14 - The Power of Art

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:

https://www.artsy.net/artist/vik-muniz

 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.

http://www.pbs.org/pov/blog/docsoup/2010/03/doc_soup_what_happened_to_avij/

   

    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:

http://plancanada.ca/5-ways-to-end-poverty

http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/85/10/07-045955/en/

      

     

      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?