De’VIA – …And the Truth Shall Set You Free.

De’VIA (Deaf View/Image Art) coined by nine artists in 1989 helps to create a unique learning environment by bringing out the creative learner in all of us. It is able to do this in three ways. The first way is by not only being a fun but also an interactive way to learn. Second it can borrow and bring in other methods of learning that have already been discussed seamlessly, and finally it allows is to teach each other in a more comfortable environment. Let’s first take a look at why it is healthy and that is where I am a strong believer in Deaf Art. Also, art does use a beloved childhood of mine, but it allows for learning rather than the construction of Deaf mind is to take place. All those De’VIA done by Deaf artists are real also we give things like names, name signs, minor back-stories, etc. We come up with inventive stories of situations that they are going through, or that one is about to die from, and then share these sometimes complex and imaginative stories. That is what exactly Edgar Degas’s quote above points out important phrase to see through inventive stories, “Art is not what you see but what you make others see” touches all the bases.

We share them with our fellow people, often times showing a new or forgotten message that the person is more than happy to learn. A New Wave needs to develop and grow a stronger event with all of this preparation to tell their stories they have created for De’VIA the people are using they may have forgot to realize that they are using the methods they learned from Deaf artists to tell a story about their artworks. To get the ideas of what will happen in the story they may have used the creativeness they exercised during their thinking session into Deaf art, resistance, liberation, and affirmation.

The use of De’VIA for these types of things is not separate from the other things we have talked about today but instead a culmination. De’VIA is what allows us to help teach and learn from another person. If they use art to express their mind you do not understand you repeat the message and then you examine it more. That is the beauty of art. Today you have read why De’VIA helps to create a unique learning environment by bringing out the creative learner in all of us.

First by learning how the use of art as a learning aid can be used, second by understanding how artworks use other methods of practice, and finally you learned by working together. Art can be used to bring everything together and teach people of any age in a fun way. From my observation with De’VIA artists, they construct their experiences with the validity of Deaf experience and address what we the Deaf know, value, and be responsible for our own intellectualism. Our knowledge as Deaf people is chiefly derived from pure reason, which is the final principle of reality.

Our being Deaf is real and true without consideration for emotions. De’VIA has awakened reasoning in Deaf mind and our search for knowing, our desire, and our enlightenment of this vast Art world are but the fabric woven in these strands for many centuries from Plato’s Cratylus to 1880 Milan to Deaf people in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries to Deafhood Foundation.

De’VIA must bring the philosophy of Deaf art, resistance, liberation, and affirmation to a sharp focus; Those current artists does the same for Deaf world with strong message of bringing an enlightenment of the struggle. Those people are known to be in the pursuit of arete, which means reaching the highest human potential in Greek, even at the cost of their own life. For next 30 years, the stories must be carried on and they all come from the beginning.

I would like to paraphrase Michel Foucault (1926-1984) statement by advising Deaf people to purse and recognize the supremacy of arts which has made a difference. It is powerful, the stories of lies and the attempt to redeem the nature of being Deaf through the hearing restoration or invention of cochlear implants must be told. Foucault’s quote, “My general theme is not society, it is true nor false discourses: let me say it is the correlative formation of domains, of objects, and of discourses verifiable and falsifiable which are assignable to them; it is not simply this formation which interests me but the effects of reality which are linked to it”–it is about the organizing principle of power wherein De’VIA can be studied through technologies of power–not progress, not education, not conflict, not struggle and not resistance.

Power creates truth, and this truth produces a function of power. De’VIA creates truth with a function of power. It is impossible to imagine without De’VIA and their influences are most often identified with their topics rather than a method. It will challenge people to question their assumptions about truth for their resistance and stop the power dynamics of cochlear implants, Audism, Oralism, and all. The truth is that De’VIA for the next 30 years is critical because Deaf people exist. It is not an accidental at all and a reason to believe that it is necessary to garner success. Since 134 years ago, the dark side of Milan 1880, De’VIA are the recipe for success to find their magic of many more truth. We must become more committed to arts in support of intellectual freedom, the search for social justice, and find the responsibility for the sake of Deaf people. The truth is that De’VIA has spoken.

-JT

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I found myself studying tirelessly the activities of De’VIA, (Deaf View Image Art or Deaf Art), learning about how Deaf artists thought and interacted with stories for their substance and sustenance in art. Like Native people, their ultimate goal is survival. The same truth goes to Deaf people: SURVIVAL. For example, the artworks done by Nancy Rourke, David Call, Ellen Mansfield, Dr. Paul Johnston of Gallaudet, late Chuck Baird whom I was honored to meet back in 2011, other many talented artists have reminded me a bit of watching a certain documentary film a while ago.

I learned which birds make nests, and which rely upon the sturdily built ones from other species of birds. I found it very interesting how instinctively innovative birds are. The great lengths birds go to procure materials, such as remnants from wasp hives, to create their nests, which is surprising to me. Such materials disguis their nests and deter natural predators from stealing their eggs. Yet, the western culture dismisses birds life as primitive. The phrase “bird brain”, which indicates a person who has little intelligence, keep on coming to my mind. It is ironic to me that birds are in fact very instinctively intelligent in matters of self-preservation and perpetuation as a species. It has the same sentiments what Deaf artists are all about disguising from oppression by predators, known as Audists. Deaf Art is about self-preservation.

De’VIA artists today are providing sustenance for Deafhood stories and Deaf people cohabiting their environment, having brought home to me the holistic vantage of Deafhood education. Even on my very street, in my backyard, I am sharing an experience with others who have just as much right to its resources, and as my state of being Deaf I can learn from the observation of birds, just how interdependent we are in the sense that birds and we are co-habitants in survival and of the same corner of the world.

In fulfillment of my support for De’VIA, I endeavored to be a careful observer of their work during their Deafhood journey. I have not had the slightest idea how Deaf artists think to draw or paint, which is beyond me and they are amazing. I must admit I have never painted, not much about my previous thought. I used to simply dismiss Art artwork because the Deaf artists are happily working and flying around inconsequentially.

When I first saw De’VIA work, it was Nancy Rourke’s creativity that I fell in love with. Then that was which has since guided me to discover more Deaf artists than ever before. I have also noticed Deaf Art has changed my life forever. Deaf Art work? I have never thought it would become my strongest therapy. Whenever I decided to sit in my living room, I began to observe their paintings over and over. A friend once said that it is an eyesore why I bought many art works from those Deaf artists. Through my observation, the artists do not want to rake the leaves fallen from the tree falls just to be lain strewn, wet, and browned from winter rains. A well-manicured lawn of our Deafhood stories across America still has little greenish pods littered with the fallen leaves.

De’VIA is a treasure that would provide nourishment “from meal to meal,” perhaps until the next Deaf person could be found in the rich blanket of our Deafhood journey. The art resistance are gathering sticks or bedding for their nests to preserve. The activism by De’VIA artists is actually assisting in the transport of Audism bin to remove to a lower place so the Deaf people can become stronger.

Also, their activism further made our Deafhood journey more accessible to truth, which would not need to climb into higher depths of Audism in order to find survival. Further, the transference of Deaf Art allows a greater yield of Audism for years and years, ensuring continued sustenance for all the Deaf people on this mother planet that depend on the stories as a source of survival. Perhaps this observation in minute of the scheme of things, but it gave me an awareness of just how interconnected we all are. I express my full support for De’VIA artists.

-JT

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Tag: De’VIA

Lessons from Deaf Arts