Wednesday, September 01, 2010

I Believe That Children Are Our Future


It won't be a spectator-kind of situation exactly. It's immersive. It's what Sarah's been up to with the children of our congregation and artist friends who've been kind enough to get in on the act. It's...a chapel transformed into a human body. You walk into it. There are kids inside to show you what to do and see and how to get the drift of what's going on. It's called Consuming Catastrophe: The Comedy of the Heart; A Play in Ate Parts, and it might go some distance in undoing the damaging image/experience of church as a place where young people are taken to learn to hate and fear their own bodies.
Sarah's "Sunday School" space is equal parts storytelling and intelligence gathering. She begins with story (Jesus' parable of the mustard seed, for instance), and then they go from there w/ drawing, playing, singing, asking questions, attempting analogies, and producing images of their own. Their money quotes ("I am art," "There's a virtual, galactic battle going on in my head," "The future is where we go to remember") have generated the installation, even as we note that they refuse, wonderfully, to regurgitate these gems on command. So anyway, they'll be there. Anyone within reasonable driving distance of Nashville would do well to be there too. And I imagine it'll be the most strange, blessed, and inspiring thing going on in our beloved town. It's a going public, we might say, with what our Sunday mornings look like. One more crack at togetherness, as H. Simpson puts it, or, in Sarah's words, another go at putting skin and bones on the mystery of God. Be there and be square. It'll be good for everyone. The opening is this Saturday, September 4th in DPC’s chapel at 6:00. Food and drink will be available as a part of the Artluck’s 1st Saturday Art Crawl. Write me if you're at all confused. More info and a visual clue or three of what some of it will look like can be found right....here.

2 comments:

J. Andrew Camp said...

Will there be another? I am in Wisconsin all weekend. This sounds extremely interesting. My brother, Aaron, and I are both chomping at the bit due to his forthcoming child this fall.

I can't help but wish for a tour of this sort of thing.

Variations On A Theme said...

Hate that I missed it. We were at a birthday party. Is it still up???