Sarah's Infinite Playlist and Stuff

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Thread for music and videos I like.

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[Roshan]

-Sarah, Suzanne Vega is a social last 259 in a different order from you.

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I guess I'll also use this thread for thoughts and writing too since I don't want to make a separate thread. But here are some thoughts on art and Rupi Kaur.

The term Viennese Actionism refers to a violent, radical, and explicit form of performance art that developed in the Austrian capital during the 1960s. Mainly consisting of four members, the group collaboratively staged, filmed, and photographed graphic performances - or aktions as they called them. They used their work to make taboo-breaking, often illegal, and sometimes repellent statements that expressed violent dissatisfaction with what they saw as the uptight, bourgeois government and society of post-World War II Austria. The Actionists thought Austrians were suppressing memories of the unspeakable atrocities committed by the Nazis in their country, and were trying to force people to face these traumas head-on through their art.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theart ... actionism/

Whether art is beautiful, ugly, pleasant, or confrontational, it has this immanent within it - “unveiling”. Heidegger, if I remember correctly, used the term "unconcealment” in regards to art but it has been eons ago since I’ve read his writings on art but I’ll check his writings and reply back to this post later. But if there are any similarities between his views and what I’m about to write about, well it goes to show how stuff I’ve read almost 10 years ago gets imprinted and becomes incorporated into my pool of knowledge regardless if I consciously remember it. It unearths itself in due time.

How you react to a piece of art reveals not only how you feel towards the piece, but your moral and aesthetic orientation - your views on beauty, the purpose of art and its place in society or in the context you’re viewing it in, it’s appropriateness, etc. To expand this further, a concept that goes hand-in-hand with unveiling is exorcism. The Vienna Actionists thought Austrian society needed a collective exorcism through violent confrontation by way of art, art that was a vehicle for them to face their past and trauma with the Nazis. Through violent artistic confrontation, the spectres that haunted Austrian society will come into the fore, with these violent “aktions” being exaggerated expressions of the subtle psychological violence that was pervasive within that society. While exorcism doesn’t necessarily have to be violent, ugly, and confrontational, the experience of unveiling latent thoughts, emotions, memories, and impulses that are present but were repressed, forgotten, or unidentified can be quite jolting. And it doesn’t always have to be about unearthing the hidden. Good art presents new ways of viewing and relating. With art, there’s always the possibility or even the promise of transformation and evolution and the lack of these elements is why I have such a problem with Rupi Kaur’s work.

First gaining recognition on instagram, Kaur became well known for her relatable “instapoetry”, eventually self-publishing her first collection of poetry, Milk and Honey, in 2014. With prose poetry, you can be more flexible with the more formal techniques of poetry like meter and rhyming but to call her work poetry is very generous if not outright inaccurate for the fact it lacks any semblance of other literary techniques like imagery, metaphor, playing with language or concepts, etc or if they're utilized,
they're awkwardly expressed. Her work is nothing more than faux-deep, half-baked, and cliched twitter statements. She has been accused of plagiarism, but I think to myself, “what’s there to plagiarize?” Most of her writing is nothing but repackaged versions of cliches and sayings that we’ve heard all of our lives. Her material is better for greeting cards than for 200 wasted pages of a book.

The horrible thing about this is that she’s not a bad writer and she has potential, but her writing is lazy and unimaginative. More time spent at a writer’s workshop could do one good. Rupi herself seems like a lovely woman and I know she has experienced trauma in her life which she writes about in her poetry and this is especially damning in that her poems about mental illness and sexual assault leave you flat, dry, and unaffected. They don’t do justice to the gravity of these experiences. If you’re going to write about these type of experiences, then fucking do it. Go down there. See I’m not really mad at Rupi Kaur, I’m more irritated by what her popularity is emblematic of.

In the pursuit of making art relatable, accessible, and likeable, you not only lose quality but lose the promise of evolution and transformation. What makes great art, well great, is in part due to its alienness and distance. It portrays common and universal themes and experiences in novel ways, and in a circular way, the novelty makes their universality more resonant. Her poetry lacks risk both as art and for the reader. It requires nothing from the reader. Her work is indicative of the numb, risk-averse, and instant gratification nature of our society. I can see why she got popular - in terms of her art, she sacrificed nothing, yet was able to gain attention and recognition which gives onlookers the hope that they can be admired while still being mediocre. On someone else’s facebook post about the lack of appreciation for beauty in society I wrote this,

There’s a general dulling effect going on in society where expediency trumps quality, and that includes quality of experience. It’s the quest for more and more stimulation but without the catharsis, and without that catharsis, one ends up dulling themselves into a void. I do agree with your overall sentiment and I think this general cultural slovenliness is a rot that’s festering throughout.

For me this goes beyond aesthetics and being considered ‘elitist’, it’s indicative of our overall lack of standards. You have people who want to be seen as unique and special but they lack the effort and risk-taking that comes with being genuinely interesting. Everything just feels cheap to me. Sometimes I feel nostalgia, not nostalgia for the past, but a longing for a time and place wherein having values and standards mean something.