Archive for January 2015

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round robin: queen of doom

QUEEN OF DOOM & CO.

Veronica Lizard, Queen of Doom, slays skeletons and rat-people in the Underworld after school to pay her way through community college.

Susanica Lizard, princess of Doom, follows her sister to the Underworld entrace,
and tattles to her parents, Bluebelly and Komodo.

So Bluebelly Lizard leaped down to the underworld wearing a speed-o to slay Hades and save then ground his daughter. 
As I hung out with Hades in the Underworld, my Dad barged in out of nowhere! What is he wearing?! He is so embarrassing and ruins everything.
My dad destroyed the underworld with his ridiculous imitation of a clown.

END.

 Artist Statement:
Just like The Exquisite Corpse, Round Robin was very collaborative and could not be done alone. Doing the Round Robin reminds you of many other collaborative projects including, the production company hitRECord, the documentary Life In A Day and the art of remixing songs. With song mixes in particular, the original piece is reconstructed into something never meant by the original author. DJ Spooky emphasizes this. You take something, reimagine it then “juxtapose, fragment, flip the script.” Every round we did this and the end result was very different then the person before could have imagined. Because there were different minds and voices in each part of the stories, the form, content, narrative and theme tended to change but each story complemented the one before. There is no telling how it will end up. Writing such short stories made it so the reader had to fill in the gaps. This made it easier for the next person to write the next part and continue it on in a unique way. It is interesting to see how each story connects and the things people chose to connect and continue through. If the order had been changed, the stories would have been very different. Round Robin gave me a greater understanding of the collaborative process. Collaborative projects are meant to inspire and make an original idea better though the use of multiple perspectives. When you build something together you become connected.
In addition to being highly collaborative, it was a uniquely self-revealing project, which gave insight into the mind and imagination of each individual.  Much discussion could be had based on the similarities and tendencies of each individual to continue each distinct story in a certain way.  For example, while contributing to five different stories, one writer may tend to one specific theme or plot direction overall.  While the process lead to out-of-the-box thinking, perhaps it shows that what resides outside the box is what exists deepest in a person’s cultural background and traditional beliefs.
It was interesting to see what stories looked like as they went by. Since we only got to see one picture per story, it was awesome to wonder how the story had become what it was. It felt like a really good exercise for the mind to imagine how a story could possibly get to some weird points. It was kind of fun to try and come up with something creative in hopes that the person after you would laugh or smile at the picture that you sent them. Obviously they were not stories to send to Hollywood or anything, but they may have sparked some ideas for some of us.

Working as a group was also a helpful thing to experience and learn. We could have been a little bit more organized at the beginning to help us all make sure we were doing the right stories, but other than that, we worked hard to work out any problems that we faced. I’m glad that we were able to experience that since it is something that we will have to deal with all the time in the real world. It is good to see that we can handle something like this maturely and respect each others work.

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music mosaic













In a lot of ways, "Sleeping on the Roof" by the Flaming Lips is predictable, pedantic even: the same little riff of a couple plodding notes is replayed over and over without much variation. But then there are there suddenly these bizarre, space alien laser noises that start at 1:32 and reoccur sporadically through the rest of the piece, and the combination of these two opposing (feelings)--the predictable and the uncouth--made me think of human thoughts and emotions, which spin and thunk and pivot and fester. That's the reason I chose to give manifestation to the thoughts of various people and character trapped in still-form, people who--like the song--have no words or lines, and thus they could be feeling anything; perhaps they're feeling beautiful and powerful, like Diana Ross with her crown to symbolize strength and regality, or perhaps they're simply worrying about dinner like Sailor Venus. All people feel the pains of stress and responsibility--the target on President Obama's back--and all people have fears and doubts--Hitler's warning exclamation point. The point of the images is that people are sometimes more complicated and uncertain and unwieldy than they might seem, the same way the song is more complex and dynamic than it seems upon first listen. Everything is full of layers and oddity. Everything fits together strangely.

Similarly, the thoughts/feelings of a person might not match their outer persona, the creature they show the rest of the world, and that's why the people in the photos are black and white and their feeling/thought emojis are colorful, bright. It's like what Annie Dillard says about not being able to see the full spectrum of color and light. We cannot see every thought or feeling that a person has, only what they choose to display outwardly. The laser noises don't match the melancholy of the rest of the song. The placid face of the teenage girl hearing some wordless secret doesn't match her inner horror. Everything fits together strangely.

The pattern of the song seems obsessive, like when the mind gets stuck on something and keeps turning it over and over. In the pictures, each "character" is thinking about a single thing, feeling a single thing; this single-mindedness reflects the obsessive repetitiveness of the music, it shows minds getting stuck in a rut of compulsion and mania and preoccupation with a single emotion or thought. Like the song, these people can't get out of their patterns, and thus they're stuck in a still format--photographs--and even their emotions and thoughts are frozen in time. Everything fits together strangely.

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thinking & writing: will "nobody's empire" end oppression?


Will Belle and Sebastian's "Nobody's Empire" music video end oppression? First of all: no. "Nobody's Empire" will not end oppression. This is not to say that the video isn't an inspiring or hopeful piece of art, or that it won't motivate its viewers to be active in fighting injustice. Belle and Sebastian and video directors Blair Young and Stuart Murdoch certainly aren't saying/showing anything that would harm the progress of ending oppression. The video is an archive of both the exquisite and the macabre, and it uses this juxtaposition of beauty and horror to convey the sensation of suppression and dread in images of flowering trees or flying birds next to images of young people being shot in the head or hospital IV's. In the recurring master shot in the video, a crippled woman, a young man wearing 1940's-era garb, and a woman dancing with a machine gun are grouped together in a way that evokes revolution and resistance. Meanwhile, the song lyrics, too, project a sense of urgency and a call for action: "Intellect, ambition, they fell away; they locked me up for my own good," Belle and Sebastian front man Stuart Murdoch sings in the third verse, and then later, "On the edge of nobody's empire, if we live by books and we live by hope, does that make us targets for gunfire?" The images combined with the lyrics make a good case for fighting oppression; they're stirring and exhilarating and noble. That said, there will be no big uprising in reaction to this music video, there will be no sea change, as it were, just because of the line, "You're a quiet revolution, marching with the crowd, singing dirty and loud for the people's emancipation."

The "Nobody's Empire" video is simply too nice. It's too pretty and inspirational and upbeat. Revolutions don't start on the backs of good lighting and modern dance and pictures of sunny meadows. Even including the more "disturbing" images in "Nobody's Empire," like a bomb going off and destroying a city, the video is still too full of flowers and babies and couples holding hands to really spark any uproars. The video doesn't say "Look how horrible everything is, we must fix it," it says, "Some things are bad, but the good stuff overshadows the bad stuff." That's a wonderful, important message to send, but it's not going to start or end any wars. It's not going to change anything at all, really. 

One of the biggest problems is the intended audience of the music video. "Nobody's Empire" is aimed at Belle and Sebastian's target audience: primarily North American and European listeners to have access to the luxuries of funky, nontraditional alt. pop. It is not directed at those being critically oppressed in the world, simply because those who suffer from major oppression like tyrannical governments or extreme poverty don't even have access to the publication of this music video. So they're not benefiting from viewing it because they're not viewing it.

Moreover, the video demands change, but doesn't gets its hands dirty. It portrays violence and hunger and war in cursory glimpses, but nothing graphic. There's nothing really shocking or dangerous in it because---as terrible as it may be---we (a collective society) are very accustomed to the consequences of violence and hunger and war. We're used to it. 

A good example of an anti-oppression movement that had the balls, if you will, to really put their beliefs into action is the Russian feminist Riot Grrrl punk band/protest group, Pussy Riot. In 2011, the group of eleven masked women started doing guerrilla performances around Moscow, making statements about women's rights and LGBTQA rights, plus opposing the inconsistencies and injustices established by Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The demonstrations were vulgar and combative and profane. In a strict and oppressed system like Russia, all these acts were illegal and resulted in the arrest and incarceration of three of Pussy Riot's members, and later, their public assault. However, due to the radical nature of Pussy Riot's demonstrations, the world clamored around Pussy Riot and their subversive ideals for change. "Free Pussy Riot" became an international campaign, and a slogan for gender rights and freedom of speech. Following the arrests, there were protests all over the world and political upheaval in Russia that finally ended with the release and amnesty of not only the Pussy Riot members, but also other "high-profile" Russian political prisoners who had "disturbed the peace" like members of Greenpeace. Pussy Riot is an example of an artistic movement that wasn't afraid of getting a little bit ugly---they didn't juxtapose their messages next to pretty landscapes or happy children like in the "Nobody's Empire" video---but sometimes ugliness and trauma is the only way to make change actually happen.

"Nobody's Empire" has a phenomenal message---it's a good reminder, it makes you think---but it's too tame to actively fight oppression. It's not going to change anybody's mind, only reinforce their current beliefs and opinions about oppression. 

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