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CULTURAL TRANSFORMATIONNikolaos-Filippos Kalantzopoulos

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CULTURAL TRANSFORMATIONNikolaos-Filippos Kalantzopoulos

No one is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman, orMuslim, or American are no more than starting points, which if followed into actual experience for only a moment are quickly left behind. [...] Just as human beings make their own history, they also make their cultures and ethic identities.1

Nowadays, an era characterized by globalization and population movements, nourishes that transformation to occur. Societies are in an on going process of cultural interaction. That cultural transformation has obvious signs in a country like England. A country in which, due to its colonial policy and economic growth, many immigrants, with different cultural identi-ties, come for a better future. Hence, minorities are trying to preserve their cultural identity and simultaneously be part of a different society, a mass with different origins and distinctive traditions.

Such contrastive interaction of cultural identities will be discussed, using the Jamme Masjid mosque in Brick Lane, London, as a starting point.

1 Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage, 1994, p. 407

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Introduction

Edward Said claims that ‘’there are no homogenous identities.’’2 According to his notion then, if all human relations are symbiotic, then cultures and identities are based on a social interaction. Population movements, forced or voluntary, along with their culture is, as Azade Seyhan comments on ‘’the culture of exile’’, part and parcel of postwar, postindustrial and postcolonial era.3 Thus, hybridity as a result of migration and reshaping identity is not something new, but took place long before the postcolonial era. Hybridization then could be described as the final product of ‘’deculturalisation’’, acculturalization’’ and reculturalisation emerging during the interaction of different cultures and the necessity of adapting to chang-ing circumstances.

Monica Ali interprets the essence of hybridization as a result of living between two worlds and as a consequence of being rootless, leading in a condition of having multiple identities, which are never fully established, but constantly being made.4

Culture

According to Noland the body is not only culturally shaped but also ‘supports yet inflects culturally-legible signification’, while culture equally is ‘both embodied and challenged through corporeal performance.’5 Lined with Noland’s approach then, the landscape could only be defined as a dynamic space, a man-orientated system, functioning and evolving, according, not just to natural conditions, but to human-made needs of a community.6 While informed by past conditions and experiences, they enable us to cope with changing situa-tions in the future.7

Culture acts as a leaver in transforming the body-focused actions into conscious aware-ness. It helps communicate these experiences to others, so a socio-cultural unity could be informed. It’s a process of cultivation or improvement, aiming in the refinement of the individual.

Culture acts as a reflection of the values and beliefs of the leaders, current and previous,

2 Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage, 1994, p. 43 Seyhan, Azade. “Neither Here/Nor There: the Culture of Exile.” Writing Outside the Nation.Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001, p. 44 Ali, Monica. Brick Lane. London: Black Swan, 20035 Noland, C. Agency and Embodiment – Performing Gestures/Producing culture, Cambridge: Harvard university Press, 2009, p 2,206 Jackson, J.B. The Vernacular Landscape, Landscape Meanings and Values, Allen and Unwin, London, 1986, p. 687 Bourdieu, P. Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977, p. 83

CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION: Nikolaos-Filippos Kalantzopoulos

and as Barbara Allen posits, culture is constituted more by what people ‘’do’’ and less by what they appear or ‘’see’’. It’s the actions, what people do that defines them as part of that place.8

Transformation

Notions of place and identity were once tied strongly to the community, in which one lived. As Kazano articulates, body-based practice brings ideas and values into action, thereby (re) producing them.9 As a result, cultural transformation begins with the personal transformation of the leader.According to Salman Rushdies observations, the effect of mass migration is the creation of new types of human beings. People who root themselves in ideas rather than places be-cause there is no place to call home.10 Therefore, we have to understand the importance of the body, and the human being as an extension, not just as a passive mean for witnessing cultural experiences, but rather as an active participant. It is an entity, capable of experienc-ing and articulating that experience and not just a primary mean of interpreting it into actions. Thus, place and iden-tity are integral for the body, as a unity, in the challenge of accepting the given and pursuing its own sense of agency.As a result, structuring and reshaping our societies around ourselves and ourselves within them, remains crucial to articulate the key infrastructure of a transforming community.

Brick Lane Serving as Cultural Provider

According to Bhabba, people are not simply part of some larger imposed conceptual body, and through everyday life turn abstract space into place.11 That stands as an ideal definition to describe Brick Lane, a street in the east end of London. A street best understood as not transformable, but as creative and generative. A place, in which the physicality of the urban space is not distorted through a process of fragmentation and homogenization. It acts as an urban supermarket, in which the identity of the occupants is purely linked, despite national-ity, beliefs and tasks. It’s a homogenization of the unknown - the different - and the ability of the society to merge inside the community, in order to articulate a piece of its own identity

8 Allen, B. On Performative Regionalism‟, Architectural Regionalism – Collected Writings on Place, Identity, Modernity, and Tradition, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2007, p. 4219 Kawano, S. Ritual Practice in Modern Japan – Ordering People, Place and Action, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005, p. 410 Rushdie, Salman. ”The Location of Brazil.” Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism,1981-1991. London: Penguin/Granta, 1991, p. 124-12511 Bhabha, H. ‘DissemiNation: time, narrative, and the margins of the modern nation’, In H. Bhabha (ed.) Nation and Narration, Abingdon: Routledge, 1990, p. 294

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and the ethos of its surroundings.

Brick Lane’s hybridity stems from being positioned between two different cultures. The eastern and the western. And the attempts to reconcile tradition with modernity, the new with the old, the familiar with the unknown. Emerging from that diversity as Roderick suggests, people are so dislocated from any normative sense of place it is argued, that individuals may have difficulties in locating a sense of belonging.12

On the other hand, the majority of people inhabiting the area don’t have much in common, thus, simple actions, everyday routines - because we are referring to a majority of Muslims could also be described as rituals - infuse a sense of order into daily life and enable people to fashion a strategic context for interaction and appropriation.13 Hence, the users along with the occupants themselves have developed an understanding that place is not fixed or determined, but rather it can be a site of agency in which ideas can both be contested and contrasted.

The Mosque as a Meeting Point

Alongside Brick Lane, in the east end of London, is located a Georgian style architecture building named Jamme Masjid, better known today as the Brick Lane Mosque. Built during the 18th century, is one of the oldest buildings in East London. In 1743 was first established as a protestant chapel by London’s French Huguenot community. Later, in 1809, became a Wesleyan chapel bought by the ‘’London Society for promoting Christianity amongst the Jews’’. In 1819 it became a Methodist chapel. During the late 19th century, it was converted to the Machzike Adass or ‘’Spitalfields Great Synagogue.’’ Finally, during the 1970’s the area of Brick Lane was populated mainly by Bangladeshis. Many found work in textile trade. Thus, the building was bought to accommodate their needs and after six years it reopened as a mosque.14

Looking at the Brick Lane Mosque, as a cultural product, the notion of the hybrid culture in an ongoing process of transformation is very strong. Yet, it remains very interesting how people interpret the space every time, according to their own needs. Without a distinctive element, how the believers confer their own identity and to what extent the building is being identified through its use and social factors in every step of its unique transformation?Under Kawano’s approach, through ritualization meaning becomes emplaced in a setting as one comes to associate, know and remember it as the site of this ritual.15 If that is the case

12 Roderick, L. ‘Deciphering Home: An Integrative Historical Perspective’,in D. Benjamin (ed.) The Home: Words, Interpretations, Meanings and Environments, Avebury: Aldershot, 1995, p. 6113 Kawano, S. Ritual Practice in Modern Japan – Ordering People, Place and Action, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005, p. 814 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick_Lane_Mosque15 Kawano, S. Ritual Practice in Modern Japan – Ordering People, Place and Action, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005

then, the mosque in Brick Lane does not impose as a finalized structure, a product ready to be consumed, but rather as a mean to make sense of, understand it according to our own needs, and operate within the context it provides. 16

Hence, it is essential to search deeper, for the reason of this transformation in order to purely understand the significance of the hybrid culture and how it adopts to evolving circumstances. Emphasizing on the last four decades to understand how a conservative reli-gion, as the Muslims, ‘’modernize’’ their principals to suit the needs of their surroundings. 17

Why in Brick Lane

After the regeneration of London in 2000, artists, students, and “hipsters” started moving to this area, as cheaply rented warehouses, mainly used by textile factories, acted as a make shifting staging solution for the alternative population of London. Brick Lane, and the mosque as a crown jewel of this composition, faced an ‘’invasion’’ of different cultures and different religions as an extension. Thus, the mosque, the focal point for the Muslim com-munity in London, with century’s old tradition and 21st century technology fused to further the aims and beliefs of the community. Moving with the times, the mosque started to provide activities for Muslims and non.

This type of interaction, between different and some times opposing cultural traditions, is as Stephen Yao classifies called cross-fertilization. ‘‘When elements or features of different tra-ditions come into contact in such a way as to generate new possibilities of meaning in one or another of the contributing cultures, while still depicting the unique particularity of both.’’18

However, this does not mean that Muslims reject their cultural heritage and cut themselves off from their tradition. Western civilization, found in a place called Brick Lane, inhabited by westerns as well, offers them possibilities they did not have at home such as the freedom of choice. They have their space, when it comes to deciding their own decisions and expecta-tions. Certainly, they still wrestle between their ‘’experienced’’ environment and their familiar one.

Observing the Brick Lane Mosque as a point of reference, we can say with confidence that cultures are changing and adapting to external or internal forces. Consuming orientated cultures are emerging through the social interaction, due to the fact that communities are no longer fixed. Things like TV, the Internet or Facebook in particular, are trying to add some sort of identity, not to the city as the people, but to the globe as a community. After that, the

16 This diagram shows the relationship between the mosque and the road, allow with the flow of people cross-ing the road17 This diagram shows the growth of the Islamic communities around the mosque, acting as a point of reference for the interaction with the other communities18 Yao, Stephen. “Taxonomizing Hybridity.” Textual Practice 17.2, 2003, p. 357

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ethos and the uniqueness of the society, on a theoretical basis, have been leveled. Then standardization comes.

Within this context, it is problematic to articulate a definitive sense of national identity. The situation occurring is in a sense multicultural rather than any in particular. Analyzing the given situation thoroughly, the identity of the mosque and its surroundings, we can tell that it does not evolve from naturally occurring processes, but, instead, it is fabricated by the contrasting majority inhabiting this space. Thus, we have to consider, to what extent the space allows us to situate ourselves in it and how we orientate in accordance to the cultural transformation that took place over the centuries. Probably, key here is the act of emplace-ment; while nature of the space may/will inform how we interpret it and operate within it, as active participants, we are not reduced to merely responding deterministically to what the space objectively give to us. In contrast to some interpretation of affordance, the meaning of the space is not solely latent within it and realized simply through our reaction to it; Rather we subjectively emplace upon the environment our own understanding built up through prior experiences, beliefs and values.19 In so doing, the inhabitant gradually re-schematizes the place in his own mind, being able to identify it as a ‘’stage’’ for his ritualized act.

Part of the puzzle, to understand the importance of the ritual, is to state the correlation be-tween the ritual and the ‘’safe’’ place it is provided as a stepping stone, for people to act with confidence in a wider context. Hence, ritualized practices, once internalized, are capable of being strategically manipulated and can respond to new conditions of place, time, technol-ogy and socio cultural relationships.20

Being able to generate a sense of place and a sense of identity, not just by the physicality of the space, but through the emplacement of a well-conceived and structured act, is essen-tial to convey a cognitive representation onto space. Bodies and places are corporealized through the embodied spatial practices.21 Such notably spatial conception is reflected inside the mosque. Space is not approached as the visual and intellectual context it provides, it is not encountered as a space of real existence, but rather as an area which allow every diversity to be staged.

Having the ability to transform and evolve over time, the mosque’s hybrid nature was struc-tured on the ability of the occupants to convey the importance of the individual and the body as a canvas, to frame a sense of place, identity and even ownership.

Bearing in mind that history does not repeat itself but human nature does, it is really crucial to conceive how this transformation, so effectively, took place over that period of time. Humanity, having witnessed the cruelty of human nature, should stand as an obstacle in

19 Gibson, J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 197920 Bell, C. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 10721 Nast, H. and Pile, S. (1998) ‘Everydayplacesbodies’, in H. Nast and S. Pile, (eds) Places through the Body, London: Routledge, 1998, p. 408

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that cultural evolution through time. Rather, examples like the Brick Lane mosque act as a yardstick on displaying how to establish an emotionally safe relationship between men and their total environment by serving as organizers of activity and knowledge, as material for common memories which bind a group together and as spatial referents for senses of familiarity.22

Rendering that approach, the heterogeneity of the mosque is the ‘’product’’ occurred between the interaction of the body, as found in a faithful community of Muslims, and the di-vers landscape of Brick Lane. Hence, the part of the ritual, as a justified act of the everyday, forms a contemporary approach of people’s routine. It articulates architecture as the creator of shelter and the primary constructing force within the built environment. It overcomes the attitude of architecture becoming two dimensional, as buildings are not used as visual commodities. Rather, they are used as confluences to understand society, atmosphere and attitude among the inhabitants, maintaining a more pervasive identity than the two dimen-sional image they convey.

As architecture speaks to bigger ideas through social production, we have to understand that space is in a constant dynamic process of change, merging the gab between the indi-vidual and the collective. Thus, we can assume that bodies don’t exist in a vacuum; rather body and place mutually constitute each other through the embodiment and emplacement of cultural beliefs and meaning.23

Considering the capacity of social change found in architecture, we could note that the area of Brick Lane is formulated to break down divisions and barriers. Spaces like the Brick Lane mosque are encouraging interaction in a sense of community. Thus, an inclusive community is being formed, with members feeling part of a unity, a society, therefore, having much bet-ter chances of insuring a sustainable future, because as Kuma suggests, spatial-forms exist only as a phenomenon, which is in the act of reconstruction.24

“Denationalisation” of Identity

With highly mobile societies, as Ian Chambers points out, it seems impossible to avoid hybridization, as interaction with other societies and their cultures are natural results of mov-ing between different countries.25 But, cultures adopting and evolving to new circumstances is something that should not be linked to the nationality or the historic dynamic every society

22 Hart, R. and Moore, G. (1973) ‘The Development of Spatial Cognition: A Review’, in R. Downs and D. Stea (eds) Image and Environment – Cognitive Mapping and Spatial Behaviour, London: Edward Arnold, 1973, p. 27423 Kawano, S. Ritual Practice in Modern Japan – Ordering People, Place and Action, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005, p. 7,7024 Kuma, K. ‘Dissolution of Objects and Evasion of the City’, Japan Architect, Vol. 38 (Summer), 2000, p. 5825 Chambers, Ian. Migrancy, Culture, Identity. London: Routledge, 1994, p. 74

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possesses. Sometimes, as with Steven Reich26, it may just be a ‘’debate’’ on how to explore musical concepts with audible processes, highlighting a slow harmonic rhythm.

It might be the reinterpretation of the old while pursuing the new. That gap, Steven Reich is trying to narrow in his new project, “Radio Rewrite”27. With his violins and cello, he is trying to define a consuming orientated culture by recanting the fragments. He tries to produce knowledge, through the production of raw material, to influence our culture and to allocate doubt, as is the only act that can take us, intellectually, further. Epilogue

Deficiencies fabricate fecund situations. Investigating the correlation between different cultures, we can support that through the centuries multiple interactions shaped them in the way they are perceived today. That investigation was based on the journey of how a symbol of Islam is located in the most alternative part of London. Hence, we can clarify that cultural transformation is not only possible, but it is what shaped cultures in the form we know them today, enriching their fundamental aspects to cope with the demanding requirements of our era, helping the human race in the process of evolving. That is the dialogue of immortality, people should have.

“the area dividing the brain and the soul is affected in many ways by experience - some loose all mind and become soul: insane. some loose all soul and become mind: intellectual. some lose both and become: accepted”

-Charles Bukowski

26 Steven Reich is an American composer who, along with La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Philip Glass, is one of the founders and pioneer composer of the minimal music movement, found during the 60’s in New York. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Reich27 http://www.nowness.com/day/2013/3/7/steve-reich-radio-rewrite

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hart, R. and Moore, G. ‘The Development of Spatial Cognition: A Review’, in R. Downs and D. Stea (eds) Image and Environment – Cognitive Mapping and Spatial Behaviour, London: Edward Arnold, 1973

Bourdieu, P. Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1977

Gibson, J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979

Jackson, J.B. The Vernacular Landscape, Landscape Meanings and Values, Allen and Unwin, London, 1986

Bhabha, H. ‘DissemiNation: time, narrative, and the margins of the modern nation’, In H. Bhabha (ed.) Nation and Narration, Abingdon: Routledge, 1990

Rushdie, Salman. ”The Location of Brazil.” Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criti-cism,1981-1991. London: Penguin/Granta, 1991

Bell, C. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992

Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage, 1994

Chambers, Ian. Migrancy, Culture, Identity. London: Routledge, 1994

Roderick, L. ‘Deciphering Home: An Integrative Historical Perspective’,in D. Benjamin (ed.) The Home: Words, Interpretations, Meanings and Environments, Avebury: Aldershot, 1995

Nast, H. and Pile, S. ‘Everydayplacesbodies’, in H. Nast and S. Pile, (eds) Places through the Body, London: Routledge, 1998Kuma, K. ‘Dissolution of Objects and Evasion of the City’, Japan Architect, Vol. 38 (Sum-mer), 2000

Seyhan, Azade. “Neither Here/Nor There: the Culture of Exile.” Writing Outside the Nation. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001Yao, Stephen. “Taxonomizing Hybridity.” Textual Practice 17.2, 2003

Ali, Monica. Brick Lane. London: Black Swan, 2003.

Tonkiss, F. Space, the City and Social Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005

Kawano, S. Ritual Practice in Modern Japan – Ordering People, Place and Action, Honolulu:

University of Hawai’i Press, 2005

Allen, B. ‘’On Performative Regionalism‟, Architectural Regionalism – Collected Writings on Place, Identity, Modernity, and Tradition, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2007

Brown, R. ‘Redefining the Edge’, in N. AlSayyad (ed.) Reinventing Traditions for the Modern World - Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Working Paper Series, 211: 1 – 24; Berkeley: IASTE, 2008

Noland, C. Agency and Embodiment – Performing Gestures/Producing culture, Cambridge: Harvard university Press, 2009

Brown, R. ‘The Elusiveness of Culture’, in P. Beacock, et. al. (eds.) Engaging in Architectural Education, London: London Metropolitan University, 2011

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick_Lane_Mosque

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Reich

http://www.nowness.com/day/2013/3/7/steve-reich-radio-rewrite

IMAGE REFERENCES

All rights reserved to Nikolaos-Filippos Kalantzopoulo.

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