Magdalena Jadwiga Härtelova
An Archive
Appendix A.
Notes to the curator October 13 year 2020.
Magdalena,
We realized we have given very little to no context about this work, Learning to Love.
Last spring brought the cold realization that the civil rights movement didn’t “happen” it is still Happening.
It woke a nation to how much farther it still needs to grow. During the uprising our communication devices were occupied by violent images of police killing black folx publicly by the day, and beating peaceful protesters at night. This kind of trauma digs deep, settles, and can paralyze. If we are not careful it will numb us to apathy.
Can ignorance, misunderstanding, and hate be transmuted into something aesthetically beautiful? But then is beauty not just the mask that hides the sinister?
I was watching a video of philosopher Dr. Cornel West giving a talk on “What it means to be Human” (see attached clip) in which he exclaims that the best part of the American Black Tradition is “teaching the world so much about love”and I thought what does it mean to learn to love? How do we learn to love? I wanted to pose the questions.
I contacted collaborator Brett Russell and asked if we could abstract footage of people getting beat by police into a beautiful image {add a crystal singing bowl resonating in the key of F (the heart chakra)} these enemy’s together then abstracts the realities of unhinged institutional power.
~abstract. distract. entertain = forget/move on
~ Abstract violence into beauty, the beauty abstracts the violence.~
~ growth is stunted ~
if you look in the words of “Learning to Love” you will see protestors getting violently beat, but it’s so subtle like micro aggressions... this is how the state moves... slow. It is only when you really take the time and care to observe ...that this reality reveals itself, much like institutional racism.
These are ways truth is hidden within distraction and love.
In sincerity and solidarity
xxooxx
Jesús Landin-Torrez III