jottings after “Art and Imminence,” a lecture by Homi Bhabha, Art Institue/School of Art Institute of Chicago, September 8, 2011—written on September 9, after Johannah Rodgers, my good friend in Brooklyn, asked me, during our phone conversation, about what I took from last night:
Here are some of the most interesting, to me, things that Bhabha said—I will quote and paraphrase and interpret a little:
Art is imminent—
it is "the about to happen." Constant shifts. From one foundation to another: this shifting is possible, is art. Discovery of another foundation brings new possibilities, allowing for the disavowal of previous meanings.
“New interpretations are not an erasure” of other interpretations—the viewer/reader reconstructs the work as they view/read, not an act of deconstruction. Powerful works of art are powerful not for their "progress"—pedagogical marching toward betterment—but because they provide new foundations for new possibilities based on new interpretations.
“The best readings are revisionary.”
Art is most powerful for its creation of “want, need, desire.” Bhabha quotes Guston: “I paint what I need to see.”
The possibility of coming upon “a global ethics”—(not based on ideas of "rights" and a "nation" that protects) can be found, according to Bhabha, within “the time-lag of meaning”—
moving between one moment and another—as in art—
the importance of staying in this space—this space as productive space (but not necessarily "productive/progressive" as in the liberal political sense of the word).
[This reminds me of reading Gandhi and how he would contradict himself often—so much so that it had to have been on purpose, certainly noticeable to him—so that his writings ((he was trained in law)) show that unity of argument doesn't neceearily suit the modern moment/speaker: just as unity of identity does not have to be the ideal outcome.]
Art's ambiguity—
is not depressing, or “indecisive,” or does not invite a huge mushy “pluralism” of saying, “it means whatever I want it to mean”; rather, art's ambiguity requires slowness, is evidence that creativity (borne of ambiguity and feeding ambiguity) surges on its own time and toward its own ends; art/creativity “does not necessarily save us,” but is a form of “survival.”
Homi Bhabha said “survival” is underrated and misunderstood as a concept—feared, almost. (We are supposed to thrive: as in, a thriving economy.) But survival, he said, can be a very vital concept and signal energy “to endure, day by day,” and signals “courage to act upon the world” without necessarily knowing the outcome.
Bhabha’s talk centered around this installation by Jitish Kallat at the Art Institute of Chicago.
This work re-frames—by marching the sentences up the stairs in LED lettering, lit in the colors of various security alerts of the post-9/11 color-coded world—the work re-frames a speech given by an Swami Vivekananda in the nineteen century, interestingly, on September 11 of that year, in Chicago, on the art institute’s steps.
Closely reading the work, ascending the staircase slowly, we come upon the word “remnant” referring to groups thought of as “other-than-Hindu" in India. Bhabha’s lecture gained all the momentum of a freight train at this point—
Bhabha points out that in light of current political situations in India, one could read this speech as a rationale for Hindu nationalism. And you can: so if your first reading was one of multi-cultural pleasure and satisfaction, of “tolerance” and peace, a historical-yet-timeless moment of coming together—and many want this idea now, nearing the 10th anniversary of 9/11—
upon closer reading, slowly, going up the stairs, you are reading a speech whose logic revolves around the idea that Hinduism has absorbed and may eventually absorb all "remnant” populations into itself (so that's referring to the Jews, Farsi populations [and Bhabha himself is a Farsi-speaking person]). “Remnant” as “left-over,” “substandard,” “weak” and not the ideal citizen in the nation’s gaze: Bhabha explains that this remnant who refuses or can not choose assimilation is the perpetual “other” even as liberalism would smile upon this subject in self-defining welcoming (all are welcome here in our state) or pity (soon you will come to your senses and give up your ways).
This reminds me again of the Gandhi course I took at the New School for Social Research taught by professors Devji and Rao; mid-way through I was bombarded by the truth of my professors claims from the onset: that by looking to India, tremendous light may be shed on the contemporary US situation and global situations—the problematics of "melting pot" rhetoric, class/caste and affirmative action, the perpetual “othering” underbelly of a discourse of liberal tolerance, how democracy rule by its own math can't take care of the minority, ritualized violence vs. terror.
Back to art: in light of these politics and new contexts, shifting:
Bhabha then talked with much passion about the importance in Kallat's work of the attention to each individual letter. (Kallat has installed other speeches by reforming each letter out of bones.)
I was excited by this point—the reverberations stirring in me—now I was taking notes quickly, feeling, “I am a poet” and “I am a person who stitches” so clearly: an intensified ringing purpose now to my listening: my life meshing with Bhabha’s words, and of course he would never know this, and I was a little embarrassed at my private comparison to the accomplished Kallat.
Bhabha said, of Kallat’s work, "reforming the fonts revitalize the contexts"—
this action upon each and every letter of the historical speech points to the purpose of art—re-casting, slowly re-reading, re-membering. “Great works of art are not easy to re-member.”
Images of my embroidery work from this summer came streaming in: my panels of stitched partial phrases from my notebook: displaying, though recast, jottings to try and make sense of my LABOR, a self-made archive of work and money: was, in fact, what I took for self-censoring more accurately re-creation?
“The symbolic recasting of letters"—the power of that smallness—small reverberations (I got several migraines this summer even in my stitching delight), small movements acting on the very component of the sign—the individual letter—
Others I can think of now whose work recasts each letter: Brendan Fernandes, Kamau Brathwaite, Cecilia Vicuña, Ernest Concepcion’s font drawings of Paolo Javier’s poems.
I left the lecture hall cataloging the components of that power of smallness intrinsic to art in its imminence:
joy and desire:
actions of survival and not an invitation to pity or advocacy but rather an invitation to new foundations: energetic and compassionate renewal.
Making the leap to compassion, though I am not sure just how, I will sign off—
Upcoming posts:
Robin D. G. Kelley on Monk and Franya Berkman on Alice Coltrane
Jen Hofer’s one and Göran Sonnevi’s Mozart’s Third Brain
The work of Deborah Meadows; the work of Melissa Buzzeo
Bill Nichols’ documentary frameworks and “documentary poetry”
