JUST ART - JUST CAUSE
JUST ART – JUST CAUSE
By Rik Leaf
If the ‘eyes are the window to the soul’ what do your eyes reveal about you? The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. (Marcel Proust)
JUST Artists is an emerging affiliation of socially active performers, producers, writers, musicians, painters and creative individuals committed to improving the world through their artistic contributions.
It is a movement in the making, where we create opportunities to view culture and the arts with new eyes; to inspire one another to become active participants in the events that define who we are and what we are running to, and not just running from. Over the last few years a number of JUST Artists have been sinking their eyes into Canadian culture; into the landscape where emerging Canadians are developing their values and beliefs amidst a constant barrage of highly manipulative sales techniques and campaigns designed to sell them an identity suitable for consumption.
The paintings we hang on our walls and the music we choose for our special events are valuable as personal expressions of who we are and how we feel. The commercial use of music and art involves identifying products as extensions of those pre-existing personal tastes, expressions and emotions.
Pop culture is certainly not the only cause, and maybe not even the primary cause of our growing disillusionment, but where it cannot undermine it overwhelms other voices and cultures. Culture creates the mainstream and the margins, marginalizing an ever increasing number of ideas, individuals, communities and even countries. Along with our loss of faith in our elected leaders and the electoral process, we’ve experienced a significant shift in how we view religion, the promises of capitalism, even optimism, but most importantly, we’ve lost faith in our own talents, ingenuity, and significance. Most of us have been fed the scraps from pop culture’s table so long we’ve forgotten how it feels to sit down and really feast on creativity and originality.
We continue to insist that change is progress, self-indulgence is freedom and novelty is originality…Western man is creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania. (Leslie Fiedler)
In 1999, the Foreign Affairs Department of Canada sent my band Tribe of One to Kosovo to participate in a United Nations humanitarian festival called ‘The Return’ hosted by Vanessa Redgrave. A group of university students befriended the band and shared that for the previous 10 years, they had not been allowed an education, to speak their own language, walk on the sidewalks, stay out after dark, or be in large groups outdoors. Albanian musicians were not allowed to perform publicly, and they could only be stagehands in the theatre. As we passed rows of tables selling bootleg copies of NSync and Ricky Martin, we commented on how well dressed everyone was, and asked where they had learned to speak English. They told us; from watching Beverly Hills 90210. Pop culture was able to cross into a war zone and sell its look, feel and identity to a generation who weren’t even allowed an opportunity to explore their own. Two years later in the winter of 2000, after driving 15 hours straight north of Winnipeg and crossing over 35 lakes on a winter road, in –30-degree weather, I arrived at the Wasagamak First Nation Community. I was driven across the Reserve to the little radio station where I met three junior high school boys. They were playing Marilyn Manson, Korn and Limp Bizkit over the radio, and dressed like they just stepped out of a Much Music video. Pop culture had successfully sold its look and feel to these youth who were so isolated none of them had never even been to Winnipeg.
But are Aboriginal and Albanian youth allowed a voice in pop culture? They’re certainly paying the price, buying the clothes, the CDs, the magazines and watching the videos, but are they allowed to play the game? Are they empowered with a distinctive voice to share and receive their thoughts and ideas and tell their stories, or are they simply overwhelmed? For that matter is anyone empowered by globalized commercial culture or are we all just overwhelmed?
Culture is the very essence of national identity, the bedrock of national sovereignty and national pride. (Canadian Government)
In her acceptance speech at the Oscars in 2003 Nicole Kidman asked the question many people, (including artists) ask; is art relevant during times of crisis? And if it is, why is it? Is it foolish to believe that artists have a vital role to play in defining our national identity, sovereignty and pride? Maybe the answer is ‘yes’, if by ‘artists’ we mean Britney Spears and Andre 3000. What can the manufactured product pushers offer us but next year’s fashions?
Are we looking to politicians to provide a future for us? Are we looking to religious leaders? Are we looking at all? Or are we really as lazy and uninformed as some of those individuals make us out to be? Maybe the artist’s voice, or the priest’s, or politician’s is disposable because that’s how we’ve come to view our own? If that’s true, who convinced an entire generation their unique talents and abilities were disposable? Especially when our world is caught in an endless cycle of self-defeating behavior and we desperately need someone to help us imagine a better way to a better world.
The worse things get, the more vital Art becomes. Art can overcome. Art can lead the way to hope from despair.(Counterpunch Magazine)
As commercial interests have been allowed to triumph over all other interests, we have begun to lose our cultural sovereignty and certain structures necessary for a successful society. We’re losing the framework for engaging new ideas and new ways of looking at the world, along with meaningful opportunities for informative dialogue. This is where JUST Artists and our leaders need to connect if we hope to positively affect change.
We need authentic, honest, passionate individuals who have a voice and are willing to use it. It doesn’t have to be political, or philosophical, or even deep, just something honest and real and the willingness to share a moment of the journey. While there is no unanimous agreement on what art is, or what makes some art authentic, we are able to sense the difference authenticity makes in both art and individuals. JUST Artists crack the door to the emotions and thoughts we all share, and give us new eyes to see ourselves and the world around us.
The first demand any work of art makes upon us is, “Stop. Look. Receive.” (C.S. Lewis)
Aldous Huxley described a process of cultural control in Brave New World Revisited, ‘it has become clear that control through the punishment of undesirable behavior is less effective, in the long run, than control through the reinforcement of desirable behavior by rewards. The nearly perfect control exercised by the government is achieved by systematic reinforcement of desirable behavior.’
Has nearly perfect control been achieved by corporate interests manufacturing celebrities whose sole purpose is to sell us their values and products? The fans buy the image and values pawned off by the celebrities they’re trying to emulate by replicating the look, the feel, and the sound, thereby providing the corporation with unlimited resources to perpetuate the cycle. The artists are handsomely rewarded, shit moves off the shelves, and one day you wake up and the little girl that used to be Sporty Spice, is now Britney Spears.
“Lenin takes responsibility for creating the first truly modern propaganda machine, from postage stamps and Mayday parades to monumental sculptures. Perhaps its most colorful, dramatic and original form was the poster. Through it, the greatest artists of the time proclaimed government policies, asked for support, and demanded greater efforts — all with the goal of building Soviet power. The Russian Revolution offered a clear example of how art affects social circumstances, and social circumstances affect what kind of art will be made. Artists were fully involved in the Revolution, both inspired by and helping to elucidate and convey the new ideals that this new
society was meant to be organized around. These works were meant as public education, speaking directly to the citizens, and were produced as a central part of the process of creating a new society. In this way, artists were a critical part and architect of this society, not seen as standing outside of it, as in Western traditions.” (Russian Revolution, The University of the Poor)
JUST Artists are learning to see the cultural landscape with new eyes, learning to differentiate between novelty and originality, between self-indulgence and freedom, and champion the voices in our midst whose work truly engages our imagination.
John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Cockburn – their work shaped and solidified the values and opinions of their generations on everything from war and peace to sex, drugs, freedom of speech and sexuality. Cockburn said, ‘Part of my job is to keep people awake. To remind people that there are things they need to pay attention to. Everything around us, especially here in North America, is designed to kill our senses and awareness of what’s going on.’
It was a culture of artistic relevancy banging on the door of social revolution. Compare that to the Dixie Chix sharing a personal political opinion in a concert, and having some of their fans actually drive their tractors into town to drive over their CDs. The backlash was in response to an artist daring to have and share an opinion on real life! Were their opponents overreacting, or recognizing the influence artists actually have?
We live in an age when people want to reinvent a whole bunch of demarcation lines and say, ‘if you’re a rock band don’t step across the line into news coverage, we reporters do that! I think that all creative activity, in fact, is a process of destroying frontiers. (Salman Rushdie)
Many people assume that art is nothing more than window dressing, or icing on the cake, a belief happily perpetuated by the very organizations that use its infinite worth to modify and control behavior. We have to consider that things are not going to get better unless ‘we the people’ make them better, and to do that we’re going to have to cross the line where art and artists provide the creativity that inspires innovation, and the cooperative partnerships with politicians, policy makers, industry, humanitarian organizations, service groups and communities of faith that can develop sustainable programs and procedures to implement vision. It’s not about pretending we have the answers; it’s about the willingness to learn to ask the right questions and being humble enough to have a humble beginning.
How fortunate for leaders that men do not think. (Adolf Hitler)
People invest in what they value. For individuals to invest in creative self-expression they have to appreciate the value of doing so. To be an inspired generation actively pursuing unique and innovative solutions to the problems we face we cannot afford to be passive observers sitting on the sidelines. At this point, discovering the right questions is a great beginning, a huge first step toward starting a conversation that can continue throughout our lives. Art matters when it empowers the people.
The arts enhance our lives, stimulate our creativity, and allow us to express our emotions, thoughts and aspirations through countless forms of artistic expression…people of all ages convey their values and their beliefs through artistic and intellectual works. These creative efforts communicate the ideas that shape lives. As we face the challenges of a new era, the arts and humanities will be vital to a future of innovation, opportunity and hope. (George W. Bush)
JUST ART - JUST CAUSE
Changing the Rules
Changing the Rules
By Rik Leaf
“I Fought The Law” was written by Sonny Curtis of the Crickets and recorded on
On
I fought the law and the law won actually brings up a point we should consider. If you fight the system by the system’s rules, you will get your ass handed to you every time. You can’t beat the house fighting by house rules, and the good news is…you don’t have to.
There are lots of things that need to be changed; there are a lot of things worth fighting for, including the rules of how and why we are engaged in the struggle to improve our lives and the lives of those around us. To achieve qualitative and lasting change is going to involve changing the way we keep score, the way we play the game, basically the way we fight.
Canadians will not win at the polls playing by the rules designed to divide and conquer the electorate. It is not in ‘OUR’ best interest to play the ‘US’ (same-sex marriage-gay-rights) and ‘THEM’ (anti-women’s rights & abortion rules) Not only do these rules drawn partisan lines down the centre of our lives, families and communities, they trivialize the fact that we’re talking about people’s lives, people just like us trying to find their way through the fog of life and love, hopes and dreams in the hope of finding a future worth living.
Rewriting the rules of engaging dialogue and discussion means more than simply propping up our wing of a sagging institution, it involves redefining the rules of engagement, crossing partisan lines, actively and effectively drawing people together so we can learn the value of an opposing perspective.
These days an increasing number of individuals feel powerless, the agents of change seem woefully inadequate or entirely unwilling to engage the enormous challenges that face us, which is why JUST Artists are so important. JUST Artists are able to work with the power and potential of our collective imagination. They are artists that can translate ideas into words, songs, movements, colours and sounds that will simultaneously engage a wide variety of learning styles.
JUST Artists is about entertaining ideas that engage and empower individuals, helping them to recognize how their talents, gifts and abilities provide unique opportunities for them to be agents of change. It’s about changing how we fight partisan politics, rampant consumerism, the destruction of our environment, epidemic childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes, third world poverty, the adverse effects of corporate mega culture, and the litany of ills and evils purported every waking moment of every day. It’s not just about battening down the hatches and trying to survive, it’s about changing the rules and learning to win.
Active Participants
Active Participants
By Rik Leaf
What is the value of a human life? St. Ambrose said we wrong everyone would could help but choose not to. That the coat hanging unused in the closet belongs to the one who is cold, that the shoes unused belong to those who have none.
The way we choose to live so often breaks the convictions we profess. This is as true of our religious convictions as it is our political. Held prisoner within the confines of our convictions, our assumptions prevent us from entertaining the transformative power of imagination and the full measure of possibilities available to us.
Canadians along with every other first world country misuse our privilege and position when we consider any personal or national sacrifice an unacceptable cost in acting as agents of change in the global community. In communities across our own country we are confronted with the economic disparity and the inequitable distribution of wealth, hope and optimism on a daily basis.
And yet, it’s so easy to bitch, such a simple thing to complain and lay blame for all our societal ills at the feet of bureaucrats and policy makers, all the while engaging in a lifestyle that reinforces the very system of exclusion and exploitation at work in devaluing our neighbor’s lives
By identifying our securities we can begin to recognize the values we are investing in. Suddenly the problems are not too big, but too small. The decisions that maintain the status quo and reinforce the corporate commitment of doing business as usual fit uncomfortably into our lives. We are active participants every day…and we know it. And it is because we know it that so many around us spend their time, money and resources doing anything and everything to avoid looking in the mirror. No price is too great to avoid looking into the eyes of those we prevent from having a place at the table because of our insatiable greed. We know we could do more, we know our genius and our talents and abilities could revolutionize the way we do business, and we know that it would require sacrifice. The ability is ours…the willingness is up for grabs.
Creating Change
Creating Change
By Rik Leaf
“The artist - in so far as he is an artist is looking not for the causes of effect; he is simply looking - sinking his eye into the object. To his eye this object permanently reveals.” Joseph Campbell
What is missing with most bands, most artists even, is a belief that what they’re doing matters. As a career artist I can understand why they might feel this way. Our society has produced an environment where the arts are often seen as an extravagant indulgence or worse, simply irrelevant.
I was recently invited to participate in a community building event in the capacity of an artist. With a mandate and vision statement eerily similar to that of the JUST Artists, I was eager to participate and happy to be invited. What I saw, what I heard, the people I met, talked and listened to made me very, very excited about the future. It wasn’t all bells and whistles, bluster and bravo, it was much simpler and more difficult…people getting together with other people and starting a dialogue that exceeded the limitations of preconceived notions and positions.
There was something else I found noteworthy… a place of was given to pastors and priests, politicians and the successful members of the business community, each were allotted their time at the mic, front and centre with all eyes and ears riveted on them as they voiced their ideas.
And the artists…well, the artists were scheduled as background ambience during lunch. Off to the side at the back of the stage with the volume turned down low enough to avoid cluttering the conversations over coleslaw. It was a great physical manifestation that represented the pre existing beliefs that what artists do and say matters little, if at all.
It is in those moments that artists can identify with the marginalized of society; be it the poor, ethnic minorities, the gay community or women, basically all those who have had to struggle to be heard and make their thoughts and ideas known.
And to be honest, these are the ones most in need of artists, writers, painters, poets and musicians, a creative community that can help tell their stories to the world.
Creating change always involves learning to give meaning to what you do. Believing that what you do matters so that you can believe that paying the price is a worthwhile investment. Change doesn’t just happen…it is created.