I realize that this has nothing to do with any journal prompts, or maybe it will. At this point though, I would just like to track my thoughts so that I can articulate them clearly later.
I feel like I've been hit with something so profound that I can barely wrap my mind around it. I felt like Leon was simply talking to me in that huge room of people. How else could he have gotten so far inside my head that he was on the other side?
Grief. I was just talking about this today. I was just thinking about this.
And the idea of grief being the absence of something. The split second before a decision is made where time seems to stretch into it's own separate entity. The feeling in the bottom of your stomach before you run head first into a wall of your own making.
The woman in the video speaking about her dreams said that she "made so many elegant decisions."
And what is an elegant decision?
Could it be simply waking up in the morning?
Could it be deciding to face the day.
Could seeing the world around you as the lights turn on and the sun rises be an elegant decision in it's own right?
Could every single thing that you do every single day be an elegant decision?
I was on the edge of my seat in that room, feeling like weeping.
And the people in the room! After everything was over, I stood up, clutching my package of amazing items that I was given when I walked in, while everyone around me went, "Ah, that was strange. So what are you doing this weekend?" around me.
What a concentration of apathy.
It's the whole dragging a horse to water thing. You can't make people get it. You can't even really make people see what is being said.
I don't even know if what he was saying was what I am seeing. I feel like I understand everything and nothing. I feel endlessly inspired and completely intimidated by his thought process (and because I see him as a kindred spirit this evening, my own.)
My dad called this "a cosmic situation." I called him immediately to articulate what I was thinking. How on earth can I describe out loud what feels like someone describing myself to me? (And what a narcissistic thing to say. This feels more about a human condition, which is NOT directly only connected to me, myself, and I.) I told him I was just talking about grief today, in connection to my uncle, and he said, "What a cosmic situation. He was exactly what you needed exactly when you needed it."
What a cosmic situation.
What an elegant decision.
Yes.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Week 8
What is your 4 week plan for your big idea?
Week 1 : Research.
What have I done so far?
Identity of surroundings (more specifically, identity of houses.) How does who you are change based on where you've been?
What do I want to do? Identity of emotions (more specifically, the stages of grief.) What are the five stages? Are there five opposing stages of joy? How could I go about making this visual instead of just a psychological idea? Does our identity change based on which stage that we're in?
Week 2 : Wrap up research, start shooting and creating.
Start looking at the collages more objectively. What else can be included? Should anything be taken out? Should there be more pictures and not just cut paper? Should there be multiple images on top of each other?
Week 3: Think about display.
Should they be solid, simple pieces sitting flat on a wall? Or should they come out of the backing that they are on? Should I take pictures of the preliminary objects, make frescoes, and then work from there? Should I make wet paper transfers? Come up with final pieces.
Week 4: Wrap up display, do a dance.
Comb through all of the work and come up with how they best look together. Take out things that don't work. Make new things if nothing works. Try not to cry too loud if things are lame, or laugh too hard if everything is ammmmazing. :D Listen to music and dance around. And relax, hopefully.
Week 1 : Research.
What have I done so far?
Identity of surroundings (more specifically, identity of houses.) How does who you are change based on where you've been?
What do I want to do? Identity of emotions (more specifically, the stages of grief.) What are the five stages? Are there five opposing stages of joy? How could I go about making this visual instead of just a psychological idea? Does our identity change based on which stage that we're in?
Week 2 : Wrap up research, start shooting and creating.
Start looking at the collages more objectively. What else can be included? Should anything be taken out? Should there be more pictures and not just cut paper? Should there be multiple images on top of each other?
Week 3: Think about display.
Should they be solid, simple pieces sitting flat on a wall? Or should they come out of the backing that they are on? Should I take pictures of the preliminary objects, make frescoes, and then work from there? Should I make wet paper transfers? Come up with final pieces.
Week 4: Wrap up display, do a dance.
Comb through all of the work and come up with how they best look together. Take out things that don't work. Make new things if nothing works. Try not to cry too loud if things are lame, or laugh too hard if everything is ammmmazing. :D Listen to music and dance around. And relax, hopefully.
Week 7
Week Seven:
How did you work with the logic and also resist the logic of the media? What is the cultural encoding of the media? How does this matter for your work?
John, you make me laugh. I've done a project on this exact topic.
I called it "Media Circus" and each of the images were meant to show how the media makes you see what you shouldn't see, hear what you shouldn't hear, wear what you shouldn't wear, and eat what you shouldn't eat. Aka, influence.
Of course, there is little to no logic in the media. Just think about the photoshopped images of the models that don't look like they even have a ribcage anymore. And those are supposed to be appealing!
The problem is not deciding to work with the logic, I don't think, but in trying to figure out how the logic even begins to exist. It's like teachers mentioning to me that I should use skinny girls for models instead of real women. The worst part is, they're trying to help, because out in the real world, models are never not the standard size blah blah blah.
I personally think that the world can change on that, but we shall see.
Clearly this effects my work because I thought about it long enough to do a project on it. I've often thought about how people, but more specifically women, are effected by the images that surround us. Since when do we care more about what Lindsay Lohan is doing more than our friends that are dying overseas? Oh yeah, since forever. This is obviously an influence of what the media chooses to show to the public.
The fact that I know that Lindsay Lohan can't afford to go to rehab is a really sad thing. But I digress.
Visual culture has such a large effect on people of every time period. Fashion, especially. But how can we separate ourselves from this fact? What makes us so prone to the influence of bias sources? I think that the internet has a lot to do with it too. At this point in time, not only are we constantly surrounded by images, but there are so many images on every single thing that we look at that we don't even know where to begin. I think the world is constantly skimming down "pages" except we're not reading books anymore, we're reading facebook and McDonald's ads.
Week 6
1) At first, I was thinking about the identity of objects and how surroundings effect it.
2) Then, I was thinking about how surroundings effect the identity of people. Would I have been the same person now as I would have been if I was born in a different country/different family/different socioeconomic status? This is not only following in line with the ideas that I was thinking about for the objects, but also in line with what I have been thinking about for my senior thesis. (See above!)
3) I have completely crashed my cart of ideas and jumped off the ship of surroundings and moved onto the identity of emotions. I feel like we turn into different people depending on our emotions and was wondering how to convey that. Or perhaps, I would like to focus on another specific emotion. Lately, I've been thinking very hard about the five stages of grief and what they mean. I tend to process large emotional upheavals by making artwork about them, and the death of my uncle has been sitting low in my belly for a few weeks. How has my identity changed now that his doesn't exist? Or does it?
Oh my, so many ideas.
I've been thinking with collage, but now instead of just having collages and leaving it at that, I would like to take them a step further. How? I'm not sure yet, but I have kept them in my room to stare at during random points of time. I was thinking about adding found objects to them, or something. Not all of my steps have been explicitly figured out at this point, but I'm okay with that. (I know, surprise!)
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Week 5
Week Five:
Create a collage of images that represent your big idea. As you write, reflect on what features are in common or dissimilar. What stands out to you as most significant? Why? What questions have you generated about your topic? How has visual culture made an impact on your issue of concern?
In this group of images about my big idea, I decided to focus on self identity. More specifically, I tried to find things in magazines that spoke to me, about me. I think that any object viewed in the proper context can be seen as referencing identity. Along with the images, I included words or phrases that I thought were important to my own self identity.
Things that I noticed the most when I was searching for images were big patterns and any variation of red or pink. I think the most significant image that I chose when I was considering my big idea though was the image of the little girl in the tutu with a sword around her belt. Little girls exude confidence before the media gets to them, and anyone who can bounce to the beat of their own drummer is admirable to me. I placed the word confidence above it just to cement the thought. The flowers were for the feminine side of me, even though I can run with the boys. And my very favorite part of this whole thing is the phrase that I found in Cosmo, of all places. "Men are attracted to women who challenge them." This statement once again comes back to the idea of confidence and conviction in one's own ideas, which in turn is a very large part of self identity.
Visual culture has such a huge impact on identity. Magazines, tv shows, and advertisements all play a large part in bringing up the questions that are needed in figuring out who someone is. Why do you like something? Why don't you? Sometimes the reasons why you don't agree bring you closer to figuring out who you are than the reasons why you do. Visual culture also has a negative impact on identity. Just one look at the people who have eating disorders can show you - brought on by stress in their lives, the need for control, and the image that the media has shown for perfection.
Having identity for a topic seems so very gigantic. Every step of the way is another set of huge questions that all seem to come down to only a few short ones. Why? What makes people identify themselves in one group over another? What makes it important to me that I'm seen as confident more than anything else? Would being brought up a different way have made it so that I would choose a different option, or would I have always gotten to this point, at twenty two years old, of being Mara? What makes us be who we are?
In this group of images about my big idea, I decided to focus on self identity. More specifically, I tried to find things in magazines that spoke to me, about me. I think that any object viewed in the proper context can be seen as referencing identity. Along with the images, I included words or phrases that I thought were important to my own self identity.
Things that I noticed the most when I was searching for images were big patterns and any variation of red or pink. I think the most significant image that I chose when I was considering my big idea though was the image of the little girl in the tutu with a sword around her belt. Little girls exude confidence before the media gets to them, and anyone who can bounce to the beat of their own drummer is admirable to me. I placed the word confidence above it just to cement the thought. The flowers were for the feminine side of me, even though I can run with the boys. And my very favorite part of this whole thing is the phrase that I found in Cosmo, of all places. "Men are attracted to women who challenge them." This statement once again comes back to the idea of confidence and conviction in one's own ideas, which in turn is a very large part of self identity.
Visual culture has such a huge impact on identity. Magazines, tv shows, and advertisements all play a large part in bringing up the questions that are needed in figuring out who someone is. Why do you like something? Why don't you? Sometimes the reasons why you don't agree bring you closer to figuring out who you are than the reasons why you do. Visual culture also has a negative impact on identity. Just one look at the people who have eating disorders can show you - brought on by stress in their lives, the need for control, and the image that the media has shown for perfection.
Having identity for a topic seems so very gigantic. Every step of the way is another set of huge questions that all seem to come down to only a few short ones. Why? What makes people identify themselves in one group over another? What makes it important to me that I'm seen as confident more than anything else? Would being brought up a different way have made it so that I would choose a different option, or would I have always gotten to this point, at twenty two years old, of being Mara? What makes us be who we are?
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