Awakening to Truths About Ourselves and the World (In the Beauty Class)
Submitted by Steve on March 26, 2015
Diane Ragsdale posts to Jumper:
This is the sixth post in a series of posts focused on the course on beauty that I am coordinating/teaching for business students at UW-Madison. In the fourth week of the Beauty Class I wanted to explore the notion, articulated by Jeanette Winterson, that “art can waken us to truths about ourselves and the world.”
The class examined works by two artists: monologist/raconteur Mike Daisey, whose piece The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs was aimed at getting people to think about about the injurious labor conditions by which their beautiful Apple devices are made; and transdisciplinary social artist Laura Anderson Barbata (born in Mexico and currently based in New York City), whose ongoing Julia Pastrana Project has been aimed at getting people to see the “ugliest woman in the world” as a human being with rights rather than as an object of scientific study or historical artifact.