It’s fascinating how different cultures produce specific art in certain times/places. Think the blues, the British Invasion, or Bollywood. Art has the soft-power potential to shape and steer the world around it, at least for a period of time, by electrifying and shaping the perceptions of each of us. And shaping the art that follows - the British Invasion wouldn’t have happened without the blues.
Even on a grand scale, art can shift history by inspiring countless individuals. Ask yourself how someone behind the Iron Curtain must have felt when they heard jazz, Bob Dylan, or the Beatles. Like life was worth living, even amid the gray stasis of Soviet-bloc communism, because amazing things were happening out there in the West. Somewhere beyond the visible, beyond the mundane, life vibrated not just with freedom but with mysterious and exciting frequencies (hope they’re not too disappointed now, but that’s another story). The fall of the Berlin Wall must have felt in part like pounding down the door to get to it.
As a child of the Cold War I went the other way, West-to-East. In post-1989 Prague I discovered a love for Czech documentary photography, which may sound pretty niche until you begin to appreciate the Czechs’ photo tradition: a unique brew of surrealism/magic realism, non-sentimentality, anti-kitsch, dark humor, and respect for humble people in the face of oppressive situations. Pretty useful traits in these times. It put a stamp on me as a person and a photographer, that continues to this day in both my photography and teaching. I still quote a Czech photo mentor to my students.
Art can transform the landscape at the local level. In the late 90s, DC’s famed music group Thievery Corporation almost single-handedly created a cultural vibe that didn’t exist, in the nation’s capital or anywhere, of lounges and trippy electronica music with an international worldview. TC is still going, and the scene around them - a kind of empire encompassing newsletters, graphic artists, photographers, singers who worked in local cafes, DJ happenings, and backroom recording studios - lasted maybe 10–15 years. Faded now but a good run. It made life itself feel different in DC. In those days I know people who said they felt more comfortable moving to the normally buttoned-down, “boring” capital because of the cool factor that Thievery birthed. Photographing in post-war Kosovo, I met people whose first question was: “You’re from DC, you know those guys?”
Years before that, DC had a legendary DIY/activist punk scene that still reverberates in a plethora of recent documentaries. For people who were there and part of it, it’s not an exaggeration to say it has defined the arc of their lives.
What even constitutes an arts/culture movement at the moment? I can’t think of much… K-Pop?
For me, most recently was the wave of innovative music from Reykjavik, primarily 2000s-2010s bands like Sigur Ros and Of Monsters and Men, but stretching further backward and forward with other lesser-known Icelandic artists. Entirely new musical vocabularies and creative approaches, evoking inner and outer landscapes, from a tiny cultural ecosystem with a mind-boggling ratio of artists per capita. The Icelandic capital’s population could mostly fit into a large college football stadium or two, yet they have both mega-stars like Bjork and Sigur Ros and a thriving and super-creative indie scene. As a whole, this movement infused my brain with new synapses and life with new wonder. And I wasn’t alone.
I feel like we’re due for something to hit. Where might it come from? The Russian underground, a new samizdat? An unlikely Israeli-Palestinian collab for peace? A post-hurricane Asheville, NC underground that leads an art revolt in the southern US (Athens, GA did it)? Hungarian artists spark popular sentiment against Orban, that topples wannabe fascists there and beyond, a new Eastern European revolution? Dare to dream. Fervently rooting for an artist mobilization around climate and, since the US election, antifascism.
Or maybe it’s something else, here already, waiting to be discovered? Or waiting on you to create something. Large or small, we sure could use it.
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[Updated - originally posted Nov 17, 2023 on Medium]