Mi Hamaca: "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction" Reading Response

 

                        Juanita Arango, personal collage of hammock and drawings, August 24, 2024. 

This text becomes more important to me as I advance in my thesis project, because the idea of container became very prevalent in my mind and my idea of world-making and in relations to human interactions, since I read Le Guin's "The Carrier Theory of Fiction". Thinking of my life, people or objects as containers, rather than means to an end, really disconnects us from the ego-centred world view that is intensely fostered in Western cultures (of violence, individualism, and selfish motives), tying me back with my culture and home; with my family and the ancestors that are with me in every step and thought.

Collectivity is essential to my way of being and the knowledges fostered across my cultural background and lived experiences, something I thrive to share in my practice and work. As Le Guin argues, containers hold ideas, thoughts, and give a space for a subject matter or story to arise or be maintained, kept safe and cared for. As soon as I reflected on the meaning of container outlined by the author, I thought of an artwork as a container.

If you think about it, a container exists within some limits; it has frameworks, limitations of physical and conceptual scope (that's why the more specific, the better research, focus and detail it can have, generally), and it is definitely site and context specific. It is influenced by its environment and the positionally and experience of its creator. Those are the limits, the world, it exists in. It NEVER exists on a vacuum. That's the first way I saw an artwork as a container.

The other way I understood it within this concept is thinking about how the ideal type of artwork I want to make is constituted. First, during my years in Daniels, I'm gradually more convinced of the idea that the work I want to make could be less about making a direct (usually political or social) statement, and more about allowing it to provide a space for the audience to engage in open discussion (with themselves and others), as this container that presents itself in a specific form, but receives more and more components and thoughts and feelings and opinions, and constant, critical feedback, from each person that engages with it, lives side by side with it. In this sense, I, as an artist, feel like a container, too. I receive and contain all that the public and my environment, and my community, as well as the knowledge from my research, throw at me and I absorb; both the good and the bad. Then, I decide what to pour out or what I keep in my heart. And sometimes it's hard to get rid of the little trinkets you find along the way and get too attached to (in the form of ideas, feelings, thoughts, objects and people). In the end, I see Le Guin's conception of the container as in we are ALL containers within containers, drawn to carry and keep in containers, anything we want, because we like it, it's useful, because we want to give, share, keep: because we CARE.

This counter narrative to the "killer story" that has overwhelmingly (and kind of annoying by this point) permeated stories of the human civilization (and I'm including the non-fictional, capital "H" History in this category too), praising the violence and competitiveness of huMANs, selling it to us from everywhere. It is so strong that it definitely arrived to the Global South and became embraced by many, and fed by Western media and mindsets. 

The container conception of ourselves, the things we do, and the world, is necessary today more than ever, as war, violence and sickening individualism grabs us by the throat and poisons society and the humanity of us all, desensitized by "the killer" narratives in the West. Le Guin offers a non-linear, de-centralized narrative that really allowed me to think of my artistic practice as something essential for relationally, as this process of deep internal connection that expands externally into the world, and into every (caring) action we take towards people and what surrounds us. 

What does my container look like?

I thought of a collage I made in a newly journal, now used for my thesis thoughts and ideas, of a hammock right on top of the ocean shore, where two people share under the sunlight. I imagined myself back at home, with my family, enjoying the most joyful and peaceful place the world; home, where the sea, the sand, and the warmth exist in harmony with us, where I connect with a higher being and the universe, but most importantly, I allow myself to be really present for me and my community. Hammocks have always represented a place of rest in the many houses of my family and loved ones in my country. Even in the colder towns we have lived in, a day of sun means a day of being together, getting out the hammock into the front patio, walking barefoot on the grass, playing with the dogs, drinking juice and snacks from the garden, and falling off the hammock from the overwhelming feeling of company, warmth and joy in its simplest, but most powerful, meaningful form.

Juanita Arango, personal digital sketch in response to text, September 18, 2024. 

Bibliography

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. London, England: Ignota, 2019.