How Do We Experience Art?

That was supposed to be the subject of this lecture.

As Geoff Dyer, author of The Ongoing Moment and, most recently, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, took the stage at the auditorium at the Getty Center, he insisted: “It’s important that you don’t know what this talk is going to be about.”

I was all ears and didn’t know what to expect. One hour later I was even more confused and amused.

Dyers’ talk was mainly about landmarks. He recalled landscapes from his youth. Next, unable to find Gauguin’s “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Instead he came across “The Questioner of the Sphinx”, by Elihu Vedder. It seemed to Dyer an emblematic way of experiencing a landscape.

His wanderings brought him further to a square with poles and land art. He described Walter De Maria’s The Lightning Field, one of the great Land Art projects of the 1960s and 1970s … a sensational bit of marketing, an experience “almost unphotographable.” But unlike most art, it permits “freedom of behavior and response.” “And do not expect to see God appear at the field, there is no room for God”, Dyer ended his lecture.

Mesmerized by his words, now I have to read his books.

Red Book Dialogues

Related to the current exhibition The Red Book of C.G. Jung at the Hammer, artists and cultural icons are paired on stage with Jungian analysts or scholars and invited to interpret a folio from Jung’s Red Book as a starting point for a wide-ranging conversation.

This week’s duo featured filmmaker, artist and writer Miranda July, best know of her unique and very personal feature film Me and You and Everyone We Know, and Jungian analyst John Beebe, who concentrates particularly on American cinema in his work.

A little side note – a year or two ago, I got the pleasure of meeting Miranda when she took the same modern dance class as me!

Didn’t know what to expect of this dialogue but my curiosity was uttermost triggered when the two got off to a strange start… “Is this some kind of staged therapy session…?” went through my mind.

Beebe interpreted some of Miranda’ dreams – she acknowledged that most of her writing is based on her dreams -, and linked them to the Jungian theory of “active imagination”: how this translates in film, and to the “jouissance” of making a film?

Both further conversed about the intensity of the process of creating. For Miranda July it means going through a crisis. Beebe: “One has to go through this torture, it is hunting for one’s soul”. The conversation swerved on in this unusual vibe of in-depth “Jungian” observations by Beebe, and spontaneous, sometimes funny mutterings by July. Near the end Miranda even initiated some “performance art”: both are standing on the Red Book, “it supports us”, answering questions by the audience. Per the Jungian theory, Beebe broke down the nurturing of the creative process as follows: “Non Sense = not knowing what to do – vulnerable – see what happens.” Hammering words…

Art in the Afternoon

This sunny day calls for some outdoors activities, like a bike stroll in the neighborhood, direction beach.

On 7^th and Vernon, colorful balloons, a children’s bounce house, and a petting zoo catch my attention. I enter the courtyard. Tables with adults and children drawing and coloring, inside the studio all kinds of hands-on workshops (from drying flower petals, crafting small wooden jewelry boxes, to making simple jewelry…). They are part of this event Art in the Afternoon, benefiting the non-profit organization A Window Between Worlds, that helps children and women survivors of domestic violence recover from abuse using arts as a healing tool.

Founder Cathy Saiser tells: “These survivors are dealing with unsettled emotions, which they can release through creative expression. This relief opens up the healing.”

12-year old Destiny, a children’s workshop participant, shares her experience, how she finds empowerment though her voice and dancing. She sings with such an emotional voice, it’s very touching!

On my way out, I can’t help myself but color a few flower drawings. It feels good.

Isn’t that Diana’s voice, the one half of the duo Ketchup Soup, playing the button accordion and singing that unique mélange of folk, blues and jazz tunes, on the patio of Venice Beach Wines?

And then there is the salty smell of the ocean waves… my meditative moment.

Here’s the link for more info on A Window Between Worlds: http://www.awbw.org