Kemê's

notations

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Poem & Welcome words for #StopHatredNow 2020  – New Standards

I read the definition of "Standard" according to the Merriam Webster, both noun and adjective, and I wonder if we haven't been mixing them in the back of our mind. Something for what we stand for, almost tangible, as a banner. Something established just by a few, the experts, the authority, as a model to follow. Something that many, we, the society agreed on, without even knowing,  as a model to follow. "A structure serving as a base or support." A ruler and scale for measuring relevance, scope, value and quality. Something good, but not enough, to be remarkable. Common. Well-established. Familiar. Definitive. Basic. Law. Norm.

When I think of standards in the context of the Arts & Culture field, a physically uncomfortable feeling grabs my body. Like a long bony hand going up along my spine trying to fix a jacket that doesn't quite fit me, or at best, a clothing tag itching my neck. Why? I suspect I have been mixing those definitions too. And I confess... I did work on being standard to fit in the standards because the standards made me feel standard for not meeting the standards.

Have you been there too? If so... Hear me out, there is nothing standard about you, having you here, floating with me in this liquid reality, like otters, hand in hand, is a reason for celebration with hope and joy.

Cute otters, fierce otters, swimming in the field. Because what are culture and arts if not the water? Our heritage, dreams and the multiplicity of our identities, particles colliding, merging, flowing.

For those who enjoy keeping the gates (or the dams) of culture: Shouldn't it be the base to ensure its fluidity? The unpredictable instability of its interactions? Or in other words, to keep it alive and growing.

We say stop hatred now, once again! And we know that we will need to go upstream if we want to take down that hefty dull flag that is keeping us from the sun, and replace it with a thousand of little colourful banners. Brave, cheeky otters, the past year were talking of allyship, but to endure the friction of the water against the rocks they need accomplices. #welcomeboard

I wrote a poem for today, sorry, I decided not to read it. I don't want to tell you something, with a beginning and an end. Not today. When we regularly hear about the "new normality" as if that branding would ease all misgivings, but "new standards" still spooks as a hairy monster about to jump from the closet. We may be otters today, but who knows tomorrow, we have been an entire animal atlas, folding and cutting ourselves to fit standards that were designed to leave some part of us always out, the tail, a leg...

As far as our standards will continue failing in welcome us all and creating gaps of in-betweenness where art and culture workers feel they don't belong, we will be supporting a production of art and culture that makes others feel unfit.

Sister otter, hold my hand while dreaming to not drift away from each other, we persevere, we survive, we know the tricks and songs of the stream, and we know that we are many.

[kemesnotations]

On Allyship: A letter.

Hi, you there, yes, you, Don’t feel embarrassed, I just want to thank you.

For the time you said: hold the horses! And asked for my opinion

For the time you asked for my permission

Or when you gave me recognition

For those days when you felt tired and still continued to stand next to me

For your continuous interest in educating yourself, reading, making research, listening and opening up.

For when you said “sorry” or “I don’t understand”.

For the infinite patience and discussions for the sake of continuing our dialogue

For not making assumptions about my gender, sexual orientation, mobility, customs, language, class, race, body, culture, heritage, religion, background or life situation.

For not patronising me or taking over

For getting out of your comfort zone

For your criticism and self-criticism

For making me a priority

For making “us” a priority

For every time you called out a bad practice

Or when you spoke out instead of looking the other way

For taking more time in breaking boxes rather than ticking them

For giving me space when I needed it

For your honesty and transparency

For knowing that we can not walk in each other´s shoes

For being a person of action and not just words

For seeing people, not only statistics

For not shielding yourself when you felt exposed or discomforted

For not pushing me into situations that would make me vulnerable

For your silent work

For not being afraid of trying

Thank you. Because I have done the same and only in you, I found an ally.

*This text was written and read by Kemê  as a part of #StopHatredNow 2019 and it is published at the URBANAPA website

[kemesnotations]

One of the functions of art is to give people the words to know their own experience. There are always areas of vast silence in any culture, and part of an artist’s job is to go into those areas and come back from the silence with something to say. It’s one reason why we read poetry because poets can give us the words we need. 

Ursula K. Le Guin

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Our culture doesn’t think storytelling is sacred; we don’t set aside a time of year for it. We don’t hold anything sacred except what organized religion declares to be so. Artists pursue a sacred call, although some would buck and rear at having their work labelled like this. Artists are lucky to have a form in which to express themselves; there is a sacredness about that and a terrific sense of responsibility. We’ve got to do it right. Why do we have to do it right? Because that’s the whole point: either it’s right or it’s all wrong.

Ursula K. Le Guin 

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The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.

Ursula K. Le Guin - Talking on the Water

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The moment a viewer recognizes a painting as beautiful, it transforms from an object into a work of art. The act of looking, then, becomes a creative process, and the viewer becomes the artist.

Lipps found a name for his theory in an 1873 dissertation by a German aesthetics student named Robert Vischer. When people project their emotions, ideas or memories onto objects they enact a process that Vischer called einfühlung, literally “feeling into.” The British psychologist Edward Titchener translated the word into English as “empathy” in 1909, deriving it from the Greek empatheia, or “in pathos.” For Vischer, einfühlungrevealed why a work of art caused an observer to unconsciously “move in and with the forms.” He dubbed this bodily mimesis “muscular empathy,” a concept that resonated with Lipps, who once attended a dance recital and felt himself “striving and performing” with the dancers. He also linked this idea to other somatosensory imitations, like yawns and laughter.

 Rachel Corbett, You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin

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Here is an interesting article from the pedagogical point of view of Yuko Takeda about the research and course Davide Giovanzana has been doing in Teak (Theatre Academy, Helsinki) under the title "Imagination of Violence" where I have been cooperating during November. The course, in an experimental way, tackled the representation of violence and our role in this representation, both as viewers and "generators" or participants. Before I never thought I would have the courage to look in the eye of this issue, because it frights me in many ways and because it is extremely problematic, sensitive, tricky, complicated, deep and therefore easier to overlook. It is something that you can not stare at without questioning your own role on it, without feeling a whole range of emotions that we don't want to have even close. Personally, I am still there, all those questions and feelings are moving within me. But questioning ourselves is necessary to learn, as the experimentation or the own experience. Thank you, Yuko for your perspective and documentation, Davide for throwing us these uncomfortable questions and to all the students involved in for doing such an inner work. Because of the sensitive of it, I will not make public the final images of this project, but If you are interested in knowing a bit more here you can read Yuko's post.

LINK

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“I am not I. I am this one that walks by my side, without me seeing him, the one I sometimes go to see and who sometimes I forget. The one who is silent, serene, when I am talking, the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate, the one who goes where I am not, the one who will remain standing when I die."

Juan Ramón Jiménez

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“My starting point is the psychological fact that the artist has at all times been the instrument and spokesman of the spirit of his age. His work can be only partly understood in terms of his personal psychology. Consciously or unconsciously, the artist gives form to the nature and values of his time, which in their turn form him.”

Aniela Jaffé, from the book “Man and his symbols”

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“If the obvious direct emotional response is to have any meaning, the question ‘Do I like this?’ will have to be the opening question and not the final judgement. An examination of our own feelings will have to give way to an examination of the piece of work. This is fair to the work and it will help to clarify the nature of our own feelings; … It is right to trust our feelings but right to test them too. … But here we come to the first hurdle of art, and it is a high one; it shows us up.”

Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery by Jeanette Winterson

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Free book: Culture of the Selfie: Self-Representation in Contemporary Visual Culture

Culture of the Selfie is an in-depth art-historical overview of self-portraiture, using a set of theories from visual studies, narratology, media studies, psychotherapy, and political principles. Collecting information from various fields, juxtaposing them on the historical time-line of artworks, the book focuses on space in self-portraits, shared between the person self-portraying and the viewer. What is the missing information of the transparent relationship to the self and what kind of world appears behind each selfie? As the ‘world behind one’s back’ is gradually taking larger place in the visual field, the book dwells on a capacity of selfies to master reality, the inter-mediate way and, in a measure, oneself.

Author: Ana Peraica

Read Here

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“Being an artist is not just about what happens when you are in the studio. The way you live, the people you choose to love and the way you love them, the way you vote, the words that come out of your mouth, the size of the world you make for yourselves, your ability to influence the things you believe in, your obsessions, your failures — all of these components will also become the raw material for the art you make.”

Teresita Fernández

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About art and meaning.

Be careful, The description is not the definition.

—kemê

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You are not creating something, something is creating you.

What you make, Will make you.

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(...)the metaphor of perspective is patently inadequate. You can’t look, after all, from different angles at an object that no longer exist as an external reality by itself.

Bruno Latour, from the book: We have never been modern

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just as the hand cannot let go a red-hot object on which its skin dissolves and sticks, so a mental image, an idea that make us mad with grief, cannot be detained from the soul, and all the efforts and detours of the mind to get rid of it will attracts it more. 

Paul Valéry

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Our media understanding of an artist as a successful professional who makes entertaining objects that sell for a lot of money is very restrictive. Artists are people who do things with images in order to understand the world. They have a fierce desire to know themselves through.

Massimiliano Gioni

from the book:33 Artists in 3 Acts.