This is an event to raise awareness of Honor Killings.

Suzanne Lacy: My Hero

Suzanne Lacy, Activist and Artist.

Suzanne Lacy is my new hero. She embodies the essence of art-making and activism. She is a change agent. She has done things I have dreamed about doing. I first learned of her while reading The Voice of the Artist as Reseacher, Homelessness in Toronto (Davis Halifax, 2010). The author attributed the following quote to Lacy in which Lacy suggests that art be redefined as, “a process of value finding, a set of philosophies, an ethical action, and an aspect of a larger sociocultural agenda” (Lacy, 1995 p. 46). These words spoke to me. Art was being presented as something other than a product; a process. This was an exciting revelation for me. I believe I already knew this, because I have long valued the art-making process. However, these simple words carried the conviction of the author and their simplicity struck me as solidly as a bass note at the end of a song.

Lacy not only suggests a redefinition of art, she advocates for a redefinition of the roles of artists because of the activities engaged in by artists such as designing programs, leading public discussions and public demonstrations which she considers “integral to the artwork.” Casting artists in the role of educator is another interesting construction which speaks to the pedagogical nature of the artist particularly as artists become more involved in their communities. Lacy attributes the following quote to Yolanda Lopez, who characterizes artists as citizens “exercising the social contract between the citizen and the state, the artist works as a citizen within the intimate spaces of community life” (Lacy, 1995 pg 40) Lacy clearly values public art-making and has made a name for herself and her art by seeking out public places for her exhibitions and performances which she reasons provides even more opportunities for a redefined role of the artist, “these expansive venues allow not only a broader reach but ultimately a more integrated role for the artist in society” (Lacy, 1995 p. 40).

It is difficult to pick one example of art-making by Lacy since most of her projects have left an indelible mark on many people however there is one project that is a great example of her art-making ingenuity. In May, 1986 Lacy created the Dark Madonna to focus attention on racism and gender. The Dark Madonna was a public performance and exhibition involving approximately 40 women of various ages and nationalities, who dressed in white and posed as statues in a public park that was filled with statues, three quarters of them white male historical figures. At the appointed time, the lights were extinguished the women posing as statutes removed their white clothes while at the same time 200 women dressed in black with flashlights proceeded to move in pre-arranged places on the lawn by flashlight where they proceeded to congregate in small groups and discuss racism and gender issues in their own lives. The former statues also dressed in black, joined these groups and contributed their reflections of their experience to the groups. According the Irish (2010) the Dark Madonna “represented one way in which white society collected its negative characteristics, transferred those onto non-white people and then rejected those enshadowed people, denying whites own unclaimed characteristics and unjustly oppressing other groups.”

The pedagogy of art-making and community engagement is a concept I intend to explore further because I believe it is fertile ground for deconstructing the traditional view of the artist and I believe it can be springboard for launching a discourse on the implications of viewing the artist as social educator. Guillermo Gomez-Pena tells us that ‘artists are media pirates, border crossers, cultural negotiators and community healers” (Lacy, 1995).

References

Hallifax, N. (2010) The voice of the artist as researcher: Homelessness in toronto. Alberta, CN: Detselig Enterprises Ltd.

Irish, S. (2010). Suzanne Lacy: Spaces between. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.

Lacy, S. (1995). Mapping the terrain: New genre public art. Seattle: Bay Press

Reflection of Artist and Activism Conference Lesley University, Oct 14-15, 2010

The minister of human services and social security for Guyana, South America, Priya Manickchand, is a powerful woman. Powerful in her aspirations and in her success of developing programs for her country’s victims of domestic violence. In the last several years, she has convinced the administration to fund and expand legal aid programs from 1 under funded program to 10 funded programs in populated areas. She created and implemented child safety programs which now feature a hotline to report incidents of domestic abuse. This hotline has received more than 4,000 calls in only two years of existence. A lawyer by profession, she has mobilized an entire movement and given hope to women and children throughout her country. She is an activist and she has come to Lesley to learn how to integrate art into her country’s healing process.

Similarly, Sister Juvenal Mukamurama, former superior general of the Benebikira Sisters in Rwanda has a similar mission to develop arts programs. She and the sisters under her leadership refused to leave Rwanda despite threats from the oppressive regime during the 1994 genocide in that country which killed more than 1,100,000 100 days. This congregation has taken a leading role in the healing and reconciliation of the living victims and perpetrators of this oppression. She hopes to use drumming and storytelling as ways to bring people together in a healing and reconciliation process.

Locally, the Geese Theatre and True Theater groups have developed programs and brought them to prisons in Massachusetts to begin the healing process of the incarcerated. Both involve live improvisation and sometimes playback theatre. One group invites the inmates to participate and act out their personal stories as well as fantasy or fictionalized accounts. The other group recruits cast members from outside the prison and puts on shows inside prisons to help the healing. One example involved an actress acting out her own personal story about her lost childhood and how her mother did not protect her. The woman is a recovering substance abuser and former prostitute. In another example, a prison came into possession of over 100 suitcases and satchels. The artists from Geese Theatre worked with the inmates to paint and decorate the cases, painting their external feelings on the outside of the box and their secrets in the inside of the box. In one example, an inmate painted a story inside of a suitcase which told the tale of a violent home life where the mother had tried to leave the house on numerous occasions with the children only to return again and again.

The war in Iraq and Afghanistan was the subject of another art making project which involved school children constructing simple objects to commemorate the lives of loved ones who had perished in the war. They constructed miniature figures out of natural objects such as tea bags, sticks and fabric. These artifacts were then used to make and exhibit to present them to the public. More than 3,000 such figures make up the exhibit which has toured the country. The point of the art was to facilitate healing.

The ArtsBridge project involves bringing both Israeli and Palestinian high school students together for 3 weeks to create a piece of art (visual art or film project). Students are paired together to conceive, design and create this project, which is then presented in a public exhibit. Students work closely together and through this process learn about each other’s their values, beliefs and cultural backgrounds. The goal of this program is to create a group of young people who can move beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This conference experience showed me several things. First, never underestimate the power of an idea. All these projects started out with a passionate person trying to affect change based on an idea for using the arts to engage. Second, almost all of the activists at the conference did not think of themselves as artists. They were humble, self-deprecating and shunned the attention and accolades heaped upon them.

One memorable story came out of this conference by Hugh Masekela, from South Africa, world famous musician and apartheid activist for his homeland about his grandmother. Masekela worked tirelessly to create global awareness of the horrors of apartheid through his music and was banned from entering the country for many years because of his activism. He held concerts in neighboring countries to promote peace and used his public position to call attention to the oppression.

He told of how his grandmother would carry three -10 lb. buckets of water, 3 times a day from the common well to her house. She would carry 1 bucket in each hand, 1 bucket on her head while carrying an infant (Hugh’s sibling) on her back with Hugh holding on to her skirt. She would then stop at every gate to talk with her neighbors. One speaker, Nathan Field, of IAB re-told this story as a powerful metaphor for an activist artist. First, the artist brings nourishment and life to people who need sustenance, which is represented by the water. Second, the artists carry’s the needy on his or her back, represented by the infant. Third, the artist takes his or her time to meet with and really communicate with people in the community. Last, the artist brings others along with he or she, like the small child Hugh holding on to his grandmother’s skirt.

Performance Pedagogy: Toward an Art of Politics

I began reading Performance Pedagogy: Toward an Art of Politics by Charles Garoian with great anticipation. Here was a pedagogy founded on art-making, I thought. Here was a pedagogy that dealt with civic engagement and social justice. I quickly skimmed the text and then started reading and re-reading it. I found ample definitions. For example, “Performance Art Pedagogy represents a liminal space, an aesthetic dimension wherein social and historically constructed ideas, images, myths and utopia’s can be contested and new ones constructed as they pertain to students’ experiences of reality and the desires to transform that reality” (Garoian, 1999 p 10). I looked up luminal. Merriam-Webster defines liminal as, “of or relating to a sensory threshold” (Merriam-Webster, 2010). It is not clear to me at this early stage of my reading what threshold Garoian is referring to, however it is possible it is the threshold between artist and spectator.

I returned to Garoian, “performance art pedagogy …considers the aesthetic dimension of performance subjectivity as an educational imperative, a practice of teaching that necessitates the critique of hegemonic cultural performances and the creation of new performance myths” (Garoian, pg 10). Merriam-Webster defines hegemonic as, “the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group (Merriam-Webster, 2010). This sentence conveys the message that performance art pedagogy provides for the critical review of the dominant culture that has been imposed on the student.

Garoian, continues, “performance art pedagogy resists cultural conformity and domination by creating discourses and practices that are multicentric, participatory, indeterminate, interdisciplinary, reflexive and intercultural. This is a mouthful, but provides deeper insight into the pedagogy. In this passage, Garoian begins to explain how one practices performance art pedagogy – one creates discourses and practices, that are based upon and require participation by students, teachers and mentors.

Performing art pedagogy does not function like conventional theatre wherein art is presented to spectators with little or no opportunity for participation. Performing arts pedagogy encourages communication by directly involving spectators. Performing arts pedagogy is a tool that can be used to facilitate and promote social awareness, community consciousness and democratic ideas. Garoian presents the concept of critical citizenship in the following passage, “performing arts pedagogy recognizes the cultural difference as a vital resource to the development of a broader understanding of reality and where participants work toward the goals of critical citizenship and democracy” (Garoian, 1999 p 67).

I can see some interesting parallels with the volunteerism exhibited by performing arts trainers and the critical citizenship identified by Garoian as one of the goals of performing arts pedagogy. By its very nature, the performing arts encourage students and teachers to enter into a body and mind discourse based on equality and reflexivity, where cultural boundaries are examined but do not function as shackles holding back free thought and expression. The performing arts create an opportunity for thoughtful discourse by stimulating critical dialogue. Teachers who train students in the performing arts are uniquely positioned to influence creative and reflexive thought in their students.

It occurs to me that the pedagogy demonstrated by performing arts trainers shares some of the characteristics of performing arts pedagogy: they are both participatory, reflexive, intercultural and multicentric. Therefore it is not surprising to see high levels of volunteerism and civic engagement being practiced by performing arts trainers consistent with the goals outlined by Garoian of performing arts pedagogy.

References:

Garoian, C. (1999) Performing pedagogy: Toward an art of politics. New York: State University of New York Press.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hegemonic

The Voice of the Artist as Researcher, Homelessness In Toronto

Reflection of Creative Arts in Interdisciplinary Practice – Edited by Cheryl McLean

This text is full of examples of artists using the arts to conduct social change, many of whom are using community-based participatory research.

In The Voice of the Artist as Researcher, Homelessness in Toronto, Nancy Viva Davis Halifax writes of her efforts as a writer, poet and a photographer to understand and portray homelessness in Toronto order to create awareness of this growing social problem. Her work is marked by deep reflexive thinking and writing which seems to capture the essence of the homeless. In an especially poignant piece, she writes of a 21 year old woman who has been on the street since she was 13 years old. In other piece, she shares the words of a young man who has no hope.

Her work reads more like an editorial on homelessness rather than research project. It is only near the end of the piece that she describes the research efforts by she and her fellow artist-researchers which involved running an arts collaborative. This community space is where they would spend time with women from a local shelter who have experienced one or more of the following: homelessness, disabilities, chronic health problems, violence, trauma and oppression.

Several of the author’s quotes speak to me, for example in the following indicates how the researchers are involved with not only art-making, they are sharing food and drink with the other participants. I also especially like her metaphor about knitting and braiding their lives together.

“In this group we eat and drink, take photographs, draw, knit, crochet, braid our lives and selves together.”

In this next quote, the author describes how “language unfolds” through art-making, in this case friendship bracelets. This is an interesting phenomenon that I have read and heard about many times; people involved in art-making begin to communicate with each other during the process of making art, and inevitably, deeper thoughts, issues and concerns rise to the surface.

“Speaking the self through aesthetic texts provides a symbolic space where safety can be woven through metaphor and media. Speaking through the development of a collage, a knitted scarf, the creation of a series of friendship bracelets language unfolds.”

I like Davis Halifax’s word choice in the next passage. She is listening to the entire person; their voices and their bodies. She shares her insights with us; she senses frustration at others who do not listen. Ironically, by listening she is channeling their frustration into something positive.

“When we sit down over our cups of tea, I listen to bodies and voices. I perceive frustration, the violence experienced because other do not listen. My work is to bring their stories to a broader community, and at the same time to maintain an ethical and safe space.”

In this last passage, the author quotes Suzanne Lacy, who speaks of redefining art as a process not just a product; and not just an art-making process, a “value finding” process which is an aspect of a “larger sociocultural agenda.” These are simple, yet elegant examples of viewing art in much broader ways.

“The making of banners that incorporate the women’s art is one way of working between community, shelter and each women’s story. The women respond in a positive way to this notion. This way of working is in accord with Suzanne Lacy, who suggested that art be redefined less as a product and more as “a process of value finding, a set of philosophies, an ethical action and an aspect of a larger sociocultural agenda’” (p. 46). Working with these guiding principles we will be able to work toward social justice through the arts.

Theatre of the Oppressed

In 1973, Augusto Boal carried out a series of experiments in Lima and Chiclayo, Peru under the auspices of the Integral Literacy Operation, a program conducted by the government of Peru to eliminate illiteracy within 4 years. Boal was a participant in the theatrical sector, one of several art-form sectors, which, “tried to show in practice how the theatre can be placed at the service of the oppressed, so that they can express themselves and so that, by using this new language, they can also discover new concepts” (Boal, 1979 pg 121).

In Theatre of the Oppressed, Boal describes these and other experiments where theatre is used to empower and give voice to those in the grip of oppression. According to Boal, the participant, who he refers to as, “the liberated spectator” (1979, pg 122) participates in the action which can be seen as a rehearsal for real-life action. The following four stage plan transforms the spectator into an actor. In the first stage, the spectators get to know their body by performing a number of exercises designed to help them understand their physical limitations and boundaries. In the second stage, the spectators play several games to become familiar with expressing themselves. The third stage involves the theatre as language where the spectators write, speak through images and act. In the fourth stage referred to as theatre as discourse, the spectators perform a piece on a subject important to he or she.

Using art in this way literally empowers the spectator to act out their story, which gives voice to their beliefs and in some cases, provides a rehearsal for their revolutionary actions. Boal describes numerous subjects chosen by the spectators which illustrate the range of stories people wanted to share. Boal shares his belief of the impact of this art form in the following passage, “I believe ethat all the truly revolutionary theatrical groups should transfer to the people the means of production in the theatre so that the people themselves may utilize them. Theatre is a weapon, and it is the people who should wield it” (Boal, 1979 pg 122). In summary, Boal’s experiments have liberated the spectator who is free to act and think for himself or herself while engaged in this process. The spectators do not delegate power to the actors; they experience it themselves and in the process feel what it is like to act on their convictions and values.

References
Boal, A. (1979). Theatre of the Oppressed. New York: Theatre Communications Group, Inc.

Artists For Human Rights

On December 10, 1988, International Human Rights Day, a national art exhibition was held in South Africa, “to shine a light on the government’s human rights abuses and remind the country, that in 1948, National Party-led South Africa was one of only six countries that refused to sign the accord,” (Cleveland, 2008). A group of courageous arts practitioners, operating under the auspices of the Black Sash organization, came together on this, the 40^th anniversary of that UN Human Rights declaration, to use art to call attention to the continued abuses in South Africa. The exhibition involved more than 400 children and was prominently covered by the national press. The Black Shash organization was made up of mostly white South African woman, who by virtue of their race and therefore their standing gave them greater access to promote and conduct their art-making. The organizers recruited local visual artists to work with the children to make paintings that reflected their view of human rights.

This article focusing on South Africa, was one of a collection of examples of in Art and Upheaval, a book by William Cleveland, provides inspiring insights into how arts practitioners have been effective in challenging oppressive regimes or engaging divided communities in five different countries.

Another example of activist art-making in South Africa involved a portfolio exhibition of 29 prints, each depicting one of the bill of rights. These portraits reflected historical events that were a part of South Africa’s history. The artists were chosen through a national competition designed to represent the nine provinces of South Africa. The exhibition of these works at the Durban Art Gallery on December 10, 1996 was opened by Justice Albie Sachs of the Constitutional Court, a highly symbolic gesture representing the interest of the courts in this effort especially considering the injustices portrayed by the artists.

This article not only offer a compelling narrative of the organizers and artists who participated, it provides insight into the complex process of community art-making by describing in detail, the struggles involved in organizing, negotiating and implementing art-making on such a large scale. These examples of art-making left me for a reverence for the artists and the work itself, because of the seriousness of the subject matter involved and the utter evilness of the regimes responsible for past injustices.