Making the Bluesky Leap
(What would Roland Barthes say?)
I finally made the jump to Bluesky.
One can’t really be in the arts or education without some connection to social media (even though a lot of current research says it’s not making us any happier). Whether in prof or producer mode, I feel compelled to stay in the web-based loop as new ideas are introduced and older ideas revamped. And with disasters playing out on all the other apps I figured it was time.
On most days I do my due diligence by scrolling and liking a few artful quotations. (And pictures of cats).
But sometimes a really inspired thought will cut through the noise. What French philosopher Roland Barthes might call a punctum moment. According to a term spelled out in Camera Lucida, his short reflection on photography:
a punctum detail in a photographic image is one that provokes a deep and personal reaction in the observer.
I wonder if such a provocation be brought about by a new image formed through a curated combination of pictures and ideas found online? Think photo dumps but with purpose. I can feel your doubt from over here, but just go with me for a moment…let’s try and make this link together.
I learned about Barthes while analyzing the disparate pieces that made up my doctoral research. My PhD was essentially me trying to answer the question: “What is inherently educational in the education of incarcerated youth?” I interviewed former guards and inmates, pouring over pages and pages of transcripts looking for common words and themes to help me in my search for an answer. But it was only when I came across some fragments in a desk drawer—a journal entry, a few salvaged student notes, and one solitary photograph that I had taken while teaching in the downtown Toronto youth detention centre—that something finally clicked. My punctum moment came not from a single detail in the photo, but from the new image that was a collage made out of my project’s disparate pieces.1
My punctum, what was my deeply personal response provoked by a collection of pieces or remnants, was brought together as new singular image contained within a small shadow box frame. That new image was my attempt to make sense of something utterly ridiculous. Locking children up. And in the end the answer to my research question was that there is nothing educational about such a set up. A 100-page thesis, multiple journal articles, and finally a book all came to the same conclusion in my ongoing attempt to explain this punctum moment. Prison is a lot of things, but don’t try to frame it as educational.
And that is “the truth. Amen” — full stop but no period needed.
These wise words of a former student, jailed and then contained again in my shadow box, they haunt me. Oh the hurt I felt when I saw through the glass of that frame that I was a part of the problem. That with my art I was doing to that child what the system had already done to him upon his arrest, containing and controlling him. Or attempting to. But scratching “the truth” in pencil he pushed back. No period at the end of his non-phrase. “Amen” — So be it.
I happened upon this gem-filled video of Guillermo del Toro talking about how paradoxical link-making is “essential to art.”
Back to my original Bluesky jump: maybe making links is essential to art BUT also essential to finding our own punctum moments in the bigger picture of our past’s disparate parts. Or, at the very least, a few random (joy-filled!) images or ideas that happen to appear while scrolling a site like Bluesky.
I’m pleased to report that one such punctum moment occurred before I left for a conference in the UK. One very generous stranger shared with me five excellent London restaurant recommendations when I put the call out. Another stranger shared with me an adorable photo of a small mushroom wearing an even smaller top hat. When his image becomes the poster for a fungi-focused film
and I are working on, my hope is that he’ll experience his own punctum moment, seeing his art out there in the world doing new things he never anticipated.Telling new truths.
Amen.
Arts based educational research or a/r/tography (including collage work and much more) is a real thing. If your interest is piqued I encourage you to dive deeper starting here.