Maya Lin
A couple of things I noticed:I noticed the potential art to bring about liberation, social change and healing. Maya Lin designed the memoriam in a way that created space for people to grieve, be together, notice the living and the dead, and the size and impact of the war. I also think that even all the voices that were crying that the memoriam was a disgrace were also an attempt to heal and sound another perspective about the experience of war.
The power of art to create a heated dialogue and to expose different view points in society is so great!
Another thing that I was struck by was how powerful and honest Maya Lyn is. Despite of young adults oppression("who would believe that such a young woman blah blah blah"....) sexism, racism and artist's oppression (!) she did not give up her vision and stood up steadily to protect her artistic statement and the world view that it contained. I was so impressed by her clarity and directness with which she spoke.
An Artist of The Moral Imagination
Red Bastard/ Eric Davis
Red Bastard is a one man Bouffon Performance that was directed by Sue Morrison and is performed by Eric Davis. Mr. Davis is considered one of the best performing clowns of our time. He has studied physical theater, Bouffon and improvisation and has been performing and teaching internationally. Mr. Davis has won several awards around the world for his clowning.
What is Bouffon?
In this bold style of performance called Bouffon, we find an excellent form for deconstructing and commenting on societal ills.
Grotesque in nature, often physically deformed, the bouffon is the outcast shunned by society and told to live outside of the village. On rare occasions, he is asked to perform for the pleasure of those who previously persecuted him. On these occasions the bouffon willingly accepts. (What choice does he have? Perform or be killed!) Thus this hideous creature enters the circle of society once more, light on his feet, eternally smiling with hateful eyes. Charming, entertaining and smart, he plans to take the piss out of you all!
http://www.redbastard.com/iWeb/redbastard.com/ABOUT.html
Eric Davis
What I loved about this piece was that Mr. Davis managed in an hour and half to play on the strings of my soul, to enliven and highlight many aspects of my humanity. In an hour and a half I fell in love, was scared, disgusted, tired, inspired, touched, saddened. He manged to get the audience to think outside the box, voice our dreams, challenge our inhibitions and try out new things. He showed us some of the places we limit ourselves and painted a bigger picture of what is possible for all of us.
May every performance do exactly that!
http://youtu.be/8TGBs6QCXDs
Hola Racheli,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the themes you bring up in your post, especially the inclusion of art as a potential for liberation along with social change and healing. I am currently reading about liberation learning. Maya Lin has an amazing ability to envision the creation of space and art that helps bring the repressed and suppressed feelings out into a safe space for the community to engage with those feelings together. From our readings of trauma healing, it is evident just how tremendously important memorials are to unlock the trapped energy that cycles through us so destructively.
Maya's art so effectively accomplishes what "most of politics has been unable to attain: It helps us return to our humanity, a transcendent journey that, like the moral imagination, can build a sense that we are, after all, a human community," as Lederach would say. Her commitment to this higher purpose echoes the contributions of other social change agents like Gandhi and Ella Baker who did so with much personal sacrifice.
I am intrigued and stimulated by the Bouffon performances. I had no previously knowledge of the role clowns played previous history. it seems more obvious to me now that those who are outcast and ostracized or preyed upon by society have the greatest gifts and insight to lend us, if we humble ourselves and listen. It seems as though we externalize that which reminds us of our humanity. By victimizing another we cut ourselves off from the full spectrum of what it means to be alive. The bouffon, like all other forms of art, help us connect with those pieces of ourselves we have closed-down to, opening again to our fullest potential.
I have seen clowns at protests before deescalate a potentially violent situation. It seems as though there is this wall of emotional energy that gets erected, and sometimes the silliest things can pierce it, even through layers of real armor. Since dehumanization is so important in the path towards violence, it seems that anything that re-humanizes a person or the perception of a person, is badly needed if we are to change the momentum and movement of violence towards nonviolent constructive conflict. I find these energetic exchanges very intriguing. It reminds us remember that we can't plot out the path of social change, it's not linear, it's going to take so much more than either side of our brains alone. Conflict transformation and healing is in relationship to others, AND our relationship with ourselves!