kristeva on the cosmopolitan

from Strangers to Ourselves, p 38

One who is happy being a cosmopolitan [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmopolitan, see 3rd paragraph for definition of a person described thus] shelters a shattered origin in the night of his wandering. It irradiates his memories that are made up of ambivalences and divided values. That whirlwind translates into shrill laughter. It dries up at once the tears of exile and, exile following exile, without any stability, transmutes into games what for some is a misfortune and for others an untouchable void. Such a strangeness is undoubtedly an art of living for the happy few or for artists. And for others? I am thinking of the moment when we succeed in viewing ourselves as unessential, simple passers by, retaining of the past only the game…A strange way of being happy, or feeling imponderable, ethereal, so light in weight that it would take so little to make us fly away…

dialogical art

Today's post desperately needs to be about community-based art projects. The genre is also known as dialogical art because of its focus on a dialogue between an artist and a community in a way that transforms artworks mid-process. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_art)

I first became interested in community art when I was working at Carnegie Mellon University where the MFA program required students to complete a "community-based art project" while in the program. Required reading for the students was Mapping the Terrain by Suzanne Lacy, and Lacy was on Carnegie Mellon's School of Art's board and helped to develop the school's curriculum..

Owen Mundy and I just created a community art project in York, Alabama during an artist residency at the Coleman Art Center. http://colemanarts.org/2005/artists_Owen_Mundy-Joelle_Dietrick.php

I bring all of these topics up because it relates to your understanding of the Female Expat Project. Yes, I intend to use your stories of life overseas to inspire more traditional forms of art—drawings, paintings, videos, etc.—but I also think of the Female Expat Project as an art project in itself. Its especially beautiful to think of we expat women spread out throughout the world, with a tendency to a nomadic lifestyle that often tweaks our typical understanding of community, being able to come together as a community online. Floating voices and visions, if you will.

julia kristeva

from strangers to ourselves

p 5, The Loss and the Challenge from Toccata and Fugue for the Forigner

A secret wound, often unknown to himself, drives the foreigner to wandering..."You have caused me no harm," he disclaims, fiercely, "It is I who chose to leave"; always further along, always inaccessible to all. As far back as his memory can reach, it is delightfully bruised: misunderstood by a loved and yet absent-minded, discreet, or worried mother, the exile is a stranger to his mother. He does not call her, he asks nothing of her. Arrogant, he proudly holds on to what he lacks, to absence, to some symbol or other. The foreigner would be the son of a father whose existence is subject to no doubt whatsoever, but whose presence does not detain him. Rejection on the one hand, inaccessibility on the other: if one has the strength not to give in, there remains a path to be discovered. Riveted to an elsewhere as certain as it is inaccessible, the foreigner is ready to flee. No obstacle stops him, and all suffering, all insults, all rejectsions are indifferent to him as he seeks that invisible and promised territory, that country that does not exist but that he bears in his dreams, and that must indeed be called the beyond.

The foreigner, thus, has lost his mother. Camus understood it well: the Stranger reveals himself at the time of his mother's death. One has not much notice that this cold orphan, whose indifference can become criminal, is a fanatic of absence. He is a devotee of solitude, even in the midst of a crowd, because he is faithful to a shadow: bewitching secret, paternal ideal, inaccessible ambition.

soon to send invite

Hey expat ladies,

I'll soon email you with instructions about how to writing or audio post to this website. You can email samples of your artwork or writing to me at jdietrick@gmail.com. Take advantage of the summer time to kick-start your creative endeavors and build a community among a group of women who are allover the globe.

Looking forward to your responses.
Joelle Dietrick