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IMPACTOS AMBIENTAIS
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Lecture and Reading Discussion 4/9 and 4/11
This week’s lectures focused on underrepresented African American culture. Monday’s lecture helped provide more of a historical background on the subject, touching upon Pan African culture, modernist experimentation, improv, and postmodern Afro-futurism. It made me reflect upon an essay written by Monae where he says, “Can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search for more legible traces of its history, imagine possible futures? Furthermore, isn’t the unreal estate of the future already owned by the technocrats, futurologists, streamliners, and set designers — white to a man — who have engineered our collective fantasies?” The concept of futurism is definetly one that should be explored in today’s day and age as it revitalizes anti-colonialism thoughts in an age where some people may choose to forget how many civilizations were uprooted and stripped of their cultures.
Wednesday’s lecture was on the Black Aesthetic, who aim to curate and assemble different forms of Black visual culture. African American culture in the bay has diminished over time due to gentrification and these increased rent prices. In Oakland’s Black Artists Make Space for Themselves, Brittsense explained that “with gentrification, we do not feel like we exist anymore”. By hosting different types of events including visual art exhibits, dance classes, and festivals, the Black Aesthetic is able to help revitalize culture in the bay. Furthermore, they believe in accessibility and won’t turn back people because of they cannot afford a ticket. I respect what the people in the organization are doing because they are helping Oakland stay true to its roots.
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Big Data visualization (taste map) of people’s art preferences. Elisa is also intrigued by the intersection of data and art
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Week 13 reading
Okoye explains that dominant cultural epistemologies have segmented and sedimented categories -- like how museum spaces typically show and value only certain types of cultural production, work thatfiguratively you can look at under a microscope. The idea of black life is more alive than that. The history of museums as collecting institutions inherently carries the torch of "disembodied" study, a way of seeing that is distinctly white and European in origin; this has affected what are considered "intellectual" and, thus, valid cultural forms and beliefs.Â
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Lecture notes 4/4
Gregory Sholette
Artist, activist and author In his wide-ranging art, activist, teaching and writing practice, dr. Sholette develops a self-described “viable, democratic, counter-narrative that, bit-by-bit, gains descriptive power within the larger public discourse.” A founding member of Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D: 1980-1988, NYC); of REPOhistory collective (1989-2000); and Gulf Labor, an artists’ group advocating for migrant workers’ rights constructing Western branded art museums in Abu Dhabi (2010-ongoing). In dozens of essays, four edited volumes, and his own two books including Art as Social Action (edited with Chloë Bass: Skyhorse Publishers, May 2018); Delirium & Resistance: Art Activism & the Crisis of Capitalism (2017) and Dark Matter: Art and Politics in an Age of Enterprise Culture (2011, both Pluto Press), Sholette documents and reflects upon decades of activist art, much of which might otherwise remain invisible. A co-director of Social Practice Queens at Queens College CUNY, he holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam,
*came to class at 12:25*
Lower Manhattan Sign Project
Activist street projects addressing societal topics in NY such as:police brutality, income inequality, Â revisionist history, structural racism, ablism, LGBTQ
Though they had legal rights to put up posters and signs, in most cases, often faced bullying from large buildings and corporations (Empire State Building kept taking down their posters which brought to light the lack of dis
Marsha Johnson Trans activist worked in the Meat Packing District
She dies and the police rule it a suicide but activists say evidence points to gay-bashing foul play
SIgn Project puts up signs giving all the facts and effectively becomes a memorial
Sign called “Queer Spaces”
Howling Mob Society
Pittsburgh
-Created sign markers and put them up in the streets illegally
-Signs looked like legitamate historical markers
-Brought att
Center for Tactical Media / Black Panthers
-Sign on lamp post in Oakland, CA
-Large crosswalk in predominantly Black community with White city council
-City Council kept refusing to place crossing guards for Black children, Black Panthers stepped in and would stop traffic and serve as crossing guards until City Council approved a crossing.
POCHO Society
-Around UCSD
-Plaques about Latino history illegally placed
Revenge of the Surplus Archive
-Modern Art Museum
Dark Matter
Gregory’s interpretation of the astrophysics concept of “dark matter”
Created a movement of art to expose the “unseen” aspects of many institutions
Social Practice Art
Highlights the contradictions of many art institutions/ galleries/ works
NY MOMA claims to have many political and social messages yet the Board includes the CEO of BlackRock (Trump Advisor, Hedge Fund is the largest holder of student debt)
A restaurant which serves menus and foods from countries at odds with the USA, yet the restaurant workers are unionized and the operation seems largely commercial
UAE Saadiyat Island (Island of Happiness) trying to build Gugghenheim created by inhumanely treated migrant workers ie high visa recruitment fees, cramped living conditions,passports taken away
The Louvre is also building a msueum in Abu Dhabi with terible working conditions
Global Ultraluxury Fashion: direct action group, walked into gugghenheim with large poster, occupied museum, dropped fliers from the top floors
The museum shut itself down, tore the poster, police were called
The Illusionists(sp?) illegally project protest imagery on museums
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Week 12 readings
Gregory Sholette’s academic paper entitled: “ Do We Need a Turing Test for Activist Art in a Bare Art World” proved to be an interesting departure from the styles of readings we have been traditionally assigned. Gregory begins by walking through a hypothetical scenario of an art gallery that gets interrupted by protest. In his thought experiment he begins by questioning whether seemingly random items such as an emergency door are also considered rt in this gallery. Alas, we once again see the concept of “what really constitutes art” come up again. Furthermore, the protest he describes is actually a reference to actual events of activism that have occurred around the art world. Once again he questions “is that art in itself.” In its simplest form, the Turing Test involves a human evaluator physically separated by a wall or other barrier from two participants so that all communication between the three of them must take place through a keyboard device. The evaluator knows that one hidden participant is human and one is a machine, though which is which remains unknown. The evaluator is tasked with trying to identify who is the person and which is the imitation person. Simultaneously, both participants try to convince the evaluator they are human. At the moment the evaluator becomes genuinely uncertain which participant is machine and which is human, the machine has successfully passed Turing’s Test. Gregory then attempts to tie this concept with incidents of art activism to really push the boundaries of what constitutes art.
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Week 12 Reflection
I would go as far as saying that Gregory is more of an activist than an artist though he is very good at the two and is extremely innovative.In his book, Delerium and Resistance, he touches upon how art appears after gentrification. He spends less time talking about the obvious social and cultural detriments of gentrification, but rather focuses on the positive of how this practice leads to the creation of artwork that expresses the thoughts of the everyday man. Large entities like the Empire State take down these pieces and also reinforce gentrification, it was refreshing to see how artists like Gregory fight back and expose the perspectives of marginalized people. I enjoyed hearing about the hard work Dena Bard has to do to make the place run, including writing grants and proposals for funding to changing the operating model of The Lab to fit artist needs.
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Lecture 3/19/18
Lynn Hershman-Leeson “Bay Area feminist Artist, video/filmmaker and Pioneering digital media artist”
  Discussing the first portable video cameras
Cortocolor (sp?) camcorder
Advertisement is a woman holding the camcorder, processing unit is a large satchel-looking box worn like a briefcase with a sash
“Women’s Liberation March”
1970
People’s Video Theatre
Interviewing bystanders and marchers
“Gay Pride march”
Catalyst for allowing people to speak and be heard
Camcorder allowed content, not covered by mainstream media, to be disseminated
Most of the filmmakers were actors/activists, yet the implications of their recordings were widespread and powerful
“Politics of Intimacy”
Women candidly discussing their sex life
1974, Julie Gustafson
“Semiotics of the Kitchen”
Satirical performance art
Objectification of women in the kitchen
“Wonder Woman”
Sexist objectification of the superhero
Expression of woman’s power
Ironic because the video was demeaning and portrayed her as “ditsy”, weak, simple entertainment
Repetitive twirling
“First Person Plural”
The Electronic Diaries of Lynn Hershman
Not really sure what’s going on, this girl is talking about being sexually turned on when she gorges on cookies
Husband leaves her, she begins a sexual relationship with food indulgence
Dieting is war with yourself and body
Professor asks us “is this whole thing even real? Was it just a performance”
Personally, I think it’s real, this chick looked insane
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Week 8 Reflection:
Jim Campbell uses his electrical engineering background to incorporate the dynamics of light and LED with programming to create complex juxtapositions of human emotion wth technology. He viewed technological machines as holders of “memories” and inputs that are expressed through computer algorithms.Â
Recently, Jim was commissioned for some of his signature large-scale lightwork atop the new Salesforce building in SF. I thought it was peculiar and a bit unecessary, though within their right I guess, for Salesforce to have added 9 non-functional floors at the top for this kind of work. I could have misheard that explanation but I’m not sure.
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