Recently I read somewhere the phrase, “VISIBILITY IS RELEVANCE”.
But now I can’t remember where I read it, and google returns nothing useful.
I’m pretty sure it was in relation to art and its histories - the way that the perception of some artwork having “relevance” to a particular time and place is NOT related to any inherent quality of the work itself, but rather to how visible the thing is in society.
That is, once something is granted a substantial amount of “airtime”, it becomes relevant to current debates around art and contemporary culture, regardless of whether or not we think it “deserves” to be relevant. Thus relevance and visibility are “intrinsicly interwoven”.
Does this explanation make any sense at all? I wish I could find the original reference…
it makes plenty of sense. I think of lesbian women and visibility most often in this sense, since it was raised in a workshop I attended - it seems to me that lesbians are less visible in culture than gay men …not that this makes them irrelevant! Maybe “I am visible, therefore I am” would be more apt…in this case at any rate. LOL…not sure what this adds to your post though!
yep, Mel, that’s a good example too of this phenomenon. Thanks for expanding it.
got it!!
from here:
http://www.phillyimc.org/en/we-become-powerful-shared-moments