Mwangola - Art Creativity and Performance
Art Creativity and Performance
The Artist as Peacebuilder
Mshai Mwangola
PERFORMANCE
“a way of making meaning – as discourse – a way of communicating”
• Process: way of making (verb)
• Product: meaning – understanding (noun)
• Discourse / Communication
– therefore an audience and an interlocuter
(people)
PERFORMANCE
“…a means by which people reflect on their current conditions,
define and / or reinvent themselves and their social world, and either reinforce, resist, or subvert prevailing social orders.”
Margaret Drewal “The State of Research on Performance in Africa”
STORY
“(Re)presentation of real or imagined lived experience”
Mshai Mwangola “Performing Our Stories, Performing Ourselves”
• Present – for others to witness / understand / become aware of it
• Real or Imagined
• Lived experience – drawing from the contexts we can relate to
performance
''not what they do
and
we observe
;
we are both engaged in it ”
Johannes Fabian Performative Ethnography
ART
A creative facilitated community conversation within a particular social context
Creative
Facilitated – artist(s) and others
Community – audience(s)
Conversation – multiple perspectives
Social Context
CREATIVITY
“Bringing into being something which did not exist before , either as a product , a process or a thought which has some kind of value ”
Levels of Creativity
• Introduce something which either has never existed before or to people who did not know of its existence
• Introduce a new process for doing something
• Develop a new perspective to something or a situation
• Change the way others understand or engage with something
Results of Creativity
• Introduce new things into a community
• Ameliorate products, processes or services
• Alter people’s attitude or perspective
• leading to a change in people’s circumstances
The ARTS
• Performing arts
• Visual arts
– Image
– Inscription / Literary
• Others - culinary etc
• Orature
– “Transcending Boundaries”
what
Affirm existing status quo
Challenge existing status quo
Start a completely new conversation
Introduce a new dimension / perspective
Bring new people into the conversation
Bring people into a new place of engagement
who
FACILITATORS:
ARTISTS / INTERVENERS / support professionals
• The Form
• The Content
• The Motivation
• Lessons to learn
• Relationship to this issue and
• Relationship to audience / community
whom
• Make-up of audience/s?
• The motivation to engage issue
• The motivation to engage in this forum
• The stake
• Special needs or context
• Preparation / Background necessary
• Relationship to this issue
• Relationship to others in audience / artists
• Desired outcome
where
• Location of
– the preparation / devisal
– the engagement
– the review
• Ownership of the space
– the preparation (negotiations, research, creation)
– the engagement
– the review
• Conventions of the space
when
• Within the Peacebuilding Process
– Before violent manifestation of conflict
– During violent manifestation of conflict
– After violent manifestation of conflict
• The Period of engagement
• The Frequency of engagement
• The Context of engagement:
– Other interlocutors
– Other processes / events
how
• The Form(s)
– The genre(s): what does this form do?
– Art in the community / coming into the community
– The genre(s) in the community
• The Content :
– Issues
• The Context
– Of the intervention
– Presentation of Intervention
In summary, know
why
• This issue?
• This outcome?
• This community / audience?
• This time / period?
• These facilitators?
• This form?
• This space?
Four Aspects of Art
The Artist as Peacebuilder
Mshai Mwangola
Art ivism: Paul Robeson
“The artist must take sides.
He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery.
I have made my choice;
I had no alternative.”
(Photo credit: Henri Cartier-Bresson)
ASPECTS OF ART
• The Godlike aspect
• The Socratic aspect
• The Andersonian aspect
• The Munchian aspect
Ngugi wa Thiong’o: “Art, War with State: Writers and
Guardians of a Post-Colonial State”
Michelangelo
Sistine Chapel: “Creation of Adam”
The Godlike Aspect
• A new perspective
• “one brings different things together to make a third”
• The essence of creativity is motion
Socrates
‘I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing’
(Painting credit: Jacques-Louis David)
The Socratic Aspect
• The stimulation of a gadfly
• Art has more questions than it has answers
• Art starts with a position of not knowing and seeks to know
(Hans Christian Anderson)
The Andersonian Aspect
• Holding up a mirror to society
• Saying what people may know but do not dare to articulate
• “carry the innocence of the child ”…
“even have the awkward habit of peering under the clothes of any emperor”
Edward Munch
the silent scream
The Munchian Aspect
• Voice
– Combination of articulations, both articulated and non-articulated, scriptable and non-scriptable
– Sign: a pointer to a reality
– The broadest possible human gesture expressing a meaning, a wish, a judgement, a mood, a situation of being
• Restores voices to the land
• Give voice to the silenced
Art ivism: Chinua Achebe
Let me say that I do think decency and civilization would insist that the writer take sides with the powerless. Clearly, there's no moral obligation to write in any particular way. But there is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself
with power against the powerless. I think an artist, in my definition of that word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects.
decisions
The 3 “P’s”
•
Product
•
Process
•
Participation
Product
“something to give ”
• The emphasis is on the finished product that contains the lesson or the main message
• Devised / created by facilitators for the audience / community
• The finished piece on display / performed to audiences
Process
“something to experience ”
• The emphasis is on the process of creation that delivers (a) particular lesson(s) or message(s)
• Devised / created by facilitators with community
• Entire journey from inspiration to review critical to engagement
Participation
“something to share ”
• The emphasis is on the dynamics of participation that engages the participants in being in community
• Devised / created by a community of different interests led by the facilitators
• Facilitation of exchange with participants coming to consensus on process and product
Product and Process
The Artist as Peacebuilder
Mshai Mwangola
CHANGE
•
Redemptive
•
Reformative
•
Transformative
what change do you seek?
Fredrick Douglass
Power concedes nothing without a demand .
It never did and it never will.
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong that will be imposed on them, and these will continue until they are resisted with either words, or blows or both.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the limits of endurance of those whom they oppress .
HUMAN CONFLICT
•
INNER
•
OUTER
•
Side A
right -
PERSPECTIVE wrong
•
Side B
theory
The dramatic arc
RISING ACTION
3
3
4
FALLING ACTION
5
3
3
1 2
1. The beginning
2. The inciting point
3. The development
4. The crisis / climax
5. The resolution
CHARACTERS
PROTAGONIST
positive neutral
helpers
neutral negative
ANTAGONIST motivation / stake
incitement development climax
CONFLICT 2
2/3
2
3
post-conflict resolution consolidation
1 pre-conflict tension
PARTIES
CHANGE
positive neutral
ARTIVIST
neutral negative
STATUS QUO motivation / stake
praxis
Where are you in your activism?
What needs to be done here?
What artistic intervention best delivers the desired outcome here?
What partners are needed?
OUTCOME
•
PRODUCT
•
PROCESS
•
PARTICIPATION
CHOICES
PEACEBUILDING
"We need to understand reconciliation … as the transformation of destructive conflict, not unanimity .
It doesn't mean we all agree, it is that we find ways of disagreeing , perhaps very passionately but loving each other deeply at the same time, gracefully and
deeply committed to each other .”
Justin Welby
