***  Haus der Kulturen der Welt: Forum1 Archive  ***
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   [Date]: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 06:35:38 PST
   [From]: "Raul Ferrera-Balanquet" <ferrera98@hotmail.com>
     [To]: forum1@hkw.kbx.de
[Subject]: Re: [forum1] Re: Act of art rather than work of art

Amigos:

The debate about the nature of art has created some questions. Being a 
"process artist," I have been more interested in the sico-emotional reaction 
that prompt you to produced the object which then is presented for 
consumption. What goes into the process seem more fascinated to me specially 
because, in my case, art become a healing process that allows me to 
articulate my life experience.

Ahora, when we talk about the nature of art, how can we contextualized the 
sources from where the creative juices emanate? Currently, there is such 
backlash against issues of "identity" that we forget to related the 
production of art to the complex territories where we had lived and to our 
experiencias.
Why the art we produced speak to certain people and no to all?
Why art can not be universal because the nations and cultural formation have 
given us specific vocabularies?
How can we compare the nature of the art in culture that are still connected 
to the land to others, like the one we have in the forum that is connected 
to the cyberspace?
Is art produced to keep cultural traditions or to ideologically manipulated 
other people and culture?
Who has the power to call an object art? What are the parameters we use to 
make that distinction?
Who has the privilege to engage in the production of art in our culture?



Raul Ferrera-Balanquet, MFA
Interdisciplinary Artist and Scholar
ferrera98@hotmail.com
http://www.artswire.org/krosrods/curriculum/index.html