We are living in a time when world leaders rail against whole groups of people: immigrants and refugees, believers of other faiths, people of non-conforming sexual identities. There are even examples of certain white cis men up for grabs, by champions of democracy no less—recall Hillary Clinton’s 2016 wholesale labeling of President Donald Trump’s supporters as “the deplorables.” It’s a time when everyone has been given permission to do the same: shamelessly air and act on prejudices related to differences in class, race, religion, sexuality, age, and nationality, as well as circumstances, like incarceration, or opinions, like political views. It’s a time that could well drain hope from anyone longing to see humans unite around truly wicked problems facing us all, beginning with the increasing siege upon the very earth we live upon.
Philosopher Charles Taylor’s theory of social imaginaries points out that humans carry around ideas about whole groups of people that are not based on reality or experience but that nonetheless produce concrete impacts, such as making it harder for them to get jobs or housing despite their qualifications. In a time characterized by sweeping generalizations about the “other,” I look for opportunities in the arts to remind us of the possibility of finding common cause amongst people erstwhile distrustful of each other.
I’m interested in how collaborative art-making provides ways to shake up our misconceptions about groups of people with different identities than our own through direct and meaningful contact rather than through symbolic means, like representation in dramatic literature. Two other ways that art-making offers this are by artists facilitating projects with people who are ostensibly “other” but with whom they find commonality, and by bringing together people with significant power disparities, who have few opportunities to relate deeply on a level playing field. While it’s not obvious how to bring such efforts to scale, contact across difference in the context of art-making can be life-changing.
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