(when did I feel like an Other? What does Swiss culture view as Other?)
Language- The number one time I felt like an outsider and very different, isolated, and alone, was being an English and non-French speaking person around not only French speakers, but French speakers who also know 2 other languages. Knowing limited Spanish helped me get around, and I did manage to learn a bit of French, but I always felt very uncomfortable because I wasn’t ever confident I knew what was going on. Other English speakers, and people whose first language was not French, also felt this way. English actually ended up being the common thread, the connection between all of us non-Swiss French.
Artist among Scientists- Logic/Rules vs. feeling and art –
I happened to meet many Scientists; people my age working on their PhDs. It was an interesting learning experience to be a person on an entirely different OTHER life path- to be an artist among scientists. I felt like I was constantly defending what I am doing with my life. But really people just wanted to understand. When I say performance art, what does that mean? It was actually really strengthening to have to explain that. And the question of what I wanted to do after my trip kept coming up. I have ideas, and I have dreams, and that’s what I can tell them. But the question of “how?” kept repeating itself- how are you going to start a theatre company? How are you going to travel around the world? The “how”- you can ask any artist- isn’t really the point. We have these idealistic dreams, and we follow them. Someone called me idealistic. Well, I take that as a compliment. I realized that as an artist, I have to be idealistic in order to get anything done. If I was realistic, logical- I would still be a teacher. I wouldn’t be trying to create this piece, I wouldn’t be trying to travel around the world, I would not have gone to Switzerland, and probably wouldn’t have left San Francisco. I think and act with my heart, not with my head. Being an artist among scientists has helped me to really define myself and reflect on why I am doing what I’m doing. And it feels very scary, but I feel stronger than ever, and my conviction to follow my dreams has been driven forward, full force.
Art Brut-
There is an art museum in Lausanne called Musee de l’Art Brut, that had a strong effect on me. Art Brut is a term coined by a local Swiss that collects artwork made by people who do not consider themselves artists, who never intended their art to be in a museum, many of whom were prisoners, in mental institutions, or live a reclusive life. These people have made art because they were called to, because it was stuck inside them, because they were driven by a force completely unkown to the audience. Their art was not intended to be looked at, to go, “hmm” at, to try to be interpreted, and definitely not to be in a museum. I felt, looking at this artwork, that I was prying into someone’s mind, staring at someone naked, a very unwelcome exhibition. I felt a bit like I was in a human-mind zoo. Animals in a zoo do not choose to be looked at by humans, as if they were artwork, and neither did these people want tourists and intellectuals to be staring into the deepest, darkest caverns of their soul. And by looking at these scratchings, wall coverings of millions of little circles, sculptures made out of rags, blood, and clay, paintings of magical creatures that came to someone in a vision- I felt like we as a society were making these people into OTHERS.
