Beyond global art activism

STREET SM(ART): Assumptions of whiteness in indie: a personal account of artistic expression

A couple of weeks ago, I overheard a student in the Brunswick Junior High School class I tutor complain about her piano lessons. Although seventh-grade sentimentalism often confronts me in that classroom, nothing had struck me like this remark before. I turned to her. I couldn’t stop myself. Be grateful for those lessons. I had them too. Then I thought of my younger self, who was awkward amidst variations of heights and stages of puberty at a magnet school in Manhattan. I thought of what playing piano brought me then. My school was also predominantly white— although Upper-East-Side-white, not Maine-white— and all of the strange spaces I ended up coursing through at 13 (as a result of the piano) were white too.
At 13 years old, I found myself the keyboardist of an indie pop all-girl band. This band was a lot of things, but at its core it was a DIY art project that argued cuteness and youth in music could be revolutionary and feminist. In two years, I went from performing recitals to dark bars on the Lower East Side to comedy shows to concert venues on a European tour with my favorite singer. It was special. I became young and musical and privy to a world that seemed far away from that of my classmates. I thought indie music gave me a way out of the averageness and awkwardness of adolescence. In some ways, it allowed me to grow up quickly. In other ways, it did not let me grow at all.
I left my project of two years because touring did not agree with public school. But I left indie because I could not fit its world. Even if I was a good musician, I would never be lithe and pale enough, which I felt deeply as a personal fault. Despite the girl-power and riot-grrrl aphorisms I touted, indie provided no guidance to navigating my identity, which was lonesomely darker and different from those of my bandmates and everyone around me. My Asian-ness pushed boundaries and thus I could feel the edges of the indie’s racial structures. Racism is strange this way. It pervades subcultures that are committed to artistic integrity and nurturing the independent spirit outside of commercial media. In all of that good, insidious individualism and prejudice still distort the world like light through a prism.
I did love music, although I did not love what surrounded it. Something that my friends at Bowdoin remind me of—over three-hour dinners at the vertical tables in Thorne—is that artistic remarkability is not unique here. Many of us have dabbled in different worlds—art, acting, modeling, dance—and still end up here. This is not to say that performing arts careers are sacrificed for education. Rather, the worlds of art can be compared to a world like Bowdoin, where issues of racism and shifting demographics often take the center slot on the front page of the newspaper and the implicitness of being white is challenged by students of color. These are the skills an artist of any sort needs to navigate a world as systematically white as indie, not as an anomaly but as an extraordinary.
An exemplar artist of color in indie is Hari Kondabolu ’04, who spoke candidly about his experiences at Bowdoin last weekend. Kondabolu’s rise to comedy stardom can be attributed to a couple things. Firstly, that he is a good comedian. Secondly, he confronts issues of race humorously and head-on, which he learned to do at Bowdoin, and has spoken about in the Orient. This was of interest to me, seeing as Kondabolu and I performed at the same types of comedy clubs in 2010, but nowadays, he is on the stage of Pickard Theater and I am in the balconies first tier. Perhaps that is a measurable value for spending time in a world like Bowdoin.
This means that there is also an argument to be made for the liberation of indie music. Last week, I watched the Japanese-born Asian American musician Mitski’s first video, and was deeply overcome by her clear engagement and discussion of race. It has been a long time coming, but Asian American indie artists are gaining recognition by the nature of identities which is something I wouldn’t have believed could happen years ago. This is particularly moving to me as I think back to my seventh grade self, who toiled at the piano and believed for a while that she would never forsake music for college, let alone a tiny one in Maine. Then again, it is easy to sign a life away before you know what it will hold. I am glad to feel the world shifting and changing beneath my feet.

STREET SM(ART)

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

May 6, 2016

On Wednesday, the artist and activist Atena Farghadani was released from prison in Iran. She was incarcerated about a year ago for creating a political cartoon advocating for reproductive rights and against members of the government. It was her second release. After her first one, the 29-year-old Farghadani made an online video that detailed her experience in prison—including solitary confinement and brutal violence—which landed her in jail once more. In addition to these two convictions, Farghadani has also been charged with threatening national security, insulting the Iranian government and even partaking in “indecent contact” upon shaking her lawyer’s hand after trial. Although international art unions and activist groups alike have stood behind Farghadani through the duration of her ordeal, she plans to remain in Iran. Despite past persecution, Iran is her home. Her attorney, in a statement, wrote that Farghadani’s lifelong dedication to art and activism comes at a “great price;” yet, a vital one in the face of humanity and peace.

Activism often comes from a place of love: one cannot hope for improvement without deep and shining optimism. Perhaps this care relates to Farghadani’s decision to remain in Iran. Concerning her practice, her art exists most poignantly within its initial state: in interaction with contemporary Iranian politics. Placing the work—and her physical self—outside of Iran’s political system impacts its significance, as well as her own identity. Art, as a mediation between the activist self and its author’s society, strikes several complex balances. This is not a new liminality to artist/activists, who straddle multiple boundaries simultaneously. Perhaps the most famous character of this specific duality is China’s Ai Weiwei, who has become somewhat of a posterboy of contemporary art as a reaction to the imposing Chinese government.

The visual language of activism, understood as a reaction to injustice or violations to human rights, is powerful and constantly in flux. Its associated artworks thus shift dramatically regarding national context. In developing rigid, authoritarian governments, artists are first are foremost and heavily oppressed: art is an unknown fear that is emblematic of “free speech,” of anti-censorship. Art represents each power, voice and vehicle. This perhaps explains the shared persecution of Atena Farghadani and Ai Weiwei, who differ by their countries of origin and their respective attributes. There is a distinct and inadmissible difference regarding their international position in relation to the world, but also, in relation to us.

We read global art activism from a Western perspective, and specifically an American one: our enormous and diversely complicated nation often considers itself a form of mediation upon the entire world. This is not quite true, as mediation implies a certain equality and peace. America’s contemporary identity arises out of both idealized values and great oppression, and it is historically, socially and economically distinct. This being said, our country is in interaction—a past, present and future interaction—with every other nation in the world, and it maintains an immense amount of capital. An example of this took place last month when the United States Senate bi-partisanly and unanimously voted to ban the import of Syrian art objects and artifacts trafficked to likely finance terror groups. America’s global and economic power is enormous, and thus, we have an enormous responsibility to respect the national identities of both ourselves and others.

This can be done through the immeasurably powerful weapon of the arts, necessary now more than ever. Art is an imperative force in our changing world. In this column throughout the semester, I have sought to explore the intersections between art and society: particularly within the insular places of Bowdoin and America. I wanted to argue a fundamental importance of arts, but I found that arts courses are all important things by default. In some ways, I tried to prove something I already knew: human nature is contingent upon the arts, which remind us of the interconnectedness of all things.

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