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Much of the time, photography is, as it appears, art. Other times, documentation. The lines often blur. But the medium has become accessible to almost to the point of producing banality; we are daily inundated with more images than we can process. And this hides the other things that photography does, the way it operates as a fully autonomous actor in a larger system, a cultural system, a human system.

Susan Sontag has a lot to say about photography and its relationship to the wider world. I’ve never realized it could be explained and understood so profoundly until I’d read her work. “The photographer’s intentions do not determine the meaning of the photograph, which will… [be] blown by the whims and loyalties of the diverse communities that have use for it,” she says. Wordless, images can be read by any sighted person, but it can also be labeled, relabeled, framed, reframed, spun any which way.

“Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art,” Sontag is often quoted. And that’s the way of things, isn’t it? The creator has evidently made many conscious decisions— the placement of subjects, composition, lighting, colouring. Things are included, excluded. But once sent out into the world, it can be repurposed. The image becomes a tool, something that can be misrepresented or misattributed.

We like to think that photographs are the closest to the truth you can get— closer than writing or painting, for sure, because they are constructions, things that are shaped to recreate experiences, scenes. Even at their most realistic, they are things that have been filtered through the individual. Other modes of art evoke, photographs show. But even here lies a curious contradiction.

You have on one hand a gorgeously rendered photo of hikers trudging up a mountainside, shapes and forms well-composed, colors brilliant and light balanced. On the other you have the same hikers and the same mountains, blurry, too bright in one bit and too oddslot dark in another, obviously hastily snapped on a phone. Which one is more genuine? We’ve begun to immediately suspect an image that is too neat, somehow, must have been manipulated even though staging and setup might have been equally likely or unlikely in either scenario. Lo-fi has become the new thing.

And that too comes with another whole set of implications: now acquired skills are rendered obsolete, now the learning curve has been drastically reduced, now anyone can be a photographer. But that is an exploration for another day.

I’m not very fond of the word esoteric. It tastes like old coffee and roundtable discussions with art professors who were painters when they were 22 but decided against art-making and turned to purist academia. I don’t think there are many things that are truly esoteric – that is, something intended to only be understood by a select group of people. James Joyce’s Ulysses comes to mind as being a very, very difficult to comprehend and difficult to approach novel. But I still think it is approachable. It demands a lot of time and energy, but to call it truly esoteric is denying the universality of the written word. Contexts are unavoidable, of course. A paper written by a botanist for other botanists might not be inherently comprehendible. But (if written correctly) it is approachable in the right way. But this is with regards to papers.

Art making, I believe, is a populist thing. Art is informed by human experience. And no human experience is invalid. And therein lies a central philosophy of mine with regards to art-making: it should be accessible, it should be simple, it should exist at a human level.

My definition of accessibility might not be a universal one. I come from a contemporary music background, where accessibility is seen (in some small circles) as a swearword. It may be the optimist and romantic in me, but I think art is (and should be) universally accessible. Open-mindedness is perhaps the biggest individual factor here.

My medium – performance – can often be seen as esoteric and uninviting, as pretentious and hierarchical. You have to be in on the joke, or otherwise you are stupid and uncultured. And certainly, some performance is conceived of in this way. And such is the public antagonism toward performance art, modern dance, modern art, and mediums that delve into abstraction. But it seems like an awful negative way of looking at something as beautiful and important as art.

But to focus my argument a bit more: I think performance is the most universal medium. I believe that nothing is more human, more accessible, than one person perfuming for another. All pretenses are abandoned, all ideas of virtuosity left at the door (although virtuosity certainly has a place).

While I can understand why some may view performance as pretentious, I think it may well just be the universal art form. I believe in the power of connection through the body – the “irreducible medium” of performance, to borrow from Martha Wilson. I believe in the power of the shared experience of the body. I am drawn to situations where anyone can be an art maker, where talent or predisposition or age or ability does not inhibit one’s inclusion in the age-old tradition of making stuff that has meaning. I believe in the power of simplicity and collaboration, the power of openness and realness.

I do not believe that anyone needs any context before experiencing a work of art. I believe that simply the context of being human is enough.

I have a huge interest in how twins are depicted in different cultures.  I’m guessing it’s because I’m a twin.  My favorite story of twins comes from Antiquity, the myth of Castor and Pollux (who become the Gemini twins).  But a close second is the Yoruba concept of the “ibeji.”

The Yoruba people are an ethnic group from Nigeria, which happens to have the highest rate of twin births in the world.  Unfortunately, however, the death rate is also high.  Yoruba beliefs holds that the first twin born is a sort of “scout” and, once they see the world, sends a message back to the other twin telling them whether they should continue into this world.  If not, the twin yet to be born is stillborn.  If neither twin thinks that life will be good enough, they are both stillborn.  The twins also share a singular soul.

If one of the twins dies then there is the problem of the living twin’s soul being in crisis.  So physical representations of the twins, called ibeji, are created to house the soul of the twins.  These have traditionally been carved wooden sculptures.

As per usual, European colonial powers sought to destroy this practice and impose Christianity.  Under England’s control, ibeji figures were made illegal.  The Yoruba people adapted and created ibeji less noticeably “African” through photography

and more European looking sculptures.  The actual physical appearance of the twins is not important because the ibeji is meant to capture the soul.  The statues are the same in appearance and for photography, the image of the surviving twin is duplicated.  If the twins are of different sexes, then one of the photos will be of the surviving twin dressed as the opposite gender.

In April 2013 Matilda the musicalwill reach the streets of NY from its London home and join the crowds of other big number Broadway musicals that fill the historic theaters. I have high hopes for Matilda after watching this interview of the composer of the children’s novel turned musical, Tim Minchin, by NYT journalist Patrick Healy.

[ see video here ]

What gives me hope for this musical that will set it apart from many of its over-priced, over-set, gaudy under-thought Broadway predecessors is that the composer truly believes in the magic that is Roald Dahl.  Minchin does not attempt to make the stage spit glitter and have the dolled up actors throw can-can kicks around the stage. Instead, he composes the musical to posses the same struggle and underlying darkness of the book itself, while bringing lightness with music and humor that Dahl does with text.  “It’s about child abuse…a horrible story, to have kids thrown around by their hair, beaten, locked in cellars, and deprived of an education, and yet have such a light air to it” says Minchin.  He explains that these underlying themes are prevalent is many childhood stories, and it is the craft of the writer to bring this to people’s attention in the most light-hearted way.

Dahl (1916 – 1990) authored children’s books close to the hearts of those in the millennial generation, with works such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factor, the BFG, The Witches, and The Twits. Dahl, like the characters in Matilda, experienced a childhood filled with loneliness and struggle, as his father and sister passed away while he was still a child, and he was later sent to boarding school.  He was a rebellious child , often caned for the pranks he played on teachers and his rejection of God and religion. After serving in WWII, Dahl’s experience with his wife and daughter, Sophie (who he named the paralleled character in the BFG after), suffered health issues throughout their lives. It makes sense then that Dahl would pull upon his experiences and translate distasteful incidents into fantastical, and allegorical, stories for children to relate and escape into.

The images from the trailer to the musical exhibit deep hues of blue, black and grey within the set, and similar costuming and sets to that of the 1996 movie, directed by Danny DeVito. Currently, the musical is sold out at its London location and has won sever Olivier Awards, including Best Musical, with high hopes for its New York premier.