Walter Brueggemann On Visual Media In The Church

Can we have our pictures and speak about them too?
We sat down to an intimate chat with Walter Brueggemann and asked about the role of visual media in the church. As an Old Testament scholar, Dr. Brueggemann brings rich understanding to the notion of "speech." We wondered if his understanding of speech might be in conflict with our understanding of visual media. Despite our muttered ramblings, Dr.Brueggemann responded with penetrating insight, his sage wisdom infused with disarming humility and honesty.

It's a pretty scary question for us to ask, because at TWOTP image is what we do. We were relieved to find not only a lack of conflict between verbal and visual, but an energizing dynamic dance.

This is one of our favorite quotes: "Surely, the visual can take you to the edge of configurations that you've never entertained before, that break everything open."

When we hear stuff like that we want to set our hair on fire and run through churches screaming in William Wallace-esque frenzy "To the edge. To the edge. Artists! To the edge!!"

Needless to say, as artists, this was an encouraging chat.

Here's a large bit of that chat. You'll find questions to spur discussion below.


Walter Breuggerman with TWOTP from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.


Questions
•When you hear "domesticated images verses images that break things open," what comes to mind?

•What might Dr. Brueggemann mean by "domesticated?"

•Is Paul Racour right in saying proclamation (or the word) 'breaks things open" and manifestation (or sacrament) "binds them together."

•Why and in what ways can "the visual be as effective and important as the verbal?"
•effective at what?
•important for what?

•Pick a Psalm of your choosing and create a public gesture in the style of Jeremiah which articulates the message of the Pslam.

•Using that same Psalm, create a second public gesture in the style of Ezekiel.


Further reading
Bureggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination. Augsburg Fortress, 1978

Brueggemann, Walter. Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech For Proclamation. Augsburg Fortress, 1989

Brueggemann, Walter. A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming. Eerdmans Publishing, 1998.

Peterson, Eugene. Run With The Horses:The Quest For Life At Its Best. Intervarsity Press, 1983

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media:The Extension of Man. McGrawHill, 1964

Daniel J. Boorstin. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. Atheneum, 1987

Lakoff, George. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About The Mind. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990

Rookmaaker, H.R. Modern Art and the Death of a Culture. InterVarsity Press, 1970

Visser, Margaret. The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery and Meaning in an Ordinary Church. North Point Press, 2001.

TWOTP AT Yale Divinity

TWOTP at Yale Divinity from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

Steve Frost talks about The Work Of The People, Walter Brueggemann and the role of the visual media artist in the Church.

For those interested, here's the transcript of the talk:

OPENING
The arts in general are in the midst of a breaking-through in the church. There is a move away from decoration and toward declaration. There is a creative passion at work which is pushing back, opening up space for the voice of the poet. I believe this breaking-through is profoundly important.

JUICE OF EMANCIPATION
“The Prophetic Imagination,” by Dr. Walter Brueggemann has been fairly pivotal in the development of TWOTP. Travis and I recently had the honour of spending some time with Dr. Brueggemann. As a result our thoughts, of late, have been basting in those conversations. In particular Dr. Brueggemann bestowed upon us a term I’m not sure is in writing anywhere. He was speaking about the Exilic story, the confrontation of Pharaoh and YAHWEH, the centrality of this story to human experience, that we all experience Pharaohs in our lives, we all cry out in pain over some kind of bondage. The Story of Israel is the story of YAHWEH’s redeeming vision for all of human kind—bondage, liberation, reconciliation. The story of Israel is the story of God’s unshakeable resolve to redeem all things; love, justice and righteousness overcome the mechanizations of power, wealth and privilege. In the context of this discussion Dr. Breuggemann referred to “the juice of emancipation.”
It is a beautiful, beautiful term. We love this term. It is very “us.” It is raw and rich and and it speaks to the earthy reality in which mission and worship take place. This term connects with TWOTP because we try to make visual media that is the juice of emancipation. We aren’t as interested in making visual media for something—a service, a market, a demographic—as we are in making visual media that comes from something. This is the gift of the poet to the Church: to create from something rather than pragmatically for something.

EXPOSE AND DECLARE
As we create from something, we hope our visual media does two things; it exposes and it declares. It exposes, it names and it challenges: Ecologies of denial; flat Kingdoms of Pharaohs calcified in numbers and control; Kingdoms of selfishness, monuments to greed, the worship of relationship-destroying power. At the same time it declares, it describes and it affirms: God’s eternal kingdom of steadfast care, of a flourishing belonging and of making all things right; hesed, mishpat and tsedeka. Usually translated as love, justice and righteousness.
In as much as we are falteringly able to make what we try to make, in as much as we are little green shoots in the soil of God’s redemption, we manage to make media that moves the soul.


GOOD
Further, in making visual media that exposes and declares, we aren’t trying to make things that are perfect, we’re trying to make things that are good. Good in the same way God created the world and saw that it was good. Our understanding of good bears a Hebraic inflection, specifically that it refers to something being in-right-relationship-as-it-was-intended.
Associated with the “good” of Divine creation are a couple of other words, “order” and “chaos.” This triad of words—good, order and chaos—is important to how we go about creating visual media. If we start from the notion of good as right-relationship: order, then is a state in which things are in-right-relationship; and chaos is a state in which things are out-of-right-relationship. These inflections are important to draw out because I think our highly rational Western minds tend to see order and chaos through a highly rational lens: we tend to see order as things which have been catagorized, counted and analysed rendering them manageable, understandable and controllable. We watch a butterfly’s flight path and if we lack the algorithms from which to make numerical sense of the flight path, we declare it chaotic. So we catch the butterfly, stick a pin through it, label it and put it under glass; thereby declaring it now ordered.
In contrast, a Hebraic understanding of order would tend to see a butterfly being a butterly and doing the butterfly things it was intended to do in a context in which it was intended to do those things—no matter how mysteriously messy looking it might be— as being orderd. A Hebraic understanding of order would see the butterfly as being in-right-relationship and therefore “good.” Further, removing the butterfly’s ability to do butterfly things—by sticking pins in it and putting it under glass—would be seen as counter to right-relationship—chaotic. In Hebraic thinking, an ecology of activities, values, systems or structures which impinge upon, hamper or even destroy right-relationship, is an ecology of chaos.
Equipped with this Hebraic understanding of good, order and chaos, we see the timeline of Creation as being: from nothing to things-in-right-relationship. There is void. Then Godcreates ex nihilo, and what he creates is ordered. Then humanity sins and now we have chaos, things-out-of-right-relationship: humanity out of alignment with God, humanity out of alignment with each other and humanity out alignment with creation. In chaos we have oppressor and oppressed, domination and enslavement, the powerful and the powerless, those with water and those without water—things-not-as-they-were-intended. It is at the point in time and space, the point in history that man moves toward chaos that God begins to move, His vast loving tearful and sweeping arc toward all things-in-right-relationship-as-they-were-intended.
God’s moving starts immediatly. Immediately after man’s move to chaos, God moves to order. In Genesis we see some initial small arcs, from chaos to order. They lead to the prototype, the defining shape to the arc of God’s moving—the Exodus story. The Exilic story traces the unexpected, breath taking, mysterious, good and ordered shape of YAHWEH’s moving. The shape of God’s moving—it’s good-ness—sheds light on the length and depth and breadth of the triune God’s commitment to restore his children to right-relationship with Him, with each other and with creation.
From nothing to things-in-right-relationship to things-out-of-right-relationship and now back to things in right-relationship. This is where we find ourselves, as co-creators with Christ, invited into God’s work of redeeming all things.

NOT PRETTY
This eternal arc of God’s redeeming grace is good and ordered, but it isn’t pretty. It is blood and guts and tears. It is dirt and mud and trying and falling and being lifted up. The arc of God’s grace is alive with quotidian messy-ness, precicely because God moves among us and to be among us it to move in chaos. The arc of God’s grace is messy, and it is good.
When we create visual media, we don’t want to make things that are pretty or perfect, we want to make things that are—in all the ways just discussed—good.

REMEMBERING
Lastly, when we make good visual media we don’t want to make things that forget, we want to make things that remember.
Our culture is littered with liturgies of denial, liturgies of distraction; actions, habits, things, systems, techniques which manifest a self-created ecology of denial. They sentimentally ignore evil for the indulgent sake of pleasant feelings; they are subservient to Pharoah-nic machinations; they uphold the language and epistemology of Empire. These liturgies of denial are everywhere, and we don’t need more.
We want to make liturgies that remember, liturgies that break up through suffering and pain and miraculously, wonderfully amazingly create new life. We want to make liturgies that remember because we need help—every day—remembering Pharaoh is a lier, YAHWEH holds the throne; Satan is defeated, God’s kingdom is here. We need help remembering—every day— we are in this world, but not of this world.
Liturgies for remembering are daring. They dare to expose real oppression; they dare to name real pain; they dare to confront local Pharaohs who perpetuate systems of scarcity and fear.
But liturgies to remember don’t stop there, they go on to attempt the impossible, they dare to declare liberation and strive for reconciliation. They dare to declare grace, dare to describe a world in which it is okay to be good, dare to affirm there is another way and it is not Pharoah’s way of scarcity and fear; it is the way of shalom—of deep abiding peace which enables profound generosity. It is the way of steadfast care, a flourishing belonging and making all things right; hesed, mishpat and tsedeka. It is the way of love, justice and righteousness.

CLOSING
We firmly believe that as long as visual media—or any creative endeavor within the church— is an object of acquisition for the sake of upholding institutional status quo, it will not be aligned with God’s arc of redeeming all things. As long as visual media is pursued as a perfectible commodity, it will fall flat. As long as visual media is used as decoration, it will continue to be less than it could be. As long as visual media is driven by enterprise rather than poetry, it will remain hyper-kinetic eye candy and nothing more.
As I said in opening, we are in the midst of a profoundly important breaking-though. The voice of the poet is awakening and creative endeavour is moving away from decoration and toward declaration.
Visual media finds itself uniquely placed within that breaking-through. In as much as visual media is able to find its impetus in specific, contextual, ongoing stories of oppression, liberation and reconciliation; stories of chaos, Divine Movement and order; in as much as visual media names our Pharaohs and points to freedom; facilitates Divine and human relationship; in as much as visual media is the juice of emancipation; in as much as visual media gives voice to the poet who lives in the tension between Empires and grace; in as much as it manages to be any or all of these things, it will touch our humanity at its core, it will caress us, it will shake us, it will hold us, it will linger in deep places long into the night—and maybe, just maybe, we will remember for one more day—there is another way.

Ghana Dance Offering

We were in Ghana recently with Living Water International and Opportunity International to meet new friends and enjoying God. During a water well opening celebration with some Ghanaians in the North, Travis joined in the festivities with his "interpretation."