Heliostat Arrays - The importance of what your art reflects.

A ‘Heliostat’ array is an array of mirrors that, whilst rotating to track the sun, all focus their reflections on to a shared single point, in doing so they create intense levels of light and heat.

Akin to this are artists. They focus on an issue, and reflect its energy, its heat, through art, they direct it towards the central engine that drives change; people.

Now the application of this metaphor becomes shaky when we get to the array part of it. Because artists (as broad as that term is) obviously do not move in unified reflection. Our lenses are driven by individual passion, they are rented out by the needs of capital modernity, our attention diverted by the faux sunlight of flashing content and memetic comments, we even self censor through fear that someone will shatter or mirror in an attack on the truth it reflects.

UK AIDs memorial quilt, 1989 - Ongoing, various artists across 42 quilts and 23 individual panels

Even moving past those issues, there is obviously the fact that there is always more than one issue to focus on, and reminders of beauty are as important as confronting truths ugliness.

So of course I am not implying all artists should focus as one to each issue in turn. We are not a monolith. What I am saying is that we should remember the collective reflections of an array of artists holds far more power and can shape a broader impact than any one alone.

I am also trying to make clear that if artists, by and large, shirk all social responsibility in favour of focusing solely on saleable content and the applause of memes then all we will do is continue to evaporate discourse and incinerate compassion, as the energy that we should direct towards engines of change is instead directed towards engines of capital and control.

One mirror may not seem capable of much, but in an array, with shared focus, the output can be phenomenal.