Genevieve Erin O’Brien, even just in a lecture, was extremely compelling. I could tell she was a performance artist by the way she carried herself and spoke. The way in which she conveyed meaning to the audience was almost in itself a performance – confident and bold.
In her lecture she said that she wanted to “[have] everyone tell their own story, everyone has one.” I thought this was a fantastic yet simple statement to make. Her piece “The Monk Who Licked Me” seemed to illustrate this concept well. Although the people who got a free hair cut were just as equally “committing to peace,” they all had their different reasons for doing so. It could have been simply for the free haircut, it could have been because they saw someone else doing it, it could have been because they were and still are entirely devoted to peace and strive to create it in anyway they can. Regardless of what their reason was, by even participating, they were telling a story. Their very different and various stories told and shared helped to create an entirely new story – one that was looking for peace. Genevieve Erin O’Brien asked these people, “what is peace, what does it look like?” To this, and furthering her opening statement, she got a variety of answers. People define peace according to their own experiences and in a way, like the artist, perform and interact with the story they tell themselves. Genevieve Erin O’Brien mentioned that idea that like art, people have their individual relationships to peace and to war.
This idea made me think of my own relationship to art, peace and war. I have been surrounded by art more than war. Peace seems relative so I am still not sure where it fits into the mix. I know people in the military, but does that make me in any way closer to war itself? Or peace? These questions are ones I will and should continue to ask myself. I realize, though, that my answers are based upon the story I tell myself about what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen, what outcomes I project out of peace, art and war. I wonder if they are ever the same? The outcomes seem relative to those involved also.
Questions:
1) How do you deal with negative responses (and do they get physical) to your performance pieces?
2) What was the most surprising reaction someone had to the “Monk Who Licked Me” piece?
No comments:
Post a Comment