As with my last sketch collage, I focused on Kurlansky’s Nonviolence : The History of a Dangerous Idea as my source of creative inspiration. Looking back on my last discussion, I noticed that the practice did not feel as meditative as my original collage, most likely because I had not set specific parameters for my focus and allowed myself to narrow in on some of Kurlansky’s points that I found personally conflicting or troubling. In order to redirect my focus, I decided to choose more specific inspiration for this practice – I chose my top six favorite rules/observations of nonviolence that Kurlansky lists in the appendix:
- The problem lies not in the nature of man, but in the nature of power
- Despite all of society’s promotion of warfare, most soldiers find warfare to be a wrenching departure from their own moral values.
- The state imagines it is impotent without without a military because it cannot conceive of power without force.
- Violence does not resolve. It always leads to more violence.
- A propaganda machine promoting hatred always has a war waiting in the wings.
- Behind every war there are always a few founding lies.
Below are my artistic reflections of these observations. These sketches ended up being much more crude and cartoonish than my others, most likely because I spent much more time analyzing the meaning and translating it into art than on actually finessing the details of my work. I found that choosing narrow and specific concepts and forcing myself to convey them through symbolic imagery was very useful in diving deeper into the meaning of each statement. Representing a written idea through art requires utter commitment to your own interpretation of that concept, and I am finding it is a really powerful way to solidify my understanding of texts.
Abigail, I think pictorial representations bring more depth to what Kurlansky’s observations really imply. Depictions of the 2nd and the 6th rule really brought to my mind how many of the wars we engage in are a result of a power struggle in the higher strata of society. In this case, there are substantial emotional burdens set on the soldiers. Moreover, I’m really interested in what further insight you gleaned from engaging in symbolically depicting Kurlansky’s rules. Did this process allow you to come to a realization about our war-promoting society that you hadn’t made by only reading these rules?
Abby, I think your project is really interesting and that in the long run, you’ll get a lot out of your project and retain the invaluable lessons that we learned from our FYS. You are a great artist, and it is encouraging to see the collaboration between art and academics. Constructively, I think it would be interesting to see how you would artistically interpret the specific nonviolent actions that we learned about in Kurlansky, like Jesus, the nature of Islam, Gandhi, and the Cathars, for example.