The value of journey can lie not just with its beginning or its ending but also with its possibility of endless discovery. View the study sheet here. Watch the recording here.
The tents are everywhere. From rain-soaked Portland to sun-drenched Southern California. On sidewalks, under bridges, in parks, along freeways. They stand as signs of shame for a society incapable of providing services that are needed for the displaced, disoriented or dysfunctional.
The hundreds of thousands nationally who are living unsheltered on our streets constitute a moral crisis for us. They are suffering injured lives. They can also be a source of suffering and injury: vandalism; theft; assault. A failure to provide an adequate opportunity for individuals to get the help they need to become healthy, self-reliant and productive and a failure to ensure safe and livable neighborhoods for all constitute the twin measures of our contemporary urban crisis.
The Book of Numbers opens with all the Israelites arrayed around tents. They are organized by tribe and by family. The text indicates that the purpose of this organization is to facilitate the assembly of a national army to address external threats, to make the community safe. However, the subtext, surfaced through midrash and commentary, hints at a very different role for tents. They are sites expressive of desires and yearnings for intimacy, for the weaving and repair of relationships.
Francesco Clemente is a contemporary Italian artist. He calls himself a “nomadic artist.” That reflects not only his lifestyle of physically travelling from place to place, especially often to India. It is also descriptive of what he hopes will be the impact on the viewer of his art. He is devoted to creating works that demand that a viewer be constantly on the move, never settling in a single space or on just one interpretation.
His piece included here, Standing With Truth Tent, is part of a multi-part 30,000 square foot installation titled Encampment. The entire installation is inspired, according to Clemente, by his sense of not having a home but wanting one. Yet, for Clemente home is described by moments of transition. Not just from physical place to physical place, but also from sensation to sensation: from suffering to joy, from physical to spiritual. Such transitions he sees as the substance of life itself.
Clemente’s nomad is not one who lacks the cognitive competence or behavioral control to manage a permanent home or one who fears the confines of an emergency shelter. His nomad has competencies and skills and control. His nomad is simply one who seeks to go beyond. One who is discontented with a mere beginning or a mere end. Clemente’s art celebrates the possibility of an endless journey.
The challenge of urban public policy today is to ensure the availability of behavioral health and substance abuse programs for everyone who needs it and shelter for all. The challenge of art is to inspire us to embrace and make wise use of the transitions that inevitably occur in our lives and to celebrate the possibility of an endless journey.
Join us here at 7:00 p.m. (PDT) Thursday June 2 as we explore the possibility of an endless journey.
