IAM 2007 Conference Review
Redemptive Culture: Creating the World that Ought to Be
The 2007 International Arts Movement Conference, “Redemptive Culture: Creating the World that Ought to Be” encouraged artists to show the reality of this world together with “the World that Ought to Be,” creating what Jeremy Begbie, the conference’s keynote speaker, referred to as a “bi-tonal relationship.” Throughout the lectures, interviews, workshops, and performances, the tension of this relationship was explored in great depth.
Thursday, February 22nd
Dick Staub, the conference moderator, opened the conference on Thursday evening by asking us to look at what redemptive questions are in our life or sphere of influence. He suggested that a redemptive culture must be constructive and that we should be self-aware of the current state of our culture. What is positive about our culture? And how do we control it/export it?
Staub specifically targeted the concept of branding, recognizing that our culture “brands” us, attempting to bond us to man instead of God. How then do we revert or recognize God’s authorship? Staub exhorted three methods that the artist may employ to powerfully speak truth: affirmation, dissent [critique], and propaganda. Each of these methods should create a dialogue where the artist recognizes the fully human, specific culture, and reality of earthly life as a required pretext to understanding the hope of God’s kingdom to come. Staub ended his talk by providing two key ways for artists to create a healthy dialogue: to treat people as ends not means [the artist’s focus is in the end about the person, not the art] and to capitalize on the universal agreement that beauty can lead to truth.
Thursday evening ended with a discourse by Roberta Ahmanson on the face, or portrait, within art history. She proposed that the progression of artist’s portrayal of the portrait reflected how we as a culture understand our relationship to God, specifically within the concept of humanity as being created in the image of God. Ahmanson traced the transition of the depiction of faces through art history, showing a shift from the acceptance to rejection of depicting the face. She paralleled this by making the case that the depiction of the face most closely relates to our idea of how we recognize ourselves as created in the image of God.
Friday, February 23rd
I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves. He has made everything appropriate in its time He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.
- Ecclesiastes 3:10-11
Friday morning opened with a short meditation by Matt Heard on the juxtaposition that this passage from Ecclesiastes brings to light. Heard positioned this juxtaposition as two tools that the artist may use: Authenticity and Hope. Authenticity engages that world as it is – represented by both the “task which God has given the sons of men” and that “He has made everything appropriate in its time.” Hope is seeing the world as it will be [or as it ought to be] – referenced by “He has also set eternity in their heart.” This juxtaposition might also be described as brokenness vs. beauty, or when improperly taken to the extreme, cynicism vs. escapism. To best reflect a balanced juxtaposition of brokenness vs. beauty, Heard suggested that one must frame the other. To explore only brokenness or beauty independently of the other, one may become entrapped by cynicism or escapism.
The highlight of Friday morning’s speakers was architect Daniel Libeskind, most notably known as Master Planner of the World Trade Center site in NYC and architect of the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Libeskind’s interview by Dick Staub focused on his work specifically with the WTC site and more broadly as a response to tragedy, be it the WTC destruction or the Holocaust. Daniel proposed a response of optimism to tragedy. His most visceral concept for the WTC site was that the bedrock of New York [the slurry wall of the WTC], exposed by the destruction of the towers, should be connected to the sky as a sign of hope. He saw faith as the substance of hope, something he had been taught to never give up, a result of his Jewish heritage and their persecution. Libeskind also voiced two of his primary tenants of architecture: “Light is the fundamental material of architecture” because it is what creates the representation of space and “Language is the basis of architecture” because it is a truly social art and it relies on a narrative, a story. He lamented that much contemporary architecture has a short story – in the end a story that has nothing to say.
Jeremy Begbie delivered the first part of his keynote address Friday evening. He put forward that the premise that the artist should show the world “as it ought to be” must be accomplished through the avant-garde, however, Begbie differed with the current predicament of today’s avant-garde. He defined the avant-garde as “the new” or “in front” and critiqued most avant-garde as simply a disguised traditionalism – in fact the avant-garde as anti-traditionalist may now be the most traditional approach. Begbie traced the progression of avant-garde art and showed an increasing attempt for art to reach a further base or root condition, one with the lack of a further precedent – a truly primal character from which all other art might refer. The significant flaw of this quest is that it is a humanist endeavor, assuming that humans can create or even exhibit this condition of “the world as it ought to be.” Begbie found that the progression of avant-garde art is without end resulting in a condition of newness for newness sake, and ultimately a loss of content.
What then can create newness that does not grow old and retains its content? A radical new start is required, a language that transforms instead of just informing. Art must combine the incompatible in order to project a new world. Begbie suggests that God has newness, He never gets weary, and carries forward into eternity. That which glorifies God, that shows his newness, may then truly fulfill the desires of the avant-garde. Arts process may then mirror Christ’s own – entering into the reality of this world in order to transform it.
Saturday, February 24th
Sam Andreades kicked off the final day of the conference. He used the morning meditation to question the perception of the artistic genius. He suggested that the common perception is to equate ‘artistic genius’ with the ‘tragic artist,’ an often self inflicted syndrome popularly captured by Tommy’s lyrics, “The sickness will surely take the mind.” Andreades juxtaposed this perception with one captured by George Steiner; “The artist queries the last privacies of our existence and tells us to change our life.” This latter perception of the artist understands that their influence is a responsibility and that the artist is speaking for those who cannot express it for themselves. Andreades suggests that with increased exposure, the artist has increased responsibility. Artistic genius might then come from a brokenness of heart, rather than a life of dissipation.
Makoto Fujimura, creative director and founder of IAM, gave Saturday morning’s main lecture, entitled, Redemptive Culture: Being a Child of the Creative Age. He began by asking, “As all children might say that they are artists, are all artists children?” Fujimura used this provocation to examine how artists are the children of God in a new age of creativity. He referred to the work of several contemporary cultural theorists, Richard Florida’s “Creative Class, Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat” and Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind” to illustrate a cultural shift from an age of information to one of creativity and synthesis – the information age has been outsourced. Fujimura posited that as children of God, we are called to be rehumanizers, to use our tragedies to connect and rehumanize others in the world. The artist may be most effective through expressing their struggle. Fujimura asked artists to create in love and create what love means. He ended by presenting the vision of IAM, that even artists need community – “no man is an island” and that IAM should “romance the artist” where the church has failed.
An afternoon workshop entitled “The Shape of Things to Come: Humans Flourishing in the Arts,” led by Greg Gansle and David Mahan, explored the role of the artist in our culture. Gansle began the workshop by providing his definition of a flourishing culture – a beauty centered, robustly humanistic and irreducibly moral condition. He then posited that artists signalers and seers to lead a culture to this flourishing condition. While philosophers argue, making points through a process, and giving answers or reasons, an artist can circumvent this method to directly point to where a culture should go. The artist acts “upstream” of the one who explains, lays the foundation for the philosopher. Mahan picked up from this position to explain that the artist must “point to in order to point past.” The artist must first understand where we are - to capture reality – and then open the imagination to more. Mahan related this to the message of Christianity, which has tragedy, is in fact rooted in tragedy, but always moves beyond tragedy with a message of forgiveness, mercy and grace illustrating that tragedy is not the end.
The conference was closed with Jeremy Begbie’s second part to his keynote address. Begbie moved forward from his discussion on the avant-garde and suggested that we are inherently hard-wired to appreciate non-order, a synthesis of order and chaos [or disorder], or polyrhythm. Polyrhythm may occur by combining the seemingly incompatible, for example, art and science such that creativity in science has led to discoveries that science on its own may never have unearthed. Polyrhythm takes advantage of dualities and multiplicities, togetherness and diversity, bitonality and tritonality. Artists must capitalize on polyrhythm, not premature in displaying God’s new world over the old world.