Cultures have a multitude of manifestations, including language, art, science, music,
communication, sport and so much more. For January’s Categorically Not! we’ll explore
multi-cultural aspects of photography, medicine and engineering, citizen journalism
in war zones and, yes, “chess boxing.” A multicultural photography exhibition, which
is part of Pacific Standard Time, will be on display.
Organized by Sheila Pinkel, "Refocus: Multicultural Focus" is a cross-cultural exhibition
of photography which is a reprise of the “Multicultural Focus” exhibition mounted
at Los Angeles Municipal Gallery Barnsdall Park in 1981. This 1981 show explored
the way the concept of art is manifested by people from diverse cultural communities
and asks the larger question about whether we can truly understand art at any historic
moment without looking at the work done by people from diverse cultural communities.
The meta question, then, is whether this approach becomes an apt paradigm for the
democratization of art history at any historic moment.
After visiting Auschwitz and seeing photos taken by the inmates themselves, former
USC journalism student Andrew McGregor founded The Tiziano Project, a not-for-profit
that teaches people living in war-torn places like DR Congo, Somalia, and Iraq how
to tell the world their stories while creating jobs. The work is obviously stressful,
so as a personal PTSD cure McGregor started “chess boxing”—a “multicultural” sport
in which where competitors alternate chess with boxing (and win either by checkmate
or knockout); he’s currently North America’s champion. To help fund Tiziano, he also
co-founded Graphation Comics, a national film festival and comic company.
Physician, scientist and engineer, USC’s Terrence Sanger knows what’s required to
communicate among three very different fields: understanding that each has its own
appropriate yet unique method of rational thought. If your car mechanic were trained
in evidence-based medicine, Terry explains, he might replace your battery because
70% of all car failures are caused by battery failures. If your doctor was trained
as an engineer, she might replace your liver just to see if that fixes the problem
or not. If both were trained as scientists, they might recruit 100 cars and 100
people to see who, on average, moves faster.
