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Here are some quotes the Artists Network is starting to gather on the role of art in society, why and how art matters in changing the world. "Artists
and musicians all through the ages, when laws and times have changed,
have been part of it somehow or another and in some way or form.
You've got to have a song. Got to have something to dance to. You've
got to have something to build up your courage, or your belief in
yourself." "I
still believe that when a play questions even threatens our social
arrangement, that is, when it really shakes us profoundly and dangerously,
that is when you've got to be great: good isn't enough." "A
play presents a self-enclosed little world for the audience to examine.
It's an opportunity to look objectively at a group of people, to
assess them, to react to them, and to measure oneself against them,
to ask, 'Am I like that?â " "The
trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've
seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an
act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable."
"What
is happening to the world lies, at the moment, just outside the
realm of common human understanding. It is the writers, the poets,
the artists, the singers, the filmmakers who can make the connections,
who can find the ways of bringing it into the realm of common understanding.
Who can translate cash-flow charts and scintillating boardroom speeches
into real stories about real people with real lives. Stories about
what it's like to lose your home, your land, your job, your dignity,
your past, and your future to an invisible force. To someone or
something you can't see. You can't hate. You can't even imagine."
"We're
not a message group, this is our life experience." "...writers
have not and should not now exempt themselves from dealing with
the pressing politics of the time. Today it is, once again, war
and empire. And it is with these monstrosities that we should engage
in one form or another. What would Euripides, Marlowe or Brecht
have done? They would have made these times strange, to use a Brechtian
formula, so that an audience could see their society anew and possibly
act on those new visions. Why settle for a lesser goal?" Q (to
Tony Kushner): "Does art heal?" From
Adrienne Rich, in 1974: "[I]t
is part of the magic of art that we can do in this sphere what is
not yet realizable in the sphere of material social relations. Lending
material expression to our dreams in the form of artistic works
will contribute to laying the basis for these fundamental social
transformations we aspire to." "The
bombing of the little girls in Alabama and the murder of Medgar
Evers were like the final pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that made no
sense until you had fitted the whole thing together. I suddenly
realized what it was to be Black in America in 1963, but it wasn't
an intellectual connection ...it came as a rush of fury, hatred
and determination. In church language, the Truth entered into me
and I `came through.' ...An hour later I came out of my apartment
with the sheet music for 'Mississippi Goddam'â in my hand. It was
my first civil rights song and it erupted out of me quicker than
I could write it down." "The
artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my
choice, I had no alternative." "Although
man's social life is the only source of literature and art and is
incomparably livelier and richer in content, the people are not
satisfied with life alone and demand literature and art as well.
Why? Because, while both are beautiful, life as reflected in works
of literature and art can and ought to be on a higher plane, more
intense, more concentrated, more typical, nearer the ideal, and
therefore more universal than actual everyday life. Revolutionary
literature and art should create a variety of characters out of
real life and help the masses to propel history forward. For example,
there is suffering from hunger, cold and oppression on the one hand,
and exploitation and oppression of man by man on the other. These
facts exist everywhere and people look upon them as commonplace.
Writers and artists concentrate such everyday phenomena, typify
the contradictions and struggles within them and produce works which
awaken the masses, fire them with enthusiasm and impel them to unite
and struggle to transform their environment." "It's
very frustrating because as artists our role in society is to fantasize,
to imagine things. In Palestine you keep on banging against reality
and the situation which is the overcloak of everything. It is always
there. You can't escape it; you can't fly too high. You start shaking
your wings and you bang into a checkpoint. It is very frustrating
because you keep on banging against walls, walls like the political
situation, our conditions and the war. But it's rewarding because
of the few times you do fly. You are stronger than the situation
and the reality and you just take them and swallow them inside you
and use them as your raw material and fly. That's a victory. This
is what keeps me working and moving until now." "Art
not only influences politics tremendously but there is also a sharp
struggle in the realm of art over what will be produced, what will
be supported, and there are many different ways that the bourgeoisie,
the ruling class, has of controlling art. In fact, in the U.S. at
this time, they prefer to do it without having to show a heavy hand
to the degree that this is possible. They prefer to do it by pretending
to have pluralism just as they pretend to have it in the political
sphere--that there is no political character, no class character
to our art, just different viewpoints, expressing people's different
ways of looking at the world." "[They]
put me on the Today program... and I sang "Brown Baby." ...And it
was the day when they were reporting the news about the girls getting
blown up down there in Alabama. When I sang 'Brown Baby'â they were
crying. And they got more cards and letters then they ever gotten
from anybody that they had on in the nine years. And all the cards
and letters were positive. There was not one KKK attitude in that
at all... And I discovered then that this is something that they
don't want. They're ready for the guy who says "Off the Pig!" ...They
wish the hell you would come with that. You know. Because they want
to kill you. But if you say something that is going to endear you
to other people. If you're going to create sympathy. If you're going
to create a beauty. If they're going to see you in another light.
That, the establishment will not tolerate!" "I
believe that music is perhaps our greatest means of amassment. You
know, a song can do so much. It can make you feel something that
you were already feeling but weren't truly in touch with, you weren't
able to grasp it... " "What
I need from my artists is a sense of urgency... And I need a sense
of collective responsibility, not just where the artist feels this,
but where the artist makes the whole audience feel a collective
responsibility sitting there together, even if we don't know each
other." "What
do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has only eyes, if he
is a painter, or ears if he is a musician, or a lyre in every chamber
of his heart if he is a poet, or even, if he is a boxer, just his
muscles? Far from it: at the same time, he is also a political being,
constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate, or delightful
things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their
image. How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people,
and with a cool indifference to detach yourself from the very life
which they bring to you so abundantly? No, painting is not done
to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war." "Art
can take our unexpressed thoughts and desires and fling them with
clarity and coherence on the wall, a sheet of paper, or against
the silence of history." "People
should fear art, film, and theatre. This is where ideas happen.
This is where somebody goes into a dark room and starts to watch
something and their perspective can be completely questioned...
the very seeds of activism are empathy and imagination." |