(Fig. 1)
Social identity is described as being a persons sense of who they are based on the group they belong to. In 1979 Henri Tajfel Proposed that these groups provided A source of pride and self-esteem, a sense of belonging in the social world. Henry also proposed that sterotyping is based on a normal cognitive process e.g. grouping things together. When doing so we notice the differences between groups and the similarities between things within the same group. The theory suggests that its when these differences are apparent that prejudice begins. Groups will try and find negatives in one another to make themselves feel in a higher social standing or to be more comparatively favourable amongst the other social groups. The ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality is known in this theory as in-groups and out-groups.
One such group was the punk rock scene in England from 1976 to 1986. This group identified as an anti-establishment movement which, at the time, shocked the public due to the rowdy and violent image punks were known for. Punk allowed the members the freedom of expression that was not commonplace among people during this time. At the height of the punk era, The political and economic climate of Britain was causing unrest in the public, young people were restless and the establishment was failing the people. This is when the punk community came together to create an environment where all of the common denominators meant that there was a greater sense of belonging with one another.
In a YouTube video where people were interviewed as they lined up for a concert, one man said, “coming out of school in the late 70’s like I did, to no future with a fractured government, it was something you latched onto and was right for you, the songs meant something to you and the lyrics meant something to you.” Another member said “punk will never die as long as we’ve got something to fight against, something to argue against.” It was these feelings of punks (us) against the establishment (them) that created the identity that many people still socially identify themselves with today. This carried through into the ‘Anarchic’ artworks and graphic design of the time with explosive visual language conveying the political strife in England. Punk allowed artists to go against the mainstream design styles in media and advertising at the time, with freedom of expression and loud and aggressive messages in the artwork.
The piece of art I chose when conducting my research is the banner poster of the punk band X-Ray Spex(see fig. 1) , for their single titled Identity which was released in 1978. The artwork shows the band members with their eyes taped over and identity badges on their tops. Their album art is what you expect to see with punk bands with black and white ‘newspaper’ backgrounds with splashes of bright, loud colour. Punks believed in anti-materialism and recycling so a lot of the art consisted of newspapers, buttons and zips and ripped material or other materials found around the house.
(Fig. 2)
My second piece of research consisted on exploring identity in Korea. Artists Cody Choi and Lee Wan were commissioned by the Korean Art Council to create works for Koreas national pavilion in Venice Biennale. The two artists held a joint exhibition which explored the ‘counterbalance of the stone and the mountain’ and their own perception of the conflicts and disjointed identity in modern Korea. The particular piece of art I liked the most was by Lee Wan, a young Korean artist that uses his works to investigate the lives of those exploited by global powers. He was born and raised in Seoul with his art exploring the subject of the social identity of those affected by the global cultural phenomena influenced by capitalism.
Cultural globalisation affects us all socially on a wide scale with inequality issues based on your social class, ethnicity or race. This inequality also comes in the form of modern slave labour, where the industries heavily influenced by capitalism lead to more opportunities for labour exploitation in areas such as fishing, textiles and and labour-intensive manufacturing in countries where human rights violations are rarely corrected.
‘Proper Time’ consists off 668 clocks hung around a central piece named ‘For A Better Tomorrow’ of what appears to be a family with their faces removed from the sculpture (see fig. 2). Each clock represents an individual Wan had interviewed from around the world, with their date of birth, nationality, occupation and name inscribed on the clock face. Lee Wan states that ‘each clock moves at a different rate that is determined by the amount of time the individual in question must work to afford a meal.’ The display is described at being a multi-sensory abstract portrait that represents global inequality. It took 5 years and 10 different Asian countries for Wan to conduct his interviews with over 1,200 people, many farmers and local producers harvesting rice, producing sugar in order to get a concept of how much labour and time was involved in making a single breakfast. From here he used statistical data made by governmental bodies as well as the formula for the speed of light used in physics. He then set the standard value to be the cost of a meal in relation to the global GDP. Finally, Wan collaborated with electrical engineers and programmers to set each digital clock to move at a particular speed, based on all of the information he had gathered. Each clock also had a speaker installed so that the audience could hear the favourite meal of each of the individuals Wan had met with.
The sculpture ‘For A Better Tomorrow’ was inspired by 1970’s Korean propaganda and as Wan describes in an interview, ‘in the past, power controlled the people.’ he goes on to say that the system is very much still valid and this is why he chooses to appropriate propaganda images. Slogans after the Korean War read ‘For A Better Tomorrrow, and ‘Todays Sweat for Tomorrow’s Happiness’ just to name a few and this shows the ideals of the Korean government and how they promised a better future for the hard work given in the present but now, in that future, South Korea has one of the highest mortality rates of young adults in the world.
Bibliography
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Ghosh, Biswajit (2011). “Cultural changes in the era of globalisation”. Journal of Developing Societies (2011, May 17th) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0169796X1102700203
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