Julio Munhoz
Edmonton, Canada, September 27th 2018
www.juliomunhoz.com
Recently a friend of mine asked me, maybe motivated by my personal engagement in professional filmmaking and vivid interest in the arts, how a great filmmaker could be defined.
In response, I told him that we could potentially define a great director by the context of his/her artistic and technical knowledge, the ability to gently converge all the creative contributions brought by the film crew, and for the energy of kindly leading a pool of talented people meticulously stimulating each one of them along their creative work. And, after all the previous skills, a great director should also be determined in following rigid production plans responding to tight budgets and deadlines.
However, as fundamental as the stated elements are, there is a flagrant need to add to the equation the sweet and precise mystery of artistic sensibility, the choice of form by the creator, and the consequent projection of the artwork on the objective world.
Therefore, by the moment the artwork initiates its existence in concrete reality, the public potentially benefits from it, with individuals returning to their subjective particular worlds motivated by this magical encounter, recreating meanings and reinventing the dimension of the artwork itself.
In a way, we could infer strong relations involving concepts such as art making, human communications and linguistic processes, fact which might drives us – if the reader allows me here some poetical licence - to the basic formula involving ‘medium and message’ enunciated by eminent Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan:
‘Development and definition of the message by the sender (or creator of the artwork)’ – ‘definition of form and medium to carry the message’ – ‘capturing of the message and respective decoding of it by the receiver (the public in contact with the artwork)’.
In this way, according to the above relation, the artist would really act as a communicator when creating and exhibiting her/his artwork to a diverse range of audiences. And this very fact tempts us to ask a few questions: Which factors would differentiate a regular communicational message from a work of art? After all, what is really art, and what is its core importance to our societies?
I believe that the answers for such fundamental questions would thoroughly respond to my friend’s inquiry willing to understand not only what defines a great filmmaker, but also a great sculptor, musician, writer, painter, and so many other sensible, essential and special artists to each one of us and to society as a whole.
Following the train of thought exposed above, and keeping in mind as a reference the Communication Theory, we could affirm that diachronic (linear) communication assumes an active ‘sender’ and a passive ‘receiver’ in the communication process. The person receiving the message necessarily needs to attentively ordinate the segments of the message, so that this individual, the receiver, is able to understand what the sender is trying to communicate.
As we might possibly agree, there is a certain power relation in favour of the person emitting the message, given the fact that linear communication presupposes a previous meaning established by the sender. In this way, the receiver needs to endeavour as much as possible at decoding the message and interpreting it accurately, and only after the message is completely deciphered the receiver is able to react to the message, agreeing, disagreeing, or ignoring it.
Curiously, most conscious processes of human communications occur based on linear communication structures: the news, mass entertainment media, conversations, the radio... and basically everything that reaches us coming from the cultural industry – content which is frequently labeled as art and done by artists, even though they rarely really are.
So, how could we define the notion of the term ‘art’ within the perspective and parameters of this article?
The arts navigate on the revolutionary sea of non-linearity, also known as synchronic or poetical communication process. Here the receivers of the message (in this case, all of us, appreciators of art) are invited to become proactive along the communication process.
In arts, the basic communication formula mentioned above could be changed to:
‘Development of the artistic message by its creator’ – ‘definition of language and form to contain and transmit the poetical message’ – ‘capturing and decoding of the message by the receiver according to his/her life repertoire and creative sensibility’ – ‘potential recreation and reconceptualization of the original message (work of art) performed by the receiver’.
“Eureka!” – in the arts, the audience is invited to become proactive when decoding the message, with all the freedom to also come up with new meanings when in contact with the artwork.
This simple fact may explain why some people leave art movie theatres with different understandings of the film which they have just watched, therefore motivating vibrant post-film conversations (and probably stimulating the desire to watch the art film again, each time noticing new elements in which they did not have perceived or imagined before).
Within this perspective, the arts stimulate and have the capacity to strengthen the individual in relation to the objective world.
This is the revolutionary and libertarian side of the arts!
Maybe this very fact explains the historic resistance that totalitarian regimes had (and still have) in regards to artists, frequently imposing restrictions and persecutions, taking into consideration that repressive regimes tend to control, whereas the arts induce and stimulate people to assume their individual freedom.
The genuine artistic code is absolutely powerful, and maybe for this reason it has been studied to exhaustion by advertisers in their efforts to generate mass consumption behaviour. In the same way, sometimes it is possible to identify communication professionals working to totalitarian regimes intending to twist the artistic communication code for vain (and villain) reasons, aiming to indoctrinate instead of freeing, sometimes making use of subliminal techniques in their despair to dominate and control (in communication terms, subliminal messages are the ones perceived by the unconscious and not necessarily perceived by the conscious side of the person).
As it should be, for our general relief, such attempts never proved to last long, and are formally forbidden in most countries.
Considering the ideas discussed so far, it is interesting to note that the artist, even if not consciously aware, has a strong relation with the objective world. His artwork brings in itself the poetic of action, transformation, and power of imagination, therefore projecting new social, moral, ethical and aesthetical paradigms, stimulating critical observation and creative stances among the artist’s audiences.
This particular characteristic of the artwork and its intrinsic participative echoing has the potential to reconnect and motivate individuals in their relations with others, with themselves, and with nature, somehow consecrating the holistic function of the artwork in regards to its main motivational centre: we, all the human beings.
Therefore, amplifying the scope of my friend’s question described in the beginning of this article, I believe that what defines a great artist is the artist’s ability to understand his/her social and spiritual role in the world where all of us live in, a world which is way bigger than any egocentric approach and any personal afflictive problems. In doing so, constantly and humbly, this great artist would naturally take all possible efforts to support and serve others though art, regardless of achieving any greater personal recognition and fame.