Jeff Derksen

Global Shoe L .Relations of P~odug~r~nThln~s,and Architect E~~~i~s

Nike Whitey-Brian Kim Stefans

With the reach and flexibili f .global are in a constitutive relationshi~ ~T~:Pltal, the local and theof the local as much as th I l' p. global becomes a productIf the local is disarticulate~ ~ca IS~emad~ by the global" (Smith, 188).global, relationally its .rom tIe natI~nal and articulated to the

I' meaning as ocal 11 .

g obaI: they are linked in . 'fy' W.I come m terms of the

ha slgnI mg cham L ..

t at run-away capital h' ' et me put It thiS way's Irt you may be ' .local, a local which I'S . 1 . weanng was sewn in somenow artIcu ated I d' fE;was to the global due to thes I' n fa I erent way than it once

I Ie re atlons 0 pd' Th

oca computer I am ty' h' ro uctIon. e globall

Ipmg t ISon was d' d'fi'C

aptop "assembled in the US" fi ma e m I rerent locals: thewhile the keyboard is "asse~bl ;2~colmponents likely from Asia,NAFT'A v " ' e m a ocal made gl b 1M' ,. let, thmgs" (as Will S' 0 a, eXlCO,viawhere," and always ha h t~aw pOintS out) come from "else-

ve, so w y ISthe I 1 hto the global? Changes in th f1 oca now t ought in relatione ows or seanes fib l'part of this, the more d' :-. 0 go a Ism account for

Iense mterconnectIVI f'

cu tures as well accoun ts fi Th" ty 0 SItes, economies andseen as more than a space~~ part. d ISI~ter~o~nectivity has to be

fi'C . me con ensmg' It IS I'

erect IS taken as cause Wh'I . ' a meta epSlS,where. Ie matenal and 'bl hchanges have added t thO d . tangl e tec no logical

1. 0 IScon ensatIon and ...

rea Ignment of trade laws d I' conJ;ectIv Ity, It is the

h' an regu atIons fo th

w Ich are an additional caus NAFTA r e movement of capitalin a way that they were not per' . I connects Canada and Mexico. h eVlous y connected· h I I 'mto t e economic M .. I ' t e cu tura ISslid

. eXlco ISno onger d 'try with its specific histor' d pre ommantly another coun-

kles an geograph b .

et for profits. Thi ' h h .' y, lit It a competing mar-'. s ISt e omogenIzm efE; f hglobalIzation; the world' C ? ect 0 t e cultural logic of

IStransrormed mto h' hizones through uneven de 1 more Ig y competitive

Thve opment and b'l (fl 'bat kids wear Nike ' " mo I e eXI Ie) capital.

s m vancouver and Mexi C' ,cause. This antagonistic c ,'. co Ity ISeffect, not

Ionnectlvlty ISspa k d C d'

ose their jobs through . r e as ana Ian workersrun-away capItal h f: .maquiladora zone and th k w en actones relocate in the. ose wor ers labo d h I

tlon that neo-liberal glob I' b' ur un er t e ack of regula-a Ism rmgs. As histor h h'causes a connection better th . Y sows, not mg quitean antagonism.

Am I connected to Mexico, somehow, more closely due tothe keyboard I type on? This implies a decrease in the fetishism of thecommodity, yet the ideological effect of globalization is to obscurerelationships rather than revealing them-that is the ideological workof the mediascape and ideoscape (Appadurai). The local "emerges"from within the new relations of production-in which commoditiesand culture are produced. The local is then a site of overlap and con-tradiction, of antagonisms, of mediation and determinism, of"authenticity" and history as well as "the fleeting moment." The localoscillates within the discourses which (partially) constitute it, materi-alizing in one as it fades in another. Christian Hodler summarizes the

pluralization of meaning for the local:

What this multiple shrouding amounts to is a perspective inwhich local settings suddenly appear as crossovers of that whichis generated with that which is generating, of repressive withliberating, of stable with subversive moments. And [...J just ascontext elements seep into local conglomerates, local specificsrun continually through the context layerssurrounding them (I91).

Pluralized in this way, the local emerges as the effective site of agency,for applying specific meanings (which take in the global flows throughthe mediascape), It is (theoretically and methodologically) sensiblethen to find culture as "a whole way of life" (Raymond Williams)with access to the interconnectivity of globalism within the local.

But what would local cultural articulations look like? And ifthe local is the site of resistance as well as the site of overlap andmaterialization of globalization, could there be progressive and retro-grade localis.ms-and to downscale Balibar's designation regardingnationalisms-"Iocalisms of liberation" and "localisms of dominance?"

Arif Dirlik gives twO problems for "the local as a strategicconcept of resistance." Firstly, resistance at the local must refuse toreify the local as the site of "authenticity," for, given the overlaps andnetworks of determination, culture is "daily disorganized by the glob-al forces [...] that seek to reconstitute it, to assimilate it to the globalhomogenization that it seeks" (41). Secondly, the local must refuseassimilation into the global (41). Dirlik's cautions themselves fall intothe binary of local resistance where globalism is (despite its complexi-ties) reduced to a singular homogenizing force and where resistancehas to take shape somehow outside of the very strUcture it seeks torearticulate or resist. The theoretical contradiction is that globaliza-~ion is imagined.to cover the planet with its complex connectivity, yetm order to resist it, sites must be outside of it. Is resistance just disar-

ticulation?

These binaries are fruitfully discarded in the recent work ofBrian ]ungen. ]ungen's sculptural works, Prototype fOr a New Under-standing, do not try to separate the local and the global, the particularand the universal, but run them together without contradiction ordisjuncture, drawing on structural similarities. The Prototypes areNike Air ]ordans (late nineties models) disassembled into their con-stituent pieces and then remade into sculptures remarkably likeNorthwest Coast First Nations ceremonial masks. The disjuncturehere is not as great as it would seem, the graduated curve of the Niketrademarked swoop and the white, black and red colour scheme fitinto the existing semiotics of Northwest Coast art. And ]ungen'srefashioned Nike masks are recognizable as references to the historicalfigurative masks reproduced in anthropology textbooks: killer whale,raven, D'sonoqua (cannibal woman), frog. The Prototypes obviouslyevade any sense of authenticity of the local, aiming instead at repre-sentation and at spatiotemporal relations. The bad trope of anthro-pology (and carried over into postcolonial discourse), locates FirstNations culture in the past as a culture which had its peak "precon-tact" and just after. Yet ]ungen's Prototypes take Nike, the signifier ofthe most global product (and a symbol of the consumerist culturallogics of globalization), and rematerializes it as "postmodern"Northwest Coast Indian art which is shown in a gallery (present,urban) rather than a museum. The spatiotemporal management ofglobalism is cross-circuited by its own complex connectivity and con-juncture. The global is brought into the local, but into a local whichis imagined in the past and which is part of a non-consumerist econo-my. From the other side, First Nation's culture is brought forward,out of a fetishized authenticity and straight into the homogenizingflow of Nike. This is not a tactic of resistance seeking the outside ofglobalism's ideology, rather it is a daring strategy which brings FirstNation's culture into globalism on a symbolic level in order to reartic-ulate the discourse of globalization. ]ungen breaks the autonomy ofspatiotemporal relations within globalization and runs the variousscapes or flows through one another in a manner which does not per-mit deterministic binaries of space and time, of local and global,authentic and constructed.

What of the different forms of labour materialized anddematerialized in these protOtypes? Nike, famous (notorious) for itsbad labour practices, makes its Air ]ordans in South Korea, one of itsmore fixed factories (Air ]ordans require more skill to assemble andthus this factory has not been relocated as others have [see Hitchcock]).Nike's relations of production are a model of complexity and mobility:

efor a New Understanding #5Brian Jungen: Prototyp . " 27"x5".1999 Nike Air Jordans, halr, 22 x

d' #8Brian ]ungen, Prototypefor. a New Understan mg1999 Nike Air Jordans, half.

Subcontractors scour emer in .teristics [cheap female labo~r, gh:~o~~mle~ for the usual charac-of labour organizations etcJ p nat!on~ government, lackget raw materials in and th' fi ..~~d~ufftcJent Infrastructure torequisite business cycles (H~ IhnlSek product out within theHC coc , 129). .

In short Nik ..,, e maxJmlzes Its profits by usin h "dcan give it, The labour of] , I jg tea vantages" globalismh ungens cu tura prod ' . b

t e opposite end of the scale D' I d' uctlon IS0 viouslyatvitrines, the prototypes re 'j hlsPdaye In the armatures and in glass

(, yea t e econst ' I b

the cut seams, the cleaved I " ructIve a our of ]ungenthe South Korean work .g uheJOins) as well as the original labour of

W'II' ers In t e number of d II lam Wood reads th ., seams an g ue joins,

ese economIes conJuncturally and speculatively:

AI; well, the masks are infu d 'h thduction of the shoes is se f ~Jt ~ Ju:0wledge that pro-global economy [ ] J' part ,0 t e ~unlshlng conditions of a

. ... n servIce to FIrst W Id CThe Implication is that nati I'k or orporate wealth,"Third World" identi ' ~es I e ]unge~ represent pockets ofthe Northwest Coast ~~ t, e so-called FIrSt World, and that

. c In museum masks dart In contemporary exam I b an commercialcontingent (19). pes are oth historically rooted and

Wood hints at the spatiotemporal and 'd 'in ]ungen's prototypes Th d' I eologlcal crossings embedded

. e commo Ity ~ , h' f"turned inside out as the lb' I ,etls Ism 0 Nlke ISbluntly. d a our InVOved In th d'ISma e visible: this aesth t' 'd I e pro uctIon of the shoe'd e IC I eo ogy of] h bI eology of globalizatio h' hi' ungen t e 0 verse of the'd I n, w IC c oaks Its m I ' II eo ogical effect of gl b r ' u tip e connections Thismarkably, the masks ::ata l~al~lOnhopens a role for the cultural. Re-

erIa Ize t e dis dglobal and the local I' courses an relations of the, as specu atlons and a fi

standing, they open these I' . s prototypes or new under-

dre atIons In a non d' d

eterministic way. re uctIve an non-

At a completely different scale and ecoto a moment of retrograde local is "I r nomy, I want to movecommon yet pointed criti f : or oca Ism of dominance." Ais that it found resistance ~ue 0 ht e exbcessesof cultural studies work

, veryw ere ut effe t hresIstance of the subJ'ect' d' c now ere, Micro-lve pro uctIve consum' fan easy target at this point d I ptIon 0 mass culture is

I'b an want to link' h'd

neo- I eral globalization h h It to tel eology ofh' rat er t an to a (cult I d'umanIties) disciplinary str 1 Th 1 ura stu les versus the

of resistance can go b dughge. ,e ocal (and subjective) as a site

Ieyon t e worrIes of b '

rep ication of the ideology fib I' . a sorption to the activef . 0 g 0 a Izatlon Th ' hi'

o resIstance and glob l' " . at IS, t e re atlOnshipa IzatIon IS not oppositional. From Appadurai,

here is a statement typical of that relationship:

The megarhetoric of developmental modernization (economicgrowth, high technology, agribusiness, schooling, militarization)in many countries is still with us, But it is often punctuated,interrogated, and domesticated by the micronarratives of mm,television, music, and other expressive forms, which allowmodernity to be rewritten more as vernacular globalization andless as a concession to large-scale national and international

policies (10),

The shift here is that the vernacular does not resist globalization, butforces it into a concession, But this improvisatory resistance which isrewriting modernity can also be flipped so that uneven developmentand the breakdown of social systems can be read as oppositional, evenprogressive, In the right-wing technological determinism magazine,Wired, a feature article on world-superstar architect Rem Koolhaasillustrates this reactive, absorptive flip. Coming back from Nigeria,Koolhaas and his researcher wrote of the "improvisational urbanismthe capital's citizens were creating from the remnants of corrupt and

unfinished development projects":

'We resist the notion that Lagos represents an African city enroute to becoming modern,' the group reported on its return,'Rather, we think it represents an extreme and paradigmaticcase study of a city at the forefront of globalizing modernity,This is to say that Lagos is not catching up with us, Rather, wemay be catching up with Lagos. (Wolf, 312-13),

Modernity, spatiotemporal relations and First World/Third Worldrelations are turned upside down in a carnavalesque globalism, with adiscursively bold yet politically reactionary gesture, For this is not awarning sign of bad modernity (or the second modernity of globalism)but a reading of uneven development and social system breakdown asopportunities for a new urbanism: "Dangerous breakdowns of orderand infrastructure in Nigeria, however, are often transformed intoproductive urban forms: stalled traffic turns into an open-air market,defunct railroad bridges become pedestrian walkways" (Wolf 313).Resistance is given a value as production, but this valourization dropsaway the relations of production, in a sense, fetishizing necessity forresistance, The neo-liberal value of individual initiative over stateinfrastructure is fused with the discourse of local-and particularly-Third World resistance. A site in the past in the uneven and brutalteleology of modernization is now the global future as nation-statesare slid through history as if indexes such as life expectancy, access to

health care and education, and per capita income are themselvesanachronistic for locating a nation in space and time.

Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of the Global.Public Worlds, vol.1. Minneapolis, U of Minnesota P, 1996.

Balibar, Ettiene, and Immanuel Wallerstein. Race, Nation, Class:Ambiguous Identities. London: Verso, 1991.

Dirlik, Arif. "Global in the Local." Global/Local.'Cultural Production andthe Transnational Imaginary. Eds. Rob Wilson and WimalDissanayake. Durham: Duke UP,1996. 21-45.

Hitchcock, Peter. Oscillate Wildly: Space, Body, and Spirit of MillenialMaterialism. Introduction, Stephen E. Cullenberg. Minneapolis:U of Minnesota P, 1999.

Hoeller, Christian. "Local Non-Sites, Non-Local Sites." Sharawadgi. Eds.Christian Mayer and Mathias Poledna. Baden: Felsenvilla, 1999.

Jungen, Brian. Brian ]ungen. Essay, Reid Shier. Vancouver: Charles H.Scott Gallery. 2000.

Smith, Neil. "The Satanic Geographies of Globalization: UnevenDevelopment in the 1990s." Public Culture 10(1),1997: 169-89.

Straw, Will. "The Thingishness of Things." In! ] Visible Culture Issue 2(1999). http://www.rochester.edu.in_ visible_culture/issue2/.

Wolf, Gary, "The Unmaterial World." wtredMagazine Gune 2000): 308-19.Wood, William. "Access Code and Avoided Objects in the Works of

Brian Jungen, Josiah McElheny and Cornelia Parker."Parachute 99 Ouly, Aug., Sept. 2000): 12-19.

Eileen Myles

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