Art: God’s Eye View
Well, the quarter is over for us at Pacific Union College so I have a little extra time – between grading – to waste time online. This included checking out what’s interesting with one of the more fantastic art collectives, The Glue Society.
Here’s their 2007 work, God’s Eye View. This show appeared at the Miami Pulse Contemporary Art Fair. It’s “four biblical moments as evidenced by satellite imagery.”
See if you can guess the Biblical event (the titles are in order at the bottom of the page).
‘Moses’
‘Ark’
‘Eden’
‘Cross’
Beyond the guessing, I appreciate how this ironical perspective confronts hermeneutical assumptions. If one takes the Bible literally true and the language of God in the sky true as well, is this what we see God seeing?
With a fresh perspective, it explores our assumptions on some very old stories. And by giving us “God’s perspective” rather than our usual rendering of these stories at human eye level, I find myself rethinking my assumptions about omniscience and my own mix of science and doctrine.
While looking at these realizations of a divine view of our story, I am looking inside at my own views of the God view: As panopticon? As omniscient? As imminent?
In fact, in all of these stories, in the text, God is represented as physically interacting with the humans. By talking, walking, leading and being present in human form. To the death. God has never experienced earth’s events this far away. This is not God’s Eye View – as this work drips with irony. As good art, it helps us to see again, via our blind spots. In this time of Advent, I am reminded. The “Presence Truth” is that the human story has only been viewed by All, through our eyes.
