After watching all 3 of the videos shared with us by Felice (linked below), please write a paragraph-long question or comment about 2 of them before noon on Wednesday.
Shirin Neshat TED talk
Mallika Sarabhai TED talk
Caution: This video has content pertaining to rape
Suheir Hammad TED talk
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
In response to the Ted Talk by Mallika Sarabhai, I was astounded by her ability to articulate and demonstrate the power of art. She proved her thesis through her performance while highlighting ways in which the thesis is actively being used. As a visual artist I believed that art could make a real and tangible impact on the world, but had never seen this concept so vividly laid out. Before it would have been hard for me to grasp how other art forms such as dance could have the same impact. Never before have I heard someone calling for art and science to go hand in hand, being recognized as equally important. However after watching Sarabhai's performance I feel awakened to the possibilities at both mine and millions of others fingertips.
ReplyDeleteThe Ted Talk by Shirin Neshat, moved me beyond words. Hearing of the struggle of a country, it's people and it's isolating outlet for social justice, provided me with eye opening insight. Further from the personal and moving story told by Neshat, something she said caught my attention. Neshat claimed that she fears for western artists, due to the growing trend of art constituting entertainment. I struggle with this statement. On one hand i see the consequences this poses such as the potential to quit focussing on activism and reform in artwork. However, is art being entertainment not the thing that breaks down the barrier between the observer and the content of the work? Is it not this entertainment that allows such messages to get through and create real change? In the end I guess it is possible for either to be true. Art as entertainment has the potential to make or break the world.
ReplyDeleteListening to and watching Mallika Sarabhai’s talk about art and the impact it can have on movements within a society, I completely agree with her argument that a culture’s art movements have major influence, and should be used appropriately. As she pointed out, most leaders in politics and in business know how art affects and moves the public, but often times, it is not for the best. A lot of the art and media surrounding Americans today is not conducive to positive change, as unhealthy and unsustainable lifestyles are being pushed through rampant consumerism. She mentioned that dances, art, and films have brought about positive change throughout the world when given the chance to. Taking that into account, I think about how many toxic relationships movies, especially movies geared toward teenagers, have been displaying and glorifying in the past two to three years, and I worry about the effects this might have on women’s health in the future.
ReplyDeleteSuheir Hammad’s last poem seems particularly relevant to the issues we are currently experiencing in America today. She speaks about refugee women and women in battlegrounds, having to choose whether to take up arms themselves or whether to continue to lose members of their family, including their children, to warfare. When all the jokes and memes about a WWIII draft began a couple of weeks ago, I was immediately repulsed. I think all Americans know full and well that a war in Iran will not really affect the vast majority of us. A war in Iran will, however, destroy the lives of so many innocent Iranian men, women, and children caught in the crossfires and drone attacks. Many women will have no choice but to experience what Hammad described, as they either suit themselves up or search for their loved ones in rubble. I think Hammad is also connecting the earth to femininity, a classic device but one that rings true, as earth is every being’s mother, yet she is made to suffer through war and pollution and invasive, exploitative pillaging of her resources.
ReplyDeleteShirin Neshat's Ted talk was very interesting. Artists are in exile because they pose a threat to the government. But also they are a voice for the people in Iran. I found it interesting that she made a movie about a book that was banned, then there were uprisings that began after it's release. The movie was made to inform Western people of how Iran was changed after the Islamic revolution and how women played a role. The film resonated with Iranian women and they wanted their voices back.
ReplyDeleteSuheir Hammad's video I thought was powerful. The deep emotions that she conveyed about the impact of war on people's lives. Particularly, in the last poem she read about how it hurts women so much. With the loss of people they care about due to war. The man created violence that rips people of importance from their lives. It was chilling to listen to.
Shirin Neshat’s story is extremely compelling living as an artist in exile she is nomadic working everywhere from Turkey, Morocco to Mexico she pretends these places are Iran. In Iran every artist is involved in politics in one way or another. They struggle with censorship, harrasment, arrest, torture, and sometime execution. Living in exile she has become the voice of her people even if she doesn’t have access to them. She is not only fighting for their identity, but also religion, femininity, and politics. The other battle her people must fight is against the government. Artists like her pose a threat to the power of the government, this however has empowered them they are central to the discourse in Iran trying to inspire and bring hope to the people and communicate with the outside world. In her art she uses women to best represent her country. In high school I studied her series Rebellious Silence which I found powerful and beautiful. She also has created a film Woman without Man because it addresses how typical women are in Iran, but these four women women featured in the film are looking for change. Through this she tries to seek a balance between a feminist and political story. When her film was released an uprising began, The Green Movement, which significantly inspired the people struggling for democracy and represented a new idea of feminism of women who are no longer traditional. Iranian women have inspired her they have broken all the rules in the biggest and smallest way and they have found their voice which has given Shirn Neshat her voice back.
ReplyDeleteIn this Ted Talk Mallika Sarabhai shows the power of art. In this story she says the god and the husband are clean and pleased, but after the god raped her she is ruined. After telling that story she then goes to say that in India there is a rape every three minutes and 25% of rapes go to a police station and only 4% of the 25% are convicted. There is a certain pattern in every country of those who are charged with crimes. “Have we stopped seeing injustice?” In her speech she makes an amazing point of saying art can go where we can’t and she’s right if you think about it. Art has a more subtle way of bringing about hard discussions then bluntly stating it. It reaches a place where others can’t. Art can talk to many when attitudes are not willing to change. Art is a language: mainstream art, cinema, soap operas. Art is not the cherry on top it is the yeast in the cake necessary to continue to improve society
ReplyDeleteI thought that Mallika Sarabhai’s “Dance to Change the World” talk was interesting because of the emphasis it put on injustice around the world regarding sexual assault. In her introductory story, there was more emphasis put on justice for the woman’s husband than there was for herself. This reminded me of stories I’ve read of women being harassed who couldn’t get the perpetrator to back off until they mentioned having a boyfriend or a boyfriend showed up, and it disappoints me that women are not always afforded the same respect that a man would get. The same thing applies to the “she’s someone’s daughter/sister/mother” statement I see sometimes that advocates for the safety of women but only through connecting them to other people-- women should not have to be related and/or connected to other people in order to live lives free of harassment and violence.
ReplyDeleteI also thought that Suheir Hammad’s talk was interesting because of the poetry she performed. At one point, she says that she carries shadow “within,” and that she’s experienced cycles of light and dark but that she thinks now that she “never was pure.” To me, this reads as a comment on how people tend to view childhood as a point in time for everyone where people (especially parents and family) aim to protect their children from the negative things that happen in the world but, at the end of the day, none of us are ever completely shielded from the various injustices that exist.
ReplyDeleteMallika Sarabhai TED talk “Dance to change the world”
ReplyDelete“Art can go through where other things can’t.” This is the point Mallika Sarabhai powerfully drives home with her opening dance-story. As an artist, I passionately believe that art can reach people in places that are inaccessible to well-argued speeches, articles, letters to the editor. As a professor of literature, I trust literature’s power to crack open our ability to empathize, no matter how unlikely the subject of our empathy might appear to be. As an educator who values interdisciplinary connections, I am planning to show the beginning of Mallika Sarabhai’s TED talk to my English and Theater students in order to highlight why American playwright Lynn Nottage chose to write a play—a work of fiction—based on interviews Nottage recorded with women survivors of sexual assault in Uganda. Her play Ruined insists we care about Congolese women whose bodies are assaulted and turned into weapons of war by the Congolese men fighting. Like Sarabhai, Nottage trusts the power of art to get through where other things can’t.
Suheir Hammad
“Where do refugee hearts go?” This question in a poem read by Palestinian poet Suheir Hammad evokes many and different ongoing histories of forceful displacement, violence, and homelessness. There are the Palestinians turned into refugees in their own country, generation after generation living in refugee camps, walled in, humiliated by checkpoints. There are Congolese refugees fleeing violence so extreme, mothers won’t share the stories with their foreign-born children. There are refugees from South and Central America, driven away by climate change and colonial histories of exploitation.
“Where do refugee hearts go?” I don’t really know.
Suheir Hamad’s poetry is so densely packed with powerful ideas I feel any string of 20 words could be extracted and still tell a story with clarity and intensity.
ReplyDelete“war drum aint louder than this breath [followed by an audible breath]”---this is just one example from her performance.
Until listening to Hammad’s reading on the TED stage, I had not considered the connection between our emoji project and poetry, a connection that now feels obvious. The process of crafting a message with poetry (words abstracted from their typical usage—prose—and reassembled in a new structure to present the reader/listener with ideas made fresh by the format) suddenly feels very much like the process we will all undertake to craft a potentially dire message with emojis.
--
Shirin Neshat says “Our artists are at risk. We are in a position of danger. We pose a threat to the order of the government.” These ideas resemble those of artists from many totalitarian regimes and oppressive governments, countries that imprison artists for their work and/or ban them from ever making artwork again. In these cultures, we can see that art has real and measurable power to change the way people think and live. If it didn’t, the governments would not see art as a threat.
In the United States, there are very few examples of art that is responded to in this way—as a powerful threat that must be resisted by the government or other form of authority. Art is, instead, seen as individual expression or as objects to be commodified. I think it can be and should be more than this. It doesn’t all need to be more than individual expression but we need some of it to point out our problems, to repeatedly stick its finger into the open wounds we are trying to ignore while asking us if it hurts, why, and what can we do to stop the pain.
Mallika Sarabhai embodies and explains what I believe the function of art to be, post-photography. As she said, it breaks down walls and allows issues to be raised without someone's pretense prohibiting it. To what extent is this fair to the viewer? Sucking them into a conversation they might not have asked for? But at the same time, a piece of art (I'm thinking visual art) presents something to its viewer, but the conversation surrounding it will never be the same because experience is volatile. Additionally, we have little need in the 21st century to recreate reality exactly as we see it, for there are cameras for that. That's why abstraction was allowed to blossom. Art today begins discussions in a guise of entertainment, and it has the power to make an audience think when they engage with it. It holds a deeper meaning than many historic, incredibly masterful paintings because of its design and the circumstances under which it is created.
ReplyDeleteShirin Neshat explained in greater depth the transition of Iran to an ideological state than I have ever had explained to me. As an American, the middle eastern "other" culture has often been framed as a sort of backward, religious to extremes society which upon reflection and Neshat's words, is not fair to eastern culture. I found it difficult to relate to her stories, especially about seeing her country shift so dramatically and her exile, but I learned more about the country of Iran, its democratic past and how powerful art has proven to help Neshat make her points. To my last comment, this is again, what 20th and 21st century art is meant to do.
ReplyDeleteI struggled to find the right words to respond to Suheir’s poems. The only thing I could think of is a loosely translated Palestinian saying (or more accurately it’s something my grandfather once said, but since he was 102 he basically coined every Palestinian saying there is) that goes “ a woman’s sigh can ignite a revolution and a loving glance from her can just as easily stop it.”
ReplyDeleteAlso, where do refugee go? Maybe if they wait long enough to die they can go to heaven? or they can try and reach some other intangible, slightly out of reach fairytale dream. Something like a home with that won’t be boomed and collapse on top of them in the middle of the night while they sleep. or maybe a hospital where no one has to hold them down because they’re being operating on with no anesthesia. Oh I know, maybe they can go to a store and buy groceries for dinner, instead of eating 3 year old canned food that they got from a white van with an America flag stamped on its sliding door. I don’t really know the answer to that. But what I do know though, is that there is no way in we’re gonna let them come into our country.
__________________________________
As for the Shirin Neshat Ted Talk.
Neshat shows just how much power there is in a woman who’s been deprived of having a voice. And how mere words from woman can upset an entire regime. Neshat said “Art is our weapon, culture is a form of resistance” and to that I say, woman is art, and art always transcends governments and religions. Art is immortal.
Suheir Hammad’s TED talk and her poems were very moving. Some of the language she used surprised me. The curse words were abrupt, but really helped get the point across. The way she spoke showed a lot of emotion and really held the listener. When she interacted with the crowd I was participated and thinking of a woman I would like to hold. It became personal.
ReplyDeleteThe artist’s, Shirin Neshat, Ted Talk was very intriguing to me. To hear about how artists are being exiled and being harrassed really reminded me that a lot of things from history. For example how artists are always pushed away and forced to have restraints from their work even if they would still be allowed to work. A lot of artists’ works can be an opposite proponent then what the government wants for the people. So when the informational movie of the Iranian Revolution was displayed for the Western world, it showed how much of a vital role that Iranian women played a big role. When the government attempts to limit an artist, I believe it only compels the artist to push even harder to create more and better work. Her art made me think deeply about the subject. I think it is so important for artists that are “in the trenches” to have the ability to release their work because it can speak volumes.
ReplyDeleteThroughout these three Ted Talks, I noticed two important themes. While each piece had it's own main belief or point, overall each piece delicately intertwined the power of art and expression of women. Through poems, dance, plays, and pictures these three women expressed their arguments, but rather than arguing or explaining her point, the women educate through their art. Through their art, these women also acknowledge the struggles women face around the world. I found Shirin Neshat's Ted Talk to be the most inspiring, especially due to current events. My freshman year, I took an anthropology class called, Representing the Middle East, and much alike Neshat's point, is the women within Iran and other Middle Eastern countries are faced with juxtaposing ideas of what a woman should and should not do and what she should look like. Nevertheless, even with the differing definitions of a woman's role, all three speakers understood the power these women hold, but also the rejection of any power associated with women.
ReplyDeleteWhile watching Shirin Neshat's Ted Talk, I was very inspired by the film she created, which was based on a book that was banned in Iran. She spoke from her heart about the ways the book and her film allowed for Iranians to reflect on their history. I also found the images from her film very striking, and I would love to see the film!
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteShirin Neshat went in depth of what an artist can do, The power they can show, and the impact that they have. The green movement was an example of change wanting to be made. The documentation is a way to show the future the truth. She was the voice of her people and explored the power of women. Her pictures captured emotion and told their own story for others to inform themselves. It was compelling and astonishing that she was in exile and managed to get her message out.
Artist in Exile--
ReplyDeleteMs. Neshat thinks of herself as "the voice, the speaker of [her] people" even as she lives far away. She references coming back home and finding it is a different place. In CETA, we discuss how being physically present in one's neighborhood is vastly different than reading about one's home, and that being present means you experience so much more from a community. I know that when I go to my hometown, only 100 miles from here, I return to a different place than I left from. I try to be an activist for my old community. I grew up there, I like to think that I know what it needs and the problems it faces. I feel though, that I am incapable of speaking for it in urbana out of fear I am stereotyping or misremembering. How can we advocate effectively for any place that we do not live when we are not present for or a part of its changing?
Poems of war, peace, women, power--
Her poem gave me chills. It always seems in classes that the powerful poetry we read is older. We read poems written by people of older times talking about older issues and then project them onto our current world. The poems are great and important, but sometimes they seem great and important because they are old and have survived while maintaining a relevance. How can we get exposed to and involved in living poetry around us? What do we even do with it? It seems like the poetry we read about is important because it was written down to retell us. Preserving it can't be what makes it important, though I don't know how its effects can be felt if it isn't documented. I don't know...
Faith Boles-
ReplyDeleteThe Ted talk given by Mallika Sarabhai was truly beautiful. I know I have also struggled to understand the best way to reach people when it comes to issues that it seems people tend to turn their eyes from. Using Art is a wonderfully inclusive and almost sneakily smart idea to be able to not only get a message across, but to make it a lasting memory inside of people. I can recall words to songs that I haven't heard in years or remember a story line of a movie that I last watched as a child. The idea of using different art forms to make messages not only more easily accepted by people, but to greatly widen the reach and impact they can have is truly inspiring and I believe needs to be used as a much more common style of communication when it comes to the darker issues in the world.
Faith Boles-
ReplyDeleteSuheir Hammad's use of poetry as projecting current problems in the world was beautiful. One of the best ways to make people truly think about an issues is through words. Not just words that say what the issue is, but words that actually cause you to think and process what was just said. She speaks of women who have felt true pain, lost family, lost homes. These things happen in every single place of the world. I think when she asked the audience to think of a specific woman and just hold her close while she recited the poem was a well planned idea. I thought of my mother. I imagined what it would be like for her to experience the trials the women in the poem did. For her to lose me or my siblings or our home and how that would forever alter her world and immediately, the poem got more personal. It was no longer just a sad story that I could easily detach from, it was about my own mother. That is how we need to look and think about every woman that is experiencing the pain spoken of, as someone's mother who needs our help just as our own mother would.
I love the concept that Mallika Sarabhai discusses in her Ted Talk of art “going places that others cannot”. As she says, art can open barriers and break prejudices. It can reach more audiences than traditional ways of getting information/ideas out because of its accessibility. Art is a vessel that can deliver any message--political, cultural, sociological, and so on. Art is a vehicle that anyone can use and interpret, and because of that, it is also a weapon. As Shirin Neshat discusses in her Ted Talk, art is a form of resistance. It is the artist’s job to inspire, disturb, and mobilize the people, and they can do that because of the vast, universal reach of art.
ReplyDelete"Don't fear what has blown up. If you must, fear the unexploded." These closing lines from Suheir Hammad's poem gave me chills. Both of her poems examine women and the powerless, especially in terms of war. Her passion comes through in her words as she speaks calmly and from the heart. I could relate her second poem to the women in my life as well as women whom I have never met; her words are very powerful, and I think her poetry speaks volumes on issues of war happening today as well as the struggles women throughout the world face every day. Her closing lines allowed me to reflect on the fact that I should not worry about things that have already happened, but, instead, I can look forward to the future to think of what may come next.
ReplyDeleteSuheir Hammad's poem was awe inspiring to say the least.The line when she said " I will not side with you or dance to bombs because everyone is dancing," stood out to me the most. It takes immense strength to stand up for what you believe in and go against what everyone else is following. I found inspiration through her words and looked up her poems after watching the ted talk. I found the poem "Of Woman Torn" and it had a great impact on me. I think that everyone should look more into her poems.
ReplyDeleteMallika Sarabhai's Dance to Change the World was very thought provoking. I have never seen someone perform like this on a tedtalk before. It requires a strong sense of creativity and courage to perform a piece like this. I didn't realize the extent of rape culture in India and this talk was very informative.
Although all three of the ted talks were inspiring and compelling, I really connected with Peter Gabrials and Suheir Hammed. In Gabriels when asking her mother why she cried, "you know you can steel your heart against any kind of trouble, and kind of horror, but the simple act of a stranger will unstitch you". This specific statement not only made me think of how privileged I am, but also made me question how many times I help people.
ReplyDeleteHammed poem was powerful. However, I once again connected with a quote that made me reflect on myself. In her poem, "I will not dance to the bombs because everyone is dancing, everyone can be wrong". This made me think about the views that society holds about women, especially refugees. "everyone can be wrong" is a powerful statement.