Art as Practice of Liberation

It took me a long time to understand what people meant when they said, “do what you love”. As a kid there was always this invisible curtain thrown over big concepts that I didn’t understand yet. “I’ll tell you when you grow up, you’ll understand when you’re older.” Or “Come find me in 10 years and I’ll explain”. To me, that created this huge amount of suspense! I couldn’t wait to understand the adult world, everything that didn’t make sense was going to be so clear! I remember having the feeling that everything would be logical, and practical, and our adult understanding of how things will connect us all. Then I turned 18. Still, the adult world seemed distant, and the answers to so many of my questions were still so hidden. Maybe I was still too young. Then I came to college, which made a little improvement, I paid my own taxes for the first time, and discovered a little thing called stress. But still, even after “the big 21” and the less hyped 22, I still feel like there are these big concepts (like “do what you love”) that don’t seem as clear or simple as they sound!

As a sophomore in college I came to my first big intersection in life. I had to make a conscious decision that was going to have a big impact on the rest of my life. I had to choose a major. Now, a lot of people say that your major doesn’t really determine as much in your life as the schools make it seem, but it was still a really overwhelming amount of power to have over my own life. It was then that I had my first realization of what it meant to do whatever makes me happy. At the time I was working toward earning a major in biology, something that I had decided I would pursue while I was in high school. I loved studying science and learning how the world works, but I was operating under the “I should…” statement. I would tell myself “I should study science”, “I should be a biologist so I can get a good job”, I should be happy”.

My art classes were where I escaped. I would come to the ceramics studio and squish, shape, and play with clay. It was my release, my liberation. When Hooks reflected on her experience in the Women’s Studies classrooms college where she taught. She looks back on her experience and says, “Those classrooms were the one space where teachers were willing to acknowledge a connection between ideas learned in university settings and those learned in life practices…feminist classrooms were, on the whole, one location where I witnessed professors striving to create participatory spaces for the sharing of knowledge”. I had the same feeling with art classes! I felt involved, stimulated, curious, challenged, and engaged in my art classes. I realized that, as Hooks says, I could “experience education as the practice of freedom”. I could use Art as liberation from “I should…” and take the first step toward doing what makes me happy. I made the decision to change my major to art and all of the sudden, one of those big cloudy concepts from my childhood was being unveiled.

Being at Northland has provided me with many opportunities to maintain a diverse lifestyle. Just because I changed my major didn’t mean I lost all interest in learning about our mother Earth! I am still inspired by being in nature, learning about the flora and the fauna, and interacting with the elements. Northland has a huge environmental focus as a whole, which has allowed me to take classes where I learn about artists who incorporate nature into the beauty of their work. That is why I was so pleased to read about Turrell, Schafer, and Goldsworth in Suzi Gablik’s book The Reenchantment of Art. When Gablik said “Schafer maintains that music, too, has lost its participatory and ecstatic aspect in the modern era, having been pervasively shaped by the same distinctive feature or Western art: walls” my mind was blown. Our society has been oriented in the direction of developing controlled, comfortable spaces for so long that we rarely break free from the man made, unnaturally maintained spaces. We are animals; we are not machines, or plastic toys. We are not concrete and rebar. We come from the Earth, and in order to feel human, we must connect with our roots!

The piece that Schafer creates for people to experience a performance in nature reminds me a lot of something that would be created by a Northland student, for Northland students. It combines art with the environment and satisfies a need that so many of us feel. “Pilgrimmage is an old idea, but as Schafer points out, when over five thousand people travel to a remote lake in the Rocky Mountains to see a performance, it is evidently one for which there is a contemporary longing” says Gablik, we all need to break free from our constructed spaces and allow our bodies to respond to nature. The art and the environment intertwine to inspire our minds and realign our foundation, our physical self. The art and the environment enhance each other, just like our soul and our flesh. Schafer’s The Princess and the Stars production must have been truly freeing in the moment.

-Video clip of Schafer’s The Princess of the Stars performance

I want to learn more about the healing practices discovered by archeologists that happened in ancient Egypt. Gablik explained temples that were made in Egypt to allow the sun’s rays to enter so that they would break up into the seven colors of the spectrum, she says “the assumption was that imbalances in the color harmony of the aura-the energy field surrounding the body-cause illness”. That idea is magnificent. Again, it is people making the decision to liberate themselves by breaking away from the rest of life’s demands to reconnect with the natural environment. They are liberating themselves from the stress, the fear, the pressures of life through art.

Another action of breaking free of social pressure, of political pressure, and pressure from the law was Bree Newsome’s removal of the confederate flag from the South Carolina state capitol. She took the power into her own hands and took removed a symbol that for so many people represented years of oppression and hate. It doesn’t occur to many people that if you want something to get done, you have to take action. Newsome, a physically fit and capable young woman decided that there was nothing holding her back, and she climbed up that pole, take the flag, and to speak to the people. And we heard her, one woman on Democracy Now said, “to see that flag taken down…by a strong, black woman was one of the greatest symbols that anyone could witness”. Newsome took the symbol of the flag and changed it, not only did she physically remove the flag, she created a new symbol for those who see and hear about what she did. She set an example for anyone else of how to harness the power of your own mind and body and use it to inspire.

“The retaliation piece was much scarier than arrest”, said Newsome about what might happen after she climbed the flagpole. She was afraid of the retaliation from the general public, the same people she was trying to inspire. That to me is a sign of bravery, and of advancement. When someone is willing break away from the comfort of conformity, that is liberation. She realized that there are definitely people out there who may not like what she’s doing, but she is willing to put her self on the line for her cause. It’s a lot like the street artists in Exit Through the Gift Shop, who every night go out with their piece of art, or their paint, or whatever it is, and physically install their message. Taking physical action to break a norm is liberating. Making a conscious decision to get out, from whatever bonds in life you might have, is liberating.

Be in the moment, climb a fence, a building, or a damp embankment in the woods. Make time to block out the rest of your world and to put your body in a special place. Show yourself, and other people that you are not a puppet, you are not a robot, and you are connected with the Earth, the air, and your body. Escape the routine. We must feel our mind and our bodies being unified in meaning and purposeful actions. That is we will be liberated.