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Essay #1: On the Idea of the Community

nyurone

I am Omer Shalev, an origami artist for more than 35 years. With the help of my friend Chun (Chunbum Park), who is a writer, I am starting an essay series. Through writing, I organize and discuss the ideas and ideals that I believe should be the core foundation of the origami community, as well as the larger (contemporary) art community.


The first essay concerns the idea of the community.


What is a community? What differentiates a community from a society and a team? What differentiates it from a random group of people?


We humans are social creatures. We compete, but, also, we help and bond with one another. Is the human existence only dictated by the Darwinian principle of the survival of the fittest? Or is there a kinder and more caring alternative to this law of the jungle?


Community is humanity's answer to this harsh and brutal reality of competition for the limited resources, to which the population size of every species conforms. Community is the ideal scale at which care, give and take, and a sense of belonging manifest. Society is too big so that these qualities fail to take place. A group, unless it is organized into a singular unit with a shared goal, such as a team, is just an eclectic number of people that fails to help one another to achieve an amplification of abilities and information gathering.


A community is situated between a society and a team. Team is tightly knit and operates as a single unit with a shared goal but limited in terms of scale and impact. The social bond that holds the society together is there, but it's too weak relative to its scale and, thereby, impact. (In a society, only the people with top brand values are given visibility; everyone else is invisible.) Community, however, has the best of both worlds, with a decent number of people and a strong social bond, which facilitates give and take, as well as a sense of identity and belonging for each and every individual/participant in the community.


Why am I talking about the definition and the qualities of community? It is because I have experienced a lack of a real community in the origami community. There is a severe lack of sharing and belonging amongst the origami artists, who are keen on competition but rarely exhibit generosity and openness with one another. There is also a sense of fear and disrespect within the community, in which weak designers steal the ideas of people who make origami based on original designs and visions, without crediting the originating artist. These two negative qualities add to one another in a never-ending cyclical feedback loop of loss of trust and generosity, and cases of copycats stealing ideas or designs. Piracy of contents and published materials without supporting the artist in any way is a big cultural con that threatens to degrade innovation and reward for hard work within the community.


The alternative, ideal vision that I have for the origami community is the exact opposite of what is happening now - a place where people openly share ideas without fearing competition or getting ideas stolen, yet also credit/reference the artist whom they sourced significant parts of their designs from. A model for this ideal alternative would be the scientific community, or the larger academia; in which people originate ideas and are credited/sourced by the scholars who use those ideas. Even contemporary artists who paint or sculpt proudly mention the mentors with which they had studied, but, in origami, this citation of references or influences is minimal or nonexistent.


In conclusion, I call upon the origami community to do better, to learn from its mistakes, and to embrace openness, generosity, responsibility, and respect. People should be willing to share, grow together, and encourage one another, acknowledging each other's merits and believing in one another's visions. We have been calling ourselves an origami community for a long time, but we never had a real community. I hope that, rather than finding a sense of belonging elsewhere, we can grow into a true community... a place of sharing and caring.


Omer Shalev, 2024-10-28


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by Omer Shalev.

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