CT on culture

31 July 2010 by pcNielsen 1 Comment

I drafted this a while ago and was reminded of it when I heard the term “culture war” on the news last week. What’s a culture war, I thought to myself why is there a culture war? Anyway, thought I’d finally post this response.

My wife pointed me to an article titled Faithful Presence on the Christianity Today website a couple months ago, more an interview of an author than an article, addressing American Christianity’s misdirected attempts at changing or redeeming culture.

The first half of the interview sounds a lot like conversations I’ve had over the past five plus years in places like the ArtsandFaith.com forums. Three pages into the article I found myself wondering why the interviewer, promising that the book referenced in the interview will change American Christianity, quoted a review suggesting in even stronger language that “Reading it will make many people indignant, but leave nobody indifferent.” So far I hadn’t read anything that I’d consider so groundbreaking, even if the ideas still lied on the outskirts of Christian thought.

I found myself arguing points that probably didn’t need to be argued.

“Both perspectives fail to recognize that culture is also infrastructure. Culture is constituted by very powerful institutions that operate on their own dynamics independent of individual will.”

But there are many different levels of culture, from National to very localized. Such localized cultures won’t be constituted by such institutions.

“Looking at our entertainment, politics, economics, media, and education, we are forced to conclude that the cultural influence of Christians is negligible.”

The point of many recent comments about changing culture is that many or most Christians haven’t necessarily been trying to change culture — indeed haven’t been a part of or even thought of being a part of culture — for decades, but instead have been living in self-created ghettos.

“By and large, American Christianity has produced a huge cultural economy, but it operates on the periphery of status rather than in the center. The importance of cultural capital is determined not by quantity but by quality.”

Which is something that Christian artists involved in this conversation have been saying for years now, that quality is more important than quantity.

In all likelihood the book in question, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World by James Davison Hunter, probably answers some of my nitpicking. I probably won’t get around to reading the book, sadly, as the stack of books I plan to read and already own is already too much for my own pace. So I’m commenting here on the interview and the ideas therein.

Halfway through the interview the direction did seem to change. The conversation turned to influence in culture and how certain small and elite groups of people end up steering an entire National culture. This wasn’t an entirely new idea to me either but it captured my interest. Without changing the elite of a culture, you won’t change the culture Hunter notes. “But didn’t the Vietnam War protests and the civil rights movement, both populist movements, force elites to change?” the interviewer asks. Hunter responds

“In the case of the anti-war movement, you must look at the demographic base of that protest. It was overwhelmingly white and upper-middle class, and disproportionately well-educated. This was not a protest that was organized by the working class or poor. In the case of the civil rights movement, it was black intellectuals in the church who mobilized people. The movement didn’t gain the kind of traction it needed to really change laws and public policy until white intellectuals and clergy from the North became involved.”

So how do we become elite then, or gain the ears of the elite, or can we change culture — assuming we want to — so that the elites don’t have so much sway (without creating a communist state)? Or do we change our strategy to work within the existing culture? Hunter suggests a “post-political” strategy:

“What would a post-political gesture look like in the pro-life movement? Borrowing an example from a friend, imagine ten thousand families signing a petition in Illinois that declares they will adopt a child of any ethnic background and physical capability. If they wanted to do something spectacular, they could go to city hall for a press conference, announcing that in the state of Illinois there are no unwanted children. That would be a public—but not political—act. Such an act leads with compassion rather than coercion.”

I’m definitely game for anything that calls itself post-political. First off it seems to undermine the presumed and unhealthy power of politics in our present day and age. I’ve talked in the past about how politics in and of itself isn’t something that can be used to change people.

The most interesting quote from the article needs an explanation, which, again, I’m assuming comes in the book.

“Culture is far more profound at the level of imagination than at the level of argument.”

Filed under Modern culture

Intentional Observations: On the jobsite

30 July 2010 by pcNielsen 1 Comment

A few cameraphone images snapped while on the jobsite (as a house painter). The camera on my new [6 month old] phone brags as many megapixels as our first bonafide digital camera, and its macro function works pretty well. As the photo of the mayfly attests too.

The prize goes to whoever can figure out what the first picture is of.

Filed under Intentional observation, Photography

On painting, and other media all mixed up

25 July 2010 by pcNielsen 2 Comments

Sometimes I wonder why I’m so drawn to clay when my inspiration is so ethereal.

It’s more difficult to represent — either realistically or abstractly — such wispy notions with a substance that turns to rock after you’re done with it. Painting allows you to create transparencies on a surface that much more accurately mimic the kinds of light I’m so attracted to in the case of thunderstorms over the prairie.

However, I still want to create a way to beautifully and imaginative portray said supercells with sculptural materials. I believe it can be done, if I’m able to give more time to the idea. Recently I’ve been doing a little bit of painting anyway, as a way to think through the problem. And because the clay around the house (almost all of it reclaim) was either too wet or too dry to work. And I haven’t found a new supplier yet, though have one in mind.

Filed under Art, Ceramics, Painting

Scissortail Art Center focus

23 July 2010 by pcNielsen 2 Comments

The focus of the Scissortail Art Center plan is on the plastic arts. The reasoning behind this, I believe, is sound. The church (both as an organization and as individuals) has given more attention to music, drama and literature over the past couple centuries than to painting and sculpture. That’s not to say that the attention was adequate or even appropriate in the way it was doled out, but the plastic arts are lagging when it comes to proper appreciation in the Christian context.

Regardless, the long-term idea for the Art Center does incorporate literature and music, at least in theory. Recently I’ve wondered if the focus should be opened up to all of these arts (drama just doesn’t fit into the scheme of the retreat in my head, no offense to our friendly thespians) right away.

This may, practically speaking, be advantageous financially. It may work towards soliciting more applications and interest early on (assuming this is needed). Hmmm . . .

Filed under Christian art retreat

On pricing art, art as a hobby, art in the church . . .

16 July 2010 by pcNielsen Leave a Comment

Another great article from Comment to highlight today that talks about pricing art and art as job vs. art as hobby. A few quotes to highlight and respond to, and then a link to point you to the writing in its entirety.

I had a professor in my first year of college tell us fresh-faced art majors that if there was anything in the entire world that we could imagine doing besides art, we should do that other thing, because art was just too difficult to pursue without an unwavering dedication. He was right, and those of us that stuck with it knew we had been duly warned about what we were getting into. In a sense, the moment we decided not to change majors, we relinquished our right to whine about being underappreciated or undercompensated. What we did receive, however, was a new responsibility regarding stewardship of the discipline into which we had been adopted.

We talked about pricing a couple of times, but I wasn’t blessed with this kind of accurate bluntness at the beginning of my art schooling. (Does this mean I still get to whine about being underappreciated or undercompensated?) Of course, I sort of eased into my studio art major through pre-architecture, and then graphic design.

On more about doing that other thing besides art, read this post.

The one conversation I really remember on pricing was Eddie Dominguez telling us why his dinnerware was priced as high as it was. Paraphrased as I remember it: “I’d rather sell one platter at $10,000 and have nine to give away than sell ten platters for $1,000.”

Crafting images and objects can legitimately operate as both a form of recreation and a means of cultural reorganization and critique. Making things in order to enjoyably pass a Sunday afternoon, and making things in order to operate as lenses for interpreting the meaning of the world, are both justified endeavours—but they are not the same endeavour. The problem is that distinguishing between the two is complicated by an insidiously ordinary similarity in material and posture. If we imagine two people standing before two blank canvasses with brushes and paints at the ready, how are we to know which one is trying to unwind after a long week, and which one is trying to change the world?

Castleman, the author, describes the difference between art-as-vocation vs. art-as-hobby better than anyone I’ve seen so far, and tactfully too. I’d been thinking about this distinction more and more recently, and his writing on the topic puts my mind at ease.

This article may serve as a personal manifesto of sorts for me. Most of Castleman’s thoughts aren’t necessarily new to me, but they are organized in such a way that the piece is very enlightening. I could end up reposting it in its entirety if I keep going with excerpts and brief responses. That said, go read it for yourself: Will Paint for Food

Filed under Art, Art and faith, Business of art, Christianity

Intentional Observation: Love the place you’re in

16 July 2010 by pcNielsen 4 Comments

Damaris over at the Internet Monk posted a wonderful little entry earlier this week about place after realizing that the monastic vows of Saint Benedict included not just poverty, chastity, and obedience, but also stability.

As I’ve mentioned numerous times here before, this kind of stability is something we Americans mostly don’t understand. In the past century or so we’ve been given the opportunity to be geographically mobile and a lot of us jump on that every chance we get. A few excerpts from Damaris’ post:

There is a virtue to staying where you are. There is a virtue to being where you are. Too many of us are never where we are. We live with our windows closed, shades drawn, televisions on. Our feet never feel the ground, and our skin never feels the air. While our bodies occupy a vague, in-between world, our minds are editing the past or worrying about the future . . .

This place where we are now is the only place we can meet God. God will never be in the imaginary places, the greener grass springing from our discontent, and neither will we.

The author then implores us to take a hard look at the place we’re in now. Be it high or low, noble or ignoble, and find beauty in it. There is beauty in it. “This place where we are now is the only place we can meet God. God will never be in the imaginary places, the greener grass springing from our discontent, and neither will we.”

Read the brief entry and contribute to the conversation via this link.

Filed under Christianity, Intentional observation, Living incarnationally, Modern culture, The contemplative life

Why I root for the little guy in an industrialized society

14 July 2010 by pcNielsen 1 Comment

I’ve been watching a few odds and ends in the Netflix instant watch queue this week [no] thanks to being too sick to climb up and down a ladder with a brush in hand. Just finished the documentary called Food, Inc.

The only way this really relates to this blog is that the documentary is about the industrialization of the food supply, and industrialization (or mass-production) is a recurring theme on The Aesthetic Elevator. It’s interesting to me mainly because I live largely on the opposite end of the spectrum, spending a lot of time creating one-of-a-kind objects, and because it never ceases to amaze me how we’re such eager adopters of new technology that we don’t stop and consider the ramifications of what we adopt — like 90% of soybean farmers planting one genetically modified soybean seed.

The film makes certain accusations against certain companies, and in the case of at least one company whose website I visited they attempted to refute those accusations. I’m generally very skeptical when it comes to such giant bureaucracies in the first place — they’ve largely earned the distrust I have for them.

One of the examples in Food, Inc. talks about chicken farming. Northwest Arkansas, our former stomping ground, is all about growing chickens. The parents of a friend had land with three or four chicken houses. They recently sold the place on account of the exact same complications described in Food, Inc. My friend who shared with me — about four years ago now — how the contracts with companies such as Tyson work could have been in the film. The farmers end up more like indentured servants than independent contractors.

Why should I accept the refutations of the companies in the film when I’ve seen first hand the claims of the film? I don’t want to be the kind of person that has a knee-jerk reaction to every bureaucracy, but they just keep shooting themselves in the foot.

Filed under Buy local, Environmental stewardship, Modern culture, Northwest Arkansas, Sustainable living

Let your squares be squares

13 July 2010 by pcNielsen Leave a Comment

Julie Rozman, an architect-slash-ceramics blogger I’ve followed for a few years now, posted some images of her work for sale. She’s moving from Chicago to Urbana to study ceramics, and one of her sets of work reminded me of a post I’ve been thinking about for a while.

A long while, actually. Probably since I graduated from college almost ten years ago now.

Julie's sculpture does not forget it's roots.

In my architecture classes, in my graphic design classes and some of the time in my ceramics classes I watched aspiring artists and designers, myself included, forget the basics of design. We’d go after an assignment with passion, with dreams of being featured on the front cover of Architectural Digest, and forget that there are certain building blocks to every visual and spatial solution. They were overthinking the problem.

I suppose this is a symptom of the genius mentality, the drive for stardom usurping the desire to make useful and beautiful contributions to our surrounding environments.

Filed under Aesthetics, Affluenza, Architecture, Art, Art education, Artist as genius, Basis for designing well, Beauty, Ceramics, Design, Modern culture

Racism at the bank

10 July 2010 by pcNielsen 2 Comments

So I went to the bank again this afternoon. Ahead of me in line were people of all colors and ethnicity, again. The man directly in front of me was in what I presume to be in native garb from somewhere in North Africa, a simple white robe and a well crafted skull cap of sorts.

An American man got into line behind me. He had a young Latino next to him with whom he spoke fluent Spanish. Apparently the American, from what I could tell, was helping this man open or withdraw from a bank account.

Africans at a bank in the Midwest.

In this particular Wells Fargo branch there is a large antique scale. The American told the Latino to go see how much he weighed. As he went to discover that he weighed a slight 120 pounds, the man escorting him said to me under his breath, “Too many of them here. Too many of them too,” he continued while pointing to the African man in front of me. “They’re taking over.”

I had to restrain myself from replying to this blatant racism, though in my mind I formulated a response, something to the effect that “I appreciate the cultural diversity that’s come to the Midwest.” He’d just come in and I didn’t really know how much of a conversation I wanted to have in line at the bank, a conversation of that nature. So I said nothing and looked ahead.

As the line was fairly long and slow we did end up exchanging a few more words, mostly to discuss our weight, the pens in the bank which never write and how Fridays are always the busiest day to make a deposit. It became somewhat obvious this man was pretty unhappy in general, or at least liked to complain. I wondered if he was harboring some sort of bitterness that poured into all aspects of his life, including impatiently waiting in line at the bank.

I know this is a fairly common prejudicial sentiment, but what I don’t understand at all is how people get there. I grew up in a very, very Caucasian Midwestern community. There were a lot fewer Latin immigrants (legal or otherwise) then than now, and very few black people in the town.

The one black kid I remember in school, in my grade, was a bully. He was a leader and had a cadre of people around him that didn’t respect anyone else for the most part. My first life experiences with an African American were negative, and yet I’m somehow not harboring any ill feelings towards him or people of any color.

How is it then that so many Americans, perhaps particularly in the Midwest, find and foster such feelings towards people of other ethnicities? Is it thanks to media reports that talk about crime in the poorer neighborhoods where immigrants end up living? Did they have parents who instilled specific prejudices instead of compassion, respect and love for other people as themselves? Or did they have bad experiences like I did as a child that they couldn’t work through?

Last weekend my wife and I were thinking about patriotic American holidays and church. We were wondering if the patriotism often worked into Sunday morning services on or near certain holidays — which my wife and I don’t really appreciate — would be lost on someone not born in the United States. Other’s pointed out, though, that these people might have a greater appreciation for America and feel right as rain celebrating the country (in lieu of celebrating God, which is the problem we have with such services).

And this makes sense in most cases. So how do so many Americans end up so down on these people who so love their country? Isn’t it flattery for people to try and get into your country for the freedoms and opportunities it affords?

I’ve heard the arguments against immigration, so spare me your pat rhetoric in response to my deeper apolitical inquiry. And understand that I’m not condoning the illegal crossing of borders here. The man in question at the bank this afternoon should know better than to assume all or most immigrants are illegal. The Africans in line were almost certainly not illegal. They were probably refugees.

How can so many Americans have so little sense of their personal history? How can they forget so easily that this country is a country of immigrants (my sincere apologies to the Native Americans)? I’m grateful for my own family’s interest in their history. I’m glad that I’m regularly reminded by my parents and grandparents of our Danish, Swedish and German heritage. Apparently there’s a little bit of French in there too somewhere. Do other families not talk about their roots? Doesn’t someone in their clan have an affinity for genealogy?

My best guess as to why people find and foster this kind of hatred is that they’re scared. Scared of the reported crime, whether or not it’s an accurate representation of the immigrant community as a whole. Scared of losing jobs I suppose, even though we all know the immigrants generally take jobs a lot of us Americans aren’t willing to do anyway (though I suppose this economy may have changed that to a degree). Scared of the unknown.

Really I just don’t understand, as I said before. I’m not perfect. If we’re honest with ourselves we all know that we harbor some bias, some prejudice. But aren’t things like love for one’s neighbor still basic cultural values in America? Do we not hold to the truth that all men are created equal?

Filed under Central Nebraska, Entitlement, Grand Island, Intentional observation, Living incarnationally, Modern culture, Personal reflection

TV as a time-suck, and as a part of us

7 July 2010 by pcNielsen Leave a Comment

I grew up with a very moderated television viewing schedule. In fact, the one small TV in our house was often relegated to our parent’s closet if they thought we were watching too much. Cable was out of the question. For the longest time we didn’t own a VCR; we rented one from the video store. As the kids got older this electronic banishment became less and less common, but in college I basically only saw one show, The Simpsons, in the dining hall at supper. I didn’t have a television in my room and really didn’t want one.

A few months after my wife and I got married we inherited the same little TV that occasionally hid out in mom and dad’s closet, along with a VCR that liked to eat tapes. We found that we liked to watch movies together, as so many people do. Since then we’ve upgraded to a relatively inexpensive flat panel television and a DVD player (although streaming from Hulu and Netflix via the Wii have been our preferred modes of video reception of late). We still like to watch movies together but also watch television. In fact, in the past 18 months we’ve watched a lot more television than film, mostly on DVDs. It’s much more pleasant sans the commercials, which probably doesn’t need to be said.

My wife, being female, can multitask. She knits or spins with a show on in the background. That’s harder for me to do, especially considering how much messier my chosen crafts generally are than hers. I’m usually more particular about what I watch than she is partly for this reason. I end up getting sucked into the programs, some that I don’t even like — like 24 — and that’s a giant waste of time when I could be sculpting or working on Scissortail instead. 24 is actually playing in the background as I type this entry.

There are some decent things about 24, such as the overall concept. But I don’t like the writing. 95% of the dialogue is just cheesy and often unaware of itself, and many of the characters are simply idiotic at times. The show also suffers from redundancy. Subsequent seasons are basically the same plot rehashed. A lot of shows grow old before they need to after finding a formula that works, that keeps viewers and advertisers coming back. The art, the imagination that drove the original idea, seizes up in light of the almighty dollar.

Image from Wikipedia

So why do I watch? My best guess is that it has something to do with the innate importance of story in our lives as humans. This is something that I’m just beginning to realize thanks in large part to my wife, who manages to read about 85 books a year. I barely get through five, and most of them are nonfiction.

TV, and therein story, can be more than entertainment. In my own life Bones is a good example of this. The wife began watching this show on a recommendation, as I recall, and it took me a while to get into it. The gruesome representations of human remains stuck in my head, unpleasantly, and I grew tired of the psychopaths. The show is very good though, and I’ve stuck with it. The characters are wonderful, as is the interplay between them — particularly between Booth and Bones. The dialogue is sharp and witty. And most interestingly I’ve become desensitized to the images of decomposing flesh.

Of course, such is commonly considered one of the evils of television. We see murders, we see violence and our observation presumably devalues human life. We’ll begin to emulate the actions of the characters as we continue to follow their stories.

We’ll all be emulating the corpses portrayed on Bones in some way or another (though hopefully not as murder victims dumped down a sewer drain) at some point, barring a present rapture or cremation. Or mummification, but that’s beside the point. Death is reality. Bones helped bring our human mortality to light in my life, at least in part. I’ve never been to a funeral for a person I knew, which for a person of my age seems out of the ordinary — though something to be thankful for as well — at least to me. So the reality of our finite time on Earth is a lesson I’ve had to come by through other means. In this case, through story.

What I’m wondering at the moment is this: How can we balance listening to other people’s stories, written in books or as a television series, with making or living out our own stories?

In a month we’ll be in Nashville for the Hutchmoot. The thrust of the moot will the importance of stories (from what I can tell anyway; I’m not sure there’s actually a theme). From the moot’s website:

We want you to come and enjoy a weekend of music and conversation about the stories all around us in song, film, books — and most importantly the story being told through our lives; our own story — what it means to get to the holy hidden heart of it, how to tell a better story with the days we’re given, and how our stories intersect each other’s and connect to the Great Story.

I’m grateful for the written word, for oral traditions and I’m grateful for photographic media (including video) as well. I’m glad I’m able to be a part of other people’s stories and learn from their experiences. However, at times I worry we neglect our own stories in favor of other’s.

I’m trying to figure out how to keep that from happening in my own life, how to find a balance.

Filed under Living incarnationally, Modern culture, Personal reflection, The contemplative life

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