Design, Culture and Cultural Sustainability

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Design, Culture and Cultural Sustainability

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C a s e   S t u d y

Noni & Iko Avital

This article questions the role of a designer in the dynamic, rapid-changing global community - previously named "the global village". This world community is dictated technologically, by a triptych infrastructure of finance - politics - media, which forces its cultural agenda. Meanwhile, today's youth live in virtual communities, and are equipped with high-tech communication tools. Their cybernetic world embodies, on one hand, the absolute freedom of speech, and on the other hand, the absence of values, as democracy, fairness and equality (Barbasi, 2002). In the current world, as we know it, there are two different types of designers. The commercial designer, who works in the commercial field and provides services to industries, cooperation and institutions, and the artist-designer, who uses design methodology to for his creative expression, and exhibits his end product in galleries and museums.

We would argue that there is a third type of designer who works in the field of culture – an empty seat waiting to be occupied: the curator-designer. The curator-designer integrates his creative talent with his intellectual skills; he works on culture-based projects that require deep social involvement, like “a religious, spiritual vocation, which is indeed a mission" (Hillman, 1960). He uses research as a multi-disciplinary, imaginative exploration; he is an anthropological investigator, studying visual values and semantic patterns of a culture, as well as their significance in its art, crafts, rituals, traditions, customs, myths, lifestyle, gender relations, and other expressions. This is the “culture’s” culture – a framework that provides signs and symbols for social interaction (Greetz, 1973), which curator-designer collects, it eventually becomes his raw material, verbal and non-verbal metaphors for his design work. This is his design toolbox, a visual- contextual syntax made of content images, forms, colors, materials and environment; it is his Animal Sybolicum (Cassirer, 1972) design palette.  This is the place for the curator-designer who is committed to preserve cultural treasures, however, he doesn’t seek the majority culture, the televised and virtual one, but that which enables his to serve as the guardian of marginal cultures. Such designer examines closely the culture’s attitude towards natural resources, as well as the authentic ways in which its visual culture has been preserved over the years: image, product, environment.

We use the term “sustainable culture” to identify a minority group who succeeded in preserving their cultural disposition on their own; they have survived cultural assimilation, and remained untouched by the influential waves of Western modernism. Because culture is, in a sense, a way of living, a way of thinking, as expressed by an individual -  physically, emotionally, behaviorally and spiritually- lifestyle : myths, rituals, customs, family tradition and social heritage he acquires from his community. Culture is the sum of values, beliefs and worldview as they are manifested in the attitude of the individual towards his community, and the community towards their individual.

A sustainable culture is also a value-based attitude towards human resources, equality and social justice - generational and inter-generational. A sustainable culture does not judge and criticize its art or crafts, as it is impossible to point out a popular dance or music as "better", therefore, here the Eurocentric 'quality scale' is neither useful nor relevant. The cultural perspective towards a sustainable culture cannot be linear, but rather it is lateral, multi- expressive, of different channels, diversified and boundless.

The universalization of the Western civilization is a course that has been spreading across the world over the past two hundred years. While some societies try to preserve their cultural heritage, it seems that their effort is geared towards the upper-structures only. Therefore, the question is what will this phenomenon lead to, is it to the Westernization of the entire globe, the westernization which famously consisted the attitude of colonial Europe, which viewed the rest of the people as "barbarians", "savages" and "primitives", in countries not "sufficiently developed" (Levi-Strauss, 2001) ?

Furthermore, to date, "the soft force" of the global policy:  the influence of corporations, brands, languages and lifestyles — in addition to the influence of the media - shadows cultures of local tribes, communities and small peoples (Tharoor, 2007). In other words, the "Mcdonaldsization” culture, which is, paradoxically, the dream culture of most countries aside from Europe and the U.S., has become the primary threat to local cultures and their values. Following it are media and advertising as well, flattening this beautiful globe with its rich range of people, its rich range of languages, its rich range of cultures. Hence, the crucial question is: what place does a native culture hold in an era of absolute globalization, in which an advertising campaign uses superlatives to praise the delightful and spiritual traits of a washing detergent (Barth, 1957))?

As a result, a dissonant quandary, of various implications emerges, as a robot turned against its maker. The scientific, technological and industrial revolutions, along with their considerable achievements, also, clearly, created an excess in production of goods and services, which subsequently led to the rise of the "shopping culture" –  that insatiable addiction to consumerism-based pleasure; an addiction in which the media, press and environment (Architecture and Signage) are all recruited to satisfy and aggressively distribute its values; an addiction which creates a mold for the virtual psychological needs of the individual, as well as socio-economic standards, by creating psychographic tools with the intent to shape an attitude and lifestyle.

Thus, consumers are analyzed in accordance with their interests, lifestyles, desires for status, self-perspectives and positions, including fears and prejudices, for the purpose of making us more destructive, more narcissistic, more status conscious, willing to live in the present at the expense of the future (Packard, 1977). The psycho-cultural core is placed here under a test: the public arena has broken down, as a result of the erosion between private and public, between individual's intimacy and flock space - for the sake of mass-sensation. The result is an authoritarian society in a flattened globe, ruled not by power, but by force-fed consumerism messages (Friedman, 2005), and produce a situation that, apparently, no one in their right mind would defy – there’s no point in confronting “success”, especially when it entail tangible losses and damages.

The technological society provides the individual with his basic needs; however, it also creates false needs, which reflect the interests of capitalists and the ruling class. These needs are submerged through the media, and therefore enslave the individual, who is not even aware that he’s enslaved. This problem of alienation and loss of the individual in favor of the technological computerization and the ruling establishment, and their replacement by something that is removed and cut-off from human nature, without the individual being aware of this. In this civilization, the individual is viewed as “one-dimensional" – a willing slave who identifies himself in goods and products (Marcuse, 1964), and who lives in a convenient lack of freedom - of thought, of speech, of conscience - by means of pleasure and entertainment. He no longer looks outside the existing condition for solutions for his lack of true freedom and self-realization, and defines himself by the false self-image: his house, car, watch, laptop, gadgets and so on. This is what creates a society with the ideology of constant, perpetual inculcation of living standards. The civilization of industries exploits the individual, nature and resources. It leaves no opening for growth and development, since it blockades the power of social defiance, which threatens to demonstrate an antithesis to the status quo.

Moreover, that very freedom from poverty and ignorance, that which practically enables an individual to break out of a social structure and achieve true self-realization in an egalitarian society, is precisely what depresses any real desire to do so: "In the event that freedom of poverty – the tangible part of any freedom – is achieved, all those other liberties, belonging to the stage of lower productivity, loose their previous meaning.”

Clearly, the modern constitution has extracted all its critical bodies by enslaving them to the opportunistic capitalists, who have been using their possession of the media to unify the society, keeping it within the establishment; its economic, media related, political and financial interests are interwoven and inseparable.

Baudriard (1981) claims: "we are creators of images – we create an abundance of images, in which there is nothing to see". He refers to the loss of the source, originality, essence, value, significance and the meaning of things; The collapse of the public domain, as a result of erosion between private and public terms; The shift from production and creativity to mass sensation (Disneyland as an allegory), by the use of branding, advertising and ratings. Mega-cultural-machines that stir the masses, alongside Television screens and computers, turn the home into a receptive and broadcasting center, which has altered the structure of the public domain in its entirety. The "Reality" shows on Television (and this was written in 1971!) are "suburban entertainment", which de-sanctify intimacy. The Television, in effect, is the “real thing” - it produces truth. "It is not you that is watching Television, it is the Television that is watching you". Today, more than ever, we can find a large number of comparative, repetitive cultural patterns across the globe: the flow of products, the flow of information and the flow of people. A flow of immigrants has been spreading over many countries, generated by economic, cultural, ideological reasons and others. These immigrants carry with them luggage filled with memories from their culture, their backpacks carried on their backs are full of talents and special craft skills. These piles of luggage and backpacks could enrich and fertilize the culture in their new home. In countries that successfully absorbed immigrants, Multiculturalism has produced cultural diffusion, a socio-demographic diversity and social empowerment.

That all stands in opposition to the question hovering over our heads today: are we all doomed to be Eurocentric "couch potatoes"? Are we sentenced to belong to a hollow, 'glocal', cybernetic communities, or perhaps shall we do now something, using the past cultural treasury, to encounter a better future culture?

Case Study: The "Beta Israel" Park Project

Ethnocentric cultures, which judges other cultures using a criteria based on their own culture, crush the right and duty of every person to be part of the heritage of his local cultural. The other duty, which is no less important, is to give space and respect to the "other", from the other cultures, otherwise, that culture is not sustained; without the yearning for "me-you" (Buber, 1923), the world loses the experience and the knowledge that has accumulated across the globe and then culture is not sustained, culture will not exist.

In the following “Beta Israel” project, we will tell the story of a city in Israel, Petach Tikvah, which has initiated, and decided to commemorate, the culture of one of the country’s most fragile communities. The project that we are presenting here, as an example for a 'sustainable culture', concerns the ability to save it from being forgotten, and to preserve the values, visual language, sounds, stories and the traditions of that community, for the sake of re-telling their story to future generations.

The "Beta Israel" project is an example of ever- changing project. The objective of the initial brief was to build a remembrance park; however, when we began to curate and prepare initial presentations for the municipality, we realized the potential and the scope of this project, expanding it from a Remembrance spot to a Heritage park. When the construction of the park was completed, we presented a plan of action for the training of young men and women, whose job will be to greet, inform and guide visitors. This was the point in which we turned the park into an "outdoor museum", which would offer activities and demonstrations for the public, something which also could create new employment opportunities for some members of the Ethiopian community living in the city.

The Methodology Employed in the Project:

Background

Ethiopia, which is located in the Northern-Eastern part of Africa, encompasses the largest hilly area in the continent, lying at between 1,900 and 2,600 meters above sea level, which is typified by extreme climatic changes (8 – 38 degrees Celsius), and which possesses varied vegetation, both natural and tilled. The population of Ethiopia is approximately 60 million people, most of who lived in the countryside. The Ethiopian Jews, who are known as "Beta Israel", lived in agricultural settlements and villages, which were spread over a wide area, in the North and the North West of Ethiopia and were differentiated from the other cultures that exist there out of the need and the desire to protect the cultural existence of a Jewish community that observes the laws in the Torah, the sanctity of the Sabbath and Jewish dietary laws. In Israel there has been an ingathering of a multitude of communities from across the globe, each of which brought with them their culture, their traditions and their customs. One of these communities is the community that escaped from Ethiopia, which today numbers around one hundred thousand people, a third of whom were born in Israel. The process in which the community immigrated to Israel began in the 1980's and most of the community came in two waves of immigration, in 1984 and in 1991.

As of today, the Ethiopian community in Israel is concentrated in a number of towns and they are maintaining their coherence as a community, which is something that helps them to maintain their unique culture and customs, and this also includes the traditional Ethiopian medicine. "Beta Israel" is an ancient and extraordinary story of a community of exiles who were cut off from Jerusalem and from any connection with the Jewish world, to such an extent that they though in all their innocence that they were the last remaining adherents to the Jewish faith. The commonly held belief in respect of the origins of Ethiopian Jewry is that the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pilesar III conquered the entire Northern kingdom of Israel in the year 734 BCE, including the area occupied by the tribe of Dan, and turned it into an Assyrian province. According to this tradition, this tribe was exiled to Assyria, together with the other tribes of Israel, however it disappeared from the pages of history, and was considered to be one of the lost tribes of Israel. Today, "Beta Israel" considers itself to be the lost tribe of Dan.

The Jews in Ethiopia, the "Beta Israel" lived their lives in a closed society, which provided its own needs, and which was led by the Kessim, religious leaders who are entitled to considerable respect because of their knowledge and their leadership in the religious and communal life, in leading the prayers and in conduction the life-cycle events in the community. Agriculture was the main occupation, and generally there was a stream that flowed beside the village, which was used by man and beast alike.

When the men were working in the fields, the women had a "washing day" beside the river, or they would go down to the stream to draw water for the family, carrying large clay vessels on their backs which were full of water. Rainwater was used for irrigation, when the rains did not fall on time; they dug water canals from the river to the fields. The main crops were chickpeas, wheat and barley. The crops were harvested using sickles and scythes. The family unit functioned such that everyone had their own task to perform: The man was responsible for building the hut, for food and for working the land, the woman was responsible for raising the children, for cleaning the home, for producing the eating implements, for pureness and for processing the food; the young daughters would carry the babies on their backs; the boys, once they reached the age of ten would help their parents in the village, in the home and in the fields. They were familiar with the surrounding area and knew how to supervise the family's animals. When the father came back from his work in the fields, one of the children would prepare a bowl of water for him and wash his feet. In the summer season, when everyone had finished the work in the fields, a boy would go out with his father and together they would enjoy fishing in the streams in order to obtain the main ingredient of the family's meal.

In the evening, everyone sat around the charcoal fire for the "Buna" the ceremony for the preparation of coffee, with the men and women sitting separately, and the children scurrying around. A clay kettle would boil on the fire from which the coffee would be poured into little cups. First of all the older men and women would be honored with a cup of coffee, followed by the men and then the women. It was customary to eat pealed seeds together with the coffee. The house was called a "tokul" and its walls would be covered with a form of plaster that was made of clay mixed with straw and supported by large wooden sticks, which would be thick and string. An additional house called a "Gojo", which means a small house, would usually be built next to the parents' home. The children of the family who had reached maturity or guests would use this house to sleep in. In the morning the villagers would rise for prayers in the synagogue. Afterwards, they would set off for work, working in the fields or with the flocks, pottery, needlework, smithery and working as a tinsmith, with everyone doing his assigned task. The menstruation house, in which a woman would stay during her period or after childbirth was located outside of the village and the women from the village, would bring her meals in separate dishes. At the end of a week the woman would return to her home. Women who had given birth and their babies would stay in the menstruation house for a longer period of time, 40 days if they had given birth to a son and 80 days if they had had a daughter. Just like in any other traditional society, the hard work and the artwork took up a central role in the life of the community. In Ethiopia only the Jews would be engaged in smithery because it was considered to be an especial form of expertise. Most of the tools that were produced were used in tilling the land, such as a plough and a scythe, weapons and implements for domestic use. The women did a lot of work with straw, with which they produced baskets and other products. Both men and women would be engaged in embroidery. The embroidery was intended for decorating the white clothing. The spinning was a job that was the responsibility of the women. They would primarily spin the cross threads, whereas the longitudinal threads were purchased in the market. The weaving was done by the men, and they sewed the wool on a loom with two peddles, which could be folded up and moved around. Many young girls from the village were engaged in pottery, which became something of a cottage industry, which produced extra income for the family. The young women would produce pottered urns to carry water in, tools as well as making dolls from the scraps, which they would sell to tourists.

The emigration to Israel caused the "Beta Israel" to go through culture shock, confusion and a period in which they could not find their way, as the result of the meeting with an unfamiliar lifestyle; an array of values, ways of behaving and the material things that constitute the way of life of a people. The transition from rural life in the hills to living in cities on the coastal plain, swapping the perspective of the farmer and the shepherd who made do with very little for the culture of plenty that worships shopping, from a closed society that had one voice to an open secular society, which is diversified and has many voices, from a verbal traditional culture to a written and filmed culture.

The difficulties in the migration caused a crisis in the hierarchy of the tribe and the family unit, the language barrier, the technological ignorance, the norms, the ways of forming connections, gender issues, social behavior, the social customs that are used in social interaction, the high level of unemployment among the men, problems with drugs and dropping out of school on the part of the youth, who were trying to get to grips with a new society, and who were embarrassed by their parents who were having difficulty with the language and the customs in the new country and even women who went out to work and who studies also resulted in the fracturing of the structure of the patriarchal family. It should be noted here that the community has been exposed to extreme forms of discrimination in the fields of education, religion and society, which has also taken place against the background of their pigmentation. However, today, the internal forces in this community, the young generation that has studies at university in Israel, is forming a new generation of leadership, which is fighting for the integration of the members of the community in the Israeli society and for a significant change in the attitude of the minority in Israel who point at them and differentiate them.

The Project Principles

The journey of Ethiopian Jewry to Israel, via Sudan was a fundamental experience in the life of the community in Israel. This difficult journey encompasses the yearning for the Promised Land, the historical ambition to realize the ancient Jewish dream: to ascend to Jerusalem, to build and be rebuilt there, and to be reunified with the Jewish people, living in its own land. It is of great importance to the community that the difficulties of the "journey to Jerusalem" be told, the journey by foot, the hunger and the thirst, the stay in the refugee camps, and primarily the thousands of women, children and the elderly who dies along the way.

The community's pride which stems from the appreciation of its art, whatever forms it takes. The provision of an outstanding means of expression for the poets, the story tellers, the singers, the painters, the dancers, the clay artists and those who do needlework and so on. All this besides the crafts that have become extinct as the result of the migration, and which are no longer used , such as spinning, weaving, sewing and smithery

The participation of members of the community in all of the stages of thinking, planning and the execution of the experience from the starting point of difficulties in being absorbed, the language, earning a living, and the day to day acclimatization – and the friction that exists and which continues with some sectors of Israeli society. Together with this, the decision that has been taken is to emphasize the uniqueness of the community, its customs and its values, in order for them to be a source of pride and appreciation in the hearts of the younger members of the community with regards to the incredibly brave act of the trek to Israel undertaken by their parents and their cultural heritage.

The technical data that were provided to us by the municipality: 26 tall, rectangular pillars 100/400/30 cm in size, made of poured concrete, covered in ceramic tiles of 11/21 cm in size, giving a total of 185 tiles on each side. The tiles will be printed using an innovative digital technique, which ensures that the tiles will be highly tolerant to the climatic conditions. Each tile is numbered and has been cut as a piece in a puzzle, which is taken from the graphic design, so that each and every tile can be attached by hand. The project has a contracting company, an architect, a printing works and a performance contractor.

The Strategy

To set up a steering team, made up of members of the community, at the leadership level (representatives of institutions: municipal, governmental and others) and at the level of creativity: copywriting, photography, graphic design and painting. Setting up the team will enable us to touch and to understand things from the perspective of the members of the community themselves, and this will prevent us from producing evaluations and estimations. The most important things is to go in depth into the very details of the various subjects to be covered, coming from the evidence of the people who were partners in the design of the project and with the agreement of the representatives of the community, under the

supervision of office-holders from the municipality – all of this enable us produce integrity and to develop an authentic, sympathetic and encouraging perspective.

The Objective

To strengthen the Ethiopian community, to safeguard the tradition for the younger generation of the community and to expose the beauty of the culture of Ethiopian Jewry to the Israeli public, kindergarten children, schoolchildren and students.

The Concept

The installation of sustainable design, which produces content and tell the story.

Curatorial and Design Stage

Our work, as curators and designers, involved in collecting and composing together the collection has taken a long time, because of the difficulty involved in finding good quality documentary materials and also in selecting the subjects that will represent correctly  the community's cultural heritage. This complex process included the collection of books, newspapers, recordings, photographs and video films. The preparation of  these materials and receiving the approval of the steering committee in respect of their content.  The  preparation of the final text and the translation from Hebrew to English and Amharic, as well as proofreading it in all three languages. Improving the quality of old photographs, which were taken from collections and scans. Scanning and repainting all of the symbols and the illustrations in graphic software and accurately reproducing the authentic colors using the RGB CMYK method, for the seven main areas of content:

Before reaching Israel: the history, the culture, the customs, festivals, traditions, keeping to Judaism and the Zionist dream.

The Journey to Israel - the transit camps, 'Operation Moses' in 1984, 'Operation Solomon' in 1991 and absorption in Israel.

Arts and Crafts – theater, dance, drawings, pottery, music, painting, sculpturing, spinning, weaving, smithing, needlework and story telling.

Portraits – children and youth, from all of the Ethiopian communities in Israel.

The overall design – a conceptual combination of designs and images, texts and drawings, Ethiopian art, graphic documentation of facts and events, symbols and headings. The distribution of the columns in accordance with subject matter and form. The processing of the visual language for the entire exhibit as one unit.

Detailed design – the individual tile as a graphic item for visual reading, information on the elements and images coming together as one composition. The preparation of a plan for the distribution of the general imagery in accordance with the size of the tiles.

Adaption- Adapting the design to the numbered area of the tiles.

The Visual Language

Our goal was to use the visual expression of the community: the clothing, the symbols, and the creative works, in order to describe their rural life and their hard journey to Israel. The experiences of the community, which find expression in the musical instruments, the dancing and the signing, the use of the "Kabaro" (hand drums) and the "Masenqo", which is akin to a violin; The Ethiopian kitchen, in which food primarily consists of a form of dough combined with a stew of pulses, which is cooked over an open fire; The school and Torah studies –the experience of the Jew and his loyalty to Jewish tradition, the style in the "Cheder" and studies in the synagogue; The festival of “Sigd”, a Jewish experience which commemorates the ancient custom of making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The paintings are drawn in a stereotypic manner and their subjects are descriptions of day-to-day life, the scenery and texts. The colorfulness is expansive and saturating: blue, red, gold, green and purple, the outlines contain symbols and the illustrations are in black. The design of the symbols is simplistic and they transmit a simple and direct message: a lion, the synagogue, the Star of David, a flower, a tree or a bird, geometric patterns in the needlework and sewing decorations.

The Design Process

This stage includes the preparation of a few presentations to representatives of the community, the municipality and the steering committee. The preparation of the final design, the planning of each individual column – the distribution of the graphics in accordance with numbered tiles; the preparation of all of the pages for printing and supervision from above over the entire process of the preparation, the printing and the firing in an oven, the manual attachment of each tile in each page.  The name of the open museum  "Beta Israel", the logo, which was created with a considerable degree of meticulousness, from formal and colorful items, which typify the culture of this community.

In summary, despite the fact that our design company has carried out a few social-centered projects in the past 35 years, “Beta Israel” is the first time we found ourselves involved emotionally and spiritually in a mission. We sought to find ways to design, while respecting the other’s tradition of visual language, a method of empathetic exploration, devoid of criticism or judgment towards its arts and crafts. However, we believe that the real success of such a project is not in its design per se, but rather it is in bringing a marginal culture into focus, while creating opportunities for programs and activities for the benefit of its community — which is also benefit our 'glocal' culture.

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