Art and Injustice

preface to “the Occupation”

1

To write today is to write from a place of privilege. When the means of expression are themselves products of institutions that guarantee those means to individuals, any individual with that ability to do so – with the time, the energy, the education and the intention – does so from a privileged vantage point. To ignore this privilege, or worse, to act as if art erases it, is to participate in injustice.

2

When we write we address the world we imagine to be speaking to, but when we write words that are meant to be spoken, the world we speak to is not imagined, but very real, and the tired ears that are hearing our words, they are also real. And yet this is the real that is buried under our complex worlds that we fill with stories. We sit and are talked at rather than talked to. But the time for any kind of talking is running out.

3

Theatre is the art of public action. The “act” of theatre is not the collection of events in the text or the history of the world we create, but what we do to our audience at the moment of performance. It becomes a singular action that is subjected to a mass of individuals. Therefore there exits in every performance a historical before and after. Every performance is a history – and like history, it speaks to our world. It, like every event that occurs, is not exempt from social and political consequences – and must be held accountable just like any other event.

4

Just because art feels good and brings us closer to each other, does not mean it is not immune to injustice. If, from this place of privilege – from this luxury of reflection, we create work that mirrors back only that which edifies the very structures that allowed it to come to be, we are creating an action that sings over, rather than about, the injustices below us. Above all, arts’ residue is pleasure, and in a comfort society, pleasure itself is also a privilege.

5

If we do not stop ourselves mid-sentence, we risk re-composing the arias that brought us here. It is art’s duty to protect those it cannot speak for, by seeking to interrupt injustice by containing it within the work itself – even if that means destroying the standards of merit by which that work is judged in said society.We must allow injustice to occupy us. It is time to ruin our well-made chapels with well-aimed rocks.

6

I am bored of a bleeding heart that can only stain pity on our stages. I am sick of the camera that claims to speak for me when all it does is tell me what it thinks I am. We are in a strange age, where our voices are once again our own – but we must also work to hear these very voices over the din of compression and conformity. We have reached a point where neither institutions nor experts have the power to dictate dogmas. But we must turn back on ourselves and see that we have constructed ourselves just like an institution, and must turn our back to this too.

7

Art can be society’s whore or its saint. It can sing for the glories of oppression as well as it can for liberation. All it is is song, all it amounts to is  beauty if we do not turn it against itself and weaponize its capacity to seduce by risking ruination. To sing against oppression is not to sample the political, but embody the action of a revolutionary movement whose purpose is to destabilize an institution that perpetrates injustice. We must perpetrate this same action on our forms – on our language, and do so excellently.There is no exception, for Art will choose the side of its support mechanism if we do not force ourselves to turn it.

8

Let us try to forget our institutional dependencies and make work no matter what. Let us make forms from our refuse, and ruin our stories with the remnants of life that haunt every open and shut case. Our goal is not perfection or a mirror but a shard. A shard that catches reflections and light and draws blood from anyone who dares grasp it.

We must make our forms bleed, and ruin art to truly see the injustice in all of us.

- Julián

How does the subjective experience of a work become the truth of the artwork more than the work itself?  Well, we want to make sure what we choose to see satisfies our need for art – but as Adorno points out this can become startlingly contradictory -

“Insofar as the now typical attitude makes the artwork something factual, even art’s mimetic element, itself incompatible with whatever is purely a thing is bartered off as a commodity. The consumer arbitrarily projects his impulses – mimetic remnants – on what is presented to him. Prior to total administration, the subject who viewed, heard or read a work was to lose himself, forget himself, extinguish himself in the artwork. The identification carried out by the subject was not that of making the artwork like himself, but rather that of making himself like the artwork,”

Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (23)

Though these words were written more than 40 years ago, there is a scary truth in them that we have not turned away from. How often than not, amongst a dizzying array of choices do we narrow it down based not on a reflection of who we want to be, or our desire to experience something new, but our desire to find something most like ourselves? Even the newest apps that help us sort through these commodities (Yelp etc.) help us search and filter through to our personal needs even pinpointing our very location and providing us a lens of judgement with which to see them. It becomes the “critics’” role then, not to enter into a critical relationship with the work but to do the work of experience for us. We allow someone else to assume who we are, and in doing so,  transplant the activity of criticism into a surrogate, who is not actually performing any kind of critique but instead formulates a value-judgment based on what defines us – which is primarily determined by the products we consume.

Theatre suffers this especially because it is so short-lived. Here a show is lucky to have 8 performances let alone 3 weeks, and if it extends it is only for a little more than a month in the memory of a year, which has so much more happening in it – and oftentimes the only remnants are these scattershot reviews, written sometimes as nothing more than mere dismissals, whose effort in writing masks the hours of labor, sacrifice and love that artists have put into their work. But the audience outside the theatre sees only the pithy response, that is formulated not to match a response to artistic experience but an evaluation of that audience’s assumed needs.

Now, I am not advocating for an end to the critic, it is necessary - criticism is vital to progress as that which stands against and always against the mere presentation of things. A critic is as essential to art as the artwork itself – but criticism, I would argue, is not tantamount to a “critic”. The function of criticism is not merely a value-judgment on an object, as if it were something on sale at Amazon, but a substantial response to the formal content and ideas in a work. And, in an era where we have turned even more to the personal, we must not act as if only critics can criticize. Artists themselves have every right, and should embrace the opportunity that we now have to bring out what used to live in print as unequivocal, and speak out. And as artists, and audiences we should not condescend and ask us to stay in our place, but rather enter into the debate ourselves.

Criticism, where we see it failing its purpose, should be critiqued, not in an effort to silence criticism but to motivate it past its timidity and conservatism. We must not act as if a critic or an artist is immune to what he/she puts on stage/on page. This is nothing new – two of literature’s greatest minds, absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco and legendary critic Kenneth Tynan had a very vocal dispute on the pages of the London Observer. Here we have artist and critic locking horns, both with incredible contributions to the form, and in some ways both are better from it. Ionesco reaches a different audience and is able to bring his voice in direct confrontation with a critic, and Tynan is forced to defend his claims  - and so the public is witness to a debate on theater of the absurd, one that lives alongside the great works of the genre.

We should not fear this time as the moment that the amateur comes to replace the illustrious critic, but embrace this as a time when no one can rest on their laurels and we all have the right to engage more vocally with each other. We shouldn’t let the institutional structures dull our voices now when our words can ring as brightly on computer screen as that of the grey lady. Criticism, if anything, in this time of complete and utter information overload, is more vital than ever, and because of that we must be as critical as ever of the critic – and keep the task of the critic alive not just in those few people we rush to see on the byline, but in ourselves.

much love,

- J

Here’s the exercise that we did: sound out the consonant F. Now, sound out “F” but put a tone in your voice (like a hum). Suddenly F turns into V. We don’t think of F and V as particularly similar, but because of selective hearing we’re able to put the tone and the sound of F into something completely and conceptually different.

It’s also the reason that the first time we hear something we’re suddenly drawn away from it, it sounds dissonant in our minds because it’s new information. Eventually we learn to recognize the formal qualities of what we’re experiencing and can appreciate it, even being able to distinguish what “works” and what doesn’t work within that particular style. Taste, in a lot of ways, just comes from the exposure to many different kinds of music – a capacity to tolerate those first dissonant moments in order to discover  a whole new world. Musical tastes can evolve – if we were to play Debussy to a newly brought-to-life Mozart he would ask us “what is this noise”? Of course, we who have been exposed to the “Arabesque” even from the sounds of a cell-phone would not have this problem – but try listening to Schoenberg the first time or even some more abstract forms of jazz.

I believe this analogy of taste does not just apply to sound. We are creatures of habit, and if we are not forced out of our shell, we miss out on expanding and learning and building on our formal experiences. The secret to a diverse art will be a heterogeneity of form. Let us imagine our judgments of taste (whether or not something is “beautiful” in an aesthetic sense) to be the outcome of some kind of relationship between universals and particulars – between identity and difference. When I say universal, let us call this the standard concepts we associate with our world (the elements of the classic tragedy are full of these “universals”), and particulars to be those new different things we can’t categorize yet (the noise, the dissonance, the avant-garde?). When we are familiar with something we can will it into “abstraction”, which is to say, we understand it, we categorize it and it becomes universal. When we are exposed to something for the first time that thing is presented to us firstly as difference – as a particular, as something uncategorizable, and until we learn its form or what its doing, we remain in a perplexed relationship with the object. The greatest works of art never let that perplexing relationship cease.

Theatre needs to embrace difference, in spite of its initial “dissonance”. We cling to our well-made plays because they sound familiar. While our brains are being introduced to new and quirky characters, or even pressing social matters, they are being simultaneously coddled and reassured by a form that lets them know that this is their world.  But you can’t always use a traditional form to talk about real problems, especially when those problems require formal evolutions and challenges. What I have always loved about APAP festivals such as Under the Radar is the diversity of voices they bring, not just different countries and cultures, but different, formal challenges. We see then in these international artists an ability to tackle a wider range of social commentary, where the commentary is itself embedded in the form, and the artist, committed to the problem, must bend and break the constraints put upon him by the form to wrench a new piece which is itself both art and the work it takes to make that art.

This need not come only from overseas -a wonderful production I saw last night from Everywhere Theatre Group (full disclosure: this is my girlfriends’ theatre company and I performed in an earlier incarnation of this piece at ars nova) – Flying Snakes in 3D, manages to address the difficulties and frustrations and class-struggles embedded in theatre by wrenching apart the structure of one of theater’s nemeses – film. In doing so the writers and actors literally break apart both their own lives and their own play all in view of an unforgiving – seemingly perfect film production behind them. This break in form does not mean that the piece is not accessible or wildly esoteric, it means that we, the audience are shouldered with the task of digesting theaters’ fate and our own class-guilt whilst being entertained.

My hope is we seek out the dissonance in order to learn and expose ourselves to the variety of artistic languages and poetics that are all around us. Let’s keep challenging ourselves to make and seek out work that doesn’t just ring true, but rings out differently.

- Julián

P.S. special thanks to @JoshuaConkel, @MelissaImpact and @BatfishLD for the Twitter-convo that inspired large portions of this post.

Rey Lucas, Maria Helan Lopez and Pep Munoz in "A room with no furniture"

Part of my belief in the need for new theater (not just in representation, but in practice), is in the investigation and creation of different ways of making and developing work. I hope to share some of my techniques with you all and explore certain themes that I am wrestling with.

For A room with no furniture which we are presenting tomorrow at 5 PM at Space on White (tickets here) – I have been particularly influenced by the idea of 2-part counterpoint, not unlike a Bach invention. The beauty of counterpoint is in how the author exploits the independent voices. The trick to musical counterpoint is following those laws set up according to the laws of consonance and dissonance (no parallel fifths, contrary motion, etc.).

With our theatrical counterpoint we used the laws of balancing space – making sure that the independent worlds were linked in a solid way to themselves but did not disrupt the unity of the stage. Rather than work through the symbolic relationship of the two stories I allowed them to be choreographed independently (I worked with one story, and my movement director, Leni Mendez with the other), and in putting them together tried to balance the stage out, finding moments where those stories met. Where music uses two independent voices – theater uses two independent worlds (how we communicate our stories) and unifies them.

Here, I love the choice of words that music uses: “voices” – we can think of the voice in theater as not just the actors’ voices but the individual voice of a theatrical theme – mood, gesture, sound, image. What I did in Room was juxtapose two voices, and in doing so, find a relationship between gestures and space using balance techniques not unlike music. But to use voice for “image” – the image speaks -and part of the excitement of A room with no furniture has been seeing what happens when two images are speaking to us at the same time, and we are forced to relate them. I am curious to see what questions arise – and it has certainly been a magical way of opening up each of these independent worlds.

Let us begin then, with Loughlin’s  more or less, thesis:

This is not to say that other races or ethnic groups do not have theatre or do not enjoy it. But the particular form of the scripted written work as interpreted by actors in a linear story-telling fashion seems to be one that has interested western Caucasians for a long time, and apparently continues to do so for a certain demographic slice of white people as a whole.

Theater, it seems, is for white people:

Rather than assume, as Loughlin does, that theater as an art-form is special for white “western” people, let us consider this a byproduct of creating a work that limits access and information to specific communities. In order to do so it is imperative for us to stop thinking about the mere statistics of audience goers and playmakers and take a strong look at the institutions, systems and spaces in which “theatre” is created “for” and “not for” people, and see how our conceptions of class, race and space are directly affecting what work and whose work we make.

If we want to understand why our theatre is becoming white, and failing our communities, we have to look not only the work created, but the spaces that it inhabits, whether physically, mentally or virtually.(Joshua Dachs has an interesting take in this article in American Theater)

If we we see the first “theatrical” spaces, the Athenian Amphitheaters even up to the Globe or the corrales in Spain, we see open air and circular spaces. In the Middle Ages, even this space was usually an appropriated “public space” – usually a church, but sometimes an entire village. Eventually, we introduced perspective into our theaters and suddenly sight was privileged for the lucky few in the lines of sight, and little by little as film replaced theater as the communal past-time, theaters got smaller, more expensive, and became the kind of thing one did out on vacation to New York instead of a commonplace cultural event.

If we look at the main theaters today, we see that they are large, foreboding and shiny apparatuses of concealment. What gets you into that brand new Black Box? First of all money, but more importantly, you have to feel as if you belong to that Black Box, if that black box even wants you inside of it. Theaters today are more preoccupied in proclaiming themselves as theaters than public communal spaces. They behave the way other luxury goods do, by enclosing themselves, and defining their audience as a informed, privileged elite. It is no surprise theaters have been getting progressively whiter, richer and older.

Why is theater for white people? Because by the choices and spaces we have created, rather than create an open center for public discourse, we have created a privileged center for elite discourse. Why are we surprised then, when the plays that make it to the large-donor theaters end up being predominantly about white families, usually with money?

This is how theater becomes “white” – not from any inherent genetic or historic trait. Theater is a form of communal expression in time that requires an audience. The way we treat and place that audience will not only effect the population that sees it, it will effect the work itself. It is a reinforcing system that we cannot stop if we do not see how our institutional model feeds the very whiteness we are trying to address.

When we cater entry into that box to large subscriber bases of generally white older-individuals with larger paychecks, that is who gets our information, that is who our intended audience becomes, and that makes our theatre a white one. When you make prerequisite for entering into that black box (on the artistic side) a college education, the ability to work multiple non-paying internships and/or the ability to subsidize your art via parents’ money, trust funds, or somehow other forms of wealth your theatre will be predominantly a white one. When the pedagogy that defines the art of these theaters is not based in in the communities themselves but in secluded ivory-towers where the process of playwriting or directing is taught in a prescribed method garnered from the experience of years of similar work with the same structure, in the end, consigning most plays to development hell where they eventually take on the formal characteristics of the very spaces they are shown in – your theater will be a white one.

Your audiences will be mostly white, the people who will be defined by those institutions will be mostly white and most importantly, anyone who is not white and makes it to those instituions will be singled out, not just for their accomplishments but for their non-whiteness. They are honorary members of a community that has been, whether intentionally or unintentionally, excluding them.

By clinging to that capital-granting status quo we have consigned ourselves to listen quietly and accept the Loughlin thesis of the theater world, seeing no other way in which we can change, and simultaneously searching for and then denying those magical harbingers of discrimination (as if they’re mean old racists locked somewhere deep in our file cabinets and not systematic flaws that live in the very fabric of our instituions)

Unfortunately, the largest step in changing theatre cannot come from places whose dependence is on theatre to remain precisely in this way. It is up to  theater-makers to seek out new spaces, develop new ways of making work and open ourselves up to the audiences which have been robbed of a theatrical voice. The time for this is now.

much love, and fight the good fight,

- Julián

if you do not know me – here is a bit about me: I am a New York based Argentine-American director, playwright and sound designer. Here is a bit more about me.

If you want to see my work – come see my play on January 15th at 5 PM

A play about designs, families and bodies

A husband and wife plan out the nursery of their child’s room while an old resident recreates the movements of his past. A line maps the difference between comfort and captivity which will bring together these two worlds.

Starring Maria Helan, Pep Muñoz and Rey Lucas

We’ll be showing this at the SNOWBALLS! Festival on January 15th (ONE DAY ONLY!) run by the awesome fellows over at Tenement Street Workshop.

The locale is SPACE ON WHITE (worlds collide! this is where I have rehearsed many-a-time and currently accompany a kids’ ballet class)

I feel honored that I have been asked to share the bill with such wonderful young theater companies. I go up at 5 PM, but your ticket (12$ online or 16$ at the door makes you available to see EVERYONE . Be sure to check out Everywhere Theatre Groups’ preview for Flying Snakes in 3D!! – disclaimer: I acted in their presentation of this piece at Ars Nova and its only gotten funnier and bitterer in this new presentation to be shown at the Brick!)

TICKETS HERE!

In other news, everyone get ready (as I am) for the veritable onslaught of NYC downtown theatre that is January. Under the Radar, American Realness, Other Forces oh my! I’m checking out Chelfitsch, Mariano Pensotti (represent!), Big Art Group, YJL, John Jasperse among others…oh god the list goes on!!

Anyways, come see this new show of mine, have a drink and chat with me about it, I’d love to see what you think, and stay tuned for future incarnations of this piece (it’s near and dear to me).

See you all very soon, lots of developments on the way! (and if you’re coming back, hope you like the new look!)

abrazos,

- Julián