Conflict has existed for almost as long as mankind has. Sometimes it erupts into war, sometimes into simmering problems under the surface, other times like an earthquake, with effects resonating across all kinds of people and over hundreds of years. All along these conflicts, people have written, painted, photographed, and composed about it.

It seems a bit dark. Turning human pain into ‘art,’ something for the leisure or enjoyment of someone privileged enough to be looking at it? Reading the stories that reap genius out of something so awful as war, I feel guilty sometimes, basking in my privilege, and thinking of all the decades riddled by conflict that would follow their publication, and it makes me wonder, “What’s the point?” Art outlives its creators – what can it do?

During lockdown, I took comfort in retracing humanity’s steps during times of conflict, gravitating towards conflict-based literature. I lapse back into old favorites – Irene Nemirovsky’s ‘Suite Francaise’ (written during WW2 and discovered sixty years after her death in Auschwitz), and ‘The Plague,’ by Albert Camus. I’m reading Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War,’ an ancient Chinese military treatise from 5th century BC. It offers advice on how to win a war. It can be read by the wager, the participant, or the victim. I read it as a global citizen. In it, Sun Tzu talks about how:

“Without a full understanding of

The harm

Caused by War

It is impossible to understand

The most profitable way

Of conducting it”

I was shocked at how this applied in a COVID-19 context. Of course, this war wasn’t made with profitable aims. That said, Jacinda Ardern understood the disastrous implications of letting the virus go unchecked and set measures in place to smoothen our recovery. While other countries will suffer recessions, New Zealand’s economy won’t be so crippled. Sun Tzu’s wisdom aligns, thousands of years later. Art grants knowledge from previously lived experience.

Joe Zizek asked, “Why does the history of revolutionary violence matter?” I want to expand on that a bit. You may say reading books about the past is like reading stale, static knowledge. As a modern-day reader of James Baldwin, I initially thought I was reading events set in the past, until I scrolled through the news and read of Ahmaud Arbery’s murderers jailed 2 months after his murder, George Floyd’s assassination, and the never-ending list of crimes against black people. In terms of black rights, our world isn’t so different from James Baldwin’s. Art allows us to step into the shoes of someone at the limits of our imagination and find parallels within our own worlds and theirs. This is where tangible change begins. James Baldwin’s novels, along with Toni Morrison and ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ inspired the protesters of the sixties. Black civil rights movements then paved the way for LGBTQI and women’s rights. The protesters of those days were stirred by the poignancy of these texts and driven to make a change in their day-to-day lives.

Do you remember when you were a child, and you would make a point of not stepping on the sidewalk cracks? Art gets rid of these sidewalk cracks, these ideas that we’ve constructed, when really, we are all walking the same path. It transcends the barriers of space and time, race, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, and gender.

Today, we pick up these books and they continue to ring true. We learn from history and we learn about what needs to be done once we put the book down. If the book is good and is true, you are somewhat altered after putting it down. Art shows how much, or how little change has occurred since then, more effective than a list of rules or a preaching of morality. Instead, it uses empathy to provoke us and compare that world with our own.

Week 8’s group had a particularly interesting focus question, “what are some ways that allow us to build/create the belief that change is possible?” Sally Angelson placed a heavy emphasis on hope.

All of the arts can achieve this. They can mobilize 8 billion people. The evidence is vast. Doris Salcedo’s ‘art as repair’ exhibition revolutionized how people saw the Colombian conflict. ‘Creating awareness’ sounds useless, but it moves pebbles, and pebbles eventually become rocks, then boulders. Ai Weiwei’s art on the Chinese government’s oppression opened a huge dialogue on their human rights violations, tapping into the minds of his spectators to make them global citizens, connecting us in a way that statistics and headlines can’t.

Many believe that books, art, photography, music are all for leisure, but it goes so much more beyond that. In making something meaningful out of something terrible, lessons are passed on, hope is instilled, and empathy is triggered. It is one of the most beautiful things of being human. There must be a reason as to why Irene Nemirovsky spent her days in hiding, writing a novel about her experiences. At one stage, Ai Weiwei was under 24-hour surveillance, with his life on the line, and he continued to test the limits. Why have hundreds of thousands risked it all to write about things that bothered them, even when they bothered no one else?

They have hope in their readers, listeners, spectators. It is up to you what you do with their creation.