number 40
the June 1997


News & Letters

Letter from:

Sonja van Kerkhoff

, The Netherlands

,
In an era in which the avant garde is well and truly part of the gallery establishment, in which the outrageous fails to shock because it has become common place, the first show of the Shopping Trolley Art Gallery celebrated the resiliency of art.
Sixty-two artists from twelve countries mailed images to the UK artist, Martha Aitchison, whose gallery was a shopping trolley -the kind often used by elderly women.

A wide variety of media was employed, from hand-made stencils to computer graphics, watercolours, printmaking, photography, collages, and constructions.

The Not At All Private View of the show took place on December 21 in the Bromley Shopping Centre, where not less than 20,000 saw the show amidst a Christmas shopping frenzy.

One highlight, apart from the trolley’s various street and gallery appearances, was its temporary confiscation for use outside the Institute of Contemporary Art in London! The trolley was wheeled up and down in front of some of the most exclusive galleries in London, and it will soon take a trip through the tunnel to Calais (France) for a shopping spree. A small gallery show is usually tied to a particular theme or place, but in this case the trolley’s changing location continually affected the context of the work it displayed, and put art on the move.

Letter from:Jerry Conway, U.S.A.

´Art is an antidote for violence. It gives the ecstasy, the self-transcendence that could otherwise take the form of drug addiction, or terrorism, or suicide or warfare. We have seen that both violence and art -and the beauty which is the center of art- yield the experience of ecstasy and self-transcendence. But art and violence are directly opposite in their effects.´

Psycho-therapist and author, Rollo May, in his autobio-graphical book, My Quest For Beauty.

I agree with the quotation´s view, but the explanation of why this is so seems unclear. Self-transcendence is a big, unclear word. Does it mean going beyond the self to something greater? Does it mean forgetting the self? I think that we turn to violence when we sense that we are trapped and can’t see alternatives.
Art is an antidote for entrapment because it is a work of the imagination and imagination is a font of possibilities. One of the key possibilities of the imagination is the chance to embody, to make somehow visible, that which is invisible. So art can give us an image of rage, an image of love, images of our desire and wishes, and, in giving images of the otherwise hidden dimensions of ourselves, allows alternative actions. Perhaps we are entrapped when we cannot find images of our inner lives, or when we think that one image suffices. We are trapped when we hold to an image of soul, without recognizing its being an image. Idolatry. Maybe I´m just word-playing, but art seems to be engaged in deepening, a discovering of the self rather than its transcending. But I look forward to enlightenment.

Letter from:

Johannes Birringer

, U.S.A.

Art is an antidote to violence may also appear to be a pious wish or a defense. Perhaps artmaking or self-expression is an active defense, in the sense of people feeling entrapped and needing to let the anxiety or rage come out. Of course, not all art is connected to or originates in such emotions. I happen to have seen/experienced a lot more violent art than art that is calm, soft, sober and meditative. Perhaps that’s a pity. On the other hand, we live in violent and often unjust societies, and struggle to make sense of it all, and many experience the sense of powerlessness that art tends to compensate for. In art production over the past 100 years, I can see many examples of art that, by approximating or playing with the power of ideas and the power of art’s role in culture, tends to be involved in the politics of power that some think is the domain of the state or the law or the media or the institutions. We have splendid examples of art in institutions/markets (in opera, theatre, painting, film, and revolutionary art as in Russia after 1919, or in other large-scale social-changes/cultural revolutions, including the totalitarian ones of this century) that participated in political violence, and could thus be called violent because of its will to power (Nietzsche).

Much religious art was also in collusion with state power, and thus played the role of a handmaiden for ideological oppression (not so close to the idea of transcendence, but more intimate with the powers that be. There are rewards for such art. Today the rewards come from corporate sponsors more powerfully than the state). Even on the seemingly innocuous level of “monuments” or “memorials” I would venture to say that there are violent monuments (of hero worship or state glorification). In Germany, there is a heated controversy over the construction of a massive Holocaust memorial in the center of Berlin, and many think the archi-tectural plan for this massive thing is preposterous. Some of you may also have seen the Israeli-Palestinian theatre production and film of Balagan, which treats very critically the use or instrumentalization of memory in contemporary Israel, in a performance that is quite violent and aggressive but justifiably so because of the profoundly unsettling and incomprehensible subject matter of the Holocaust. Remembering can be violent, as we see in the occupied territories.

I don’t know whether it is alright to say that violence in art is sometimes necessary. There have been performances and body art works that were also self-destructive or self-lacerating, and the violence as a real action asked questions about the daily violence we know/consume or don’t recognise, as we sometimes become desensitized to it all. In revolutionary terms, there is also a way to think of resistance against oppression as perhaps a necessary violent act of image making (see the guerrillas of MRTA/Tzpac Amaru in Lima, who are occupying the media and drawing attention to the injustices in their country). I suppose there is no valid generalization. There are so many ways to express and to make art.

Letter from:

Justice St. Rain

, U.S.A.

We would all love to believe that the things we love are beyond corruption. As artists, we want to believe that art cannot be violent, when, of course it can be. I once saw a piece of performance art by a Bahá´í friend, which was so full of anger and obscenities that I felt personally violated. But our rosey view of our own occupation is more than just naive, it is dangerous. If we believe that art is an antidote to violence, then we may blind ourselves to the violence we may be perpetrating in the name of art. Shoghi Effendi did not warn us about the prostitution of the arts because the arts were beyond corruption, but because we can become blind to that corruption when we egotistically believe that art is somehow more holy and pure than every other occupation.
If art, like any other form of work, is not done in a spirit of service to humanity, then it is not worship, and therefore can be just as violent, corrupt and degrading as any other activity.

Review:    

New CD by

Luanne Hightower

, U.S.A.

reviewed by Philip Belove

, U.S.A.

The album has range. On the opening cut, prayer, ´Oh Lord My God, Open Thou the door...´ is sung first as an acapela chant and then unfolds into a classic jazz tune. Then the album turns to melodies and arrangements colored by exposure to the brilliant and talented sufi musicians in our area. Bahá´í and Sufi prayers and poems are sung in English and Arabic accompanied by rim drum and Arabian stringed instruments. And these are beautiful arrangments with complex harmonies and they stand as exquisite musical pieces. The Bahá´í selections include The Hidden Word, ´ Love me that I may love thee...´
´ Ya Baha ul abha´ ´ Free Thyself,´ and the Báb's prayer, ´ Say:God Sufficeth.´ There are several Sufi poems, a particularly lovely translation by Kabir Helminski of a work by ibn Arabi, and a haunting chant from the Qur'án, ´ Surah 59:22-24,´ and the album ends with ´Amazing Grace.´

Review:    

Mevlana: The Whirling Dervishes of Turkey

Review by Daniel C. Orey, U.S.A.

...Kabir Helminski was an extremely talented narrator and translator of much of the poetry, verses and ceremonies. He explained that the ceremony was a ´refreshment of the living soul´ for those performing it, and by all accounts, it was not only the dancers who left refreshed.

The evening began with a brief recitation of poetry from Rumi, after which the themes of the music and choral portions were shared with the audience. The music and the ritual of hirling are true aspects of the mystical branch of Islam, Sufism, and are based on the teaching and writings of the philosopher-poet Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273) and of the Qur'án. Rumi taught that dance, music and poetry can be avenues to a state of transcendence, and can actually be channels of Divine Grace. The dance as performed here by the Mevlevi, seeks a liberation of the soul, and symbolizes a trip to heaven...

The Mevlevi Ensemble consisted of an orchestra of 13 members, and used Turkish versions of the violin, lute, flute and drum. The ensemble employed eight singers, who sang in unison. The most impressive of these singers, Kani Karaca, besides being one of the two drummers, was also blind. About half way through the 40 minute non-stop musical performance of the first half, he suddenly burst into song, with what the local newspaper critic referred to as, ´such vehement force, breaking the regularity of the music with a free-ranging melody of his own, that sounded like improvisation´. His phrasing and feeling was reminiscent of Spanish flamenco singers, with the intensity of African American gospel singing...

Artist Profile:    

pages 5 - 8

Tina Herslund

, visual artist, The Netherlands / Denmark.

Tina began as an assistant stage designer in her home town of Copenhagen (Denmark) in 1980. Later she worked for the Gladsaxe Theatre as a theatre technician... She then turned to the visual arts...
In 1986 she moved to Amsterdam to study theatre at the Rietveld school of Visual Arts...
During her study she wrote plays, made video, live performances, sculptures and paintings.

In 1991, Tina graduated with a book presentation of her play, Tenminste (if only / at least), her only script that has been worked into a full production...

In 1994, Janny Donker, the director of Loss Theatre in Maastricht commissioned Tenminste and it was performed nine times over a period of two weeks.

The story of it began with long space of her own studio, into which a voice was placed. Soon this monologue evolved into a dialogue, and then into one where the two women are sisters who talk -often past each other- about a childhood incident concerning the accidental drowning of their brother...
The performance makes use of a wall of 3 rows of television sets: a total of sixty-three, plus a set at each end of the space, and sand is placed on the floor.
The seating for the audience is at each end of the narrow space so that the audience faces each other and has to look sideways to view the images on the television sets...

Artist Profile:    

LineSync Architecture

, Joseph Cincotta & Julie Lineberger, U.S.A.

LineSync Architecture designs large and small commercial, municipal and residential properties, and currently employs two architects and two draftspersons. Joseph graduated from Harvard's Graduate School of Design with a Master´s degree in Architecture (M.ARCH). Julie is responsible for LineSync Architecture's marketing, client negotiations, and office management. Before running LineSync Architecture, she worked as a professional international educator in third world countries. The family has been living in Vermont for 8 years, where they established LineSync Architecture in 1988.

Joseph...In 1983, I began my three year stay in the Sultanate of Oman, working for Al Turki...
Seven years later, my design for the Al Turki Headquarters had the honor of being designated a National Landmark in the Sultanate of Oman...

Julie: I am responsible for the marketing and all the office management. Often our tasks overlap both in design and management, and quite regularly on client relations.

I was in the Graduate School of Education, studying and working in the field of International Education. I had travelled many places, working in various settings. In Bogota, Colombia, I started a school in the hillside for children fleeing United Fruit Company violence; in Tijuana, I was part of a group that ran a summer school for street children; in Bonaire, I taught English and Spanish to Dutch businessmen; in Thailand, I ran a 10,000 student education system at the Khao-i-Dang Relocation Camp, working with the International Rescue Committee under the auspices of UNHCR; in the Sultanate of Oman, I taught English and social skills to Bedoin children who had received scholarships to attend the Sultan's private school; in Boston, I worked with a group to open the International Studies and Language High School for the Boston Public Schools.

When we decided to marry and start a business, I took my non-profit skills and switched to profit. It is this unusual background, we believe, that has allowed us to be successful in architecture, at a time when thousands of architectural firms close annually in the States...

With the majority of our clients, the cultural pulls are more inconspicuous. Their lives, and dreams for home design, are influenced by their socioeconomic culture, their career culture, their family structure, their education, the community in which they build, and their self-definition.

More about LineSync at: http://www.sover.net/~linesync/

or see their profile page on this site: LineSync Architecture

Artist Profile:    

Barbara Joyce

, visual artist, the Dutch Antilles.

For former actress Barbara Joyce, art is the stage of the mind. It’s an intuitive process: an act of discovery and surprise that sometimes offers curious clues into the human psyche. As a starting point, Joyce sometimes likes to flirt with the legacies of legendary artists, such as in her collage After Magritte.
Other works have paid homage to artists like Picasso and Chagall. Aside from this theme, her subject matter Is not pre-meditated,and she allows this to evolve as she adds the collage elements.
In choosing the elements for a piece, Joyce intentionally juxtaposes different styles, color schemes and media. Each incongruous collection of objects takes on a dream-like quality, much like the disjointed events and images that occupy your sleeping hours. When she completes a work, Joyce laminates it to protect the piece. Now based in the Dutch Antilles, Joyce acted on Broadway and in television soaps -including the soap opera As the World Turns -before turning to the visual arts 10 years ago, when she began her informal study...