Nature Against Puppets

The reading packet starting with Suzanne Lacy reminded me quite a bit of various puppet theaters from around the world that utilized the puppet shows to provide information about current events and future meetings that were not caught by the government censors mainly because the messages were being provided through puppets, not something to seemingly pose a threat. Other companies such as the Bread and Puppet Theater in New York use larger than life puppets in protest parades.

This paragraph, from the Suzanne Lacy portion;

"Art as a profession, taught in art schools and displayed in museums, has created a paradoxical division between its practice and its public locus. The confrontational framing that figures prominently in recent art controversies is in part a product of the modernist model of the artist. Alone in her studio, the artists creates through struggle that, at various times, pits the individual against nature. Culture society or the art world itself"

Reminded me of this quote from the professor/author, Joseph Campbell;

"I once heard a wonderful lecture by Daisetsu Suzuki, you remember this wonderful old Zen philosopher who was over here? He was in his 90's, he started a lecture in Switzerland, that I heard in Ascona. He stood up with his hands on his sides and said:

'God against man - Man against God.'

'Man against nature - Nature against man.'

'Nature against God - God against nature.'

'Very funny religion!'

Both of which, let me realize how separate from nature - even human nature - we are as a society, and how the public square as defined in the reading is perfectly great for railing out political jargon as well as a space for the artist to interpret the words of the politicians to provide additional conceptual framework to others as well as comment on the words being spewed.