Art as a Political Witness
Text may be found here - https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Art_as_a_Political_Witness/4rEnDgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
I have been reading the above title and wrestling with where on the spectrum I would like to make my own artistic nest: witness to activist with the various gradations in between as well as the tangents of art for art’s sake and compulsion making and the living tissue artists discussed by Cristabel at last week’s tutorial where artists are at the sharp end of defining ethical boundaries and future making.
Art as witness
Spectator, the personal, first hand observation, the voyeur is deemed unacceptable as a witness for the lack of action
Ethical dilemma of being present in the face of trauma, pain or crisis with no action associated
A more ethically defined definition of the ‘participant witness’ as one who self critically participates with the conditions or situation
Holocaust witness becomes Holocaust survivor - the critical issue being that memories and observations were made on behalf of others not those individuals themselves and therefore a model of memory construction
Qualifiers such as silent, expert, moral, transparent, post-factum, transparent etc - transparency for example relates to verifiability and fairness of that witness testimony (e.g. legal testimony or expert witness where the comments are made on the basis of being a qualified expert in the field)
A true witness has experienced or has been at risk of experiencing the moral question
Contention that an artist cannot bear witness unless they have actively participated in or been subject to the issues concerned
Telling it like it was or telling it like it felt is an important distinction
The authors claim all art is a contribution to political discourse - what can be seen, what can be thought, what can be said. Art can shape what is seen to be possible, a new political landscape
Acting as a moral witness is linked to hope - the hope that there will be a moral audience who will listen to the artist’s testimony. They contend that witnessing without a receptive audience is therefore futile.
Art is not bound to truth in that it interrogates narratives that are historical and acknowledges that memory evolves particularly when encased in storytelling
Aftermath or secondary witness art such as photographs depicting how victims of trauma are suffering
Why do artists feel compelled to bear witness to those things at which they may not have been present or asked to bear witness to