Art as a way to encounter diversity

Practicing and experiencing art provides an opportunity to develop the skill of understanding that is not developed through knowledge. Facing uncertainty, on the other hand, requires skills that are not developed through knowledge, but are only shaped by continuous practice.

I think that the function of art in the functioning of contemporary society is an important, direct necessity. The function can be logically derived from the tasks of art in the formation of knowledge and the concept of reality. Art must be special in one way or another. Practicing it and empathizing with it requires and strengthens the individual ability to interpret various phenomena. Art therefore helps to see the world in different ways. The artist presents his own unique view of the object he depicts. He sees the world as directly as possible, without seeking profit. For this reason, each artist also communicates different things about the world than so-called ordinary people. He creates his perception of the world faster and more sensitively than others.

When a person's ability to understand diversity and interpret similar phenomena in different ways is strengthened through the practice and experience of art, tolerance and respect for diversity, which are important for society, develop at the same time. In a social sense, these are the opposites of, for example, racism and monoculturalism, two globally significant manifestations of inequality in our era. Edward Said writes in his book The Responsibility of the Thinking Man : "There is more intolerance and loud absoluteness in motion at the moment than any system can handle."

A society that says it favors tolerance, equality, and democracy, but at the same time reduces art education and does not care about the conditions for artists, weakens its citizens' ability to understand diversity. Unless the ability to respect the diversity of people and phenomena is cultivated through continuous artistic practice and experience in everyday contexts, respect for other cultures, for example, cannot be increased by a few information shocks. This is because information does not "get through" if the ability to accept different expressions and interpretations of things has not been developed. Skill is developed through practice, and information shocks in no way replace skill or contribute to increased understanding.

Of the three windows of reality – the macro-paradigm of science, ethics and art – art is the one that requires doing and action. This most fragile and sensitive human area is always revealed and experienced only through the result and practice of some concrete action. In our contemporary society, the decline in functional capacity is a major problem: we medicalize problems whose solution would only require doing and repeating the action. Art can be the first step in removing many difficulties precisely by its demand for action.

The quality of a work of art arises from the truthfulness with which happening, experiencing and doing, and the dimension of time contained in all of them, are intertwined in the work. The perfection of the intertwining, the truthfulness, moves the entire being of the person experiencing art. This multisensory movement of the being is the deepest task of art. The repetition of artistic experiences is one and perhaps the most important way for the self as an egocentric person to disappear and move into the selflessness that lives the flow of reality and affects it with its actions.

Read more about Jaana Venkula's book " On the Necessity of Art ", a reprint of which has been published by Lyhty ry, (Original publisher Kirjapaja Oy.)