The crisis or the collapse of the idea of “centre” (and “artistic centre”) inseparable of the deepening process of “globalization” (and “cultural globalization”) implies a continuous questioning and critical re-organization of analytical notions, and the destabilization and plural reordering of the perspectives and ways of looking within the field of sociology (specially in sociology of art and culture). Besides questioning the notion of “centre” and the criticism of traditional theories about the opposition between centre and periphery, it is the belief itself in the idea of “centrality” and the logic structure of binary oppositions generated by it (for instance between North and South or East and West), that has to be questioned in favour of aspiring to a particular gaze and demand to which metaphorically, in the absence of “cardinal points”, I would call “no compass”. In analytical terms we encounter problems like thinking about the status we should give objects and activities associated to traditional and ancestral cultural practices, characteristic of populations and areas of the globe until recently ignored or minimized by the “art world”. The decentering of globalization generates a multiplication of global and globalizing points of view that come from situations that during a long time were seen as objects or victims of the process of globalization. We’re not talking about the emergence of new centres but the affirmation and multiplication of new voices and poles that speak, affirm, draw, define and practice their own globalizing perspective. This group of voices and practices can no longer be left out of the questioning within the art system. I will try to equate problems like these from my reflections on concrete research conducted in places like Parintins and Phnom Penh.

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