I've been meaning to post "A Fire in My Belly," the video that was recently pulled from an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. (Unfortunately the library is blocking YouTube...go figure) I want to post it to show my support for the museum and artists everywhere who battle censorship. I also want to praise the Wexner Center for displaying the "banned" video that has certain stuffy lawmakers threatening the Smithsonian's funding.
It's not my place to explain the video or its relevance. I will say that these lawmakers and religious officials have fallen into one of the booby traps of contemporary art. You should never let yourself be fooled by the first glance, by one moment among many in an entire video loop, and fail to examine the issue that is the artist's true subject. So, Right Wing, you have been duped into a false sense of superiority and righteous indignation, when the indignation is truly and rightfully directed at you and all who ignore the suffering of others. You are the ants crawling around, ignorant of the importance of other issues.
So let the video make you feel revulsion and disgust, and then ask yourself "why do I feel this?" Don't stop watching, don't reply to me with religious damnation. Keep watching and think about the issues. Think about the analogy of Christ suffering amid intolerance and scorn to the suffering of millions of HIV and AIDS patients, also amid intolerance and scorn.
This video is not anti-religion or anti-Christian. It is, however, pro-human. Think about that.
27 December 2010
Keeping an eye on the enemy
I've had an epiphany while lamenting the presence of FoxNews on the television. Yes, Dad has been watching again. Let's see what I can come up with in response to the conservative hypocracy.
Of course I must declare that Ann Coulter has no soul.
I can sort of see how higher taxes and government spending for the unemployed and impoverished could seem unfair to the rich. But I think that Congressman talking about Christmas spirit (or in O'Reilly's opinion, "co-opting Jesus"), made a good point...especially during this season of giving, how can anybody ultimately reject the notion of helping those in need? Naturally the conservatives draw a line between private charity and government services, but really, both help put food on tables and presents in children's hands. Not to mention paying bills and mortgages and keeping people in their homes.
You can quote the Bible and interpret parables all you want (though FoxPeople don't see it as interpretation...), but it really comes down to being human. Can you really stand to see suffering in all its degrees: from skimping on gifts to unemployment to all-out homelessness...while you sit pretty on a mound of cash? Even conservative economists agree that money in the hands of the lower classes and unemployed is better spent than money in the hands of the rich (most likely eventually re-routed to foreign accounts...not creating jobs). Can you believe that Coutler and O'Reilly think money to the poor amounts to the taxpayers "buying" alcohol and drugs and financing illegitimate children? That in itself is a most un-Christian view of the poor.
Now I'm not saying that every unemployed person out there is a saint. But it's insensitive and classist and wrong to assume that everyone in a certain class are irresponsible and misguided. I was further incensed by the suggestion that people who are unemployed like me somehow deserve it. There are those who have given up...but those aren't the ones getting unemployment assistance are they? The poor didn't choose to be poor, Mr. O'Reilly.
I am, however, concerned that government assistance merely perpetuates the presence of extreme poverty among the ill-educated and under-served. As I write this I'm thinking of the film Precious...and its grim look at welfare and how it is used and abused. But really, I'm starting to doubt whether an education can really lift someone out of that kind of hole. Seeing as my education is worthless at this point.
Of course I must declare that Ann Coulter has no soul.
I can sort of see how higher taxes and government spending for the unemployed and impoverished could seem unfair to the rich. But I think that Congressman talking about Christmas spirit (or in O'Reilly's opinion, "co-opting Jesus"), made a good point...especially during this season of giving, how can anybody ultimately reject the notion of helping those in need? Naturally the conservatives draw a line between private charity and government services, but really, both help put food on tables and presents in children's hands. Not to mention paying bills and mortgages and keeping people in their homes.
You can quote the Bible and interpret parables all you want (though FoxPeople don't see it as interpretation...), but it really comes down to being human. Can you really stand to see suffering in all its degrees: from skimping on gifts to unemployment to all-out homelessness...while you sit pretty on a mound of cash? Even conservative economists agree that money in the hands of the lower classes and unemployed is better spent than money in the hands of the rich (most likely eventually re-routed to foreign accounts...not creating jobs). Can you believe that Coutler and O'Reilly think money to the poor amounts to the taxpayers "buying" alcohol and drugs and financing illegitimate children? That in itself is a most un-Christian view of the poor.
Now I'm not saying that every unemployed person out there is a saint. But it's insensitive and classist and wrong to assume that everyone in a certain class are irresponsible and misguided. I was further incensed by the suggestion that people who are unemployed like me somehow deserve it. There are those who have given up...but those aren't the ones getting unemployment assistance are they? The poor didn't choose to be poor, Mr. O'Reilly.
I am, however, concerned that government assistance merely perpetuates the presence of extreme poverty among the ill-educated and under-served. As I write this I'm thinking of the film Precious...and its grim look at welfare and how it is used and abused. But really, I'm starting to doubt whether an education can really lift someone out of that kind of hole. Seeing as my education is worthless at this point.
11 December 2010
bookish
Lately I've been stumbling through Museums in a Troubled World: Renewal, Irrelevance or Collapse? by Robert R. Janes. Of course the topic interests me because it has to do with my future/lack of career, and I've also been asking myself, if museums could be irrelevant, could I also be irrelevant? As a museum worker, that is. Now I haven't finished, because I've been distracted by rereading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but I just had a thought...
Janes is from a more ethnological background; he's involved in museums of natural and cultural history, so there is no real mention of art museums specifically. But of course that doesn't mean the two types of institution aren't suffering from the same entropy. And I've been questioning my own understanding of contemporary art anyway, after years of reading job descriptions that ask for a "deep understanding of contemporary art." My latest conclusion is that I don't know a damn thing, despite all the education and gallery-hopping. My problem with contemporary art is not just that it always seems so inaccessible to the general public (and it is beyond difficult to coax this same general public into viewing contemporary art as anything but foreign), but that it doesn't have the same historical value (as Riegl would put it) as the objects in an anthropological or archaeological exhibit. Humans have been making art for a while now, yet the oldest of the old once served a purpose other than expression. Caveat: that is what scholars have surmised. If indeed the paintings at Lascaux were pure expression and had nothing to do with hunting prowess or ritual, then it's all good. No argument here. However, the dominant wisdom points to ritual purposes, the precursors of religion, if you will. Up through art history, art has served as a devotional tool, a civic unifier, and a commercial venture. That's why any talk of self-expression seems flat to me. If contemporary art has no ritualistic background, no purpose other than the proverbial "art for art's sake," then I have trouble seeing it (as a whole) as the visual products of a culture. I often wonder if museums in the next few centuries will group our art geographically, chronologically, or otherwise. Would it make sense to them?
And now as I read through, none of this makes sense.
Janes is from a more ethnological background; he's involved in museums of natural and cultural history, so there is no real mention of art museums specifically. But of course that doesn't mean the two types of institution aren't suffering from the same entropy. And I've been questioning my own understanding of contemporary art anyway, after years of reading job descriptions that ask for a "deep understanding of contemporary art." My latest conclusion is that I don't know a damn thing, despite all the education and gallery-hopping. My problem with contemporary art is not just that it always seems so inaccessible to the general public (and it is beyond difficult to coax this same general public into viewing contemporary art as anything but foreign), but that it doesn't have the same historical value (as Riegl would put it) as the objects in an anthropological or archaeological exhibit. Humans have been making art for a while now, yet the oldest of the old once served a purpose other than expression. Caveat: that is what scholars have surmised. If indeed the paintings at Lascaux were pure expression and had nothing to do with hunting prowess or ritual, then it's all good. No argument here. However, the dominant wisdom points to ritual purposes, the precursors of religion, if you will. Up through art history, art has served as a devotional tool, a civic unifier, and a commercial venture. That's why any talk of self-expression seems flat to me. If contemporary art has no ritualistic background, no purpose other than the proverbial "art for art's sake," then I have trouble seeing it (as a whole) as the visual products of a culture. I often wonder if museums in the next few centuries will group our art geographically, chronologically, or otherwise. Would it make sense to them?
And now as I read through, none of this makes sense.
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