INGRAINED CULTURE
Culture is an ungraspable enigma, one that is felt but not measured. There are clear hubs of creativity like Los Angeles, New York and Paris that permeate culture and expression. Media is a force of undeniable influence that can span the globe. Societies trade and exchange culture when they collaborate, and distribute culturally significant works that speak to the audience of those generations and paradigm.
Culture can be a force for good, or a tool of coercion. We often get an ingenuine impression when culture is used as a means of controlling the identity of people and societies, often exposed in stereotypes and clichés. The diversification of culture is essential to a healthy culture, one that is able to transform, evolve and adapt to society and norms. Like a family's genepool, if not enough exchange of 'cultural DNA' is used, redundancy leads to stagnation and less healthy development. Diseased ideologies can take hold of a majority of attention when there are no other options.
Human Society Series: Change in Ingrained Culture (Prescribed Burns), 2021. Printed media collage, #"x #".
We all have noticed how media has become more centralized into fewer and fewer platforms, as well as more decisive and less open to middle-ground thinking. This is a characteristic of our society and the culture of media in a global world of constantly growing information. It is like an environment that slowly simmers to a boil, but at increments you don't notice until suddenly you realize you're in a toxic surrounding.
WOODLAND PRESCRIBED BURN
The danger of cultural hegemony is in the blinded inattention to other sources of creativity. As the undergrowth of volatile alternative culture and media grows, the established players don't notice the potential hazards and competition. By tending to and integrating these new ideas allows the forest that is our culture to be diverse. The tallest trees (or biggest corporations) may have no concern for the ground floor of a forest because their bark is thick and they stand tall above the rest. But if the undergrowth is not integrated into the ecology of culture properly, or subjected to prescribed burns and maintained, it will quickly grow to put even the largest trees at risk. Then, when it is too late, a new paradigm can catch... and the flames will engulf the whole structure and leave to drastic change.
Hollywood has long been the staple of cinema entertainment, but it is at risk of destruction. Media sources like podcasts, Youtube, streaming services, and the metaverse will become rising adversaries to traditional media which often holds a monopoly on cultural standards. The precarious position of corporations putting profits over art and culture means they risk turning the whole industry on its side if they do not incorporate new thinking. It's like the way the Impressionists changed the paradigm of art from culture restricted to portraits, landscapes and still-lifes...to a more inclusive and varied subject matter. New technological insight is allowing user-created and interactive media to challenge the contemporary paradigm of passive 2D media that follows tried and true storyboards and themes.
This collage is a reaction to the volatile environment that contemporary art industries like big media corporations have built in this increasingly restricted society and produces culture that only focuses on maintaining majority influence. It relates the environment of their culture to that of the physical landscape, often neglected and presenting potential hazard caused by certain mismanagements. It is not a criticism of the city, but of the culture of pseudo-diversification led by major corporations. Mining people like resources, the environment will not always be stable.
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