CHARTING NATIONALITY: Exploring the Maintenance of National Cultures
The feeling of belonging to a group is a fundamental human need, is this changing with the increase of progressive individualism?Countries nowadays are struggling to define their national identity in the face of globalization, putting up an almost automatic resistance to change, often resulting in proliferating narrow heterogeneous ideals. Yet the value of fragmented individual cultural production as a basis for stable integration is being vastly underestimated. Through my research, I explore how this important issue of national maintenance historically developed by determining which forces in the rise of nation-states gave way to this conflicting yet unconscious feeling of nationalism. Further I explore the difficult balance and structure of maintaining locality and global values in cultural production, the role of new media in nationalism today, and how locality is produced through global media.
NEW NATIONAL ARCHIVES
The new national archives generate data from the public, instead of being compiled by a select few. It relies on you select what should be remembered about your country. One thing I found very applicable today while researching the maintenance of national cultures is the idea of the national archive. One important and influencing element of cultural maintenance is the canon of knowledge, or the national archive. Historically the national archive was complied by a select few, therefore ensuring a selective national memory of national events, victories and, while not often, failures. With this in mind, I developed a concept utilizing a ‘bottom-up’ method of generating data linked to modern national identities. I looked mainly at social networking and photo-sharing sites as the sources for this data, ultimately choosing Flickr and Twitter as the most easily accessible and wide-used sites. In short, ‘the new national archives’ challenges the unconsciousness of nationalism, and creates a new, real-time and flexible national archive, based on entirely on the individual’s choice.
New National Archives www.katesnowdesign.com/newnationalarchives
Kate Snow DESIGN, portfolio website www.katesnowdesign.com
