R E : M A R K S F R O M E A S T T I M O R A Field Guide to East Timor’s Graffiti B Y C H R I S P A R K I N S O N 1 RE:MARKS FROM EAST TIMOR: A Field Guide to East Timor’s Graffiti. By Chris Parkinson. ABSTRACT. This thesis investigates the specific conflicts and contexts that produced East Timor’s fledgling graffiti between 2004-2008 to demonstrate links between its local lineage and a globally contextualised backdrop. It is a work that is advanced through the epistemological propositions of Southern theory. Primarily, it is concepts of the centre and the periphery and how graffiti negotiates movement between these positions that are the thesis’ main concerns. With this in mind, the central question of how East Timor’s graffiti contributed to the cultural expression of East Timor’s growth into nationhood from conflict is framed. In demonstrating graffiti’s contribution to the cultural expression of East Timor’s growth into nationhood from conflict, its location at the nexus of resistance and transformation is revealed. This thesis presents graffiti in East Timor as a hermeneutic, validating the expressions of marginalised actors in geo-political contexts of conflict, reconstruction and social relationships. A NOTE ON THE PRESENTATION. The presentation of this thesis is an intertextual proposal that presents a cluster of related texts that quote, comment upon, amplify, and remediate one another. You will find stand-alone pages of an image and a quotation or field note that begin entering the thesis’s flow - as early as page 9 - in the COURIER font. These images, whilst linked to the broader narrative, should be understood as being independent to images acknowledged with a Fig. in the body of the thesis that have a more direct correlation to the narrative of the thesis they are nestled in. A CAPITALISED guideword will appear upon the page, denoting that page’s entry with its corresponding image and quote or field note. Cross-reference pages at the end of each entry direct the reader to associated points of the thesis for provocation, consideration and resonance. 2 CREDITS. Without Gabi and Luca Gansser, Annie Sloman, Abe Baretto Soares, Ros Dunlop, Elizabeth Adams, Milena Pires, Marieclaire Sweeney, the Guterres family and Max Stahl, things wouldn’t have grown into this. Dr. Lachlan MacDowall never wavered. Martin Hughes never stopped stoking. Fiona Hillary never forgot. Dr. James Oliver sculpted perspective. Andy Mac never left the building. Caroline Compton read, reflected and revised with chocolate and critical analysis that made me probe. Catherine Arthur conversed, motivated and thrust Peace of Wall: Street Art from East Timor into a new, academic chapter. To Robert and Anthea Parkinson for their steadfast love and support. To my brother Alex Parkinson, a humble servant of humour and fount of inspiration. To Joan, Orla, Michael and Micheál O’Loghlen for their fearlessness. Rest in Peace, Éamon. Belun maun no mana sira: Alfe Perreira, Etson Caminha, Tony Amaral, Osme Goncalves, Mely Fernandes, Xisto Silva, Ili Danebere, Gil Valentim, Chris Phillips, Michael Fikaris, Bryan Phillips, Thomas Henning, Liam Barton, Djuwadi Ahwal and Amanda Haskard: “What the ralliers may learn from me is but a faithful mirror of what I go on learning from them.” This thesis is dedicated to Emma, who believes and Nell, who emerges. 3 CONTENTS. 5. CHAPTER 1. OPENING RE:MARKS 9. otherotherotherotherotherotherotherotherotherotherotherotheroth 22. ruinruinruinruinruinruinruinruinruinruinruinruinruinruinruinrui 23. CHAPTER 2. METHODOLOGICAL RE:MARKS 2.1 ON PROCESS 27. emergenceemergenceemergenceemergenceemergenceemergenceemergence 33. 2.2 ON PRACTICE 43. identityidentityidentityidentityidentityidentityidentityidentit 49. rumourrumourrumourrumourrumourrumourrumourrumourrumourrumourrum 68. rupturerupturerupturerupturerupturerupturerupturerupturerupture 77. centrecentrecentrecentrecentrecentrecentrecentrecentrecentrecen 78. CHAPTER 3. PASSING THROUGH WALLS 3.1 GLOBAL RE:MARKS 82. defiancedefiancedefiancedefiancedefiancedefiancedefiancedefianc 84. 3.2 ALTERNATIVE RE:MARKS 93. 3.3 LOCAL RE:MARKS 96. peripheryperipheryperipheryperipheryperipheryperipheryperiphery 99. palimpsestspalimpsestspalimpsestspalimpsestspalimpsestspalimpse 106. marksmarksmarksmarksmarksmarksmarksmarksmarksmarksmarksmarksmar 113. resonanceresonanceresonanceresonanceresonanceresonanceresonance 114. 3.4 PIECES OF WALL 115. aspirationaspirationaspirationaspirationaspirationaspirationasp 116. 3.4.1 IDENTITIES 131. 3.4.2 INSCRIPTIONS 134. spacespacespacespacespacespacespacespacespacespacespacespacespa 139. memorymemorymemorymemorymemorymemorymemorymemorymemorymemorymem 144. 3.4.3 TERRITORIES 153. CHAPTER 4. CLOSING RE:MARKS 154. dreamsdreamsdreamsdreamsdreamsdreamsdreamsdreamsdreamsdreamsdre 159. marginsmarginsmarginsmarginsmarginsmarginsmarginsmarginsmargins 160. BIBLIOGRAPHY 4 CHAPTER 1: OPENING RE:MARKS. Finding one’s voice isn’t just an emptying and purifying oneself of the words of others but an adopting and embracing of filiations, communities, and discourses. Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos. - Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence; a Plagiarism. This thesis investigates the specific conflicts and contexts that produced East Timor’s fledgling graffiti movement between 2004-2008 to demonstrate links between its local lineage and a globally contextualised backdrop. It is a work that is advanced through the epistemological propositions of Southern theory, a body of ideas that seeks to redress a broad ignorance of cultures that originate in nations or territories that are located at the periphery by those who regard themselves as inhabiting the centre of a world-system that organises reality according to this criteria. Specifically, I look to the work of Portuguese social theorist Boaventura de Sousa Santos and his proposal of Epistemologies of the South, a field of epistemological challenges that proffer: New processes of production and valorisation of valid knowledges, whether scientific or non- scientific, and of new relations among different types of knowledge on the basis of the practices of the classes and social groups that have suffered, in a systematic way, the oppression and discrimination caused by capitalism and colonialism.1 For this thesis, the South as metaphor has larger resonance than its literal geographical latitude. This metaphorical understanding is “predicated on the concept of a vertical hierarchy, where value lies above.”2 It is a “metaphor of the 1 Boaventura de Sousa Santos, “Public Sphere and Epistemologies of the South,” Africa Development, Vol. XXXVII:1 (2012): 51. 2 Kevin D. Murray, "South Ways: Art Undercurrents across the South," Artl@s Bulletin 5:2 (2016): 84. 5 human suffering caused by capitalism and colonialism at the global level, and a metaphor as well of the resistance to overcome or minimise such suffering.”3 As such, this thesis investigates Southern theory as a theoretical approach to the broadening field of graffiti study and research. Graffiti in East Timor develops knowledge through its interpretation of memory, identity and history embedded in peripheral frameworks. As Jeff Oliver and Tim Neal argue for a broader recognition of graffiti’s historiography, East Timor’s graffiti demonstrates the “actors, times, spaces and concerns, which may not ordinarily be brought into dialogue other than through such inscriptive materializations.”4 In this spirit of emerging dialogue, this thesis demonstrates graffiti’s capacity to make theoretical links. It proposes how Southern theory integrates with graffiti to build new knowledge and interpretations of East Timor. In a future focus, I wonder how it might contribute to understandings of other postcolonial and post-conflict contexts where graffiti is present, also? Primarily, this paper is concerned with concepts of the centre and the periphery and how graffiti negotiates movement between these positions. With this in mind, the central question of how East Timor’s graffiti has contributed to the cultural expression of East Timor’s growth into nationhood from conflict is framed. This centre-periphery proposal is nuanced and evidenced in varied ways. For this research, it plays out both through East Timor’s peripheral location in the world and, more directly, in relation to the centre location of Indonesia’s occupation; also, the shifting role and status of young people in East Timor’s history; the centralized, public expressions of graffiti deepened by dialogue with the offstage and private expressions found in the country; or graffiti’s shift from central concern to peripheral practice in my own - and those of the Animatism5 artist collective’s - creative experiences and practice. 3 Santos, “Public Sphere and Epistemologies of the South,” 51. 4 Jeff Oliver and Tim Neal, eds., Wild Signs: Graffiti in Archeology and History (Oxford; British Archaeological Reports, 2010), 1. 5 Animatism is a collective of artists and curators from Australia, East Timor and Indonesia founded by the author. The collective is: Chris Parkinson, Chris Phillips, Amanda Haskard, Bryan Phillips, Michael Fikaris and Liam Barton (AUST), Etson Caminha, Alfe Perreira, Tony Amaral, Osme Goncalves, Mely Fernandes and Gil Valentim (East Timor), Djuwadi Awhal (Indonesia). 6 I propose, in accordance with Santos’s understanding of intercultural translation, that graffiti represents a form of