[ hold :: this space ]

so many things i’ve been meaning to write about…

it’s finished now, but Ecstatic City at the ngv was simply superb. Due to the water crisis in melbourne the fountains in the moat at the front of the gallery have been switched off, so Chris Doyle made a fountain by projecting images of melbourne people jumping onto the front of the gallery. It was beautiful.

21:100:100 is still on… it’s a sound installation in at Gertrude art gallery, 100 works by 100 sound artists… everything ambient, electronica, drone. i was a little underwhelmed when i walked in - i wanted images, or darkness, some way of getting lost in it - but after a while i felt like a kid in a candy store. It’s an overwhelming collection of works, best consumed in medium sized doses over repeat visits. we were there for a couple of hours the other day. i’d really like to do more with sound in the stuff we do. it’s always the thing we think of last, the accompanying soundtrack rather than the central piece…

i kept meaning to blog about man on wire when i first saw it, but couldn’t ever find the words. It’s an extraordinary film, one i still think about. a couple of friends have said they won’t see it because they’re terrified of heights. i’m not good with heights [i'm not scared i'll fall, i'm scared i'll jump], and it didn’t bother me at all when i was seeing the film. oddly though, later that night i was lying in bed, and i felt almost paralysed with fear as i thought about what Philippe Petit had done. he was walking - dancing - on a tight rope, a quarter of a mile above the earth. it’s a film about passion and courage and the pursuit of dreams, but more than that, it’s about wonder and awe and defying the hypothetical and real laws of gravity that would keep us pinned to earth. i loved it.

tonight we’re having a between the spaces dinner to plan a christmas ‘moment’… and then i’m off and away for a week. see you when i’m back.

Andrew Denton interviewed Philippe Petit on Enough Rope tonight, in anticipation of Man on Wire opening in Australia this week.

Denton: Of all the amazing things in this act, the thing that most astonishes me is when you lie down on the wire, you lie flat, and then you stand up again. That strikes me as breaking several laws of gravity.

Petit: [bemused, as though the idea of laws of gravity is entirely new to him] You know, I never thought of the high wire as a technical world,  although i am practicing still today three hours a day on the wire. I always thought of the wire as theatre, as something really very special and inspiring, where the physical act should not have the most importance… and when you say that laying down the wire and standing up is physically demanding and physically difficult, i’m not interested in that. I’m interested in the idea… of a man or a woman walking on thin air or a little wire, that at some point will be so well in their world that they can fall asleep…

Is that not our task?  Finding the way of being so well in the world that we are bemused by the idea that some law of gravity might get in our way…

Unlike the hand forgeries which preceded lithography, photography, film and audio recording, [Walter] Benjamin argues that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries placed art in an era of mechanical reproduction, which necessarily changes our perception of art itself. In particular, Benjamin argues that the “aura” of an original, “the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced” is depreciated and lost in the reproduction. Further, the authentic work of art had its original value in ritual, and what mattered was the fact of its existence (visible to the spirits) not its display before man. In the age of reproduction, however, art is intended precisely for its own exhibition since the place of its birth, such as a temple or sacred site, is irrelevant when it can be copied and placed in any context; thus an alternative cult ‘the “theology of art” for the sake of art’ is born.

from here, exploring Walter Benjamin’s book ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’

i’ve been playing around with a few ideas about next year’s UK trip today. they’re still consolidating, but they’re based in the belief that we need to be finding new ways of offering encounters with stories that are bigger than our own - and that doing that is at least as important a conversation for the church to have as what new communities of faith might look like.

i’ve been thinking about who communicates the essence of faith best to people who are disinterested or disenchanted with Christianity; about who offers a moment of hope, peace, redemption, grace to the world, and who enters into the world’s agony, tragedy, ecstasy. it’s largely artists, musicians and poets. we know that, alt worship emerged from that reality. but often, even in alt worship, we’re simply using art as a way of explaining what we already know and what we think others should believe [the same theology in a different wrapping].

i’ve been reading a lot about the process of creativity recently, mostly interviews with artists and authors. so many of them talk about not knowing when they begin how something they create will end. the shape is uncovered in its making. the artwork’s creation is a revelation, and the artist is shaped by the artwork as much as the artwork is shaped by the artist. i know that my theology and shape has been changed dramatically since i started to write about it [someone told me once that i would believe anything if it made good poetry, and there's more than a little truth in that]. i wonder if it’s one of the reasons why anything beyond straight descriptive art is so terrifying to many christians. - that, and that we lose control of meaning with art, where we had control of meaning with words [well, we thought we did - i've got a whole other post about that coming up!]…

none of this might make sense. it doesn’t quite to me yet. but i’m putting it up in case it resonates with someone - and whether you can push it a bit further for me… but back to the original point of the post: next year’s trip I want to be a kind of hothouse for a group of people who want to explore this in very practical ways - and preferably because it’s in their blood, not because they think it will be good for the church…

‘The dichotomy between beauty and necessity has always been a false tension. Yet as a distraction, it has been extremely effective at crippling our power to bring full-bodied, earth-rending change. And those of us who are most intent on justice, those of us who are activists, and those of us who stand in the barrage of steady societal critique perhaps need to drink in more art than anyone else. In our line of work, the task of stoking our vision and constantly imagining possibilities is absolutely essential.

We can be so harsh and ascetic as we fling ourselves against the needs of the world. Art is accused of being bourgeois because much of the creation of art takes time and solitude and staring out the window. And how can we give ourselves permission to do that when people are starving and there is work to be done?

I think of Judas bemoaning the fragrant ointment that could have been sold to feed hundreds of hungry people but instead is poured in that single lavish, revolutionary gesture onto the head of Jesus. He views the profligate gesture as sin, and feeding the poor as the only good.

I know that voice. it comes from my own lips. But if we always see only those who are starving, we will continually wander the desert of the frantically working and overwhelmed. What we need - desperately - is to not be overwhelmed. And the single thing that keeps us from being overwhelmed is imagination…’

- taken from ‘How one justice-seeker was redeemed by beauty’, Dee Dee Risher, in Geez Magazine Spring ‘08 edition.

I was out at Brunswick UCA yesterday and Ray showed me the art / meditations that have been slowly building as part of the church’s engagement with Lent. It’s based around an idea that he took from Cityside’s Desert Files and reworked for the local situation - each week of Lent is given a theme [taken from the lectionary reading from that week], and people contribute artwork based around that image. The artwork is then integrated into worship each week.

The collection is open to the public this Sunday as part of the Sydney Road Street Party.

It’s lovely stuff, well worth going [and the Sydney Road Street Party normally isn't bad either!]. The church is on the corner of Sydney road and Merri St in Brunswick.

Chris Rowntree from the Centre for Theology and Ministry is organising what sounds like a fabulous day of art, theology and reflection, on Feb 23 at the CTM in Parkville. It’s around the theme of water. A registration form can be downloaded here: rego-form-web-version.pdf .[I was at the CTM this morning, to speak at a lecture in a course on Psalms, about the Psalms we've been writing in prisons. It was slightly intimidating - but very helpful - to have to verbalise and make sense of what was basically an intuitive process. It was certainly helpful for me, and hopefully for some of the students too!]

december always seems so far off - the month where anything and everything is possible. i have said yes to being involved in some brilliant things this advent, but i’m going to have to give up sleep, as well as blogging, in order to make them all fit. it’s a small price to pay.

i’m using this animation at a service on tuesday - the Isaiah reading for Advent 1 is Isaiah 2:1-5… their swords shall be beaten into ploughshares

i’m preparing at the moment for the wisdom’s feast alt worship workshop. i think most participants in the workshop will be firmly located within the church context, so it’s likely the conversation in the workshop will edge away from what’s possible, and towards ‘how do we make sure we do what’s right?’. a lot of them will also be longing for something different, but be nervous that things might change.

one part of the workshop is going to be about the church as an environment that can inspire or stifle imagination. as i was thinking this through, one of the things that came to me was that we’ve been so concerned about protecting the church’s theology from potential straying that we’ve not allowed imagination - there’s always a danger that our imagination might lead us into muddy waters. but maybe not letting there be a space for imagination in church is as irresponsible [unfaithful?] as careless theology.

last night i was part of a conversation [over a fabulous dinner], set up by cam semmens and stu davey. they’re both part of Solace community in Fairfield - an Anglican emerging church / alt worship community. Cam is being employed by Solace to do some research into arts, worship and theology. He pulled together a small group of people last night to have a conversation about inspiration, the place of the arts in worship, etc.. I hadn’t met the others before. i think what was lovely about it was that our thoughts/philosophy/theology were emerging from very different perspectives, but when we talked about art and imagination, we resonated with each other really strongly. it was our common ground.

cam and stu’s reflections on the conversation will be part of a chapter to be included in the next book that Solace are writing…

[not only did we get a wonderful dinner and good conversation, we also came away with gifts - how cool is that! i'm free for such conversations every week! stu gave us a copy of 'Remaking: a workbook for spiritual formation', a book of thinking that has emerged from within the solace community. i haven't dipped into it yet, but it has a beautiful cover... and also a newly released cd from melbourne's cafe church. it's called fish under a tree... it's a compilation of music from artists within the community. i'm listening to it at the moment, and it's really lovely... and the insert artwork is absolutely gorgeous.]