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

[Deborah Kelly <dkellysocialchange@yahoo.com>]

this is a wonderful discussion, so tentative,
skinless, and now with a riproaring poem. 
thanks!

Deborah

--- Mendi Obadike <mendi@blacknetart.com> wrote:

> 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.
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 

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