The Only Solution to Culture

so yes I thought that after lunch a great thing to do would be a detailed analysis of Wagner's Ring cycle so it's this this is what we're about to do no not at all and so I promise you that this talk is not going to be as as intense and as heavy hopefully we'll be a bit lighter although I will touch on some I think important subjects but hopefully it'll be a bit a bit a good after lunch conference hopefully so um when I want to talk about it I want to talk about the problem of culture and the problem of art I am an artist I'm an icon Carver I I ended up adding some of my carvings into the presentation this morning because yesterday a lot of people were telling me oh I'd like to see your carving so we'll see you'll see some of my carvings in the in the presentation there are a few artists here as well today and I want to talk about what how is there going to be how is it possible for their for culture to move forward how is it possible for art to move forward considering our situation right now so in in the 19th century vogner came up with this term the gazhams comes back this notion of the total work of art right the the perfect work of art and it's in that notion in that idea of a total work of art that he developed his Ring cycle of operas and his idea was to create a work of art which would join together all the different arts into one thing and so he thought that the Opera was the perfect place to do that to take narrative to take music have dance have also visual representation in terms of composition all of that pull together into one massive total artwork we have a lot of people have said that in fact the the the real let's say kazama-kun spark is the movie the the the movie does exactly that it pulls together you know these narratives and it has you know like a an expensive good movie has this amazing soundtrack which actually follows the narrative structure they have a science like a musical science of following narrative structure using music and there's also the composition of the screen you know that there's color all of that comes together into the this this example of the perfect let's say so I chose two images one of a higher high end more you know artsy movie and one which is the recent popular end game movie which was I saw which was absolutely visually astounding it's astounding what they what they can do and in terms of narrative also pulling in all these stories dealing with myth using mythological structures it's pretty amazing what they're able to come together and as we look forward obviously we are looking towards a possibility of having absolute total immersive you know narrative with all of that story everything we could have this immersive complete experience of vogner's kazama-kun spark this total artwork coming into our field of vision and so you would think right and then III just for father Steven I added that this this morning there's a holodeck from Star Trek which is the the ultimate in that imaginable possible perfect you know cultural experience would be in the holodeck but you would think right so you would think that imagine a culture that has come to create such perfection that has come to create these these works of narrative structure that are that cost millions and hundreds of millions of dollars to to make and are gonna bring about you know hundreds of millions of people to come see them you would think that you would think wow they if we've reached that level of cultural manifestation we definitely should have a pretty beautiful cohesive society right turns out that is not the case turns out in fact that it is not and as most of us have seen in the past few years we have noticed in fact the very contrary as we watch the social fabric in Western Europe in North America as we watch it start to fray and start to dissolve and we're seeing things we haven't seen since the 1930s people fighting in the streets the signs are not are not good in terms of where our culture is leading us so what's the problem what's the problem why is our culture which is so refined and you don't have to go watch the Marvel movie you can go see have an extremely elitist opera an extremely elitist concert all of these things you can go to you we have more culture available to us than any time in all the history of the entire world you know you could see any show you want anything you want you could you could probably find a place and you could go see it you go to Broadway and there are tons of shows you there are tons of museums tons of so what why is it that we are there right one of the problems there is many one of the problems is the problem of entertainment we have come to a point where we have confused culture and entertainment we think that culture is to go somewhere and sit and have an aesthetic experience and there's a there's a book a wonderful book called amusing ourselves to death some of you maybe have have read it by Neil postman and he says when a population becomes distracted by trivia when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby talk when in short a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act then a nation finds itself at risk culture death is a clear possibility yeah and social media is the ultimate version of this because and I say that I am on social media right father Steven we're all on social media we're all using social media but social media has tricked us in believing in relationships which are not relationships which are performance and consumption that's what we're doing on social media we are posting things and people are voyeuristically watching them and I don't even know who's watching my who's interacting with my stories on social media it we have turned our relationships into into performances and into audiences that is how our relationships have been have been transformed into by this problem of culture traditional culture traditional art in every single traditional culture in the world including you know Western medieval culture including Eastern Orthodox culture culture is participative culture is not culture the ultimate act of culture or the arts are not spectacles are not only spectacles but we that's all we have left of culture right museums are places where things go to die that's what museums are they are giant cemeteries for objects where we have removed objects from their actual use and we have put them up to gaze at and I'm not saying that there's nothing there's nothing wrong with that there's nothing essentially wrong with looking at the pass in order to learn from the past but when that's all that's left of your culture you know it's all that's left of your culture is this you know the these spaces of performance and these spaces of of showing objects that are ripped from their context and we think that that's that's lively we think that that's culture then we're in serious prog we have a serious problem one of the one of the issues that has come as we see happen in culture I mean starting even I would say at the Renaissance we start to see what you could call Adi incarnation we start to see things start to rip to pull apart okay we start to see this notion of high art start to rise up and then we start to see this notion of objects production let's say or objects for you start to come down so we separate this notion that we have these objects of cultural contemplation and then we have these objects of pure use and there's no connection between the two we don't conceive that there's art in those objects and we don't concede that there's use in the high art objects we have come to somehow glorify the fact that these useless objects these useless events that don't have purpose in our society that don't have relevance that aren't there to bring us together like a folk dance or like a a festival and is in a village that we have we have convinced ourselves that that is in fact the highest form of culture now the word art in in in the medieval world means fitting together properly that's what refers to and so the the notion of art we still have that expression today right we still have this expression where we talk about the art of something that's how the medievals understood art there was the art of rhetoric there was the art of painting the art of woodworking and there were these and so art was not we didn't have this idea of making art nobody ever made art people used art to make things and those things were had purposes so the the very notion what we call art works is a is a very disturbing perversion of the traditional idea of art because what we what we've been convinced is that somehow art has a value in itself that these objects because until you have these arguments everybody's heard these arguments see this painting and they're like is this art is this not art what's art is this art is this annnddd and it's been lasting for 100 years since the beginning of the century arguing about what is art and what is not art and the answer is that it doesn't matter doesn't matter right those objects don't have value because they are art their value should be based on what they're doing in the world not whether or not their art but I mean we're kind of so far from that right now it's very difficult to come back anyway so here is this notion of the high art and the design and we've come now we really I mean it's very extreme we have all these objects in our houses that we don't even think about they're just there for our use they're just there for us to to consume and part of it is of course technical technological advancement of course it's part of why we are able to think that a fork doesn't matter because you can get it for cheap at Walmart you know in a time when an artisan would make your fork and that was his let's say that was his vocation the relationship to what you would receive was very different then then the mass-produced object all right so here we see the the medieval arts alright and so this is the alright these are the traditional cultural events right traditional culture events were and are those that still exist there are a few that still exist are participative you know and of course well get to it of course the church is one of the last vestiges of places where people come together and participate in a cultural event which is not just to be cultural but is actually serving the purpose of uniting the community together facing i transcendent God you know so it brings people together but it also is there to kind of show us where we should be looking at so there's an interesting there's an interesting thinker from the beginning of the century i really i really suggest that people read his book he's actually not a christian he's a he's a single e's man his name is ananda coomaraswamy and he was the curator of the boston museum for many years and he sometimes you need someone from the outside coming from pretty culture that still is somewhat traditional to see the monstrosity of your own of your own culture and and coomaraswamy really defended this real notion of art so he said art is not tangible we cannot call a painting art as the word artifact or artificial imply the thing made is a work of art made by art but is not itself art the art remains in the artist and is the knowledge by which things are made so art is the human capacity to make things the human capacity to create in a way you could say that we still have the word craft we still use that word in its right sense that is it is the skill that the artist has and then applies to the world and so like I said it removes this this immediate value of the object that is being made just because it's it's art it doesn't matter the question is what is it what is the object what is it doing and so one of the thinkers I think especially for us artists one of the thinkers that has helped to reawaken the possibility of traditional art because we see I mean I see because I came through the contemporary art world and several people I don't know Heather if you did Heather came through the contemporary art world several of the professional iconographer you'll meet in North America actually started out as contemporary painters contemporary installation artists we studied the contemporary art and we came to the end of that we we realized that it was running out of steam and that the question we needed to ask was too big for the art system to answer the question wasn't what should I make this or that kind of art should I make this or that kind of painting should I make this or that kind of sculpture the question became what is the value of these objects in what is the whole value of your project the entire project of Contemporary Art what's its purpose in the world so it became very difficult for us to remain in that contemporary art world because the question is too big they can't answer it I'm not asking you I'm not asking you to interpret the paintings and to tell me what the paintings I'm asking you why does this painting exist like what what what is it doing in the world what's what what justifies its it's taking up space in the world right and the answer ended up a lot of the answer ended up secretly being something about prestige and something about financial transactions and investment and all that there's a lot of that that was happening in terms of understanding what the true value of contemporary art ended being and so one of the thinkers that I think has helped us is is Heidegger Heidegger has read a few books one is called the origin of the work of art but another one of his books that people don't think of in terms of art is is the the book called the question concerning technology because the word the Greek word for art for the Latin word art the the best translation of it is techn a craft we still have that word we use it in technology the problem is that we've like I said we've ripped everything apart where we now have this notion of art that's up here and is esoteric and and intellectual and then we have techn a which is down here which is making objects for consumption but in the ancient vision that's not how how it was understood and so Heidegger interprets Aristotle and Aristotle considered technique to be a form of truth to be a form of unveiling right I don't know how to pronounce this word a lúthien lúthien or luthier Alethea anyways truth or unveiling so this is Heidegger interpreting Aristotle so techne is a form of a lúthien unveiling or truth whoever builds a house or a ship or forward to the sacrificial chalice reveals what is brought forth this revealing gathers together making that gesture for you on purpose because I did it all morning gathers together in advance the aspect and the matter of the ship or house with the view to the finished thing and vision envisioned as completed thus what is decisive in technique does not lie in the making and manipulating of means but rather in this Afra mentioned revealing right it is as revealing not as manufacturing that Tecna is a bringing forth so if you think about what I talked about this morning he is dealing with this question he's realizing that making something is gathering things gathering objects gathering ideas gathering all this to together bringing it into something which reveals the being of that thing so if I'm making a cup I am gathering elements bringing them together in order to reveal to you the function the purpose the the reality of this cup so you get a whole other a whole other vision of what it means for a human being to make right you get that sense of this participative act that to make something is almost it's almost as it's almost a an act of let's say lower creation right it's almost the possibility of to the extent that we're capable of to participate in creation to be that that image of God but in order for it to be that things have to actually come together and one of those things is and the most one of the most important things is purpose and so it's not it's not arbitrary that we have removed purpose from our culture that we have removed the reasons for things in our cultural events we have reduced them to distraction talked about distraction this morning we have reduced them to distraction to entertainment and so they are spinning on the outside of that wheel right and we've lost that which brings it together and with as a strange thing happening as well very strange thing because it's not only that we're dispersing out into this kind of fragmented chaos but actually think we're actually seeing things right now seeing them flip upside down it's very fascinating to watch because the last remnant of participative culture in our and in our world was Church so he was the last thing left there was still people who went to church sat you know stood together sang together even a even a Protestant Church you know you were still at least doing something right you're it's music it's narrative its words and we're together and we're all doing it together it's bringing us together focused on something which is beyond us but it's very strange to watch today right when you vote we've all seen it happen we've all seen Church turned into entertainment and and and and churches are doing everything they can to become as close to entertainment as they possibly can light shows it's a concert people don't know the words of the songs anymore because you'll have to change songs every two weeks because you always have to innovate you have to keep people on the edge you have to surprise them surprise as part of entertainment you know the titillation of the new is is a part of the entertainment every time someone asks me about icons and and and asks about you know why you know we should enter we should innovate in icons and it's like hmm well I'm not against innovation per se but I do struggle with your desire to innovate though like I do struggle with a little bit of that we have a name for that in the Orthodox tradition it's called a Cydia it's a passion this this incapacity to this desire this in stable feeling we have to always have something new have something changing to kind of keep us feeling alive you know and everybody's felt that did boredom you know you want you you want to be entertained and so that obviously is one of the strange events but the other strange event is we're seeing the opposite happen as well we're watching entertainment culture become liturgical and that is the weirdest of all so everybody knows about cosplay right so people will get make costumes of their favorite fictional characters will dress up and then we'll get together and we'll kind of reenact these things will will will will celebrate their fictional characters and it's a fascinating thing to watch because it is born it's born out of that same desire we have the desire that should be the desire for for liturgy the desire to come together and to act as one and to to to to act together that is now flipping into these strange venues there is a monastery near in my house about 10 minutes away from my house and like all monasteries in Quebec all the Catholic churches all the monasteries that they're all dying everybody's going away and they don't know what to do with these buildings right what we have all these buildings the most Catholic place in the world it used to be so now we have all these buildings what do we do and so this monastery they've been struggling with it trying to find a venue and finally they were able to sell it and everybody's celebrating because they were able to sell the monastery and and and it was bought by a an intrapreneur someone who organizes events and so what he's gonna do is he's going to have Harry Potter events in the church so the church they'll have people dressed up as the students in Harry Potter and then they'll reenact scenes from the Harry Potter movies and books in the church because beautiful right beautiful architecture and he's going to do Game of Thrones events where people are gonna come and reenact Game of Thrones and and and all of that so and this is not a joke there is an organization it's called Harry Potter and the sacred texts and they have churches they don't call them churches but they have groups that meet every week and they have these liturgical readings of the Harry Potter books they gather together and they they all over the United States they sit together and they they they try to participate in the story of Harry Potter they have this desire to participate this desire to to to for something to be to not they want their entertainment to not just be entertainment because they have felt the emptiness of that and so they want to enter into the story they want to participate and the ultimate example now is this last movie who's seen the spider-man movie rave all you guys are too Christian for me no one has seen this good it's going on what is going on so so then this last spider-man movie it was called spider-man into the spider verse and in this movie the main character discovers lawrence to be spider-man by reading spider-man comic books by interacting with another like the original spider-man so he is being initiated into the spider-man world he's this he's a spider-man catechumen you know and so it's not just that we have spider-man but now we have the story of spider-man we're in the story there's a character who is learning from spider-man to become spider-man right and and the whole movie keeps saying anybody can wear the mask anybody can become spider-man which is obviously really stupid because not most of you don't can't stick to walls I think I I don't I don't unless unless if you have enough faith in spider-man maybe you can stick to walls I don't know I'm not sure but this mean but but the desire right the desire is so real this desire to participate is is you can't blame them you cannot blame people for having this desire to enter into the story to to be part of the story and so that's so the title of my talk was liturgical art is the only solution for the cultural problem and I think that statement is true in every single context whether or not people return to Christianity and discover the liturgical life or whether they stay with spider-man or Harry Potter liturgical art is the only solution to the cultural problem people are looking to identify to participate and they they're there at the end of this bland you know outside entertainment mode because it it leaves you empty but of course I will you know of course I have made my decision I've made my choice which side I want to go and I and so I would I want to do for the last part of my talk is I want to try to explain why liturgy is the only game on Scoones VII the only total artwork and so what I mean by liturgy now is you have to see it as a little bit bigger than just the let's say the actual ritual or the actual prayer the actual services now what I'm talking about liturgy and liturgical experience or liturgical art encompasses the of course the services the the the constant services which exist actually you know that we I have a small part of but in the monastic world exist to their fullness and there's this totality of filling up time with prayer right you can see that as the ultimate version of it and we participate in it you know at different levels but it also includes of course the architecture of the church it also includes the iconography of the church it includes of course the music itself not just the service but the actual music it also includes the objects that are made to participate the vestments the vessels you know the furniture all of this is what I mean by liturgical the liturgical full liturgical experience you could say and it not only includes that but it also includes the very cycle of the liturgical year which means that the Terkel year is this entering into the story of Christ which follows the whole year right we enter into the story of the mother of God and into the story of Christ and that's the basic track of the of the year and so what happens is we see this is where we see everything come together right so vogner said talked about narrative talked about music talked about the visual aspect that's a visual art so we add to that architecture you know and then we finally add the ultimate one which is participation right and so the liturgical year is the true cultural manifestation why because it brings us together it creates a qualifies time it gives meaning to time and we all know that we it's fun it's great now today it's actually great today because we're so far from that we're so far from the liturgical time that we can easily point to everybody and say right now in our world is they're qualified time what's the difference between day and the night it's barely gone it's barely gone between day and nights barely gone between the days of the week pretty much gone you know the stores are open 24 hours and they're always there and we said so time is just this strangely spread you know quantity across and we don't have this rhythm that is found in the traditional cultures this rhythm which marks time and and which which is like music you can imagine the liturgical year as a giant the giant Orchestra you know as a giant opera which lasts the entire year which follows this story of Christ and you can enter into this story and also like I said in Marc's time I have said this several times in other talks but you know in a medieval village where do you put the church in the middle right you put the church in the middle of the city and then everybody sees this the spire of the church it becomes the the center of the village it becomes the place where everybody meets it becomes the reference of the village and so all of this is qualifying time it's giving us the reason why we even exist as units we don't even know like what's the difference between this suburb in that suburb we don't know we don't even know why there's a limit between the two just a bunch of houses spread over the terrain like that but a few malls we don't have town centers anymore we don't have anything which qualifies space it's gone right and even though even the the shopping malls are on their way out soon there won't even be shopping malls those are the last remainders of a place of communion you could say in in in space those are going away all that is left are individual segregated habitations with people who don't know barely know their neighbor and who are connected with all these other people and who are performing for all these strangers online and so the church the the the the church qualifies space and then it also gathers material culture it creates the standard for architecture the standard for for space he creates the standard for fabrication and usually having the most beautiful objects it becomes the standard for other objects you can see that as a hierarchy you know like the King's chapel or the the patriarchs Church has the most beautiful things and as you go down the hierarchy you have more simple things but are all looking towards those those patterns let's say and so it qualifies even the fabrication of things I had to put this in for father Stephen and so that is why I think those of us that have left the contemporary art world and entered into this participative art it is amazing it is it's hard it's so hard because when I meet artists they don't understand like contemporary artists like you make what you make religious pictures for churches really ok and then they think that I'm doing it kind of by default because I couldn't make it you know as an artist that's what they think that's do they think it's hilarious but they don't understand the joy because when I make when I make an icon so I'm gonna start showing you some of my icons as I as I go through this way so when I make an icon I am engaging in the language of the church so like a poem you know like like any form of ancient art you know like a like a poem that has form anything that has a a basic structure which we can all agree upon and which brings us together which makes us know that I am I am part of this culture rather than this other culture like I I'm somewhere in the world I'm part of a group I'm part of a communion of people so I participate in the language of the church but then I'm also participating in the community of the church because I am making objects for specific uses I am making an object for someone who wants an icon of their patron saint I am making an object for a church who is looking for a specific icon that they want to have out there I'm making a blessing cross so that the priest can bless can bless the people and so the object that I'm making is connected to the community but at the same time what is what's amazing about the luck that we have making liturgical art is that the subject of my art reaches as high talks about mysteries that are as esoteric as as a is powerful as hidden as any contemporary artist would ever be able to touch right and so it's not just that I'm the Terkel art is not just that I'm there's a nobility in making a chair and there's a there's a beautiful nobility making a chair but when you're making an object which also participates in the in this this language of narrative of the church then you're you're also dealing with so you're connecting these stories these principles and you're connecting them with actual objects that are then going to participate in the world I always say that liturgical art reaches higher than contemporary art and it reaches lower than contemporary art because it connects the it connects actual used objects with these higher principles and so that's why I think that liturgical art is the only solution for the cultural problem now I'm not I think I just want it to be careful I I was a bit hard on cultural manifestations let's say modern cultural manifestations I don't see that there's anything wrong with movies or with popular music in itself I mean obviously a lot of it is trash but not necessarily not necessarily it doesn't have to be right and and novels or poetry all those things are fine the problem is the proportion it's that it's always a problem of hierarchy everything has a place the problem is when you you you you things are not in their right place is when there's a problem when we live for entertainment that's a problem right but it's okay you'd have a party right it's okay to dance it's okay to to to to have a carnival like traditional carnivals are in every single culture the problem is is proportion so for example I think that in the in the recovery of liturgical art in the recovery of the biblical stories in the recovery of the story of the saints in the participation on in those stories what we will also gain is a amazing matrix of references the matrix of references that built Western civilization the matrix of references that made Shakespeare what Shakespeare was as we lose those we also lose the profundity of the art just becomes this vapid nonsense because we've lost all these connecting threads that are that come from the that come from the Bible and come from our existence in this liturgical liturgical world and so I I do believe that to enter into let's say to rediscover the liturgical I'll give you an example like something especially that a lot of people know Jordan Peterson he's here he's he's a friend of mine and he is working to help people rediscover the biblical stories and I think that that's awesome because he sees that he sees the problem I'm saying he says these biblical stories are underlying our culture if we take them out and we fall in vapid nests and our you know our culture will be nothing our morality will be nothing so it's like let's rediscover those stories but I think it's not enough I think it's not enough to just know the stories I think you have to jump in you have to participate you have to enter into the story and the liturgical life and the liturgical year and and the liturgical experience that is the that is the best and most complete way to actually participate and not just read the stories as an intellectual exercise let's say but like I said I do think that once we have rediscovered once we have entered in I don't have a problem with other art coming out and I've seen now several Orthodox artists and some Catholic artists also who are who are starting to use the I mean you see that in Tokyo you see that in CS Lewis where they are there they are bathing in biblical understanding bathing in traditional let's say structure traditional narratives and they're writing things which are not directly liturgical which are not directly even in tokens cases not even Christian on the surface but is so understood from underneath is so it's so bathing in the-the-the all those references that it creates a powerful story so I like I right now I am working on a graphic novel with a with an artist I wrote the story with my brother and it's going to be a wild very hopefully very entertaining retelling of the legend of st. Christopher and it's going to be it's going to be an adventure with with can anybody recognize that who do you think is on the pillar maybe can you see the pillar in the background yeah so st. Simeon is in the story and so and so it's if there's going to be dragons that there's going to be monsters and all of that but the underlying references the underlying mesh of relationships is going to come straight out of my own experience in iconography in my own experience in reading the lives of the saints and and the Bible but I don't it won't be for Christians I mean it can be for Christians but I'm not writing it for Christian I'm writing it for everybody it's gonna it's not it's not going to be this you know like you know those Christian movies know those yeah those are really really really bad and they're and they're very bad because they're because they don't have this depth of understanding the relationship between the visual world and the narrative world and the patterns and the rhythm they don't understand it they just have this message that they want to get across and it stinks it's it's it's that literally like it stinks in the sense that you can smell Oh propaganda it's not it doesn't smell good doesn't smell good but but III and also even the silliness like even the silliness is not totally absent from this structure right the the in the Middle Ages they had what was called marginalia who knows what marginality is so the way that medieval manuscripts in the West were written is that they would write the text in the middle and then on the sides they get wild and crazy all right and so alright these are on the side and it goes very very far so I I have to apologize in advance everybody everybody probably here has seen the the search for the Holy Grail by Monty Python right so who remembers that trumpet ears at the beginning right the the special trumpet ears right and you think you think you'd say oh this is this is right this is blasphemous right this is this is a mocking Christianity but they didn't make this up Monty Python didn't make this up this is from medieval manuscripts this is in the Middle Ages they had but trumpets - right and so there is room for the margins there's room for the gargoyles on the outside of the church there's room for the carnivals you know the the Mardi Gras is the carnivals all those are part of the total story but we don't live here of just four so father's even can stop just move to something more glorious here so that it's part of the story the problem is that we don't we don't live in Mardi Gras all right now the whole year is Mardi Gras and now the entire world is upside down and so there's room for the upside down you just keep it on the edges and then it's it serves its purpose you know the Jews they celebrate Purim every year and they get drunk and they spin and they fall on the ground and they dress they take they cross dress they do all this stuff but it's just one day year right just one day a year and it's on the edge right it's the last in that book where God's not mentioned right so so hopefully I hope that that this does help you understand why I why I think that that one of the reasons why a lot of us that are now entering into liturgical art we're doing it obviously for our own sake for our own salvation I think and because of because of our love of God or love of the church and our love of this art but I think we also no at least I think that I'm also doing this this is the only door this is the only door that right now that can lead to something productive because all the others are out on the edges of the wheel and so I don't want to I don't want to fall off so all right thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: Jonathan Pageau

Views: 68,163

Keywords: Art, liturgy, the symbolic world, The symbolic World, Jonathan pageau, eastern orthodox, the symbolic world jonathan pageau, jonathan pageau symbolism, culture, cosplay, folklore, symbolism, heidegger, coomeraswamy, religious symbolism, religious skepticism

Id: pTPyqWE8cxc

Length: 46min 21sec (2781 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 12 2019