This week at senior seminar, an artist came to speak who made work a lot like mine- out of accumulations of waste products- paper, plastic, tires, ceramics. Mostly paper.
His work was beautiful. Knowing his materials so intmately, I felt deeply moved by the slides of his work, by his simple, elegant execution of a process much like mine. He visited my studio, gave me some good tips on stacking paper safely, and asked me a lot of hard questions. I was puzzled by why exactly he'd do this, but liked the opportunity to practice talking.
However, he was an asshole. His artist talk was painful- he was rude to the students and self-righteous. He fell in to all of the pitfalls of talking about ecological art that I am working very hard to try to avoid. He sited half-relevant statistics, included images meant to illustrate how appalled he was by today's crisis. To his credit, in my eyes, he did not claim his art to be a solution, he acknowledged his complicity in waste. However, this pissed most people in the room off. By using his artist's talk as a platform to discuss ecological issues outside of his work, he primed his audience to look at him as 'part of the solution'. When inconsistencies between his work and talk became apparent, most notably that he also makes work out of store-bought materials and sometimes cuts down smal trees to use in sculptures, people got angry. They saw him as a hypocrite. He responded dismissively and defensively, which made it much worse. I cringed, knowing that his terrible handling of the subject matter we share could well predispose my peers to see all ecologically oriented artwork more cynically, and to be more judgemental of my work.
Since his lecture, I've had a couple of really interesting exchanges about what was wrong with the talk. Our shared frustration leads us to talk about his content, and I end up sharing a lot of my opinions about consumption, waste, and my art's engagement with these issues. This result is exciting.
This situation brings up interesting pedagogical questions for me. By pissing us all off, the artist inspired us all to dwell on his talk a lot more than we would have if he were pleasant. Mostly, I think of agressive or confrontational teaching approaches as counterproductive and fundamentally bad, but some of the anti-racist workshops I've attended in the past few years have made me rethink this. These workshops consistently make me feel terrible by asking me to confront all of the unjust benefits of being white, all of my latent racism. I feel strongly that this is the right approach, because I am not, should not think of myself as capable of combatting structural racism, because the delusional over-empowerment of liberal white folks is part of the problem...thus it is honest for an anti-racist workshop to leave me feeling powerless, guilty, confused, bad. The agressive pedagogy evokes an appropriately difficult emotional response.
I think ecological self-reflection should also make people feel bad, because it is a just sadness. However, I don't think ecological teaching has the right to preach, because what human can claim the moral high ground? We are all suffering from and contributing to planet trash soup. I am trying to find a way to talk about my art work and life choices non-judgementally, non-condescendingly as a way to talk about ecology compassionately, and I think I'm getting good and gauging the appropriate tone. This visiting artist, though, made me more concious of my choices, though, because in a strange way his work was also effective, in that it provoked an oppositional response that called for conversation.
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I've been thinking about confrontational teaching lately in the context of animal rights. Friday afternoon, someone was outside of Kline passing out vegan pamphlets. At first I was excited, but the more I thought about it and talked to people about it and the more I saw people's reactions to the pictures of tortured animals in front of them--clearly meant to parallel the meals in front of them--the more troubled I became. I guess that confrontational approaches are supposed to make people feel responsibility for the environment, animal rights, or whatever, but in my experience, it instead makes them feel guilty. People usually end up trying to rationalize their actions so they can stop thinking about it and stop feeling guilty. And then, what I think is worst of all, is when the guilt leads them to action and makes them self-righteous about that action. Someone who sees activism this way will end up making value judgments, like, "I am a better person than I was before because I recycle," or "I am more morally correct because I no longer eat mammals" which lead to "That person is not as a good of a person because he/she doesn't recycle" and "I'm better than this other person because he/she eats more meat than I do." This is what I hate most about common animal rights activist practices, and lately I've been thinking that the source is confrontational teaching.
This is drifting further and further from relevance to your post and generally having a point, but: I think that what veganism is about is happy animals, animals that love each other (like http://letsbefriends.blogspot.com/!) and yummy vegan food, and that environmentalism is about fresh air, truly organic plants, and beautiful places, and that talking about or showing slaughtered pigs, de-beaked chickens, veal cows, smokestacks, landfills, nuclear waste, and desertification, are the opposite of what those movements are about.
Naomi,
wow, thanks for the thoughtful response. I didn't even know you read this.
How do we talk about our "lifestyle" choices that we believe are correct (dare I say ethical?) without being condescending in a way that turns people off, but also in a way that opens conversation and spreads critical thinking? I know you and I don't believe other people need to make our lifestyle choices, but we do want to be agents for the increase of critical ecological thinking. What we eat is one of the most direct areas in which we engage in this, good personal training in learning to talk about any of our choices, since it comes up all the time, in lots of different situations . It took me years to figure out how I wanted to talk about being a vegetarian...I definitely went through a moralistic phase (just like I did early on in working on this art project), but now try to speak in a way that highlights the incompleteness of my efforts. I try to make clear to whoever I'm talking to that I am not forgoing meat, or saving my trash, or making art about consumption because I think that makes me a better person, but rather as a way to acknowledge large problems in my actions, and to make learning about ecological crisis part of my every day life. I see our choices as acknowledgements that eating, disposing of trash, making art are ecologically complicated endeavors, They are not solutions.
I really admire the way you make your veganism a very public part of your identity using only positive, accessable language. I have never felt judged by you for not joining you in this choice, but I have learned about veganism from you, I am a more thinking person for your friendship. There's a lot of oppositional vegan pedagogy and it seems pretty ineffectual to me too. However, I disagree a little bit with you about why this is so.
I wouldn't say that "environmentalism is about fresh air, truly organic plants, and beautiful places" like you do. I'm not so rosy. I kind of hate the word 'environmentalism', but if I had to use it, I would say that its about getting people to confront our flawed assumptions about how we live through increased understanding of its affects on the landscape, the atmosphere and other life forms. It's about facing crisis and making changes in the face of it. The planet is not going to be all lovely looking again any time soon, and so I think its problematic to try to sell people on the need to "care about the environment" by making it seem like a feel-good endeavor, because we need to ask people to wreckon with destruction and injustice with us. We cannot get all cozy with our organic local food in our LEED certified house and call it a day, its not going to work. It's not always going to feel good to care about the planet, it doesn't always feel good to care about anything. I get really annoyed by this and so definitely design my actions in a knee-jerk way, intentionally making myself feel guilty, powerless, and scared. This also has its problems (I think I'll write an entry about that soon...) There needs to be a balance.
I think oppositional vegan recruiting is ineffectual because it sets up a hierarchy, not because it uses scary images. I really appreciate efforts to put the slaughterhouse, smokestack, landfill in to the public consciousness, I just think fascilitators need to make clear that they are not outside of these problems, no 'recruit' should feel that they are having a burden thrust at them, or that they are being offered an opportunity to absolve themself of their complicity in evil. This is the kind of thinking that leads to bullshit like carbon offsetting and organic tv dinners. We need to celebrate all that is still beautiful and hopeful, yes, but we also need to mourn our collective misjudgements. together.
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