"Love and Joy and Electricity in the Body"
What happens when you bring a rockstar group of activists, performance artists, scientists and researchers together? You get an amazing conversation on topics like the zeitgeist of the unicorn and the parameters of the adjacent possible! Want to know what that’s about? Watch the full discussion here:
What is art? How does it transform us?
Marc Bamuthi Joseph, the evening’s moderator and Chief of Program and Pedagogy at the Yerba Buena Center for the Performing Arts, began the evening with a charged, probing performance of a poem about love, freedom and soccer. He spoke of artists’ ability to imagine and create the parameters of our future possibilities. Artists, he said, “tap into the intersection of the society we know to be, and a culture that we have yet to dream.”
Marc then asked the panel of Experts to dive into a conversation about the arts-- what is it, and how should it make us feel? What happens to our communities when we don’t invest in art and creativity?
Images from Shannon Jackson’s 1993 performance, “White Noises”
Shannon Jackson’s point of entry to the arts was performance art (see images of her 1993 performance exploring white privilege above), but she pointed out that people often have a “primal connection” to one particular form of art, such as photography or painting. Ultimately, Shannon believes that the arts in all their forms are key to helping communities answer deep, challenging social and political questions.
“Turning to the arts and creativity theme,” she explained, “doesn't mean that you have to turn your back on social and political questions...Art is a glue for advancing and serving as a vehicle for some of the hardest social and political questions that we might face.”
If art can answer our toughest social and political challenges, then it must be able to do some pretty cool things to our brain, right? Fortunately Dr. Charles Limb was there to give us a brief overview of his fascinating work on the neuroscience of creativity.
Dr. Charles Limb demonstrating the keyboard that helps him uncover the science of creativity
Dr. Charles Limb, Professor at UCSF, is living the dream-- his research combines his two loves, music and medicine. The audience enjoyed a short film showing Dr. Limb’s inventiveness in uncovering the physical linkages between art and creativity and the brain (see the keyboard above that he plays while lying down in an MRI machine!)
Dr. Limb described our brain’s complexity as “an absolute prerequisite to have an elevated life that involves the arts.” He explained that “the arts are the embodiment of the human ability to innovate and come up with a new idea,” and tied the human capacity for creativity and art to our survival as a species.
If art and creativity are the at the root of our brain’s capacity to innovate, is Facebook really just modern art? Perhaps we digress. Let’s meet up at one of Chris Treggiari’s mobile art projects so we can chat more about it.
Images of Chris Treggiari’s mobile art project
Chris Treggiari, an artist and activist, described his art as a means of listening to and working with communities to elevate their voices. His entertaining, hands-on mobile projects initiate conversations about personal and community challenges, and he makes a point of distributing the results to the community. Chris’ projects allow community members to speak about the most pressing questions they have-- whether surveillance in Oakland, personal struggles, or gentrification.
Marc Bamuthi Joseph performs a poem inspired by love, freedom and soccer
Investing in the Arts
Now that we’ve witnessed first-hand the all-encompassing power of the arts and creativity, how can we make sure the arts can thrive in the Bay Area? Marc turned to the Expert panel to ask them how they would invest in the Bay Area to allow artists to “change the world.”
The Experts agreed that investing in partnerships and strengthening the artistic ecosystem as a whole would help the Bay Area continue to sustain its creative spirit and culture. Charles spoke of founding a Center for the Sciences of the Arts in the Bay Area that would allow scientists to continue uncovering the neuroscience of creativity, and to study the changes in our brains that occur when we improvise, create or perform.
An image from one of Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s community festivals
Chris hoped to channel investment to local organizations that are “allowing creativity to shine,” and to preserving the exceptional artistic talent that exists in the Bay Area. He encouraged the audience to think about funding nonprofit organizations that expand artists’ reach to diverse audiences and amplify communities’ voices.
Shannon and Marc spoke of creating spaces for collaboration, and of leveraging the capacities of different organizations to produce a stronger whole. “The Bay Area is known for being a creative space,” explained Shannon. “How can we be more mindful of how we use that creativity for sustaining a world we want to live in?”
Need more art and creativity in your life? We know you do, which is why we’ve already scheduled October 19th’s Organization Night! We’ll hear from innovators, disruptors and changemakers working to harness The Power of Art & Creativity. Join us!
For more information about Battery Powered or to join, contact [email protected]