The Power
of Art
By: Benjamin Copithorne, Juliet Nolet, and Sean
Handa.
Waste land (Lucy Walker, Vik Muniz, 2010, Brazil, 100 min.)
For some
people, fate is the factor that decides where we start in life and where we end
up. Throughout history, humanity has tried to understand why some people are
dealt a fairer set of cards, while others spend their lives struggling. In
Greek mythology, it is the goddess Fortuna who decided everyone's fate; the
good, the bad and the ugly. When you are dealt such a lucky hand in life it may
be hard to see the perspective of people who were not so lucky. The two
documentaries Born Into Brothels and Waste land look at the
perspective of individuals who were not so lucky in life but prospered
nevertheless thanks to the power of art. Creativity and art hold hand-in-hand
to change people’s mindsets and change people's lives for the better; making a
future of possibilities for people who originally had no future at all.
After getting tired of the Fine Arts scene, the famous Brazilian artist Vik Muniz left his home in New York
to do an unconventional art project in the landfill of Jardim Gramacho for a nearly
two-year period, near Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. From 2008 to 2010, Vik took
photographs of a handful of self-assignment pickers of recycled material and
placed them in symbolic and famous positions from popular paintings, like Woman
Ironing by Pablo Picasso. Vik and some of the pickers took the photos to
recreate them on a much larger scale using garbage found at the landfill. The
relationships he makes along his journey and the stories he learns about the
pickers are shown in the documentary film Waste land, directed by Lucy
Walker, Karen Harley, João Jardim.
During class
this week we looked at the power of art, how art and creative visual art forms can
change lives. The pickers at Jardim Gramacho had a lot of dignity for their
work; they took pride in what they were doing for the environment and the hard
work they put in to make a living. Vik’s project never undermined their
importance or discounted their self-worth because they were pickers at a
landfill, his project inspired the pickers to see themselves in a new light, to
reinvent themselves and re-imagine their lives outside the landfill. Art can
encourage people to think differently. For example, before the project started
the pickers did not realize their self-worth, but when the project ended, many
of the pickers got a new outlook on life. Isis-one of the pickers- gained more
confidence in herself after she saw herself in the form of art: “I don’t see
myself as trash anymore. I really don’t.” Vik’s ability to turn people into art
had this amazing power to give everyone more confidence in themselves as he
changed peoples’ lives for the better. His project gave financial support to
the picker community, Isis could see her inner beauty, Magda left her husband
after she realized she deserved equal pay, and the financial gain from the
project gave Tiao reassurance that his dreams to create a picker’s union were
going in the right direction. To quote Vik Muniz, his project “changed the
lives of people with the same materials they deal with every day.”
Waste land acknowledges a lot of
environmental, individual and societal issues while Vik develops relationships
with the pickers. The first issue raised in this film is that society can make
judgements on people simply because of their economic status. Before Vik
started his project he assumed all the pickers were drugs addicts and that the
landfill is, “the end of the line. It's where everything not good goes,
including the people”. His perception of the pickers change when he realizes
that the pickers’ lives are just as important as anyone else’s: “When you see
the appetite for life these people have and the way they carry themselves, it’s
just inspiring.”. The second issue exposed in this film was how we consume and
produce so much garbage and never question where our garbage goes. The pickers
created their own recycling plant and in the process helped the environment. Vik's personnel approach of following and interviewing the pickers was unobtrusive and well done.Waste
land exposes how little we know about where our garbage goes and forces us
to ask ourselves, “how are we affecting the environment?”
Waste land is a
remarkable film because the film serves as a platform for understanding the
society of people who make a living recycling at the landfill of Jardim
Gramacho and allows the viewer to see their experiences. Film and art work
together to give viewers a shared understand of the world; an outlook on life
we never considered. Vik Muniz’s work can be further explored in the following
site which displays how beautifully he uses repurposed materials within his
artwork:
Born
Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids (Zana Briski & Ross
Kauffman, 2004, USA, 85 mins.)
The
film “Born Into Brothels” is an American documentary produced by Zana Briski
and Ross Kauffmam. It was released in 2004 and it is 85 minutes long. The film
tells the story of the kids that live harsh lives as children of prostitutes,
in the red light districts of Calcutta, India. In the film, we see
the harsh environment of the red light district and how the streets are
littered with prostitutes. Zana Briski enters the district’s inner circle and
begins to live there in the hopes of capturing and documenting the way of life
inside the red district because as she says, “the district is a completely
separate place from the outside world.”. While there, she befriends the
children and offers to teach them photography, by which the children are
extremely intrigued. She gave each of the children cameras and allowed them to
photograph whatever they wanted. The perspective shown through the children’s
photographs depicted their life in the red light district. In the film, we also
so that the children are forced to do labour and are treated badly because they
were seen as being unable to provide for the family, no matter their age. Much
of the children’s pictures was used in the film and one boy was even chosen to
go to Amsterdam for a photography convention because of how talented he was.
The film also depicts Briski’s efforts to place the children in boarding
schools to give them a better education and lifestyle. In the end, we are shown
that many of the children were taken out of the schools by their parents, while
others left willingly. Only about 2 children stayed and ended up attaining
benefits out of it. You can visit the following link to see just
what became of one of the “slum kids” that was able to get a chance at
education and a life outside the red light district of Calcutta.
One
of the big issues that we could see in the film was prostitution and how female
children that were born into Calcutta’s red light district, were pre-destined
to become prostitutes themselves. Various scenes from the film depict
situations such as with Suchita, where we can see that her parents are the
reason why she is practically bound to be a prostitute in the near future. They
never let her go anywhere, every female in her family is a prostitute as well,
and they never allowed her to go to school and educate herself. Using scenes
such as these in the documentary film really allowed Briski to show that unless
the parents themselves break the cycle of blinding their children from what is
right or what is wrong, there will continue to be many underage prostitutes
that live a sad and frustrating life.
The cameras in this film can be seen and
understood as being mediums of art that enable the children to escape their
harsh reality and instead put a magnifying glass over the finer and, in this
film’s case, smaller, simpler things in life. With these cameras, the film
maker was able to gather the children’s perspective on the life inside the red
light district. The art of photography also served to serve to give the
children purpose in life. One such child was Avijit. With the help of
photography, he discovered what he wanted to do with life and with Briski’s
help, he even went on to go to Amsterdam for a photography convention.
The
concept of this film is to help us understand that art is not just for
entertainment, it can offer people a means to express themselves and to perhaps
find an escape from reality that they might be tired of and that art can be an
instrument that frames moments and scenes into pictures, etc. to add focus to
particular issues that we might not notice otherwise.
Personal
Reflection
Art is often synonymous with those who possess a higher level of education, and yet as we have seen in
both films for this blog that art can empower those with nothing but their
minds. The two films viewed this week Born Into Brothels and Waste land,
show us the true power of art when introduced to those neglected by
society. Art allows those rejected and discarded to feel emotions and witness
the magic of creation, whilst fulfilling their wildest dreams and aspirations.
We can all help alleviate the suffering in countries which do not provide
adequate means of subsistence to their disenfranchised.
The films that were viewed
this week, indicate similar underlying causes that lead both the recycling
workers in Brazil and the children from the brothels in India, to be pushed
into working dangerous and strenuous jobs. Dire socio-economic perspectives,
injustice and a lack of education, has led to difficulty in obtaining decent
employment opportunities. This inability to procure a satisfactory profession
has had the effect catapulting the impoverished residents of Rio into work at
the Jardim Gramacho landfill. Correspondingly, the children of Calcutta born in
the red district are likely to follow in their parent’s footsteps, in
considerable part due to an inadequate education. Art can have the effect of
aiding those in need, helping them break through the glass ceiling. Art
empowers those that utilize it to its full extent.
All human beings can
discover, create, and appreciate art no matter from which social class they
come from, or whether they have obtained a proper education or not. Visual Art
can achieve what no other form of human expression can, because it can
transcend words, language, and level of education. People from every walk of
life can appreciate visual art in all its forms, whether it be drawings,
paintings, or photography. Visual art is understood without the need for words,
each person can make his own interpretation based on life experience, and
personal aptitude for visual comprehension. Art brings people together that may
have never met. For example, Vik meeting with Irma, Suelem, or Tiao Santos,
would have been highly improbable were it not for the power of Art, and its
ability to connect people together on an emotional level.
Poverty and socio-economic
injustices are clearly responsible for the conditions experienced by the
children of Calcutta and the landfill pickers of Rio. The unequal distribution
of wealth between the ruling classes of Brazil and India, and the economic
disparities between western and third world countries, contribute to the
conditions lived daily by the uneducated working poor. Considerable investment
is needed to alleviate poverty in third world countries. First, there needs to
be leadership and a will to rid poverty and injustices from developing
countries. Second, investments need to be directed towards education and the
creation of decent paying and stimulating employment. Third, western countries
need to provide ideal economic conditions to allow for stable and constant
economic growth in developing countries. Within the last fifty years’ great
strides have been accomplished, in the continual fight against poverty.
According to the World Health Organization, poverty levels have been reduced by 80% in the last thirty years alone. To reinvigorate our efforts to eliminate
poverty we must follow the recommendation of Plan International; provide
quality healthcare, free education, adequate water and sanitation, and economic
security, this is the minimum we must provide to families with inadequate
financial independence. Providing the right conditions and investments we will
be able to continue our fight against poverty and its detrimental effects in
third world countries. For further reading refer to Plan International plan to
combat poverty and the WHO’s assessment of poverty worldwide:
Filmmaker’s
Lucy Walker for Waste land and Ross Kauffman for Born Into Brothels, both
utilized interviews and on location live filming. In Waste land, we
follow Vik Muniz as he explores the landfill and talks to the pickers. We don’t
have the impression he is accompanied by any crew. The landfill workers seem
completely natural around Vik, which allows the audience members to get a real
glimpse into the life of recycled material pickers. As a viewer, the genuine
filmography allows us to form a “relationship” with the pickers, to the extent
that we feel real empathy and compassion for their cause. Similarly, Ross
Kauffman’s Born Into Brothels film techniques are simple, direct, and
engaging for the audience. Interestingly we are given the impression that each
of the children is constantly followed by their own cameramen, whilst they
themselves photograph their surrounding world. Ross Kauffman only shortcoming,
is that he omits to provide any background information, we are transported
directly into the red district of Calcutta for the first scene.
Everyday without the apparent knowledge and will, we view, contemplate, and enjoy multiple variations of art. Art is part of our daily lives, some of us acknowledge it whilst others choose to ignore its power and beauty. When I was visiting family in Europe, I had the opportunity to visit the Musée des beaux arts in Paris. At the time I was completely disinterested in fine art, or any art form for that matter. As I was walking through the halls and different galleries of the museum, I began to form a relationship with art that has never left me. Art is universal, we all have a hidden or an overt relationship with art, as they say ''a picture is worth a thousand words''.
Art has
the remarkable ability to transform the lives of those that have been forgotten
by society, and give opportunities to those who previously had none. Within
both films we witnessed the positive affects visual arts had on the lives of
Brazilian recycling material pickers, and the children of Indian sex workers.
Both the children of Calcutta’s red lights district and the workers of Jardim
Gramacho landfill, experienced empowerment through the creation and
appreciation of visual arts. Art brought together the most unlikely of people,
together they created sheer beauty, obtaining the public’s acclaim and
comprehension of the issues faced in Brazil and India. As a worldwide connected
society we must attempt to resolve once and for all the underlying issues and
obstacles faced in developing countries. The causes and effects of third world
poverty have been known for years and yet they still linger to this day, we
must ask ourselves why?
