Celebration cultural heritage
IT has become a goal and a dream for many Pacific Islanders to represent their culture and demonstrate their art when participating in any regional forum particularly the Pacific Festival of Arts.
The Festival, initially known as the South Pacific Arts Festival, has grown from the first South Pacific Festival of Arts with 1000 participants from 20 countries to close to 3000 delegates from 27 countries.
The concept for a regional festival originated from the Fiji Arts Council in 1965 with the first one hosted by Fiji in 1972 - a collaboration between the Fiji Arts Council and the South Pacific Commission and since then, twelve festivals have taken place out of which eleven is captured in this book.
The festival activity is firmly rooted in the Pacific past and is, therefore, a perfect vehicle to promote a Pacific identity and culture in the future.
In what is described to be an elaborate capture of this famous festival, a newly published book enters the shelves this year, depicting the various forms of art that have been rejuvenated and re-enacted at these festivals.
With almost 42 contributors, Dr Karen Stevenson and Katerina Teaiwa edit this volume which captures the different expression of the development of cultural and national identities within the Pacific cousins including an array of the professional photographic essay.
The book The Festival Of Pacific Arts – Celebrating 40 years of cultural heritage & Trading Traditions – Edited by Dr Karen Stevenson & Published by USP Press – The University of The South Pacific hopes to bring about a sense of the festival in reality.
It provides a glimpse as to what the festival entails and its dynamic role in Pacific art and culture from diverse reflections and experiences has changed over time in the context of traditional performance, traditional and contemporary arts, traditional medicine, healing arts, culinary arts, philatelic arts, traditional money, oratory arts, storytelling, musical instruments, vernacular architecture, traditional games and sports, symposiums, debates, and workshops.
Today with technology, we have immediate access to almost everything; one forgets how recent such access is. Where are depositories of festival information and how do we get copies to study – where is the archive? This volume answers most of these questions and does much than just providing issues for historians, academics and researchers, but also establishes a contact between people at all levels and specifically notes the problematic areas of cost, politics, protocol, copyright and its socio-economic and political agendas, and the danger of the Pacific cultural identity being lost.
The idea of this book was mooted at the 2015 Pacific Arts Association Conference between the association members, SPC and USP Press. The book records and captures a 40-yearold legacy which has become a component to contemporary Pacific Life ensuring that the Pacific’s cultural traditions will continue to remain strong in the future.
The book is supplemented by another volume Trading Traditions” The role of art in the Pacific’s Expensive
Exchange Networks which reflects findings of myriad investigations into the role of art played in the exchange of objects, peoples, technologies and ideologies in the historic and modern Pacific lives not limited to physical exchanges, but also the complex social, economic and politics between people, structures and systems as a venue for cultural sharing and interaction.
The 12th Festival of Arts was hosted in Guam, 2016 and this year Hawaii is honoured to be the chosen host for the 13th Festival of Pacific Arts & Culture from June 10-21, 2020.
The book is proudly published by USP Press and is available from USP Book centre. Contact maharaj_v@usp.ac.fj
The views expressed are those of the author of this article and not of the University of The South Pacific or this newspaper.