Connections, Collisions, and Possibilities
Diego Rivera's Ballet Horsepower: The Failures of the Pan-American Techno-Body
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Elisabeth (Ellie) Guerrero
It was 1932, and the ballet H.P. (Horsepower) was making its debut before a packed audience at the Philadelphia Opera. Dancers in oversized costumes moved across the set. Downstage, a humongous multicolored fish danced stiffly on teetering human legs. Blinded by his painted paper mache head, the big fish made a single pirouette and crashed into King Banana, who lost his balance and tripped over two blond mermaids playing cardboard lutes. When three giant pineapples waddled onto the scene, the unintentional comedy of clumsiness made an apt analogy. There was not enough room to move within the confines of the convention of an underdeveloped tropical paradise. The apparently unlimited material resources of the region that the dancers portrayed were, in fact, limited. The ungainly image of the Big Fish bumping into the Grand Pineapple signaled what was to be a series of misunderstandings between the Mexican and U.S. creators of H.P.: artist Diego Rivera and composer Carlos Chávez on the one hand, and conductor Leopold Stokowski and choreographer Catherine Little on the other. The plot was to be a celebration of the union of Anglo-American technology with Latin-American natural resources. However, H.P.’s awkwardness in portraying Pan-American unity on the stage was an indication that a perfect union between north and south was illusory. The United States was in the throes of the economic Great Depression. With a quarter of the U.S. population unemployed and hungry, the United States government moved to deport hundreds of thousands of Mexican laborers and even some U.S.-born citizens of Mexican origin in an overzealous attempt to protect jobs. And yet, at the same time, even as the north slammed the door shut on Mexican workers, it threw the gates wide open to acclaimed Mexican artists. Producers spared no expense for H.P., and advance press was overwhelmingly positive.
Painting: A Transitive Space
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Simon McIntyre
This paper looks at a painting based project that seeks to extend the investigation of painting beyond the image and conventional gallery experiences of the medium. It explores the potential of an exhibition to portray painting as a site of encounter and exchange. The idea of transitivity refers to the thinking of critics, David Joselit and Nicholas Bourriaud; Joselit talks of the manner in which painting might connect to networks (social, economic and digital) and Bourriaud emphasises of art’s dependence on the viewer for activation. The project was founded on a two-part exhibition, artist talks, and a supporting publication. As initiator, curator, participator and publication editor I set out to create an exhibition that celebrated the life of painting – to think about painting in dynamic terms – as a process that involves contingency, chance and change. Within this context, painting has more to do with emergence and provisionality than with planning or representation. This paper discusses how the exhibition was conceived and how it created an opportunity to bring generations of artists together, in order to generate a proliferation of emerging connections, collisions and possibilities. The whole project has galvanised the painting community, created a platform for ongoing dialogue and initiated further exhibitions which have picked up the thread of the conversation.
Music and Social Justice in the Dialogical Classroom
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lisa Parkins
Reflecting on totalitarianism in the twentieth century, Timothy Snyder asserts that it is “a primary American tradition to consider history when our political order seems imperiled.” The arts education learning environment is a potent site for investigating the development of socio-political movements, leading to the enactment of students’ own creative/activist agency. This paper presentation discusses a group study in popular music and social justice at a public college for adult learners in New York City following the inauguration of the 45th president of the United States. Particularly at that moment, this diverse group was ready to explore the history of protest music and, in response to current issues, dig into art practices and processes. Analysis of this transdisciplinary study is informed by Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism, bell hooks’ definition of education as “the practice of freedom,” and Gaston Bachelard’s poetics of interior spaces. How did participants’ discursive engagement with twentieth century social movements, cultural traditions, and the music of activism empower them to “enact new and more just ways to live in the world together”? How does a radically open, embodied approach to arts pedagogy foster students in becoming critically informed about crucial local and global issues? If as Bachalard says, “dream values communicate poetically from soul to soul,” can the quotidian classroom be transformed into a meeting place in which students freely access and share their personal imagery of everyday life, identity, and cultures? This presentation concludes with a video documenting the group’s collaboratively created song of resistance.
Nuclear Technology and Folklore: The Excommunication of Science
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alice Ruo Ran Wang
Cumbrian Alchemy, 2012-2014, is an artwork by Robert Williams and Bryan Wilson that combines archeology, folklore, and nuclear technology. The project contains several drawings, sculptures, and photographs that integrate anthropology with nuclearity. In Atomic Priest from Castlerigg a figure mimetic of J. Robert Oppenheimer stands amidst a Neolithic stone circle [below]. One local legend tells of the treasures buried in Castlerigg but warns against their excavation as the action will elicit horrific deaths. This story of deterrence, which was intended to ward off intruders for the stone circle, now finds resonance within the current global desire to prevent future generations from excavating at potential nuclear burial sites. Indeed, one major concern for deep-time geological storage of radioactive waste is that the material remains toxic for millennia, during which time the location of where they are interred may be forgotten. To prevent this, one suggestion has been to develop a robust system of oral culture where radioactive sites would be adorned with dissuading superstitions like those of Castlerigg. Cumbrian Alchemy therefore explores this entanglement between science and folklore by critiquing any simplistic understanding of orality. Its inclusion in a 2014 international conference on radioactive waste management hosted by the Nuclear Energy Agency in France points to the criticality of the work. Through a study of Cumbrian Alchemy, I examine how visual analysis of artworks can harness social activism to enrich technoscientific discourse and advance our understanding of public policy and global security.
