See you in the streets
This week I have felt split in two, or maybe more. I debuted as a teacher at an art-school, just for a week, but nonetheless. The students were awesome, and I absolutely loved working with them. But not gonna lie, it felt a bit intimidating Monday morning walking into that place as if I knew what I was doing. Well, I do know what I’m doing, but still, other teachers had studied at various prestigious art academies all around the world, and even if I have a lot of opinions about the gatekeeping these institutions represent, I also have a deep respect for knowledge, dedication, and skill. And while the other teachers were teaching their workshops about how to create paint like the old masters, classical croquis, or implementing 3D printing technology into an sculptural artistic practice, I was perhaps the enfant terrible, teaching my students how to break rules, challenge cultural hegemony, and speak truth to power. One way do that using art, is adbusting. So I of course taught them how to do this, as part of my course.
This adbust went semi-viral. If you live in Norway, you probably heard about the leader of a liberal/right wing youth party who said that it was a societal problem caused by platforms like Tinder, that only a few men “had access” to a lot of women. Because, all men should “have access” to all women. Attempting at the same time to conflate his or other guys inability to get laid with the very real problem of men's lack of intimacy, emotional connection, and the damage that male loneliness can have.
I agree that Tinder has wreaked havoc on our society and culture, and our ability to speak to each other in just a normal way about wanting to get to know each other and spend time togheter, and perhaps forming a relationship. But, the self-entitlement that this guy is revealing is just beyond, and the tactic of saying something incredibly ignorant to get publicity and muffled cheers from the darkest places of the internet, is ugly and well-used by the liberal parties. And a couple of young women in my class were not having it any more. So they made this poster, that says that members of the youth party in question would get 20 % off on Tinder Gold, to help them “get access” to women, and posted a video about it on Tik-Tok. And the views just shot through the roof. Which of course made for even more interesting conversations and dilemmas about freedom of speech, and the differences between what is considered moral versus legal.
And this is just one of the countless things that happened this week teaching. We talked about the criminalization of graffiti, and the subsequent lack of representation and the attack on the culture’s ability to evolve and grow on its own terms. We talked about racism, capitalism, power, colonization, money, solidarity, trans-rights, police brutality, feminism, claiming your space, and using your voice to speak up for yourself and for your brothers and sisters. We talked about war, about genocide, we talked about international politics, and Palestine, and Chile, and Sami indigenous rights and how our own government is operating in breach of them, we talked about the climate crisis, and how it is to be twenty-something and have the whole rest of your life in front of you, only to be handed a world that seems entirely broken beyond repair. We talked about revolution.
Safe to say it’s been an incredibly intense and challenging week both personally and professionally, and simultaneously, the images and sounds from the outside world has been earth-shattering.
By Monday, the videos of Aaron Bushnell’s act of self-immolation had started to emerge on social media, and I will never forget his three cries for Free Palestine. Then came the flour massacre, followed by images of the starved children dying, and then a human body after being run over by a tank. I cried, and felt a strange relief that I still did, recognizing that my empathy and my humanity was still operational, despite the constant stream of horror threatening to numb it. I’m not sure I would have gone through this week with the same amount of energy and steadfastness had it not been for this week of workshops and creating art with the students. Because they represent hope to me. Their presence in this world, means that something that have never been before, now exists.
I keep seeing thing that I never imagined I would see. For better, for worse. And I keep doing things I never imagined I would do.
I had a conversation with one of the students, about not knowing what to dream of or plan for, because the path has not been walked by anyone else before us. And we don’t know what will come of our choices, the connections we have yet to make, the people we will meet or form a new relationship with, but there’s this calling.
I have faith. I have hope. And I love life. I love us, this planet, and every living being on it. I am horrified at the level of cruelty, violence and complete disrespect for life, and everything about existence that I hold so dear. But I know that this is not it. Even before this level of visual documentation, I knew that really fucked up stuff happens to people. I’ve worked with abused children and adults, people who have experienced war and even genocide in their homelands, I’ve worked with victims of human trafficking and modern day slave-trade, I’ve personally dealt with rape, sexual abuse, domestic abuse, and I’ve been in relationships with men who have had their mother killed by their step-dad, men who have been molested and raped by their soccer-coach for years, men who have disappeared into psychosis, I have talked people out of killing themselves on the job and outside of it, spent holidays trying to help loved ones out of their heroin-addiction, I’ve dealt with loved ones alcohol abuse, their self-harm, cutting themselves, I’ve walked into rooms where I can smell the blood before I see it because it’s so much of it on the floor. I have never met a woman that haven’t at least one story to share about misogyni and threats from men, same with queer, trans and non-binary people, and I have never met a person with a different skin color than mine that haven’t multiple stories to share about racism and violence. I’ve walk past the food-line to the poor house every day for the last five years, and it’s still growing. I know that life is fucking horrible. I have very few illusions left.
And still, I have hope. I fucking refuse to give up on life, and on us.
Because I have seen the other side of us as well. I know what lives is us, and what we are capable of. Not just the bad stuff, but the good stuff. The truly beatiful and magical and paradoxically unimaginable, the stuff that in an instance can fill your entire being with love, wonder, awe. The stuff that changes EVERYTHING, and just moments before, you had no idea it was just around the corner.
I had no idea, when I went to an adbusting-workshop in the spring of 2019 to meet people I had never met before, that I would spend the next five years experiencing a process of making sense of what at the time felt like an ever-growing black hole of burn-out, depression and complete and utter failure both personally and professionally. I made this poster, that says “create your own reality”, and ever since, I’ve been trying to do that. I’ve always tried to do that, always tried to change things. I don’t think I know any other way to do this.
I have become better at choosing my battles. And I’ve for the most part, stopped trying to change people other than myself. That doesn’t mean that I won’t call things as I see them, and be vocal about my opinions. But I think it means that I’ve become better at listening, and hopefully a little more humble even if I speak in bold and all caps at times. One of the young women in my class said to me that I was teaching them to rebel. That I had helped open something in them. Another that I had inspired them to take up more space. A man who had previously been penalized and fined for making graffiti to the extent that he quit doing it at all, told me that this was the first time he had sat in a classroom in front of a teacher to a sketch for a piece, without having to hide a piece of his art. He thanked me for giving him the chance to experience that. I didn’t know what to respond, because there are so many people who have done more for that moment to be realized than me. But I was grateful to see it and receive it on their behalf.
I think artists are incredibly important right now, because they are able to imagine the possibility of something that has never been. I think this is one of the most precious skills to support in each other now. The ability to imagine something else than this, and in spite of this. And I think the troublemakers, the misfits, the black sheeps, the “overly sensitive”, the dreamers, the naive idealists, the indigenous people, the subversive thinkers, the people who will not comply, who will not obey, who will not give in, and who have all been tried to be silenced in order to maintain order and status quo, are the ones who will save us.
We are not made to “fit in”. None of us are. Our creation is an expression of belonging. There is nothing that separates us from each other, and everything on this planet. And yet we struggle to fit in most of our lives, and how to best do as we’re told. What a fucking waste of precious time.
I’m heading for the streets in support of Palestine today. Not because I believe it will change the minds of the people in power, but because I want the rest of us to see each other, and realize that we can take their power from them. Hope to see you there.