Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Detangling Microagressions by Raven D.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfq9H1mniUE
Selfie Portrait Performance - Detangling Microaggressions
For my self-portrait performance, the social-political issue I chose to focus on is the discrimination of black women. The topic relates to race, identity, and gender. Everyday black women face a form of microaggression or discrimination whether it’s from people in their workplace, friends, and even family members. An act of microaggression is when someone unintentionally discriminates against someone of a racial or ethnic minority indirectly. Black women are discriminated against for features such as their hair, attitude, and the way they carry themselves. According to John Berger in Ways Of Seeing he states “A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself...From earliest childhood, she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continuously.” (Berger 46). The most common stereotypes of Black women is that they’re always strong, angry, aggressive, and promiscuous which is false and rooted in racism. Others also include being ‘considered white’ when speaking proper or having interests that don’t feed into stereotypes. This limits the value and diversity amongst Black women and what they’re capable of. Not all Black women are the same. Joanne Finklestein states in The Art of Self Invention that “Thus the lies becomes a technique for penetrating the multiple layers of social life and, in reverse, it is a constituent of those same complex layers,” (Finklestein 72). It’s toxic to enforce these stereotypical views because not only does it harm their identity but also their safety, which is viewed and handled poorly in our current society.
In the video, I’m shown sitting down wearing my hair out in a natural Afro filled with folded index cards, with a hair pick, and a small trash bin. The folded notes in my hair are several quoted micro-aggressive phrases that have been said to me or other black women. They were placed in my hair since it's considered to be a crown representing my identity as a black woman and the notes symbolize the amount of criticism black women often receive. As I take out each note, I reveal what it says and proceed to rip up, crumble and discard them in the trash bin. In throwing away each note, it’s an act of rejection of those harmful ideals used to wrongly judge who I am and make me feel less than what I am. Towards the end of the video, I successfully discarded every note and teased my hair with my hair pick which symbolized me embracing my natural identity as a black woman, not allowing those micro-aggressive messages to tear me down. The song playing throughout the video is “Don’t Touch My Hair by Solange feat. Sampha, I selected this song because it’s about embracing natural hair and it’s the personal connection to the artist’s blackness. In conceptualizing this performance, I was inspired by Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece”. If I were to make this more interactive, I’d ask black women to write any microaggressions they’ve experienced on an index card and place it in my hair, then proceed to do the performance.
Be a Woman ~ Luzangela Martinez
Performance is the act of staging a play or other forms of entertainment. It is much more than photographs, paintings and other methods of representation. Often, it can express self-identity and issues that affect self-identity. This is because the body serves as a site of identity performance by demonstrating to others our personality, beliefs, and skills. This performance shown below was inspired by Marina Abramovic’s “The Artist is Present” performance, where she gazes into the eyes of several individuals for approximately 2 months.
In modern society today, the idea of male gaze is still heavily present. Many males objectify woman and view their feelings, thoughts, and sexual desires as less important than their desires. In this performance, my mother portraying the “man” with a black mustache dressed in a grey hoodie and black cap symbolized this idea of male gaze. On the other hand, the “woman” portrayed by me symbolized the idea of woman submitting to the “man”. As you can see, the table separating both individuals contains girly products such as a hairbrush, hair iron, makeup, and facial products to help improve a women’s appearance. One can also observe the vanity that is behind “the man.” Each of these items represents the idea that men often force women to believe that they should only focus on their appearance to please their significant other.
To understand male gaze, it is important to consider the consequence of an act. As Berger states, “how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated.” For instance, if a woman is beautiful to behold, the man may pursue her whereas if the man does not fancy her, he will avert his gaze. In John Berger's book “Ways of Seeing,” there is a focus on nude from European oil paintings where women were portrayed as subjects. This nudity stands as “criteria and conventions by which women have been seen and judged as sights.” In other words, the author makes several references to the Eurocentric standard of beauty being the focal point for women.
This
perspective enables this patriarchal impression to dictate the treatment of
women based on their skin color, shape, and other physical features. To
retaliate against this view, one way to understand ourselves is to understand
what it means to be naked, which is to be oneself. This view is a self-focused
idea where the goal is to recognize the beauty that lies in women bodies.
Unlike this notion of being naked is to be nude, where one's naked self is
unrecognizable and objectified which is what the male gaze employs if left
unchallenged. Unfortunately, most women, like myself, have grown accustomed to
this theory of male gaze. This idea of how women should be “are assigned to us
as children,” where it is taught to us in our family origin, particularly
“taught to us by our mothers” (Understanding Patriarchy).
John Berger
Chapter 5
“A painting could speak to the soul”
"All reality was mechanically measured by its materiality".
Protect Black Women - Nashira Banks
John Berger
- "A painting could speak to the soul."
- "All reality was mechanically measured by its materiality".
My performance piece address the topic of protecting black women. Being a black woman in today's society can be very challenging. Black women are often viewed as being the aggressor in situations, when in those situation they are just trying to protect themselves. My inspirations for this performance are based from my own experiences and Jean Michel Basquiat art. Basquiat art can look child like at first, after looking at his work some pieces have words written in the background so I decided to put words on my face. I decided to revisit Mickalene Thomas -Photographed, Collaged and Painted Muses, “By selecting women of color,
I am quite literally raising their visibility and inserting their presence into
the conversation.” This is incredibly important especially in today's society because black women are constantly being disrespected, have no protection and it has became a growing topic on social media. However, there is no conversation regrading this and there needs to be one. Instead many people are quick to judge, believe that one is lying, or being the aggressor in serious situation.
Lesly - It's Okay To be Alone
John Berger, Chapter 4 & 5
- “These relations between conqueror and colonized tended to the self-perpetuating. The sight of the other confirmed each in his inhuman estimate of himself. The circularity of the relationship can be seen in the following diagram - as also the mutual solitude. The way in which each sees the other confirms his own view of himself”.
- “From the tradition, a kind of stereotype of "the great artist" has emerged. This great artist is a man whose life-time is consumed by struggle: partly against material circumstances, partly against incomprehension, partly against himself. He is imagined as a kind of Jacob wrestling with an Angel”.
"Its not always what it seems"- Katia C
I decided to create a Tik-Tok video showing myself in two different ways. The first part of the video its lip singing the lyrics to a song by Billie Eilish “Everything I wanted” which talks about Mental Health in particular, Depression and Suicide. The famous TikTok video consists of people showing themselves as their true selves and then changing themselves, showing the world that they are more than just someone’s child. That they are worth more than hurtful words. That they are more than just a Mental Health Disorder. One main reason why I decided to utilize my social media platform was to share my own experiences with Depression. This performance was inspired by John Berger's quote “But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.” John Berger. This quote made me realize how important it is to see the world in other ways and see events that happened in a positive form in order to recover myself. It took me some time to record this video, although I know it’s not the best, I am showing my true self and of how strong I’m able to be. When I created my flag, I used it as a symbol of hope for myself and as a guide to continue fighting not only for my own health but for others my age. During quarantine, I became more vulnerable on my own, less and less happy with life but having my family and friends there beside all chaos around us, helped me the most. In this generation, where bullying, self-harm, and ignorance is at its high, it is important to share and speak on Depression because it can change someone else's life.
Revisiting Carrie Mae Weems’s Landmark “Kitchen Table Series”:
“This woman can stand in for me and for you; she can stand-in for the audience, she leads you into history. She’s a witness and a guide,”
Different Side
- "What are these paintings? Before they are anything else, they are themselves objects which can be bought and owned. Unique poems."
- "Before these canvases the spectator-own hoped to see the classic face of his own passion or grief or generosity. The idealize appearances he found in the painting were in aid, a support to his own view of himself.
The videos demonstrate the differences between gender (man vs. woman). Part 1 and part 2 video contains what we see in today's society which is the woman always has to do chores while the man sits and relaxes. This video symbolize how my brother is the one who can do whatever he wants that no one can tell him what he can or cannot do. Family and society expect the woman and girls to learn the necessities like cooking, house chores or serving the "man of the house". The first video shows how the woman has to provide food for the man but sometime they are not please by the work. The part 2 video shows how the man relaxes from has hard day or work or can also symbolize how my brother can enjoy his free time while the girl or woman have to do the chores. Society gives a slap to the woman's face meaning the patriarchal society. In Understanding Patriarchy, Bell Hooks states "As their daughter I was taught that it was my role to serve, to be weak, to be free from the burden of thinking, to caretake and nurture others... I was taught that it was not proper for a female to be violent, that it was “unnatural.” The reason why my brother slap me in slow motion and in that instant of the end you can see how I am left speechless while my brother stand there as if it is natural. It just shows again how the simplicity of thing occurring in todays society. I also use Andy Warhol ideas by making the video slow motion to slow down the time and the action of the occurrence. The music effect and the them back ground color used in the first video to demonstrate the cold and serious effect around what is happening so it can highlight what I am trying to covey to everyone. In the picture let's ignore the age difference and focus how woman are taught by their culture or roots to just stand by to receive such treatment. In Ways of Seeing by John Berger he states,"the focus of perception shifts from eyes, mouth, shoulders, hands- all of which are capable of such is manifold." The picture demonstrated on the bottom is a mere example of. that how I am crouched down and upset while my brother stands up all high mighty. It show how men are in power and in control over themselves but also toward the woman. Even in the artworks woman are displayed as "compliment objects" or like Berger says "to be born as a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into keeping of men." The means that women is portray to serve the man, to be sided with the man. Women can't find their own voice nor be indepedent and can't grow and find their own identity. Is like they are trap to do what society tells them to do. The videos as stated previously has so much life to it and makes you think and puts you in that position of what you are seeing in screen. Video resembles the photography in a way where you can add effects but a video show much more feeling than a picture would show you. The video you can sense the sadness not only because of the action or occurrence being filmed but it disturbs you in a way that makes you wonder. For example of Yoko Ono the video of people cutting her clothes give the viewers a view of how the actual person is reacting to what is happening around their surroundings. It is the same here we see how woman act, how woman are treated and also how they are perceived but if they don't change or if people don't change their way of seeing them an an individual then women won't find their identity.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Conclusion
SPEAK OUT
John Berger
"But the essential way of seeing’ women, the essential use to which their images are put, has not changed"
"Women are depicted in a quite different way from men - not because the feminine is different from the masculine - but because the ’ideal" spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him."
"The term oil painting refers to more than a technique. It defines an art form. The technique of mixing pigments with oil had existed since the ancient world."
"What distinguishes oil painting from any other form of painting is its special ability to render the tangibility, the texture, the luster, the solidity of what it depict"
My Performance piece is based on the idea of being silent. It's around the time where we are starting to vote and it will be my first time voting. This is the time for our voices to be heard and try to make a difference so that we all can co-exist in America peacefully. Being apart of Gen Z, older people try to overlook us and think that our voices do not matter. This performance piece is to show that I am not going to be silenced and I will always express how I feel and fight for what I believe is right. I am going to keep fighting for black rights and speak on social injustice as we know it. I am hoping that all of the young people who are voting for the 1st and 2nd time to actually use this power that we have and not take it for granted. At one point in time women and minorities could not vote, so we are not only voting for ourselves but also our past and most importantly our future. I believe that the artist used performance art as a way to express themselves and connect with other people and that's what I tried to do with my piece. Performace can definitely express self-identity in many ways and is often very authentic. It's a way to be creative and create work that represents you. Performance definitely can go beyond photography because it tells more. With performance, there is more flexibility and it's often better to connect to.
I was inspired by Yoko Uno and how she made a bold statement with her cut piece. She was silent and she let the actions that were taking place in the performance tell the story. I also how she left the interpretation of the performance up to the audience to decided. Many people see her performance in so many different ways and it often sparks conversation and interesting debates. Yoko Uno expressed herself in a way that was simple yet powerful and this is something I attempted to achieve in my performance. In the text "The Way Of Seeing" there are definitely quotes that stood out to me. The first quote states "Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it speaks". This quote is very true because many of my earliest memories are very visual and it tells that performance and photographs are very universal and can be comprehended from the young to old. Another quote that sticks out to me is that "Today we see the art of the past as nobody saw it before. We actually perceive it in a different way." I definitely believe that any type of art whether it is painting or performance art are perceived differently. Today's generation is so much different than past generations because we are more open to talking about issues than they were in the past. Yoko Uno's Cut Piece is definitely interpreted differently now because back then a lot of people were shocked that a woman would do such a thing but nowadays it's normal for things like that to happen. The last quote that stood out to me was "Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen. The eye of the other combines with our own eye to make it fully credible that we are part of the visible world" meaning that we are aware of seeing before words and that seeing comes naturally while words take time to build and understand. In conclusion, I really enjoyed this performance project because I was able to be creative and I was really able to express myself.
Genessy’s Performance
John Berger
“A painting could speak to the soul”
“We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves”
The social political issue I am displaying is identity. My performance addresses identity in a way in which it describes the stereotypes of a female, a male, as well as someone who choses to identify as “other” As you can see, the first image is a self portrait of half of my face identified as a female with lashes and red lip stick, and the other half has stereotypes women feed into such as emotional, bossy, dramatic, fragile,etc. The second set of photographs exemplifies men which has the goatee along with fitted and hoodie, and states that men shall be strong, tall, manly, cocky, aggressive, masculine, etc. Last but most certainly not least, we have the stereotypes of a person identifying as either man or women, here we see the rainbow flag depicted on the eye shadow above the lash, followed by the goatee and red lipstick. On the opposite side, the words read homophobia, coming out, transgender, lesbian and so on. I was inspired by many different artists and realized that my performance can be connected to the Cindy Sherman Effect. One of her quotes were, “We are in the era of YouTube fame and reality TV shows and makeovers, where you can be anything you want to be any minute of the day.” Here we can agree that as she states “you can be anything you want to be any time of the day is a perfect example of identity. No matter who you are, you can choose to be whoever you want no matter what people may say or think. Another Artist that helped me come up with my performance was John Berger. Berger has a book called Ways of seeingwhich offers the audience a different perspective of seeing men and women. Two of my favorite quotes are, “A man’s presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies.” “By contrast, a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. These quotes exhibit how men are looked upon solely on how strong he is, on the contrary, a women is adressed depending on how she carries herself. A performance expresses self-identity and issues that affect that self-identity in a multiplicity of different ways including clothing and artistic expression. The theme, background, and art you use expresses who you are and how you identify. Without it a performance would simply be bland. Performance goes beyond other methods of representation like photographs and and paintings because it is different from theater. It sometimes does not have a structure, clear narrative, or appeal to the audience, Instead it displays the body’s role in artistic production.
Tuesday, October 20, 2020
Women - Objects
I decided to perform the way women are treated. Both men and women undergo pressure from society and are taught from the moment they’re born to act a certain way. Women in specific are taught to take a submissive role in society and are often treated as objects rather than equals to men. While men also face underwhelming situations of defying the typical masculine figure I think that women often face things more aggressively. In this performance, I had the assistance of my younger sister to help depict a woman being treated like an animal. She constantly caresses my hair and shoulder throughout the video, as a human does to any pet and towards the end, she grabs my face to force me to look at her and then towards the camera. Overall this performance is a way to express how women are often seen as objects that people can use rather than letting women act out of will and yet also a performance that depicts the way women are aggressively treated both physically and mentally. In Ways of Seeing by John Berger he mentions an important aspect of the way women are portrayed in paintings “In the art-form of the European nude, the painters and spectator-owners were usually men and the persons treated as objects, usually women. This unequal relationship is so deeply embedded in our culture that it still structures the consciousness of many women.” This quote goes hand to hand with Understanding Patriarchy by Bell Hooks, in regards to her experience growing up as a women, “As their daughter, I was taught that it was my role to serve, to be weak, to be free from the burden of thinking, to caretake, and nurture others. My brother was taught that it was his role to be served; to provide; to be strong; to think, strategize, and plan; and to refuse to caretake and nurture others.” Both quotes helped me decipher what I wanted to express in my piece. John Berger mentions that women were and are still portrayed in forms of sex appeal, they’re depicted in paintings and other forms of art with the purpose of entertaining the viewers, men. Berger also points out that this relationship between men and women is something that still goes on. We see it all the time within advertisements, such as alcohol which usually glorifies drinking by showing beautiful women drinking alongside the protagonist, a man. On top of this, we also get a quote from bell hooks who explains in detail the way society molds us to be who they want us to be from the very start. A woman in the eyes of society should act submissive and ‘girly’ while men take the form of a more masculine and superior being. With this in mind, I created a performance to portray the way women are both physically and mentally treated. While coming up with the idea I had Yoko Ono in mind with her cut piece performance, I wanted to be able to showcase something as significant as her piece without exactly remaking the same performance. While not having to specifically mention women and discrimination or equal rights I highly enjoy this quote from “When Artists Create Flags - Artworks of Creative Time’s Pledges of Allegiance Project”, “Guided by notions that art matters, that artists' voices are important in shaping society and that public spaces are places or creative and free expression” Art is our voice, the work that an artist does is the message that we want to put out there and showcase to others. I think it's an intriguing way to just put an important message out there with the use of a creative source. I also find it very important that as a woman myself I should advocate for equal rights and the end of women discrimination. It was very upsetting and overall just a frustrating performance to go through but I feel that anyone who's looking at this performance video will get to have a feeling of what I felt while making this and the concept in general.
Marina's self portrait performance - STOP cyberbullying
WAYS OF SEEING
- But the essential way of seeing women, the essential use to which their images are put, has not changed.
- If you buy a painting you buy also the look of the thing it represents.
- And the history of the tradition, as it is usually taught, teaches us that art prospers if enough individuals in society have a love of art.
cyberbullying is harmful
The following performance was created to reflect a socio-political issue we face. Cyberbullying is easy and affordable since is only by paying the internet bill. Teenagers and kids are the most human that are affected by this bullying. Even celebrities go through cyberbullying, got their feelings hurt just because people think they have the right to. They are hidden behind their screens and say whatever they would like to. Since suicide is the most leading cause of death in the United States of America so I found it the harshest and heartbreaking for parents who lose their children due to bullying.
The main part of the performance is to show how some words can break a person heart and lead her to commit suicide in minutes. The first picture shows a normal girl posting a selfie on facebook, then surprising with a lot of hate comments from people who should be her friends, cried and decided to commit suicide because she felt ugly and shouldn’t be living with herself looks like that. so performance expresses the self-identity by making a person express himself to show an issue that affects him, expressing yourself in performance to point up an issue is the best way to make people feel about it and then to help in solving it such as the above performance, I expressed myself as a teenager that got cyberbully leading myself to commit suicide. Also, a performance makes more sense than a photographs and paintings because one picture won't make you feel what is going in in a short time of period or what could happens, you only see that moment but in a performance you see a story leading you to feel the pain in the issue and put yourself in it, therefore, you will feel that. you could help to stop it.This performance was inspired by Marina Abramović who used her body as a medium to explore her physical and emotional limits to show the self-infliction of pain such in her rhythm 10 when she was holdings knives and stabbing each knife over and over until she cuts herself showing that you either repeat the mistakes or cancel them out. I used the same idea to represent my issue by using my own body and objects to present a huge problem we face every day on social media. One of the quotes that inspired me was “to indoctrinate boys into the rules of Patriarchy, we force them to feel pain and to deny their feeling”. Simply to make people listen to you, just make them feel the pain of the issue like seeing a happy person who commit suicide because of bullying so they feel bad and never support bullying. Another quote is, “She urged viewers to disregard their gender, race or other defining societal factors and instead connect with the humanity they share with others” so disregard the person in the picture, her look and her body and instead connect with the pain she felt and what she went through. Also, “Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak” is showing how performance art will have an impact on people’s thinking and could help with an issue to be resolved. Seeing a story could help in understanding the issue and start working on it to solve it.
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
Express YOURSELF !!
You should always find the time to express yourself in any way ! Be true to yourself always! I decided to create a series of selfies taken while I was in a happy moment.
Tuesday, October 13, 2020
Marina's weekly selfie - People must NEVER GIVE UP
People must NEVER GIVE UP
Art Must Be Beautiful
Marina Abramovich
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