In contemporary culture, art is often turned into artifice, fashion, trend, spectacle, and into a competition of aesthetic prowess. We have glamorized self-absorption to the point where it has now become an “aspirational” lifestyle. How many people are now interested more in their own brand, their follower count, in how much $$$ they can make, or how famous they can get…? Even our altruism has tax write offs, and our spiritual leaders have become politicians or celebrities or media moguls. All while our world is burning in crisis everywhere around us.
Art is the compass for a society…
when it is commodified and power hungry-- so too are the people.
Art is a $63.8 billion dollar a year global commodity market.
If the machine of self-interest is the overall force devouring our world, then redefining self-interest to include humankind, can surely illuminate and redeem us. Art in this model is a force of societal alchemy, metamorphosis and rebirth; transforming our ancient problems into new solutions, for one does allways contain the seeds within it to the other.
And yet it must be said: Art on its own is not enough to wake up humanity, we need art combined with new paradigms for our world. Even Picasso understood this when he put up the masterpiece Guernica denouncing brutality, and still the bombs continued to rain down on that small, beautiful village in Spain, horrifyingly. Art alone is not enough. This should be overwhelmingly clear by now.
The 2020s requires new ideas, new models, new paradigms PLUS art.
We need artists who are bravely honest with themselves *and* with the world.
CA$H = where subject and object, fuse and converge.
We need people who are not just extraordinary artists, but extraordinary human beings who, with joy and courage, embrace their responsibility to be leaders of social impact in our culture.
CA$H is the Coalition of Artists to Save Humanity. Photographers, filmmakers, painters, sculptors, street artists, dancers, musicians, graphic artists, poets, actors, writers, animators, DJs, journalists, playwrights… rising out of the City of Angels to contribute their voice and vision into deconstructing the face of modern human suffering. To show ourselves to ourselves.
Watch a child. They exude peace. We are not born with any inherent inclination to destroy each other and/or ourselves. So, why is it that this has been normalized... for so many thousands of years!? Why is self-destruction now the leading cause of death, depression the foremost global disease, and warfare/violence only keeps on proliferating?
Right now…
- there are more than 80 million+ refugees of war
- 357 million children are living in armed conflict around the world
- 50 million people living in modern human slavery
- suicide is at a 30 year high
- a seemingly endless global pandemic
- and ecocide looms
= all while plastic surgery, celebrity fixation, drug consumption, mass shootings, hate crimes, xenophobia, political cataclysm and luxury lifestyles are all increasing globally…
The question is: what is humankind doing to itself and why?
All art matters and has value, because all art makes us feel. And yet, there is a certain category of art which is particularly urgent at this global juncture: art that intentionally functions as a portal to a healthier social reality.
Underneath such urgent creations of art and expression exists an eternal motive which is vitally important: Art is ultimately our conscience and mirror—it makes us feel *and* think critically. It is where we find what is most real and enduring… of how truth can be found and lived in ourselves, and in our world.
May we celebrate artists who exhibit the bravery to answer the call to be righteous instead of the emphasis on their own status. The world needs bold art now more than ever. Therefore CA$H is a catalyst for artists to be more honest with themselves and to think about their impact. Especially at a time of global crisis, it is not about being good or impressive—which is all an egocentric quest, but about standing for something far more than yourself.
Instead of artists exploiting their own gifts for the endless machine of fame, money and career building, this is about using our art to bring light to the world, and to our own lives. For too long the self-destructive artist archetype has reigned; and this is because the creation of art has an enormous power and energy. When it is utilized in service of beauty in the world/self it heals and strengthen one’s lifeforce, no matter the path.
The experience of joy is inextricable from addressing our most serious topics. Artists know this truth intimately—the essence of creation, is joy. Our world is in urgent need of catalyzing joy as a fundamental reality to existence. It is central to generating the passion and commitment required to heal our planet and all its inhabitants—including ourselves. Well-being is our natural state. Not violence, addiction, depression, racism, stress, powerlessness or chronic disease.
Art has an imperative role to play in human evolution.
May we remember this responsibility and live + create accordingly.
Great works of art pass through us like storm winds, flinging open the doors of perception, pressing upon the architecture of our life with their transforming powers. In works of art are gathered the mythologies of thought, the heroic efforts of the human spirit to impose order and interpretation on the chaos of the human experience. Possessing the power to construct through language realities which are both sensuous and concrete, yet pervaded by the life and mystery of the spirit. There are great traditions, lines of spiritual descent, which relate to Homer to Yeats and Aeschylus to Chekhov. To these I return with passionate awe and a sense of life ever renewed. For, all about us flourishes the new illiteracy, the illiteracy of those who can read short words or words of hatred and tawdriness but cannot grasp the meaning of language when it is in a condition of beauty or of truth.
~ George Steiner
Genuine art does not have as its object a mere transitory game. Its serious purpose is not simply to transport the human being into a momentary dream of freedom, but actually to make him free… Art is the daughter of freedom.
~ Friedrich Schiller
Beauty will save the world.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The objective of CA$H is to create art that is a livable doorway to a brighter and healthier world.
Yours Passionately Aflame for Our World,
Brigitte Secard
author + artist + educator
and creator of CA$H