Today I had an interesting online conversation for an upcoming issue of Blackbook Magazine. It was a moderated conversation about the "Future of Art" between Paola Antonelli, Shirin Neshat, Yinka Shonibare, and myself. In discussions today that involve the dichotomies present in political art, and also the distinction between art and design, I find myself recently a bit ... lost. And then I was found.
I remembered hearing once about how the ear doesn't blink. The point being that our eyes blink, and thus seeing discontinuous imagery is tolerable -- as we often experience during the rapid cuts of a movie edit. Yet our ears never blink, and that when sound suddenly changes in a discontinous manner, it is jarring. It occurred to me that good art makes our mind blink. Whether it's a visage of alarming beauty or acknowledgement of a horrific social disaster, the process of blinking makes our mind remember that we are here. And not somewhere else deep in our thoughts that have nothing to do with here. There. I am now here.
Posted by maeda at December 15, 2005 05:57 PM