Week 5: Response to Waldemar Januszczak, “What Is Art For?”
Januszczak answers his titular question very definitively: “What's art for? What it's always been for. To get you out of here.”, which makes it very easy to structure a response.
While I find it a useful conclusion, I can see the logic of an opposed view: that art is meant to really bring you to where you are, to see things as they really are. I recently enjoyed listening to the Max Neuhaus installation “Times Square”, a sound piece under a traffic island in the middle of that location. The low droning tone merges with the ambient sound of the place, somehow enhancing it. However, one could argue that it does not take you “away” from Times Square – rather, it makes you aware of a musicality and harmony that has always been present in the place.
In a similar way, Gautel & Karaindros “Angel Detector” (a light which went on when there was complete silence around it), encourages people around it to listen with particular acuity. When viewing the work, sounds around you come into particularly crisp focus, and you start noticing things that otherwise would have never passed the threshold of awareness.
Both of these works are saying, in a way, “come back here – there are things going on that you have never noticed”, which is the diametric opposite of “getting you out of here”.
Now, in order to finish the Hegelian dialectic, is there a way to reconcile both views? Can art do both things at the same time?
Well, if the “here” that Januszczak refers to is the blinkered mindstate of most people’s day-to-day existence, and “getting out” can refer to seeing things in the world that we have previously been blind to, then yes: both of these definitions are compatible. In fact, Januszczak’s is slightly more flexible, as it admits the element of fantasy. Getting “out of here” can mean transcending your existing mindstate, by either seeing new things in your world, or by escaping into a world of fantasy.
In any case, what seems to require more thought is the concept of the “here”, the trapped mindstate that we are getting out of. Are most people, in fact, stuck in a limited mindstate? Is there a benefit to escaping it, becoming more awake? Is art the only way to do this?