_posted in dayedayerocks | film | ingredients for life | the world | versus | 02 February 2011

Erzilie Danto    artist credit: yves telemak

This post is a response Support Lwa and Create Dangerously, which is the start of a new Versus with Antero.

I'm so excited that Antero and I have rebooted "Versus." First, thanks to Antero for linking to the Kickstarter video for my latest short film, "Lwa." I'm excited to be working on a film that marries my anthropological interests with filmmaking. I'm equally excited that Danticat's latest text is about creating within the immigrant framework, within the framework of people who stand in multiple lands, products of the diaspora.

Antero and I seemed to have connected to "Create Dangerously", simultaneously. Both of us were instantly drawn to this work and for me it's a continuation of my love of Danticat's calm and expressive voice. It's taken me a few days to go back to the first two chapters. I wanted to give myself some distance, let my interpretations sit for awhile and just let my daily experiences as an artist add a bit of texture since the initial reading. Over the years I've read and reread many titles, paying close attention to notes I made in the margins, expressing the beauty of a phrase or my confusion or lack of understanding for a theme. What's most important about these margin notes is how I've changed over the years. There have been many moments when I laughed out loud and openly mocked my younger and inexperienced self. It's always nice to have written proof that your experiences color how you see the world and yourself.

In the second chapter, "Walk Straight", Danticat gives us so much more than margin notes. She gives us a whole letter to her younger, less experienced writer self. I feel immigrant artists are indeed held to a very different standard when it comes to their experiences and the representation of themselves to world. It's so easy to be forced into the trap of representing the whole of a culture, be it all Haitians or all West Indians or all blacks in America. Representing the whole is the burden of the immigrant artist, forced on them not just from without but from within their own communities. Danticat added this letter as the afterward in future editions of "Breath, Eyes, Memory", "an addendum to the text." In the margins at the end of this letter I wrote, "The responsibilities of the artist..." Looking back I wonder why there is no question mark after that statement. Did I agree wholeheartedly with this addendum, only to be less sure of it as a declarative a week later, now wanting to explore it even more? What are my own responsibilities?

I find myself in a strange place as a black filmmaker. I constantly feel like I'm in a liminal state, between two worlds: the world of an artist of color who feels a responsibility to one's culture and an artist looking to support herself on her art. However, they seem to be mutually exclusive. The industry in which I am training to be apart, has room for only one black filmmaker at a time, and at present the black filmmaker de jour leaves a great deal to be desired. So I choose to create, boldly. What do I have to lose? I'm investing my life into my art. I have the luxury of film school, of sitting in classrooms talking about "my voice," my stories and art and how that works within the construct of culture and what responsibilities are involved in that. This all seems so passive in the face of my friends who walk into classrooms everyday and friends who are abroad actively working with refugee and immigrant youth. Danticat speaks on this and the "passive careers" that create "distant witnesses." It takes time to come to realization that the work you do as an artist, can produce broader understanding, that to create is never passive.

Camus' assertion that, "Art cannot be a monologue" is at the heart of the immigrant's art. Danticat knows this by her framing of what creating dangerously means with the deaths of two political figures, the oppression of the Duvalier regimes, the role art plays in subversion and effecting change. Art is not something meant for just the artist. To create is not enough, to express oneself is not enough. As an individual in a larger construct, your art must speak to that as well. Danticat speaks of memorial art in ancient Egypt as possibly being an answer to slaves being buried with their masters to serve them in the next world. This was art as "a stand-in for a life, a soul, a future." For the slaves, it must have been a terrifying thing to know your life was tied to serving others even after death. I search for the clarity and understanding those artists found to effect change. I search for that daily in my own work, to find solutions for a world that seems to be imploding with each passing day, in short, to create dangerously.

That's a bit of what I took from the first two chapters of "Create Dangerously." There's so much more of course. There are so many underlined passages and tons of notes in the margins. Antero, I'm curious about your experience while working with immigrant youth and their views on creating art, literature, etc.