Fact versus Fiction and The Art of Storytelling

After dividing the state of prehistoric research into two opposite fields, Laming-Emperaire was not satisfied. She felt that on the one hand that the systematically scientific characterization of artifacts takes on an all too rigid function, but the other method "leaves science  behind and creates fiction set in prehistory instead" (141). I find both of these methods lacking and somewhat dangerous to the interpretation of prehistory so I would have to take the same route as Laming-Emperaire: to find "a way forward that avoided both extremes"(141). Like her, I would start with the science--with what had been given to us through the archaeological record-- to see if any stories could be pulled out of it. The danger of applying theories and ethnographies to prehistoric cultures is the inherent ethnocentrism, the mortal sin of the anthropologist. Following this line of thought, we're essentially implying that there cannot have been diversity among early people (which we know cannot possibly be true) and that we aren't really interested in understanding these peoples for who they were. Works of art exist as tools of instruction, structure, and solidarity among cultures and it would be completely ignorant of us to assume that the implementation of art is universal. Our book uses the example of masks. If we apply the modern meaning of masks (which vary from people to people anyhow) to prehistoric images of masks, we aren't going to be able to learn anything about the prehistoric people. Instead, we've imposed our knowledge onto something, slapped the label "primitive" on it, and lumped them altogether under the same heading "primitive masks."  

                    

Different Faces, Different Places: not a universal symbol

(Northwest Coast Indian mask, Australian Aboriginal mask, Inuit mask)

While I am a storyteller at heart, I have to say that I think Laming-Emperaire goes about her research in the correct way, that is, she starts with the cold hard facts. She realized that the cave paintings besides being art, were archaeological artifacts...and so they should be analyzed as such rather than abstract phenomena. The benefit of approaching the caves this way is that the "conclusion would be valid because it is derived entirely from archaeology, not from ethnography" (144). In a way I think this gives the paintings a deeper meaning since we're now on the trail of the truth. After extracting every bit of information from the archaeological record (i.e how the paintings were made and their location), we can begin to piece together the science to create a story based on reality (real-life science fiction). I think if one stops at the end of their archaeological study and doesn't proceed to flesh it out, then the point of anthropology has been missed. I feel that it is vitally important to relate artifacts to their relevance within a culture, otherwise they become nothing more than interesting old chachcas without any real significance destined to sit in a museum and collect dust. It is our duty as anthropologists to listen first and analyze later. No one would write a valid ethnography in modern times without conducting an intense ethnographic study...so why would it make sense for someone to write a historical treatise on prehistoric people without doing an intense archaeological study of "places, dates, sizes, and shapes?" The resulting story, however, must have its roots in science. While perhaps not as magical or interesting as approaching the caves from the more speculative ethnographic side, in the end I think we benefit more from the scientific approach, but most importantly we do justice to the great cultures of the past. 

Pollock!!

Contemporary art in relation to aesthetic experience.

The birth of contemporary art affected not only the art world at the time, but also changed the entire purpose of art up through the present. Up until this point, I think I would agree with Ellen D. that there are "two kinds of appreciation...the ecstatic response to sensual, psychophysiological properties in the artwork, and the aesthetic response to the manipulations of the code..." (What is Art For, 164). But contemporary art pulls away from aesthetic tradition. While contemporary artists would have studied the codes and patterns of history, the art itself doesn't reflect this. In fact, it is a reaction against traditional aesthetic experience. 

Jackson Pollock, Full Fathom Five

Ellen D. suggests that art serves a useful tool for people "not only to 'understand' the mysteries of life but to 'control' their world as best they could" (151). Pollock, perhaps one of the more famous contemporary artists, describes his technique as a controlled accident. It would seem to me that artists such as himself are trying to shy away from the more "cognitive or intellectual element[s] in aesthetic response" (165) as they desire to capitalize on said mysteries of life--that uncontrollable element of the universe--perhaps even chaos itself. These artists are after the point that art doesn't have to be modeled on reality, it doesn't have to have some kind of universal meaning or symbolism. Instead, aesthetic experience can simply be rooted in the feeling that the universe is full of randomness and things that we don't understand, which is exactly the feeling I get when I look at Pollock's work.

Contemporary art bypasses all the codes and is symbolic in that it represents the essential essence of something. It is an experiential art, the development of which "consists in the deepening [of] one's feelings through experience...and through experience in interpersonal relationships so that one can better appreciate embodiments of specific aspects and modes" (164). For example:

Jackson Pollock, Shimmering Substance

"Shimmering Substance glows with the brilliant light of midday sun on a thick meadow. Alive with arcs and orbs of heat-saturated colors, the painting is a testimony to the importance of the Long Island landscape as a motivating force of Pollock's work in the late 1940s" (http://www.nga.gov/feature/pollock/artist15.shtm). While the painting's subject matter is a summery landscape, I don't necessary see that with my eye. This is a great example of what I'm getting at simply because the name of the painting is Shimmering Substance... Pollock is representing the substance of sunshine (one of these somewhat elusive concepts) on a grassy meadow...not necessarily the thing itself (sun, grass, flowers, etc.) which would require the viewer to understand certain aspects of perspective, depth, motion...codes. What is most important in terms of understanding contemporary art is a "wide acquaintance with human relationships and ranges of emotional and imaginative thought...[which] will enrich one's experience of art in a way that may not be strictly necessary for emotional experience of nature, sexual love, religion, and so forth, where acquaintance with complex traditional 'code' is less involved in receptivity and response" (165).

Aesthetic Ecstasy

Ellen D spends an entire 10 pages talking about the importance of ecstasy in terms of aesthetic experiences.  She defines this term as "a range of experience characterized by being joyful, transitory, unexpected, rare, valued, and extraordinary to the point of often seeming as if derived from a praeternatural source" (157). I think to really understand the aesthetic experience in all its intensity, ecstatic experience is essential, but I don't think I really grasped this idea until recently.

I live in Maui and there's a lot of hippies who hang out there so naturally there's a lot of "hippie festivals," if you will. I just mean festivals with vegan food, a lot of yoga, crystal alchemy, sound healing...and in particular ecstatic dance. This seems to be a really common thing in certain circles these days: ecstatic dance. What the heck does this mean?

I didn't understand ecstatic dance (and thus I couldn't fully comprehend the depth of aesthetic experience) until I attended the Mystic Island Festival in January. Ellen D says that "music was the most frequently named art ecstasy trigger" (158) and these festivals are all about the celebration of music! I remember one night sitting around this huge fire someone had built. There was a man playing his hand drum and chanting songs that he learned from his village in Africa; another man was playing a didgeridoo. Unlike many of the people there, I was not on any substances. Nevertheless, I found the whole thing so entrancing. Even intoxicating. It was like your whole body would just vibrate with the didg and your heart was beating along with the drum. My body was in tune with the music. What's more, so was everyone else's. Ellen D talks about a kind of ecstasy where "there is a sense of union, a complete or almost complete loss of sensibility coupled with a feeling afterward that any contact that was made was complete" (158). This was exactly what I was feeling and my feelings manifested themselves in the form of dance: it was literally impossible not to move my limbs. Hence my first experience with ecstatic dance and the community therein.

I always smile to myself when I go to concerts now and I see people our own age bobbing their heads but otherwise unmoving.  I think this generation is afraid of dancing. They're afraid of connecting with others around them in any kind of union because they're afraid of being judged to the point that they become immobilized. They cannot know ecstasy or aesthetic experience. In fact, without an kind of "intense emotions [that] make us feel we are living" (134), they are more like zombies than anything else. They cannot really grasp what art--maybe even the human condition itself-- is all about without this integral piece.

But there's always one or two people at the edge of the crowd who are spinning and waving their arms. You might think they're crazy because they're so into the music! But I know those are the people who understand, or at least have the capability to understand, ecstatic experience; they appreciate, as Ellen D says, the "importance of feeling" in aesthetic experience. These are the true artists and this is what art is for.

I don't have any sound bites of the drumming and didgeridoo because no one was video taping or on their phones (obviously)...but here is a clip from another incredible artist, Freedom, who played that night. His voice hauntingly touches your soul.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wNr7pSLFNA

Making Special on a Friday afternoon

 I feel like I could have blogged about making my personal space special because it is actually very special to me. I've moved maybe 10 times in the last two years between houses and even back and forth across the country a few times. I've really come to realize that home is where the heart is so I tend to take as much of my heart with me every time I move and my space has become something like a bunch of little shrines, if you will, to things that inspire me. For example, I've dragged my books all over the place (thank god for media mail!) and I've taken a lot of time to arrange them on my bookshelves in each new place I've lived. Then there is my alter with my shells and my little Buddhas. I also like to paint (an act of making special in itself) so I hang up my paintings in particular places on my walls. I'm in love with the ocean so I bring it with me in my artwork.

Emma Zawacki, 2010

But what I really wanted to blog about was the act of making special through movement. Dance has always been a part of my life. I remember getting dressed up in my favorite hot pink tutu, the one with the silver sequins, and putting on my very own living room production for my private audience made up of my stuffed animals and my mom. I have since grown out of the hot pink tutu but my passion for dance has only increased.

Entering the ballet studio (which I did Thursday after a little summer hiatus) is a breath of fresh air. It is a place where awareness of the world outside, with all its trials and stresses, melts away and is replaced by focus and inner awareness. It has cultivated inner strength in me that helps me overcome the challenges of everyday life, and also a sense of humility by forcing me to recognize the limits of the human body. I continue to dance because it is a very personal challenge. Ballet is rigorous and demanding, both physically and emotionally. Yet, like all hard work there is something beautiful and deeply satisfying about it. It is my way of telling stories without words; It is my way of "making special." Every time I put on my ballet slippers I have to challenge myself to jump higher or turn faster, to dance as if no one is watching. This translates into the desire to grow within myself, to perfect my art, to be willing to try new things, and to continue to make grace and beauty an integral part of what I do and who I am. Ballet is no longer simply a hobby; it is a way of life. Dancing has taught me to sit up straight and move gracefully. But most importantly the very act of dancing has made me a stronger person. 

For some reason I don't have any recent photos of me dancing...but here's a few older ones.

A piece choreographed by yours truly, 2008.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmakMyy0xvE

Nutcracker 2008, Canyon Concert Ballet

An Anthropologist's Lesson in Cultural Relativism

Robert Layton asserts that, while there is no “universal application,” “there are two approaches to the definition of art which are applicable across cultural boundaries…” (Layton, 5).  After talking last week we decided that trying to define art was futile, and yet it seems that Layton is onto something. He says “one deals in terms of aesthetics, the other treats art as communication distinguished by a particularly apt use of images” (Layton, 5). In other words, we study the anthropology of art so that we can begin to understand art in a culturally relative context— that is, in relation to other forms of traditional expression within said culture. Layton cries out “What right do we have to assume that our criteria of harmony, rhythm, and proportion are those of other people?” (Layton, 13). WE CANNOT!  In order to understand art, we need to understand the culture’s traditions, the artist’s experience of life within their culture, and perhaps even the culture of the audience they’re addressing.  The beauty that we perceive may or may not be what the artist intended so the only way to understand the reality of the artist is to listen to his or her voice.

It was incredible to watch the clip about Faith47 and also the movie about graffiti in L.A. Graffiti is such an interesting art form since it’s sort of an anti-aesthetic. (It’s even been labeled “art crime,” a term used by the general public in a negative way but embraced by graffiti artists themselves!) One expert, Jeff Ferrell, writes in his book Crimes of Style:

"Graffiti writing breaks the hegemonic hold of corporate/governmental style over the urban environment and the situations of daily life. As a form of aesthetic sabotage, it interrupts the pleasant, efficient uniformity of "planned" urban space and predictable urban living. For the writers, graffiti disrupts the lived experience of mass culture, the passivity of mediated consumption." (The cool website where I found this: http://www.graffiti.org/faq/werwath/werwath.html .)

Aesthetic sabotage, hm…paradoxically, this is what the anthropologist must grasp in order to understand the aesthetic of graffiti art. It’s like using art against itself. (Nietzsche would love this!) It takes the traditional Western idea of form (harmony, beauty, balance, etc) and turns it on its head by exposing the artist’s reality. Too many people don’t respect the medium (to the point of calling it vandalism), and obviously they don’t appreciate the art form…probably because they don’t understand the culture from which it comes. But this is the entire point of anthropology: to understand another reality. Graffiti comes out of hip-hop. It comes from the streets, from struggle and hardship, from oppressed souls, from opinionated men and women who want to be heard above the deafening roar of the masses. To understand this reality, the anthropologist has to get out of his plush velvet armchair, open his eyes to the world, and his heart to human struggle.

(Check out these realities....This website is incredible!) http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/09/14/tribute-to-graffiti-50-beautiful-graffiti-artworks/

OMEN

                                                                                 

Josepalencia

Perhaps an ancient form of graffiti?

(http://sweetsweetlife.typepad.com/sweet_sweet_life/2010/02/im-sure-that-cave-paintings-are-not-on-your-list-of-fascinating-subjectsnor-were-they-on-mine-but-olivia-had-to-do-a-unit.html) 

        

 I saw these canvas graffiti paintings at Outside Lands a few weeks ago. They weren't made to reflect the  artist's culture in particular (although I'm sure this was an influence), but rather to reflect the culture of the festival inspired by the music. Kind of a neat sensory experience for a peek into festival sub-culture. It wasn't solely the graffiti artist's voice that was heard, but rather the voices of the musicians expressed through the painter's interpretation.