Re: <eyebeam><blast> Art and Media

[ratkins@idt.net (Robert Atkins)]

Attila Sohar:

>Don't get me wrong,what the art and the net association achieved so far
>is very promising and has a tremendous potential in many aspects, but
>art only relieves and seldomely saves or prevents. I think that is an
>aspect worthy of serious discourse and research.

Since art's origins lay in mythic ritual paleolithic citizens might
reply that art has always saved lives by ensuring that the crops grow,
the bison flourish, that enemies are vanquished or female fertility
ensured.

But I suggest that you are thinking far too literally about what it
means to save a life. (Altho a  Rodin could certainly flatten a rapist.)
Figuratively speaking, art (and film and books) saved my life as a kid.
At a social level, art--like theory--obviously possesses the power to
change/shape/alter consciousness. Be that artwork Picasso's Guernica or
a Rothko abstraction. More recently the AIDS crisis provides lots of
additional examples. The resonant symbols of that crisis which have
helped save lives by focusing attention, anger, fundraising etc were all
made by artists who self consciously conceived them as public artworks:
Silence=Death (Silence=Death collective), The Quilt and Red Ribbon
(Visual AIDS' artists caucus). Not to mention the fact that the prospect
of exhibitions has kept many artists with AIDS alive; a shocking number
dying a week or 2 after that final exhibition opened.

Robert Atkins

Editor: TalkBack! A Forum for Critical Discourse
http://talkback.lehman.cuny.edu/tb
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