Sylvia, I really appreciate you sharing the story behind the candle piece. It brings me back to questions I have about the professionalization of art-making. Do most people spend the time that many artists (myself included) spend thinking about whether something is a trite cliche? Who is the art for? When is innovation about opening up new avenues of perception and empathy and possibility? And when it is for proving something in a culture that say if it is not new and different it doesn't matter (and even if it is new and different someone else may have already patented the hypothetical idea)
When I saw that lionfish I felt a lifting and warmth in my chest after a long, defeating day of looking at cases of ignored rent law violations. Cases where people are pushed out of their homes for someone else's profits. There is a lot of evidence, as you, Alan, have pointed out, showing there is no turning back from the ecological destruction we've done. Are artists hospice workers? Are pop stars and morning show hosts? Some people are comforted by distraction. Some people are comforted when their version of the central, awful truth seems to have been brought to light. Some people are comforted by both at different times.
Is the cause of a crisis a moot point? If there is to be any successful effort to stop horribly tragic deaths such as Amanda Todd's does it matter whether you (we) think the larger issue is laws about cyber-bullying or a culture of misogyny that creates the context for a young girl's life to be ruined when a stranger sees her breasts?
How do I stop drawing a thick line between my poems and art and my activism? There is no division at the root, but I feel little unity at the outcome.
I would love if we figured out a way to all make separate pieces that could come together in a larger piece that addresses ways of "dealing" with crisis.
And maybe a structure and some pacing for doing that would help too. I can't speak for people we haven't heard from at all, of course, but I'm finding it a little bit hard to keep up with the pace, as I spend long stretches of time away from computer. I would love to respond to the stimulating conversation with some more fully-formed ideas of how we might move forward, and I'd also like to respond after looking at all the links and resources that have come up here. But I haven't yet had time to do so, and I also want to balance that with giving some sort of indication that I'm here and hearing the three of you who have been posting more diligently.
Jillian, thanks for these thoughts. I like the idea of working on something that is part of a larger class project. Alan, how long is this course? It might help figure out the scope and shape of such a project, and a suggested assignment with a time frame could help move us forward.
ReplyDeleteSome random thoughts/suggestions: (1) we can do pieces of art that respond serially to the one before it, like a conversation in images (or poems/videos) instead of words, (2) we each do a piece of art that we share and each of us can take all of it and re-mix it, collage it, make it into something different and responsive to the original pieces, or (3) ???
Hi Jillian and Sylvia, We did remix work in the first course I taught here; I wonder if it wouldn't make more sense, given the nature of crisis, to do work that plays off, not just the piece before it, but to respond to any or all of the pieces presented here. And what strikes me is what's most strong are your own, my own, backgrounds, what you bring from your professions and place within or not within your art. There has to be some way to express things without giving a piece the kind of agony that creates stasis or anguish, that results in a numbness undercutting future creation. I've seen this over and over again. I keep thinking about the Amanda Todd videotape, and the photographs of Francesca Woodman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesca_Woodman - in both cases art presaging tragedy was created, but wasn't sufficient to stop these acts (I had another student at the Rhode Island School of Design - where Woodman went, who also killed herself, whose work was amazing, and whose prefigurations should have been caught - a similar situation to someone at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, also a student). The acts are a kind of surplus, and even recognizing the anguish in the work doesn't mean that the end result is clear. I keep thinking that art keeps us sane, but there are so many times that it documents a descent, in the form of open parentheses ( , that just isn't caught.
ReplyDeleteWhat I would like is for all of us to create, within the next two weeks, a work in any medium that might express crisis, but without the open parentheses - a work that might function as a tool, a way in.
Let me know if this works for you and hopefully, while this dialog is also open-ended, it might spur you to respond, to keep it moving.
Thanks, Alan
That sounds good. Even I am overwhelmed by all the media on this blog already--so many links to click, everyone's backgrounds to learn about, and it's all extremely awesome. But if we start fresh with newly created art, not only will it be more productive, but also probably more manageable, reading-wise.
DeleteThis works for me. And I really like the idea of drawing from resources people are sharing here so that this conversation can continue.
ReplyDeleteThank you and count me in as well! At the moment I'm still sick and under a number of deadlines, but I'm hoping to bounce back in a few days! And definitely let's continue.
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