Ben Durham

11/8/16
Dr. Plageman
Globalized Erasure of Culture
The Chale Wote Festival is a culturally rich and representative event held in
Jamestown, Accra, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Ghanas capital city. Artist such as,
Elvis Nsiah, integrates Ghanas culture from the past and present and tries to accurately
aim or predict something about its future. In Elviss case, his artwork work primarily
focuses on the urban settings in Ghana and the relationship of the space or housing
policies to the political forces that ultimately have a great deal to do with its poor
existence. Mr. Nsiah observes these slums and extracts certain objects of trash and debris
and then ties them into meticulous compositions of his own design.
Nsiahs work tells us more about the city, its residents, and its culture than just the
cardboard and other trash that appears in his artwork. Nsiahs work is primarily consisted
of cardboard, corroded metals, and plastic. These materials really help depicts the
housing deficiencies in Accra, defined by political spaces or boundaries. In attempts to
remain within the festivals theme, Nsiah reflects on how robot systems operate. He
claims, As the system of the Spirit Robot become autonomous, it relates to the
exploration of slum spaces. These spaces are structured to have a system of power and
control although human intervention breaks boundaries in site-specific ways and also
through the autonomous nature of space (accradotaltradio.com). Nsiahs perspective on
the slums is different than you may think. In fact, his perspective recognizes the fast
development of the country and the fast erasure of homes, memories, stories, and cultures
that originate from the slums. All of this burial of a rich, yet not so bright past, in favor of
inaccessible high-rise condos and cars that no one locally can make use of. Nsiahs work
represents a movement in resisting dominant systems, which may be deemed too
advanced; modern, or technological. However, its these facets that turn out to be quite
destructive to organic culture, like those formed in the slums of Accra. Further more, his
work pokes at the idea of a system that only knows right when its self-serving, a system
aloof from its peoples plights and also a people so disconnected and disillusioned by it
all that theyd rather do things their own way (accradotaltradio.com). Members of the
Accra community who are denied opportunity by the system decidedly live in the slums
where their lives have value. Nsiahs work more specifically examines ownership,
belonging and power. All three of those words have a double meaning. Does the state
have ownership over the slum? Is the slum symbolic of the ownership it has taken in
retaining some of the local culture Ghana still has to offer? Belonging. Are the people
who live in the slums the exiled members of Ghanas culture or are the rich and newly
powerful investors the real people who dont belong. Who really belongs? And finally,
power. Are the people with rich cultural knowledge surrounding the slums and the city
more powerful than those ordering the bulldozers plowing through the slums? On one
hand there is an untold history of the culture existent in Ghana today and on the other

hand there is another relatively new movement to modernize the country. If anything
Nsiah represents the people of Accra as a proud people of their past, despite its apparent
unattractiveness to foreigners. There seems to be a very big emphasis on cultural
preservation surrounding this festival as well as the artists who part take in it.
When it comes to defining terms like globalization and modernization one
has to be more careful about what it means in context to many African cultures. As Nsiah
has exemplified, not all parts of the word need or want to be connected or assimilated
with other parts of the world. This isnt to say cultures of Ghana or those in Africa at
large dont want to assimilate with others, but that there is a certain limit to how much
some of these cultures want to be affected by those changes. In Ghana, those changes due
to globalization and modernization have resulted in many negative consequences
culturally to areas like the slums of Accra.
http:// /2016/08/homes-where-the-heart-is-elvis-nsiah-and-lisa-harrisexplore-space/ - (accradotaltradio.com)