Artistic Collaboration as Our Public Work

Last night I went into the city with Sarah to see abstract artist Makoto Fujimura and percussionist Susie Ibarra collaborate in a give and take of avante-garde percussion and abstract painting at International Arts Movement’s Space 38|39.

The night was rewarding on so many levels.  It was an opportunity to be present in one of the most transcendent artistic experiences I have ever witnessed.  The inexpressible burden of artistic creation that unfolded as a catalyst of mutual creation generated a feeling of collective beauty and amazement as a live collaboration blurred the line between artist and audience and became a overwhelming sense of mutual wonder and awe.

I know that sounds complicated, but it was a deeply simple and meditative time.  It was immensely serious and formative yet I was still sitting in a chair and drinking a beer.  Avante-garde percussion and amazing abstract art make Brooklyn Lager taste magnificent.

The space created with a live collaboration was one of a sacred space: a space that allows the artist to take God given talent and then control improvisation in real time.  In a sense, the mutual collaboration is liturgy: this was a public work, both for us within the space and the audience watching via the Internet in cyber-space.  This was not a product given to be consumed.  This was a public work given to all, as Makoto took a painting and broke it as the Eucharist.  Art is meant to be broken forth, so that all can enjoy the hospitality of the sacred space that this collaborative art creates.

Watch the video below for a past collaboration between Susie Ibarra and Makoto Fujimura.

Support Dan Porter!

Dan Porter needs your support in raising money for African refugees!

Dan is a graduate student at Regent College and a dear friend of Everyday Liturgy.  He is taking part in Ride for Refugees Canada, a cyclling event that is raing money for refugees in Africa. 

A message from Dan:

The numbers are staggering – 67 million refugees and internally
displaced peoples according to a United Nations 2007 report. Over half
are women and children, vulnerable and voiceless while they flee war,
persecution and tribal violence. The RIDE is a way that I can
personally connect to this crisis, and it’s a way for me to make a real
difference in a refugee’s life. Thank you for your help and generous
support.

If you would like to support Dan click here to give.

If you think you need to know Dan better before you send some money his way I want you to know that:

1. Dan is an awesome ultimate player
2. Dan and me tried to unsuccessfully rewrite the whole legislative process at our alma mater through a re-imagining of parliamentary procedures that was eventually dismissed by school administration.
3. Dan likes trees and rocks.

MatterCon Recap 1: Trey Allen

Last week I was at MatterCon ’09: A Theological Creativity Event featuring Pete Rollins and presented by Shechem Ministries at Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, TX.  I am recapping the event by publishing my notes for your fondest enjoyment.

Trey Allen, "Romans 12:1-2 A Call and Guide for Artists within a Community"

Romans 12:1-2 should be understood communally

All bodies together make one sacrifice

Respond to the gospel in a common way, think about the gospel with a common mind.

There must be a communal interpretation.

We should submerge all of reality into the kingdom of Christ, into the gospel.

Transform is to change from the sinful age to the age to come.

The individualistic spiritual formation does not tell us we are called to be responsible for our fellow brothers and sisters.

There is no indication vv. 1-2 are supposed to be interpreted as individualistic and separate from the context of Romans, which is community.

Baptize the whole in the gospel.

The artists participate in the whole reprogramming of the community, making art that guides Christians to the age to come, away from "this world."

This passage recalls the Day of Atonement.

This is a holistic act where all believers respond in forgiveness.

The community is moving away from gospel centered art because of cliche and consumerism in Christian art.

Our art should find a home in a community that is being renewed.

We should go to church to experience forgiveness holistically.

The artist must help the community by producing art that leads the community into the eschatological kingdom of Christ.

This applies to all vocations.

An effect of the Church’s enslavement to the Enlightenment is its demurring of art since it leads to multiple interpretations.

————-

I very much enjoyed Trey’s discussion.  He is an excellent, enthusiastic speaker who was able to kick of the discussion of art and theology in a meaningful and thoughtful way.

Hollywood Worldviews

Brian Godawa, the screenwriter for the excellent movie To End All Wars, has written a crash course in the art of watching a movie for something more than sheer entertainment called Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment. Written for  the general audience, the book takes a look at many of the popular films in our culture and dissects the worldview that lies beneath them.  A structuralist critic, Godawa sees films as being bound to specific rules and structures which govern how they should be interpreted and how their worldview should be dissected.  Godawa takes all of his worldview critique from James Sire, and unfortunately he uses Veith’s definition of postmodernism which really distorts the approach to postmodernism within this book.

I am certainly not a structuralist when I approach film or literature, vehmently disagree with Godawa’s worldview criticisms in general, and do not like how Godawa seems to desire that all films bend toward a Christian worldview, such as when he critiques the movie Gladiator for having a pagan worldview (what kind of worldview do you really want a movie about pagans to have, seriously?)   Godawa desires what I call the Beowulf approach to literature and film that so many Christians take as their form of criticism and creativity: they do not want original stories as much as to make sure that any story is Christianized, like the ancient English poet did by taking the pagan myth of Beowulf and adding Christianity into it.  Beowulf was written during a Christian awakening within England, and its cultural value is certainly paramount, as are many Christianized works, but making this the go to way of criticism by judging movies solely on worldview does not give credit to the artist merit and other valuable cultural questions that non-Christian worldviews bring into question for Christians and non-Christians alike.

Even thought I disagree with Godawa’s consensus on worldview criticism, especially his distorted reflections on postmodernism, the conclusion to this book makes it a necessary read.  If you are well versed in most modern popular films and have been in a college philosophy class you may want to skip reading the book, but don’t ever skip the conclusion.  It is by far the best Christian defense of filmmaking I have read.  Godawa excels at laying out the cultural necessity of Christian engagement with the cinema.

Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment*
Brian Godawa
IVP
$10.88 (Amazon)

*I have linked to the revised and updated edition, which I did not read.  The thesis of the work has not changed concerning worldview, from what I have read on IVP’s website or in the new foreword and introduction.  It appears to have been updated to include movies that have come out since the first edition.

Worship Music and the Local Church

Lately I have been thinking more about the role of Christian artists as I read through Andy Crouch’s amazing book Culture Making.

Specifically, I keep going back to the question what is the role of the artist in the local church?  I’ll start with the easy one, one I participate in, which is worship music.  No matter what church, all churches have music and musically talented people that lead the congregation.  There is a culture in any church or denomination that has a specific mode of worship music, whether the millennia old worship of Eastern Orthodox or the current, cutting edge shredding of a guitar virtuoso during an Evangelical service.

One of the pieces of Scripture that continues to stick out to me concerning this is the last Psalm in the psalter:

Praise the LORD.
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.

Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.

Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,
praise him with tambourine and dancing,
praise him with the strings and flute,
praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.
Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.
Praise the LORD.

There appears here a great license to basically make any type of music that can lead the congregation in praise of God.  A license for both the old and the new.  The worship of the congregation is cosmic, in that everything that has breath should praise the Lord, and the Church does that together in thousands of different ways each Lord’s Day.  There is true unity in diversity found within this psalm, both a connection to all who praise the Lord as well as the opportunity to sing to the Lord a new song, songs that can include everything from orchestras and Bach to guitars, drums, cymbals, and U2.

I play the drum set at an evangelical church.  I often wonder about how the music should be connected to the universal church in all of its diversity, as well as to the culture we find ourselves worshiping within.

For me it is not as much a point of what instruments are used as to how does the worship music at my church tie into the cosmic worship of the Church Universal?  Do we present ourselves as unique or as part of something bigger?  Do we seek to mimic or be creative?  Do we approach worship music as a mode of emotion or as a unifying spiritual practice?

I think these are questions you and me need to be asking.

Ancient-Future Worship

I have been deeply influenced by Robert Webber’s thought as it trickled into my own thought through third parties and articles concerning Robert Webber and the Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future.  Yet I had never read one of his books in its entirety, so over the summer I read Ancient-Future Worship, the final volume in Webber’s Ancient-Future series.

Ancient-Future Worship is written on the following premise: the Evangelical worship service is not modeled around recreating, and thus reentering God’s story.  Instead, the Evangelical worship service has been used to elicit an emotional response and to dispense information to the congregation.  In the typical Evangelical worship service the congregation is passive: sitting or standing as a band, pastor, and PowerPoint dictate their spiritual response.

Webber yearns for the worship service to be about the retelling and re-enactment of God’s story, because God’s narrative is truth, and we should worship in spirit and in truth.  The worship service should not be modeled around emotional or ecstatic responses to God.  Webber counters with a more liturgical and purposeful definition of worship as action: "worship does God’s story."  This is a direct call to the Evangelical church to create worship services that do God’s story.What then is God’s story? It is the remembrance of the past and a hopeful look toward the future.  It is entering into the mystery of God’s work in this world from the Scriptures, from the saints, and from our own lives.  It is re-entering God’s story through baptism and communion.  It is using prayer as a corporate entrance into God’s story.  As Webber writes,

The first and, I believe, most fundamental reason why worship is not seen as prayer is the failure to grasp that corporate prayer arises from the story of God. We think of corporate prayer as arising within ourselves. Yet the story of God…is the story of the world and of human existence. Worship prays this story…. A second reason why worship is not seen as the prayer of God’s people for the world is because worship has been turned into a program….Consequently, the nature or worship has shifted from corporate prayer to a platform of presentational performance.  Worship, instead of being a rehearsal of God’s saving actions in the world and for the world, is exchanged for making people feel comfortable, happy, and affirmed.  Worship, no longer the public prayer of God’s people, becomes a private and individual experience. (150-1)

This paradigm of worship permeates Webber’s book and makes it a thrilling, and deeply convicting read.

Ancient-Future Worship
by Robert Webber
BakerBooks
$10.19 (Amazon)