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The Spiritual in Film and Art
by John Koch
Filmmaker and Owner of Cinema Revolution
For PMJ
February 17, 2008 -- As I strolled through the Minneapolis Institute of Arts today a strange disconnect took hold. I thought perhaps I was just feeling closed off today, maybe the problem was in how I was reacting to the surroundings there. So I decided to let myself be led by my true impulses, and not by what I consciously thought to be relevant, and it was eventually the medieval and Renaissance art that captivated me, and the spiritual scenes therein. Though I was not thinking about it at the time, Andrei Tarkovsky too was inspired by Renaissance art, and had much disdain for contemporary art forms. Tarkovsky was the master of capturing the spiritual on film, even declared "the greatest of them all" for this reason by his colleague and fellow master Ingmar Bergman. As I said in my previous entry, the spiritual is the highest form of film, and this same quality is unquestionably fully represented in medieval and Renaissance art, though not necessarily through its subject matter but in a similar much deeper sense. Though representational of one specific spiritual faith, it is the underlying universal spirituality where its significance lies – in its gestures, its light, its compositions, its colors, its emotive qualities, its associations – which gives it the power to transcend different cultures and faiths. I feel it is operating on a much higher plane than most 20th-century artists ever gave credit, as they commonly criticized its superficial archaic religious qualities. Its power is there beneath the surface, communicating through highly potent symbolism sophisticated human values, questions and struggles, not mere illustrations of biblical scenes. In their contempt for the old, 20th-century artists made the same mistake as early Christians who, according to mythologist Joseph Campbell, ignored the significantly more powerful and true metaphoric intentions of the authors of the Bible, reinterpreting the book rather as a literal, historical document. 20th-century artists were seeking another way of thinking and interpreting the world, but in what now seems a very clumsy, almost mechanistic way, somewhat analogous to the then prevailing scientific view of the universe or the body as a machine rather than a living system. The motivations behind the post-modernist idea of stripping art of meaning are unfathomable to me, tantamount to removing the skeleton from a living creature. It is perhaps a bitter and hateful response by a world turned inside out by two world wars. Without meaning, there can be no feeling, lessening the unthinkable pain of tens of millions of lives lost. However, the concept of art devoid of meaning is nonetheless a misguided and violent revision of a something as inherently sacred as the body itself, and yet another in a long list of reactionary 20th-century mistakes that have led humanity in a perversely wrong direction.
The ideas of modern and post-modern art and thought were a natural progression out of the age of enlightenment. It is clear where 20th-century art wanted to go and why it wanted to go there, but its methods now seem predictable and almost childlike in their simplicity. If not 'X', then move in direct opposition to 'X'. However, the movements of modernism, cubism, abstract expressionism and post-modernism exhibited on the whole an admirably rebellious iconoclasm that did accomplish a great deal. The ideas of redefining form, recontextualizing the art/viewer relationship and dislocating the point at which art happens was at one time novel and has proven to be important to the understanding of art as a whole, but it is now well-trodden and tiresome and has little left to offer the world. Its confrontational air is no longer revolutionary – quite far from it actually – thus its confrontations reek of a tedious impotence. Something very basic in art has been gradually discarded through the revolutionary movements of the last 100 years, namely the idea that art can serve a similar role as religion or spirituality – viewing it as a force that helps us derive meaning from our lives and cope with the limits of our humanity/humanness, and as an expression of a longing to break free into a "divine" or higher plane of consciousness. Changing the modalities of art – such as how abstract expressionism broke free from the figure or from anything representational for example – was also an attempt at this; to evolve in the way we think, to reach for a higher plane of thought through a different form expression of ideas/concepts. However, their approach was too grounded in the intellect and furthermore seems to me now almost anti-human, anything but spiritual. The ideas of 20th-century art are a dead end, no longer waning but at the actual end of the street, fully stopped, staring up at the yellow diamond warning sign and its bold print.
Through its complex harmonies and layers, polyphonic music of the medieval period sought to understand and emulate the mind of God and the music of the spheres. As time progressed and especially after the age of psychoanalysis, music such as romanticism tended to shift rather towards understanding the mind of Man. The same can be said for the pictorial progression of art, as classical and biblical subject matter gave way to more romantic concerns such as dramatic historical events and beautiful women. Something significant, however, was already in the 18th and 19th century being lost in the process, that reaching for an evolution of the mind towards divinity. However, living in a society now mostly freed from the confines of religious superstition, and with modernism and post-modernism having run their course, I feel the motivations behind polyphony merit further artistic investigation – but now to understand the mind of God that lies within Man.
I think about the gesture I saw today of the Madonna's hand resting on the infant Christ child's chest, and the love and tenderness expressed in such a gesture. As human beings, are we no longer in need of expression such as this? Where will this expression exist if not in art? Do we suffer less than those in the past, to the point where we no longer need a path through the darkness, to make our way through suffering? Where do love and sadness, the most prevalent human emotions, fit into post-modernism and its high-minded irony? As Zen Buddhism states, to live is to suffer, yet there is less and less of an outlet in our culture to express or acknowledge that fundamental pain – the fact that we are all beings headed towards death. It is clear that the ugly, fractured, unsure and neurotic state of contemporary art reflects the true nature of our society. Yet we are in a culture dominated by escapism and distraction that is growingly unequipped to address its own malaise. Can art lead the way towards greater understanding, or must it always merely imitate life? I feel art can manifest the latent desire to address this deep dissatisfaction felt by many. Art can and should be a search for a way out of alienation rather than a perpetuation of it.
Though usually the target of much of the frustration associated with contemporary art, the commerical demands of art have existed for centuries and are actually inconsequential to this argument. The charlatans who pose as artists to manipulate the system for their own monetary gain will lose in the end, as they may get rich and famous but will never attain immortality. Their work has no value that could conceivably outlive its generation, perhaps at best only to serve as a curious reminder of a lost culture's distorted values. Unfortunately, said charlatans now represent the vast majority of successful working artists. However, without a commercial application and without its audiences – museums, galleries, private collections, concerts, performances, and screenings – art would not be able to function. An expression must have a destination. Thereby art that has value to society should also by default have a commercial value – people will pay to experience it. It is when you have to convince people of art's relevance that the system starts to break down, and I feel it is the predominant meaninglessness in contemporary art that alienates audiences far more than any controversial work.
An artist who creates work that lasts can never let the demands of the marketplace fundamentally change him/her or his/her ideas. The best artists have the strength to faithfully pursue their own truths, and to trust that their audience and the marketplace will support them. Without this leap of faith, real art cannot begin, and what's left is relegated to the status of a vulgar commodity, one brought into existence for the mere purpose of promoting itself.
Revolution or MySpace
by John Koch
Filmmaker and Owner of Cinema Revolution
This essay is addressed to the liberal/creative/intellectual community in Minneapolis/St. Paul:
"Re-examine all you have been told...dismiss that which insults your soul."
-Walt Whitman
November, 2007 -- Time is the most valuable resource we have, yet it seems that there is always less and less of it, and that it is always passing away faster and faster. I believe that most of us have all the time we need, however, we just need to focus on those numerous cracks of time that collectively draw so much energy away from us. I feel it really is control over the little things, those stray hours here and there, that can make all the difference between a productive, self-actualized person and someone who is "too busy" to spend time on things that really matter, or even to cope with life. Consider how much of what's around us that demands our time - work, special events, holidays, demands of family/friends. All of these things draw our energy, however they provide tangible benefits in return and are important. If we consider certain things that may seem innocuous, such as time spent on the internet, the sum total of hours spent there per day can really add up over time. The biggest examples of this kind of time-draw are the social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, which, from this point forward for the sake of brevity I will simply refer to as "MySpace". If you consider as a conservative estimate that the average person may spend an hour a day on MySpace, that's 7 hours a week of time. Think of what one could do with 7 extra hours per week! Think of how much easier your job would be, for instance, if you had one more day off per week, as it's almost the same amount of time. These things add up fast.
I simply want everyone to stop and think about this social networking phenomenon, and ask themselves if it all really feels right. In the 1980's when we saw the boom of MTV and home video game systems such as Atari, everyone seemed to know that those things were vices and overexposure was unquestionably bad for them. With MySpace, however, seemingly few who use the service question or critically observe its effects. Being a fairly serious person, I know a number of people who are pretty careful and snobbish about the things to which they expose themselves, to the extent where they consider movies at the Lagoon too mainstream and would never even dream of watching television. However, even the most ascetic people I know have and devote serious time to their own MySpace page, and don't even think twice about it. The excuse I hear every time is, "well everyone else is on there". This is very troubling to me. My response is that people in large groups do a lot of really lame things that often don't merit emulation. Do I really have to remind you who are intelligent free thinkers to stop and remember that we are all individuals with free will, capable of making our own decisions? So if you have friends that you will lose by not being on MySpace, ask yourself how good of friends they really are and whether they are really worth knowing. Friendships existed before MySpace, before emoticons, winks and pokes, before IM, and before text messaging. What usually happened was, people communicated with each other on an individual level and with real words and fully realized thoughts. MySpace was built under the auspices of making communication better, easier, and more convenient, but instead it ended up creating a greater volume of communication that is of significantly lower quality. It encourages depersonalized relationships under the veil of greater, more expansive personal expression. Ironically, you may end up spending more time on maintaining these two-dimensional online relationships than you ever spent maintaining friendships the old-fashioned way (to think that one on one communication could now be considered old-fashioned!). Through its inherent structure of marketing oneself for mass appeal, it has made communication more complex, less honest and less precise. It adds unnecessary layers of interpretation to an individual's character, and strong, self-respecting people do not need to engage in this type of subterfuge. I am not my tastes in movies, music or books, my carefully selected mp3 track that represents my core being, my cool background layout, or my clever photos of me and my friends. I am not defined by my "friends list", those people who choose to electronically align themselves with me and lend me their legitimacy, while I in turn lend mine to them. I am not a contrived version of myself that I am expected to present on a standardized page for all the world to see the "real" me, for the real me is not arrived at so easily, nor will it be so readily and shamelessly shared with anyone out there who cares to know.
It is time to call MySpace on what it really is, an enterprise providing a service that promotes vanity, superficiality, laziness, and instant gratification. It is not communication but base entertainment, and a form of it more insidious than anything society has known. It appeals to people's weaknesses, their desire for attention, connection, and love, and preys upon that by devouring countless hours of their time and attention, all under the guise of "networking". MySpace is dangerous because its allure is strong, and it is sucking precious time away from things that really matter, taking valuable and finite energy away from people who could be changing the world.
The generation of artists and musicians prior to mine that came of age in the 1980's had a large-scale problem of heroin addiction. Heroin (and drug abuse in general) may have been viewed by them as the ultimate rebellion, the ultimate "fuck you" to the establishment. In truth it is a highly debilitating substance that extracts all the creative energy out of a person, and is, in essence, a counter-revolutionary agent. What I believe our current generation faces as its most serious enemy to creativity and change is this prevailing culture of distraction and abuse of time. Perhaps this is progress, since these new threats don't possess the serious and deadly health effects of illicit drugs. However, what the degenerative effects of heroin were on the creativity of artists in the 1980's and early 1990's, MySpace, Facebook, and video games are to this generation.
Basically, my call to all of you in the liberal/creative/intellectual community is this: You have a choice, revolution or MySpace.
Many of you out there in our community have a fervent interest in both protecting our environment and eating healthy organic foods, which is laudable. However, I can't stress enough the importance of the ecology and well-being of the mind, which seems to me to get ignored all too easily with the demands for "easy" entertainment. It is imperative to realize that filling your brain with hours on end of MySpace, video games or Hollywood movies is no less than the equivalent of dumping toxic chemicals into our lakes, or gorging on an entire bag of pork rinds. Our society is killing itself with cognitive pollutants, while nothing is more important than how we foster our intellectual and spiritual growth, as it is the basis for our existence, our understanding of life and how we make the decisions that affect our lives and the lives of those around us.
If I can persuade you any further to drop your MySpace addictions, remember also that there is nothing a person can do on MySpace that isn't performed better and most satisfactorily in the real world, or even on pre-existing internet technology. Do you want to promote your band? Build a web site, send out an e-newsletter, play shows, and sell your CDs online. Do you want to keep in touch with friends? Isn't one on one personal contact with friends better than mass-messaging your moods, thoughts and experiences via your daily blog, even if it is over email? Ask yourself, what do you really get out of an evening spent on MySpace? You may get the satisfaction that today some other person or group of people on the internet may have paid a few minutes worth of their attention on you. Ask yourself the bigger question, what tangible benefit have I ever gotten out of all of this time I've put into MySpace? I'm sure that they do exist, such as people who may have met their spouses, or whatever, but what I am saying is that I believe the negatives far outweigh the positives, and there are and always have been other more direct ways to meet people, such as face to face contact, that have proven successful for thousands of years before MySpace.
So is all this really worth wasting such a large portion of your life, 28 hours - over one full day - per month? To put things in perspective, here is a list of things you could do with those extra 7 hours a week:
- Write a song, screenplay or novel
- Learn an instrument
- Paint or draw
- Go out and take photographs
- Make a film
- Take a walk
- Talk to friends over coffee
- Visit your family
- Read more books
- Catch up on homework
- Take a nap
- Exercise at the gym
- Organize an event
- Have sex or masturbate more often
- And of course... go see or rent a movie
I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors, and may a thousand Twin Citians bloom. |
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