Re: [-empyre-] Re: Tina Gonsalves on "Bare Life"

[Mendi Obadike <mendi@blacknetart.com>]

Thanks to all who have been participating in this interesting and
challenging discussion so far. I've been thinking about Tina's ideas
about mediation while thinking about the question of where art fits in.
They reminded me of a poem by Robert Pinsky called "Poem of
Disconnected Parts". I'm excerpting it, and hopefully you'll be able to
follow since it is, literally, a poem of disconnected parts, but
there's a link to the whole poem below.


"At Robben Island the political prisoners studied.
They coined the motto Each one Teach one.

In Argentina the torturers demanded the prisoners
Address them always as 'Profesor.'

Many of my friends are moved by guilt, but I
Am a creature of shame, I am ashamed to say.

Culture the lock, culture the key."

http://www.poetrymagazine.org/magazine/0206/poem_177610.html


It seems to me that one purpose of art is to make sure that as long as
culture is used as a lock, we can find a way to use culture as a key.

Mendi



Tina Gonsalves <tina@tinagonsalves.com> wrote:

    Ana and michele - thanks for sharing your story. I have a hard time
    knowing to respond. My role here seems to be to talk from my
    experiences of being an artist, and my first response to reading
your
    story is to wonder why I bother being an artist. Today, it seems
rather
    inconsequential and irrelevant.

    <snip>

    I guess, in my installation and video works, I want people to
become
    more sensitive to themselves, to their breath, their pulse, their
    emotional feelings. "vulnerability� and
�sensitivity� is often regarded
    in a negative way, but with my work, I am trying to see sensitivity
as
    an asset that enriches each day. Being able to cry, to share the
pain,
    to engage more intensively in feelings. Be more compassionate.

    In these moments when being an artist feels stupid, I look at
Joseph
    Beuys comment about what it was to be an artist. �You
weren�t showing your magnificence and your wealth of ideas and
your huge creativity, you were showing your vulnerability. And it was
your vulnerability that people picked up on, the perception of your
vulnerability as a person and as an artist that sparked the creativity
in other people�.

    But then again creativity seems a luxury when you just managing to
    exist. Actually, I don�t know where it fits in.