Danielle Boutet

WITHOUT ART, THE WORLD IS MEANINGLESS
(EXCERPT)

I will start with a story—more precisely, with reporting on a conversation with a friend of mine. This friend is not an artist; she is a conflict mediator and a life-long activist… And among the things she does, she sits on the Board of a small feminist organization that produces shows and concerts of women’s music. About a year ago, in her trustee capacity, she attended a concert of classical contemporary music produced by that group. Classical contemporary music, as you may know, can be difficult, abstract and experimental, and because of that, not always very accessible—like a lot of classical music, for that matter… Knowing this kind of music well myself, I was curious to hear what she had thought.

Interestingly, she didn’t say that it was boring or incomprehensible… No, she rather said: “It is so interesting to me that human beings would do that…!” She recounted how she was moved by the notion that a whole group of people would sit quietly in a concert hall, completely focusing their attention on listening for considerable time, to sounds that have no obvious purpose—sounds that in the end, form some kind of abstract discourse that doesn’t particularly inform us about anything; sounds that are only meant, she said, to affect us internally; sounds we listen to for the sheer experience of apprehending something complex, beautiful and strange…

“I thought it was so fascinating,” my friend said, “that human beings would value so much an activity of that kind.” She added something to the effect that it felt like the opposite of war, or maybe she said that it was entirely discordant with other things that we normally do socially.

I was very struck by my friend’s account. It had never occurred to me to see it like that. Because it was foreign to her, my friend saw it from some kind of ethnologist perspective and she was mirroring back to me how peculiar that behaviour is, and to what extent a contemporary music concert is antithetical, indeed, to our dominant values of efficiency and profit. It has happened to me to wonder why we’re making art; what use it is when the planet is in such dire state, when one thinks of everything very concrete that needs to be DONE. Often I have wondered if art was bourgeois, or egocentric, or simply what it was for. My friend reminded me.

I am not saying that if people were to make more art, the world would be more peaceful. Such an affirmation wouldn’t hold in the face of history—we’ve always had a lot of art, and a lot of war. But I do mean to say that art has something to do with our mental health; I do believe that art has been a means for achieving greater consciousness—by its power to expand the scope of our inner landscape, of our sensory capacity, of our capacity to feel. Take music again. Every day we are immersed in an ocean of noise. Consciously or unconsciously, we train ourselves to not listen, to constantly filter and sift noise in order to hear the words of another person, or the sounds associated with danger. Music trains us to be attentive and to listen again by providing us with something meaningful to listen to. I could say the same for visual sensory, which we learn to block all the time, we learn to not see; while visual art teaches us back to look and reminds us that we are seers.

What were those people doing, at the contemporary music concert—sitting in rows, listening to intricate tapestries of sound produced on instruments that, themselves, are masterpieces of engineering? Via sensual stimulus, something is taking place in their minds. They are understanding something that they would be at a loss of translating into words but that nevertheless seems of vital importance. "The purpose of art, said classical pianist Glenn Gould, is the lifelong construction of a state of wonder."

There is an epistemology specific to art, a way of knowing something ineffable about the world and about ourselves. The human quest for expressive perfection, for an ever greater mastery of poetry, of art making and storytelling, the long hours of practice, our yearning for beauty and eloquence, our exploring new media, new forms, new ways of making and sharing art… all that effort and time and the riches spent to that end, it counterbalances the meaninglessness of a addicted, consumer world. Painting is the antithesis to clutter, dance is the antithesis to agitation, story is the antithesis to senseless experience. Music is the antithesis to noise: every note by each instrument in the orchestra has been carefully and intentionally produced; each brushstroke has a reason, makes sense somewhere, and contributes to creating a sensual experience that brings together perception, emotion, intelligence—and spirit.

When the first humans began to trace animal shapes on cave walls, they were saying to themselves: we know these animals, we see them, they have meaning for us. Because art makes meaning into material reality, it makes reality meaningful; ultimately, that gives us a sense of our and the world’s presence—which is essential to recognizing who we are and to living a meaningful life.

This is not about what art could or should do, but about what art does, has always done, about why humanity has cultivated such practices as art; for their potential to make sound, gesture, stuff and visual perception speak to us about a world in which we are included, to which we are related, in which we know ourselves to be real. And what is consciousness, if not that?