Penicillin and the Pull-out Method: What the heart is full of..

Recently I started investigating going back to school. Yes. Hence the process of tenderizing my scholastic mind by marinating in other scholars' words and reflections in research, is well on its exhausting way. By accident, I came across a bit of writing done by Evette Weyers, the wife of a prominent and popular South African actor, Marius Weyers.

The Weyers.

As a sculptor and writer, her reflections on what it means to be an ARTIST in the world and the roles we take on, made me feel emphatically about the importance of Fine Artists, Actors, Musicians, Dancers, Poets, and Writers as the necessary witnesses of live. It's not new news, but its really nice to reflect on it and I wanted to share this bit of insight she offered.

Starting by looking at what roles artists can take in society, either by choice or by accident.

Most artists hope fervently that their work would be a source of inspiration. Sometimes this happens by accident and sometimes it is just that time in History and society for that catalyst to appear in our collective psyche. Take for example the landscape artist Strijdom van der Merwe or Wolgang Mozart. Others choose to hold a mirror up to the world around them like William Kentridge, Sue Williams and Willie Bester, which inspires understanding of its own.

http://www.strijdom.co.za

So Mr. Van der Merwe is the reason Hipsters in Vancouver have taken to knitting coverings for trees. Who knew?

Other choose the value of shock to convey their meaning . The famous Dutch producer, Dieter Reible promoted the idea that theatre should be dangerous and that the State should fear it. “ The role of theatre is to shock people out of their bourgeois selfness.” As Frans Kafka said:

“ A book has to be like an axe that shatters frozen sea within.”

Maybe the clam chowder for dinner was a mistake.

An obvious example of this is Salmon Rushdie's exile over the “ Satanic Verses” which the whole religious sector of his country took personally and issued a death warrant over. Hectic.

That in itself becomes a query into the freedom of speech within the arts, but we won't open that can of beans just yet.

Tough review.

Artists can also effectively fall into the category of the jester; the bold-headed clowns who entertain us through satire, like our local comic satirist Sapiro and Pieter Dirk Uys's Evita.

Who were you expecting? Madonna?

Then there are those who like to focus our attention on our blindspots..make us guiltily aware of the fakeness of the Emperors’ new cloak by bringing into focus a lie or the hypocrisy of religious convictions. These artists want to cause panic and dissertion in culture. I volunteer Die Antwoord for this one..especially with their latest music video "Fatty Boom Boom".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIXUgtNC4Kc

Through the ages the human race has shows is perclevity for going of course. How many times can we see people doing REALLY bad things in the name of God? Jesus and His was the mascot for the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades.The Jihad was declared in service of Mohammed, and let's not forget when The Church burned women as witches in the Puritan times. Murder is still murder.

Makes you feel uncomfortable don't it?

http://brandingironworldwide.com/journal/2012/01/jill-greenberg-a-strange-new-world/

Here is what the Russian writer Alexandr Solzhenitsin had to say when he received the Nobel prize for Literature in 1970, about the role literature could play in the merciless onslaught of violence in the world.

"Let us not forget that violence does not exist alone and cannot survive in isolation; it is inevitably bound up wit the lie. Let the lie come into the world, even dominate the world, but not through me. Moreover, writers and artists can do something more, they can vanquish the lie. Wherever else it fails, Art has always won its fight against lies, and it always will win. Its victory will be obvious, irrevocably obvious to all men. The lie can withstand a great deal in the world, but it cannot withstand Art."

This truth shines in nominal fiction such as Solzhenitsin's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and locally in "Die swerfjare van Poppie Nongena" (The wander years of Poppie Nongena) by Elsa Joubert.

And this same truth can just as easily be hidden in the following ironic account:

When the government in the USA gathered to announce their declaration of war on Irac to the press in 2001, they were in a large room that had an embroidered replica of Picasso's Guernica on the wall. When they noticed this they quickly covered it with a large blue cloth. The truths about the violence of war Picasso's work reflected was quickly swept under the carpet. Would it have reminded these important men that war's inhumanities isn't all Fox news broadcasts and flying banners of judgement. Lives are lost on both sides. One wonders if they felt their decision might be judged or sound false in the presence of work that showed the inhumanity of what they were about to undertake.