Arts and Diaspora, continued
Last Sunday morning I went to the panel discussion with artists and scholars on "Arts and Diaspora", one of the arts-related events of the final weekend of the University Symposium on "The Politics of Populations" sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Study.
The listed participants included
- Sandy Agustin of Intermedia Arts, an organzation that "uses art as a catalyst to build bridges between people";
- Ananya Chatterjea, of the Ananya Dance Theater and Associate Professor in the Department of Theater Arts and Dance;
- Evelyn Davidheiser, Director of the U's Institute for Global Studies
- Louis Mendoza, Chair of the Department of Chicano Studies; and
- Abdi Roble, photographer, whose strong black and white photos documenting the Somali diaspora surrounded the conference room and can be seen at the website of the Somali Documentary Project.
Also participating in the discussion were other members of the Somali Documentary Project and Ananya Dance Theater, undergraduate students, and faculty and staff from the Institute for Advanced Studies.
Although it was made abundantly clear that the arts provide a powerful vehicle to share the stories of immigrants, discussion moved fairly quickly from the specifics of arts connected to diaspora to broader issues of the arts in a race-conscious, and often racist, society. Some of the points that were made:
- Community artists need other sponsors and sites, to "visit each others houses".
- The schools are dropping arts instruction, and have no sense of cultural competence in working with students of color.
- The university needs and wants to engage with communities of color, but there is a history of mistrust. The arts could be a place where they could meet in equal partnership.
- Minnesota should be proud of its history in supporting the arts. It was the second state to establish a state arts council (Utah was first), and did so well before most of the others. But despite generous support of the arts, there are great racial disparities in many areas (health, education, housing, jobs); and even in the arts, support goes mainly to the big organizations and has contracted since 9/11.
- If we want diverse outcomes, we need a diversity of people at the table. We need an "investment of knowing" what is happening in the various cultural communities, and must surrender our "privilege of silence" to speak up about racial and ethnic balance.
Further grappling with issues such as these needs to be at the forefront of public engagement efforts at the University of Minnesota and similar institutions.
Perhaps it is suitable to end with a quote from Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel Prize-winning writer, in the latest issue of Poets & Writers: "[A]rt in any form is a social activity, and any creative endeavor that enlarges the horizon of the human being, the human entity, in any way, is already not art for art's sake." He continues, however "What the danger is, is when writers allow themselves to become manipulated into believing that their work has to have some very specific social relevance... When I pick up a book, I don't want to deal with some instant political relevance. Otherwise, life becomes very boring."