I am extremely interested in dualities and I am intrigued by the way we construct the world in our own perceptions. It is particularly interesting how we see our thoughts as us and our unconscious and automatic patterns other. We identify more with specific parts of our extended selves than we do our own stomach. I feel as if all the things I have been learning this semester have been tying together. In CCS I have been so inspired by my research. Learning about the spectacle and Guy Debord last term was very insightful and has made me so much more aware of how commercializing something, turning it into a commodity, dissociates it from its culture and original meaning. I learned about the movement Occupy and realised how strange it is that we’ve reached this place of ‘contemporary art’ which has a label that suggests the format of art has reached a plateau, when this just isn’t true.
Whitewashed gallery walls tear items from their environment, and pride monuments designed by cis white men give an illusion of equality and acceptance when there is none (here I’m referring to Gay Liberation by George Segal, who was chosen after no gay artist felt safe enough to associate themselves with the monument). Pride has been turned into a commercial party, with so many misunderstanding the true history of pride. Companies put the pride flag over everything, yet do nothing to fix discrimination in their workplaces. Marks and spencer created an LGBT sandwich, equating LGBT people to a lettuce, guacamole, bacon and tomato sandwich (it’s not even vegetarian). Many symbols of movements have lost meaning through mass production and cheap printing on t-shirts and other items.
This spectacle of imagined worlds can cover so much inequality, it can pretend the world is woke while keeping the same rigid structures behind the scenes, where money is power. Social media has taken this to a whole new level, where algorithms control our realities, in a digital world that is laced with adverts, consumer mentality and one-upman ship. A place where people have real-life experiences, and a world with real life consequences. It is a weird contrast, social media can control and manipulate our realities, but it also opens up a platform where every person has a voice. Traditional media outlets can be bypassed, and online activism can be brought into the real world to create actual change. A good example of this is the current Black Lives Matter protests. Global communication is now possible, and information can be shared on social media, and this has instigated protests in multiple countries and an even wider group of people are educating themselves about institutional racism and people are waking up to their white privilege.
Russel Belk explains the extended self, and in a later piece how this self has expanded into the digital world. I was particularly interested in the formation of communities and archives, and how the digital world gives us an opportunity to record the histories of minority groups who have been dehumanised and erased in the past. Danielle Brathwraite’s WE ARE HERE BECAUSE OF THOSE THAT ARE NOT is an archive in the form of an interactive video game for Black Trans people in the Genders exhibition at the Science Gallery. I love how unapologetically it exists within the exhibition and online, and how it asks those with white and cis privilege to use it to help.
I am most interested in how our experiences and what we are exposed to affect who we see ourself as, and how toxic the fast-paced never stopping world we live in can be. It is interesting that we see everything in opposites, including capitalism and communism. Binary ways of thinking seem to be everywhere, and we are obsessed with this idea that one will rule out the other or should. If good was to destroy everything bad, good would lose its meaning. There is no way to have one opposite without its counterpart because we have created this language and categorisation ourselves. During lockdown I read The Book; On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts, and this has been the major source of inspiration for my self directed project.
I hope this makes some sense. I have realised I need to start writing down my ideas and thoughts as they occur to me, because this will help me to decipher my inspirations an goals for a project. Often I think through a lot about my work and its meaning but never write my ideas down anywhere, and this leads to my project feeling more dispersed and disconnected. Also because I think so much I connect things in my head in unusual ways and then don’t remember so clearly why these things link, or doubt whether they should link. Over summer I plan to get into the habit of keeping a notebook with me and see how this helps me, if I still struggle I may try voice recordings.
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