Mind and body, Soul and Nature

   In the first conversation we read with Richard Shusterman they jumped right in talking about the externalization of objects and is strong separation we've been taught to feel between art and the real world.  They brought up the idea that has been brought up before that through our western tradition our culture has taught us that art is meant to be on walls in the galleries and to be seen only by the fortunate ones who have enough leisure time to be able to enjoy this commodity of high culture.  But that of course is bullshit, art started so long ago I like to think of art beginning with tribal dances and beautiful long rituals that tribes would connect through and create this relationship with each other, the earth, the natural and super natural they would create creative artist connections.  Performance art and simulations began far before the white man decided his portrait should be inside of a aesthetically similar building as to that of a cathedral.  It wasn't until egotistical men of power decided art was only for them that generations after we would think that galleries was just where art was and should be.  Thankfully theres hope..


Through out all of these conversations we have been breaking free from this idea that art is for the bourgeois and very separate from the real world and nature.  But our speaker Terri Warpinski has obviously proved nature and art are one in the same and art is very much present off the walls, outside the galleries and present in our everyday lives and experiences.  I logged onto her website to look at more of her work and in such a simplistic way she captures the sublime and reminds us its still there.  The vast landscapes she discovers and captures breaks the barrier between mind and soul, between art and nature and, I think like our conversation pieces we read, hopes to ground us from innovation and think of reflection and recycling instead.  A quote I liked from Richard, "everything is a simulation of another simulation, and that we're all recycling, quoting and appropriating."  I believe everything that can be done has been done before but just by a different hand, through a different eye, created through a different medium.


In the conversation with Carol Becker she brings up bourgeois nothing of freedom being a freedom for the individual apart from society, not a freedom for the individual within society.  Individualism has brainwashed generations thinking thats what we need to strive for in order to be successful and stand out but what we've fought for for so long is community and access to being part of society free of racism, sexism, ageism, all -ism's we have fought for are trying to break the perception that we as humans should be individual and in our own worlds when in reality we need to walk, breathe, talk, BE together and work together.  The more separation we create between each other, between art and earth, the more separation between us and earth which is not a good separation to have.  


All the separation... may i remind us all separation has nothing to do with art AT ALL!  Art is about communication, relationships to society and nature (which is one in the same), its about connections so when we look at something we feel something!  We learn something, we take something away from the art in front of us that we couldn't of been inspired to feel without that aesthetic piece.  It is about conversation, whether were talking to people or being inspired by art to talk to ourselves and hear that artist voice through their piece or hear the peoples voices that the artist is trying to capture.  Thought in it self is a conversation and through art and the creative whelm it is created.  Nothing else in the world can inspire change like art can.  No simplistic view that we find in the New York Times can move us to feel one way or another like a short quote from a philosopher or artist who leaves you with the answer and poses ways to find it.  Nothing in the world can cause you to think like art can and it is important we see more of it everyday... or should I say it is important we LOOK for more of it everyday.  There is not a place in this whole world where art is but seeing distance away.