Monday, March 7, 2011

Blog Post 5

 This week's blog prompt will involve providing examples for two important metaphors that relate to your education and to the art we are studying. In the opening pages of the Gomez-Pena piece, he says he is attempting to "observe a new world with new eyes." One of my colleagues has the following quotation by Sydney J. Harris on her email signature: "The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows." Please respond to these two quotations by providing examples in this week's text AND anything from the NY trip or our class discussions that you think are examples of observing a new world with new eyes AND turning mirrors into windows." 

I really like Gomez-Pena's approach at "observing the world with new eyes." For me, this is all about shifting focus and understanding so that we can get to the heart of experiences and issues. Gomez-Pena is creatively and blatantly sharing the ways that he sees the shifts in the current global culture. He isn't judging them (as he says), but he is sharing them for what they are. Once he names what's happening, we're able to move a step deeper. At the end of his essay, he provides some ways that questions can be re framed to explore a phenomenon (problem, trend, whatever) more deeply. When we shift and look at something in a different way, with a different focus, this affects the action that we take. I really loved a lot of the statements that Gomez-Pena made in this essay, and it's clear to me that he is really questioning how he can continue to be effective with his art. I think that he was unable to carry on with his work without stepping back and going back to basics with this piece, because things ARE changing, and it wouldn't make sense to carry on without recognizing this shift. 

I can definitely see evidence for his statement that artists are having to wrack their brains to find ways to engage their audiences, now that (privileged) audiences have so much at their fingertips and are harder to please. I think that people are looking for an experience, so artists are shifting to that realm. Krzysztof Wodiczko's "OUT OF HERE: The Veterans Project" felt like exactly that; it provided an experience that I could engage in to shift my focus and see the experience with new eyes.

I also agree that one purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. It again goes back to needing to go deeper. If we only rely on our own experiences, we end up with completely internal knowledge, and it's very easy to filter experiences through knowledge base. We all do it, and it's how we make sense of the world. We don't grow, and we don't learn if we stay in our comfort zone. A step has to be taken to get past the "mirrors" of our own experiences (though this is valuable knowledge, to be sure) and also be able to grasp the experience of the world from another's perspective. We can't be compassionate without taking that step (which I think Gomez-Pena points to in his essay.)

I can't quite explain how this connects to the prompt, but I really love this quote from the text. "What certainty do we have that our high definition reflection won't devour us from the inside out and turn us into the very stylized freaks we are attempting to deconstruct? And if we are interested in performing for nonspecialized audiences, what certainty do we have that they won't misinterpret our "radical" actions and hyperethnicized bodies as merely spectacles of radicalism or stylized hybridity?" (pp. 14)  This is a perfect example of how complex and how difficult identity, creativity, and power are. Over the past few years, I have felt a  strong focus towards my ability to define identity and experience by my own terms, and have repeatedly run into this same sentiment. How do I insure that misinterpretation won't happen? Especially with art, something that cannot be completely explained and relies (maybe?) on the interpretation of the audience, is that risk of misinterpretation just something that comes along with sharing a message?

1 comment:

  1. The two quotes, "observe a new world with new eyes" and "The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows” are both extremely powerful quotes. In Gomez-Pena introduction he talks about the difficult time that not only the art world went through but the entire world as humanity knew it. A socio-political shift from everything that was known to everything that was unknown. When people lost jobs and they were not backed by academia they just held on to their hopes. Behind all of the ciaos in the art world, Gomez-Pena is saying that by observing the world with new eyes that he will not forget the things that happened and if he doesn’t use these experiences in the “new world” it will these things will only come full circle and happen again
    The second quote carries the same meaning in my eyes as the first quote however; it is much more relatable to me. I come from an entire family where the closest relative that has an education is a second cousin. Having an education opens your mind to many things beyond just learning new material, you also learn how to see things in a different light, to have opinions on everything, and for me personally feel confident that I will not have to work the way my family has in the past. Through gaining an education my mind is open to limitless possibilities, I want to continue with school, obtain a master degree and maybe move on to another field. Through my education I am turning all of the negative aspects of my life and everything that I was “supposed” to do and shattering it. One day I will be a very successful woman and nobody will be able to stop and because my education helped me turn mirrors into windows.

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