Eleni Karasavvidou teaches Cultural Studies and Intercultural Artistic Education in the University of Ioannina, Greece. She is a member of grassroots art movements, she has published various books and articles, she has participated in various conferences, European programs and projects and she has been honored for her work from the Greek section of UNESCO and Greek Ministry of Culture.
She will present how Art-programs might be used as a mean against social exclusion, using Victims of Domestic Violence as a case study.
Art Against Exclusion: The VDV1 as a Case Study
Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.
― Stella Adler
Exploring the role the arts can play in addressing social exclusion it might be a relatively new departure, but the fact that in 2001 the Arts Council of England commissioned research to explore different models occurring in the arts, it’s further proof of its evolving importance. Especially in a socio-economic context where the minimalistic state of neo-liberalism ‘crushes the soul’ even more of the socially excluded, and in a global order which prefers to trade in signifiers and surface naturalizing hierarchies and marginalized presences, or convenient rhetorics of the opposed, Art-programs can challenge the dominant paradigms that govern society, promote critical thinking and empathetic attitude. Also, employing a more flexible and challenging framework should transcend the traditional concept of ‘art excellence’ and consume, sustaining communities and individuals.
Since prehistoric times art has been used as a method of expression, of communication with the inner self and others, and personal or collective imaginative ‘worlds’ that could mobilize or prevent actions. Art, creating metaphorical links to ‘mirror’ and understanding ourselves while depicting and worshiping deities, describing the zeitgeist world, and challenging the social functions and power relations they encompass, can challenge cultural consensus and homogenization while promoting cohesion and inclusiveness.
All over the world, in the most varied contexts, contemporary Art is a rich source for increasing the visibility of persons and communities facing social exclusion.
In our paper we try to explore the diversified yet important impact a properly designed and addressed Art-project might have on that direction, using victims of domestic violence (VDV) as a case study, supporting the utopian vision of an authentically public form of art and creativity. In doing so we depict the theoretical framework of context analysis and the theory of representations(Moscovici), with selected loans from intercultural philology(Wierlacher), along with a literature review presenting the benefits and dystopias of related artistic perceptions and programs. This method was chosen because of the complex nature of creativity and its representations and the narratives they evoke.
We ask questions such as:
- the evolving nature of exclusion and art in a socioeconomic context where artistic communities and art consumers often reproduce its biases.
- Can art education denaturalize, in a creative and not totalitarian or oversimplistic way, the representation of reality and one’s self in it, and defamiliarize the status quo questioning fake consensus between victims and victimisers, whether it be aesthetic, social, or political?
- Can the desire to assert cultural specificity in gender roles be increasingly accompanied by a yearning for the universal?
- Can the transformative potential of Art in the lives of such people, and the slower, collaborative mechanisms, enable it to reinstate the human at the very core of the artistic experience?
We hope to contribute to the evolving educational and socio-cultural dialogues about marginal Presences, like abused children and women, raising questions of ethics, practices, and opportunities for us all.