We Have a Situation
Interactive artistic acting
might be a reflection of what we call “networking” these days. It’s something
we’ve been doing ever since before we became human. Maybe it is the other way
around: artistic behavior became a reflection of life itself, instead of an elusive,
visionary thing. Watching people think about something and then talk about it
is quite popular. It is amazing to see how addicted we are to communication,
though communication can mean many different things. In the theater or a
company or government department, “communications” is the particular department
of the organization that communicates with the outside world.
Last week, I took part in a
workshop called “We Have a Situation Here”: some kind of 4-layer community art
inter-multi-media discussion seminar conversation about mobility. It was really
useless in my opinion, but apart from that is was pretty good: quite a bit of fun,
and many relevant issues were covered. “It’s the content, stupid,” says the
spin doctor to his boss right after their failed performance. People go for
content, no matter what they are interested in. Anyway, it was about my city,
Eindhoven, and the international moderators of the program were looking for problems
to discuss and expose.
Birds of a feather, etc., so I
was interested. For one reason or another, I was on the panel, but there are no
problems here in this town. If we talk about my city from a global perspective,
with its quiet nights and clean streets and functioning streetlights. If I
compare that to what I have seen in other parts of the world, through the media
and with my own eyes, there are really no problems in this town. This answer
gives us an extra advantage, because now we do not have to criticize our own
society. And since the Dutch word “kritiek” can be translated as both “criticize”
and “critical”, it unfortunately suffers from a bad image; criticizing
anything, even if only for a moment and, for example, to stimulate other
perceptions, is preferably not done. Having no problems makes it easier to hide
them under the surface. I’m not sure if I live in a friendly town. And if we
never say we do not, we have no problems with it. But, of course, this is not
really how problems are solved.
Maybe that is why, to me, that
workshop was good. I did not mention the war. The war is not in my head
anymore. After the Cold War and Vietnam, the Gulf War, the Balkan Box of
Pandora, another Gulf War, and many others, now there are just people in my
head. So, I cannot forget the friends I met. Hiding from the macro world and
escaping into the virtual world, I have recently seen such an impressively
great amount of beautiful paintings from Syrian artists on some website on Facebook
simply called Syrian Artists. In the meantime, we just keep working – doing
what we can with what we have. Nothing special about that, even if it becomes uncommon to live like that.
JOSEPH BEUY'S STATEMENT ON THE
POWER AND IMPACT OF ART
- I think art is the only political power, the only revolutionary power, the only evolutionary power, the only power to free humankind from all repression. I say not that art has already realized this, on the contrary, and because it has not, it has to be developed as a weapon. At first there are radical levels, then you can speak about special details.
- I think art is the only political power, the only revolutionary power, the only evolutionary power, the only power to free humankind from all repression. I say not that art has already realized this, on the contrary, and because it has not, it has to be developed as a weapon. At first there are radical levels, then you can speak about special details.
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