Finally someone has come up with a (relatively) simple way to describe Web 2.0:
My bookshelves are like the proverbial loaves and fishes, in that no matter how many times I go through them and cull out everything I don’t HAVE to own, they produce boxes and boxes that need to be sold or donated to make room for the new ones I am continually acquiring.
I sold this last batch of 8 boxes in only 3 stops (well, four, but one didn’t buy ANYTHING). And I got away with only buying 2 new (used) ones in exchange. One of these was Flower Portraits: the Life Cycle of Beauty, by the photographer Joyce Tenneson.
Tenneson had just finished a book of photographs on women in the third phase of their lives, and had become fascinated by the unexpected beauty she saw in these older women. Flowers had long been a photographic muse for her and in this, her next book, she started photographing them throughout their life cycle too. What she found amazed her; in her own words “I saw wisdom and beauty with new eyes”.
As a budding photographer (and aging woman) I love these expansive images, unfolding expressions of an innate beauty that transforms but does not fade.
An article by Jonathan Lethem caught my eye in February’s issue of Harper’s (The Ecstasy of Influence). The piece itself was very clever, and has a fabulous twist I won’t go into here, but what interested me most about it was his description of art as something that exists simultaneously in two markets – the market economy and the gift economy.
This interested me on at least two levels since 1) I am an artist, and 2) my work in the world – my ‘worldly art’ so to speak, given that I am in the business of design and communications – is inextricably entwined with the gift economy and exchange of Web2.0. So, the idea of art that can be ‘sold’ and yet still remain a gift was intriguing, and rang true to my own experience.
Much of Lethem’s article was inspired by the ideas in Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, which cites the central tenant of a gift as something that cannot be kept, but must be given away. In the gift of art what is passed can be an experience, like inspiration or illumination of some kind. Paraphrasing Hyde, “Art that matters to us – which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the sense, or offers courage for living, however we chose to describe the experience – is received as a gift is received.”
But this way of gifting goes beyond art; much that the people I work with do also occurs within the gift economy. Heartland’s Thought Leader Gatherings, for example, are all about fostering courage and hope and inspiration, and much of the wonderful work done by the World Café exists entirely within the gift economy of volunteerism.
Lethem describes the cardinal difference between gift and economy exchange as his assertion that “a gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people, whereas the sale of a commodity leaves no necessary connection.”
I love this beautiful idea of all of us gifting our art (whatever that might be) out into the world and by doing so establishing an ever-widening network of feeling-bonds …
This morning’s Thought Leader Gathering stimulated several creative threads for me, as usual.
Conversation starter James O’Dea of IONS (The Institute of Noetic Sciences) mesmerized us with his Irish lilt telling mythological tales of decay & redemption. The one that made the strongest impression on me was of Orpheus & his ability to counter the call of the deadly sirens (which O’Dea compared with the necrophiliac lure of cultural ‘norms’ like war and greed) with the enchantment of his own poetic imagination, with love of life or biophilia.
The meaning I made of this story is that I can find solid ground in my innate love of life & my relationship with nature, that I must call on the power of my creativity to address the challenges of my life & times… and that new answers won’t be found in old forms.
One of the new forms I’m exploring here in this blog is an attempt to incorporate many different parts of my life into a comprehensive whole. This makes the Beauty Dialogues hard to categorize, I know, and I am deeply cognizant that the ‘lack of professionalism’ in doing things this way may devalue me and my work in some contexts. On the other hand this mash-up – of metaphysical inquiry, ‘private’ thought, ideas about my work and field, my art & things that inspire me, social interactions, dreams, tools, resources & references, the promotion of my own work and that of my friends – represents a new paradigm, and I think it gives a truer sense of what we are all really like than the compartmentalization of earlier, more traditional, forms did.
I can only imagine we will be seeing this integration of life and work more and more, and I’m looking forward to the new forms we’ll create together.
Welcome!
