Our new President

I just wanted to sincerely congratulate the next President of the United States of America, Mr. Barack Obama. I am so proud of our country right now. I know that the country will not become perfect over night but I do think we are moving in the right direction with electing Obama president. Thank you to everyone who went out and voted.

thats all

Wear red on Thursday!

I am just reposting a repost! via the curvature as well as document the silence

In October 2007 people all over the United States gathered physically and in spirit to speak out against violence against women of color. Some of us wore red all day and explained that we were reclaiming and reframing our bodies as a challenge to the widespread acceptance of violence against women of color. Some of us wrote powerful essays about why we were wearing red and posted them on the internet. Some of us gathered with bold and like-minded folks and took pictures, shared poetry and expressed solidarity.

This year, on the first anniversary of the Be Bold Be Red Campaign, we invite you to make your bold stance against the violence enacted on women and girls of color in our society visible. In D.C., Chicago, Durham, Atlanta and Detroit women of color will be gathering to renew our commitment to creating a world free from racialized and gendered violence, and this time, we’ll be using a new technology called CyberQuilting to connect all of these gatherings in real time. To learn more about CyberQuilting, which is a women of color led project to stitch movements together using new web technologies and old traditions of love and nurturing, visit www.cyberquilt.wordpress.com.

This letter is an invitation for you and yours to participate in a gathering in your city on Thursday, October 30th that will be webcast to similar gatherings in other cities. We are calling on you because we recognize and appreciate the work that you and the organizations you work with are doing everyday to make this a more loving and less violent world for women and girls in oppressed communities. Please join us on October 30th so that other warriors in this struggle can be strengthened and affirmed by the energy of our collective ferocity!If you are not located in D.C., Chicago, Durham, Atlanta and Detroit for the webcast, you can still participate by wearing Red on October 30, 2008 and send us your pictures to beboldbered@gmail.com

Also we are asking once again that people wear Red on October 30, 2008 and send us your pictures to beboldbered@gmail.com

As we receive them we will upload your pictures under “Red Pictures Today.”

Also, as well as to share your stories of Red on this website under “Why are you wearing Red on October 30, 2008.”

i will be wearing red on thursday, will you?

on presidential debates

i dont know how others will feel about this but i really think these debates are pretty lame. im pretty sure this second debate is just a remix of the first one. and why is the audience so white??? and bald?? is this supposed to be a random sampling of undecideds? because are white people really the only ones who are undecided??
mccain talks like war with russia is a matter of luck. maybe these debates are better for those undecideds than those of us that are VERY decided. and on that note:




yes we can

sunday

so i could be doing a million other things but this is what i am doing today instead:
before baking

and after

i need to and want to:
go to the grocery store
go to hancock fabrics
and i really need to write my lecture for class! like big time! maybe i will get all of this stuff done. we'll see.

a bit of palin funny and a bit of palin rant

i just feel the need to talk about this sarah palin deal. i cannot comprehend how anyone thinks this person is fit to be VP let alone be a heart beat away from being the Prez. sexism and feminism is finally being talked about, but, sadly i would rather distance myself from the way these things are being defined. palin is NOT a feminist, not by the original definition. she has done NOTHING to forward women's rights, she consistently defines herself as a woman/mother/even sex object as opposed to being a politician. she has done NOTHING to prove that she is qualified for office, it seems that while mayor and later governor she abused her powers, ran the city government into debt, and thought it was a good idea to charge rape victims for their rape kits at the hospital. i know that her family is her own personal business, but how can you not believe in age appropriate sex education and family planning and then have a pregnant teenage daughter? palin wants to teach creationism in schools and doesn't seem to believe global warming could have been caused by humans (although she might have actually changed her stance on this). although i am not completely against hunting, i dont think people should hunt unless this is truly your source of food.

i am absolutely horrified at the thought of any woman who initially planned on voting for clinton, deciding it makes any sense to instead vote for mccain/palin. i have decided (for my own sanity) that this segment of voting women must be made up. or else these are women who secretly were always going to vote republican and are now just finally admitting to it. what is the point of electing a woman to such a high post? just because she is a woman? especially when that woman is a pandering weakling when compared to the woman that could have been in office. i am fully for obama, although it was admittedly tough for to swallow that there would be no woman in office. part of the reason that obama was a difficult choice is not because he is a man though; his ideas are slightly different than mine. he supports coal much more strongly than i do, i cringe at how much he feels the need to show his spirituality (which i think should be none for a political office) and im not sure if i agree with his war views, although anything is better than the bush doctrine (whats that? :P)

a few people already know this, and maybe i shouldnt even write this horrible possibility in full, but, IF (and thats a huge if) obama some how doesnt get elected, i really dont want to be a part of this country. a country that will likely overturn roe vs. wade, a country that denies and belittles science, and a country that prizes a killing mentality- whether its kill a wild animal for fun, kill your neighbor, or preemptively kill a whole population because faulty information tells you you should. i wish i could just take the whole portion of republicans in the US and just shake them, and say "REALLY?? these two people??" i am so flabbergasted.

news!

this is slightly off the topics i normally talk about but i just wanted to let everyone know that chris and i are engaged! i have a feeling that most of you that read this blog already know but i just thought i would try to reach the few of you that dont know yet. i think the wedding is going to be next summer, we havent set an actual date yet. i dont know how cheesey/overly optimistic/elitest this makes me sound, but i really would like this to be an expression of my eco-friendly feminist views. so, for example i plan on use as many locally sourced products as possible as well as making the event about our relationship as opposed to just being about me. i guess we will see how everything turns out!

announcements

just a couple announcements to anyone and everyone:

i am in a show that is currently up in Joliet, IL called:
index: directions in contemporary photography
where: the Moser Performing Arts Center Gallery on the Campus of University of St. Francis (www.stfrancis.edu)
when: now through October 10th
who: Jeff Otto O'brien (www.otto-obrien.com)
Johanna Reed (www.johannareed.com)
Esteban Schimpf (www.estebanschimpf.com)
Amy Wainwright (www.amywainwright.com)


also, please go to my blurb site and vote for my book for the Photography.Book.Now People's Choice competition. you have to register to vote, but it's worth it!

target: women i love it!

two videos posted recently at my favorite blog: the curvature. they originally came from a different site but this is the way i found them. they are incredibly awesome and very appropriate!

wedding shows

yogurt


and just because: heres another one!

coda

here is the video i made for my final project!



This project was created to consider the differences in forms communication. I was raised in a family with two deaf parents and two other hearing sisters and I feel that this has formed my personal identity as well as my cultural identity. I learned from a young age to be the connection for my parents between their culture and the hearing world. The title of my video piece “C.O.D.A.,” stands for Children of Deaf Adults. C.O.D.A. is an international group for the culture of hearing children of deaf adults. These hearing children are in a similar situation to the children of immigrants, in both cases the children may have to negotiate between two very different ways of life.

Being the child of deaf adults has allowed me to be a part of two separate and distinct cultures. The deaf world, unlike other types of disabilities, is considered its own culture because it has it’s own language and form of social interaction (Filer). Although my parents never used sign language with our family, we have learned to communicate differently than other hearing families do. This video piece highlights one of the most important ways of communication within my family, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). While AIM is often associated with today’s tech savvy youth, my parents have quickly adapted to it, email and text-messaging.

According to Rex and Peggy Filer, in the article “Practical Considerations for Counselors Working With Hearing Children of Deaf Parents,” there is a set of shared characteristics for many children of deaf adults, although not all children have all of the characteristics. A brief summary of these characteristics, for example: the hearing children (most often the oldest daughter) become the parents link to the hearing world, these children often feel like they are neither part of the hearing nor the deaf world, the children are both interpreters and censors, they are protectors, of real threats like fire alarms, police sirens, and burglars, as well as perceived threats like discrimination.

The video starts off with a conversation between my partner and I. It is a fairly banal conversation, we acknowledge the camera and continue to talk in a normal fashion. The middle portion of the video focuses on two views of me sitting at my computer. I am talking to my mom on AIM, although this may not be immediately obvious. Unlike the conversation between my partner and I, while talking to my mom, I am checking my email, listening to music; my cat even jumps onto my desk at one point. These two conversations come in two very different forms, although they do tend to drift toward some of the same topics. The video ends with another clip of a conversation with my partner and I. We mainly focus on some of my everyday worries until my partner suddenly breaks into a description of what he sees as my “mothering” tendencies.

One of my personality traits that I have always thought of in a negative way and as a very gendered idea can be understood differently when looked at through the lens of C.O.D.A. “Mothering” turns into “protecting,” which comes across as more neutral. I am very protective with the people in my life I am close to, both hearing and not. This is the way that I have managed to bridge the two cultures that make up my identity.

contamination

This week’s readings, 2 from the show Ultrabaroque and one reading about cosmopolitanism titled “The Case for Contamination,” by Kwame Anthony Appiah, all speak about the blurring of cultural lines.
In the show Ultrabaroque, authors Elizabeth Armstrong and Victor Zamudio-Taylor, talk about a concept of ultrabaroque that is different than the baroque style that swept Europe. Ultrabaroque includes many different mediums and ideas; it is the ultimate postmodern idea. Ultrabaroque melds together ideas of Spanish baroque, Latin American culture, and native peoples history. Latin America has become the source point for what has become thought of as hybridity. Although the Spanish attempted to take over and create a second spain, instead there has been more of a negotiation and the people of latin America have been able to move fluidly between different types of culture. My teacher, Greg Foster-Rice, brought the idea of negotiation between a conquering group and the subordinate group to my attention. Foster-Rice learned of this idea from the well-known theorist Homi k. bhabha and his book, “the location of culture.” This idea of negotiation happens when a dominant culture actually compromises their ideas to make them more understandable and digestible to a subordinate culture. In this compromise, the ideas have actually been changed and both cultures are different because of it. In other words, even when a culture attempts to completely change another, it is not a one-way relationship and they both are different in the end.

José Antonio Hernández-Diez, "kant," 2000
_____
And this leads me to the other article, “the case for contamination.” Appiah uses many terms that sound very aggressive and disease-like in this article. Contamination and infiltration of ideas and cultures. Appiah mainly argues for a cosmopolitan global view. Many critics have argued that (mainly) third world countries should not be allowed to become more westernized. This argument treats these third world countries as if they are too ignorant and backwards to be able to choose what is good or bad for themselves. Appiah argues that these “lower” cultures can be exposed to western culture and take what they need while also sorting out which traditions to keep or change.
I was not surprised to learn about appiah’s argument, it seems completely in line with white patriarchal society to assume that we can control what occurs in other societies. We should no longer assume that we know what is best for other countries, or that just because we do things a certain way that means it is the best way to do it.

sexual assault awareness

this month is sexual assault awareness month. as a female, sexual assault is something that i am forced to constantly be aware of. music, movies, advertising, and the rest of pop culture all subtly or overtly constantly remind us women that we are not safe when we leave our home. most often this message is paired with the idea that rape is the woman's fault. men cannot control themselves and when women drink, dress certain ways, or walk down certain streets men are compelled to force themselves onto women. this false dichotomy is insulting to both men and women, through sex education and promoting conversation we can help break down the traditional rape culture.

sexual assault is a tough topic to talk about. but many people would be surprised to hear how prevalent it is. a few years ago, while at work i talked to some of the women that i work with. all but 1 or 2 out of a group 5 or 6 had been assaulted. women constantly face sexual discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual assault, and for the most part it is frowned upon but not always punished. i think that our culture has a problem with sexual assault because we have a problem with communication. i am not trying to blame it only on men or women, but if we could each communicate and enforce boundaries and acceptable forms of interaction, whether it be in the workplace, with friends, or within our own personal relationships, then sexual assault would be less of a hidden cancer within our society.

white, whiteness, and white girls

Because I am in a class about Identity politics, I have been very aware of the way that identity is played out on T.V. I really do not like to think that I watch a lot of T.V. but lately I do feel I have been indulging in a little escapism. Thankfully I don’t actually have to watch many shows often to get a good sense of how identity is portrayed. The show that I have a big issue with currently is “Lipstick Jungle,” I have only watched an episode or two, (someone in my house secretly likes to watch it every week), but I was very disappointed. Lipstick Jungle descends from Sex in the City, which I really do/did love. I completely acknowledge that although Sex in the City managed to give a multifaceted view of (upper-middle-class, white, straight) women’s sexuality in the late 90s, it did nothing other than promote white as the norm. I had hopes that in the 21st century version of the “powerful and sexual women’s” show we would actually get to see a little bit of diversity. I’m sure this show is aimed at some specific target group, but this was a great opportunity that I think the show’s producers missed out on.
__________________

I was excited to read about the show titled “Whiteness: A Wayward Construction.” In my opinion, some of the other shows that have been breaking down identity are lacking the critical aspect of “outsiders.” In Freestyle, as far as I know, only African Americans commented on blackness. In Post-Jewish, although the curator seemed to expand the boundaries by showing work by Jews who could be considered controversial, the line was still drawn at those who are Jewish. Of all of the races “white” is the one that needs to be analyzed the most. When thinking about the museum shows we have talked about so far this semester, Bad Girls, Freestyle, Whiteness: A Wayward Construction, White! Whiteness and Race in Contemporary Art, Post-Jewish, I am glad that the art world is slowly trying to at least consider and critique stereotypes. The art world has always seemed to be a home for outsiders and yet it has historically been racist and sexist. I still feel that we have a long way to go but I think the first step towards a truly post-ethnic art world is to be aware and at least work to break stereotypes.
A quote from “From White to Whiteness,” by Tyler Stallings:

“The privilege conferred by whiteness is to be considered human and normal, to be viewed as a multifaceted, complex, and mutable individual, as opposed to being categorized, fixed, and kept in place. If we want to live in a society where others enjoy the same privilege, it will be necessary for whites to acknowledge both their nature as racial beings (even if we accept that race is largely a social construct) and the way that whiteness has operated, often by stealth, to maintain social and economic hierarchies.”

___________________

Wendy Ewald created a piece of art titled “White girl’s alphabet.” The piece consists of images combined with text to create an alphabet. Ewald worked with a specific group of high-school girls to create this alphabet, they helped choose images to pair with the letters and wrote statements for each one. Ewald “was interested in finding out how the girls’ choice of words and images reflected the ongoing campus debates about gender and race.”
Out of the letters in the alphabet, I felt that the letter “N-Normal” was the “whitest” of them all. The image paired with this letter is of young white woman standing straight in the middle of the frame. I strongly feel that this just reinforces the idea that white is normal and anything else is weird, bad, or other. The other letters that stood out as being very white were the letters “R- Rebel,” (white man smoking a cigar) and “W-Weight,” (two fairly thin white women comparing stomaches). I wish I had the images to show you but I can only find imagery from one of Ewald’s other alphabet series. After showing the girls the series all put together, the girls were “astounded at how revealing they were,” and they felt that it was "sad." Did they also see how well they were reinforcing myths about whiteness?

adrian piper-cornered

we watched this video in class last week. it has been bouncing around in my head since then, which is the purpose of the video. take 15 minutes to watch it. i know 15 minutes is long but i think its a very important topic.

my identity diagram

by the way this was photographed by my phone, sorry for the low quality. i think i will attempt to scan it in later in the week so it will look way cooler....

weekly nytimes

and because i have never noticed how appropriate nytimes is, here are a few articles i was reading this week:
when girls will be boys
black rabbi reaches out to mainstream of his faith

and an actual assigned reading:
ART/ARCHITECTURE; beyond multiculturalism, freedom?

sometimes..."post" isnt so bad

Reading about race and multiculturalism in art this week has made me consider once again how “others” are represented in the art world. For the most part, they aren’t. and the ideas of multiculturalism seem to have solidified boundaries between some of the minority groups. There are latin-american artists, African-americans, asian-americans, in this case I think that a gendered approach actually mixes up some of those boundaries a little. Because Asians do not show with latinos who do not show with blacks. With this separation comes the reinforcing of stereotypes, latino art is religious, asian art is orientalist, and black art cannot be anything but about race.

The show, “freestyle,” also known as the post-black show, attempted to break through some of the stereotypes associated with “black” art. These were artists who happened to be black who were very engaged with ideas about what it meant to be black. I think it is great that shows of this type break down common stereotypes and styles associated with certain groups of people…..but I think that I have a problem with only people from within the group being about to question/criticize the group. After seeing the post-jewish show and now reading about post-black I do see these movements as going forward but I still see them holding on to socially constructed categories. I think this complaint is aimed at the curators and other organizers of the art world, and not the artists themselves though. It seems, from the descriptions of both shows, that although the artists could not help but come from a certain perspective (because of their faith/skin color/heritage) they did not necessarily feel that they were making some kind of ethnically specific art. And another problem I have with even post-black/asain/latino(etc) is where people of mixed ethnicities fit in. the art world does not seem to have addressed hollingers idea of post-ethnicity. Is it because each of the 5 skin-colored pentagon are worried about losing part of their team? White skin doesn’t fit into this idea because white has always dominated, so inevitably we will have to stop seeing repetitive, often mediocre, white man art. But, and this applies outside of the art world, are blacks/Asians/latinos worried about losing some of their numbers to a mixed category? It is sad that the skin-color pentagon that has had such a mixed history, bringing both good (affirmative action) and (mainly) bad (racism), would need to be held on to, to the detriment of another minority group- mixed ethnicities.

i went to a lecture this week

I went to a lecture this week. The lecture was from author David Hollinger who wrote, among other things, the book we are reading titled “postethnic America.” His lecture was mainly broken own into 2 parts, with a small 3rd part. First he mainly talked about ethno-racial relations, with obama as an example. Many people have questioned whether obama is “black enough,” I never fully understood why that was even a question. Except possibly on the level that some people would say he doesn’t “act black” or “sound black” which I have always found incredibly offensive. According to Hollinger, there is a different part of the story I wasn’t aware of. In the united states, immigrants or children of immigrants from Africa or the carribean statistically do better economically, educationally, and intermarry more often than African-americans who have been here since the slave trade. So, because obama is the son of an immigrant, he is automatically set in a different category. I was curious about how many generations a family has to be here before this difference is no longer noticeable. If a family came to this country in the early 1900s, they would not have had to deal with being a part of the slave trade, but they would still have been heavily discriminated against and would have been part of the civil rights movement possibly…. During the lecture, someone asked if language was part of the problem. Hollinger did talk a little bit about language, he had a quote from colin powell about how having only a little African American in him made him black no matter what, but he didn’t sound black so that also set him apart. I think that was the gist of his quote, maybe I changed it a little bit to what I was thinking about, but either way, I thought colin powell was another great example of the situation that obama is in right now. the 2nd and 3rd parts werent as interesting to me, the 2nd part was about the jewish relationship to identity. the short 3rd part was about how hollinger was post-idaho when he finally met a jewish person when he was growing up.

All of this goes back to what our identities are made up of. We saw the “new authentics” show on Tuesday, what a great show, everyone should go see it. I believe its up until mid april. All of the artists in the show were jewish in some way although not all would have considered each other to be jewish. I know I already spoke a little about the show so I won’t go over it all again.

I don’t know if it is just because I am tired (again) or if I am just in an abnormally wistful mood, but I wish we could somehow comprehend a person’s identity always as an accumulation of their personal history- as well as understand that their identity can change at any minute in answer to that personal history or in response to a contemporary situation. But I think that would require us all to be mind readers. And if we were all mind readers I guess we probably wouldnt have the life experiences we end up having.

how appropriate

today's nytimes had so many great articles. or at least, nytimes.com did. i'm not even sure of the dates of the 3 articles that i thought were so great but here they are:
teaching boys and girls separately
as someone who went to a coed public school i really dont agree with separate sex teaching, but part of this argument was very convincing. dr. sax is taking a biological approach to why students should be separate. to me this sounds too much like how science has been used from so many wrongs in the past, the biggest one is the reason to enslave africans. on the other hand, ann tisch, who founded the "young women's leadership school of east harlem," feels that their are more social reasons for girls to be separated from boys, which i can appreciate but i'm still not sold on the idea. neither approach seems to deal with children who may not fit the "norm," what about boys who actually like to sit and chat or appreciate the warmth of feminine behavior that supposedly only girls want, or girls who want to get up and run around or like to talk loudly? or young homosexual or transgender boys or girls who may not feel comfortable around their own sex? and one of the reasons that i really feel that coed is the best way to go is that i think it is necessary to recognize that students may be a distraction toward each other (especially as they hit puberty) but learning to interact with each other regardless of differences is the only way to get through life.
how do you prove you're a jew?
after yesterday's post i wanted to make it clear that i view jewishness as a religion only, and not as a nationality. after reading this article, i think it helped me to see how jewishness is tangled up as a religion and a political idea.
and
the emerging minority
i am about to fall asleep on my keyboard from exhaustion, i cant say much more other than, people should stop assuming people are going to act/think/vote a certain way because of their gender/class/skin color/sexual preference/other.

the new authentics

This week I had readings from the catalogue of the show “The New Authentics,” by Staci Boris. Boris discusses how in this particular place in time much of our society is questioning what it means to have a certain identity, specifically in this case- the jewish identity. Boris feels that jews are able to choose what it looks like to be jewish, as opposed to in the past when jewishness was a very concrete category. Boris compares this exhibition to the exhibition titled “Freestyle,” where the term post-black was used in reference to the artists of that show. The artists in “Freestyle,” did not make what could have been called “black” art, although curator Thelma Golden felt that it was possible that race could have been an influence for the artists work. Similarly, Boris put this exhibition together to see how different degrees of jewish affiliation could be visually portrayed. The artists of “New Authentics” have a variety of backgrounds, not many identify themselves as mainly jewish and one is not American.
The work in the show seems to cover many different subjects, Collier Schorr’s work- “shatter[s] taboos on both sides, Schorr, as both insider and outsider, makes ‘work that Germans would make about Germany if they were American.’”

Shoshana Dentz uses imagery made near her home in Brooklyn as well as other pop culture sources to talk about the Israel/Palestine conflict, ideas of home, and the psychology of borders.

In the work of Shoshanna Weinberger, identity is the largest influence. Weinberger considers herself a “Jamaican Jew,” who actually uses a mixed media approach to represent the hybridity of her own affiliations.

Because I have also been reading Hollinger’s “Postethnic America,” I questioned the premise of this show. The closest way I can explain things is that it would be the same to me if there was a show put on about being catholic. I am glad that in the essay Boris speaks about post-jewishness as a way to really consider what it means to be jewish, both in comparison to postmodernism’s hybridity as well as Hollinger’s postethnic voluntary affliation to groups. I am trying to analyze my feelings about this and I think that my lack of understanding for this show comes from the fact that I am REALLY not a religious person. I have never understood institutionalized religions and I think religion is a very individual and personal idea. So I can’t comprehend having a religion (as a category or something) be part of my identity. But I am trying to not be hypocritical, I am sure other people take being jewish (or catholic or whatever) very seriously (and obviously that is what this show is about).

Linda Nochlin

we are presenting a panel discussion that artforum held in august of 2003 in class this week. i will be talking about Linda Nochlin. she mentioned a few artists:
sam taylor-wood

and piplotti rist

this rist video isnt talked about but i think it might be my favorite.

i dont think i understand what she is trying to say conceptually but i am interested in how much she seems to be referencing minoan snake priestesses (art history finally paid off):

quick post....

im at work, i am listening to this podcast about race and identity. are identity politics dead? i think im tired of everything i am interested in dying (feminism, identity, art, painting, photo...). but the interview is pretty good at least. here's the link to the podcast page. which then has a link to the interview. i cant write more, i probably shouldnt even be doing this now.....

entitlement

Entitlement-for my generation (“Y?” or are we just unnamed?), there has been a lot of negative talk about how we feel entitled to everything. If I am part of the “Y” generation, my understanding of it has been that it is Y in a sense of the question- why? Or why not? Especially said in a whiny tone. We assume we should be handed things- jobs, money, happiness. In the readings this week entitlement was mentioned a few times in reference to the 3rd wave. I am thankfully part of a generation of women who grew up with a lot of overt feminist influence. Overt in a way that I can yell back at my harassers on the street, I can choose to flaunt my sexuality for my own pleasure or not-depending on who I am portraying that day. I do feel entitled to my rights as a woman, but I don’t see this as a negative thing. I don’t think that means that I passively accept my role as a woman and I do feel strongly about moving women’s rights forward. And if the things my foremothers fought for (voting, the right to choose, equality in the workplace) were threatened, I do think there would be a vocal outcry.
All of this was in mind while reading about the “Bad Girls” show(s) of 1994. Although, I don’t remember this show, the idea of “bad girls” and riot grrrls and even girl power all influenced the way I grew up. Some of the criticism for this show written by Jan Avgikos seemed to ring false to me. Avgikos has a problem with the idea of putting together art by mainly women artists that is funny. My understanding of this criticism is that Avgikos believes the art won’t be taken seriously if it is funny. I love the idea of funny art made by women, in our culture women are never considered (or allowed) to be funny the way that men are. In a recent pop-culture podcast I listen to, 2 female comedians started a group for women comics called “Offensive Women.” They felt they had to do this because there is a serious shortage of female comedians who are taken seriously. Another piece of criticism that Avgikos offers is that the didactic of good girl/bad girl doesn’t exist anymore, so the show is put together on a false premise. The idea that girls don’t have to worry about this didactic anymore is ridiculous. I realize that it may be better now than in 1950, but it is still an issue. Just last week an article in the NYTimes discussed how this topic is still relevant. The grown up version of this- whore/prude is still active too, why else would women who dress in a revealing manner get blamed for getting raped? But that leads to a whole different discussion….

why have there been no great women artists? and is feminism dead?

“Why have there been no great women artists?” according to Linda Nochlin, this question is incredibly important for many reasons. This one single question begins to break down art history as a whole and even the rest of known written history. When this question is initially asked my first instinct is to think that there must have been, we just haven’t found them. or some people think, maybe women are just not capable of greatness. Art of the problem with “greatness” or “genius” is that white men have done the deciding of who is great or genius. And this genius is an innate (natural) talent that would have come through under any circumstances. Except that Nochlin puts forth that there have been no great artists from the aristocracy either. I was surprised to hear that, so basically all great artists are white and middle class. Although according to the article maybe the aristocracy just thought of art as a hobby and the middle class women were too busy to make art. I have argued in the past (with my sisters that are non artists) that everything about art can be taught. As an artist, I have no natural/innate talent for art that my sisters don’t have. I just had a desire and interest to be taught art. The “art academy” has socialized me as an artist and I have practiced until (almost) perfect. It is interesting that art, as an institution is looked up as so different from the rest of society. It is thought that we have natural abilities in whatever media we use, whereas I would never think that a doctor was born knowing how to diagnose diseases or a mechanic grew up automatically knowing about cars. I know that those professions take years of training and hands on practice, which is just what artists do, we are just drawn to some type of visual expression.

Being in an identity class, I think we will be discussing many types of “posts.” In the article “feminism, incorporated:reading ‘postfeminism’ in an anti-feminist age,” Amelia Jones describes different types of postfeminism. Like postmodernism, there seems to be an idea of postfeminism as after-feminism and a postfeminism that is anti-feminism. Jones seems to be arguing in this article that both types of postfeminism are negative. The first type of postfeminism seems to come from the idea that feminist art is just a part of postmodernism or could be considered postmodern feminist art-therefore postfeminism. Often many art critics and historians lump feminist art in with postmodernism and therefore diminish the importance of the feminist critique. Photography has played a strong role in helping to objectify women. Even female photographers that are attempting to criticize the consumer culture get passed off into postmodernism.
The other part of postfeminism, the part I consider to be anti-feminist, also appropriates feminist language to make arguments that feminism is dead or unnecessary. After second wave feminism, many media outlets broadcast the idea the women were tired of trying to be equal and were happy staying at home with their families. The women who didn’t want to go back to their domestic lives were seen as lesbians or destructive (or both). But even this wild woman was still always pictured as white and middle class. And often the woman would be brought back to her domestic place and live happily ever after. Although this article was written more than 15 years ago, I think many of its ideas are still relevant. Many contemporary books speak of getting back to family and home, this article published recently about being a “female male chauvinist,” and even the fact that Hillary Clinton seems to get criticized more often for what she is wearing than what her actual policies are. I cannot comprehend how anyone could begin to think that feminism is dead, nor should it die anytime soon.

random conversation

i am still kind of in the middle of the reading for the week, i finished the first article (nochlin "why have there been no great women artists?) and am part of the way through the second (jones "feminism incorporated: reading postfeminism in an anti-feminist age). i had been reading the jones article when i was asked by a co-worker about what i was reading. i told him the title and he just made a yucky face. then later he asked how my reading was going and i told him, and he asked about whether we were in an anti-feminist age. my answer was that i hadn't yet gotten to jones explanation of this but i could see how we could be. my co-worker (lets call him "nick") then says, "well, isn't feminism done?" i was surprised by this. i immediately said no and asked what he meant, he said that there was equality, and that was the point of feminism. i really was absolutely shocked to hear him say this. i mentioned a statistic from one of the articles, women make up about 52% of the population, museums show art that is made by women about 10-15% of the time. he just said, wow that sucks. and since that didnt seem to faze him, i said and what about the fact that in our government women probably hold 30% of the offices at most (i really dont know the exact amount, sorry!). he finally realized what i was talking about and only had to say that women were seen as equal under the law. i agreed and pointed out that a lot of people dont pay attention to the law.

so after all of that i really had a lot to think about. for the most part, at school, i surround myself by men that seem to be progressive and i would say possibly even feminist thinkers. this nick guy, i dont think hes chauvinist or misogynist, just sheltered (from a variety of types of feminism and types of women) and ignorant (about feminist theory or how people other than white middle class men get treated). it is completely strange and sad to hear a man that is close in age to me say that feminism is done. but maybe we just have different definitions of feminism. or maybe a lot of men feel the same and i live in my own little feminist world where all of the misogyny and patriarchy happens very very far away. i think i need to be having more conversations about women with my male friends.....

identity affiliations and gender performance

The readings for this week were about identity and how it is formed. Specifically in art history, identity is a way to understand the motivation behind the work. As in, if art was made by a woman, then she probably made it a certain way because she was a woman and had certain life experiences. In the history of art history, this reliance on the identity of the artist has created many parallel art histories. Women’s art history, African American art history, and others are looked at as separate happenings instead of being interconnected. Even as more emphasis was being put on certain categories of people, women, African American, homosexual, there were some that were resisting the labels of identity. They wanted to be more than just a homosexual artist, they wanted to be artists who happened to be homosexual, African American, and/or women.
In the article “Performative acts and Gender Constitution,” Judith butler attempts to define what gender is and isn’t. Gender is a series of repeated acts that both the actor and the audience believe. This belief that the series of acts equals a certain gender has been repeated throughout history and because of this repetition many people believe that gender is natural. That there are certain ways each gender should act according to their sex. The interesting thing about this is that when a person does not “perform” their gender according to social norms they are punished, which implies that deep down society knows that gender is NOT a natural concrete set of rules, because if it were than all behavior would be natural. I’m not sure how much of that makes sense, but it was pivotal to me (see image). I began to draw parallels between how art has been thought of and how that thought process has changed. Initially art was thought to have this innate meaning that was universally understood by all, no matter what context it was put in or who the viewer was. There are definitely still people who believe this, but many contemporary practitioners and historians have come to understand and accept that the meaning of a piece of art lies somewhere between the viewer, the art, and the context in which it’s seen. And from this weeks reading, that is very similar to how I understand gender, that we perform in certain ways, depending on where we are and who our audience is; our audience understands our gender because we are acting in accordance with societal context and we are dressed in a certain way.
Another facet to identity is ethnicity. David Hollinger argues for the idea of “post-ethnicity.” The reason that Hollinger feels there is a need for a new way to look at ethnic identity is because past methods have failed. Multiculturalism does not go far enough to include the diverse array of people and although it worked well when it was growing in the 1980s and 1990s, it has failed to be updated since then. Post-ethnicity takes the cosmopolitanism that was prevalent in multiculturalism and pairs it with the idea that identity is voluntary. We choose to be affiliated with certain groups, as opposed to have a concrete identity that just IS. Hollinger feels there are three main groups that are affecting Americans thoughts about ethnicity. The business elite who don’t care much about actual Americans because they do most of their business overseas, a group that sees themselves as trans-national and therefore do not care much about a national community, and the third group is the “middle Americans,” the Evangelical Christians who feel strongly about America but believe that it belongs only to the people that look like them (white, middle class, and straight). After reading this section I am left wondering how I fit into America. I don’t affiliate myself with any of the 3 constituencies that Hollinger outlines, I do feel that I would identify with the idea of post-ethnic. I have always hated the idea that a label was going to be chosen for me by an outside force, and this label might fit some aspects of my personality and the rest must be flukes because they don’t fit a certain way.

moar funny pictures

poetry slam

i found this on a friend's myspace. i was initially offended by it, i wasn't sure if someone was trying to take advantage of the person's handicap. but i watched it more and really listened to what was being said. as the poem was being spoken i really began to think about who was leading and who was following. the first speaker seemed to be the one that was leading at first, because she always says the line first. but as the poem progressed i became interested in how the first speaker would say a line and what it meant in reference to the second speaker. even after viewing this video a few times, i still don't know how serious it is, mainly only because of the "ad" that is at the end of the video. whether or not it is a spoof, i still found it interesting in reference to this weeks readings. but more on that later!

first post

as an introduction i figured i would just get this first post done and over with. the first post is always the most difficult for me. i am going to use this blog primarily for my "21st century identity politics in contemporary art" class. my hopes and dreams for this blog are to reflect on readings, class, other blogs i read, and life. hopefully, i can continue with this even after class is over....

currently for class i am reading critical terms for art history, the section about identity. the other readings for class this week include the introduction to postethnic america by david hollinger and "performative acts and gender constitution" by judith butler. and that is all the explaining i will do now, check back later for the reflection part.