Andrew Dewdney and Victoria Walsh interview Yudhishthir Raj Isar (28 October 2010)
Yudhishthir Raj Isar is an Independent writer, public speaker and advisor on cultural policy issues. Former Director of Cultural Policies and of the International Fund for the Promotion of Culture at UNESCO, Isar was also Executive Secretary of the World Commission on Culture and Development (1994-95). In 1986-87, Executive Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Maître de Conférences at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) and a visiting professor at other universities in Europe and the United States. He is co-founder and co-editor of The Cultures and Globalization series published by SAGE (2007-11) and a member of the Board of the Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA), London, since 1994.
Questions Ssent in advance:
Context
- As way of introduction, can you tell us something about your background and the context in which your interest in cultural policy developed?
- How do you understand and relate your academic study of cultural policy to your direct involvement in the public realm of culture working with arts organisations?
Iniva
- When did you become involved with Iniva in London and how did this come about?
- What was Iniva’s status at the time?
- How did your international perspective differ or coincide with UK colleagues at Iniva?
Cultures and Globalisation series
- Taking into consideration the following quote from Stuart Hall which appears in Volume 3 of your publication series Cultures and Globalisation [SAGE] what is your response to Stuart’s view that the very concept of globalisation expresses a contradiction between the processes of cultural expression and those of other forms of power, namely the economic?
- In the globalization 'game' there are no absolute winners and losers. Neither homogenisation nor diversity can capture its contradictory movement and character. The essays and papers collected here offer, from a variety of perspectives, a rich exploration of creativity and innovation, cultural expressions and globalization. This volume of essays, in all their diversity of contents and theoretical perspectives, demonstrates the rich value of this paradoxical, oxymoronic approach.
The abstract for this same volume of Cultures and Globalisations contains three questions, could you offer us here a short answer to them:
- What impacts does globalization have on cultural creativity and innovation?
- How is the evolving world 'map' of creativity related to the drivers and patterns of globalization?
- What are the relationships between creative acts, clusters, genres or institutions and cultural diversity?
Multiculturalism, Heritage, Diversity and Transnationalism
- In the UK there is an incipient argument which runs along the political lines of left to right which poses Multiculturalism against One Nation and Heritage. What is your Internationalist perspective on this?
- In our Tate Encounters research we recognised the limits of the cultural politics of Multiculturlisim in reinforcing the binary of the margin and the core. We have begun to explore whether transculturalism is the logical next step for progressive cultural activity. Does this concept hold a currency in your own thinking?
- In Britain Cultural Diversity was taken up as the battle cry of Multiculturalism by New Labour, but the cultural policies which have attempted to increase cultural diversity in forms of participation in public culture have been criticised on both sides of the political divide as instrumentalist. How does the notion of diversity play out in international contexts with which you are familiar?
Nation, Identity and Global mediascapes
- In the paper you submitted to this year's International Conference on Cultural Policy Research in Finland ['Cults of Heritage, Memory and Identity: Policy Challenges'], you wrote about the impact of digital technology on heritage in relation to how memory is mediated and constructed – can you say more about this and your comment (p.8) that "in many cases, the 'nation' is no longer the principal site or frame of memory."?