In the week of 29 September till 3 October, Marloes van Houten guest lectured at the HQ Art School in the Netherlands for their “Arts and Society” series. Together with her students she created art to support the peace and democracy protests in Hong Kong. We invited Marloes and Anne-Ruth, one of the Dance major students to write this guest post for The Voice Project.

Art speaks

AR: In class we learned about the different ways in which art can ‘speak’. “Art are words spoken in different forms and shapes with the ability to create and influence situations. Art can be our fingerprint we leave to this world. Art can be a letter we write to people/situations, wherein we embody the text of the letter through the music, dance, drawing, etcetera we make. Art can be used as a way to dialogue, as a transformative tool or to make you conscious of something”.

MvH: That covers indeed part of the core of my guest lecture. In this time and age, we seem to thing of creating things through mechanical or 3D production. At the same time the arts are sometimes viewed as a commodity. Both conviction make us forgot that the verbal and non-verbal ‘words’ spoken have the power to create and influence things as well. Maybe not always in a 1-to-1 mode, where an art protest leads to the immediate wished for results, but ‘speaking’ in any kind of art modality (written text, dance, theatre, poetry, etcetera) always has an effect. In the Jewish tradition they believe that the numbers 3 and 4 are connected. Something should be ‘spoken’ three times for it to become solid, materialized and visible in the natural world the fourth time. Potentially, we can learn from this way of thinking when we reflect upon art making, and see it more as acts that give a push to the birthing process of social change transition processes.

To make the topic tangible and concrete, I shared a lot of case study stories on the topic of the class, from ‘external projects’ or from my own working experience using the arts in conflict transformation, activist or dialogue projects.

AR: My classmates reflected on the class in the following way: “we love the new way of thinking”, “We want to learn more about how we can accomplish peace by using our creative minds” and “this is truly a form of using art to transform a situation”.

Umbrella revolution in Hong Kong

AR: During the second part of the afternoon Marloes told us about the umbrella revolution in Hong Kong. Hong Kong had an agreement with China that they were promised to choose their own leader within a couple of years, but now China changed it a little bit, limiting their freedom of choice. When the police reacted with violence to students peaceful protests, the general public stood up and joined them in the streets.

 

MvH: I explained to the students that you have to look beyond the surface of a conflict, to see that the current issue is often just a reflection of deeper laying disparities. “Hong Kong is not just fighting for universal suffrage, but for its existence in general”.

Art in Action

MvH: After the class, I invited the students to create an art work using one or more art modalities to: 1) raise awareness for the situation. 2) to positively influence the situation, based on the idea that art can be like a prayer/embodied spiritual practice that breakthrough deadlocks and gives rise to new things.

 

AR: I chose to make a dance on the song “Storm” by Lifehouse, because I realized that everything must feel like a storm for the Hong Kong people. A moment where they don’t see how it can change. Some lines of the song go like this: “I know you didn’t bring me out here to drown. So why I am ten feet under and upside down. If I would just see You. This Darkness would turn to Light.”

AR: The song also has a hopeful part where they sing that God will catch you when you fall. That everything will be alright. I wanted to express the chaos people must feel and I wanted to battle for breakthrough for these people/ situation through my dance. To me it felt like an embodied prayer of hope. The chorus was something that I choreographed, but the other parts were improvisation. I think using improvisation can sometimes make the dance more personal and powerful, cause you choreograph really in the moment.

MvH: I acknowledged the strength improvisation can have and agreed that AR could work in this way.

What she made in such a short amount of time was already very powerful in its authenticity. It expressed both ‘the not knowing’ and ‘the search for something solid’ and the ‘hope for change and for the dark clouds to be lifted’. If there was more time, I would have liked to work together with AR to develop the dance further. While I watched the dance video and worked on the photos of AR’s dance, the title ‘Hopeful Storm Dance’ came up.

The other students created songs, paintings and poems which we shared with each other. Here, are three examples:

 

 

Dutch art school students with their version of Under My Umbrella in support of the HK protesters:

 

Dutch – HK art sharing and support

MvH: I made the connection to Hong Kong, by posting one artwork a day on the facebook page https://www.facebook.com/hearttohardhq of my website www.hearttohard.nl, and on the Art for Peace and Democracy facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Arts-for-Peace-and-Democracy/1480522885547977 After teaching and debriefing, I decided to join the art activism act as well and wrote a poem, which I entitled ‘latter rain’.

Latter rain

I was hoping
for the winds of change
to blow, suddenly
and swift fully

For a million suns
to arise
out of the doom of day
after the tiring nights

For the moon
worshiped for so long
to sing back

For something miraculous
But none of these heavingly bodies
seem to have anything to say

The director of the central government’s liaison office mocks:
“The sun rises as usual,”
His eyes fooled him

His other senses left out
of the listening-game

The sun is tired
The moon shines not as bright
The stars yearn
and the wind has cocooned itself
Can’t you see….

I am standing on the shore
Where are You?
I am shouting and being silent
all at once…..

We need Your latter rain
Your glorious sunbeams
to burst into our night and day
We need Your justice and fairness
to FLOW
Like a river
that never runs dry

I am standing on the shore
like a watch(wo)man

~ Marloes ~
1 October 2014

MvH & AR: We believe art activism is very powerful, as a means of raising awareness and creating something new through the ‘words’ spoken in artistic languages we send out into the world. In this way art can be a ‘rites-de-passage’. Wherein the artworks created work like an encouraging and supportive crowd of non-material witnesses, standing along the lines of a community in transition, protecting the people having to go from separation, through a chaotic liminal space, towards reaggregation and incorporation.

We would like to encourage other teachers and students to also get involved in art activism.

Anne-Ruth Biesbrouck
Marloes van Houten

Authors:

 

Marloes van Houten is a Dutch art educator who set up a new educational trajectory at the HQ school (www.hqschool.nl) last year, which focuses on using the Arts for Social Justice. She now works in Hong Kong as a researcher, teacher and performing artist and founded/owned www.hearttohard.nl, a platform that employs research, art projects and coaching, to address injustices that prevent individuals/ communities to live life wholeheartedly and abundantly.

Anne-Ruth Biesbrouck is a Belgium student of the Dutch HQ art school. She majors in Dance.