In Our Own Spaces #4: "Bring A Work That Bears Witness"
Intentions for a community hosted artist salon series
The following writing was created for and spoken at the fourth edition of the community-lead and hosted artist salon series “In Our Own Spaces” on December 3rd, 2023. My partner and I founded this salon series as a space for communal gathering, radical conversation, and redefining uses of art in our current society.
We all know pain. Feel pain. We look left and right and inside and outside and we know someone who has hurt us. We know someone we have hurt.
When we can reflect on causing harm, or being implicated in the causing of harm, we crave an opportunity to repair it. To end the suffering of another. And sometimes we can, and sometimes we can’t, despite our efforts. Not that our efforts are futile, but they are often not enough.
As that suffering continues, as it lingers, guilt says “I have done something wrong” and shame says “I am something wrong. I deserve retribution”. Sometimes we get retribution. Often we give it to ourselves. When we bear witness to the pain of others, we can’t help but question: is that source of evil, that source that creates pain, is that inside me? Maybe even, is that all I am? And in that pain which we cause ourselves, though we may grit our teeth, when we are unable to bear it we are forced to turn away from that pain, from the source of that pain, from that harmed other. We become stuck in the darkness inside.
In our inability to see beyond ourselves, making your pain my pain, we are ignorant. We are in denial that the suffering around us is ubiquitous. This pain bubbles inside us and it’s all that we see, it’s all that we hear and we stop witnessing. We stop listening.
Art is a way to take what is inside and place it outside, to take this pain and give it a voice, and to allow us to turn back to that root of pain. Art is a way to speak and a way to show. To voice our witnessing. Art is a way to listen, to see; an attempt to understand.
In previous salon’s, I've shared our “intentions” as some finished thought, some revelation where, though I leave you with some questions, I take a pretty strong perspective on our theme. Tonight I’m a lot more curious about what you all have to say, and wanted to open up the discussion around a few ideas Lauren and I have been bouncing back and forth.
I want to kick us off with a quote from a dramatic little book by Camus that I read this week called “Create Dangerously”:
“To speak to everyone about everyone, it is necessary to speak of what everyone knows and the reality that is common to us all. The sea, the rain, our needs and desires, the struggle against death— these are the things that unite us. We resemble each other through what we see together, the things we suffer through together. Dreams change according to the person, but the reality of the world is our common ground…
Artists faced by their times can neither turn away from nor become lost in them. If they turn away, they are speaking in a void… Artists take from history what they can see or suffer themselves, directly or indirectly, that is to say, current events… Judging contemporary people in the name of those who do not yet exist is the role of prophecy. True artists can only value the dreams proposed to them in relation to their effects on the living.”
So for our conversation tonight, I want to ask the following questions to you all:
Do we, as artists, have a responsibility to “bear witness,” to create and represent the suffering and joy of our times? Who is the primary benefactor of these images? Are they, in some way, self-serving for the artist, and for the viewer? Are they “for the public” and a radical act, a driver of change?
This new salon format created a wonderful conversation among our community members around the uses of art for the personal and for the public, the purpose of the “art object”, free will, and the extent and limitations of personal and global responsibility. I hope these ideas and questions will create an opportunity to open up new conversations and dialogues in your own communities.
