Intimate Distance: The Photography of Thien V

Originally posted at howlarts.net.

“I’m in the business of translating what cannot be translated: being and its silence.” – Charles Simic

The Student Strike inspired an effervescence of creative works and artistic expression. The ubiquitous nature of the music, the posters, the interventions, the literature suggests that the arts played a central role in galvanizing the movement. But what exactly is the relationship between art and the politics of the moment? It’s easy to say that art is important to politics or to society in general, but how often do we actually explore what that means? Is the role of art to offer abstracted symbols of the movement, such as the carré rouge or the casseroles, around which to rally? Or is its role rhetorical, to convince its audience of the validity of a particular position? Although these two artistic modalities are important parts of a social movement, I believe the role art has to play can potentially be much deeper. Alain Badiou has written that “Art is pedagogical because it produces truths and because education (save in its oppressive or perverted expressions) has never meant anything but this: to arrange the forms of knowledge in such a way that some truth may come to pierce a hole in them.” By this understanding, art is a naturally destabilising force, puncturing the status quo and established modes of thought, and allowing us to see the potential on the other side. And it is through this action, I believe, that art is inherently political, and that it is political in a way that only art can be.