art as a way of understanding

2022-03-29T13:38:56Z

I appreciate this essay by lazenby on nonbinary/agender identities, art, power, logic, bodies, nations, understandings:

Art, as Ruskin wants it to be seen, is a co-equal portal of creation through which it is possible to glimpse a world that is something other than the vigorous hybrid of cleverness and sadism.....

In rather the same way that art does not rely on the logic of power or the power of logic, its example allows us to see still other ways of thinking. Love, for instance, has its own order and virtuosities.....

The body contains and articulates yet another organization of thought. I think the gender each of us ends up with (if any) is a reflection of how well, or badly, we are able to eavesdrop on the inner logic of our bodies. In this it has something in common with the talent for love–or art: A person who can understand what their body thinks is by definition one who also knows that rationality and power cannot and do not exhaust the possibilities of life.

And this interview with Alok Vaid-Menon:

What I think I have turned to in my own practice is to create spaces for people to be nourished for all the parts of themselves that they feel.....

I think art is uniquely positioned to give us an emotional and intellectual framework to hold messiness and I think our political movements need to learn that.

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Sumana

art as a way of understanding