We get so caught up in our own lives, in the events that pass us by, in the people who surround us.  We become so focused on our work, the latest trends, the current affairs.  We lose sight of so many important things, the ones unseen, the scenery that remains constant even as we move incessantly.  We forget to appreciate the quiet.  We forget to truly look and reflect– about ourselves, about the world, about life, in general.  We forget too easily that it’s not all about the grades or the money or the reputation.  It’s always about something more than that, some unspeakable greatness that is found in the smallest of things.

This video is just another reminder of how greatness surrounds us every day.  How can something so simple, like fish in an aquarium be so astounding?  This is what they mean by the Sublime in History of Art– a scene that reminds us of just how small we are.  And indeed, as onlookers are deeply silhouetted by the blue green of the water tank, we are forced yet again to acknowledge how small we are.  In comparison to the vastness of the sea, the millions and billions of fish and other species in the world, we are but a mere 6 billion humans.

Because we are human, oftentimes, I think we forget that we are just humans.  We have the capacity to think, to feel, to plan, to act, to judge.  So, we think we are so great, so immortal and invincible.  We believe we are the most intelligent beings, we believe we are right, we believe no one else could possibly know better than us.  We feel we have the right to control everything, to hold power over others.  But when it finally hits us that we are nothing more than human, the word than connotes a meaning much less than “powerful”.  It strikes us that yes, we are humans…and nothing more, nothing less.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Under the comment section on Youtube, there was one who criticized this video and those who considered it to be beautiful:

“Horrible. It’s never that crowded in the open sea. Poor animals. And all that only because they want to hear us humans saying things like you are here on youtube.

This is not beautiful, it is brutal.”

This comment does bring up a plethora of questions, one of which asks, “What is beauty?” and the other which asks, “Can something be morally deranged and artistic at the same time?”  This commentator seems to imply that because the entrapment and display of natural beings is a brutal practice, this scene cannot be considered “beautiful”.  That its artistic value is lost because it is tainted by some idea of right or wrong.  Alas, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is it not?  Something that is brutal to one person has every capacity to be considered beautiful to another.  Not to sound completely void of morality, but this seems to be fact.  Photographs and paintings depicting the havoc wreaked by war are still considered to be art, to retain its sense of creative expression, even if they are portraying or were created in deplorable circumstances.  Art, I don’t believe, is necessarily bound by a humanistic sense of ethics; in fact, art is precisely that which cannot be defined or contained by human understanding– artists will say that they do not create for the purpose of profit but that they create because they are driven by this innate drive to express something they cannot label or comprehend.

However, I’m really glad that this person showed us the other perspective of a scene many would call breathtaking and magnificent.  There are so many sides to art, so many ways that it influences us daily and we do not even take notice of it.  Art does a lot to move the public, yet we have become so interested in technology, the sciences of movement– faster, stronger, better– we have become blind to the art that surrounds us each day.

This video holds a lot of appeal for viewers because we become immersed in the scene.  We become surrounded by the water that holds the sharks and the fish, we are enveloped by this sense of calm and tranquility, struck by awe and amazement at the beauty that faces us.  We are just another human being in the aquarium, drinking in the magnificence that slows everything down.  It’s like we’re in water– we feel loose and at ease, we feel slowed down but not in a cumbersome way.  And as we watch, mesmerized, it hits us that, wow… there’s so much more out there than we fully appreciate or realize.

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Gabby Park often wishes she could go to aquariums and be immersed in the blue-green water, even if she has trouble swimming.

Yogi Berra, coined the phrase, “This is like déjà vu all over again!” making a humorous statement planted from misused repetition. Déjà vu all over again is apparent in our current lives seen in the topic of museum looting, yet does not connote the same kind of humor as Yogi Berra.

During World War II, Nazi Germany raided and destroyed both large and small cultural museums as well as homes filled with private collections. This war tactic stripped a culture of its historical legitimacy and heritage, showing the German’s act of genocide went so far as to extinct Jewish and Polish entire existences by demolishing their ancestral objects as well. More than half a century later, looted artwork from this time period is popping up today, while others are still missing.

We see the process of deja vu all over again, when in 2003, the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad was raided after the United States invasion of Iraq. Mostly native Iraqi looters stole ancient Middle Eastern heritage of great importance to both Iraqis and the world. In both cases we can see an attack on individual cultural pasts.

A culture’s credence rests upon the evidence provided by accumulated ancestral objects. Therefore, the importance of these objects must not be overlooked. The issue of museum looting is greatly important in the United States due to the acquisition of these objects in our major museums nationwide. On a local level, back in the 80’s, there was a case of looted objects found in the Kelsey Museum on Archeology collection here on campus. Acquisition policies in museums have recently reformed, becoming more aware of the object’s origins and deaccessioning looted objects back to their country of origin.

Museums can learn from their past acquisition mistakes in order to prevent déjà vu all over again in the future.

It’s history and it’s present!

Arts, ink. brings a dedicated core of writers to blog about wide-ranging topics on the arts at the university and elsewhere. Columnists will be blogging soon — please check back!