No Cause for Celebration

Collaborations is the new exhibition at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT.  You guessed it, it's a whole museum full of works by collaborating artists.  But that's not really the point herein.


Among the works on view is All the Holidays At Once by MTAA.  It's an interesting premise; they are mixing up the holidays and the notion of artistic collaboration by asking the town's residents to lend them holiday decorations which they have arranged on the grass behind the building.  Donations include snowmen and Santas, pumpkins, skeletons, giant spiders, eggs, rabbits, and turkeys.  On the surface it's a nice bit of celebrating and lore and good times.  But it goes wrong really quickly.


The problem I have is the plastic.  It's all plastic propped and hanging everywhere.  Plastic!  I don't care what you're celebrating, plastic (and its source, petroleum) causes an enormous amount of damage to the planet's ecosystems.  On that point alone, the piece fails; what is being celebrated by the continued destruction of the planet and its life forms?


Let's take Christmas, the most represented holiday in the piece, and start by asking is it really in keeping with Jesus' teachings to abuse the earth in this manner, with our selfish and harmful use of resources?  By extension wouldn't loving your neighbor include simple things like refraining from poisoning his water?  And plastic is among the most common pollutant in the earth's waterways, just to make the point.  I'll admit, it's a little hypocritical for me to make this complaint as I do wear synthetic clothing and drink from a reusable plastic bottle.  But I try to limit my plastic habits in other ways as much as possible while recognizing it's a material we can't completely be rid of by now.  Still, does no one see the hypocrisy in plastic ornamentation?


All the Holidays at Once also includes nylon flags honoring Martin Luther King Day, Kwanzaa, Halloween, El Dia de los Muertos, Valentine's Day, Easter, Chanukah, and Earth Day.  A nylon flag honoring Earth Day?  My common sense chokes on the irony. 


Exacerbating the natural environment problem inherent in the piece is that the arrangement mimics Spiral Jetty, a work that was debated at the time of its creation as destructive to its environment and continues to raise questions about ongoing effects to the area.  In that regard, at least that's an appropriate reference.


In the figurative sense, the plastic bothers me still further.  As an observer of my own culture, I am concerned with the thing we call plastic values.  Not in the malleable, adaptable sense; I am talking about the synthetic and artificial.  We're caught up in a life that revolves around false notions of beauty, youth, productivity and worth.  Watch tv on any given day and we are driven by the pursuit, not of the new, but of the more.  We must always have the better phone, with its plastic casing and carcinogenic metals because without them we can't use the apps that don't add any value to our lives.


Which is much like celebrating a great deal of the holidays when you think about it.  Christmas is the ugliest, most hate filled, greed infected time of year despite the constant hitting over the head of good will and joy.  Those who do not participate in the celebration, whether for religious or moral objections, are labeled ill-willed, bad tempered, Scrooge and chastised for having different priorities.  Had Jesus been a real guy, I would fathom a guess he would be dismayed by this.  


Dr. King had a dream of all children being equal but we live in a world that still seeks to punish those who aren't like the loudest voices in the front of the line.  You are still lesser if you are black or brown, a woman, poor...  But we need to celebrate all the accomplishments we have made in equality even as we take those hard earned gains away.


New laws that will restrict voting access, women's rights, wage standards all stand before one state or other right now and the rhetoric continues to be America, land of the free.  We are seeing the beginning effects of global climate crisis and the argument is whether businesses should be restricted by environmental regulation -- because if business has to be mindful of the resources it depends on then how will it make as much profit as possible selling us things we don't need?  Thanksgiving is a "real" American holiday but we celebrate myth and ignorance, thinking the Pilgrims were passive friends to the Natives and not actively engaged in isolating and even killing Natives in their native land.  How many of your friends know why Memorial Day and Veterans Day are different?  How do we thank those who served our country?  By taking a day off to go shopping.  Plastic values. 


People decorate their homes and yards with garbage to celebrate holidays they don't understand.  They clutter their spaces to avoid the emotional garbage that clutters their lives.  The emphasis is on the conformity to superficial representations rather than genuine sentiments of thanks, love, or self-reflection.


Maybe All the Holidays at Once is good for exposing this arrogant stupidity and the hypocrisy that follows.  Maybe it's good for showing us the wrong ideas in our traditions but, as a celebration of cultural life forces, it's a sad disgrace.

Computer Art

I am a docent, or soon to be, with a rather reputable museum on the east coast.  I like it so far and hope to be effective once I can lead tours.  Like most museums, this one uses technology to assist the processes of running the joint and administering a variety of programs.  Fair enough; technology is everywhere and to deny it is futile, though none of us is obligated to follow each new technology just because it is available.


We're getting iPads to assist with tours.  I find the idea exceptionally intrusive.  I wonder if there is potential debate among the docents about the usefulness of it but I don't really care all that much if there is.  One imagines for those with limited knowledge in art or art history, or even the art on exhibition, it could help to have quick access to easy information available during the tour.  I imagine even I could benefit from it as I am not so well versed in specific instances and moments in art's chronology. 


But the irony for me is this museum's docents use VTS, Visual Thinking Strategies, an inquiry based model of looking at and thinking about art.  So it's my job to ask "What do you see" and encourage you to make connections with other ideas and issues in society.  We don't do the rote lecture -- or, from my understanding, not often as the mission is more about facilitating conversation and thought than telling you what to think.  The idea being that the "authoritative voice" discourages you from engaging and pursuing your own ideas around the stuff you're looking at.  True enough.


So why am I spending time now looking up the right answers to questions?  Why am I doing the work of connecting the dots for the audience? 


Beyond this, I am firm in my belief that there comes a point when technology interferes with the art experience.  I know the other docents; I can see some of them obsessing over a problem with the iPad and neglecting the point of a tour, becoming determined to make the iPad work in order to find the one piece of requested information. 


There is a lot of tech based art work out there and getting over fear of interacting with tech is good -- it's necessary if any of us want to understand where this tech art comes from.  Just getting over the tech hang-up enough so more of us use the docent blog for conversation and resources would help.  But making ourselves dependent on technology to talk about any and all art is an obstacle to real interaction from where I see it.  Why should the audience trust themselves when I hold the key to all the correct information in my hand?  People believe the information they get from a computer -- they take it as an authoritative truth.  It's a very common human tendency.  So having the iPad at the ready is no different from me spouting a bunch of crap, telling the audience what the art is and I see the potential for this to undermine the museum experience and the VTS process.

Prejudice

I'm not going to argue laws or work place policies.  What I am pondering is the accepted social prejudice in the US toward atheism.  I am an atheist and can be vocal about that at times.  It boils down to this -- I don't need made up stories to justify why I am alive, why my life sucks, why good or bad things happen, why we can't explain everything ever to occur in the whole huge, unknowable universe.  Nor am I so pretentious or self-righteous as to think I deserve an explanation for all those things as if my mere existence obligates that kind of response.  Kind of arrogant to think I am entitled to that kind of stroking.


But here's what I'm pissed about:  If my believing friends say something to the effect that god has a reason, or they can take solace in god's plan... and so on... that's perfectly fine in polite society.  They're just sharing what they  believe and are doing me a favor by enlightening me to their sacred knowledge, even if I choose to ignore it in the end.  But if I vocalize the fact that god is false and belief in anything supernatural is irrational and wrong then I am considered subversive and anti-social.  I'm pretty sure this is what is called a double standard. 


This is the First Amendment to the US Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.


We have no official religion in the US and I take issue with the very premise that this is a Christian nation, or any kind of god following nation.  For anyone to insist it is is a dismissal of my rights as a citizen and, in fact, a denial of the Constitution itself.  And let me say, where  Christians or other zealots may have rights to share their beliefs with me, even if I don't want to hear them, I have the same rights.


And in terms of my private life, I have the right to talk as I will.  Sure, there are accepted rules within personal relationships regarding the manner in which parties communicate, but I still reject the notion that censoring of one's self or ideas even in that context is unacceptable.  I can accept it if a person says "I'd rather not discuss it."   But that person owes me the same respect.  And it's a practice most believers I know can't seem to grasp.  A double standard they refuse to admit.