CLAT – Prepare Yourself Flashcards
(Chapter subtitle)
All the arts from all the world for all of God’s purposes.
(3) Realities about the Arts:
REALITY: People communicate in almost seven thousand languages around the world, not just by spoken words, but also through artistically rendered song, drama, dance, visual arts, story, and other special forms.
REALITY: All communities have nonexistent or imperfect relationships with God, and struggle with social upheaval, violence, disease, anger, sexual immorality, anxiety, and fear.
REALITY: God gave every community unique gifts of artistic communication to tell the Truth, and bring healing and hope and joy in response to these problems. Many of these gifts, however, lie dormant, misused, or dying.
What are the arts?
Special kinds of communication which differ in two ways from other communication forms:
- Artistic communications place greater emphasis on manipulating form than everyday interactions.
- Artistic communications are bounded spheres of interaction that have beginnings and endings between which people interact in unusually patterned ways. (Stone 1979)
- Stone (1979), Kpelle of Liberia, artistic events are “set off and made distinct from the natural world of everyday life by the participants”
Stone (1979)
Among the Kpelle of Liberia, artistic events are “set off and made distinct from the natural world of everyday life by the participants.”
How do arts and culture interact?
The arts may both reflect (homologous) or influence (transformative) the cultures in which they exist.
homologous (source)
Feld (1984)
transformative (two sources)
Beeman (1997) and Jules-Rosette (1985)
homologous
art form and culture have same shape (Feld 1984)
Feld (1984) example of homologous interaction of arts and culture
In PNG, musical form of “lift-up-over-sounding” reflects Kaluli communication pattern of “interrupting” each other [look for coherence, not correlation [of culture and art forms]
Beeman (1997)
Artistic communication events help people understand the world around them; they are intentional, with the aim to be effective in one of two ways:
- conservative (confirm what people think)
- transformative (change people’s minds)
Jules-Rosette (1985)
Artistic communication provides symbolic protection for critical content: women in African Apostolic Church may not preach but can interrupt a sermon with a critical song (“Men, stop beating your wives”).
What is Creativity? – What happens when artistic creativity occurs?
Artistic creativity occurs when one or more people draw on their personal skills, the social patterns of their culture, and symbolic systems to produce an event or work of heightened communication that has not previously existed in its exact form. (CLAT xix)
What is creativity? - God creates…
…ex nihilo (out of nothing); we create ex creatio (out of God’s creation)
[Best (2003)—God as Continuous Outpourer; we are made in His image, created for continual outpouring, too, but He is singularly infinite, while humans are “unique and multiplied finitude”]
What is creativity’s purpose and what is tradition? - 3 sources/quotes
Beeman (1997) — intentional artistic communication events help people understand the world around them: it is either conservative (confirming what they think) or transformative (changing/challenging what they think)
Ricouer (1984) — “A tradition is constituted by the interplay of innovation and sedimentation.”
Edge (2010) — “Tradition is innovation that succeeds.”
Best (2003) idea/quote
God is a Continuous Outpourer; made in His image, we are created for continual outpouring, too, but He is singularly infinite, while humans are “unique and multiplied finitude”
