Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Number 2 | Page 57

Dorothy Miell:
I think people are motivated to express themselves in those sorts of conditions.
But how do we know why they do it? I’d argue it’s about communication. As
a social psychologist, I think the motivator is, I have to communicate this thing.
I maybe don’t know who I’m communicating it with yet, but this thing that is inside
me, I have to get out and share. You don’t necessarily have a specific individual
audience in mind at the time, but it’s important that you’re trying to get the
emotion or idea out to enable it to be shared.
Voice and Dialogues
J. P. Singh:
So, let’s turn it the other way around and get to the notion of voice, which is
about the artist voicing a particular condition. When that happens, is then
the artist listening back to the society in which she or he is producing?
Dorothy Miell:
I think even if you’re sitting creating something completely on your own,
you are kind of in dialogue with the canon, or the community. As Mikhail
Bakhtin proposed, the artist thinks about what has been done before and
reflects on, or reacts, to that and so is in some sense in dialogue with that
broader community. I don’t think artistic works are made in hermetically
sealed units away from communities.
J. P. Singh:
This may be too simplistic: Shostakovich says I’ve got to represent this communist
moment so I’m going to have this very military-like rhythm. But concurrently,
he also composed in a language that his friends understood as deeply
subversive. He wrote in a very personal manner that did not prevent his
symphonies from catering simultaneously to Stalinism.
Dorothy Miell:
Yes, you’ve got multi-layered communication.
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