Month: September 2018

The TED talk I watched was the one about painting favelas in Rio to create art in a place of poverty. I found this to be a very interesting talk, and it especially peaked my interest when they started to talk about helping the communities through this art. It really is amazing the impact that just some color had on this poverty stricken place. The art was installed, and then all of a sudden this is a beautiful community and newspapers are writing about it. This really reminds me of the butterfly effect, how one small action can multiply and change the world. A setback to this art is the funding and the large scale that it is on. Many people wouldn’t want to invest in this project because the results aren’t clearly seen and the project isn’t laid out in exact measurements. But the lack of preparation is what makes this so special and unique. Like Koolhause said, this project has room to grow from the ground up, organically, like the favelas that it is based on. With planning and perfection, the organic and natural element would be lost. Knowing the amount of paint or how many houses involved takes away from the experience the neighborhood gets from it. This isn’t just artists choosing a spot to put their next piece of art, this is an entire community participating in the betterment of their homes.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coalescing

After rereading Southan’s essay again, I am left with the same feeling of general uneasiness as I was the first time. After thinking deeply about many of the ideas mentioned, this project feels like a cult to me. These people are trying to make each and everyone of their members into a uniform perfect citizen, giving away their life to charity. In a sense, this is very selfless and kind, but also very creepy . I found that I did understand the text better, and repetition does help the level of retention and the small pieces start to come together in my mind.

1.  “[Art] demands resources that, in the right hands, could have saved lives”(Southan, 3). I commented on this saying is art not also valuable in saving lives? While maybe not everyone can publish a book with extreme social repercussions, or make a movie that changes the world, how is anyone supposed to make any significant difference with art if they can’t have any experience making it? I feel that without art, much of life would be lived in a lethargic and pointless state. Many people refer to the craft or career that they choose as an art, so then is art not anything that someone puts passion into? This is where I find holes in the logic of EA’s.
2. With the analogy to the analogy to the shallow pond, I feel that there are many more factors involved than just those mentioned in the essay. In that situation, the problem is easily viewed and easily fixed, where poverty and lack of resources can be seen as out of sight, out of mind. Problems like poverty are also much more complex than a child drowning in a pond. For the child, you simply remove them from the harmful situation and stop them from drowning. Poverty has been a problem for many years and will continue to be a problem in the years to come.