Talking about the Arts Day orientation, although it didn’t seem to be as impressive as the other two orientations, it gave me a relatively new understanding about arts.
When we talk about art, we should really understand what the word “art” means to us. The way to gain a better understanding of art is to ask ourselves what and how we qualify something as art. In another words, we should define the word “art” in our own way. We should listen to ourselves truthfully about what art is in order to appreciate art. I personally have a very broad definition for art. Besides the traditional art form such as dance, music, visual arts, and literature, there are many other elements around me that I consider as art. For example, people’s dialogue, either formal or informal, is an important art form to me. I qualify something as art if they can enlighten my mind, and increase my awareness about the beauty around me. Because of that, I do not qualify some of the so-called “contemporary art” as art. I simply view them as part of the culture, and not all parts of the culture are qualified as art.
I consider the evening event with Jonathan Safran Foer a combination of two different forms of language art. One is the traditional art form—literature. The other one is my self-defined art form—oral expression. At the beginning and the end of the event, Foer briefly discussed about his novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. It was enjoyable to hear how the author of the novel interprets his own work, since it can help the readers to understand the novel more deeply. Furthermore, the discussion of the literary work was an artistic way to undercover the arts within the novel, because Foer tried to use the best words to convey the ideas of his novel so the readers can appreciate the arts through his oral and written words.
However, I think the interview itself took a more significant role as art throughout the event. First, the content of the interview was about art. Foer has shared with us his definition of art. He believed that there should not be a clear border between different forms of art. I agree with Foer’s point of view because many times a piece of art work can fit into many different categories of art. For example, calligraphy can be a piece of visual arts and a piece of literary work. The way calligraphers structured the words can create visual appreciation to the viewers, and calligraphers’ word choice in a piece of calligraphy can usually it into a piece of literary work. Speaking of word choice, I once again bring up this point because in my opinion, it is a very important art form. There are many words that we can use to express the same ideas, but different words can have totally different effects on the expression. Therefore, the words that both the interviewer and Foer chose to use had added some artistic elements into interview process.
The Arts Day event is considered an art for me in that it has enlightened my mind in how to define different art forms. It also gave me a new understanding of what art really is in my life. But more importantly, through Foer’s interview, I have learned the beauty of word choice. Although I didn’t apply what I learned in the event into this blog entry very well, I would continue to sharpen this skill in the future.
