Focusing art inward versus outward
I’ve been chatting with a number of people this week about my recent show – artists and not, trans and cis, family and friends and coworkers. (Video is forthcoming. I’m actually converting the video to an editable format as I’m writing this. Stupid Sony, stupid Mac.)
One of the things I’ve been thinking about is how art can focus inward versus focusing outward. That is, this past show was very much about my own experiences and feelings. It attempted to capture how I felt about particular experiences – coming out, not coming out, moments in the transition – at the time of the experience. I looked inward to try and portray how my journey has felt, and not as much what I think or feel about it now. I definitely touched on the present, but mainly to acknowledge that I don’t know how I feel about a lot of things; that I still have a lot of confusions and uncertainties.
But how can, and should, are focus outward? How does it get directed at other people?
Cedar of Taking Up Too Much Space had a chance to see my show (thanks for coming!) and wrote a post with her thoughts. Much of the post is about how to deal with the artifacts of pre-transition life, things like photos and mementos. That’s something I want to write more about, particularly because of her really interesting take, but she also had some thoughts and criticisms on “confessional theatre”
So, the confessional. Invisibility discourse, as well as discourse about “ignorance” and “silence” and discourse about how We Just Need To Tell Our Stories And People Will Like Us all share this background assumption that the thing power does is it hides, it silences, it represses–it prevents things from coming to their natural state of being all happy and open and free.
…
LGBT autobiographical art has been pushed into a mold that goes about like this: I was little, I was different. I grew up, shit was hard, I hurt and I hurt and I hurt and maybe I had deviant sexual or gender habits and I was different and oh yeah I hurt a lot, and then I slowly realized the truth about myself and I came out and it was hard and scary and I was sure everyone was going to reject me and this or that person did and it was awful but this or that person affirmed their love for me no matter what and I came out and I was true to myself THE END HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
She continues in this vein, and had some similar questions and thoughts during a talkback after one of my shows. Basically, she’s commenting on what I’ve been thinking of as inward-focused art. That is, art – particularly personal narrative – which deals with the emotions or thoughts or feelings of an individual without making huge attempts to fit them within a larger framework of society or culture.
My piece was, without a doubt, of this mold.
But while I’d like to push myself toward doing more outward-focused art (which would more directly engage the audience into rethinking their position in society/culture/gender/etc) I want to speak up in defense of inward-focused, confessional-style art.
Now, I’m just going to quote my own comment at Cedar’s post:
I don’t think that [the limitations or falsehoods of confessional art] invalidates the value of the confessional as a method of personal or community growth. Yes, saying “We Just Need To Tell Our Stories And People Will Like Us” is a little naive, but I really do believe that it’s a lot harder to hate someone – or even just to find them icky – once you get to know them. You may still disagree with them, but I really to believe that a sense of understanding makes hatred more difficult.As for my show, specifically, the motivations have been pretty open-handed-ly selfish: I’m trying to process being trans, why I didn’t transition earlier and how that’s shaped me, transitioning now, dealing with past v. present v. future, and how all that impacts who I am today. I really do hope the show was valuable for others, but that honestly wasn’t my original goal with making art about my identity as a trans woman.
What I’m now trying to figure out is how do I start to move toward outward-focused art, to start to push and prod the audience to answer questions about themselves and issues of identity and gender. I ask some specific questions in the show, the largest being “How do I reconcile who I was with who I am? Who I want to be?”
The next artistic growth I need to push myself toward, it seems, is to answer those questions (or at least start to or try to) rather than just pose them. And to encourage and engage audience members into doing the same.
Has anyone else thought of these issues? How can/should art focus for the artist, and for the community?
Themocracy
Personally, I felt like you were using your personal story to building a bridge an between and create understanding of what it’s like being a person of transgender status. The outwardness comes though to those who understand common milestones in every transperson’s story.
Thanks for stopping by, Molly. I guess what I meant by focusing outward was asking questions of the world that exists outside of my head, or examining things from a more external place.
For example, take growing up. At the time, it felt like being trans was something I needed to deal with by myself, and that not coming out and transitioning earlier was my own fault. That’s the inwardly-focused version. However, looking outside myself, there was an entire culture and society pushing me to not come out or transition; imposing an identity on a child in a really painful and harmful way. That’s the outwardly-focused version.
Neither of those are false, but neither of them tell 100% of the story. I feel like Trans Form was leaning more toward inwardly-focused, though, and am interested in exploring an outwardly-focused perspective as I move forward with my art.
Does that make more sense?
Perfect sense! And I agree. I’m so in-tune with your inward-focus that it seems outward to me
Without seeing the video, a couple of points.
I’m really not sure that this would classify as confessional art in anything other than the actions to make the private public. Maybe it might be better, sticking to ecclesiastical analogy, as a form of testifying. Which pays forward.
The other is to ask if the evolution outward that you’re looking for entails a different use for performance art in the processes of your own transition. And I guess to ask how much congratulation you’d accept in terms of success in using the piece to help make better sense of your own transition.
As someone who comes from a religious background that wasn’t big on testifying, I do like that analogy.
Totally agree there. I’ve used art thus far to, for the most part, try and examine moments in my past so that I can even begin to grasp where I’ve come from. (Since it sure as hell didn’t make sense at the time.) I think I’d like to try moving away from the huge personal narrative arcs, though, at least for a little while. That’s part of the reason I’m really excited to try and take some various classes (circus arts, theatre, etc) in the coming months: to give myself some different perspectives.