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L5 Contextual Studies: The Hyper-Connected World

It has become clear that over time we have become living in an increasingly connected world, according to Nicholas Mirzoeff, in 2012, a third of the world’s population had internet access. Google currently predicts that by 2020 there will be 5 billion using the internet and having access to the internet.

Marshall McLuhan is believed by many to have predicted the existence of the internet. During the early 1960s when McLuhan came to state the important of TV and the relatively of people’s everyday lives. The way information is shared and communicated was at the centre of his thinking.

The Investigatory Powers Bill was passed in December 2016, and is the biggest reform of the UK’s surveillance. Though many people have criticised the bill for the measures that it entails. According to the bill there is a list of people who are allowed to access your whole internet history. The list of authorities include the police, home office, HMRC and the food standard agency.

The Arts & Crafts movement was a movement in art from the late 1800s which favoured simple, naturalistic forms and traditional craftsmanship. It was essentially anti-industrialist and came about as a reaction to the industrial revolution.

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L5 Contextual Studies: Queer Theory

Queer theory is an academic discipline that originates from feminist theory and gender studies  during the 1990s. The theory challenges the way that heterosexuality is considered normal, it also explores the way that other identities or behaviours might considered to be deviant.

Deleuze argues that homosexuals like other minorities – women, colonized people – have to question these identities and turn away from their own questioning in an ongoing fashion. They have to enter into a permanent revolution [...] who searches not for a ‘gay identity’ or for ‘being-gay’ but for becoming gay.

Verena Adnermatt Conley, “Thirty-six Thousand Forms of Love: the Queering of Deleuze and Guattari.” Deleuze and Queer Theory. Edited by Chrysanthi Nigianni and Merl Storr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 25.

Yeah, come for me. Thirty-two years later and they’re still coming for me. And what have we got? Here, where it all started, trans people have nothing. [...] And it really hurts me that some gay people don’t even know what we gave for their movement.

“Queens in Exile, the Forgotten Ones,” by Sylvia Rivera, 80-81.

We must reject a queer politics which seems to ignore, [...] the roles of identity and community as paths to survival, using shared experiences of oppression and resistance to build indigenous resources, shape consciousness, and act collectively.

Instead, I would suggest that it is the multiplicity and interconnectedness of our identities which provide the most promising avenue for the destabilization and radical politicization of these same categories.

Cohen, Cathy J. “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” GLQ 3, 1997 (437-465), 459-460.

Queer Disability Studies / Crip Theory

[...] to be able-bodied is to be “free from physical disability,” just as to be heterosexual is to be “the opposite of homosexual.

Like compulsory heterosexuality, then, compulsory able-bodiedness functions by covering over, with the appearance of choice, a system in which there actually is no choice.

Robert McRuer, “Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer / Disabled Existence, Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (New York: NYU Press, 2006), 301-308

“Cripple”, when I use it, allows me to take ownership of everyone’s misconceptions of disability. I know you’re scared of me; I know you think I’m different from you, and guess what? I am. I’m owning that as best as I can when I use that word. It is a term of personal empowerment for me. I wouldn’t use it to describe another disabled person without their consent, but for me it helps me navigate the experience of disability with an honesty that I think is really important.

Andrew Gurza in “Here's What This 'Queer Cripple' Wants You To Know About His Sex Life”, Huffington Post [online] (21st July 2017).

People invent categories in order to feel safe. White people invented black people to give white people identity.

Straight cats invent faggots so they can sleep with them without becoming faggots themselves.

James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni, A Dialogue (Philidelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1973).

Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers.

David Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a gay hagiography. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 62

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. 

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 301.

Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being.

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

Drag constitutes the mundane way in which genders are appropriated theatricalized, worn, and done; it implies that all gendering is a kind of impersonation and approximation. If this is true, it seems, there is no original or primary gender that drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original.

Judith Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” in Sara Salih (ed.), The Judith Butler Reader New York: Blackwell, 2004), 127.

How can a relational system be reached through sexual practices? Is it possible to create a homosexual mode of life? ... To be “gay,” I think, is not to identify with the psychological traits and the visible masks of the homosexual, but to try to define and develop a way of life.

Michel Foucault, “Friendship as a Way of Life” The Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, (Volume One). Translaed by Robert Hurley (New York: The New Press, 1997), 135-140.

Untimeliness dislodges queers from socially shared, normative periodicities. For those without children or ambitions to procreate, queers are cut loose not only from parenting responsibilities but from quotidian temporal rhythms that the family-orientated community imposes (school, soccer, shopping).

With the notion of queerness strategically and critically posited not as an identity not a substantive mode of being but as a way of becoming, temporality is necessarily already bound up in the queer.

E.L. McCallum and Mikko Tuhkamen, “Becoming Unbecoming: Untimely Meditations” in Queer Times, Queer Becomings (New York: SUNY Press. 2011), 1-21.

...to refuse the battle for the right to marry, to refuse the presumed connection between marriage rights and liberation, to refuse to succumb to the idea that coupled monogamy is the best way to practice intimacy. To refuse to ask for the rights that have been refused to you is to turn your back on the carrot dangled by the state and to go looking for nourishment elsewhere.

Jack Halberstam, Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender and the End of Normal, (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 128

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L5 Contextual Studies: Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is defined as: ‘A system of psychological theory and therapy which aims to treat mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind and bringing repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious mind by techniques such as dream interpretation and free association.’

(Oxford Dictionaries online)

The idea of the unconscious and the ‘unconscious mind’ is key when it comes to psychoanalysis, Freud believed that the analysis of various things through the unconscious mind was key to curing his patients. Freud believed that the mind was made up of three parts: the id, ego and superego. The id reflected our basic animal instincts and primal desires and works on the principle of pleasure. The ego according to Freud is often thought of as the ‘I’ and works on the principle reality. The superego on the other hand is thought of as ‘the conscience’, it incorporates and learns societal values and morals, and works on the principles of idealism.

A neurosis is defined as: ‘A relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress (depression, anxiety, obsessive behaviour, hypochondria) but not a radical loss of touch with reality.’ 

(Oxford Dictionary online)

Freud believed that these were caused by repressions, both of the pleasure principle and of childhood traumas. He believed that a trauma or a disruption during the early stages was responsible for the creation of neuroses in later life.

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages

For Freud, an infant’s psychological development was intrinsically linked to a series of five psychosexual stages:

> The oral phase (0-1 year)

> The anal phase (1-3 years)

> The phallic phase (3-5 or 6 years)

> The latent phase (5 or 6 to puberty) - The genital phase (puberty to adult)

The Oedipus complex is considered to be one of Freud’s most controversial ideas and as a result it is an idea that many people will immediately reject. The Oedipus complex is the idea that during the phallic stage a young boy has sexually desires towards his mother, and would want remove his father from the picture. Freud’s theory then irrationally continues with the belief that should the young boys father find out his intentions and his true desires the father would ultimately remove what the boy loves most, his penis. This theory is otherwise known as castration anxiety, the young boy aims to resolve the problem by imitating his father’s masculine traits and eventually taking on the male gender role.  

Another thing that Freud believed ought to be analysed was parapraxis. Parapraxis are also known as a ‘Freudian slip’.  It is believed that parapraxis reveal that we are not always in control of our own speech or actions. According to Freud, parapraxis were telling of a persons repressed desires. An example here could be writing ‘thigh’ instead of ‘though’, or trying to open your car with your house keys, possibly signalling you’d rather be staying at home.

Separation Anxiety is believed to be what happens when there isn’t enough maternal care in a child’s life. If a child is separated for too long, they begin to think all good things will disappear at any given moment. As a result the child can become anxious or volatile, many people believe that another way that they may deal with the separation is by becoming detached.

Lacan divided the psyche into three sections to do with development: the imaginary, the symbolic and the real. The imaginary is when a newborn baby does not realise it is a separate being from its mother; though as it gets older it gains a visual image of itself and starts to understand that it is a distant from something or someone. The Symbolic is when the infant starts to realise its experiences. Finally the real is when an experience or thought occurs that language cannot symbolise.

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L5 Contextual Studies: Politics of the image

Hope (2008), Shephard Fairey. The”Hope" poster is an image of Obama designed by artist Shephard Fairey, which was widely described as iconic and came to represent his 2008 election campaign.It consists of a stylised stencil portrait of Obama in solid red, beige and (light and dark) blue, with the word "progress", "hope" or "change" below (and other words in some versions). 

The design was created in one day and printed first as a poster. Fairey sold 290 of the posters on the street immediately after printing them. It was then more widely distributed—both as a digital image and other paraphernalia. This led The Guardian's Laura Barton to proclaim that the image "acquired the kind of instant recognition of Jim Fitzpatrick's Che Guevara poster. 

In January 2009, after Obama had won the election, Fairey's mixed-media stencilled portrait version of the image was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution for its National Portrait Gallery. Later in January 2009, the photograph on which Fairey based the poster was revealed: a June 2006 shot by former Associated Press freelance photographer Mannie Garcia. In response to claims by the Associated Press for compensation, Fairey sued for a declaratory judgment that his poster was a fair use of the original photograph. The parties settled out of court in January 2011, with details of the settlement remaining confidential.

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L5 Contextual Studies: Global Discourse

Race, culture and displacement are all topics that need to be discussed more openly as today more and more people are feeling displaced now more than ever before. Many people are being forcibly displaced from their homes and are forced to flee due to conflict and persecution. In order to best highlight these topics to the viewer many photographers, illustrators and animators have used their art form to covey the harsh reality of these topics.

Many people are the world feel the effect of racism on a daily basis according to The Independent, religious hate crimes rose 23% in the year following the Brexit vote. As well as Brexit encouraging the rise in hate crimes across the pond the in the United States the Trump votes have also encouraged socially unacceptable attitudes to become mainstream. This could be considered to be a form of institutional racism. Institutional racism is a type of racism which is embedded within political or social institutions.

The race relations act of 1965 was the first formal legislation in the United Kingdom to address racial discrimination. The act banned racial discrimination on the ‘grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origins’.

‘The truth is that no legislative change will end systematic discrimination in Britain because racism is coded into the DNA of the nation’ Kehinde Andrews, 2015.

White privilege is the term for an institutional advantage or a set of benefits granted to those who are white. It can be thought of as "an invisible package of unearned assets” - according to Peggy McIntosh, author of the now- famous 1988 essay White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.

Black Lives Matter is an international activist movement which campaigns against violence and systematic racism against black people. The movement began in America 2013 as a hashtag after the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Since then the movement first began it has developed and turned into regular protests. Though there are some people who have criticised the Black Lives Matter movement and the phrase ‘All Lives Matter’ was created as a response to it.

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L5 Contextual Studies: Gender Discussion

Today gender inequality is still an issue, according to the Gender Inequality Index (GII) ‘UK gender inequality as bad as 10 years ago, EU league table shows’. The Gender Inequality Index is a report that is prepared by the UN. The report looks into gender inequality and is divided into three aspects of human development: health, power, economics.

Gender binary is constantly being deconstructed, though despite the fact the gender inequality still exists more and more people are opening their eyes to the possibility of gender being less binary than formerly accepted. In 2014, Facebook introduced 71 gender options which users can now choose from. Users are now also able to choose their preferred pronoun, whether they prefer to be referred to as ‘he’ or ‘she’ or ‘they’.

Around the world, in places such as Germany and France, gender and linguistics are often closely linked as nouns are directly gendered. Also in the English language nouns are gender directed, though nouns that are feminine tend to have negative connotations especially when compared with masculine nouns. Some examples of feminine nouns that could have negative connotations are ‘mistress’, ‘madam’, ‘spinster’ or ‘hussy’.

Laura Mulvey, a British feminist film theorist, discusses the concept of the ‘male gaze’ and visual pleasure through the narrative of cinema and film. Within her essays she argues that in during the 1950s and 1960s the viewer is placed in to a masculine position whereby the female characters are shown to be an object. Also within many of her essays, Mulvey, believes that the plots and characters of many films were founded and built upon the institution of patriarchy.

When it comes to gender there are large differences between biological sex, gender identity and gender expression. Biological sex is a table that you are assigned at birth depending upon various physical factors including hormones, chromosomes and mainly genitals. Gender identity is the perception of someone’s own gender, which may or may not correspond with their biological sex. Gender expression is the way in which someone expresses their own gender identity.

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L5 Contextual Studies: Designing for the Anthropocene

Why should we care about climate change?

Over time humans have become the most dominate species on the planet, and as a result this has led to us having a negative effect on the planet leading to a vicious cycle. The effect that we have on the planet has just as much of an effect on us and the animals that live here, therefore in the long term by us effecting the planet we are essentially effecting ourselves.

GAIA Hypothesis

The Gaia Hypothesis theory was put forward by James Lovelock. The hypothesis challenges the view that humans are the most important species. Lovelock believed that all forms of life on the planet were a part of Gaia. The word ‘Gaia’ was first used by the author William Golding; the word originates from Greek culture and is the name of the Greek Goddess of the Earth.

Lovelock’s theory opposed Darwin’s belief of the survival of the fittest, evolution to reproduce to survive. Lovelock believed that conditions on earth are actually managed by Gaia herself.

How we see the world -

Over time the way that we see the world has changed, this is mainly due to the way that we as a society have progressed and the technology that we have developed. We have progressed from flat paintings, such as  Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hunters in the Snow (Winter) (1565), to images on Google Earth and NASA images. 

Blue Planet

Documentaries such as David Attenborough’s Blue Planet show the viewer the problems that Anthtropos have caused to the wildlife and environment over time. For example the rising pollution in the sea, Drowning in Plastic. Documentaries such as these highlight the inconvenient truth that many people refuse to believe. Justin Hoffman (Wildlife Photographer) also highlights the growing problem of sea pollution and the effect that it is having on the wildlife in his award winning photographs.

Justin Hoffman (2017) -Wildlife Photographer of the year

Celebrity Endorsement

Over time some brands have worked to reduce the amount of plastic that is used as a part of their brand and also work to create outfits and products that are environmentally friendly. As well as creating the various products the brands and companies also pay celebrities to endorse their products. This benefits both the brand and the environment, as it gains attention for the brand therefore promoting the clothes and also changes peoples views on the environment and reducing the amount of plastic that we use - recycling. 

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L5 Contextual Studies: Consumerism

Consumerism revolves around the materialism. During pre 1600’s the pineapple was considered to be one of the highest symbols of wealth, as shown in the painting titled ‘King Charles II being presented with a Pineapple’. The pineapple was only considered to be a luxury due to the cost of importation and how rare the fruit was during the time, today the pineapple is no longer seen as a symbol of wealth as there is now an overlap between love and economics.

Commodity Fetishism is an idea presented by Karl Marx in the first chapter of Das Kapital. The idea relates to the way in which items become ascribed with almost magical qualities. During this idea the human labour which went into creating and producing the item is eventually lost. This idea often means that consumers in capitalist societies can believe that an item has intrinsic value.

Example of Commodity Fetishism - NIKE shoes 

(Wings by Macklemore)

The music video highlights the power of materialism, as the video focuses on the artist intense want for a pair of Nike air Jordans and his younger self’s belief that the shoes would improve his sporting abilities due to the way that the advertisements sold the product.

The virtuous circle of economic growth is first highlighted in the early 1700s. During this time wages began to rise meaning that families had more money to spend and could afford small luxuries. This meant that the more money families spent, more businesses grew, more workshops opened to manufacture the goods, more people were employed, and wages went up. This time has been described by many as ‘the first consumer revolution’.

Benefits of capitalism?

> It drives national prosperity and can make a difference to the lives of the weak and the poor, apprentices can be trained, hospitals can be built etc.

> Incentives to get rich can lead to innovation.

> Freedom - not only in choice of consumer goods, but also in careers.

> [supposed] Equality - everyone has the chance to ‘make it big’.