New City Arts Initiative • Charlottesville, Virginia

We wandered into Second Street Gallery this afternoon to see Daniel Canogar's (much-anticipated) "Reboot."

The installation is beautiful and worth the trip. The things that we find mostly get in our way (i.e. techno-clutter-- ethernet cords, CD's, tangles of wires), Daniel Canogar has resurrected into a beautifully "littered collective memory, a portrait of our society in this particular age."

Second Street elaborates on Canogar's ideas: "Voluntarily, we allow ourselves to be trapped by cobwebs of our own making, daily utilizing technology to create complex techno-emotional connections that seem to bring us together but in fact can separate and isolate us."

The work eerily reminds us of Alain de Botton's writing in The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. De Botton spends some time with the work of a rocket scientist to conclude, "We [are] now deep in the era of the technological sublime, when awe could most powerfully be invoked not by forests or icebergs but by supercomputers, rockets and particle accelerators. We [are] now almost exclusively amazed by ourselves."

The most interesting thing about this artist (Canogar), or in the case of this author (de Botton), is their willingness to "ask questions about how technology has changed the way we feel about ourselves, about notions of what it means to be alive, or dead." Neither artist nor author are calling for an abandonment of our technological ways; they are just calling into question the assumptions that technology subtly makes about our humanity-- our relationships with one another and our understanding of ourselves.

In a similar vein, almost every Round Table that we've hosted this year has ended with a techno-conversation, even if the Round Table topic has been seemingly unrelated.

Anyway, if we were to attempt to re-imagine Daniel Canogar's work here in this blog, we'd just be giving into the very non-presence that makes for Canogar's material. Rather than reading, we suggest stopping in to experience this buried technology in a fully present, re-imagined way.

 

Second Street Gallery is located at 115 Second Street SE, Charlottesville, VA 22902. The gallery is open to the public from Tuesday to Saturday, 11 AM to 6 PM.

Transpositions has facilitated a symposium on art, kitsch, and faith.  A series of articles on their blog have got us thinking...

-Do we participate in Christian kitsch (even without realizing it?) How does this participation with kitsch affect us? 

Drew Dixon, in his article "Wearing Out the Faith," answers:

"Many resort to a ritualistic stance on kitsch. As is often the case as Christians, our passions wane but we maintain rituals–so as we give ourselves over to kitsch, it becomes the way we decorate our cars, bodies, and living spaces. In moments of weakness or failure when we realize our lives don’t match the testimony of our garments and Facebook statuses we are faced with a dilemma. The Christian either attempts to cut ties with kitsch altogether or finds comfort in them–as we imagine them to be expressions of our values and priorities. The former position may seem ideal but is ultimately marred by self righteousness and is impossible to maintain. The latter is a precarious position akin to polishing the outside of the cup (Matthew 23:25-26).

“Christian” kitsch is going to be a part of our lives–it is utterly unavoidable. We can remove our bumper stickers, throw away our T-shirts, and refuse to project our spirituality through social media but kitsch will find us out.

...

Kitsch can make us “think more highly of ourselves than we ought” (Romans 12:3). Thinking of ourselves with “sober judgment” means refusing to define ourselves by our outward projections. And whether we make any attempts to divorce ourselves from kitsch or not, we must be willing to divorce ourselves from it in spirit, and focus our attention on our testimony and our relationships. If our shirts, buttons, bumper stickers, and Facebook statuses were cleared away would our closest friends see Christ in us?"

 

-But why is kitsch bad? Isn't it just a "lesser good," a "lower art,"--mediocre, maybe, but certainly not dangerous?

Tim Gorringe, in "Feeling Good about Ourselves While Evil Goes Unchecked," answers:

For Gorringe, kitsch is "the refusal to be honest about pain and evil; second, that looking at kitsch two tears fall, one at the subject and the other which notes what a tender emotional being I am to be moved by this. Kitsch, we can say, is a particularly vicious version of emotivism...we have to ask why there is no kitsch in the Christian Scriptures. It is not that the texts are shy of emotion: to the contrary. But throughout there is an insistence on seeing reality, seeing it steadily and seeing it whole. Kitsch ducks this insistence.

Is the flight from reality of kitsch characteristic of the People of the Book, in which reality is kept so squarely in view?

...

The emotional dishonesty of kitsch prevents us from facing our own fear and our own shadow.

...

Nothing is more remarkable, in the Messianic writings, than the fact that resurrection story never becomes simply a ‘happy ending’ but rather speaks of hope for God’s peace, justice and coming kingdom.  Christians are not called to be puritans, to deny laughter, tears and joy, but their Scriptures generate a structure of affect in which kitsch has no place. Kitsch, in fact, is one of Satan’s prime stratagems to undermine the gospel, to turn it from something which turns the world upside down to a cheap tinsel decoration which helps us feel ‘good about ourselves’ (one of the mantras of our contemporary culture) whilst allowing injustice to go unchecked. Hundertwasser may have been right that we will never have a world free of kitsch, but we could at least see to it that it does not become part of Christian DNA."

So for Gorringe, kitsch is a dangerous denial of reality, an attempt to escape from pain, a self-validation of our own thin emotions, and has no part in a Christian worldview, which should be engaging with the reality of suffering, and the real hope of renewal.

 

-So how does kitsch fail as art? What can art do that kitsch cannot?

In "Wounded for Our Visual Transgressions..." , Betty Spackman addresses this question:

"Good art opens the mind and emotions. It stretches one’s perspective, questions one’s beliefs, agitates apathy, and invites one to explore the mysterious. It can be, I believe, a manifestation of the sacred. Religious kitsch, on the other hand, with its general goal of preaching, is without ambiguity, without questions, without mystery. It closes the mind, confronting or comforting the viewer with prescribed answers.

...

Paradoxically, the simplistic nature of kitsch both conceals and reveals the vestiges of wonder, the underlying mysteries of faith, through the most garish of guises and a disturbing exhibitionism. In a way, kitsch represents a closet desire for spiritual reality, and the creative longing to manifest mystery. In this sense it is a kind of faith in drag.

...

She addresses the importance of visual culture in faith:

"Faith says we shouldn’t need to see but perhaps more than ever we are in a generation of doubting Thomases. However Jesus did not shun Thomas’s desire for visual aids. He bared his chest and opened His hands. He exposed His wounds and offered the possibility that they be handled. I’m sure that moment was as awkward as it was beautiful; sentimental and profound at the same time. I long for this humility and generosity of spirit and pray for us all as artists that this kindness be manifest in the art we put on the street, sell in the store or hang in the gallery, and that we might be able to invite whoever might want to, or need to, poke their fingers at it."

Spackman claims that in acknowledging the failures of kitsch, we are also affirming the power and potential of art--to open our eyes, to make what we believe material, to reflect truth and inspire response.

From "A Conversation with David Foster Wallace," interview by Larry McCaffery, Dalkey Archive Press, 1991, via Culture Making.

David Foster Wallace explores what art is, and why it matters that it believe in something. He argues that if this world is only full of badness, then "bad art" would just be--appropriate art.  But humans are more (and long for more) than this "badness," and flat, shallow art is classified as such because it does not reflect those longings.   Foster Wallace seems to be arguing (inadvertently, perhaps) for art that encompasses the darkness of the world, while also offering a vision of redemption and brilliance in the face of all the badness.

He says:

"Look, if the contemporary condition is hopelessly... insipid, materialistic, emotionally retarded, sadomasochistic, and stupid, then I (or any writer) can get away with slapping together stories with characters who are stupid, vapid, emotionally retarded, which is easy, because these sorts of characters require no development. With descriptions that are simply lists of brand-name consumer products. Where stupid people say insipid stuff to each other. If what’s always distinguished bad writing—flat characters, a narrative world that’s cliched and not recognizably human, etc.—is also a description of today’s world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world. If readers simply believe the world is stupid and shallow and mean, then Ellis can write a mean shallow stupid novel that becomes a mordant deadpan commentary on the badness of everything. Look man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.

...

If you operate, which most of us do, from the premise that there are things about the contemporary U.S. that make it distinctively hard to be a real human being, then maybe half of fiction’s job is to dramatize what it is that makes it tough. The other half is to dramatize the fact that we still "are" human beings, now. Or can be. This isn’t that it’s fiction’s duty to edify or teach, or to make us good little Christians or Republicans; I’m not trying to line up behind Tolstoy or Gardner. I just think that fiction that isn’t exploring what it means to be human today isn’t art. We’ve all got this "literary" fiction that simply monotones that we’re all becoming less and less human, that presents characters without souls or love, characters who really are exhaustively describable in terms of what brands of stuff they wear, and we all buy the books and go like "Golly, what a mordantly effective commentary on contemporary materialism!" But we already "know" U.S. culture is materialistic. This diagnosis can be done in about two lines. It doesn’t engage anybody. What’s engaging and artistically real is, taking it as axiomatic that the present is grotesquely materialistic, how is it that we as human beings still have the capacity for joy, charity, genuine connections, for stuff that doesn’t have a price? And can these capacities be made to thrive? And if so, how, and if not why not?"

 

 

THE LEATHERS-SNYDER B&B (in support of the New City Arts Initiative*) is auctioning: A Night of Murder, Mayhem and Mystery!

 

It was a cold March evening, in 1892—a party was about to begin in the stately home of Captain and Madame Ne’erdowell, when a murder was discovered! All guests attending the event were implicated. Was it Professor Poindexter in the Parlor, Scarlet O’Hara in the Hothouse or Chef Clementine in the Kitchen?

OR maybe it was YOU?!

Bid to win a spirit-filled evening at the Leathers B&B and discover who among your friends is the true culprit!

- Participants receive clues in advance and attend in character.

- Guests will enjoy champagne, hors d'oeuvres (provided by Everyday Cafe), and dessert during the evening, while roaming through the Victorian Inn!

- Game scripts for 6-8 participants (... costumes are up to you!)

 

Bidding begins at $400—approx. donation of $50-66 per person. Bids accepted through Feb 25th. Murder by appointment only, subject to availability of Inn. Send letter of intent to Susan or call 434-974-7285.

 

*Auction to benefit Arts Forum April 20-22, 2012. This event is a collaborative effort among Charlottesville arts organizations, local businesses, and the University community. A few of the many presenters include Dean Dass (UVa McIntire Department of Art), Maggie Guggenheimer (Piedmont Council for the Arts), Steve Taylor (Second Street Gallery), Jamie Bennett (National Endowment for the Arts, Chief of Staff), Howard Singerman (UVa McIntire Department of Art), Nicholas Wolterstorff (Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture) and Greg Kelly (The Bridge PAI). --- You can find a full presenter list and description of the event here.

 

Ever wished that there was some kind of cupid cyclist to deliver delicious baked goods to your crush's door?  Ever lamented at the lack of adults willing to dress up as cherubs and--using some eco-friendly mode of transportation--spread love and scones?

Well, then get ready for the 8th annual Bake 'N Bike fundraiser to benefit Books Behind Bars and Community Bikes. Every year Bake 'N Bike raises well over $1000 for these organizations, and with your help, they can raise even more this year!

This fundraiser will be held on Valentine's Day, Tuesday, February 14th, all day, but orders should be placed in advance. For a $15-20 donation, cherubic bicycle-riding cupids will deliver a half dozen freshly baked, heart shaped, fairly traded chocolate chip scones - complete with a homemade card - to your door (or your honey's/friend's/co-worker's door) in town. If you want to get scones but you live outside town, the scones will be available for pick up at the Quest Book Shop.

Place your orders soon! To do so, please call Patrick Costello at (703) 785-2186 or email him!

If you are interested in volunteering the day of, or helping with publicity in the weeks before, please let Bake 'N Bike know here.