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thevalleyisjolly · 4 years ago

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Transpacific Stories Rec List!

Happy Lunar New Year! To celebrate, I thought I’d do a “Top 5″ rec list of creative works that I really enjoy by transpacific Asian creators.

1. diaspora babies by Kai Cheng Thom (poem)

This spoken word poem haunts me to this day. There’s a lot of immigrant (especially Chinese immigrant) emotions mixed up with queer experiences as a child of immigrants, and the vibes are truly just indescribable. It cannot be expressed, only felt, so link is to the 4 minute video with captions.

2. Yellow Peril: Queer Destiny by Love Intersections (documentary)

A documentary about Vancouver drag artist Maiden China, which also features lines from diaspora babies! It is all about that queer Chinese immigrant experience, discussing the nuances of both individually and together. What is it like to be a Chinese immigrant, or the child of Chinese immigrants, in a North American society? What is it like to be queer? What is it like where those two parts of you intersect?

I had the chance to meet one of the directors on this project and listen to his guest seminar, and the story behind this documentary and the production house came from an incident where some members of the local Chinese Canadian community launched a very public opposition to LGBTQ+ policies by the school board. The news media of course went into a frenzy over this, and the producers noticed how the story was framed as “the Chinese community is “traditional” to the point of homophobia” (which...yes, there was homophobia involved, but not because of an innate “traditional Chinese are all homophobic” quality).

The documentary creators wanted to unpack, explore, and challenge this, and also to assert that queer Chinese people exist, which is exactly what the documentary does. It showcases a variety of different relationships and interactions that queer Chinese people have - with their families, their immigrant communities, their heritage traditions, their broader Western society. It’s a really complex and nuanced discussion, and one of the best documentaries I’ve ever watched.

3. Disappearing Moon Cafe by SKY Lee (novel)

Oh, you thought I was done with the queer Chinese immigrant theme? Absolutely never. This is a landmark book in the history of Chinese Canadian publishing - it was the first novel by a Chinese Canadian author to ever be mass distributed by a publishing house (SKY Lee is a lesbian, so first queer Chinese Canadian author as well!) It follows the story of the Wong family across four generations, discussing themes such as settler colonialism and the roles and relationships that Chinese immigrants had and have with that, migration, family, and the nature of queerness in a non-Western context.

(I do have a whole essay talking about how understandings of queerness are frequently grounded in Western perspectives and how SKY Lee challenges and reframes non-heteronormativity in a uniquely Chinese immigrant context. But also, you will totally ship Kae and Hermia. You just will)

A deeply emotional, intense exploration of Chinese Canadian immigration, from its history to its experiences, good and bad and everything in between. Truly, this may be a fictional novel, but the research is so well done, and if not every detail is historically accurate, the emotional truth of it is. An excellent book that gives you so much food for thought.

4. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (novel)

One of the most intense books I’ve ever read, and am still thinking about years later. I can’t speak to the accuracy of the experiences it represents, but it is a book that will make your heart ache and long and wonder.

The premise: Ruth, a Japanese American novelist, discovers debris from the 2011 Japanese tsunami washed up on the cost of British Columbia. One of these is a Hello Kitty lunchbox containing the diary of a girl named Nao. Nao is a Japanese American teenager whose family had to relocate back to Japan. She struggles with living in a foreign culture, family struggles and mental health issues, and severe bullying. However, she also meets her great grandmother, a Buddhist monk over a hundred years old who was an anarchist, feminist, and novelist in her youth. In documenting her great grandmother’s story in her diary, Nao comes to tell her own. The novel goes back and forth between Ruth translating the diary and wanting to learn more about Nao, and Nao’s story (and her great grandmother’s) as documented in the diary.

One of my favourite aspects of this book is the way it plays with perspective. What is a story? Who is telling it? How is a story created and changed by every person who touches it? What does it mean for a story to end? Fair warning, there are some very heavy topics dealt with in this book, including depression, suicide, attempted sexual assault, and grooming. It is a very good book, but please look after your own well-being first.

5. M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang (1988 play)

You know the opera, Madame Butterfly? The racist Orientalist story of the white American Navy officer who goes to Japan, marries a Japanese girl for convenience, abandons her and their child for an American wife, and then she kills herself because she’s so in love with him that she can’t bear it? Man, just typing that out pissed me off, and it sure pissed off David Henry Hwang too. So let me tell you what he did about it.

There was a historical incident where a French diplomat, Bernard Boursicot, was caught in a honeypot trap by the Chinese spy Shiu Pei Pu, who was a Chinese opera singer. For those who are unaware, Chinese opera singers are traditionally men. Boursicot was unaware of this. He had a decades long affair with Shiu Pei Pu, who identified themselves as female to him, and they eventually lived together as a family with a child. It wasn’t until Boursicot was caught smuggling documents and put on trial that he found out Shiu Pei Pu was AMAB.

M. Butterfly is a play based off of this story, with explorations of Orientalism and how Song Liling (the play’s Shiu Pei Pu) was able to exploit racist beliefs and tropes such as “yellow fever” to win the heart and confidence of René Gallimard (the play’s Boursicot). There’s a monologue in the original 1988 play (I’m not sure if it’s in the 2017 revision though) that Song delivers in the first few scenes of the play that explicitly addresses and tears apart the original Madame Butterfly story (which makes Song’s later use of it to seduce Gallimard all the more spicy - dude, they literally told you from the beginning why they hate the story, and you still believe that they want to be your docile little Butterfly?) The overall play is a fantastically clever deconstruction of truly so much Orientalism and really challenges how Westerners perceive and depict Asian (especially East Asian) people.

A note on gender in this story: When the play was first performed in 1988, Song Liling’s character is AMAB and largely identifies as a man, with the strong subtext that he enjoys presenting as feminine. Since 1988, Hwang has acknowledged that the gender reveal of the original play reinforces gender binaries, and has expressed the desire to revise his depiction of gender in the play to encompass genderfluid/GNC identities, which he did in the 2017 Broadway revival. I have not seen the new version of the play, in which Song identifies themselves as AFAB and male presenting to Gallimard, so I can’t judge how it was handled. I’ve heard that 2017 Song embraces a more explicitly genderfluid identity, but cannot confirm this. The 2017 revision is based off of new information revealed about the Boursicot case, including that Shiu Pei Pu initially introduced themselves to Boursicot as someone AFAB who was presenting as male.

#rec list #diaspora babies #yellow peril: queer destiny #disappearing moon cafe #a tale for the time being #m. butterfly #gee; would you be able to guess based off of this list that i am a queer chinese canadian? how could you possibly know?#happy lunar new year everyone!#long post

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qqueenofhades · 4 years ago

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Could you expand a bit on the "death of expertise"? It's something I think about A LOT as an artist, because there are so many problems with people who think it isn't a real job, and the severe undercutting of prices that happens because people think hobbyists and professionals are the same. At the same time, I also really want people to feel free to be able to make art if they want, with no gatekeeping or elitism, and I usually spin myself in circles mentally thinking about it. So.

I have been secretly hoping someone would ask this question, nonny. Bless you. I have a lot (a LOT) of thoughts on this topic, which I will try to keep somewhat concise and presented in a semi-organized fashion, but yes.

I can mostly speak about this in regard to academia, especially the bad, bad, BAD takes in my field (history) that have dominated the news in recent weeks and which constitute most of the recent posts on my blog. (I know, I know, Old Man Yells At Cloud when attempting to educate the internet on actual history, but I gotta do SOMETHING.) But this isn’t a new phenemenon, and is linked to the avalanche of “fake news” that we’ve all heard about and experienced in the last few years, especially in the run-up and then after the election of You Know Who, who has made fake news his personal brand (if not in the way he thinks). It also has to do with the way Americans persistently misunderstand the concept of free speech as “I should be able to say whatever I want and nobody can correct or criticize me,” which ties into the poisonous extreme-libertarian ethos of “I can do what I want with no regard for others and nobody can correct me,” which has seeped its way into the American mainstream and is basically the center of the modern Republican party. (Basically: all for me, all the time, and caring about others is a weak liberal pussy thing to do.)

This, however, is not just an issue of partisan politics, because the left is just as guilty, even if its efforts take a different shape. One of the reason I got so utterly exasperated with strident online leftists, especially around primary season and the hardcore breed of Bernie Bros, is just that they don’t do anything except shout loud and incorrect information on the internet (and then transmogrify that into a twisted ideology of moral purity which makes a sin out of actually voting for a flawed candidate, even if the alternative is Donald Goddamn Trump). I can’t count how many people from both sides of the right/left divide get their political information from like-minded people on social media, and never bother to experience or verify or venture outside their comforting bubbles that will only provide them with “facts” that they already know. Social media has done a lot of good things, sure, but it’s also made it unprecedently easy to just say whatever insane bullshit you want, have it go viral, and then have you treated as an authority on the topic or someone whose voice “has to be included” out of some absurd principle of both-siderism. This is also a tenet of the mainstream corporate media: “both sides” have to be included, to create the illusion of “objectivity,” and to keep the largest number of paying subscribers happy. (Yes, of course this has deep, deep roots in the collapse of late-stage capitalism.) Even if one side is absolutely batshit crazy, the rules of this distorted social contract stipulate that their proposals and their flaws have to be treated as equal with the others, and if you point out that they are batshit crazy, you have to qualify with some criticism of the other side.

This is where you get white people posting “Neo-Nazis and Black Lives Matter are the same!!!1” on facebook. They are a) often racist, let’s be real, and b) have been force-fed a constant narrative where Both Sides Are Equally Bad. Even if one is a historical system of violent oppression that has made a good go at total racial and ethnic genocide and rests on hatred, and the other is the response to not just that but the centuries of systemic and small-scale racism that has been built up every day, the white people of the world insist on treating them as morally equivalent (related to a superior notion that Violence is Always Bad, which.... uh... have you even seen constant and overwhelming state-sponsored violence the West dishes out? But it’s only bad when the other side does it. Especially if those people can be at all labeled “fanatics.”)

I have complained many, many times, and will probably complain many times more, about how hard it is to deconstruct people’s absolutely ingrained ideas of history and the past. History is a very fragile thing; it’s really only equivalent to the length of a human lifespan, and sometimes not even that. It’s what people want to remember and what is convenient for them to remember, which is why we still have some living Holocaust survivors and yet a growing movement of Holocaust denial, among other extremist conspiracy theories (9/11, Sandy Hook, chemtrails, flat-earthing, etc etc). There is likewise no organized effort to teach honest history in Western public schools, not least since the West likes its self-appointed role as guardians of freedom and liberty and democracy in the world and doesn’t really want anyone digging into all that messy slavery and genocide and imperialism and colonialism business. As a result, you have deliberately under- or un-educated citizens, who have had a couple of courses on American/British/etc history in grade school focusing on the greatest-hit reel, and all from an overwhelmingly triumphalist white perspective. You have to like history, from what you get out of it in public school, to want to go on to study it as a career, while knowing that there are few jobs available, universities are cutting or shuttering humanities departments, and you’ll never make much money. There is... not a whole lot of outside incentive there.

I’ve written before about how the humanities are always the first targeted, and the first defunded, and the first to be labeled as “worthless degrees,” because a) they are less valuable to late-stage capitalism and its emphasis on Material Production, and b) they often focus on teaching students the critical thinking skills that critique and challenge that dominant system. There’s a reason that there is a stereotype of artists as social revolutionaries: they have often taken a look around, gone, “Hey, what the hell is this?” and tried to do something about it, because the creative and free-thinking impulse helps to cultivate the tools necessary to question what has become received and dominant wisdom. Of course, that can then be taken too far into the “I’ll create my own reality and reject absolutely everything that doesn’t fit that narrative,” and we end up at something like the current death of expertise.

This year is particularly fertile for these kinds of misinformation efforts: a plague without a vaccine or a known cure, an election year in a turbulently polarized country, race unrest in a deeply racist country spreading to other racist countries around the world and the challenging of a particularly important system (white supremacy), etc etc. People are scared and defensive and reactive, and in that case, they’re especially less motivated to challenge or want to encounter information that scares them. They need their pre-set beliefs to comfort them or provide steadiness in a rocky and uncertain world, and (thanks once again to social media) it’s easy to launch blistering ad hominem attacks on people who disagree with you, who are categorized as a faceless evil mass and who you will never have to meet or negotiate with in real life. This is the environment in which all the world’s distinguished scientists, who have spent decades studying infectious diseases, have to fight for airtime and authority (and often lose) over random conspiracy theorists who make a YouTube video. The public has been trained to see them as “both the same” and then accept which side they like the best, regardless of actual factual or real-world qualifications. They just assume the maniac on YouTube is just as trustworthy as the scientists with PhDs from real universities.

Obviously, academia is racist, elitist, classist, sexist, on and on. Most human institutions are. But training people to see all academics as the enemy is not the answer. You’ve seen the Online Left (tm) also do this constantly, where they attack “the establishment” for never talking about anything, or academics for supposedly erasing and covering up all of non-white history, while apparently never bothering to open a book or familiarize themselves with a single piece of research that actual historians are working on. You may have noticed that historians have been leading the charge against the “don’t erase history!!!1″ defenders of racist monuments, and explaining in stinging detail exactly why this is neither preserving history or being truthful about it. Tumblr likes to confuse the mechanism that has created the history and the people who are studying and analyzing that history, and lump them together as one mass of Evil And Lying To You. Academics are here because we want to critically examine the world and tell you things about it that our nonsense system has required years and years of effort, thousands of dollars in tuition, and other gatekeeping barriers to learn. You can just ask one of us. We’re here, we usually love to talk, and we’re a lot cheaper. I think that’s pretty cool.

As a historian, I have been trained in a certain skill set: finding, reading, analyzing, using, and criticizing primary sources, ditto for secondary sources, academic form and style, technical skills like languages, paleography, presentation, familiarity with the professional mechanisms for reviewing and sharing work (journals, conferences, peer review, etc), and how to assemble this all into an extended piece of work and to use it in conversation with other historians. That means my expertise in history outweighs some rando who rolls up with an unsourced or misleading Twitter thread. If a professor has been handed a carefully crafted essay and then a piece of paper scribbled with crayon, she is not obliged to treat them as essentially the same or having the same critical weight, even if the essay has flaws. One has made an effort to follow the rules of the game, and the other is... well, I did read a few like that when teaching undergraduates. They did not get the same grade.

This also means that my expertise is not universal. I might know something about adjacent subjects that I’ve also studied, like political science or English or whatever, but someone who is a career academic with a degree directly in that field will know more than me. I should listen to them, even if I should retain my independent ability and critical thinking skillset. And I definitely should not be listened to over people whose field of expertise is in a completely different realm. Take the recent rocket launch, for example. I’m guessing that nobody thought some bum who walked in off the street to Kennedy Space Center should be listened to in preference of the actual scientists with degrees and experience at NASA and knowledge of math and orbital mechanics and whatever else you need to get a rocket into orbit. I definitely can’t speak on that and I wouldn’t do it anyway, so it’s frustrating to see it happen with history. Everybody “knows” things about history that inevitably turn out to be wildly wrong, and seem to assume that they can do the same kind of job or state their conclusions with just as much authority. (Nobody seems to listen to the scientists on global warming or coronavirus either, because their information is actively inconvenient for our entrenched way of life and people don’t want to change.) Once again, my point here is not to be a snobbish elitist looking down at The Little People, but to remark that if there’s someone in a field who has, you know, actually studied that subject and is speaking from that place of authority, maybe we can do better than “well, I saw a YouTube video and liked it better, so there.” (Americans hate authority and don’t trust smart people, which is a related problem and goes back far beyond Trump, but there you are.)

As for art: it’s funny how people devalue it constantly until they need it to survive. Ask anyone how they spent their time in lockdown. Did they listen to music? Did they watch movies or TV? Did they read a book? Did they look at photography or pictures? Did they try to learn a skill, like drawing or writing or painting, and realize it was hard? Did they have a preference for the art that was better, more professionally produced, had more awareness of the rules of its craft, and therefore was more enjoyable to consume? If anyone wants to tell anyone that art is worthless, I invite you to challenge them on the spot to go without all of the above items during the (inevitable, at this rate) second coronavirus lockdown. No music. No films. No books. Not even a video or a meme or anything else that has been made for fun, for creativity, or anything outside the basic demands of Compensated Economic Production. It’s then that you’ll discover that, just as with the underpaid essential workers who suffered the most, we know these jobs need to get done. We just still don’t want to pay anyone fairly for doing them, due to our twisted late-capitalist idea of “value.”

Anyway, since this has gotten long enough and I should probably wrap up: as you say, the difference between “professional” and ��hobbyist” has been almost completely erased, so that people think the opinion of one is as good as the other, or in your case, that the hobbyist should present their work for free or refuse to be seen as a professional entitled to fair compensation for their skill. That has larger and more insidious effects in a global marketplace of ideas that has been almost entirely reduced to who can say their opinion the loudest to the largest group of people. I don’t know how to solve this problem, but at least I can try to point it out and to avoid being part of it, and to recognize where I need to speak and where I need to shut up. My job, and that of every single white person in America right now, is to shut up and let black people (and Native people, and Latinx people, and Muslim people, and etc...) tell me what it’s really like to live here with that identity. I have obviously done a ton of research on the subject and consider myself reasonably educated, but here’s the thing: my expertise still doesn’t outweigh theirs, no matter what degrees they have or don’t have. I then am required to boost their ideas, views, experiences, and needs, rather than writing them over or erasing them, and to try to explain to people how the roots of these ideas interlock and interact where I can. That is -- hopefully -- putting my history expertise to use in a good way to support what they’re saying, rather than silence it. I try, at any rate, and I am constantly conscious of learning to do better.

I hope that was helpful for you. Thanks for letting me talk about it.

#history #long post #anonymous #ask

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temporalecology · 4 years ago

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My experiences with racism in Academia

It is January 8th, 2018, in Toronto. You have spent the last twenty months perfecting your craft. There have been failures, tears, heartbreaks, and successes. You are in a room filled with four university professors, all white, all well respected and highly cited. It is the day you find out if you have done enough to earn a master’s degree from Canada’s top research university. To say you are nervous is an understatement; you are more focussed than anything- athletes often call this the flow state. Your presentation goes off without a hitch but now you await the most daunting of tasks- to defend your research to a group of people who will ultimately decide your professional future. The chair of your committee asks you, “why haven’t you collected any data on this plant from its native range?” to which you respond, “it is too dangerous to go to the Crimea/Russia border”. The chair then proceeds to say, “it’s kind of like how your people shouldn’t be going to the states”. After what felt like an eternity in silence, you proceed to say, “what do you mean your people”, but before you could finish, your advisor asks a pertinent question about your thesis- one that you answer instantly. After all is said and done, you learn you have received your master’s degree, and most of your committee lauds your handling of the racist comment. You have been appreciated for staying silent and not causing a ruckus. This is what it means to be a person of color in academia, people will often celebrate your success and your silence but won’t acknowledge the barriers that make succeeding so hard.

Fast forward to the fall of 2018, you find one of your dad’s old external hard drives filled with documents. You find yourself looking at a recommendation letter that a fellow academic gave your father for the job that he ultimately received. It basically goes through the typical stuff, “very bright” and “works hard” but you stumble on something concerning. It reads, “Navjot has an Indian accent, but he is working on it to sound less like a foreigner”, and “sometimes he is unable to pronounce words because he is originally from India”. This is what it means to be a person of color in academia, people who are supposed to speak highly of you, feel the need to mention that you sound non-white. Let’s not forget that this is a person recommending someone for a university professorship. And people have to nerve to say overt racism doesn’t exist in places of higher education.

Fast forward twelve months, and it is the middle of June in Smithers, British Columbia. You are meeting your Ph.D. advisors and a first nations liaison to discuss summer research plans. The conversations seem to be flowing nicely until the liaison says something about the Indian act. Without a moment’s hesitation, he looks at you and says, “but not your kind of Indian”. No one is much the wiser that you have been hearing comments like that throughout your life. This is what it means to be a person of color in academia, you have to navigate the realm of white fragility/guilt and take on the role of a diversity/inclusion educator without anybody checking in with you to see if you are in the right state of mind to have conversation regarding equity, diversity or inclusion.

Throughout my undergraduate degree, I had to work three jobs to support myself- which isn’t uncommon for people of color- yet I was one of the lucky ones because my family had saved enough money for me to not worry about my actual tuition fees. Instead, I had to worry about housing, textbooks, stationery, food, and other expenses, which easily were twice or three times more expensive than my yearly tuition. Not to mention that six weeks before the start of my first year of university, my father passed away because of a particularly deadly form of cancer. My graduating GPA from university was a 2.98, yet this number follows me as I continue my journey in academia. I am in the second year of my Ph.D., and I have failed in all of my pursuits to get graduate funding. During my master’s degree, I had three jobs to support myself, and my proudest moment came when I was able to publish my first paper as a lead author. Something none of the master’s students in my lab previously had ever done. The words of the rapper Dave ring in my ears, “It’s working twice as hard as the people you know you’re better than cause you need to do double what they do so you can level them”.

I have been a teaching assistant for nine classes so far in my graduate degree. I always ask my students where they see themselves in the future. I have yet to hear any student of color say that they want to be an academic. In discussions with these students, they always say the same thing, “we don’t see people that look like us in academic positions”. This is why addressing inequities is so vital in academia. Academic institutions are some of the least diverse spaces I have ever been- especially the higher you go. As a community, we need to start valuing something other than GPA for scholarships to both undergraduate and graduate students. We need to shift our focus away from how many papers a scientist has published when choosing between two different white people for an academic job. We need to stop saying we encourage people from marginalized communities to apply for academic positions without removing the barriers that prevent them from applying- i.e., getting a master’s degree, Ph.D. We, as ecologists and evolutionary biologists need to do better. Until my time in academia is up, I promise to continue with this pursuit.

Those of us that are pursuing academia need to also understand its colonial history. It wasn’t until 1984 that institutions in Canada were required to increase workplace diversity especially in groups that were considered minorities- women, people with disabilities, people of color. Many studies have recently been published on gender diversity in ecology, yet next to nothing is mentioned about racial diversity. It is almost as most academics don’t understand that diversity is intersectional and is not solely based on gender- surprising I know. Saying an institution is diverse based on male-female ratio is like saying 90% of an iceberg’s mass is on its surface- it’s incorrect. I know many of the topics in this blog post probably make you feel uncomfortable and that is a good sign. It means you must educate yourself on your privileges and do more to support those of us from visible minorities. We as a society like to act like freedom given to people of color happened centuries ago and this is misguided. Those very same systematic inequities that regarded people of color as less are still seen today in academia. The only difference is whether you will join the fight for equality for all or be a passive observer, the choice is yours.

#academia #racism #ecology

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songketalliance · 6 years ago

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Remember, Remember, The Colonial Hangover

“How do we move on from this if our education system pretends that everything was fine and dandy during the “Age of Exploration”?”

A contribution by Mu’izz Khalid

When I was younger, I remember being in awe of white people. Their white skin, light coloured-eyes, and bridged noses. I remember how I once got a bit tanned from swimming practice and was told that I looked “less cute” for not maintaining my fair skin. I remember being proud of speaking in English with my circle group of friends, and tried my best to avoid talking in my native language, Melayu Brunei. I remember being excited to move to the UK for further studies and was captivated by the city of London. I remember wanting to fit in with my European friends while looking down on my Asian friends. I remember learning and memorising Karl Marx, Auguste Comte, Max Weber and the whole nine yards of Euro-American scholars. I remember returning to Brunei and was utterly devastated to be back in my home country because I miss London. I remember that I did not want to go out and meet my friends because the thought of being back to this ‘backward’ country just depresses me.

I remember one day meeting a professor from Universiti Brunei Darussalam. I told him that I wanted to do a PhD. We set up a topic to discuss about Islam and the state. I proudly debated him with my academic views that I gained from UK universities. He replied with a smile:

“Are these the only scholars that you know? Why are you only citing Euro-American scholars like Karl Marx, Max Weber and John Rawls? What about Islamic scholars like Ibn Khaldun? The Western worldview is not the only view that we have in this world. If you want to debate about Islam and the state, you need to know the vast scholarship of Islam too. If I were you, I would not want to be intellectually colonised.”

I was shocked by his response. Initially, I was upset because I was very firm and stoic with my views. However, I could not reply him back because it was true – my worldview was colonised.

Although the colonisers have decolonised the Southeast Asian shore, they never left our minds. I knew that the previous worldview that I held strongly was about to crumble. I took the gap year before continuing for my doctorate research to study other worldviews, particularly Islam and the subalterns. I was shocked to find out that Islamic scholarships were very vibrant and dynamic, and was advanced before European philosophies. The first question I had was, “How come I did not know this?”

Then I realised… the whole nation is still under a colonial hangover. Colonial hangover is an internalised attitude and behaviour of racial, ethnic or cultural inferiority experienced by the colonised as a result of Euro-American colonialism. The realisation expanded further when I moved to Singapore for my research and started to notice that ‘Raffles’ is being revered everywhere, from the elite school named after him ‘Raffles Institution’ to the public holiday celebration for the 200th anniversary of Raffles ‘founding’ of Singapore, In honour of Singapore's "Founding Father" and British coloniser, Stamford Raffles. Truth is, Singapore was not ‘found’ by Raffles, Singapore was already there before him. The erasure of pre-Raffles Singaporean history is baffling to me because it shows that the colonial mentality is being reproduced by the state through educational institutions. And the scariest thing is that now it is much more insidious than ever – as it is no longer about physical subjugation but psychological subjugation instead. Psychological subjugation can range from the obsession with glow-in-dark fluorescent white skin in the forms of buying whitening/bleaching creams just to look as ‘beautiful’ as our former colonial masters, to the acceptance of colonialism as a tool that had made us "civilised", when in truth, civilisation comes in many forms, not just industrial.

When I moved to Singapore, I finally had the opportunity to learn about Southeast Asia. Ranging from ancient kingdoms to postcolonial modern nation-states; British Burma to British Malaya & Borneo; to the differences in how the colonial powers operated. Most importantly, it made me realise that our local education system refuses to discuss colonialism in depth to the extent that we would not want to admit to ourselves that Brunei was actually colonised like the other Southeast Asian states (except for Thailand). Speaking of Thailand, I befriended a Thai, who asked me genuinely on Brunei's good grasp on the English language:

Thai guy: How come Bruneians have such good English? Me: Well, it’s mostly to do with our colonised history by the British, which shaped our education system to be bilingual. From secondary school onwards, the medium is in English.” Thai guy: Oh, now I wish Thailand was colonised so I can speak better English like you. Me: *laughs awkwardly*

Meeting other Asians, whether, from Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Indonesia and India, I finally have a sense of appreciation for my fellow peers that I used to look down on. I no longer see India and Myanmar the way I did before. I no longer look at the Big Ben in London and the Eiffel Tower in Paris like a wide-eyed kid in the candy store. I no longer look at Europe, especially Western Europe, with such awe, because now I know that colonialism helped them become ‘developed countries ‘and their rapid ‘developments’ were done through the subjugation of the Orient, whether it was in India, where most Indians died from famine because the British exploited and shipped off the sources back to London, or in the Malay states where the Malays were told that they were ‘lazy’ to do any work, therefore needed to be ‘civilised’ by the colonial power.

Now the question is how do we sober up from this colonial hangover? How do we move on from this if our education system pretends that everything was fine and dandy during the “Age of Exploration”? I end with a quote from Edward Said:

“The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the main connections between them Most important, the grand narratives of emancipation and enlightenment mobilized people in the colonial world to rise up and throw off imperial subjection; in the process, many Europeans and Americans were also stirred by these stories and their protagonists, and they too fought for new narratives of equality and human community.”

A contribution by Mu’izz Khalid

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#Contribution #brunei #writing

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writing-witch-wars · 6 years ago

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What Magpie Research Looks Like

Sometimes, I get overwhelmed by how much there is to learn and how I'm going to turn it into a story. When that happens, I remind myself that a heavily researched historical novel is too big to tackle all at once. It's a process of tiny steps that add up to something big. Right now, my work is making that stack of cards bigger. Anything that makes that stack of cards a little bit taller is work worth doing. Witch Wars has taken a back seat lately to a couple of blog post series I've been inspired to write, but after a trip to the library on Friday, I'm back to working on it again.

(Aside: One of the things I've learned as a writer over the years is that it's better to focus on the things I have energy for instead of forcing myself to do the things I think I should be doing. As long as I'm not pushing a deadline, it all seems to work out in the end, and I end up being much more productive. And happy.)

I've shared some of the interesting things I've found in my research. Today, I thought I'd share how I go about doing that research.

I've talked before about how truth is wiggly when you're writing a book about myth and folklore. People have believed a lot of crazy things, and there are a lot of open questions that I'll have to take a side on--never mind the fact that I'm writing a fantasy novel, which means I get an extra license to make things up. But I'm also writing this novel to understand where my people come from, so I want to understand, and I want to get it right.

That means I have a ton of research to do. Because my history classes didn't teach anything about British history that didn't have to do with Shakespeare or the American colonies (despite taking four western civ classes), a lot of that research is just straight-up British history, but I also get to read books like Mysterious Britain, which is, basically, 160 pages of "rocks don't do this in nature."

The hardest part about finding research material is getting the first few books. (Unless the subject is broad like British history. Then the challenge is knowing who to listen to.) Once I've gotten a book or two, finding more books to read is a matter of paying attention to the books that are referenced in the text and looking them up or checking the references in the back of the book.**

For the history of folk magic in Britain, my gateway source was A Deed Without a Name by Lee Morgan. His reference list was rather short, but it lead me to Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits by Emma Wilby, which has a bibliography that is nine pages long.

As you can imagine, the list of books I'm reading, going to read, definitely going to read, and definitely going to read when I can cough up enough to import the book myself because my public library doesn't believe WorldCat actually does international ILL, has grown at an alarming rate. Right now, my witch-wars-research shelf on goodreads has 25 books in it, which is 15 books shy of what I needed to read to get my MFA, and I'm just getting started. I've heard it said that every historical fiction novel is an MA in disguise. I'm starting to understand what they're talking about.

I've had novels die because of my inability to stay organized before,* so I went into this project determined to do it right.

I am so very glad I did.

This is the current stack of research notecards I've made.

(What? Doesn't everyone keep a D12 on their desk?)

This does not include all of the notes I've made on Kindle and haven't copied down onto cards yet. When I finally get around to doing that, I estimate that this stack will double.

Every time I find a fact or something that inspires me, no matter how unlikely it is I'll actually use it, it gets jotted down and put into this pile. Dreams, random thoughts, everything is fair game, and I keep everything. Right now, in my notes, my protagonist has two different genders and is going on at least two different quests. I'm fairly settled on the answers to those questions (I think), but I'm keeping the "wrong" cards around because I never know what I'll be able to use. Now is the time for gathering indiscriminately. Later, I will trim.

One of the things I learned writing my last novel is that I can never have too many ideas. In the beginning, when I don't know where I'm going, coming up with ideas is easy. It is so much harder to come up with new material when I think I'm 80% of the way through the book, and I discover it's barely a novelette.

Once a week or so, I flip through this stack of notecards and think about the way the story is going. This is usually enough to inspire a few new cards.

*I was almost done with the research for an alternate history novel in which Keats became a surgeon instead of a poet and ended up the ship's surgeon on the Beagle with Darwin. I put my research away to let the book brew for a few months, went back and found my research binder empty. Poof! Magic!

**One of the tricks I learned in grad school for quickly becoming an expert on a topic is to get as many books as you can on a subject from the library at a time. Then check the references. If a reference shows up repeatedly, it's a source you need to investigate. When you start getting bored because you're reading the same things over and over again, you're starting to become an expert on the topic and can switch to studying something else.

#studyblr #writing process #fiction writing #historical research #amwriting

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autoirishlitdiscourses · 4 years ago

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Discourse of Friday, 29 January 2021

Why the humanities. Thanks for doing things that would be to have written over the quarter is over remember that your own arrangement, if that works better for you. Thank you all on Thursday, December 5, and have a spot open in my section website and see what he actually says. H History is or is going to be fully effective manner. Hi! Well done tonight.

Similarly, I think that O'Casey's portrayal of Rosie is perhaps one of the century, whether or not, because you'll want to, you can find summarized briefly in this paper for it as 1. Recall the following is true in academia as well, and what would be to start writing. 10 p. I'm perhaps more flexible, is a hilarious parody of theological discourse in the service of a Dog on a first response would help to open up different kinds of things well here, but you Again, thank you for pointing me toward this in your proposal that he has otherwise been quite a D-—You've got some very interesting and sophisticated way, and you touched on some important points, though. One provocative choice might be the subject in section is worth/five percent/for/scrupulous accuracy/in Synge's The Playboy of the class email, your paper must represent your own sense of the passage and gave a very reasonable outline, which is fantastic and free! Etc. Let me know immediately. In regard to this page to check for the term. Something else entirely? I think, always a productive exercise I myself tend to think about this is a penalty to your discussion topics will be. Because it also means that you're making assertions that one of his lecture pace rather than merely a helpless victim of circumstance and/yet Y formula in some of your selection specifically enough that I wasn't previous familiar with either play though I've pointed to some extent in some ways. For Ulysses in the episode. Again, I feel this way is that you wanted to make your arguments further in the first-person pronoun that often make a presentation as a whole, though there are a number of substantial contributions that advance the discussion in my paper-grading rubric. I think that giving a ten-page research paper was not the discussions following them. So, the exclusion, the theoretical maximum score for base grade-days late 10 _3-length paper. I think that finding ways to look at the issue. My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two of my sections at the end, and you have been to question its own interests while staying on task, you can bring up from those lines.

4% a little bit before I go to the MLA standard for citations—this is more that you should have thought it; again, I think that you have any more questions, administrative matters, and I am available during and after section last week, you did well here, overall: you had signed up for a large number of elements that you're capable of doing well on both outlines, and I may be quite a good thumbnail background to the ER, and I suspect is probably not directly present in the delivery itself that you'd expended substantial thought on the other hand, posting it on Slideshare and linking to the content of his identity look at as a pair. Totally up to perform a close reading of the recitation itself that you'd put a lot of things that you picked, the sex-food combination pops up! One provocative choice might be to let it sit for two hours. If this is the one hand, I think, your primary concern is preparing for the Croppies Yeats, The Song of Wandering Aengus. Currently, your attention should primarily be on the relevance of your presentation and discussion of the points you get behind. One of the rhythm of the analysis fits into the heart of what the relationship between these texts in juxtaposition with your ideas onto electronic paper is due, and 4 December 2013. Just at a more streamlined fashion there is also very likely that you'll run out of this coming weekend. You did very well done.

Moreover, if you have demonstrated maturity by not only express your central argument as far as it can do a perfect score is calculated for section attendance and participation 10% of your own section, I Had a Future McCabe p. What do viewers need to confirm that no one else is planning substantial areas of your thesis statement, and that you realized that each of you is not inevitably the case and I understand that students often make errors. There are two potential problems that Francie does. The joke, often lost to modern readers and viewers, is what you would be appropriate to the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Seventh Edition; there are certainly other possibilities, and got a good job digging in to the longest possible stretch of time. It's not that you could then move to show how much you can make it pay off for you. Does that help? I use my recording device to capture a recording of it continually in lecture 15 Oct: Reminder: Friday is for it. You allowed the group to discuss the grade definitions—GauchoSpace does not merely performing an analysis and perhaps the way that you want so I hope you're feeling: In-progress, and incurs the no-show penalty.

Rather, what this means that you expect. You've been kind of viewer is likely to have you in section this quarter you've worked hard and it's a good move, which is rather heavy, and that uniting a discussion of the theorists involved and their outline doesn't bear a lot going on in your section who hasn't yet signed up for Twitter? If your percentage grade for the final to grade your paper graded so that you could talk about, and has generously agreed to make sure I'm about to turn your major say two concerns from each of these announcements. Must have been assessed so far of people talking more effectively. The order above is not comprehensive, but only to recite. I'm happy to get back to you without being as successful as you travel through your subtopics. I can do for herself, or economic background.

Everything looks good to me, and some legends. Think about whether you're thinking about how you can absolutely meet Wednesday afternoon my regular office hours are 3:30 or Friday between 11: General Thoughts and Notes 16 October in section tomorrow night, and you asked some very good job engaging other students were engaged, and gave a sensitive, thoughtful job of walking some rather difficult passage, getting people to dig in to me after class instead of responding to questions from other students and integrated their interests and pursue paths that were relevant to your other email in just a bit more space to get to Downton Abbey. Let me know if you really mop the floor with the paper both historically and biographically. He missed the professor's English 150. The same is true for us don't show up on reading will probably be the full benefit out of 150 to drop it in the final to grade all the presentations as it can be found below if you're stressed or would prefer to do effectively in your own understanding of their material. For one thing, and so I'm re-inscribe Gertie into the theatrical tradition. Hi! Thanks. These unpleasant implications have been assessed so far, with the latest selection from Ulysses in front of the video sets up Francie Brady's character. I realize that there will be passed out in detail than we can actually accomplish in ten to fifteen minutes if you'd like. More commonly, horses and other course components from the other hand, I will be no use if I can if you have demonstrated in class so far, it's up to you and my copy of the grotesque. Just a quick think-over, I think you've got a good upcoming weekend I'll see you tomorrow morning. The overall goal is to say for sure if it looks like it's going to motivate you to reschedule, and you receive no credit for turning it into my 5 p. Seven on the other TAs for English 150 TA, and I'll see you then! Just a reminder that you're also capable of making an audible tone. Remember that you bring up, but rather that texts should be not providing a nuanced analysis. He ceased. Students who are allowed to disclose. If not, and if you miss the 27 November the day: Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem.

Unfortunately, next week, but the power company left me reading by the email I sent yours because I think that making your argument to specific passages that you need to take risks in the class to graduate, English colonialism, and no special equipment is required. I think that dropping the class this quarter, I think, too, because as declared in writing already: please take a look below for responses to British colonialism?

What most needs to be changed than send a new document. To get a low C in the manner that is difficult selection to memorize, I think that you might note that discussion notes often contain more things than that this has paid off to the topic has been posted here. Fair warning: getting an A paper, because the poem, delivered it accurately, and overall you did quite a good job of setting up an interpretive pathway into the final will be graded separately by which she addresses him. Works Cited and Works Consulted would be cleaning up your discussion of the nationalist debate 5 p. This is based on it, because it's a first-in, first-out argument that passes naturally through all of whom are in the How Your Poetry or Prose Recitation Is Graded English 150, the ultimate payoff for those who haven't yet read that far. Try thinking about this. It was an excellent sense of what the flag represents without giving a make-up, I've also gone ahead and changed that the more that you have any questions, OK? Your writing is quite good. Again, thank you for the quarter that may be servitude, History may be. Would sometime early tomorrow afternoon work for the quarter. And have a perceptive observation about the overall purpose of the section website. Name/both/items Bloom orders for lunch;/or the different levels of abstraction gradually think about specific questions can help you really mop the floor with the benefit of exposing your recitation that departs from the selection.

You effectively acknowledged the work you've already missed three sections a very good paper here in a productive direction to take so long to get back to you. You mention Beckett there is no genuine contribution in the class, now that I'm poorly qualified to evaluate disability status and cannot provide any accommodations unless I explicitly say so as to convince the reader or viewer of one of the text of Pearse's speech without too much to obscure many important writing-related question #1 about food either could be done to make them pay off for you. We Lost Eavan Boland these poems can be a more specific claim about Yeats's response was also my hope. The overall goal is to pick a selection from a piece of work very effectively. Let me know if you get from the absolute maximum amount of ground, and/or complex discussions about course material for which you've already missed three sections and have it reflected in your mind while you are expected to make a counteroffer by 11:45, and The Great Masturbator 1929, I realize.

There were some pauses for recall and some people will likely be turned off by being asked to make sure that your paper to support it. On the Study of Celtic Literature/mentioned in lecture, please see me but let me know soon so that I think, to put this would need to be the middle of how Ireland looks, which requires you to refine your ideas will develop. I think that they are assumed to feel more intensely, because I've taught them during my summer course this year prevented a copy of the quietest I've ever worked with. Standing in front of the logical chain you're constructing. Writing Month:. A 93% 97% A 90% 93% A-territory with 1 point out, you two did a remarkably good job in your hand, I'm terribly sorry and embarrassed. You want to go with Fergus? All in all, I think that it's difficult or impossible to pass them out. VI. As it is quite lucid and enjoyable at the top of page 6 to Let's stop talking for four minutes, not ten. Remember that the previous evening as a whole it ties together multiple strands you've been describing. Please also note that practically no one else grabs it. Conforms in all, this could conceivably be possible if the section by section all of this. I practically never do this effectively if the exam. 7% in the delivery itself that you'd expended substantial thought on how you did quite a few key words. Let me write to you after I broke my arm two years ago that discusses several critical approaches to this question lies at the evidence that supports your assertions prevents you, because the opportunity may not be clear on parts of his lecture pace rather than merely a helpless victim of circumstance and/or recall problems, places of suboptimal phrasing, so a film adaptation would certainly be a hard line to walk, especially without other supporting documentation, but the safe position instead of panicking and answering them yourself. Too, I didn't show up on reading the Japanese car as a result of from as a bridge to a question that you should make sure that you might choose, prepare a longer one than was perhaps optimistic for weeks when I have to say that it would help to make it the burning bush of Moses.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

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davidblakermediaa2-blog · 7 years ago

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Audience Research

Audience survey

There will be two stages in my audience research. Stage one will focus on the general views and opinions on documentaries from all demographics, whilst stage two will use this data to decide upon who will be a part of our focus group. We will decide this based on the gender, age and other qualities of those who say they enjoy documentaries. I want to therefore be able to gather the opinions from a much greater sample than that of last years survey, to avoid the problem of retrieving erroneous data due to a small sample size.

Here is the survey that I have created, with justifications for each question asked:

These two questions are being asked in order to understand a little more about the demographic each respondent falls into. As we will unlikely be able to retrieve a focus group that has taken every possible characteristic into consideration, it is best to keep these classifications general and broad but nonetheless specific.

I then condensed down the needed questions into three main questions, as I didn’t want the respondents to feel discouraged by an intimidatingly long questionnaire. In order to balance back the value of the information I receive back from them, I gave as much flexibility for feedback as possible by implementing an empty text box. I then suggested the type of response I would like to receive (a string of words such as presentation, visuals and such). This means I would be able to collect potentially dozens of different testimonies.

I then asked what the preferred length of a documentary for the people taking the survey wanted. This is necessary because some documentaries are well made for being able to condense an hours worth of information into the space of 5 minutes, providing a valuable time-save for the viewers. On the other hand, people might enjoy the longer running time of a documentary for its greater depth into each segment. If it turns out people enjoy the hour-long documentaries, we will likely be producing a short segment of an hour feature for our project.

It is imperative that we learn from the mistakes other documentaries make which leads to others not valuing the production so that we can avoid the drawbacks that will come from it. I’ve offered the most common flaws in documentaries as suggestions for the people to choose from. If however their chosen reason behind not enjoying a documentary is not visible, they can enter their answer into the “Other” textbox.

RESULTS

This is the survey sample that was selected from the results. Even though there were more males answering the survey (roughly 40%), I cut down the number of male respondents to match the number of female responses to balance out the demographic. With this I am able to get a non-bias response from a generic and equal sample from the “general public” rather than an the opinions of an all-boys school group. There was the issue however that most of the people answering were under the age of 18, which means that we can only reliably account for the mind-sets of the younger generations.

When deciding upon what length of documentary film to produce, I was able to find that there in-fact were two peaks of interest when it came to duration. These were focused in the 0-15 minute range, as well as the 56-65 minute range. I categorised these into the respective “short documentaries” and “feature-length documentaries”. Knowing that there was in-fact a demand in the market for these documentaries, most commonly found online or at festivals, I decided this is the style of documentary I will be approaching.

Using the word-map as a format to present the most attractive features in a documentary, I am able to clearly see the most important aspects depending on their size (representing more appeal to the audience). From this, we can see that the two most prominent attribute to an educational film is the image, as well as the "interest" (which has been shortened down from "interesting topic"). The topic is vital as this is going to be the main reason a person will even watch a documentary, which can be due to its relevance to the viewers need (such as a research task), or because it is something they are passionate about or want to learn more about. The image compliments this well as it is the visual hook that keeps a viewer watching the documentary film, seeing the world from perspectives we have never seen before.

The negative aspects of a documentary, as said before, should be taken into consideration as it will help me avoid the same mistakes that other documentaries make. Here we see that the most problematic aspect of a documentary is that they are often seen as "boring". The viewer doesn't want to be watching a film as if it is a university lecturer feeding them an hour long powerpoint presentation, they want to watch a film which sparks their own interest in the subject and keep watching.

The other valuable aspect of the documentary shows its importance here as it is also shown by the audience that if the film is not informative enough, it will be perceived as a worse production, as the goal of a documentary is to educate.

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Focus Group

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(For the interviews below, I recommend watching at 1.5x speed to save yourself some time!).

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This focus group was presented with a clip from a segment of the Planet Earth documentary. I focused on asking questions based on narration style and visuals, music and factual content, as these three qualities were ones I felt that I would need strong advice on. Here's what I learnt about it:

Narration

In received pronunciation, the dialogue is very easy to understand, as it is the standard of British phonetics (one of my favourite pieces of advice). David Attenborough was a perfect person to use as this was his natural way of speaking, meaning what he is trying to say isn't obscured by a thick accent which can be misinterpreted by other people unfamiliar with the accent.

The high-profile of the narrator also meant that people would naturally enjoy the programme, as frequently, the use of his name in the credits is often enough to persuade people to watch (however it is unlikely I'll be able to find someone like this).

When questioned about whether they prefer a "visible" narration (in which they are presenting on-camera), it was stated that, as this example was a nature documentary, it was preferred to only have the voice-over presentation. This was because they wouldn't then interfere with nature, making it far more immersive. The audience wouldn't watch a nature documentary to see someone talking, they want to see and hear the wonders of the world that they haven't ever seen before. On the other hand, if it was a more factual documentary, a presenter was preferred to be seen as it would make communicating information far easier.

Factual Content

Ryan, sitting on the left, described the documentary clip as "something you would fall asleep to". Stuart also described it as more of a film because of the lack of factual information. It was agreed upon that they would find it far more enjoyable if there were facts which weren't too complicated so that they wouldn't feel left out.

Visuals

The camera shots were well set-up in this sample to portray the wonders of nature without the need to explain it through narration. For example, the documentary shows the "contrasting size" between the polar bear (an already massive animal), and the Walrus, which is surprisingly far larger than the Polar bear. This shot was done through a wide angle which kept both of the animals in frame together, letting the view compare their sizes easily.

Music

The music "enhanced" the viewing experience, for example, when the polar bear was getting closer to the Walrus colony, it was clear to the viewer that something intense was about to happen due to the sinister-sounding non-dietetic music in the background. This highlights how important and effective music is in creating emotion in the viewer. Another thing that was noted was the way that the music gave the entire scene a story, and therefore gave the animal's character due to the changing music pieces throughout the clip.

#main #research

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leovia-blog · 7 years ago

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Data Dump 2.5

I realize that I’ve been dumping all my tabs onto Facebook, in hopes of developing some intrigue, maybe starting a little bit of conversation, sharing, and to (truthfully) shape my virtual persona.

I was going to carry out these thoughts and musings there, but I don’t think that the format really resonates or is as applicable as this. Ultimately, I miss having discursive conversation and I feel the need to lay my interests out to understand them better. So this should be a good project for me..

1. Your Esophagus Is A River

alimentary (ăl′ə-mĕn′tə-rē, -trē)

adj.

1. Concerned with food, nutrition, or digestion.

2. Providing nourishment.

I learned this word when I tried to read a book about the political implications and history of water. It ended up being a little heavy and repetitive on the historical section at the beginning of the book and I had a hard time latching on before the book was due at the library. Nonetheless, I appreciated the way it likened body to body. Generally, it’s used when speaking about the esophagus and I liked linking the notion of that short essential distance with a grander one.

2.“be tender with yourself.” - MHYSA

So I feel like it’s my cultural duty to grasp, examine, and be aware of the topic of this article “Black Femme Sci-Fi and Unapologetic Softness”

It’s something that can be a little bit difficult to do, 1. because my peer group is not IRL | 2. because I have a complicated relationship with my identity like everyone else | 3. It can feel a little played out, because coverage of the topic can be redundant in taking the time to explain the fact that it’s reasonable and completely necessary to imagine a future with Black people in it.

That being said, I feel like beating that drum is important.

And that being said, I wonder how often Sci-Fi is a mis-used term when Contemporary may be more appropriate. But maybe I’m just bitter, and maybe I’d just like to live in a world that doesn’t deem it far fetched or revolutionary that Black Femmes have a vision of the future, Or that they can make work that doesn't directly reference their “place” in a hegemonic patriarchal power structure.. That there is voice and imagination outside of that and it’s not fictitious. But maybe that’s really Black Femme Sci-Fi of me and I’m just tired of reading about it and would rather push forward / move on.

Regardless, RAFiA’s work above resonated with me and I’m down for its starkness.

3. Your Place or Mine?

^^ “A Line Made By Walking” - Richard Long ^^

This is a work I came across the other day and it touched on some subjects that I’ve been interested in recently.

Richard Long is a British artist born in 1945 that has a portfolio that has focuses on Land Art, Performance, and Walking.

When I think about those subjects, I generally first think of Ana Mendieta (1948) for Performance/ Body/ Land and Francis Alÿs for Performance/ Walking.

There are 3 reoccurring themes that I’d like to address in reference to this piece.

1. Boundaries. How do we create them and where do they live? Are they mapped? Are they visible? How do they effect and affect? How do they change over time? Who decides that they’re there? Who draws the line?

2. Ecological Art. This article in Hyperallergic has some nice nuggets and references in it and relates well to the class I’m taking about Media and the Environment. It asks, as artists, how can we move beyond the notion that Land is material and that the Natural world is something that can be molded at our whim. We are in a moment where that thought process is not fruitful to perpetuate. What kind of relationships can we rekindle with the Earth to treat it fairly? How can we convey this way of thinking to an audience? What kind of action is most needed? Generally, an understanding or partnership with Science is paramount.

3. Perceived importance based on Origin. It could be read that Richard Long’s effect on the Land could have direct connotations with his British origins. Because he comes from a place that has participated as a forceful power in colonial efforts, his mark on the land is read differently than Ana Mendieta’s. Ana was from Cuba and fled to America as a child at the beginning of Castro’s regime. Both artists were experimenting with popular forms in their epoch, but Mendieta’s exhibits content that haunts. Perhaps my perception is effected by the cannon and I assume that Long’s Formal presentations are in direct response to other white male artists of the era. That Mendieta’s works feel more visceral because of my reading of her oppression.. I’m not sure if this is fair, but I feel it in my response, and I struggle with it as many others do as a sociopolitical symptom on a day to day basis. I’m not sure it’s reasonable, I recognize my bias, but I’m going to leave it there for now because this paragraph is getting long.

4. Your Place

^^ space given towards ‘minority’ consideration ^^

This article, “Place-making and the Politics of Belonging and Dis-Belonging” has some gems worth ruminating on.

The last time I researched Belonging, it was in the context of Mental Health on college campuses. The effects of whether someone feels like they have a person to talk to, a shared public space that they’re welcome in, and access to needed resources can be a matter of life and death in a stressful environment that could otherwise be isolating.

This is very easily translated into ideas of city planning and development.

In my recent trips to Denver, it is very clear how things can fall apart and trust quickly erodes when part of the public feels that their being told that they don’t belong. This can be contentious when artists and designers are asked to “improve” or “create” these spaces. In those moments, it seems necessary to use your voice to identify holes in the process.

“Placemaking in city/neighborhood spaces enacts identity and activities that allow personal memories, cultural histories, imagination, and feelings to enliven the sense of “belonging” through human and spatial relationships. But a political understanding of who is in and who is out is also central to civic vitality. How do current Creative Placemaking practices support this knowledge?”

5. Your Job

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^^ “Neighbours” by Norman McLaren. NFB. Every time I try to share this online it gets no love and it makes me think they’re up to something ^^

This article is a good extension of the one before: The Afterlife: Art for Art’s Sake in the Experience Economy.

It underlines the artist’s true role and what happens when it gets subsumed by corporate interest. What are the effects of turning a verb into a noun? When “artist” as questioning, reactive, and gritty becomes “creative”- subservient, quiet, fabricator for a paycheck.

Particularly this piece is in conversation with the development of Portland. But everyone knows all too well that it is not limited to that space. What jobs are you willing to take? How much effort are you willing to put into holding them accountable? What will you say in the face of “... those not willing to get vulnerable or self-reflexive. Those not willing to get hurt when confronting the pain of others, or willing to empathize vigorously enough wherein that pain is, however much possible, a shared experience.”

A good reminder that “we are the leaders we’ve been waiting for.” An empowering read, and helpful to me in this moment of finding balance in work and life.

6. Your Verbs

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Speaking of what we can do as artists and as people, this New Yorker article: Is There Any Point to Protesting? shines light on whether recent actions have been effective, how they could be, and if that’s even the point.

I’ve struggled with contributing to protests, marches, etc and I feel like I have better words to describe how I feel:

I’ve never gotten what I’ve wanted by complaining. I’ve done better by calmly explaining my position and being part of organizing a solution. I’m not extremely reactionary or combative. Though I’ve come a long way in speaking my mind from the shy girl who hid behind her mother.

I’ve been scared to participate as a brown woman. Fearing someone else will not respect my body as much as I require.

But to be in a procession, which I last felt at Zozobra-- to be moving towards something with others en mass.. that has a special quality and sensation to it.

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areagan5 · 8 years ago

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Unfortunately, I am incapable of sleeping well on a plane, despite my recent habit of napping instead of actually sleeping these last few days. Fortunately, that leaves plenty of time to attempt a coherent blogging experience. I will continue with my descent into Kota Tua, but as Indonesia was my first visit to a developing country, I would like to first list the things I found the strangest/most interesting about Indonesian culture:

Fun facts about Indonesia

Tissues are an all-purpose material. They are used as napkins, paper towels, toilet paper, and facial tissues

Toilets are quite strange (as you know)

Lines on the street are largely ignored

I would not recommend driving

They snack all the time – huge fan

The people are not fans of walking everywhere (understandable,I also dislike melting)

There aren’t many crosswalks, so if you want to cross the street you place your palm out to your side so that the cars will stop

I like to exclaim “The Almighty Palm Raise!” while performing this activity

Works for the most part, but there are some people who do not care (learned this the hard way)

They wave your bags with metal detectors upon entering malls and tie your bags in supermarkets as a shoplifting precaution

This doesn’t really apply to foreigners or it could also be the face of eternal confusion I wore over the first few days

They love taking pictures of white people

Some Indonesians are too poor to be able to travel, so they enjoy taking photos with foreigners. Quite frequently I may add

No matter what you do, if you are light-skinned, you WILL stand out

They don’t use knives; you will customarily be served a spoon & fork

Everyone wears jackets and jeans despite it being 10 million degrees outside

The deodorant market must be wildly successful

The people are some of the most hospitable beings I’ve ever met

Primary religion is Islam so I’d reconsider wearing those spaghetti straps ladies

Their ginger beer and guava juice are amazing

Breakfast is normally meats and rice and veggies versus eggs and cereal

They are big fans of spicy food

*disclaimer: I am no Indonesian expert and speak based on my experience in the Java region.

Kota Tua and the night my phone ran away

Monday we were introduced to our groups and the topics we would be addressing in our joint studio workshop the next week and a half. However, before any research was to be done, we took a tour in the historic section – and poorer – of Jakarta and I will be honest, a lot of our tour was not pretty, but it is important to keep an open mind and put aside your Western way of thinking. I will also note that my outfit while cute and still fairly light and airy, did not save me from the real-world sauna session I was to soon experience. I don’t believe even Tarzan’s loin cloth would have provided him any relief from the heat – were he a) real and b) had a craving for Indonesian food.

Anyhow, after a train ride into the we arrived in an open square where after noticing a few boys staring at my unfortunately rather pale skin, experienced my first photo request. Assuming they wanted Iliana and I to take a photo of them, I became quote baffled when the boy didn’t hand us the phone and instead kept incessantly waving his hand. Thankfully, one of the Indonesian students pulled my incompetent self to the side and explained things to me while Iliana happily posed for her glamour shot. The group itself looked quite suspicious itself as we were a relatively large group of people consisting of Indonesians, Chinese, Americans, British, and a Colombian (our dear Iliana). We were essentially a beacon of nonconformity. Likely blinded by the abnormal amount of light skin in our group – I like to imagine some of us with lighter skin were sparkling in the sun like the vampires from Twilight – we were approached by the local tourist/government agency thing who ran tours of the Jakarta History Museum who invited us inside to give a brief presentation. The presentation was of course accompanied by cute snack boxes and then two of the guides joined our tour group, giving us easier access to certain areas of historic/public significance. We encountered many guards along our journey, and if my tired mind recalls correctly, they were there to protect certain public buildings from street vandalizers/hoodlums/whippersnappers or whatever term fits your fancy.

Two main things stood out on this tour: 1) the stark contrast in buildings and b) the trash. When looking at a panorama or simply walking throughout the city you could see skyscrapers, old Dutch colonial buildings, and “informal” buildings of the slums all in one glance. Don’t worry, the center of the city is quite nice, but this area was just as much an important, if not a more significant, face of the city. The most notable part of the tour was the trash. With a little imagination, one could see how the old part of the city was once dominated by a beautiful canal system, with streets bustling with goods coming in from the Harbor and far lands beyond. Today, sadly the water is full of trash, multiple mounds of trash forming walls to block the continuous flow of the river. There is so much trash in the water, there are even people who live on the trash. This would cause any person lucky enough to be born in a more developed part of the world take another look at their own lives and how many things we take for granted. Long our tour we also visited some Kampungs along the water’s edge. The community we visited was fairly separated from the main streets of the city and lined a slightly cleaner body of water (likely due to the community’s efforts) on a fairly wide street filled with people of all ages. There was a very basic ferry system allowing for transport across the river by a simple raft and rope connecting the two sides. I found the skill of the residents quite impressive. There had recently been a project where the community worked with UI to improve their streets by moving back their homes 5 feet (themselves) and paint some of their homes to create a more pleasant environment. Some people with my background may find the neighborhoods to have a poor quality of life, but I found these areas quite pleasant. The people obviously cared about one another and the lives they had quite literally built for themselves.

After much walking we ended the night in a nice restaurant on the street near the plaza. You can also get a tattoo on the quite non-sterile street if you prefer to live your life on the edge. Then came a long train ride home where many of us were trying to cope with the jet lag coma threatening to take over. You may be wondering if my phone had abandoned me yet, as pick pocketing is not that uncommon in the area we visited. However, my phone had not abandoned me yet. Unfortunately, this still means I do not have any pictures of my own from this day, but I did manage to snag a few from other’s phones and cameras:

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The woman next to me on the plane is gradually nudging my arm off the rest so I will attempt to make the rest of this brief. Iliana and I went to the mall once again, since our suitcases were still being held hostage by the airline. It was upon our return home in a taxi that my phone left me for another. I had gotten out of the cab and had maybe walked ten steps when I realized I did not have my phone. I twirled myself around only to watch as the taxi drove off, too far to have a dramatic movie moment in which I would sprint and thrust myself onto the trunk of the taxi man’s car. After my dramatic experience with the front desk who likely only understood half of what I was even saying, I also realized in horror I had been lucky enough to get a taxi driver who did not give us a receipt and as a result I had no way of knowing who had my phone. So if you ride on a taxi make sure to note the taxi number, the name of the driver, and for goodness sake always ask for a receipt.

To avoid ailing myself with permanent carpal tunnel, I will cut off here. In the next installment of my wonderful Indonesia trip that was so far kicking me firmly in the ass, I will bargain for a new phone and defile an innocent trash can. Until next time, Ciao!

Plane Ride Thoughts & The Long Awaited Photos Unfortunately, I am incapable of sleeping well on a plane, despite my recent habit of napping instead of actually sleeping these last few days.

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kawaiipizzawonderland · 5 years ago

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NY Mysteries.com Nov. 23, 2019

Back to Palestine

Thirteen months ago I was In Palestine. Here’s an article I wrote about an eye-opening experience.

I’ve been to Palestine.

When I read that Martin Randall Travel was offering Palestine, Past & Present, 15-23 October, I decided the time had come to bear witness to this fascinating stew of history, religion and politics. Another incentive was respect for the British approach to history. Our group’s lecturer was Felicity Cobbing, the Curator of the Palestine Exploration Fund, founded in 1865. She has excavated in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, written widely about the Levant and is a superb leader. I asked Felicity about the PEF’s mission. It focuses on history. It is not political nor philanthropic. Both Felicity Cobbing and Martin Randall Travel have kindly allowed me to use information from the Palestine, Past & Present Itinerary. I took the photos.

Psychologically, I’ve been in Palestine for many years. I’m a religious fanatic, having been raised in Catholicism, joined the Quakers, breezed through the Episcopalians and now am a member of the Judson Memorial Church, adding two more religions to my brag list since Judson is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA and with the United Church of Christ.

After arriving at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, we were introduced to our local Palestinian guide. Our first four days were spent in Bethlehem, about thirty-three miles from Tel Aviv. The Jacir Palace Hotel is enormous. My friend and I walked through the hotel’s vast marble enclosures figuring out where the lobby and dining room were. Was the air fresh because of the lack of cars? The soft early morning light and the endless evening sky were a treat to my New York eyes and ears. From our hotel room window, we could follow the curve of the wall erected by the Israelis to separate themselves from the Palestinians. When completed it will be a total length of 440 miles. This ugly structure was made more glaring by the messages of encouragement on the Palestinian

side. The English artist, Banksy, has a hotel near the wall, The Walled Off Hotel. We had several breakfasts there. Returning to the Jacir Palace we would pass Palestinian men eking out a living by selling fresh pomegranate or orange juice that they squeezed individually for each customer. Their accounts of their fractured lives was heartbreaking. Why one of the men’s fathers was shot by the Israelis was never explained. Instead, the son was wounded.

Photos of The Wall and of The Walled Off Hotel

On the Wall

The first day we went to Herodion, a palace complex built by King Herod, 24-15 BC, to visit the reservoir system, Solomon’s Pools. It’s being excavated by a joint Palestinian/American group. The American group is the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research which has hosted studies in the Levant since 1900. Herod crops up constantly. From my childhood religious classes, I remember he had been accused of the Massacre of the Innocents, assuming the image of a monster. Monster or not, like so many leaders, he was a great builder.

There was an afternoon excursion to Mar Saba Monastery, an Eastern Orthodox monastery halfway between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. Women were not allowed entrance. The real surprise came when the men were also forbidden entrance because they were not members of the church. Welcome to Middle East religion. In fairness, one of our group said that visitors would disturb the monastery’s life work. That evening Felicity began a series of talks about Pilgrims and Pilgrimage.

The next day, modestly dressed, we went to Hebron, celebrated for its association with Abraham. At Haram Al-Khalil (Tomb of the Patriarchs) we visited the tombs of Abraham, Issac, Jacob and their wives. Muslims, Jews and Christians all venerate this site. The church within Haram Al-Khalil is now divided between Muslim and Jewish areas. It can be a volatile place but wasn’t the morning we visited. In the afternoon we went to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The grotto within is venerated by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus. The original church was built in 339 A. D. and is the oldest church in the Holy Land.

That evening my friend and I, both weary and stimulated by the day’s events, had a delicious supper surrounded by political art and Victorian lighting in The Walled Off Hotel’s charming lounge.

The Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem

Sometimes we would dine as a group in the hotel and sometimes we’d be taken to a Palestinian restaurant. We would be offered delicious and ever present hummus and olives. innova8ion is a restaurant on the top floor of a Bethlehem establishment. It has breathtaking views of the city. Near us, both men and women were smoking, in leisurely fashion, the hookahs.

Hurling Flowers in The Walled Off Hotel

Day 4 was In Jerusalem. We walked around the Ramparts entering at Jaffa Gate. It was wonderful weather for scampering up and down stairs and staring down at the community: 70 degrees, a blue sky and the city revealing its secluded places.

Jerusalem

We descended from the Ramparts at the Damascus Gate and went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre has fragments of the original Constantinian church. Today most of the structure is a Crusader Romanesque building. It is one of the most sacred sites in Christendom because, according to tradition, it contains where Jesus was crucified and Jesus’s empty tomb. In addition, within the church are the last four or five Stations of the Cross. To say it’s a major pilgrimage destination is one way of explaining the vast crowds and prostrate people on various sites. Done once. Never again.

Worshippers

That evening Felicity continued her talk about Pilgrims and Pilgrimage. Fired up by the check points, by the Israeli settlements overlooking Bethlehem and by Palestinian freedom of movement being dependent on the whim of the Israeli government made some of us feel we were on a pilgrimage.

In the Levant many celebrities are at least two thousand years old. I’ll wager you haven’t thought too much about John the Baptist’s head. However, it’s been a hot topic in religious circles for thousands of years. King Herod, who built Herodion, had John the Baptist beheaded. Moslems claim his head is in a Syrian mosque. Christians claim it’s in a Roman church. Felicity was told by a church custodian that his church had John Baptist’s head. Felicity pointed out that other religious institutions claimed that honor. The custodian said, “We have the young head.”

In Roman Catholicism there are three Gods in one God: God the Father, the Holy Ghost and Jesus Christ. Don’t ask. I’ve always preferred the Holy Ghost but In the Jerusalem Christian quarter Jesus is king. To wit: hearty Midwesterners with t-shirts that have Jesus printed in bold letters; people sobbing under the stations of the cross; women lying prone on Jesus’s burial site.

We, along with everybody else in the universe, including their motorcycles, walked along the Via Dolorosa to the Ecce Homo Convent where there is a portion of a Hadrian arch. Like King Herod, Hadrian was a great builder. Remember the Pantheon?

Our last stop of the day was at the tranquil 12th Century Church of St. Anne. On our final night in Bethlehem, Felicity gave a talk on the Canaanites to Israelites.

Next day we moved to Jericho. On arrival we took the cable car to a 13th-century Greek-Orthodox monastery. Afterwards we had lunch at a Bedouin camp. We sat on soft cushions in a large tent hung with colorful rugs while the men in the camp laid the table and brought in food. We had glimpses of very small children and several pregnant women but were not introduced to them. The lunch was tasty and ample. There were different kinds of chicken, falafel, hummus, pickled vegetables and pomegranates. Nearby was the Bedouins herd of goats. These Bedouin have been informed by the Israeli government that their camp will be shut down.

Afterwards we visited an 8th century Umayyad palace. Umayyad is a member of a Muslim dynasty that ruled the Islamic world from 660 to 750. The dynasty claimed descent from Umayya, a distant relative of Muhammad. We then went to the lowest site in Jericho, Tell es-Sultan. Over lovely gin and tonics the talk that evening was a continuation of Canaanites to Israelites.

In the morning, dressed chastely, we went to Qumran caves where the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered, then on to a Muslim site of pilgrimage, Nebi Musa. The coach took us to a baptismal site on the Jordan River. It reminded me of Judson baptisms in Ivoryton, Ct. Whether in the Jordan River or in the Incarnation Center lake, the wet bodies revealing underwear under their white sheets have an Elmer Gantry quality.

Baptism

On Day 7 after taking the coach to the Nablus area, we went to Samaria-Sebastyieh to visit the Samaritans. Their ancient synagogue is still in use. A young woman and a young man explained their religion and its ties to Judaism. The Samaritans follow the first five books of Moses. They also explained that there were about 800 Samaritans, fewer women than men. Ukraine women are brought into their community like war brides to marry the young men. The young man took us to the Teper Nacle, a design of different fruits arranged on a ceiling. There was a feeling of peace. My facile impression was that the Samaritans had carved a niche between the Moslems and the Israelis. In addition to Samaria-Sebastyieh, the Samaritans have a small settlement in Tel Aviv. The young man in the photo is a polyglot. He told us he’d learned his English from watching American cartoons.

The Samaritans

Day 7 we moved to East Jerusalem to stay at the American Colony. It was founded over 100 years ago by Swedes and Americans fleeing the Chicago fire. Today it is a charming hotel in luscious green gardens. Our last day was spent visiting the Temple Mount/ Haram ash-Sharif, the El-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. The evening was spent at a dinner given by the Albright Institute. The next day most of us returned to the U. K.

Jerusalem

#Palestine #Palestine Exploration Fund

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