My darling readers...
do you appreciate art? do you think you know good art when you see it? what do you classify as art? Is literature a type of art...? Music? Dance? What does art mean to you? Does it bring out specific emotion...does it bring out meaning and memories? Does it touch your heart and motivate you to do great things? Is art a source of inspiration or entertainment?
I went to a light show at Galata Tower. It was a performance by artists in Istanbul titled: Visibility Project 5.
First i will share the history of Galata Tower....built sometime in 1430 it is an old look out tower that towers over Istanbul and at night the view is spectacular. The story goes that a man climbed up the tower with a set of golden wings and jumped off the tower and glided all the way to the opposing shore of Istanbul (Golden Horn). He was labled a heretic or something by the Ottoman Emperor and thrown in prison or killed...i'm not clear on the details.
SO already the Tower is shrouded in mystery...
Now on to the night in question... at about 930 my friend Maja and i journey to Galata tower and push our way through the bohemian crowd that is mobbing at the base of the tower waiting for the light show to begin. When it starts the first thing i notice is...it is nothing that is so spectacular...there are people with large flashlight things and paper covers to change the light color...standing in various places around the base of the tower and shining there lights on it.
the crowd is roaring and yelling with pleasure at the slowly changing lights....and it suddenly dawns on me that the shadows are creating an effect that makes the tower seem taller. and the more i look the more details a start to notice...such as the reflections of the light positions on the buildings around us is a blur of all the light colors...in conglomerations that mirror the shapes of flowers. Maja and i watch until the end, and as soon as the music stops and the artists are finished the crowd starts to cheer and shout and music begins to blare loudly...it slowly becomes a party like atmosphere...but instead of drunken antics, people are having legitimate conversations about...well...art about their opinions and perceptions of the light show. I didn't stay around to listen but i did manage to get a picture that will stay in my mind forever...
i was attempting to take a picture of the sign that proclaimed the name of the event, and two things happened as soon as i pushed the shutter button...1.) One of the artists turned his large flashlight in my general direction and 2.) a man in front of me in the shadows raised his arm in mock triumph for the success of the show.
the picture is the one in the upper right hand corner of this blog.
So this event has led me to start thinking of art...what it means to me, what i consider to be art, and whether i have any right to judge anothers artistic abilities.
Art has come to mean something completely different to me here in Istanbul. There is the woman in front of a shop near the mosques who weaves rugs...it takes her about 2 years to finish one. It is a tedious task but very challenging...not just anyone can do it...i think it is an art.
There is a man who sits on the street with a traditional turkish instrument and he plays traditional Turkish songs and he sings...his voice is far from inspiring and his playing is mediocre but somehow the sad way he sings, and the emotion he puts behind the music he makes is haunting to me....he is an artist
This group of men and women who put together the light show and created shadows on a tower, who inspired a crowd of people my age to do something other then drink and talk about silly nothings...they are artists as well.
Art is something that drives you, inspires you, moves you, touches you, makes you think, consider, talk, discover. It is something that hovers over you, like an idea and you are constantly trying to explain it to people...through painting, dancing, singing, writing, drawing, playing the banjo, playing with light structure, sculpting....and so many more ways... and that is difficult....which is why everyone who tries it is not an artist, and every artist does not create art in every single peice.
Imagine having a knawing idea in the back of your brain but everytime you try to get it out, only a little comes out...would you not try and try and keep trying until the whole thing came out...well, that is art methinks ...artists see/hear/conceptualize something in their mind and they try to spit it out...sometimes it comes out perfectly...sometimes not
But the great thing about art is it's a form of communication that surpases boundaries. In a crowd of Turkish bohemians in the dark i felt more emotion and unity then i do in a movie theatre of people who admire Gerard Butlers amazing bone structure the same way i do.
Its affecting, art is....so i ask again readers...what does art mean to you?
xox
Jessi
No comments:
Post a Comment