Response to “Where is Ana Mendieta?”

Jane Blocker quoted Rudi Fuchs who said that “the time one can show contemporary art in makeshift spaces… is over. Art is a noble achievement and it should be handled with dignity and respect.” She goes on talking about how 1970’s art “is now difficult to find because its innovations have failed to meet the demands of profitability…” While I do agree that art installations in museums and the like need to draw patrons to help keep an institution in business, makeshift spaces are still more than capable of properly displaying various forms of art and are definitely capable of defining these works as art.

Moreover, modern artists no longer need these venues to display their arts. As we have discussed (and performed) all semester, the capabilities of the Internet and other forms modern communication have, more or less, erased the need for “profitability” in works of art. An artist can easily set up a free website to display their art. Used in conjunction with video sites like “YouTube” or multimedia applications like “Flash,” an artist can set up an intuitive and powerful digital installation of their artworks. Furthermore, the idea that art can only become “dignified” with the exclusion of makeshift spaces severely limits the definitions of art and, in a way, insults the audience. Life is art, art is life – Art is everywhere and it needn’t be housed to be recognized.

Response to "Picturing Whiteness: Nikki S. Lee's Yuppie Project"

Maurice Berger talks about how “we live in a culture in which whiteness is so much the norm that it does not have to be named. […] It is precisely this refusal to name whiteness, to assign it meaning, that frees white people from seeing their complicity in the social, cultural, and historical economy of racism.” I do agree with the author that most white people do not even realize their advantages or privileges in society; privileges not necessarily afforded to other minority groups. I do believe that, in my lifetime, there will be a shift in the profiling, current definition of “minority.” Census groups predict that by 2050 (and likely sooner), that whites will become the minority in America. That, however, does little to nothing to alleviate current and future concerns such as racial profiling and poverty.

The picture above is from an add for a L'Oreal/ Vichy skin-whitening cosmetic, "BI-White." The woman pictured is removing her dark, blemished skin revealing the healthier, clean, and beautifully white skin. There is still a deeply seeded notion, not only in America but throughout the world, that anything other than “white” or “whiteness” is unclean or something to be ashamed of. This perception comes from hundreds of years of patriarchal white privilege that has dominated American society and the world. Let us hope that we can make the choice to plant different seeds in society that are not governed by prejudice and hatred.

Response to: “Althea Thauberger: experimentalism is dead. Long live the Internet”

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=11211421

Emily Vey Duke talks about how “[u]biquitous computing and communications technologies have reconstituted us as subjects and will continue to do so.” To speak about this, I feel compelled to relate it to my own works I have created and hope to continue creating in the near future. In the work entitled The Power of the Zen-Chi, I quite literally attempted to split my personalities into multiple on-screen personas. While hardly a work of traditional experimentalism, it does seem to fit with Vey Duke’s observations of artists “position[ing] themselves explicitly as protagonists, thereby acknowledging the reciprocity of the author/audience relationship.”

Quality of my work aside, the internet has provided me, along with countless others, the opportunity to put one’s self “out there” for the masses to view or ignore at their leisure. The nature of the internet, viral videos in particular, allows a sort of narrative freedom that is not available to most people in the realms of television and film. I don’t think about movie productions and viral video productions in the same way. Ideas that I once thought were silly for film seem oddly appropriate for the internet. In this way, I absolutely agree with Vey Duke’s ideas of the internet breaking down the conventions of traditional narratives.

Response to “Identity, Social Networks, and Online Communication”

The issues of identity performance and interpersonal communication have faced some interesting challenges in this new digital age. Technology has provided us with the means to become more, or at least different, than who we are or how we perform ourselves in “the real world.” That doesn’t necessarily mean that an “online persona” is a false representation of self, but rather that the removal of social obstructions (or even social shortcomings) releases the self of real-world inhibitions, especially in text-based interactions. But like the author Guy Merchant states, performed identities “vary considerably with the environment (email, discussion board, blog, or online game)…”

I have worked with people in the past that leave work and lose themselves for the rest of the night in MMORPGs (not the mostly non-existent acronym “MMPOLGs” that the author used) when they get home. They would, in a way, shed their real-world persona and become a character in a digital environment. While this wouldn’t fit with the author’s descriptions of “identity threat[s],” I do believe that those games can possibly threaten a person’s social identity. The irony is that while shutting one’s self out from social interactions in the “real-world,” the gamer simultaneously connects with people across the world, interacts directly with others within digital spaces, and at times can create long-lasting digital relationships.

Response to “Radical Gestures: …”

In the chapter “Roles and Transformations,” Jayne Wark quotes Simone de Beauvoir who said that “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” Wark then paraphrases Judith Butler saying “that there is no essential femininity (or masculinity). Rather, we ‘perform’ our subjectivities by means of stylized and repeated acts of speech and gesture that create the illusion of an abiding (gendered) self.” In other words, the female or male sex organs that a person is born with neither limit nor define that person’s gender identification. To support this, I have included an image of the recently pregnant Thomas Beatie who gave birth to a baby girl this last July. He was born a woman (or rather, born with female body parts), and around ten years ago, he underwent a gender-reassignment operation and since then has been personally and legally identified as a man.

The LGBT community has had to deal with many of the issues that have had and continue to have an impact on women and minorities throughout history – issues of belonging. The LGBT community seems to fit with Eleanor Antin’s ideas of being an “other” in society. Although Thomas has had to deal with much media criticism due to his pregnancy, he said that, “despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am.”

Response to "A Piece of the Action..."

In the reading, Judith Williamson talks about how people interpret images of people, women specifically, in relation to appearance and presentation. In images specifically, how a person presents themselves - how he or she dresses, for example – can falsely determine the identity of the person pictured. In support of this argument, I give the above example of current vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Much of the campaigning by her, or for her benefit, has been specifically meant to create a pleasing “image” of her to potential voters. From her inception as a vice-presidential candidate, an image of her as a tough, everyday “Hockey Mom” has been presented to voters to appeal, in part, to their apparent need for a “real” candidate in tune with small-town values and ideals. Even the above picture had a caption reading, “Tough as nails. That’s Putin, the bear.”

However, that “image” has been threatened by the recent revelation of her arguably expensive, not-so-small-town wardrobe. Ed Rollins, a Republican political consultant who ran former President Ronald Reagan's re-election campaign in 1984 said, "It just undercuts Palin's whole image as a hockey mom, a 'one-of-us' kind of candidate." That coupled with recent misconceptions by Palin of actual vice-presidential duties seem to fit Williamson’s statements of exclusive image representation; what is pictured is not necessarily representative of who is pictured.

Response to "What is Performance?"

In Marvin Carlson’s essay, he describes three different concepts or categories of performance: a skilled or talented professional performing for an audience, the conscious way one acts or behaves socially, and how a person or object functions in contrast to a defined set of standards. A commonality that one could draw between these various definitions of performance is that they all invite critique because, as Carlson states, “performance is always performance for someone.” A musician is rated on his/her prowess with an instrument along with the quality of the performance. Someone who makes a conscious effort to act a certain way socially may judge him or herself on, for example, the successfulness of interpersonal communication (An external party may even draw critiquing comparisons of how that person acts collectively versus privately). Furthermore, a computer may be evaluated on its circuitry, features, and ease of use or even simply on aesthetics.

Take the dog food ad above as another example of the complexity of word “performance.” The ad implies the “powerful performance” of the food, contrasting the seemingly healthy dog and the bodybuilder. One could evaluate not only the quality of the dog food, but the models pictured and the effectiveness of the ad as well.