Full disclosure: I'm writing this right before my class at 2:40pm and I need to prep for Jamila Woods class visit. I'm sure folks know of Jamila Woods -- the Chicago poet, the black church voice having, black grl soldier. But what folks might not know is she's in an artist collective called Dark Noise with Prof. Marshall, Fatima Ashgar and others.
I want to turn to the latter really quick. I want to center this post on an interview of Fatimah I heard recently. There's this radio show/podcast in Chicago called AirGo (shout out Damon Williams and Daniel Kisslinger). Fatimah Ashgar was interviewed on that show and talked about her art being relational. That is, the aesthetic goal of her work is to build relationships.
That's profound. When one thinks about poems or paintings, one may asses the aesthetic value of that poem on painting under the guise of: "what is she saying with this?" or "how does this make me feel?" It's a one-way street -- the goal is to place a piece of work into the world and let it affect those it affects. But the audience does not then turn and affect the artist. In that way, it is not dynamic.
But if the goal of your work is to foster a dynamic, a relationship, that throws a wrench in our conventional aesthetic schema. The aesthetic value of an artist's work is assessed by the relationship. That's radical to me.
I don't know what this analysis can lead to (for our ethics, politics, etc.). It's dope though. Perhaps that's what Dark noise is (a la Audre Lorde and what not)?
Well, the first thing that is important to understand is this: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I don't think that this is some cope-out to say that one's poetry or art will look like one thing to one individual, and a completely different thing to another. It goes deeper than that, in making a reader think "Can this reflect something that is experience for me? Does this poem actually 'speak to me'". This is different from one just asking "How does this make me feel".
ReplyDeleteI don't necessarily see how anyone's "relationship", whether personal or tangible, cannot be an assessor of one's work, or why it would be radical. To me, this is a kind of feedback, if you will, and interaction between the reader and the viewer. It also should not be troubling to think of this assessment as criticism. You see it all the time with many other people saying "I don't think of it this way" or "I don't like this poem". I mean, it has to be inherent in one of us as students actually reading and analyzing those works. In other words, such interactions, if they are to be whole, are not to be a one-way street. What if I were to tell you that while poems and paintings remain static, their meanings absolutely change from one audience to the other, and not be "static" after all? I encourage all of us to think on that more.
I have to say I took the word "aesthetic" differently, in that I immediately think about imagery. I think that imagery is perhaps the most important element of an affective poem or story, and the same applies to a painting whose subjects are clear, and others that are not so clear. It is through imagery that poets are only able to express these emotions and understandings, and to further enhance those connections that you are essentially describing. Of course, this is inherently linked to using the words themselves, but all good products have to start with a clear picture of the final piece.