Introduction to the book Digital Resistance

The introduction to this book brings up many good points which I would like to address. The first is the need for people to name things. The author talks about the fear with which the Critical Art Ensemble approached being named because naming yourself means that you become pigeon-holed. It is a way for everyone to understand what you're doing, and also to judge. I think they were wise to fear being named because it is true that definitions do create boundaries (page 5). This is one reason I find it so hard to talk to people who aren't artists about artists because I don't want to define myself as 'just' a photographer. I also enjoy working in 3-d, writing/poetry and hope to make videos too. I know why people have a need to define and understand what other people do with their lives, it's so that they can feel like they understand them. It's a very one-dimensional take of a person but unfortunately many people operate like this. It's like when I told my English 102 Teacher I was British, she assumed my compliance in the oppression of the Irish and post-colonial woes all around the world and was very frosty with me for the whole semester. I am more than my countries history. CAE is more than 'tactical media'.

The idea that joy can evolve from naming yourself is interesting to me (page 5), the author talks about the sense of relief that many participants felt upon belonging to a named group because it opened them up to hybridization (page 5&6). The group welcomed any and all cultural hybrids, artists/scientists. The CAE group sought to broaden itself in order to reach as many people as possible through as much media as possible. Comparing this to the Infernal Noise Brigade you could say that the CAE has a broader appeal than the INB. The INB was focused more on political protesting through music while the CAE has multitudinous aspects. Both groups have similar aims, intervention by challenging the status quo and subverting what is accepted but their delivery is different. I think the CAE has more application to work in different social structures because, as the author says, they change what they do depending on the social spaces/hierarchies present in the areas they are working. INB seemed to have similar approaches wherever they were, not to discount what they did at all because it was very effective.

I agree with the notion of power in the archive as discussed in pages 9 & 10. The belief that the meaning of archived materials changes with time is very true to me and I think it was wise of CAE to try to leave as few traces behind as possible. As they say, what traces remain are active, rather than passive in that they could incite a viewer to action. I think this is a very clever course of action, especially with digital media. Digital media should not exist in an archive on a floppy disc growing old. It should be a phoenix on the internet, waiting to be rediscovered and recontextualised by a new generation.

Assignment Three: Typologies of Walking and Not Walking

For this project I was inspired by Kim Sooja's 'A Needle Woman' project. In this series the artist (or model) is always in the frame of the image with her back to the viewer. She is presented in different places all over the world but she is always the same.

I wanted to create a series of photos with me in the frame, always dressed the same in an outside place I usually enjoy going to. I chose Reid Park because I live fairly close and enjoy spending time there. Right now I am going through my two year 'removal of conditions' period in immigration status. This means I have to collect evidence that my husband and I are a real married couple with intertwined lives and intend to stay together. It's very stressful trying to gather enough evidence to avoid suspicion and I'm finding it hard to enjoy life at the moment without thinking about it. Even when we go out walking in the park it's on my mind and that's what made me think of this project. I am in these places but I am not interacting with them. Sooja's work is a protest against the anonymity of sweatshop workers (as I see it) and globalization. This project is my way of protesting the bureaucracy of immigration and the way it affects my life. In this project I wanted to convey a lack of something, it's personal to me (immigration story) but I want the casual viewer to get a sense of emptiness/death/searching from the images.

Week Three Walk Two

I did this experiment yesterday but it's taken me a while to think about what to say about it.

I decided to SMILE all day, with people I would actually show my teeth and wandering around I would keep a slight smile on my lips or a broad smile, depending on what I felt like.

People always tell me that I am hard to read or that I don't smile a lot. In fact, a boy I had a crush on at school wrote me a Christmas card one year that has 'you should smile more!' written inside. I've always been shy and never been good at showing emotions, I could say that's a product of being the youngest of five children but that situation is just as likely to make one extroverted.

I wondered if smiling all day would make me feel happy, even when I wasn't but really it made me feel strained, like I was lying about something. I have a friend who's lived in France for a long time (she's an American) and she said that when she first moved there she would smile at everyone, say 'thank you' and 'have a nice day' to people she met until one day her partner (who is French) sat her down and explained the puzzled looks she'd been getting. In France they don't understand why you say something you don't truly mean, it's an empty phrase and they have no time for it. Similarly, why are you smiling at people you don't truly know, they aren't your friends and they don't expect it.

I noticed that when you smile broadly at people they tend to smile back at you, which can be pleasant but also awkward, perhaps as if you're now expected to strike up a conversation. I went about my normal daily activities while I was smiling and browsed in a few shops I don't usually go into that often. Clerks always ask you if you need help and if you're smiling broadly when you say no they look sated, which is an odd reaction.

While I was smiling I remembered when I used to walk home from school alone. I started to be allowed to walk home alone when I was around 13 and as I walked home at the same time everyday I would pass several older people on their way back from the supermarket. I would smile at them but never say a word. Every day for years just smiling at the people I passed as I walked home from school. They nearly always smiled back. I have no idea why I smiled at strangers like this except that probably my Nana told me it was good manners at some point and as the people I passed were about her age I wanted to please them.

It was an interesting experiment but I don't feel any different after it, I think if I was less timid then I would try to strike up conversations with strangers but the thought of doing that makes me feel a little bit sick. I think that's probably a good reason to challenge myself to it.

Week Three Walk One

I asked my husband, Brian, what cause is most important to him and he answered 'Education' without any hesitation. Brian is a teacher, right now he's teaching at a charter school in town but before that he taught at the SUSD and was made redundant following budget cuts in 2010. Education is important to him, not just because it's his job but because he believes it is the most important aspect of society. "Did you know that prisons look at the reading scores of 6th graders to decide how many extra prisons they're going to need to build in the following 20 years?" He says things like this to me all the time. When he was made redundant from his job Brian was probably the least surprised to discover that while the SUSD now has an average class size of above 30 they have continued to hire more administrators, obliterating teachers jobs.

I walked from our house to the local school, Blenman Elementary and using pavement chalks wrote out some of the things he has told me about Education over the years. I hope that someone at the school sees it and it makes them think.

Infernal Noise Brigade Discussion Points

I understand the idea of protest through noise, disrupting the traditional notion of a person holding up a sign 'human bleating' their lament at the injustices of the world but I don't really feel that either one is 'better' than the other, as Jennifer Whitney seems to suggest. Perhaps it's the fact that the INB were such a new form of protest and the shock value of it made people take more notice of what they were actually trying to say. I do not mean to say that all protests are futile but there is a sense of finality about the act of protest, it's more of a last-stand than anything else. The recent protests at tuition increases in England did not change anything in the status quo and society moved quietly on. Monsanto has successfully lobbied the FDA into submission so that they no longer have to tell people when they're consuming products that are genetically modified...so what has really changed in the last ten years? The transnationals are, if anything, more bloated than ever and the majority of people really have no idea of the world and their place in it. College doesn't do much to help, you take a couple of INDV classes and learn about the destruction of natural habitat all over the world so that you can live your comfortable life and still nothing changes. I don't have a solution, I am as much a culprit as anyone else. I always feel an intense emotional connection to protesters and think, 'fuck yeah, I'm going to quit my job and do things like that too!' then I remember I'm married and have other responsibilities. Not that the people in the video aren't married or have responsibilities but the important factor is that they are a community. They work as a community, sharing their responsibilities among themselves which gives them more real time to do what they want to do with their lives. I think about the communities where child-rearing is seen as a village effort, no one mother is alone in it like most of us are here in the West. There is a disconnection in society that means we no longer really have a community, yes we're all living in the same place but we don't connect or rely on each other - we're independent of one another. I feel like the protesters need to 'grow up' and infiltrate the corporate world, take their ideas inside the companies and change from within but it is near impossible to survive being tainted by the corporate world.

Whitney's article talks about the first 'public/private' collision taking place for the INB when they invaded a Starbucks and started to play. For me, this was the most effective and unexpected visual in her piece because we all expect protests to happen on the streets. We all expect the police to be hostile and gas you but what we don't expect is the protest to invade the comfortable sphere of our being in a coffee house. This approach is probably bound to incite more anger at the participants because it disrupts all peoples business but it is probably very effective at getting people to pay attention to why you're protesting.

I think about the Style Wars video gallery scene when I think about trying to take the INB into a gallery just by showing photographs or artifacts and for me it really wouldn't be as effective as the protest. The INB exists for the protest, it is a living, breathing organism as Whitney describes - they all knew signals on which beat to take up, how fast to walk, when to turn etc. To dissect it and place it in a museum would mute the message that the participants were trying to get across. Like in the Style Wars video, I am sure that the people visiting the gallery would feel moved by their experiences viewing parts of the INB but fundamentally the message would be different.

Who has the power in a protest, who is in charge? Are the protesters in charge because they have taken over the streets or are the police in charge because they hem the protesters in with their batons and riot gear (or whatever US police have - I'm more familiar with the UK riot police...surely the US police don't carry their guns to protests?) or are the corporations hosting international events in charge because it is ultimately their presence in a city that means protests will be organised there. All participants in protests have the power of their respective spheres, the protesters rule the streets, the police rule the sidelines and the multinationals rule the corporate world. All these spheres have the power over their representation and message, the protesters relay their message through their music, mission statements, slogans or by direct interview. The multinationals relay their message through 'impartial' news outlets, designed to undermine the message of the protesters but the police really don't have a say in what they do. A protest is most effective when the lines between those spheres blur and merge, just as in the Starbucks protest or in the Shell office protest described in the footnotes of Whitney's article. These protests are most effective because the participants behave in an unexpected manner which is the most disarming way to get your point across.

Style Wars Analysis

Style Wars is a Documentary from 1984 about the rise of several subcultures during that time, most notably the graffiti subculture.

Graffiti artists liked to work in areas where the trains were parked for a long time so that they were able to truly invest time in their work. "When you first against a train, it's like everything seems so big, like, wow! It's like you're in a yard of like metal giant, like I mean everything is like so hard and so steel like you're just there. You're like a little dude like in the midst of these metals and like you're here to produce something, well, like you're here to try to produce something." (Dondi, Style Wars). The tunnels that run under the city include some areas where the trains are parked for an hour or more. This gives the artists a great opportunity to spend some time working on the trains, however, if there is no train there or there is a guard the artists also work on the bare walls. It seemed like they used the walls as a bulletin board, exclaiming their presence to the other artists that work in the tunnels. Although the tunnels are underground, dark, damp and depressing they are bringing vibrant colourful life via their graffiti to the walls. Sometimes they come across abandoned tunnels or stations, which are like tombs or time-capsules. These kids are changing the face of those walls, giving them life again.

The urban poor in America are among the most oppressed groups in the country and most likely the hardest working. The myth of 'pulling yourself up by the bootstraps' is nearly always virulent but the audacity of youth sees it for the delusion it truly is. These hip-hop kids are breaking out against the system of repression as they see it. They do not want to fit in to the norms society has created for them and by creating wildly colourful displays in public places they hope to draw peoples eyes to the injustices that occur every day in the city. The kids talk about 'going all city' because that way other writers will see their name and then they will have power in their own group. The breakdancers are pushing against the boundaries set for 'dancing', gaining control over a medium that they invent. They are making their mark within society or making the dominant culture aware of their presence through their subversion.

The artists 'own' nothing in the subway in the true sense but they do own the subway through their creations, in a more metaphysical sense. They talk of knowing each other through their work, learning about one another by what they observe and even making enemies of other artists. Tagging on public spaces does extend ownership to the artist. Banksy is a great example of this because the majority of his work does not get painted over and is in fact cared for by the people who own the walls it is painted on (http://sfist.com/2010/05/02/chinatown_building_owners_lovingly.php). While Bansky is considered a professional artist I don't really see him any differently from the taggers in the documentary. They both have the same aims which is to undermine the establishment through their artwork. This is why Banksy continues to choose corporate/public spaces.

Graffiti and hip-hop culture are classless, which is why white kids or affluent kids are attracted to it. I feel like all teenagers want to subvert what is expected of them by the dominant culture or their own class. So the white kids want to play against the stereotype that they're 'good/obedient' kids and the poor kids want to show that they're not 'bad/disobedient' kids.

"People look at a person and like, 'What? You write on trains,' and, 'You vandalism,' and all that. Yeah, I vandalism alright, but still in general, I know what I'm doin'. I did somethin' to make your eyes open up, so why is you talkin'?" (Kase, Style Wars)

Kase makes the point that although he is technically breaking the law, as he sees it he is making people pay attention to the larger injustice that is taking place. I really agree with this and in my mind this is the best kind of art, that which seeks to illuminate the viewer to something which is happening all around them but that they are unaware of. This is why Banksy is so successful for me, especially his work on the wall in Palestine.

The work of Cap really annoyed me a lot, it seems so pointless to anyone but him and to have no real meaning to anyone but him. I felt like Cap was this bully like figure in the graffiti world, someone did something to annoy him at some point so he's ruining all their artwork for the rest of their lives. It seems so senseless whereas the work of someone like Kase has a point to it, it has a higher meaning. I feel like I shouldn't be so subjective about this, after all it makes me like the city official who says 'graffiti is the application of paint to a surface, is that art? I don't know' (paraphrasing). Why is it that the artwork of the burners is so much 'more' than the artwork of the bombers? It's a hard question to answer, like why are professional photographs any better than snapshots, apart from obvious technical superiority. Caps whole attitude about it annoyed me the most of all, he really sounded like a little kid whereas the actual little kids showed a lot more maturity than he did.

I feel like the gallery scene demonstrated that a lot of people don't understand the purpose (as I see it) behind graffiti. They see the pieces on canvas and think it's the same but it isn't. It's true that the colours are just as intense when painted onto canvas but what is missing is the message behind it. Graffiti is an attack on the establishment, art galleries are part of that establishment and when you put subversive art on canvas it loses part of its meaning (at least for me). I think it would be better to have the graffiti actually on the walls of the gallery but of course, you can't make money that way.

Week Two Walk Two

For this walk I decided to use an avoidance technique of wearing sunglasses indoors. I went to the Tucson Mall because I wanted to be sure that I would be passing people and outdoors in the summer in Tucson that's never guaranteed.

As I walked into the mall wearing my sunglasses I felt like I was avoiding someone I knew but didn't want to see. There were crowds of people inside but no one was paying me any particular attention. I went into a store and started browsing the racks and this is when I started to feel weird, like people were staring at me. I left the store and started to walk in the mall again, I felt far more comfortable walking in the mall than I had felt browsing in the store. My sunglasses are dark and cover a good portion of my face so they truly feel like a barrier. Walking around inside with them on made everything a purplish hue and I really felt very disconnected from everything that was going on around me. I sat down on a bench for a while and watched the people going by, a little boy asked his mum if I was blind but she hurried him along. That was something unexpected, I know blind people sometimes wear sunglasses but I started to feel like I had wrongfully elicited someones sympathy for a condition I do not have. This made me feel the most uncomfortable of all and I decided to take my sunglasses off.

Repeating my walk of the mall without my sunglasses on I felt much more at ease and found myself actually trying to look people in the eye but unsurprisingly, no one really did - or if our eyes did connect they swiftly looked away. I went into a store again and started to browse the racks, I felt much more at ease this time and didn't feel like anyone was staring at me.

I think I learned that the expectations of society matter more to me now than I ever thought they would when I was a punk kid. I felt uncomfortable from wearing my sunglasses inside because I was worried about what other people would think, when really very few people either noticed or cared.