Lecture 1

Q1. What is art to you?

Art is a symbol of expression of the artist that can be kept through a physical medium especially when talking about art before the 2000s. However, with the development of modern art, art can be able to bring about different experience and reactions from the intended audience. Personally, I feel that art is subjective, it had been too loosely used by many to descript weird and unusual occurrences. However, that does not put one’s work as art. Since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, art is only considered art in the eyes of whoever who can value it and also be able to educate others around him or her about the value of the art piece.

In today’s, the value of art had been tainted by the people who has made art into monetary industry. I feel that the monetary value of an art piece have been influencing people in the wrong way to believe that art has a trend or to be directed in a certain way.

Q2. Does colonialism exist today? If it is, in what form?

Colonialism has evolved ever since the 2000s into a new form now labelled as neo-colonialism. This new practice is through the manipulation of developing countries using methods of capitalism and cultural imperialism. Developing countries such as African nations are one of the major targets of neo-colonialism in this current time and age.

The reason how neo-colonialism is still prevalent currently is due to the dependency of the developing nations on the first world countries. The whole system of neo-colonialism is built with the model of wealthy countries at the centre and poorer countries at the periphery. Furthermore, with easy transportation and fast paced information transferring, multinational corporations are able to enter newer markets much more easily. These companies is able to influence the developing nations through humanitarian, environmental and ecological causes. However, not all influences on the developing countries are positive as these multinational companies may exploit works or ignore environmental regulations.

One of the earliest example of neo-colonialism happened in the cold war where the USSR (United Soviet Socialist Republic) and the USA (United States of America) fought a proxy war fought by client states in the decolonised countries as they are accused of practising neo-colonialism in their imperial and hegemonic pursuits.

Current day representations of colonialism are Sino-African relations where trade between china and African nations have increased by 600% during the past 15 years. China not only control the trade in some African nations by having 70% the latter total exports. Korea, on the other hands had be acquiring lands from Madagascar for agriculture lands by outsourcing their multinational corporations there.

Thus, there is distinctive presences of colonialism today through the economic flow of wealthier countries to their poorer counterparts.