Guy Yedwab

Writing The Essay

Politics And Memory In The Artistic Space

Every thought or work of art can be seen, in one light, as a product of the cultural history which

led up to its formation. Both Ngugi wa Thiong'o in “Enactments of Power” and Andre Aciman in

“Shadow Cities” look at the spaces in which art happens with regard to the cultural history which gave

birth to them; and, fittingly, each of their interpretations is the product of their own cultural history.

To Andre Aciman, art is to be viewed as a slice of the everyday life of the culture. He views his

“home” in Straus Park through that lens: he, as a foreigner, looks to Straus Park to see a mirror of the

homes he has left behind. He examines the Greek, the Italian, the German, and the French areas of New

York; like Aciman, they live in a place that is based off of their idealizations of home. Exiled from their

own homes, they have projected their own idyllic homes onto Straus Park to feel comfort. The unique

flavor of the works of art which he imagines and experiences existing in the park—whether it's the

1930s recordings of Beethoven, or the statue of Mnemosyne—serve to anchor the place with a

beautiful work of the familiar. Whether or not the art is the most beautiful, it is a piece of culture and

“home” which anchors the wandering exiles of the world to their newfound homes.

For Ngugi wa Thiong'o, however, art is anything but everyday. He examines the structures of

power which control the spaces of artwork. This is not surprising: his cultural history is that of Kenya,

an oppressed state for most of his life under the British colonial powers and equally oppressed under

the dictatorial postcolonial government. For him, putting up a play is not as simple as booking a theater

—he discovers himself bumping up against the gulf between the Kenyan culture and the lingering

remains of the British power structure. His conclusion of art and its spaces, therefore, is that artists seek

to make people free and make the spaces free for creation; governments seek to constrict people and

always attempt to constrict the spaces in which they work through permits, licences, and passports.

Each is attempting to examine their power by provoking the other; artists enjoy the subversive satire

which has the potential to spark anti-government thought, and governments attempt to stifle such
criticisms and replace them with sycophantic, controllable displays of “performance” such as public

arrests, public hangings, or military marches.

When I visited the 14th St./8th Ave. subway station, I felt immediately as though I was looking

into a slightly different relationship between art and space. To a degree, both essayists seemed to be

right on the mark; something about the bronze-work, the non-threatening shapes, the use of cultural

figures (such as the early 20th Century suits, police uniforms, and gambling symbols) seemed to recall

the late 19th Century or early 20th Century. And this was fitting: the space in question was the New York

Subway, a product of the height of the Industrial Revolution in America; these figures and this style of

art seemed to leap right out of that period. And one half of Ngugi's equation did seem to fit: the artist

was creating a freer space. There was something about the small, out-of-the-way figures which made

me see the subway platform as more than simply an in-between place, more than just a dead-end. After

seeing it, I noticed the buskers at the other stations a little more, realized the potential of performance

in the subway. It seemed like a genuine place, like a Point A or a Point B rather than the line connecting

them. It also seemed, in its own non-threatening way, to be slightly... unnerving. I was surprised to see

a figure of a police officer who was in the tell-tale position of clearing out a homeless old woman. I

was surprised to see a business executive whose head was a bag of money, as though he lacked any

identity beyond his own greed. I was surprised to see a two-faced gambling lizard. And in the most out-

of-the-way corner, in a place about to be trampled by passers-by, there was the figure of an immigrant

woman and her son. Her gesture was that of holding him back to protect him, as though he might get

stepped on if he stands in anyone's way.

They seemed to stand up for the rights of the poor, the rights of those the establishment forgot.

They reminded me of the inscription, now unread, at the base of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your

tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free.” This, of course, is a hugely influential piece

of New York culture. But at the same time, the yearning for freedom and the burden of the poor seemed

like things which I would have expected our government to deemphasize if, as Ngugi said,

governments aim to constrict and to control. As Ngugi said, free movement is controlled by passports
as a performance of power. Clearly, the police officer who is about to clear out the homeless person is

performing his power over a helpless woman; the relationship does not cast the police officer in the

heroic light that the city would like to depict them in. He is not saving a life, he is not 'protecting or

serving' unless he is serving the man with the money-head who is standing not too far from him. And

what is the symbolism of the massive alligator bursting out of the New York sewage system to eat the

other man with the money-bag head?

But at the same time that the artist is performing his power to subvert and make open, the

government is clearly not acting to constrict. Many people have accused governments of using funding

for the arts to constrict: but these sculptures were almost certainly commissioned by the city—maybe

even in the 1930s, during the city's efforts to employ artists so that they could support themselves (part

of FDR's National Arts Endowment's aims). This was not only something to make the country freer, but

also to help those poor people reach a new level of richness. This is not the constrictive government

that Ngugi has described—this is our democracy, with its almost sacrosanct belief in the First

Amendment: freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Of course, the culture that Ngugi has

developed under reflects his view on government—I read similar sentiments from Vaclav Havel, the

playwright who attempted to write under the brutal Czechoslovakian communist government in the

1970s and 1980s. Viewing his essay as a work of “art” in its own right, and viewing Aciman's work

similarly, you can see that the two of them are the ends of their own cultural history.