liammooneytheory

[liammooneytheory]

Reflection on Dossier

Overall, the Dossier was a very interesting experience in which I, funnily enough, enjoyed what I did and it really made me think of ideas that I hadn’t thought of before. So what this allowed me to do was explore different pathways and finally say to myself go do your work Liam and do something that you love, even though my work right now is very static and all about what it looks like especially the aesthetics of it. I need to start bringing in meaning into my work and allowing myself to be open and also have the ability to make new relationships with other people, other artists and others who are in similar situations or who are similar to me. Overall, I think I have become more confident in what I am doing and need to start allowing that confidence to flow into studio and make some amazing work. Here is an image in which I recently did which I believe embodies who I have become during this process and this idea of embracing my identity and not giving a shit about what society says. 

[liammooneytheory]

Written Statement

Having the ability to be who I want to be is special, but what is even better than that is having the ability to express that through different art forms. As a white, homosexual, male from a conservative Catholic upbringing, I think I have finally understood what it is like to embrace who I truly am. With ideas surrounding identity, gender stereotypes and sexuality - especially in the LGBTQIA+ community - constantly making an appearance through my work, I have to make sure that I myself have accepted or at least begun accepting who I am. Through creating this dossier, I have realised the importance of finding your standpoint and allowing myself to embrace the ideas I have, in order to add further depth to my practice. “Few doubt the importance of language as a tool for self-expression and, as such language becomes particularly important for GLBT individuals as culturally marginalised to articulate a sense of identity and expression.” 26 The research, activities, examples, artworks everything gathered in my dossier has helped me find that sense of identity and expression Kelsey talks about. Previously, in a lot of my studio work I have found that the ideas behind what I have made are all focused on the making and physical attributes of form, material and shape. With a lack of meaning and this almost mass produced, minimalistic ideology suffocating my work, I haven’t given space for me to express issues, concerns or the empowerment that I know I want to communicate. With a lot of my studio work being stuck in this almost aesthetical realm, I have been exploring more of the ideas which surround my own identity in my minor; however, I want to incorporate these ideas I have more into the studio work I will produce in the future. “Without aesthetic value, no art, one might say. Without audience, without judgment of taste, nothing “particular” about art. And conversely; without art, no aesthetics in the sense…” 27 Although  there is an interesting conversation about aesthetics relationships with art and non-objective art, I am in the stage where exploring and experimenting with my practice incorporating other conversations can help me in the future.

With this new found confidence which I have obtained from the work in the Dossier, I am able to implement my own personal identity in order to further express meaning into my work. This requires an emotional, conversational and relational experience which I will endure by myself but also with other people, artists, influencers, lecturers, etc. “Everywhere its premise was that we become individuals and begin shaping identity only through socialization, even if individuation ultimately enables us to turn even against the groups and norms that originally furnished the sources of our identity.” 28 Creating conversation, discourse and relationships with other people who have similar interests brings another perspective into my work and allows me to widen my audience even further. In order for me to do this I need to be willing to converse about my work and have these intellectual conversations with other artists.

The Dossier of Usefulness has enabled me as an upcoming artist to embrace who I am even further. I know with the constant support from peers and lecturers, giving me and pushing me to use my art as a vessel of encouragement and empowerment, I will introduce these interests into my work. It has always been there and will always be there because that is who I am. I will use my artwork to challenge the conventional Western normalities which have been lurking society, especially through ideas surrounding Identity politics. This is because my practice should be built on my identity and society needs to accept the fact that we are not all the same.

Liam Mooney

26. Bruce Drushel and Kathleen M. German, Queer Identities/Political Realities, (Cambridge Scholars Pub, 2009), 155.

27. Morten Kyndrup, “Modernism and Aesthetic Experience: Art, Aesthetics and the Role of Modernism,” Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 25, no. 51, (January 2016): 19-34.

28. Gerald Izenberg, Identity: The Necessity of a Modern Idea (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 369.

[liammooneytheory]

Quotation #2

Look at something you have written for one of your classes. Have you quoted any sources? If so, how have you integrated the quotation into your own text? How have you introduced it? Explained what it means? Indicated how it relates to your text? If you haven’t done all these things, revise your text to do so.

“Artist’s expressed this idea that art didn’t need to “represent the world transparently (as if from a window).” [1] However, it could be invented by everyone’s unique definition and their own distinct meanings which they attach to phenomena. The idea that the world is constructed in our own eyes presents how our minds depict the world in various ways. No two people have the same definition of the world and even more so the same definition of art. This is why modernist artists are diverse in style however, yet so concrete in their unified manifesto. “The cross-fertilization of modernist art forms was often expressed in tactical programmings of the manifesto…to declare universal applicability of a new aesthetic programme.” [2] Luca Somigli talks about the idea of a manifesto being positioned “between practice and theory,” in order to move the discourse on “what artists are and do.” Also following the issue of the agitating connection the artist and the audience had,[3] and how art has different meanings to each of them.

   [1] Rodrigues and Garratt, 58.

   [2] Ibid, 51.

   [3] Luca Somigli, Legitimizing the Artist: Manifesto Writing and European Modernism 1885-1915. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 4.”

I have integrated a few quotes into this piece which I did at the beginning of last year for theory. It is a piece looking into the ideas surrounding Modernism and the Industrial Revolution. The sources in which I have introduced have been placed in between sentences to almost finishing the sentence of with the words of someone else, or I have used starters such as “Luca Somigli talks about the idea...” these bring the quotes into the paragraphs and allows the reader to connect them together to understand the ideas I am trying to portray. I could go into more detail into how maybe it relates, however, there is enough there for it to work. I think that without it being too wordy and too longwinded the words around the quotes bring it in and tie it together in order to help understand what is being said. This also brings in the ideas surrounding what you write before and after quotes because misplacing a quote can be bad as it may not fit into the sentence and it may be in a difficult spot for the reader to put two and two together. 

[liammooneytheory]

Quotation #1

Find a published piece of writing that quotes something that “they say.” How has the writer integrated the quotation into his or her own text? How has he or she introduced the quotation, and what, if anything, has the writer said to explain it and tie it to his or her own text? Based on what you’ve read this chapter, are there any changes you would suggest?

“Simply because quiet artists are an unfamiliar model within the Western art industry, their practices are not considered to increase awareness of Indigenous identities. This could not be further from the truth. Indigenous people already speak to social and political issues by the mere fact that their bodies exist in a world that is constantly trying to negotiate their terms of existence. Anne Riley states:

The lack of awareness and dialogue around emotional labour is a testament to the amount of private internal work Indigenous artists have to perform to be visible in the white-dominated art world. As Indigenous people, we work overtime to be seen in our everyday lives, both by others and by ourselves. As artists, we are expected to work extra hours to earn our identity.

Riley affirms that Indigenous people fight to have a voice in their everyday lives and being both an Indigenous person and Indigenous artist means double the labour, because that is another space in which they need more visibility. Yet another space which requires them to make loud proclamations of their identity if they want to be heard.

Artist and curator Talia Smith (b.1985) was brought up in Aotearoa and is now based in Australia. She has a diverse yet typically dislocated multicultural upbringing. When asked by Vice magazine about which aspects of colonization she addressed through her work, she replied:

When you make an artwork you are inevitably putting a part of yourself in it or exploring a part of your identity. You draw upon your experiences and influences and as a person of Samoan, Cook Island and New Zealand European heritage, that will always be at play in my work even if it does so quietly and not so obviously … The fact that I have a privileged position of being able to make art and work in the arts as a person of mixed heritage is probably the biggest way I do it.” 24

When reading this piece about the non-Western and Western culture, I saw that they had almost had kind of an interview with a few of the artists from a certain exhibition. The way I which they incorporated the words and what they said is seen as above. Instead of say ‘she said’ or ‘they said’ like it states in the question to find, what interests me was the use of the colon in order to kind of break up the writing of the author of the piece from what the actual person she was interviewing was saying. With the layout of the article clearly showing where each person was saying something using the italics, they also added words such as, ‘she stated,’ or ‘she replied’ you know things that are different rather than just the same way in which to incorporate quotes from what someone has said. Obviously what the writer has introduced has been helpful to the ideas surrounding what they are talking about so it seems like the way in which they introduced them into the article was clever, precise and very clear as well.

25. Natasha Matila-Smith, “The quiet need no defence,” Un Magazine 12.1, accessed April 2019, http://unprojects.org.au/magazine/issues/issue-12-1/the-quiet-need-no-defence/.

[liammooneytheory]

Gerald Graff

24. Gerald Graff, They say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, Ed, Cathy Birkenstein, W.W. Norton & Co, New York, 2010. 

[liammooneytheory]

Moularity

Concept, context, material process.

Support, intrinsic motivation, network, money, time.

Identify and respond, support the community.

Writing, collaboration.

From Taarati Taiaroa’s talk.

Emma’s Haiku:

Collaboration, 

Identify and respond,

Support, Network, Time.

 My Haiku:

Our identities

Forming a relationship,

Support each other.

Ideas surrounding my studio work especially in relation to identity and forming relationships with those around you even though we are all different. Treating others with respect and supporting each other's decisions, choices and embracing who they want to be no matter what. 

[liammooneytheory]

One Sentence

I have come to the conclusion that the dossier is a compilation of past, present and future ideas/research, from my own mind and from others minds - this enables me to incorporate these ideas into my studio practice, to challenge myself as an artist.

[liammooneytheory]

Peacocks

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Liam Mooney (@mail_4_liam) on Oct 25, 2018 at 2:23am PDT

To me this work is something which looks into the ideas surrounding identity which I find my self constantly trying to bring back into my work. The work ‘Peacocks,’ uses colour, drawing, video and sound in order to help me create this work that looks into the lives of people I know and how they themselves all have accepted their identities and each and everyone of us has our own unique personality. 

[liammooneytheory]

Conversational Research

“Principles for Conversational Research:

● To practice conversational research is to challenge oneself through engagement with others.

● Conversational research is a process that places emphasis on engaging in an on-going and potentially immeasurable relational commitment. It requires a commitment to the facilitation and maintenance of kinship—human relations.1

● Conversational research does not have a deadline, although it can have breaks.

● Geared towards a deceleration of outcomes, conversational research is a conscious decision to engage dialogically as a means to facilitate the emergence of knowledge, as opposed to focusing on the production of a predetermined outcome.

● Conversational research can be haptic and/or silent.

● Conversational research aims to slow down processes in order not to prejudge the outcomes of conversations, or even pre-empt them, but to be open to the emergence of gesture and/or collaboration.

● Conversational research is collaborative, informal and flexible.

● Conversational research is a process that embraces contingency and uncertainty, aiming not to be limited by preconceived expectations or measures of success.

● In the context of conversational research, it is the duty of the curator to support the artist’s ideas, be informed about their complexities and attempt to construct a safe framework for the artist to produce their work or express themselves.

● In the context of conversational research, it is not the role of the curator to ask the artist to change their work towards the desired outcome.

● Conversational research requires benevolence and kindness; however, it is not altruistic. Self-care is important.

● All active participants in the conversation have the ability to voice their opinion and exercise the ‘Law of Two Feet’: to move to a space in which they feel they can contribute or learn, or to walk away from the conversation when it feels inappropriate or unsafe.

● With permission from the collaborators the conversation can be opened up for advice and appropriate council, which has the potential to provide collective permission or possible embargo.

● Conversational research can result in slippery authorship.

● Conversational research resists the assumption that there is a designated ‘public’ or that conversational research needs to be broadcast to be valid as an outcome.

● Conversational research accepts the need for public accountability and the need to support and encourage critical dialogue.

● Throughout the conversational research process it is important that collaborators are exhibitors (that they are represented on their own terms) as opposed to exhibits of a curatorial process.

● The question of how, what and to whom a conversation is made public is something to be determined in conversation with collaborators and must emerge through the process itself.” 23

23. Taarati Taiaroa, “Conversational Research: Praxis & Emergence,” A Year of Conscious Practice, published in 2017, accessed in April 2019, http://ayearofconsciouspractice.com/texts/conversational-research-praxis-emergence. 

[liammooneytheory]

Gems, Ripples and Tetrads

[liammooneytheory]

12 Things A Man Should Do Before He Dies

This is my own personal work and I have just added this because I think this is probably one of the works that to me define what I want to continue doing with my artwork and continue to further develop and understand even more about it: 

12 Things A Man Should Do Before He Dies:

1. Read a magazine

2. Play with make-up

3. Shed some mascara tears

4. Put the washing on the line

5. Apply some lipstick

6. Go shopping all day

7. Slip on a dress

8. Shave their legs

9. Drink Rosé

10. Do the cleaning

11. Wear fake nails

12. Try on heels.

As a feminine man I wonder, I wonder why people think they have to conform to societal norms. It blows my mind the amount of people who think that because you are a man you must be masculine. My question is what does it mean to be a man? In this series of images I have compiled a list of '12 Things A Man Should Do Before He Dies,' 12 things which are stereotypically feminine and make a masculine man experience them. 12 things which most men haven't encountered before, but some may have already. Not all men are masculine, and I don't understand why they need to be. What I want to show is this discourse between masculinity and femininity and how there doesn't need to be a barrier dividing them. I want men to understand that they don't need to repress their indivdualism and how they want to present themselves, as society is ever-changing. Men can be feminine, masculine, a mixture of both, or even neither. Gender normativity and stereotypes do not need to be stood by and make men feel obligated to fit under a certain personality. As a feminine man I wonder, I wonder when people will realise that they can be who they want to be.

[liammooneytheory]

Brainstorm

What is my standpoint:

Homosexuality

Irish decent and history

Masculinity vs Femininity

Cisgendered

LGBTQIA+

Ideas surrounding male gender stereotypes

Catholicism

What isn’t my stand point:

Homophobia/Queerphobia

Racism

Feminism

Obliging to gender stereotypes

White supremacy

Atheism 

[liammooneytheory]

Minor Reflection

What I think is something which I can see a connection within especially to my minor is the ideas of respect and assumptions I wanted to pull this from my minor assignment because I wrote about what I wanted to do and how I went about it because I think sometimes we need to look at how we respect others and what is the right way. Sometimes assuming things which we all do we got to admit may be hard and it is something which we should make sure we think about it first. 

Image is an outtake from my minor assignment called 

��the only homo in a hetoreo family,’ 2019

[liammooneytheory]

Situated Biography

“I don't speak my Father's native tongue I was born under a southern sun I don't know where I belong I don't know where I belong My Great-Grandaddy was Wiradjuri My Father came here from the Philippines It's where I live, it's where I want to be Oooh but you make me feel so ill at ease I don't speak my Father's native tongue I was born under Australian sun I don't know where I belong I don't know where I belong It's easy enough for you to say It ain't no thing But I'm the one you ain't the one Been living in this skin So if you want to call me something Call it to my face But I will not apologise For taking up this space And every time you cut me down I'm gonna come back fierce The time is through for being nice Let's call it what it is I don't speak my Father's native tongue I was born under a southern sun I don't know where I belong I don't know where I belong” 22

If it is ok to assume then this is what I think, Mojo Juju is in conflict with other people about where they belong, as an Australian aboriginal and Philippines, which they directly talk about in the song. They are talking about how they do not speak their father's native tongue and that they do not know where they belongs. This is an identity crisis and it is like they are unable to truly understand who they are and where they belong in society. Looking at how this song talks about who, what, when, where and why especially in relation to Mojo Juju themselves, yes we can assume this but at the same time it may not be as simple and as easy to unpack and talk about. So what I think is happening and is being talked about in this song is, Mojo Juju themselves are confused, they are talking to those who have hated on them or talked to them about what ethnicity they may be. It is for the people who have said she may not belong where they are and it is their retaliation as an artist. Juju is someone of an ethnic background which is outside of your ‘normal’ white race, they live in a predominantly white raced country in Australia and I think they have been living their life in this constant doubt and veil of mystery on where they belong. This may be also written for their dad, they may have written it so they can understand what is happening and that he needs to know. So this idea of Juju writing it for someone, and about someone, so there are many different ways in order to unpack that. I don’t really know how else to unpack that but from what I talk about in this reflection is this idea of respect and assumptions. So that is something that I am interested in talking about as well. 

22.  NiteShok, “Mojo Juju - Native Tongue Lyrics,” Genius, published November 2018, accessed March 2019, https://genius.com/Mojo-juju-native-tongue-lyrics. 

[liammooneytheory]

Mojo JuJu

21. Mojo Juju, “MOJO JUJU - NATIVE TONGUE Featuring The Pasefika Vitoria Choir (Official Music Video),” posted July 5, 2018, accessed March 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLQ4by3lUJo.

[liammooneytheory]

Reflection on Paragraph

Re-writing that paragraph and changing some of the pronouns used in it in order to see what would, it made it a completely different perspective on the paragraph. I changed a lot of the ‘I’s’ into ‘we’s’ because I wanted to look at what would happen when you were talking in a sense of community or as a group. It made it so like someone was talking on behalf of someone else, this made it because of the context of the piece it made it seem like it would be more cultural and say culture orientated. I think that the way in which changing ‘I’ to ‘we’ takes the focus away from someone independently obviously and makes it a wider concern in which you are talking about. The other word which I changed was from ‘he’ to ‘they’, the writer is originally talking about a specific speaker of a different colour skin, and I think that changing ‘he’ to ‘they’ has made it almost seem like a negative or complicated situation to be in. Obviously, there has been some issues and other events in the past related to racial differences and I think there is also a lot of racial discrimination in the present as well. This makes it like this idea of what is correct to say depending on what person you are if Lopesi addressed cis women as he or cis men as she, depending on their preference and what they want to be called, then it doesn’t very fit to this idea of respect. It is almost a slap in the face and I guess kind of rude to not respect what these people want to be called. Because that is another point, some people don’t ask for preference and the fact that nowadays people are having to express their pronouns when first meeting people is interesting. If I have to introduce myself I always say my pronouns so people know that is what to address me or to call me because some people can confuse my feminine attitude to being wanted to be a girl and I have had incidents where that has happened. And personal pronouns are just the beginning of what it is that we should and shouldn’t be saying. So many people use words which a) may not have the particular right or be the appropriate person to be saying it, this may be cultural, sexual, gender-wise or b) which are just straight up offensive. Racial, homophobic, gender slurs which people think they have the right to say to others but really is this the kind of world we want to live in. I think that the use of grammatical personal language is very hard to misunderstand and easy to misuse, with the world being so open now and so many people trying to find their true identities it is hard to make sure that you are saying the right thing. However, I think it just boils down to respect, yes we make mistakes but there is a right way to say shit and sometimes we need to stand back think about what we are saying and even address the person and ask them. 

[liammooneytheory]

Rewrite Paragraph

ORIGINAL 

“The day before, at Takapūwāhia Marae, I too felt a little weird. The large contingent of Pākehā and non-indigenous curators who had traveled to the wānanga was unexpected. There was a lot of Pākehā comfort in a conversation about “curating indigenous art”- which isn’t to say that the Pākehā voice was loud at all, but that it was listening and observing. Reflecting on Leonard’s comments and his expression of discomfort and uncertainty, I recognised that of course Pākehā should be present in these settings. It also occurred to me that when he describes his feeling of “contradictory proximity”, he’s talking about being an ally, and the challenges of being an effective one.” 20

RE-WRITTEN 

The day before, at Takapūwāhia Marae, we too felt a little weird. The large contingent of Pākehā and non-indigenous curators who had traveled to the wānanga was unexpected. There was a lot of Pākehā comfort in a conversation about “curating indigenous art”- which isn’t to say that the Pākehā voice was loud at all, but that it was listening and observing. Reflecting on Leonard’s comments and their expression of discomfort and uncertainty, you recognised that of course Pākehā should be present in these settings. It also occurred to us that when they describes his feeling of “contradictory proximity”, they are talking about being an ally, and the challenges of being an effective one.

20. Lana Lopesi, “Allyship, not ownership: on good curatorship and being tauiwi,” The Pantograph Punch, December 12, 2016, accessed March 2019, https://www.pantograph-punch.com/post/curatorship-and-being-tauiwi.