Little Is Much When God Is In It: The "R5" Visual Arts Seminar and Studio in South Africa
by Rachel Hostetter Smith
Rachel Hostetter Smith is Gilkison Professor of Art History at Taylor University. She co-led the “R5” seminar in South Africa with Joel Carpenter of the Nagel Institute at Calvin College and is curator and project director of the exhibition Between the Shadow and the Light which will travel in the U.S. into 2018. For information contact her at rcsmith@taylor.edu.
In June of 2013, a group of twenty-one artists from North America and Africa gathered in South Africa for two weeks of intensive interaction—living, learning, and creating together. These artists were participants in a seminar co-sponsored by the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, the Lilly Fellows Program in the Humanities and the Arts, and the Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity at Calvin College. The event was titled “R5,”a convenient pneumonic device based on the five-rand coin so commonly found in South Africa, used here to highlight five critical issues with which South African artists struggle:
Rachel Hostetter Smith is Gilkison Professor of Art History at Taylor University. She co-led the “R5” seminar in South Africa with Joel Carpenter of the Nagel Institute at Calvin College and is curator and project director of the exhibition Between the Shadow and the Light which will travel in the U.S. into 2018. For information contact her at rcsmith@taylor.edu.
In June of 2013, a group of twenty-one artists from North America and Africa gathered in South Africa for two weeks of intensive interaction—living, learning, and creating together. These artists were participants in a seminar co-sponsored by the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, the Lilly Fellows Program in the Humanities and the Arts, and the Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity at Calvin College. The event was titled “R5,”a convenient pneumonic device based on the five-rand coin so commonly found in South Africa, used here to highlight five critical issues with which South African artists struggle:
- Remembrance: the intertwined and contested histories of varied people groups.
- Resistance: the old, vivid, and continuing tradition of prophetic artistry.
- Reconciliation: persistent questions over how to justly reconcile aggrieved people.
- Representation: in a post-colonial, multicultural society, who may represent whom?
- Re-visioning: how does hope factor into the human—and artistic—imagination?
The “R5” Seminar program followed a structure established by an earlier visual arts seminar of North American and Asian artists that took place in 2008 in Indonesia. (That project resulted in Charis: Boundary Crossings—Neighbors, Strangers, Family, Friends, a highly successful exhibit that traveled across North America from 2009 through 2012.) The participating artists in the “R5” seminar committed, on their acceptance to the seminar, to produce artwork in response to their shared experience in South Africa. That work constitutes a second traveling exhibition titled Between the Shadow and the Light that opened in September 2014 at Xavier University and the McKenna Museum of African American Art in New Orleans in conjunction with the Lilly Fellows conference on the theme, “A Future City, A New Creation: Equal on All Sides.”1
It has become a commonplace to quote Mark Twain in The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It on the benefits of travel:
It has become a commonplace to quote Mark Twain in The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It on the benefits of travel:
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.
While what Twain claims is often borne out, it is also true that many travelers return home essentially the same, their notions of peoples and places unchallenged and unchanged. This essay attempts to identify some key strategies of transformative travel programs for artistic and cultural engagement that may produce a more lasting effect on the participants by considering the case of “R5: A Visual Arts Seminar and Studio in South Africa” and its 2008 predecessor which took place in Indonesia.
Immersive Education as a Model for Faculty Development: The Indonesia Seminar
Six years ago, in June 2008, a group of artists and scholars from North America and Asia gathered in Indonesia to participate in an experiment in trans-cultural engagement: a two-week, immersive seminar based in Java and Bali on Christianity, contextualization, and the visual arts. This project was co-sponsored by the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), Calvin College’s Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity, and the Asian Christian Artists’ Association. The Indonesia Seminar was the first in a new initiative—the Gospel and Culture Seminars—intended to bring North American educators and scholars together with their counterparts in another part of the world better to understand the shift that is occurring in economic power and cultural influence from the West to the global East and South.
So what set this program apart from the CCCU’s other faculty development initiatives? First, the program was designed to bring together a group of North Americans with their counterparts in another part of the world for prolonged engagement. Second, there was the remarkable decision by the lead donors to do a seminar on the arts as central to the work of God in the world. And third, to extend the benefits of the seminar, the sponsors expected that participants would produce a response to their experience that would be shared with others. That meant creating works of art that would form a traveling exhibition with supporting media and publications.
Following a format developed by Bob and Alice Evans of the Plowshares Institute, a Christian organization dedicated to fostering peacemaking efforts around the world, the participants were given a packet of readings to undertake before meeting face to face.2 The North American team members came together for a single intensive day of orientation at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. They heard presentations on the history and current state of Indonesia, engaged in discussions of readings, team-building and cross-cultural sensitivity exercises, and fellowship before boarding a plane for the long journey to Indonesia to meet up with their Asian counterparts. Once there, seminar participants followed a rigorous schedule, first on Java and then on Bali, discussing their art and viewing cultural sites and events that introduced them to the rich artistic and cultural heritage as well as the complex realities of contemporary Indonesia. They also learned about Indonesian peacemaking efforts and the Church in Indonesia. While it might seem absurd or at least foolhardy to expect that a cohesive body of work would emerge without thematic direction, those who work with creatives come to know that you have to allow the experience to generate a natural response. Carefully planned exposure combined with intragroup engagement inspires a vibrant dialogue in art that has coherence, energy, and fresh insight without being forced or prescribed. Remarkable as it might seem, a theme did emerge and it did so naturally: Charis: Boundary Crossings—Neighbors, Strangers, Family, Friends.
Charis, from the Greek for “favor” or “grace,” but best translated as “goodwill,” explored the implications of Christian faith and effective artistic practice in an increasingly visually-oriented world where the convergence of cultures is the norm rather than the exception. Reconsidering the importance of our shared humanity in relation to the realities of genuine difference as we seek to live together in a shrinking and increasingly interdependent world, the exhibition presented the essential challenge of living with a spirit of grace (and all that entails) toward ones’ neighbor, whether that neighbor is next door or on the other side of the globe. Charis represents the artists’ dialogue about the challenges of cross-cultural communication and understanding. The works reflected the need for people of faith to address real-world issues of social justice, peace, and reconciliation as well as the effects of globalization wherever one lives. It also grappled with the role of the artist in a complex context where one’s grasp of issues is often tenuous or slippery.
The success of this exhibition can be attributed, in large part, to widely varied and strategic programming designed to engage diverse audiences with the art and the issues it raised. These strategies are outlined in an article titled, “Art as Invitation: Considering New Paradigms for Scholarship and Global Engagement through the Charis Exhibit,” published in the Summer 2013 issue of the Christian Scholar’s Review. The impact of that visual arts seminar (and its fruit in the form of the exhibit) was, in fact, so far-reaching that organizers and key partners decided to do it again, this time in South Africa, led by Joel Carpenter of the Nagel Institute and myself.
“R5”: A Visual Arts Seminar and Studio in South Africa
Why South Africa? you might wonder. Ask almost anyone who has been there. South Africa gets under your skin—and into your heart. It is a place where one can see with absolute clarity that God’s love is the only true hope for the world while also observing the evidence of God’s goodness and grace in startling ways, something that Archbishop Desmond Tutu has argued so effectively in his book, No Future without Forgiveness.
Contemporary South Africa is the product of the convergence of rich yet diverse cultures: African, European, Malaysian, and Indian, to mention only the most evident. It is also a country that is experiencing a renaissance of the arts. Recent history, contentious issues—economic, political, and religious—and contemporary social challenges create a compelling setting for reflection and representation by artists who seek to address these concerns. In this country, said one of Africa’s most eminent art critics, Okwui Enwezor, “art is not just an interpretation or facsimile of history, but a moral force in the production of a new reality, and hope for a damaged society.”3 It is a place where artists continue to act both as piercing prophets and hopeful seers.
The program we developed was carefully constructed to introduce the artists to many of the complexities of the social, economic, and political situation in South Africa, its history, and contemporary situation. It was also designed to engage participants with how artists in South Africa have served as both “piercing prophets” and “hopeful seers,” prompting people to action where change was needed and providing a vision of what might be. In addition, it provided for ways to process together all that we encountered intellectually, spiritually, and creatively.
We visited informal settlements and established communities originally designated as townships under apartheid in the environs of Johannesburg and Cape Town.4 We worshipped in several different churches including the historic St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town (where Archbishop Desmond Tutu served as the first black Archbishop during the height of the struggle against apartheid in the 1980s) and J. L. Zwane Church in the township of Guguletu (known for its extensive slate of service and outreach programs to the community). We visited historic sites like Cape Point and Groot Constantia Vineyards and toured contemporary monuments and museums like Freedom Park and the Apartheid Museum. We met with representatives of several universities and visited important civic and governmental centers, most notably the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg which was deliberately built on the site of an historic prison on what is now known as Constitution Hill. And we saw lots of art—in museums and galleries, “crawling” the arts districts of Johannesburg, Stellenbosch, and Cape Town, and visited the studios of leading artists, most notably William Kentridge and Diane Victor.
But perhaps more significantly, in virtually every place we met with people who shared their experience and stories with us. Their openness helped us to understand the complex realities of life and living in South Africa, past and present.
Immersive Education as a Model for Faculty Development: The Indonesia Seminar
Six years ago, in June 2008, a group of artists and scholars from North America and Asia gathered in Indonesia to participate in an experiment in trans-cultural engagement: a two-week, immersive seminar based in Java and Bali on Christianity, contextualization, and the visual arts. This project was co-sponsored by the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), Calvin College’s Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity, and the Asian Christian Artists’ Association. The Indonesia Seminar was the first in a new initiative—the Gospel and Culture Seminars—intended to bring North American educators and scholars together with their counterparts in another part of the world better to understand the shift that is occurring in economic power and cultural influence from the West to the global East and South.
So what set this program apart from the CCCU’s other faculty development initiatives? First, the program was designed to bring together a group of North Americans with their counterparts in another part of the world for prolonged engagement. Second, there was the remarkable decision by the lead donors to do a seminar on the arts as central to the work of God in the world. And third, to extend the benefits of the seminar, the sponsors expected that participants would produce a response to their experience that would be shared with others. That meant creating works of art that would form a traveling exhibition with supporting media and publications.
Following a format developed by Bob and Alice Evans of the Plowshares Institute, a Christian organization dedicated to fostering peacemaking efforts around the world, the participants were given a packet of readings to undertake before meeting face to face.2 The North American team members came together for a single intensive day of orientation at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. They heard presentations on the history and current state of Indonesia, engaged in discussions of readings, team-building and cross-cultural sensitivity exercises, and fellowship before boarding a plane for the long journey to Indonesia to meet up with their Asian counterparts. Once there, seminar participants followed a rigorous schedule, first on Java and then on Bali, discussing their art and viewing cultural sites and events that introduced them to the rich artistic and cultural heritage as well as the complex realities of contemporary Indonesia. They also learned about Indonesian peacemaking efforts and the Church in Indonesia. While it might seem absurd or at least foolhardy to expect that a cohesive body of work would emerge without thematic direction, those who work with creatives come to know that you have to allow the experience to generate a natural response. Carefully planned exposure combined with intragroup engagement inspires a vibrant dialogue in art that has coherence, energy, and fresh insight without being forced or prescribed. Remarkable as it might seem, a theme did emerge and it did so naturally: Charis: Boundary Crossings—Neighbors, Strangers, Family, Friends.
Charis, from the Greek for “favor” or “grace,” but best translated as “goodwill,” explored the implications of Christian faith and effective artistic practice in an increasingly visually-oriented world where the convergence of cultures is the norm rather than the exception. Reconsidering the importance of our shared humanity in relation to the realities of genuine difference as we seek to live together in a shrinking and increasingly interdependent world, the exhibition presented the essential challenge of living with a spirit of grace (and all that entails) toward ones’ neighbor, whether that neighbor is next door or on the other side of the globe. Charis represents the artists’ dialogue about the challenges of cross-cultural communication and understanding. The works reflected the need for people of faith to address real-world issues of social justice, peace, and reconciliation as well as the effects of globalization wherever one lives. It also grappled with the role of the artist in a complex context where one’s grasp of issues is often tenuous or slippery.
The success of this exhibition can be attributed, in large part, to widely varied and strategic programming designed to engage diverse audiences with the art and the issues it raised. These strategies are outlined in an article titled, “Art as Invitation: Considering New Paradigms for Scholarship and Global Engagement through the Charis Exhibit,” published in the Summer 2013 issue of the Christian Scholar’s Review. The impact of that visual arts seminar (and its fruit in the form of the exhibit) was, in fact, so far-reaching that organizers and key partners decided to do it again, this time in South Africa, led by Joel Carpenter of the Nagel Institute and myself.
“R5”: A Visual Arts Seminar and Studio in South Africa
Why South Africa? you might wonder. Ask almost anyone who has been there. South Africa gets under your skin—and into your heart. It is a place where one can see with absolute clarity that God’s love is the only true hope for the world while also observing the evidence of God’s goodness and grace in startling ways, something that Archbishop Desmond Tutu has argued so effectively in his book, No Future without Forgiveness.
Contemporary South Africa is the product of the convergence of rich yet diverse cultures: African, European, Malaysian, and Indian, to mention only the most evident. It is also a country that is experiencing a renaissance of the arts. Recent history, contentious issues—economic, political, and religious—and contemporary social challenges create a compelling setting for reflection and representation by artists who seek to address these concerns. In this country, said one of Africa’s most eminent art critics, Okwui Enwezor, “art is not just an interpretation or facsimile of history, but a moral force in the production of a new reality, and hope for a damaged society.”3 It is a place where artists continue to act both as piercing prophets and hopeful seers.
The program we developed was carefully constructed to introduce the artists to many of the complexities of the social, economic, and political situation in South Africa, its history, and contemporary situation. It was also designed to engage participants with how artists in South Africa have served as both “piercing prophets” and “hopeful seers,” prompting people to action where change was needed and providing a vision of what might be. In addition, it provided for ways to process together all that we encountered intellectually, spiritually, and creatively.
We visited informal settlements and established communities originally designated as townships under apartheid in the environs of Johannesburg and Cape Town.4 We worshipped in several different churches including the historic St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town (where Archbishop Desmond Tutu served as the first black Archbishop during the height of the struggle against apartheid in the 1980s) and J. L. Zwane Church in the township of Guguletu (known for its extensive slate of service and outreach programs to the community). We visited historic sites like Cape Point and Groot Constantia Vineyards and toured contemporary monuments and museums like Freedom Park and the Apartheid Museum. We met with representatives of several universities and visited important civic and governmental centers, most notably the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg which was deliberately built on the site of an historic prison on what is now known as Constitution Hill. And we saw lots of art—in museums and galleries, “crawling” the arts districts of Johannesburg, Stellenbosch, and Cape Town, and visited the studios of leading artists, most notably William Kentridge and Diane Victor.
But perhaps more significantly, in virtually every place we met with people who shared their experience and stories with us. Their openness helped us to understand the complex realities of life and living in South Africa, past and present.
We heard from leaders in the historic struggle against apartheid and the process of national justice and reconciliation, such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prof. Piet Miering, who served with Tutu as the only Dutch Reformed minister on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). We heard from veterans of the struggle against apartheid, such as the poet and journalist Zenzile Khoisan of Cape Town, who also led investigations for the TRC. And we heard from current activists in the struggle for justice and human flourishing, such as the Rev. Paul Verryn at the Central Methodist Mission in Johannesburg.5
Group Shot after Meeting with Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu; Photo by Larry Thompson, 2013, “R5” Seminar in South Africa
We also heard from artists currently engaged in a great diversity of highly creative empowerment projects like the Journey to Freedom narratives and Artist Proof Studios. Meetings with artists like Diane Victor whose passionate dedication to addressing the many varied ills that threaten to undermine South Africa today were especially inspiring for many in our group.
Group Gathers in Studio of Diane Victor, Photo by Keith Barker, 2013, “R5” Seminar in South Africa
South Africa is often described as a place of stark extremes that co-exist often side-by-side. Drawing out those contrasts in meaningful ways was essential to the impact of the program. We carefully considered pacing and sequence as we set up the schedule for the seminar, providing for days that were sometimes focused and others that were intentionally shocking in the contrasts presented. We shared in the exuberant worship of Regina Mundi Church in Soweto on a Sunday morning followed by several hours taking in the grim dehumanizing realities of South Africa’s discriminatory policies and their frequent violent enforcement at the Apartheid Museum in the afternoon.6 On a day focused on monuments, we visited the Voortrekker Monument, “a massive granite tower that celebrates Afrikaners’ divinely ordained destiny in Pretoria in the morning followed by Freedom Park, a sunlit memorial garden to remember all who died in South Africa’s struggles and wars that same afternoon.”6 After enjoying the cool of the gracious, tree-lined streets of the university town of Stellenbosch, we walked accompanied by laughing children eager to catch our hands amidst the shacks made of scraps of wood and corrugated metal sheets in the crowded neighborhoods of Kayamandi, the adjoining township, where one member of our team lived.
Joel Carpenter describes what was clearly the most emotionally difficult day for the group this way:
Joel Carpenter describes what was clearly the most emotionally difficult day for the group this way:
Another morning we went to the Constitutional Court, where both the architecture and the art in its halls proclaim equal justice for all. But this was followed by a deeply disturbing visit to the Central Methodist Mission, an overworked shelter to some 1,000 homeless migrants, mostly from Zimbabwe. Then that evening we were hosted at the University of Johannesburg in its beautiful new art gallery for the opening of an exhibition, so we ended the day sipping wine and munching hors d’oeuvreswith a gallery crowd—but imagining the great crowd of homeless folk bedding down at the Methodist mission. Our group certainly felt disrupted and jarred by what they were encountering.7
In the days that followed, Joel and I were asked several times why we had not better prepared the group for what they had encountered at the Central Methodist Mission, thereby mitigating the distress it created for some members. Programs like “R5” commonly involve making judgment calls that are difficult. When leading student or other less experienced parties, I always provide a clear indication of what they will be encountering, alerting them to the effects it might have on them. While it might have been good to do that in this case, it is equally certain that had we done so, the impact would not have been the same. The contrasts among these three realities of contemporary South Africa—found within a few mile radius of Johannesburg city center—would have been dampened. The tremendous disparities in privilege and possibility for different members of South African society today—and in so many other places in our world—would have left less of a memorable impression. And in the days that followed, there were many instances of heartfelt and thoughtful interaction as North Americans and Africans alike brought their varied experiences and understandings to the table for consideration and response. Recognizing the complexity and intensity of exposure to such experiences, the program included regular periods of reflection and refreshment in order to process all we were encountering. But it was also important to be flexible, attentive to unexpected developments or needs and to provide for them accordingly.
Living, Learning, and Creating Together—Key Strategies
The arc of the two-week seminar began with a couple of days of foundational exposure to South African history and culture and community building activities as participants started to get to know one another. Essential to this time was sharing their art with one another each evening. This was followed by several days of meetings and visits in Johannesburg and Pretoria with some time for debriefing. After a day largely devoted to travel to Cape Town, we had four more days of widely varied activity in the Cape Town area with day trips to Stellenbosch and Robben Island. Each day was carefully planned to introduce a balance of exposure, interaction, and reflection. We concluded our time together in South Africa with several days in studio at a Catholic retreat center where the artists began to respond to what they had been learning through collaborative creative activities, individual studio time and reflection, conversation, and more formalized sessions of focused discussion. There was a lot of time to walk the grounds, take a stroll into town, sketch, or just be quiet. When we gathered for a final conversation on our last evening together, everyone had much to share—so much that our last session had to be extended by several hours so that we dispersed for bed for only a few hours of sleep before loading the bus for departure the following morning. It seems the studio is where artists do their most fruitful thinking.
There were a number of key strategies undertaken in the “R5” seminar that contributed to its distinctive character and impact. Some were carried forward from the Indonesia seminar. Some involved changes that reflected “learnings” about how better to engage artists in an intercultural context.
Ecumenism and Demographic Diversity
With the decision to undertake a second visual arts seminar, this time in South Africa, we decided to bring together an even more diverse group of participants. We wanted to have a truly ecumenical gathering to see if we might successfully come together as one body in Christ. We drew applications for the North American contingent from art faculty from both the CCCU and Lilly Network Schools, so the seminar included representatives that ranged widely in church affiliation: Catholic and Episcopal, Baptist and Wesleyan, Reformed and Evangelical. The African contingent represented an equally diverse range of Christian affiliation—not only Catholic and Protestant (including the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa) but also an African Independent Church (AIC). While most of the members of the North American contingent were from the United States, it included a Canadian and a Ghanaian. The African contingent included artists from six different African countries: Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa (including black South Africans and white Afrikaners). The cohort included roughly equal numbers of women and men and blacks and whites. Participants ranged in age from their twenties to their sixties. We were a diverse group indeed. In making these selections, we recognized that this level of diversity might present a challenge to community building and group cohesion. Nevertheless, we were committed to seeing whether their common commitment to Christian faith, distinct sensibilities as artists, and desire to pursue wholeness and restoration as expressed by their application would overcome those many differences. It did. It was a wonder to see how these shared commitments brought them together to listen to, learn from, and care for one another.
“Priming the Pump”
In preparation for the seminar, we set up a website where participants could access a selection of resources in advance of meeting in South Africa. A wide range of readings, films, and websites were posted with some identified as priorities for the group to review. Participants were also encouraged to recommend items for inclusion, giving them ownership in the group’s exposure and preparation. Biographies and photographs of all of the participants and their artwork were provided. All of these resources established common ground regarding South African art, history, and contemporary concerns on which our experience could be built, and offered a modest introduction to one another before we ever met in South Africa. Seeing samples of the artwork of the other participants heightened anticipation for their engagement with one another as artists and persons. Understanding that South Africa is a gift-giving culture where it is common for guests to bring small gifts to their hosts as an acknowledgment of their hospitality, we had asked each participant to consider what modest gifts they might bring that could be offered to people who hosted us for meetings, meals, or conversations. They brought books, small works of art, products, and small mementos from their home localities, including t-shirts and baseball caps of favorite teams or universities. It gave them a personal stake in extending something of themselves to those who shared so much of their time and their experience with us while we were there. It was a delight to see participants begin to ask if their particular gift might be given to a host who had particularly moved them in some way. We gave everything away that they had brought.
Building Community and Cultivating Community Care
The capacity to learn from one another depends on establishing a sense of community and trust within a short period of time. North American and African participants were matched up as roommates, carefully considering where there might be points of connection such as life situation, artistic interests, temperament, or spiritual interests. Mealtimes and riding on the bus provided time for casual conversation, the comforts of food, and laughter to take priority. They came to know one another’s habits and preferences and to provide for them as fellows in a shared enterprise. Prior to arriving in South Africa, we had sent out a listing of jobs related to community life and care, asking people to sign up for a couple of those responsibilities. They ranged from loading luggage when the group was in transit to organizing laundry, wrapping and presenting gifts to our hosts at each meeting to being attentive to members who might become ill. In some cases, we solicited participants to take responsibilities where they had particular expertise: documenting our time together through photography, planning our worship time, or serving as tech people when we needed media. Each job had two or three people assigned to it to foster cooperation and shared responsibility for the common good of the group. There was something for everyone to contribute regardless of differences in personality or expertise.
Total Immersion—Every Element Counts
Transformative intercultural experiences involve immersion in the host culture. For organizers it requires a consciousness of how each component is contributing to the objectives of the program no matter how small. Stopping at a beach for a box lunch to enjoy the sunshine and beauty of the landscape in the company of new friends might engender a love of place that is essential to coming to genuine care for its people. Explaining the significance of a local joke or species of flower makes one an insider momentarily. Shopping for SIM cards can contribute to recognizing patterns and practices that are different yet the same. One important element of our program was providing participants with a South African novel to read as we traveled so that even their recreational reading was related to South Africa. This drew them further into South African culture and the experiences of particular peoples. Since each book was being read by others in the group, conversations broke out over aspects of the stories that related to what we were encountering. As people finished one book, they swapped with others who had been given a different book. Many of the books, poetry, music, and films that we shared in preparation for the seminar and as we lived and learned together came to inform the artwork the artists eventually produced. It became a kind of group heritage. Accepting a last-minute offer of complementary tickets to attend the Cape Town Funny Fest on a night dedicated to raise funds for Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s charitable foundation afforded not only raucous laughter and diversion but an experience of popular culture that provided a glimpse into the social psyche of South Africa that is both vibrant and unimaginably complex. Attentiveness to how an unplanned encounter or opportunity might contribute to the experience can reap unexpected rewards. Total immersion involves planning like crazy while maintaining a readiness to embrace plan “B” when that serendipitous opportunity presents itself.
Intellectual, Spiritual, and Creative Processing
With all we were encountering, we needed regular time for reflection and processing, individually and together. Much of this was informal as we lived in community with one another and moved from one activity or appointment to another, each with its own character and benefit. But much of it was also formalized, through planned times of worship and prayer and regular group conversations to debrief from the experiences of the day. These debriefings were commonly prompted by a comment or question posed by one of the leaders or group members. It was also important to allow the issues needing attention to emerge through careful probing and gentle guidance. As our time progressed, these conversations became easier and more honest. We had come to trust each other. One evening as we approached the end of our time together, the Africans laid hold of the conversation, reflecting widely divergent perspectives on “Africa,” South Africa, and what it meant to be African, while the North Americans listened attentively. During our final conversation together, each subsequent speaker, asked to share their “learnings” from our time together, took longer and longer to explain all that they had gained from the experience, describing the questions and conundrums it had raised. We were so invested in this process that we lost a sense of the time as we talked together late into the night. But, it was equally significant to encourage the artists to process the experience in non-verbal, creative ways. We recommended they bring along not just a journal but also a sketchbook or paints. Several participants were tapped to engage the group in creative exercises or collaborative projects that unfolded over the course of the seminar. And the final days in studio found the artists immersed in conversation or thought as their hands sought to find expression of what was inside them on paper, in paint, or by bringing found objects together in some new form.
A Commitment to Follow Up
One thing is certain—knowing they were expected to produce something as individual artists and as a cadre of creatives altered the artists’ perceptions of their role from that of passive participants to proactive agents. The requirement of making work that would become part of a group exhibition that would travel for several years made all the difference. It generated an intentionality and investment that paid off in unexpected ways, not the least of which was the exceptional number of works the artists created. Instead of the one work each artist committed to send six months after the close of the seminar, most produced at least two and several produced ambitious and varied works with multiple parts or in series so that the exhibit was far larger than originally anticipated. From the outset, they had a vested interest in not just their own growth and learning but in that of the other artists in the seminar. They knew that their artwork would become a vehicle for bringing others into their experience of South Africa. This knowledge inspired them to experiment, move in new directions, and pursue substantial projects the better to engage those seeing the exhibit with the story of South Africa and its application, no matter where they might be coming from.
What links these critical strategies? The key word is “together.” Our goal was to see every element of the experience as a contributing part to the whole and to engage it together as the distinct parts of a single body as scripture describes the body of Christ. Just as artists come to trust that their creative process will bring results so we learned to trust the process of the application of these strategies to bring about community, new learnings, and a kind of transformation.
Little Is Much When God is in it: Learning to Trust the Process
The “R5” seminar presents a model for trans-cultural engagement for artists that brings participants from two different parts of the world together for an intensive period of living, learning, and creating. The strategies for program design and implementation described here are key to the distinctive character and impact of the seminar. But the most important aspect of this immersive model is the way it fosters personal and creative relationships that continue to grow and develop over time, often long into the future. Friendships are made, new understandings are gained, and attitudes are changed. News of violence in Nairobi or the passing of Mandela in Johannesburg, ice storms paralyzing the American south or the birth of a baby girl in Minnesota, images shared of one’s latest art exhibition or a son’s birthday cake on Facebook: these things now bind this group of sojourners together as members of the family of God and the whole human race. Their time together has shifted their orientation to the world. And this new orientation, in turn, influences what others may come also to see, through them and the work of their hands.
One day in South Africa, we saw a sign taped on a window that read “Little Is Much When God is in it.” The message was seen in reverse because we were looking through the glass at the back of the paper on which it was written. It was visible to us only because the ink had bled through. This image has come to represent for me the seemingly mysterious alchemy at work in a program like the “R5” seminar and the ingredient essential to its transformative effect: trust. Trust in the process and in the One who is in it.
Living, Learning, and Creating Together—Key Strategies
The arc of the two-week seminar began with a couple of days of foundational exposure to South African history and culture and community building activities as participants started to get to know one another. Essential to this time was sharing their art with one another each evening. This was followed by several days of meetings and visits in Johannesburg and Pretoria with some time for debriefing. After a day largely devoted to travel to Cape Town, we had four more days of widely varied activity in the Cape Town area with day trips to Stellenbosch and Robben Island. Each day was carefully planned to introduce a balance of exposure, interaction, and reflection. We concluded our time together in South Africa with several days in studio at a Catholic retreat center where the artists began to respond to what they had been learning through collaborative creative activities, individual studio time and reflection, conversation, and more formalized sessions of focused discussion. There was a lot of time to walk the grounds, take a stroll into town, sketch, or just be quiet. When we gathered for a final conversation on our last evening together, everyone had much to share—so much that our last session had to be extended by several hours so that we dispersed for bed for only a few hours of sleep before loading the bus for departure the following morning. It seems the studio is where artists do their most fruitful thinking.
There were a number of key strategies undertaken in the “R5” seminar that contributed to its distinctive character and impact. Some were carried forward from the Indonesia seminar. Some involved changes that reflected “learnings” about how better to engage artists in an intercultural context.
Ecumenism and Demographic Diversity
With the decision to undertake a second visual arts seminar, this time in South Africa, we decided to bring together an even more diverse group of participants. We wanted to have a truly ecumenical gathering to see if we might successfully come together as one body in Christ. We drew applications for the North American contingent from art faculty from both the CCCU and Lilly Network Schools, so the seminar included representatives that ranged widely in church affiliation: Catholic and Episcopal, Baptist and Wesleyan, Reformed and Evangelical. The African contingent represented an equally diverse range of Christian affiliation—not only Catholic and Protestant (including the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa) but also an African Independent Church (AIC). While most of the members of the North American contingent were from the United States, it included a Canadian and a Ghanaian. The African contingent included artists from six different African countries: Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa (including black South Africans and white Afrikaners). The cohort included roughly equal numbers of women and men and blacks and whites. Participants ranged in age from their twenties to their sixties. We were a diverse group indeed. In making these selections, we recognized that this level of diversity might present a challenge to community building and group cohesion. Nevertheless, we were committed to seeing whether their common commitment to Christian faith, distinct sensibilities as artists, and desire to pursue wholeness and restoration as expressed by their application would overcome those many differences. It did. It was a wonder to see how these shared commitments brought them together to listen to, learn from, and care for one another.
“Priming the Pump”
In preparation for the seminar, we set up a website where participants could access a selection of resources in advance of meeting in South Africa. A wide range of readings, films, and websites were posted with some identified as priorities for the group to review. Participants were also encouraged to recommend items for inclusion, giving them ownership in the group’s exposure and preparation. Biographies and photographs of all of the participants and their artwork were provided. All of these resources established common ground regarding South African art, history, and contemporary concerns on which our experience could be built, and offered a modest introduction to one another before we ever met in South Africa. Seeing samples of the artwork of the other participants heightened anticipation for their engagement with one another as artists and persons. Understanding that South Africa is a gift-giving culture where it is common for guests to bring small gifts to their hosts as an acknowledgment of their hospitality, we had asked each participant to consider what modest gifts they might bring that could be offered to people who hosted us for meetings, meals, or conversations. They brought books, small works of art, products, and small mementos from their home localities, including t-shirts and baseball caps of favorite teams or universities. It gave them a personal stake in extending something of themselves to those who shared so much of their time and their experience with us while we were there. It was a delight to see participants begin to ask if their particular gift might be given to a host who had particularly moved them in some way. We gave everything away that they had brought.
Building Community and Cultivating Community Care
The capacity to learn from one another depends on establishing a sense of community and trust within a short period of time. North American and African participants were matched up as roommates, carefully considering where there might be points of connection such as life situation, artistic interests, temperament, or spiritual interests. Mealtimes and riding on the bus provided time for casual conversation, the comforts of food, and laughter to take priority. They came to know one another’s habits and preferences and to provide for them as fellows in a shared enterprise. Prior to arriving in South Africa, we had sent out a listing of jobs related to community life and care, asking people to sign up for a couple of those responsibilities. They ranged from loading luggage when the group was in transit to organizing laundry, wrapping and presenting gifts to our hosts at each meeting to being attentive to members who might become ill. In some cases, we solicited participants to take responsibilities where they had particular expertise: documenting our time together through photography, planning our worship time, or serving as tech people when we needed media. Each job had two or three people assigned to it to foster cooperation and shared responsibility for the common good of the group. There was something for everyone to contribute regardless of differences in personality or expertise.
Total Immersion—Every Element Counts
Transformative intercultural experiences involve immersion in the host culture. For organizers it requires a consciousness of how each component is contributing to the objectives of the program no matter how small. Stopping at a beach for a box lunch to enjoy the sunshine and beauty of the landscape in the company of new friends might engender a love of place that is essential to coming to genuine care for its people. Explaining the significance of a local joke or species of flower makes one an insider momentarily. Shopping for SIM cards can contribute to recognizing patterns and practices that are different yet the same. One important element of our program was providing participants with a South African novel to read as we traveled so that even their recreational reading was related to South Africa. This drew them further into South African culture and the experiences of particular peoples. Since each book was being read by others in the group, conversations broke out over aspects of the stories that related to what we were encountering. As people finished one book, they swapped with others who had been given a different book. Many of the books, poetry, music, and films that we shared in preparation for the seminar and as we lived and learned together came to inform the artwork the artists eventually produced. It became a kind of group heritage. Accepting a last-minute offer of complementary tickets to attend the Cape Town Funny Fest on a night dedicated to raise funds for Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s charitable foundation afforded not only raucous laughter and diversion but an experience of popular culture that provided a glimpse into the social psyche of South Africa that is both vibrant and unimaginably complex. Attentiveness to how an unplanned encounter or opportunity might contribute to the experience can reap unexpected rewards. Total immersion involves planning like crazy while maintaining a readiness to embrace plan “B” when that serendipitous opportunity presents itself.
Intellectual, Spiritual, and Creative Processing
With all we were encountering, we needed regular time for reflection and processing, individually and together. Much of this was informal as we lived in community with one another and moved from one activity or appointment to another, each with its own character and benefit. But much of it was also formalized, through planned times of worship and prayer and regular group conversations to debrief from the experiences of the day. These debriefings were commonly prompted by a comment or question posed by one of the leaders or group members. It was also important to allow the issues needing attention to emerge through careful probing and gentle guidance. As our time progressed, these conversations became easier and more honest. We had come to trust each other. One evening as we approached the end of our time together, the Africans laid hold of the conversation, reflecting widely divergent perspectives on “Africa,” South Africa, and what it meant to be African, while the North Americans listened attentively. During our final conversation together, each subsequent speaker, asked to share their “learnings” from our time together, took longer and longer to explain all that they had gained from the experience, describing the questions and conundrums it had raised. We were so invested in this process that we lost a sense of the time as we talked together late into the night. But, it was equally significant to encourage the artists to process the experience in non-verbal, creative ways. We recommended they bring along not just a journal but also a sketchbook or paints. Several participants were tapped to engage the group in creative exercises or collaborative projects that unfolded over the course of the seminar. And the final days in studio found the artists immersed in conversation or thought as their hands sought to find expression of what was inside them on paper, in paint, or by bringing found objects together in some new form.
A Commitment to Follow Up
One thing is certain—knowing they were expected to produce something as individual artists and as a cadre of creatives altered the artists’ perceptions of their role from that of passive participants to proactive agents. The requirement of making work that would become part of a group exhibition that would travel for several years made all the difference. It generated an intentionality and investment that paid off in unexpected ways, not the least of which was the exceptional number of works the artists created. Instead of the one work each artist committed to send six months after the close of the seminar, most produced at least two and several produced ambitious and varied works with multiple parts or in series so that the exhibit was far larger than originally anticipated. From the outset, they had a vested interest in not just their own growth and learning but in that of the other artists in the seminar. They knew that their artwork would become a vehicle for bringing others into their experience of South Africa. This knowledge inspired them to experiment, move in new directions, and pursue substantial projects the better to engage those seeing the exhibit with the story of South Africa and its application, no matter where they might be coming from.
What links these critical strategies? The key word is “together.” Our goal was to see every element of the experience as a contributing part to the whole and to engage it together as the distinct parts of a single body as scripture describes the body of Christ. Just as artists come to trust that their creative process will bring results so we learned to trust the process of the application of these strategies to bring about community, new learnings, and a kind of transformation.
Little Is Much When God is in it: Learning to Trust the Process
The “R5” seminar presents a model for trans-cultural engagement for artists that brings participants from two different parts of the world together for an intensive period of living, learning, and creating. The strategies for program design and implementation described here are key to the distinctive character and impact of the seminar. But the most important aspect of this immersive model is the way it fosters personal and creative relationships that continue to grow and develop over time, often long into the future. Friendships are made, new understandings are gained, and attitudes are changed. News of violence in Nairobi or the passing of Mandela in Johannesburg, ice storms paralyzing the American south or the birth of a baby girl in Minnesota, images shared of one’s latest art exhibition or a son’s birthday cake on Facebook: these things now bind this group of sojourners together as members of the family of God and the whole human race. Their time together has shifted their orientation to the world. And this new orientation, in turn, influences what others may come also to see, through them and the work of their hands.
One day in South Africa, we saw a sign taped on a window that read “Little Is Much When God is in it.” The message was seen in reverse because we were looking through the glass at the back of the paper on which it was written. It was visible to us only because the ink had bled through. This image has come to represent for me the seemingly mysterious alchemy at work in a program like the “R5” seminar and the ingredient essential to its transformative effect: trust. Trust in the process and in the One who is in it.
“Little Is Much,” Photo by Keith Barker, 2013, “R5” Seminar in South Africa
NOTES
- This essay draws on material from a number of previous publications by the author including: “Coloring the Wind In and Out of South Africa,” Between the Shadow and the Light, Rachel Hostetter Smith, ed. (Grand Rapids: Calvin College, 2014), 15-28; “Unsettled Ground In and Out of Africa,” SEEN (Spring 2014); “Art as Invitation: Considering New Paradigms for Scholarship and Global Engagement through the Charis Exhibit,” Christian Scholar’s Review, Vol. XLII:4 (Summer 2013); “Boundary Crossings: Divining the Human in the Fragments of this World,” Charis: Boundary Crossings, Rachel Hostetter Smith, ed. (Grand Rapids: Calvin College, 2009), 12-22.
- See http://www.plowsharesinstitute.org for more information. Some of the distinctive approaches developed by Bob and Alice Evans through Plowshares are published in Pedagogies for the Non-Poor, Alice Frazer Evans, Robert A. Evans, and William Bean Kennedy (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1987). See ch. 7 on “Traveling for Transformation” in particular. Joel Carpenter, my co-leader for the “R5” seminar, and I are especially grateful for additional training we received during the Plowshares pilot seminar on “Making Travel Transformative” in May 2013.
- Okwui Enwezor, “Remembrance of Things Past: Memory and the Archive,” Democracy’s Images: Photography and Visual Art after Apartheid, Jan-Erik Lundström, ed. (Umeå: Bild Museet, Umeå University, 1999), 27.
- Revised and augmented from material in the Foreword by Joel Carpenter to the exhibition catalogue Between the Shadow and the Light (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Calvin College, 2014), 9-10.
- Ibid., 10.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
