Teaching Lao art and critical analysis in the classrooms

In the May 2005 issue of Art Education, Ismail Ozgur Soganci's article "Re-attaching the Detached" examined the importance of critical analysis of popular media images of Karagoz. Among the interesting ideas he proposed was that "Instead of loyal acceptance of popular iconography mandated mainly by media, the art class at times should become a laboratory in which visual literacy is taught through critical analysis of popular icons, advertisements, cartoons, comics and so forth." (Soganci, 51).

It's an interesting topic given some of our previous inquiries regarding puppoetics. Karagoz is the lead character in almost all of the scenarios of Turkish shadow puppet theater. A parallel in Lao culture would be shadow puppet stories from Kalaket and Manola and Sithong, or episodes of Xieng Mieng or Phra Lak Phra Lam.

Soganci insisted that schools and art "can still play essential roles in facilitating students to better understandings of human cultures through a historical perspective." (Soganci, 34) He was further curious about the way students could be shown inferior reproductions of classic images and characters from a culture's traditions to examine what the quality of mass-media images can have and their effects on us.

Soganci lamented that "philsophical richness is considered irrelevant" in popular media. He noted that in the past, in Turkish shadow puppetry, the white screen symbolized temporary life, while the puppets were humans with almost no will, and the unseen puppeteer represented a superior will manipulating everything. The light was considered the energy that enables us to see the world while concealing the Divine. This was a scenario that had significant relationship to Islamic philosophy, even as the art form emerged from techniques learned in Asia.  (Soganci, 35-37).

By the final summation, Soganci suggested that we ought to explore what schools could do to "re-attach the detached by critically unfolding the ways popular media exploits examples of visual culture. While not all images in popular culture exhibit a detachment of images from their cultural, historical, and artistic essences, it should still be considered one of the art teacher's essential duties to keep a close and critical eye on mass media."  (Soganci, 38)

For those of us engaged in both visual and literary Lao American arts, these are questions and opportunities applicable to our own experiences that we ought to consider.

As poets and writers, I would not want to see us shy away from engaging with the art and techniques of our past, but I think it's important to study the philosophies and aesthetics underpinning the particular techniques and meanings. We should also still seek ways to innovate and continue to expand our artistic vocabulary. The final words have not been written. There's so much we can yet explore. 

 Lao art has historically been far more liberal in the diversity of forms it has taken. There are certain guidelines and expectations, but the final executions are more often than not distinctive to particular artists in a given generation than not, as we see in the wide range of Buddhas from Laos. This would apply not only to our visual arts but also our literature.

This is still a difficult proposition in the US given the struggle to maintain and effectively support arts education in the schools from a mainstream perspective. Among Lao American programs, most are struggling to teach the traditional forms and baseline principles that we do not regularly get a chance to examine more ambitious approaches for integration into our curriculum. We should consider what can be done to reduce those barriers. 

[Poem] Our Brave New World

There's only a few in creation
Who read me like you.

So it goes.

I, debating between Heaven and Earth,
The wild bunch and the truths regarding better luck tomorrow,
A better tomorrow where maybe every woman can be
The princess bride in a never ending story, a legend.

You, watching with me in your own way,
Seeking stories nearly a continent away,
A phoenix of rebuilding
As familiar with Nang Phom Hom as the legends of the Fall.

We listen, hearing hearts within bodies with so much to teach,
So much to smile about.

Surviving like bamboo, some moments arriving as slow hurricane,
Some like Kansas twisters, offering a journey to Oz.

Some a desert, others, a city by the sea in a state of lost angels,
Wandering xang and atomic sinners, strangers sharing space
And sometimes more.

From Tanon Sai Jai, 2009

On February 26, 1909, Kinemacolor, the first successful color motion picture process, was first shown to the general public at the Palace Theatre in London.

[Poem] The Shape

What is the shape of the wise man?
Is it the unblinking eye or the open hand?
Is it the restless foot or the compassionate heart?
Is it a book of prayers or a moment of silence?

Is it a wild horse in the fields of Shangri La
Or a bolt of lightning over Angkor Wat?

Is it that fragile water lily in a pond in Luang Prabang
Or the croaking frog in a Mississippi mudslide
Gone now, without a trace.

No one says it is an unsheathed sword.
Few would argue for a cracked atomic mushroom
Boiling an ocean of sharp-toothed sharks to prove an equation.

Uncertain judgment should be noted
Regarding tiny infants on University Avenue
Or humble ants packing their ditty bags
At the first hint of a cloud of RAID coming their way.

And it is almost certainly never found in a mirror.

From On The Other Side Of The Eye, 2007

February 25th, 1996 was the death of Cambodian actor Haing S. Ngor, known for his Oscar-winning performance in The Killing Fields.

[Poem] New Myths of The Northern Land

"Dream," I said,
"Aren’t you tired of making new legends
That no one but I ever hears?"
"Bones," she said,
"Aren’t you ever tired of asking questions
That only I can answer?"

I went back to bed,
Waiting for the new king to arrive,
His talking mirror filled

With dire pronouncements of flame.

From On The Other Side Of The Eye, 2007

February 24th, 1909 is the birthday of August Derleth, a noted Wisconsin writer.

On the Long Poem, the Profound and Lao American speculative poetry

"The long poem is an attempt at a major poem. Though most modern poets have worked in the short forms, many have also been tempted by the longer distance. Eliot emphasized "concentration." Pound derided yet practiced Imagism. Yet both Eliot and Pound were called toward the epic. William Carlos Williams, in his aims for Paterson, claimed that "the longer I lived in my place, among the details of my life, I realized that these isolated observations and experiences needed pulling together to gain profundity."

- From "A Lost Classic: David Shapiro's Lateness,"  
Frederick Smock, American Poetry Review, Jan./Feb. 2012 

There are many approaches to poetry, but within speculative poetry, I think it is important that we continue to keep abreast of many of the questions more conventional poetry is examining. What constitutes a major poem of deep, transformative meaning for its readers when we are exploring the worlds of the fantastic, the alien and the far-flung future? 

Who has it within them to write a modern work of 24,000 verses on par with the Ramayana or Phra Lak Phra Lam? In the classic days of the Lao epics, it could take almost a week to recite the full epic every evening, much akin to the work of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung.

Today, we barely get 15 minutes on stage. 

I might argue that this sort of time frame can be a relief when you're dealing with tedious poets. But at the same time, we also see so many pieces designed as if we're in a rush to say something profound. This isn't always how profound works. Sometimes it takes certain kinds of literary spacing for it to unfold properly in its scale and magnitude. 

Wagner's ambition was amazing with Ring of the Nibelung in both its scale and scope but it also something that could be accomplished within poetry. How might Lao American speculative poets follow the struggle of gods, demons, heroes and the creatures of myth and their struggle over an object on par with the ring that would grant dominion over the world, or a beauty like Sita from the Ramayana? In The Ring of the Nibelung, we follow three generations of protagonists that culminates in a final cataclysm. Those are some pretty big stakes.

Within modern poetry it can often be difficult for us to find work that gets beyond the street corner. This is not to say that the street corner is not a part of the epic, but we're also talking about an inability to see the forest for the trees. The line from Casablanca comes to mind: "The problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

For Lao American speculative poets, my charge would then be: Think bigger. Dream bigger. Otherwise, we cave into an internalized oppression that says our works cannot be more than those of a self-absorbed, tiny, petty people who can speak of nothing tectonic, nothing that transforms worlds. Yet, as I've often noted, Laos is a nation the size of the United Kingdom, and once, Britain was a significant force in the affairs of the world.

What might we add to the greater dialogues for the ages yet to come?