On Exceptionalism & Reoccurring Violence

*This essay was originally published in 2018 in Seedy Clips, a zine made and edited by Sara Fantry, Brooklyn, NY. It is being reposted now due to the uncanny similarities in the politics that followed in the years to come under the Trump Administration.

On Exceptionalism & Reoccurring Violence

Violence

Noun, behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.

 

Evil

Adjective, profoundly immoral and malevolent.

 

February 19th, 2018—I woke up this morning and opened the digital version of Wall Street Journal. The home page for the titan newspaper was splashed with multiple stories, covering most of the page, of the 19 year old disturbed Nikolas Cruz who gunned down 17 people in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Many stories, across many news organizations, tell of a troubled teenager who was easily able to legally obtain a semi-automatic firearm. A teenager, who for years prior, had been carefully attended to psychologically by the school, through the use of discipline, counseling, and temporary transfer to a high school for emotionally troubled students. Still, Cruz was able to walk into the school on February 14th, and massacred those 17 unlucky people, and wounding far more.

 

The response, as many expected from the same political arena that upholds Trump’s America, was tepid—President Trump condoned the violence, and pointed to mental health issues as the main cause, while blatantly skirting the issue of gun control. Many Republican lawmakers took to Twitter to write of their “thoughts and prayers” for those in the tragedy; many of the same lawmakers who had received funding towards their various political campaigns from the NRA. Many Democratic legislators pointed towards a need for stricter gun-control laws, and indeed, in the days following this tragedy, we’ve seen the national dialogue spring up around gun-control laws once again. If the past shootings are of any indication, the interest will wane and lawmakers shall forget the issue until the next mass shooting. To me, this seems an obvious example of the banality of evil within American society, and to which I first turn to Arendt for relief.

 

I look to Arendt for that same moral-philosophy “comfort food” that I sought in my undergrad navigating the political sphere for the first time—reading The Public vs. The Private Realm essay is seminal to my understanding of feminist seizure of space. However, this time, I focused on excerpts from Eichmann in Jerusalem, as read in the Portable Hannah Arendt. This is Arendt’s famous recanting of the trial of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, on trial in Jerusalem in 1961, for organization the deportation of Jews by the Nazis from Hungary and elsewhere.

 

Eichmann was forced to recount multiple horrors during the famous and televised trial. Throughout, he protested that as a Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel), he had no authority within the ranks of the SS and was only following out orders that were ultimately made by Himmler, Müller, Heinrich, and Hitler, and as such claimed that he had no guilt or hatred on his conscience regarding what he had done. Of course, there were multiple instances of times when Eichmann visited the internment camps, and witnessed mass shootings of Jews there—so he could not claim to not have known that the people he was deporting were being killed. Ultimately, Eichmann was found to be guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, guilty of membership in one of three Nazi organizations (SS), and guilty of crimes against Slovenes, Poles, and Romani. The judges concluded that he believed in the Nazi extermination campaign wholeheartedly, as well as was following orders. He was hung on May 31st, 1962.

 

Arendt, it must be said, might have the wrong example for her famous “banality of evil” concept in Eichmann, as historical research indicates that Eichmann was a lifelong Nazi and not the plain-faced bureaucrat that he had cultivated for the trial, and for which Arendt has been criticized. However, many examples of this exist easily within the political sphere. This idea, the “desk murderer”, the ones who feels absolved of wrongdoing because they were “following orders”, “not making the rules”, or “had no ability to change anything”, who aided and abetted in the violence of the states towards specific bodies.

 

Arendt writes in a letter to Mary McCarthy on the subject of Eichmann in 1963, “It is indeed my opinion that now that evil is never “radical”, that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. It is “thought-defying”, as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its “banality””(Arendt, “Holes of Oblivion” letter to Mary McCarthy in Banality and Conscience).

 

Arendt’s ideas are this—if we strip the exceptionalism of the Holocaust from that moment in history, it is a moral failure of judgment. Perhaps it is not exceptionalism in that that specific violence is constantly reoccurring—(or, in the aforementioned example of the most recent mass school shooting, is a regularly reoccurring violence), but it still functions as violence and as a moral malfunction within a supposedly just society.

 

Arendt ultimately believed voting populations need to understand the power of the word “no”—and of course, to also understand the broken mechanisms of two-party politics. She wanted these populations to really think objectively, and to not function as an automaton within a system or party. She argues that there cannot be a mass prescription of individuality—i.e., American exceptionalism is a key concept to avoid here. However you slice it, she argues that this individuality needs to be built into the culture itself, so that the culture self-regulates responses to violence and the needs of the community.

 

I think, given the above logic from Arendt, one should individually grapple with responses to the question of “When is Violence ok to employ?” I already know my own opinion, which is to resist fascism in all respects, to resist inequality in all respects, and to resist the growing economic divides in America. I’m personally not one to watch gorey films or violent war movies, but I do want to see Nazis punched in the face by the black bloc at the Women’s March. I do want racists to be afraid to walk in the street. I do want to see catcallers kicked off public transportation and being doused in hot soup on trains. I do want to see people who blame school shootings on mental health and children before guns (knowing full well that it will happen again to more children) to be forcibly removed from public places. I want to see the diversity of my country protected by the people within in—lord knows those who represent us within the political arena, with its Trumpism and “alternative facts” won’t stand for us.

 

Because the “unprecedented” in violence has already happened, as in the case of the horrors of the Holocaust, it is precedented now that it has occurred, and moral judgments in favor of human life can be made. If the precedented violence has still occurred, as with the case of reoccurring school shootings in the US, and those in power seek to maintain the status quo, then we have, in similar, “tiny Eichmanns” representing us within our government, who in turn grapple with their own banality of evils. To that end, Arendt believed we should aim to squash fascism in all its respects, and any intolerant models of government and power that seek to eliminate diversity—of people, economic standings, education, access to citizenship, etc.—and instead check and vote for models of power that embrace the diversity of our society. Her freedom ultimately lies in the public arena, and more specifically, within the voting booth. Whatever your opinion of “legitimizing” forms of fighting back over others, voting offers an above-the-board tool that hopefully, someday, will reflect the needs of the people who vote these legislators into power. In the meantime, it’s time to take to the streets.

"Gazed Upon" Music Video

What a wild ride!

I am happy to share a music video I co-directed and art directed for Natural Velvet, "Gazed Upon"!

Here you can find our interview with Sjimon at Impose Magazine:

http://www.imposemagazine.com/bytes/chatter/week-in-pop-ed-schraders-music-beat-desert-fine-china-natural-velvet-da-stern-mary-ocher/4

This track is the unsung hero of this record, and I had been sitting on this nest egg since last fall. Here she is in all her sparkly, shiny, flashing glory. We had SUCH a blast making this video.

Directed by: Brendan Finnerty & Corynne Ostermann

Additional footage: Abby Hopper
Filmed at Wild Limb Studios, Baltimore, MD and
Ottobar, Baltimore, MD (Filmed at the Mirror To Make You record release show, June 2017 at Ottobar, Baltimore, MD.)

Lighting Design by Michael Chappell & Jack Thomas 

Mylar Installation by Delaney Cate

https://delaney-cate.format.com/

3-D Animations by Ryland Bishop

https://www.rylandbishop.com/

Some Baltimore locals might recognize the live footage in the video if they attended our record release show for M2MU. You might spy yourself in the crowd in those shots if you were there…

Extended Biography, or, Working as a Multipotentialite Artist

My name is Corynne Ostermann, and I am an artist, musician, designer, stylist, and occasional poet (among other roles) living in Baltimore, MD.

I am originally from the Chicago suburbs, attending public school about an hour away from Chicago city (so, not quite Illinoisan, definitely not Chicagoan, but certainly a Midwesterner). My ceramicist mother and my musician/audio engineer father raised me out there, and I have one younger brother who’s in the military.

My mother loves to brag that I knew how to draw before I learned how to speak or write. In any capacity, I’ve always felt like I’ve been training my entire life to do what I do. In moments of weakness or poverty I bemoan this fact, but it is a source of pride and identity for me, as well.

In 2007, I attended Interlochen Center for the Arts Summer Arts Camp (IAC) for the first time, initially as a drawing major with a painting minor, and in 2008 returned as an advanced painting and drawing major. IAC is one of the premiere arts programs in the country, and it was the first time I was surrounded by some of the most talented, driven people I had ever met working in the arts. Many of my friends from Interlochen are still working as artists of all stripes and as consummate professionals, and I am grateful I had this intensive training since day one.

At my public high school, I was the prominent visual artist in the art program, and also played in Orchestra, Jazz Band, and the Symphonic Wind Ensemble on trombone/bass trombone. There were a few teachers who actively pushed against my talent, some of whom told me outright that I’d never get into the East Coast schools I wanted, that I was unskilled and coddled, and talentless—so, in order to boost my luck for college applications, I attended figure drawing classes every Saturday and hustled to rebuild my portfolio.

My luck turned out—in 2009 I was accepted into Maryland Institute College of Art, and in 2013 I graduated from MICA Summa Cum Laude as a painting major with a gender studies minor. I am grateful I never listened to the people from my small town who told me I’d never be anything.

My senior year at MICA, I started a band with two then-illustration students & 1 drawing major, and we called ourselves Natural Velvet. The original lineup in 2012 was myself on bass guitar and vocals, Kim Te on guitar, Spike Arreaga on guitar, and Adam Jones on drums.

Natural Velvet released our first EP “Salome With the Head of John the Baptist” in 2013, and then our first full-length “Shame”, in 2014. We didn’t know what we were doing, but we were happy to be doing it—we were building the basis of what our sound was going to be like for years to come. It still tickles me that folks listen to these records sometimes; occasionally I hear a compliment from someone about them, and it makes me smile.

In late 2014 our drummer Adam Jones left to focus on his illustration and drawing career, and we had a series of temp drummers. Nothing was working out until we secured Greg Hatem as our drummer, who has remained since then. At this point, we can’t imagine the band without him.

In 2015 we released “She is Me”, our first full-length record on Friends Records, with singles “Fruits”, and “Crash!” “Fruits” had a gluttonous music video directed and edited by Chris LaMartina, and “Crash!” was made with the help of Nick Baldwin & LaMartina, both videos art directed by me.

This past year, Natural Velvet released “Mirror To Make You” on Friends Records. This record was recorded with Martin Bisi, of B.C. Studios, who is known for his work on Sonic Youth/Lydia Lunch/Swans/Unsane, etc., records, all recorded on the same equipment in the same studio. The record was mixed in Baltimore with Rob Girardi (Beach House, Double Dagger, etc.), and mastered by Sarah Register (The Shins, David Bowie, Ariana Grande, Future Islands, etc.). The single “It’s All Mine” and the corresponding music video, shot by David Manigault, and art directed by me, featured 18 boys in gold bootie shorts exercising and lounging by a pool. Queer and campy, we followed it with “Kristina”, a love song to a friend living in California. The “Kristina” music video was directed by Elena DeBold & produced by Jeff Rettberg.

Natural Velvet is still ongoing—we left last week for our largest tour yet, the “Who Framed Natural Velvet?” Tour, and it will be our first time travelling Internationally as a group. I’ll be posting updates sporadically here about the tour as we chip away at the next five weeks on the road.

As for my visual arts work, in 2013 my then best friend Jonathan Levy and myself started a studio space in Hampden, Baltimore, calling it “Ash Street Studios”. We took over an old auto body shop, and transformed it, turning the 3300 sq. ft. space into 14 studios for visual artists. Over the years, 30+ people called Ash Street Studios their creative home. Our business model was designed around creatively affordable studio space for emerging artists, and as such, we took very low studio rents from our artists until we ultimately closed up shop in 2016. Many studio spaces in the city blossomed shortly after we opened or in our wake, utilizing the model we first experimented with at Ash Street Studios. 

I showed my paintings sporadically until 2016, and then curated my first group shows in Baltimore. In February 2016, “Cake Out in the Rain” opened for one month at Current Space, featuring work from Walker Seydell, Kevin Runyon, Johnny Rogers, Adam Amram, and myself. This was followed by “Remixes” opening in March 2016 at La Bodega Gallery, featuring work from Dre Britton, Jean Alexander Frater, and myself. I had the great pleasure of attending Vermont Studio Center as a resident painter in 2016, as well.

This past year I had my first solo painting show. “Super Hot Female” opened at Terrault Contemporary in November 2017, and it was fantastic—I fell in love with my own work again, and have been creating in a nonstop frenzy since.

In terms of day jobs, I have worked as a floral designer since 2013, originally in floral retail and more recently in wedding and event work. I had the great pleasure of studying at the New York Flower School under Robbie Honey in 2015, and currently freelance for Steel Cut Flower Company, in Baltimore MD.

Beyond that, I freelance art direct for creative entrepreneurs, musicians, and artists, and I create anything from music videos, record cover art, EPKS, to branding and digital brand management. I’ve been truly lucky to work with undeniably talented, smart, and musically sound musicians, and have lots to share soon from my work with these talented peers.

And occasionally when I have time, I write little poems.

Why do all this stuff? Why mention it at all?

I find that artist biographies tend to gloss over details that are often labeled “tangential”, when writing about the big, exuberant art practices with multiple creative outputs; it’s easier to write about the singularly focused artist, toiling away in the studio. This multiplicity of outputs is what I consider my strength as an artist, and is misleading to younger, impressionable creators, who might feel they have to pick one specialty and focus in on it with laser precision to the detriment of the diversity of their practice. It is unfair to those of us who consider ourselves true “Multipotentialites”, who are capable of a variety of skills and talents that make their voice unique among the many.

The full phrase is “Jack of all trades, master of none, but better than a master of one”.

This blog is ultimately a celebration of my accomplishments in all facets, written by me, to share with you. I am excited to share the breadth of my work, and consider my music and my art careers equal to each other in terms of my practice and production, therefore, I shall write of these equally and of more regular inspiration drawn from the world around me.

Thanks for joining me here.