Toronto Artists Drawing Resistance

Writers Against War

Famous people speaking out is different. If it's someone you admire, then you will be more likely to be on side with them or use them in your arguement. If you don't like them, you use them as ammo in defense of your position.

That is what effective protesters do after all - they assume characters on the streets (eg: Raging Grannnies, Radical Cheerleaders), stage (eg: lysistrataproject.org), and in the media (eg: Auntie.com, Jaggi Singh, etc.)

According to famous theorist, and creator of Theatre of the Oppressed, Augusto Boal:

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Theatre is born when the human being discovers that it can observe itself; when it discovers that, in this act of seeing, it can see itself – see itself in situ: see itself seeing.

Observing itself, the human being perceives what it is, discovers what it is not and imagines what it could become. It perceives where it is, where it is not, and imagines where it could go. A triad comes into being. The observing-I, the I-in-situ, and the not-I, that is, the other…Therein resides the essence of theatre: in the human being observing itself. The human being not only ‘makes’ theatre: it ‘is’ theatre. And some human beings, besides being theatre, also make theatre. We all of us are, some of us also do.

Theatre has nothing to do with buildings or other physical constructions. Theatre – or theatricality – is this capacity, this human property which allows man to observe himself in action, in activity. The self-knowledge thus acquired allows him to be the subject (the one who observes) of another subject (the one who acts.) It can allow him to imagine variations of his action, to study alternatives. Man can see himself in the act of seeing, in the act of acting, the act of feeling. Feel himself feeling, think himself thinking…

An actor, acting, taking action, he has learnt to be his own spectator. The spectator (spect-actor) is not only an object, he is a subject because he can also act on the actor – the spect-actor is the actor, he can guide him, change him. A spect-actor acting on the actor who acts…

Only the human being is tri-dimensional (the I who observes, the I-in-situ, and the not-I) because it alone is capable of dichotomy (seeing itself seeing). And as it places itself inside and outside its situation. It needs to symbolise that distance from ‘I am’ to ‘I can be’, and from present to future; it needs to symbolise this potential, to create symbols which occupy the space of what is, but does not exist concretely, of what is possible and could one day exist…

The being becomes human when it invents theatre.

In the beginning, actor and spectator coexisted in the same person; the point at which they were separated, when some specialized as actors and others as spectators, marks the birth of the theatrical forms we know today. Also born at this time were ‘theatres’, architectural constructions intended to make sacred this division, this specialization. The profession of ‘actor’ takes its first bow.

The theatrical profession, which belongs to a few, should not hide the existence and permanence of the theatrical vocation, which belongs to all. Theatre is a vocation for all human beings: it is the true nature of humanity.

The Theatre of the Oppressed is a system of physical exercises, is a system of physical exercises, aesthetic games, image techniques, and special improvisations whose goal is to safeguard, develop and reshape this human vocation, by turning the practice of theatre into an effective tool for the comprehension of social and personal problems and the search for their solutions.

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Artists are often not very comfortable with political activism, though. That has something to do with activists' need/tendency, sometimes, to start becoming what they behold. That is, political thinkers almost inevitably end up believing that they've got to outsmart the realpolitikers by becoming realpolitikers themselves, and that kind of thought can be inimical to people who resist ruthless generalizing.

Ideology in general is going to be a problem for artists -- real human beings keep producing exceptions, and that tends to irritate the political, while interesting the artist.

Well, hell, that's too many overgeneralizations already from me!

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To me, all artists are first of all craft-workers, and it is likely, although not unfailingly true, that people who do craft work are going to live in at least a bit of tension with a dominant economy/society/culture that values productivity 'n' efficiency over craft values -- which demand focus, focus, focus, upon the ever smaller, smaller, smaller ... (See Blake on the universe in a grain of sand, etc. The other Blake, ie. )

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I wrote to a Toronto art critic, whose comments prompted me to start this thread. I agree with skdadl in an very general way. With the disappearance of hands-off state support for the arts, many of us have turned towards petty commodity production (eg. small paintings, drawings) which are saleable, storable, and have something of Wally B.'s "aura". I haven't found this to be a purely negative trend, because a lot of great work is being in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver and I get to enjoy it. But it also creates a petty-bourgeois mindset amongst artists in which they can see themselves as "capitalists" - even thought he only means of production they own is their hands, some pens and brushes, and a kitchen table.

One can compare this with some of the very crucial feminist and Black liberationist art done in the 60s and 70s, eg. Adrian Pyper's card stating that despite her light complexion she was black (she gave these to people who made racist jokes and comments to her thinking she was white).