On the Census, I identified myself as a female and checked off the box that read “White.” I did this because I identify myself as a female and because my ancestry is a mixture of European and American heritages: Italian, Polish, English, French Canadian, and Mohawk Indian. The infinitesimal amount of Native American blood makes me rule out the option of identifying myself as a Native American, and as a result I’m left to check of plain old, boring “White.”

                So, I’ve established that I would identify myself as white and female, but how else would I identify myself? Regarding class, I would say that I am a member of/was raised by members of the Middle Class. I would identify my sexual orientation as straight. I would also identify myself as feminist, not racist, not sexist, and not classist. Even more, I’m a liberal with an open mind, who is deeply confused and disturbed by social conservatives. Okay, so I think I know who I am, but am I right?

                As an individual, I know how I would identify myself and what social position these identifications put me in. By thinking about my individual position, though, I am completely disregarding my ever present and much more prominent subject position. Your subject position is your bare bones identity – in my case, white/middle class/straight/female. This means that all white/middle class/straight/females, WMCSF from now on, are lumped into one huge umbrella category, as it is fairly safe to assume that we experience the same prejudices, hardships, and struggles… which I would say are comparatively very few.

                All people who are identified as White/Middle Class, regardless of gender, are privileged. By privileged, I don’t mean spoiled. I mean, WMC people have access to education, health care, and usually have a disposable income. Really, most people in the United States are privileged, because even as a lower class member of any race or either gender, people usually have access to clean water and shelter, which is a luxury in developing nations.

                As a WMCSF, I know that I will never fully understand racism. I have never had to overcome any obstacles regarding my race, sexual orientation, or even gender for that matter. Though I know it is rare, growing up and even to this day, I can recall but a few sexist experiences that effected my directly. As a result it took me a while to warm up to the idea of feminism, which will be the topic of a future post, but once I was able to see instances of misogyny and sexism in the society I live in, I appreciated and embraced feminism. This example is a case where I was only thinking of my individual position instead of my larger subject position, in which many MCWF are discriminated against because of their identity as a female.

                I cannot and will not even understand what it is like to be another race, another class, a different sexual orientation, or a male. Though I often wish that I could know, I have found that by understand my subject position and how my subject position influences my experiences, I am able to be more empathetic and understanding. I realize that I am privileged with two college degrees… and even simpler, with clean, running water. This post is furthering my agenda in terms of social justice, equality, and understanding. Now that you’ve read this, please remember that many people start off in a much more difficult position that you might have – (I say this and not the opposite because you have internet access, don’t know?) Do not call the lower class lazy, other races ignorant, or the opposite sex inept. We’re all trying to overcome limiting stereotypes, and we did not/do not start out on equal ground.

                I grew up with a father who was on the cutting edge of all technology. I was also an only child. We always had at least 300 more channels that the three of us could possibly watch, but they were there just in case we needed them. In middle school, my parents let me have a TV in my bedroom. What did I chose to watch? The Home Shopping Network and Nick at Nite. No joke. I was obsessed with I Love Lucy, Green Acres, and Mary Tyler Moore, which in my opinion didn’t hold a candle to Rugrats, Hey Dude, and Salute Your Shorts, which I watched with my friends during the day. I never watched a show regularly, except for maybe TGIF, which was a family affair. I couldn’t be bothered to have to sit in front of the TV at a certain time – and I definitely still can’t!

                In high school we got satellite TV, and my obsessions became the Game Show Network and the Food Network. Once again, not joking. To this day, I have never seen an episode of Dawson’s Creek, The OC, One Tree Hill, Laguna Beach, or The Hills. I didn’t care. At all. Despite the fact that I didn’t particularly enjoy TV, I still felt like I had to have it on. I think it was for the background noise, or just due to the fact that that seemed like the normal thing to do. Throughout my entire life it has been incredibly hard for me to JUST watch TV. I always have to be doing something else: surfing the internet, making dinner, knitting, eating… anything other than just sitting there. As a result, I barely even pay attention to the TV. It’s become rarely anything more than a box of colors and sounds that I instinctively tune out and don’t pay attention to.

                Now that I am living away from my family and with my pretty frugal boyfriend, we decided not to get cable. I think this was one of the best decisions ever, because I am not paying for lights and sounds that I don’t pay attention to anyway. I get the local channels if I want to catch up on the news or, on occasion, watch the few shows I really do enjoy: How I Met Your Mother, Jeopardy, and The Ellen Show.  The shows that I enjoy that are not on antenna TV are easily accessed on the internet, and we decided to get Verizon Fios for just that reason. Quality high speed internet > cable TV. Now I just waste my time on the computer instead of as a zombie in front of the TV, but I’d like to think that my time spent on the computer is exponentially more productive. Whatever helps me sleep at night, right?

                Obviously not, because only a couple years later, when Gibson was pulled over by a Jewish cop, was it discovered that he is anti-Semitic. The man who sold out Jesus, the most famous Jewish descendant of all, actually thinks that Jewish people are inherently inferior and responsible for the world’s problems (hi, Hitler). He used ethnic slurs when talking to the officer, and he embarrassed himself even more when the entire incident was included in four pages on police reports. I wonder, at this moment, how many people had wished they’d have had the hindsight to realize that he was such a tool and wanted the $10 back they spent on one of the most blasphemous, disingenuous movies ever created.

                Speaking of disingenuous movies, one word: Apocalypto. This piece of garbage, which I can’t believe anyone would pay to see, especially after passion of the Christ (seriously, I lose respect for anyone who supports Gibson and his movies) is an epic action movie chronicling the end of the Mayan civilization. Though surprisingly historically accurate, this film’s main goal seems to be to torture and kill as many half naked people as possible. Which, if I may play off the concept of Orientalism that I mentioned in the Vampire blog, is a perfectly acceptable premise and fate for the savage “barbarians” of the ancient Mayan culture, but would by no means by an acceptable end for any European story. Well, maybe it would, but the Europeans would definitely be clothed.

                Gibson is awesome at documenting his racism and sexism. He doesn’t just harbor hatred in the privacy of his own home, he likes for it to be recorded so the entire nation can hear his tyrannical rants. The most recent of these are the phone tapes released by Gibson’s ex-girlfriend. The amount of ethnic, racial, and sexist slurs that come out of his mouth throughout these tapes is mind blowing.  Gibson proves, for the umpteenth time, that he is a racist, sexist tool. Hopefully this time is registers with the public. This is probably going to be a career ender for him, and, personally, I couldn’t be happier.

10. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.

It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are founding Futurism, because we want to deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries.

Italy has been too long the great second-hand market. We want to get rid of the innumerable museums which cover it with innumerable cemeteries.

Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you hate or do not know.

The above passages are taken directly from F.T. Marinetti’s 1909 Futurist Manifesto.

Marinetti was an Italian poet and philosopher who attacked Renaissance perspective and bourgeoisie values. Obsessed with war, speed, and machines, Marinetti wanted artists to break free from the canon and create violent, radical works that represented modern life. Marinetti’s ideas were impressive, avant garde, and highly political. Like many radical ideas, Futurist works ended up being total failures, as they have been taken out of context and no longer successfully represent the ideological ideals they were created to convey.

Case in point: not many people really understand the (not particularly pleasant) ideologies of the futurist movement, as they are not necessarily visually apparent in Futurist works. For example:

Boccioni States of Mind: The Farewells, 1911

From this Boccioni piece entitled States of Mind: The Farewells, created in 1911, the bright, abstracted shapes are actually sort of fantastic and cheerful. Though the concepts of speed, machine, and modernity are conveyed by the paintings formal characteristics, the angular shapes and the dream-like composition do not convey the the concepts of violence and destruction that are so central to the Futurist’s Manifesto.

Balla: Girl Running on a Balcony, 1912

Giacomo Balla’s Girl Running on a Balcony, painted in 1912 is even less successful at illustrating the Futurists most important ideologies. This painting looks much like Georges Seurat’s canonical pointillist work, La Grande Jatte created circa 1884-1886. Balla’s use of light, bright colors makes this painting anything but ominous and his reference to the art historical canon does not suggest the obliteration of culture. Though it too conveys an infatuation with movement, as all futurist works do successfully, but there are once again no illusions to destruction – especially not the destruction of art or art history.

Boccioni Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913

Lastly, Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, a sculpture created in 1913, is the icing on the top of the not so successful cake. This sculpture of is the centerpiece of the brightly lit, ENTIRE ROOM of exhibit space at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Yes, the artistic and social movement that wanted to destroy museums and libraries and equated museums to cemeteries has its OWN ROOM at the Museum of Modern Art. It’s own really beautiful, really impressive, incredibly misleading room…that also does not hint at destruction, war, or radical politics. The Futurists failure by ending up with their own room in one of the most prominent museums, museums being the foremost institutions that they wanted to destroy, is the perfect example of why form needs to meet function, or in this case – ideology. Oh, irony. You’re great.

The reason that I became so enthralled with the SI is because of this one particular image that I saw in my Contemporary Art class with Professor Mario Ontiveros at UMass Amherst in the Spring of 2007. The image was Guy Debord’s The Naked City, and it looked like this:

I’m not entirely sure why I was so sucked into this image, but it was probably because of the system or organized chaos. The network of arrows and buildings that do not make sense at first but slowly appear to be suggesting the free movement of an object or a person through space. Simply put,  I appreciate the effort of trying to illustrate how a person interacts with the space around him or her, which is exactly what this image does.

My fascination with The Naked City and the SI led me to explore more about the politics, beliefs, and practices of the SI. I was first led to Guy Debord’s most famous publication, The Society of the Spectacle:

I have to admit that I am pretty much in love with the cover of this publication. The Society of the Spectacle could be considered the manifesto of the Situationists International, who were a group of artists, philosophers, poets, and intellectuals. This publication contains the ideologies of the SI as number bullet points, each one expanding off the last. From here I was led to another of Debord’s publications regarding Psychogeograpy: Theory of the Dérive, which explains the Situationists concept of “public drifting.”

“One of the basic situationist practices is the dérive, a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiences. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll.

In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. Chance is a less important factor in this activity than one might think: from a dérive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.

But the dérive includes both this letting-go and its necessary contradiction: the domination of psychogeographical variations by the knowledge and calculation of their possibilities. In this latter regard, ecological science, despite the narrow social space to which it limits itself, provides psychogeography with abundant data.” – Guy DeBord, 1958

The dérive and psychogeography are, as made apparent by the above passage, closely linked, though not mutually exclusive. I found myself interested in the dérive and psychogeography because I often times find myself gravitating towards certain landmarks or walking on an unmarked path. For example, when walking around a college campus, it is bizarre to see just how much power the sidewalks and marked walkways have over the campus’s inhabitants. I’d say that well over half, probably closer to 75% of the campus community does not veer off the designated path. I find myself to be part of the minority who all of a sudden realizes that they are walking through the middle of a field because, well, “I felt like it.” Going with your instinct and reacting to your surroundings, whether you are conscious of it or not, is an incredibly intriguing concept to me.

Because of my interest in these concepts, I find myself sometimes hyper-aware of the space that I am occupying and how I am interacting with it. One space which, to me, felt like a consciously constructed, sort of forced psychogeographically is the interior of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, aka MoMa. Specifically, MoMa’s 2002 – 2004 renovations by Yoshio Taniguchi. It is four stories high, with a pair of escalators on each floor, one going up and the other going down. Each escalator, however, only goes to one floor above or below, i.e. – you couldn’t go directly from the fourth floor to the second floor without stopping and walking through lobby of the third floor, unless you took the elevator. This forces visitors of the museum to sort of be herded along from floor to floor, and also makes it impossible to miss a floor. The artificially constructed psychogeographic landscape made me feel uncomfortable, as I was limited in the ways I was able to interact with the space.

So, the next time that you are walking through a park, around a university campus, to the bus stop, or around a large building, make a conscious effort to think about the way that you are interacting with the space you are occupying. Is the space constructed for you to interact in a certain way? How does the space make you feel as an inhabitant? These are all questions that will make even the most boring trip to the supermarket a thought provoking and possibly enlightening experience.

From previous blog posts, I’ve made it largely apparent that I am fascinated with the idea of the spectacle. In this instance, I will also be using the word “spectacle” as defined by the Situations and Letterists International, both examples here taken from Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle:

33.

“Though separated from what they produce, people nevertheless produce every detail of their world with ever-increasing power. They thus also find themselves increasingly separated from that world. The closer their life comes to being their own creation, the more they are excluded from that life.”

35.

“The fetishism of the commodity — the domination of society by “intangible as well as tangible things” — attains its ultimate fulfillment in the spectacle, where the real world is replaced by a selection of images which are projected above it, yet which at the same time succeed in making themselves regarded as the epitome of reality.”

I will also be expanding on the notion of spectacle with what it particularly means to me, which is a hybrid between the ideologies of the SI/LI and the dictionary definition of: “something exhibited to view as unusual, notable, or entertaining; especially : an eye-catching or dramatic public display.” For me, the spectacle, in relation to the body, involves using the body (with or without consent of the person) as something to be viewed or provide pleasure and/or entertainment. The two examples of the body as spectacle that come to my mind are “ethnographic” presentations of people and pornography. Yes, they seem pretty unrelated right now, but bear with me.

The practice of displaying people is centuries old. Particularly after the colonization of Oceania, the Americas, and Africa “indigenous” people were sent back to Europe for display at fairs as “ethnographic displays.” The most well known example of this is the Hottentot Venus, an African woman who was sent to Europe as a “specimen” due to her engorged secondary sexual characteristics and “odd” (not European) aesthetics. A brilliant commentary on this practice is Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez –Peña’s performance piece circa 1997, The Couple in the Cage. This piece, which is one of my favorite performance pieces, shows the injustice and continuance of these practices. We’d like to believe that these practices no longer exist, that humans are not turned into spectacles, but think back to the last time you visited your favorite art or natural history museum. Remember that Ancient Egyptian mummy? Yeah, that is a human body. I know; it’s easy to forget.

Now what do “ethnographic displays” and mummies in museums have to do with pornography? Well, in these adult videos bodies are on display – in this case, not really as specimens, but as objects of pleasure and enjoyment. I guess in some ways it is not THAT much different than the theater or cinema, in which actors and actresses use their bodies and talents to entertain. I think what, in my mind, connects pornography with the display of bodies is the degrading and careless way in which many of its subjects are treated. Discussing pornography also provides an excellent transition to my next topic: the body as commodity.

When discussing the body as commodity, all that I can think of is prostitution and sex slavery. Once again, two very different things, though they are really only differentiated by one, rather important aspect: consent. My first experience unpacking the body as commodity and commentary on prostitution was exploring Picasso’s Demoiselles D’Avignon. In Picasso’s fragmented cubist painting, he is making a harsh commentary on the barbarous nature of selling one’s body for money. Particularly commenting on the crude behavior of seemingly sophisticated Parisian life in the early 20^th century, which was rampant with prostitution and sexually transmitted diseases, Picasso uses the notion of primitivism to criticize the Western world, rather than the common practice of using primitivism to denigrate non-European (and therefore inferior) cultures. Though the female subjects of Picasso’s painting, as prostitutes, are choosing to be commodities, their bodies are shattered, their faces are ugly; they are far from beautiful or inviting, which was (and still is) the common glamorization of sex for sale.

I’ve had many debates over whether or not prostitution is a symbol of barbarism for a culture, of whether or not prostitution as an economic function of society, as an unsightly byproduct of capitalism somehow justifies its existence. To me, the body used as spectacle, but particularly turned into commodity can only be explained by this quote by Walter Benjamin: “there is no document of civilization that is not simultaneously a document of barbarism.” In my mind, prostitution is as disturbing as sex trafficking and it is the physical manifestation of a culture’s barbarity. It is the underbelly of a culture that is in denial of its own primitivism.

“Patty Keene was stupid on purpose, which was the case with most of the women in Midland City. The women all had big minds because they were big animals, but they did not use them much for this reason: unusual ideas could make enemies, and the women, if they were going to achieve any sort of comfort and safety, needed all the friends they could get. So, in the interest of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they though that, too” – Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

No, I will never be a Patty Keene. My sincerest apologies. (I am not implying that if you do participate in this vampire craze that you are a Patty Keene, rather I am insinuating that there is absolutely nothing wrong in me expressing how I feel about it, by using my “big mind”.)

I have been studying Art History for five years now, and through this education, I have developed tools to criticize, analyze, and examine cultural production. Cultural production, is, quite literally, a material object that has been created by or for a culture. In this case, I am looking at two instances of cultural production: Twilight and True Blood. All culturally produced objects speak volumes about the culture in which they are produced, which is what I will write about in this blog post.

I taught Orientalism twice as a teaching assistant, and it was one of my favorite social and artistic movements to discuss. Orientalism was a trend in the 19th century when cultural producers, particularly artists and writers, created an “imaginary orient,” if I can borrow from Linda Nochlin, a sort of screen onto which they could convey Western desires. Because the subject matter of these pieces of art and literature were of the Middle East, it was okay for the women to be nude, fine for the men to be violent, and more than okay for there to be lascivious sexual acts. This Western constructed view of the Orient as sexually free, lavish, and idle was detrimental to the Western world’s opinion of the inhabitants of the Middle East.

Though I do not worry about what will happen to people’s opinions of fictional vampires, I find parallels between Orientalism, and the exoticizing of the “other” (in this case, Eastern inhabitant) and the recent vampire phenomenon. The values that these vampire phenoms represent, even as constructs, are problematic, as they appear to be the opposite of what we claim we’d like for our own society.

Though there has been a push in recent years for equal rights between the sexes, and some people even think feminism is outdated and no longer necessary (which cannot be further from the truth) in vampire land (in this case, Twilight vampire land) Edward can emotionally abuse and borderline stalk his defenseless girlfriend and instead of this behavior being creepy and inappropriate… it’s considered romantic… because he’s a vampire. Does this make sense? No, and it’s even more disturbing when young girls quote passages of this garbage to defend and rationalize staying in their own abusive relationships. Good for you, Stephanie Meyer.

Besides the awful acting, I think that there is too much sex in True Blood, bordering on pornography. I’m not a straight laced hyper conservative person, and I wouldn’t have such a problem with the gratuitous sex….if it wasn’t so violent. The mixture of sex and violence, which the media has tried and succeeded at making incredibly glamorous, is disturbing. Women do not enjoy being borderline raped, they don’t like being put in dangerous situations so they can be “saved”, and they are not just objects for hypersexual males; vampire or not.

The commentaries that True Blood tries to make on race and sexual orientation are valiant efforts, but huge failures. A black bartender who is gay… and runs a porn site…and sells drugs; any other stereotypes you want add to his character? The protagonist is white, blonde, and pure…with a badass black side kick. Incredibly progressive. Lastly, equating vampire rights (of evil, sex crazed, blood sucking vampire) to civil rights, particularly of the gay community, seems a bit offense at best, no?

I find it deeply disturbing that, out of all of the fantasy worlds that could be created, even regarding vampires, that these worlds which include outrageous amounts of gratuitous sex and violence and countless instances of racism and misogyny have been the center of media hype and have become beloved and championed by hundreds of thousands of Americans. None of these things, as made apparent from my earlier post regarding Alfredo Jaar and public desensitization to images, are entertaining to me. It genuinely makes me worried about our culture if this is the type of cultural production that represents America.

p.s. zombies are way cooler than vampires.

SEVERAL MILLION. My reaction was a mixture of shock, awe, and anger. This did not compute in my brain, and here are a few reasons why:

1) Jeff Koons doesn’t make his art.
2) Jeff Koons is a jerk.
3) Jeff Koons doesn’t make his art and is a jerk, but still makes millions of dollars of profit from “his” work.
4) Jeff Koons is a genius.

So, it’s been a known fact for at least the past decade that Jeff Koons doesn’t actually make his own work any more. Why not? Well, probably because he thinks that he’s too awesome to make his art any more, and that his awesomeness warrants that someone else make it for him. What is the problem with this? Well, there really isn’t one. I also understand that he is consciously trying to break free from this whole “hand of the artist” concept that has permeated the art historical discipline. But, really, did he ever hear of Duchamp? Been there, done that. So, in essence, the sucker that bought the Baroque Egg purchased an industrial made product that was, if anything, an idea drawn up by Koons, but even that is a stretch. He probably has other people do that for him, too.

Why do I think Jeff Koons is a jerk? Well, to put it simply, the methodology and ideology behind his art just scream “I am a condescending a-hole.” If you can’t even be bothered to make your own art, why should you be able to cash in on the rewards? It’d be one thing if his pieces were selling for $20 a pop, but his pieces are selling for millions of dollars at auction.

As much as this enrages me, I’m pretty sure that’s Koon’s plan. He wants what he does to incite frustration. He wants to make a commentary on the hypocrisy of the art world. He does this, effectively and profitably. This is what makes Koon’s a genius. There is not another artist that I have encountered (so far) that I love to hate as much as Jeff Koons. How about you?

This is the most recognizable kind of Lewitt, and, to me, that’s unfortunate. Though there is also a line drawing at the Wadsworth, it is tucked away in a corridor and is not a centerpiece like the wall drawing. It wasn’t until I visited the Sol Lewitt retrospective at MassMOCA that I saw the diversity of Lewitt’s work throughout his long career.

His pencil drawings, which are hallmarks of his earlier career, are completely breathtaking. They are super impressive, and the dedication and precision that went into creating each piece radiates from it. They are delicate and subtle, inviting the viewer to get closer to examine the texture, color, and pattern of the colored pencil lines. The black and white pieces provide just the right amount of drama, balancing the perfect contrast of light and dark lines. They look like this:

So if the pencil drawings are so sweet, why are the swirl wall drawings the canonical example of a Sol Lewitt work? Well, these pieces are bright, cheery, and relateable. They are large and impressive, and they were created at the height of Lewitt’s career. I find them less impressive, though, as the bright colors lack nuance and subtlety, and as the process is not as precise and painstaking as that of the line drawings.

The second Lewitt that I became quite familiar with is located at the Benton Museum at the University of Connecticut. This is another swirl wall drawing, and, although Lewitt did not actually paint his pieces, he did plan them. He also had very specific rules and requirements for these pieces and their display. Even though people were hired as assistants to the museum to trace out and fill in the pieces, Lewitt specifically stated that he wanted the works painted DIRECTLY on the wall. This was because he understood the fleeting nature of visual culture, and the fact that maybe, someday his work would need to be covered up. Even if this happened, the museum or institution that “purchased” the piece would have the plan/outline to recreate it somewhere else.

The Benton, however, did not listen to Lewitt’s request and painted this piece on a panel which they then mounted to the wall. This did not make Lewitt very happy. It made me pretty angry every time I walked by it on the way to the upstairs galleries, too.

So, if you haven’t seen a Lewitt yet, which I’m sure you have, but just didn’t know; you’ve probably see one of the less impressive but still incredibly cool swirl wall drawings. To get the entire Lewitt experience take the trip to MassMOCA and check out the retrospective; you will not be disappointed, and you will have an even greater appreciation for the work of Sol Lewitt.

banksy

Though the word “graffiti” by definition means “a drawing or scribbling on a flat surface, originally referring to the marks found on ancient Roman architecture,” the word has developed a negative connotation in the past few decades. When most people hear or read the word “graffiti,” they automatically think if vandalism and defacing property; both of which are criminal behaviors.

shepard fairey

When these artists do create public works, reactions are mixed. Some people are excited and flattered that the artist has chosen to paint in their city or neighborhood, while others feel violated by the artist’s “criminal behavior.” As a result, most paintings are power washed away within hours of being painted.

This fleeting art form that incites controversy and forces people to react – whether positive or negative – is exactly what, in my opinion, these artists hope to achieve. No matter what the reaction, therefore, their “graffiti” is always a success.