The Beauty of Disruption

An artwork of argument

A fearless nine year old staking his claim to a silent communication channel. Fearless because there is nothing wrong with disrupting one’s own mother. It is, in fact entirely normal. Expected even.

‘Empty space’ he says gleefully, (well I think he says it gleefully. It was all silently written on the board … but the exclamation point would seem to speak for itself) ‘This is boring’ he says.

Is it?

No?

‘It is boring’ he says. ‘True’ he says.

Arrow. Arrow. Angry scrawl.

Beautiful angry scrawl.

Description: Class slide on beauty with red scribbled writing at the top. Text: ‘you should’, ‘you’, arrow, open bracket ‘true’ close bracket, arrow ‘it is boring’ Credit: artwork by Sarah Gory & her son

An artwork—in its own way. A beautiful artwork.

The beauty is not so much the disruption itself, as the conversation it evokes.

The beauty is, in many ways, this ‘invisible’ hand on the wall. Though you do not make direct eye contact with the artist you see his point of view opaquely. ‘This is boring’.

Is it?

I hadn’t noticed. Nor was I feeling remotely bored. Therefore it is not boring.

The beauty is the outside point of view.

This is not boring. But is it? To a nine-year-old? I see now. My eyes are opened.

Abstraction is now unfiltered and displayed back as the simple parts it brings. Supposition and hypothesis.

Yes. We say. How deep we say.

No he says. That. Makes. No. Sense. At. All. Come back to reality!

He was there… in a sense invited into the abstraction. But the thing is… he said no.

Description: Writing in the shape of an anchor on a chain. Text: ‘And by saying no he became an anchor. Connecting us to a new point of reference. Expanding our discussion.’