[-empyre-] The Artist vs The Terrorist (New Orleans reprise): forward from GH Hovagimyan

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

[message received in rich text, so I've converted it to plain and  
here forward]

-cm


Subject: The Artist vs The Terrorist (New Orleans reprise)


New Orleans is a city that has always been a problem for America.  
Like New York City it is a place of ambition and neglect.  New  
Orleans was the center of the slave trade. The first place that  
Africans set foot on American soil. The discussion of bare life is  
quite pertinent when looking at New Orleans. It’s culture of mélange  
and balance is the result of its’ constant bare life brutality.  If I  
couldn’t live in New York City I would live in New Orleans. There is  
an anarchy and chaos that is always covered over by the gloss of  
“laissez les bon temps roulet.” New Orleans is a black and Catholic  
city of excess in the middle of a white protestant culture. The  
mulatto is the true citizen of New Orleans.  The Katrina disaster  
exposed to the world the true nature of New Orleans. The poor of New  
Orleans have been scattered in a diasporo around the United States.  
What is already happening is that the artists are beginning create  
works about the experience. Since New Orleans first art is music, the  
expression is coming out in a new type of dislocated, Jazz/rap. It  
will take some time before we fully understand how the city and it’s  
poor will reconstitute itself.
The art and service industry of New Orleans depends on cheap housing  
for all the service workers, musicians and parade crews. This is a  
big dilemma for corporate developers. The opportunity to make a lot  
of money and turn the city into a Bourgeois paradise conflicts with  
the need for subsidizing the poor and the marginal. Artists never  
figure into any equation of money and corporate greed in the USA  
unless they are creating major commodities. There is no such thing as  
support for struggling artists or mid career or those who might not  
ever become blue chip. There is no understanding of the environment  
of discourse and messy anarchy that is the gumbo of creativity.

Bare Life has two component; the individuals’ reality and the groups  
reaction.  Both are being played out in this drama.  Luckily, the  
artists’ first instinct is to make art. The reaction to a stripping  
away, to bare life, can vary quite a lot. I see the terrorist and  
religious fundamentalist instinct as a countervalent reaction to bare  
life.  Art is a liberating force. The desire for release, for  
liberation from, can create either a terrorist or an artist. The sad  
part is that in the worlds and cultures where art is suppressed or  
not valued or de-valued only religion and war are appropriate.


-GH