Gaining fresh perspectives

On the merits of endeavouring to take into account all view points.

“The opposite of war is not peace. It is creation.”

Jonathan Larson, lyricist and playwright

Immediately after breakfast on the 7th October I went to see the David Hockney Lightroom edition at Coal Drops Yard in London. His colourful work was projected on all four walls and the show was narrated by David himself. One of the subjects he covered was his interest in perspective and points of view.

The traditional form of perspective we are used to, he explained, is fixed on one distant vanishing point, drawing us in to one view and direction. He has enjoyed exploring other ways to use perspective. An image of a chair was shown, wonky and distended at first glance, but which made perfect sense when he explained: he walked around it. He saw it from all sides. He drew everything he saw, not just one angle.

Image taken at Light room, London by the author. Original art work by David Hockney

At one stage, a Chinese scroll unravelled before our eyes, the inspiration (along with the Bayeux tapestry) for Hockney’s giant work Spring in Normandy that extends in one long line over several walls. These works allow you to travel, changing perspective in the same way as you see a street as you walk, your eyes moving so that you look up, down sideways, backwards as you move through time.

Once in the show you can watch the 45 minute loop as often as you like. On the third run though I began to move from observing to responding. Hockney was of the view that you have to paint to show this type of roving perspective, that a photograph can only ever show one perspective, a tiny fraction of a second. Never one to accept a statement with out some attempt at analysis, I took out my iPhone and began to push the capacity of the pano shot function to see if that was in fact true. The resulting images are not perfectly formed images but they do capture different angles of view and different projection as the screens changed over time, all in one view. Perhaps more importantly, the making of them brought me to a new understanding of what I would create next in my own art practice

Image taken at Light room, London by the author. Original art work by David Hockney

Image taken at Light room, London by the author. Original art work by David Hockney

Of course, while I was playing and innocently enjoying creativity, war was breaking out.

My phone became less art tool, more conduit to the news. Initially I was in that observation stage, watching horror with horror. Gradually that moved to response and analysis. I have debated whether here is the place to express my thoughts. It is not the place for all of them. Nor is it a place to dump grief and fear or to seek to alter your own views. But it is a newsletter about the way our previous careers can influence our lives now and it is about the process of creativity in general, not just art.

So I will say this. In my previous career as a barrister and Judge (in which I dealt substantially with human rights, refugees and violence) it became second nature to look at a situation from multiple view points. It was often the case that merit and demerit could be found on the arguments on all sides of a conflict. Insight came from seeing things from all viewpoints, looking at them not in isolation but studying how they intersected. That insight often led to the ability to create a new way forward.

This process included looking at issues from perspectives I could not in anyway condone. My masters degree in Criminology saw me sitting in cells with hardened criminals and writing about what causes people to commit violent offences. Understanding and taking about causation is not the same at all as condoning it. Contextualising conflict is in no way incompatible with the strongest of condemnation for individual choices. Nor does looking at things from all sides prevent the subsequent making of decisions and the decrying of injustice. It may however require those declarations to be made against more than one party. In no way is a multi-perspective analysis the equivalent of neutrality or abdication of moral judgement. It does facilitate the taking of sides on individual discrete issues rather than at a generalised partisan level.

Over the past days I have been surrounded ( by friends, online acquaintances and physically when a protest march held up my London bus) with people seeking to press me to pick one perspective or another. I am being asked to ‘stand with’ one group at the expense of the other. To designate one side as meritorious and one as demeritorious. To fix my gaze through the eyes of one people, chosen as the most deserving, the most ill done to, the most justified.

The iPhone I was using to make my pano shots is one which replaced an earlier model which is now in the hands of my Mother. Mostly it works fine and is certainly adequate for her needs to call, text, tot up her shopping costs on the calculator and to make occasional forays on to the internet. The camera however malfunctions as a consequence of the phone having been dropped. Photos taken through its lens are full of jagged edges and blurred out parts.

When we experience trauma, especially trauma layered upon trauma upon trauma, the way we see things changes. Events look different compared to people who have experience of different trauma or to someone who has no relevant trauma to speak of. This is not at all to say that their perspective is to be dismissed. The rather beautifully ethereal photos my Mother’s phone produces invite inspiring and fascinating interpretations and responses to the mundane bedding plants or newly purchased clothes she wants me to see. It is not that trauma invalidates a perspective. It can however change and harden it considerably, often rendering it beyond easy recognition to those who come to it from a different experience.

This metaphor, combined with my previous career training enables me to both feel the visceral horror at barbaric acts and to place them in a historical context. I can grief deeply the loss of people connected closely to people I am connected to and feel the fear and desperation of people I do not know who share a different culture and expression of faith to me. I can condemn the massacres as inhumane and condemn the blocking of humanitarian aid. I can struggle to comprehend how humans can be so cruel and still believe that human rights apply to all humans. I can grieve for suffering Israeli children and suffering Palestinian children. I can hear and comprehend the arguments for totally opposing viewpoints (and there are many more than two in this situation) and I can accept some, reject others and weigh equally the remainder.

Of course a capacity for looking at all angles does not remove the human emotions attached to the material. If we are looking at a chair on which we nursed a baby or read our favourite books our drawing will be full of light and fondness. If it is a chair on which we sat at a desk struggling with a job we hated or on which we sat to receive news of a bereavement, then our expressive mark making will be very different.

I can look at all sides of the Middle Eastern conflict but I cannot rid myself of feelings of revulsion anymore than I could when dealing with images of abused children in a court room. I can wrote considered essays but I cannot deny the fear I feel. Not would I want to be so emotionally disabled, so empty of empathy, for that would be to be as damaged as the perpetrators of hate and war crimes. All one can do is recognise those feelings, accept them as valid and ensure that destructive emotions are not the sole propellors for action, that they are not allowed to crowd out fuller truths.

If we all walk around a chair the image we draw will not be the same. If we all take an iPhone and wave it around a Lightroom, the photos will vary. The ultimate conclusions I come to about the current Middle Eastern situation may or may not be the same as yours and I have no desire to use this space to change how you think of feel.

What I do want to say is simply this: whether you are making a drawing of furniture or making your mind up when watching the news, I agree with Hockney. Both your art and your opinions will be more creative, more interesting, more inspiring to others, more influential, more likely to make others think in new ways, ways that can prompt new art and new politics, if you walk around and look at it from different perspectives. That includes perspectives you don’t agree with and which which don’t agree with you. Get down on the dirty floor and look at the underside of your chair. Observe the underbelly as well as the bright shining surface of your subject. See what you can make of photos that appear completely distorted. See if you can roam across borders to gather your raw material.

The second newsletter I send each month has been timed to come out roughly around the time of the new moon. A new moon traditionally is associated with initiating new beginnings, beginning a new cycle and ending one that goes before. As I write this piece, that new moon will soon hang over both sides of the Gazan border. I dare to fervently wish for what currently seems impossible, for isn’t that the definition creative process and learning? I wish for the start of a new peaceful cycle for all whose eyes look heavenward for hope tonight.

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For you to ponder:

This time around I am sure we have plenty of existential questions to ponder without me adding more. So I will ask only this:

Are you doing enough to protect your mental and emotional welfare?

Here is one link that can help you to do so from At The Well, an organisation that provides resources to consider Rosh Chodesh, the Jewish way to mark the New Moon. And this article on dealing with crises generally from a Muslim viewpoint has much to teach people of all faiths in all kinds of difficult situations.

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From the studio:

Years ago I was represented by a gallery in Jerusalem who sold my collages of graffit photos taken in The Old City, one of which you can see below. The reason I found the gallery in the first place was that it stocked the calligraphic work of Gazan street artist Shareef Sarhan. For obvious reasons I am unable to contact him to ask for permission to share image of his work but I can direct you to images of his art here and this article about the lighthouse he built from the rubble of previous bombings.

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Finally a blessing:

May all humans know peace.

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Shalom and Salaam,

Helen