printmaking and traditional art from highschool but I am not nearly well read on it as I should be, and even the stuff that the school curriculum covered is mostly big foreign names - I really only know something substantial about a handful of ex yu graphic designers, thanks to a few exceptional professors that I'd say went out of their way to cover them! And I'm totally a hypocrite for complaining about americanisation when I'm not exactly making much effort to research our own very rich history further and learn how to appeal to our audiences. It's something I notice in lots of my peers too, and I cannot really articulate how, but I feel like it only pushes us to americanise our work further. Like an echo chamber that is hard to notice and even harder to claw your way out of (I mean, I'm not even close to leaving it and I've been aware of it for years)
I think a few things are to be blamed for this:
- A lot of us grew up on the internet which is, depending on the bubble you find yourself being pushed into by algorhytms, often very american
- A lot of us come from households that devalue anything from the ex yu due to the generational trauma of war, life there or various other reasons, be it conservatism or just plain antiintelectualism but also well meaning parents that don't want you to "waste" time studying art are really nothing new here
- a lot of us have been conditioned into feeling like our own language and even culture are "cringe" and "uninteresting" (or less harshly, to simply not prioritise our culture -> my previous point about my education). By whom? I'm not really sure - maybe it's that point about how people find their mother language too intimate so they detach a bit by using english instead.
Probably the fact that i feel the need to write all of this in english instead of our language is pretty telling also - we are appealing to a broader audience and giving them a chance to be included in the discourse for no real reason in particular. We have been conditioned to do so, and while it's certainly a good thing that maybe somebody foreign will find value in this text because it's in english, I feel like It would be more beneficial to talk about it in Cro/Bos instead - but nobody a lot less people would care about see it then! So I think your point about the english language is very relevant here - it's lackluster and yet we choose to use it.
This is what I feel is happening to my art really, and what brought me here are a set of circumstances that are somehow always in favor of "americanising" my work: first and foremost surviving as an artist by reaching a broader audience, lots of conditioning, lots of bubbles and echo chambers, and probably many other things that I don't even realise (and I'd say this applies to most other media we consume too, including the adaptation of odyssey)
My frustration is immense because it feels so obvious as to what the solution is - pick up a book, educate yourself, you gotta know your biases before you can even try to avoid them. And yet... here I am, conforming with my art because it's the easier route for survival, it truly feels awful and it weighs on me heavily :')
I have a lot of thoughts about this but I've really made this about myself and my work enough already, and I'm not even sure whether I said anything that makes sense or has a real connection to your response. Hell, probably none of this will be relevant in a few years because the market will change completely as you say! I dread to think about it too much.
I will leave you here with this mess of my very subjective thoughts and opinions filtered through another language, I hope there's some value somewhere in there lol In any case thank you for talking to me and I feel like there is a lot that I can learn from you!
