Be an openist
I like textures. I am learning to detach.
Art: Jaron says—anything you can get away with.
Art wasn't a thing at my home growing up. It wasn't something we got away with, talked about, nor did art hang on the walls.
Yet there was art in the form of music—Leo Dan, Leonardo Fabio, Los Terricolas...a long list of romanticas. When the different educations and environments aren't conducive to considering what others get away with, music is there. There it was, the sounds, the lyrics, the beats, the appreciation for the voices and for the message. I didn't know all of that was art. It was just music, everybody knew it, everybody had records, then cassettes, then CD's, everybody played it and danced to it. It wasn't that special, we loved it.
Art isn't that special, is it? Just another human thing. As special as daydreaming, feeling, thinking, dancing, speaking. As special as being human. That's what music was for us, another human experience.
When I went to museums, art was this mysterious senseless something that I couldn't understand. Fernando Botero, the sculptor and painter, Leonardo Davinci, the Mathematician and Monalisa's painter. It was so weird, they were god-like figures that I couldn't imagine ever to understand, or to even attempt to emulate. Art wasn't what I was supposed to make or do, or think about.
But what was accessible was music, moving my body, listening to the radio, learning Shakira songs, yeah! I could do that. We weren't conscious of it, but art permeated our cultural life, with complex rhythms, movements, instruments. We moved our bodies artistically—we just didn't know it.
I don't consider myself an artist, yet I am in this School of Art. If I can call myself anything it would be compassionate and open, and music forged that. Being open to all different kinds of dances, of dancers, of rhythms, feeling for those singers and their breakup songs, their longing songs, their triumphant songs. It taught me to be so open that I consider doable things that most wouldn't. So I am going to call myself an openist—I am open to a world of possibilities. And as an openist I must consider it possible to bring down, reverse and transform the ongoing tourist industry of a Caribbean Island into a socialist, culturally rich, dignified, strong, proud community. And that's what I intend to work on getting away with while at The School of Art and Time—while I dance, while I internalize that "Do" in Northamerica is C, while I bang some strings in the hope of a melody.
Juliana is Colombian, she loves learning in collectivity—and developing collectivity. She views movement as a form of liberation.
Juliana imagines, yearns, and strategizes for a world without oppressive divisions. She likes to explore the roots of human behavior, why people think the way they do, the elasticity of the so-called “human nature”, and art making as a vehicle for uncovering truths.
