“To rebel or revolt against the status quo is in the very nature of an artist.”
-Uta Hagen, Respect for Acting
Respice, Adspice, Prospice. Throughout the year, we have encountered different forms of art. We started with the art of Szymborska, which commemorates the past, looking at the photograph. Then we took a journey to Vik Muniz’s Wasteland, which uses art as a mirror, reflecting what is around us. In order to complete the trinity, we now chose the art that looks ahead.
Nam June Paik was a 20th century artist who dreamt of the world yet to come. His ideas surpassed that of Google and Facebook by several decades; revolutionary by nature and absurd by context. Yet, the greatness of his artwork is not from the very fact that Paik was ahead of his time; the artist has included humanity in the artwork which many idealists have missed. When observed carefully, the robots are not only progressive but humanly progressive, embracing both the cultures of the past and the newly evolving technology. While the robots boast engineering complications, they also cherishes the human heritage, defining very well the boundary between the creation and the creator–to the point that no artwork on the exhibit can dare to exist without a father whose name is humanity. Perhaps the boy in the photograph, who innocently plays around with his artwork, was also burdened with the onus of being an artist.
In stark contrast, the play by Young Jean Lee. Straight White Men is not an artwork which looks decades ahead of time, but it is similar to Paik’s exhibit considering that the play pulls the society towards the world yet to come. Although it is tempting to think that the play is about some straight white men, the author makes it clear that she is not speaking only about the straight white men with the social “privileges.” If we think about the remark made to Matt, concerning how a white man can’t speak about civil rights, the author hints that the play is attacking the societal silencing in general, not just a specific race or ethnic group. The playwright is well known for writing plays about everyone and anyone, unlike the traditional American method of writing, which Ronald Knox very-explicitly explained in #5 of his 10 Commandments: “No Chinaman must figure in the story.” This is the story told by Lee, which tugs everyone towards the future unknown.
If Paik’s “Becoming Robot” is the manual for an experiment, and if Lee’s Straight White Men is the procedure to identify problem, the Zero Tolerance exhibit of MoMA PS1 shows the explosion of revolution: the embodiment of ideas and realization of what used to be merely dreams. If artists are revolutionary, can revolutions be art? Certainly, revolutions can take forms of art, as shown in the exhibit. Anger, despair, grudges, frustrations. These human feelings are portrayed in many different shapes– some violent, other peaceful, some noisy, other quiet. What matters is that these images and sounds are considered modern arts, and rightfully so; they connect the artist and the subject with us, the audiences. The Zero Tolerance exhibit does not complain about what used to be, or what is now happening; it shows various experiments in which change is about to happen.
Respice, Adspice, Prospice. Art is selection. It is a selection to seek, to find, to look, to think, to feel, to live and to be. With this baby step progress towards understanding what art is, we look back, look ahead, and look around.
