Process Notes:

I choose to make a banner as my assignment this week. I wanted to do this because it seemed the most out-of-the-ordinary, and because I’ve always been super bad at doing crafty things, so I thought it might be fun to try to force myself to. I also wanted to think about what type of succinct message someone from my extended family—or just someone more representative of “Trump’s America,” who feels very removed from the intellectual elite environment we have here—might want to say to people at a place like UChicago. I’ve also struggled to describe or “sum up” my social issue / topic, and I figured the word constraint in a banner would be a useful challenge. I wanted to highlight the sort of irony of intellectualizing the struggle of the proletariat as members of a type of elite (by the fact that we have access to the resources of an institution like UChicago). So I cut out the letters for the words from  a copy I have of Weber’s The Protestant Work Ethic. I also thought this added another layer because it’s a book that most of us have to read for the UChicago core classes. I made the background by cutting out covers of various New Yorker magazines because, again, this magazine symbolizes a community and dialogue of the intellectual elite. Generally, the process of making the banner was super new and different for me. It took a lot of time and patience to cut everything out, but it was really fun and satisfying to make something tactile, which made me think of the desire to craft something that Layli Long Soldier talked about with her quilting project. I will bring the banner to class, but I was super worried that the New Yorker cover pages might rip before or on the way given that they are very thin, so I figured I’d include a picture now. Hopefully my toes and the background of my carpet are not too distracting.

In order to slightly alter the viewpoint of my project on nuance in political discourse, I decided to specifically focus on one phenomenon I’ve noticed online recently, the increase in people using the phrases “beyond a doubt,” “without a doubt,” etc. I decided to show this phenomenon with a looping PowerPoint, showing the participation in this trend by people on all sides of the spectrum. It was challenging to fit the entire tweet in the frame at times, but I realized sometimes it wasn’t actually important to the point I was trying to make. As you might’ve guessed, the last tweet is the one that triggered the project, and as such appears longer and in full at the end of the loop.

beyond a doubt

Below is a picture of my creative assignment, which I will also bring to class on Wednesday:

Process Notes:

Inspired by the Bread and Puppet Theatre’s “40 How-Tos,” I wrote three how-tos on womanhood. I admit that mine ended up being more directly “instructional” than those of the Bread and Puppet Theatre, but I felt that this was necessary for my work’s relationship with social change. While writing and drawing, I kept in mind the afterword to “40 How-Tos.” I hope that I was able to make a statement in this short piece of work. The form of the manual was one that I wouldn’t have thought to use to tackle the issue of gender equality or social issues in general, but I liked how the format allowed me to represent the idea that society is constantly “instructing” women on how to look and act. I also enjoyed drawing illustrations to go with the words, and I’d be curious to hear from others what they added to and/or subtracted from my message.

I was very struck by Peter Schumann’s first assertion in “The Old Art of Puppetry In The New World Order” that puppetry is a form of art and performance that can exist without speech or language – as he put it, “Puppet theater has a talent to manage without language!” To me, as someone who, in regard to creative pursuits, primarily writes, this concept about making a statement without language is interesting and somewhat foreign to me. After reading Schumann’s work, I started thinking a lot about leaving space for silence, especially while I watched the “Bread & Puppet: Grasshopper Rebellion Circus – Naked Truth Pageant – Hallelujah” video. I do think the characters in the masks were able to convey certain emotions and to connect with the audience in a different way because we are paying more attention to their gestures and body language, and not pre-occupied or biased by what’s coming out of their mouths. Thinking about this also reminded me of the moments of silence in Drnaso’s Sabrina and how they were able to convey poignancy in a new, gut-feeling way, especially in regard to moments of grief.

I also wanted to note the piece on p. 34 of “40 How To’s” called “How to Transform Unwanted Noise Into Music.” This is something I like to do somewhat unconsciously, especially when I am at home in New York City, which is always filled with unenjoyable sounds. I thought this piece did a good job at capturing the sense of making the unbearable bearable and even enjoyable while still also being somewhat annoyed about it. I also really liked this idea of “assigning the ear a brand new task,” because I feel like I rarely think of my ear as an entity that can learn anything new anymore.

Manifesto:

We address the powers that be on this planet, the shrouded men who carry the world of knowledge in their briefcases, who decide where the sun goes, who concoct the shape of alphabets, who play politics like a worn-out game of checkers, who choose which is left and which is right. We ask them to reach deep into the velvet bag of power and like Prometheus once bestowed fire upon man, we ask that they give to women a voice.

Who, exactly, are we? We are women – that is, we are any person who has ever called herself woman or been called woman. We is me, and it might be you. We are any person who fears walking alone at night, jogging from the warm beam of one streetlamp to another, desperate to stay in the light. We are any person who looks back on history and fears that it will resurge like a dusty tsunami and that she, too, will become only womb. Above all, we are any person that chooses to be “we,” that will join us in our pussy-hatted march.

Let us be clear: when we ask for a voice, we mean a voice that will be heard in the halls of power at the top of great mountains. Women already have a voice and have been shouting for quite some time now. Perhaps you’ve heard even us screaming on streets, in hospital beds, or lying on the grass. We simply ask for certain men, who may or may not be named Mitch McConnell, to drag their rotten heads out of the sand in which they’ve buried it, to clean their ears, and to listen. And we are only asking because it is the polite thing to do and we have been socialized to be polite and old habits die hard and we are trying our best.

Let us speak to power. Let us be power.

Please (but read that in a very angry, very nasty voice that bites like a pink asp).

While we are here, we have a list of other polite demands. We want pencil skirts to be burned, except maybe a few which we can keep in a museum along with other instruments of torture. The pencil skirt, a staple of the businesswoman’s wardrobe, binds the legs together like a twisted mermaid and only allows a wearer to move her feet four inches forward with each step. We are quite literally trying to run a race with our legs tied together, and we will not do it anymore.

We reclaim the colors pink and red and we also will be keeping blue, green, orange, purple. We will wear power suits or bikinis or potato sacks in any color we choose, and we reject the attachment of any meaning to our plumage.

We need to re-visit the Disney princess movies. We understand that they are part of our cultural heritage, but so are a lot of things that we definitely don’t teach children to emulate (we hope), like the conquistadors and Harvey Weinstein . As for the princesses, Moana, Mulan, Anna and Elsa are fine. The rest are on thin f***ing ice. The Sleeping Beauty film should come with a manual about how to teach your daughter to never, ever, ever be OK with being kissed while she is in a coma.

We thank you for your time. If you are of the male persuasion and confused, do not worry, we trust your mothers or sisters or girlfriend or girl friends will explain why this is important to you later.

Process Notes: For this piece, I really just wanted to have a little fun with it and make my points in a very weird way. In some ways like Bread and Puppets, I wanted to embrace the absurdity and found that doing so was a good writing exercise. One thing that I was thinking about while writing is that I didn’t want to make a hard binary between man and woman or to be exclusionary in any way. I would love any suggestions on how to be more successful with that.

Untitled 3

*Text of the cross: We demand that this symbol no longer represents the silencing and erasing of queer students attending Catholic schools around the world, and rather provides a space where individuals feel loved, supported, and welcomed schools and that these communities encourage coversations regarding identity and diversity so as to ensure that not one more queer kid grows up in love. 

To the administration and staff of St. Ignatius College Prep: 

Along with this cross we write this manifesto on behalf of queer faculty and staff, and any queer or questioning student who roams your halls like we did. I write this manifesto because you know damn well that your administration does not give a shit about queer people: eliminating support groups and public clubs related to LGBT matters, removing the word “gay,” “queer,” or “LGBT” from any kind of educational and religious discourse, and even firing your dedicated staff when their gayness becomes known to the student body. Your proud Jesuit mission of “Men and Women for Others” doesn’t mean shit when you don’t include queer people in your mission, because “that’s what the Catholic Church would do.” A change is long overdue. 

Here are our other demands: 

WE DEMAND fundamental changes to your school policy and treatment of LGBT people.

WE DEMAND that rhetoric like this be removed from your school and be replaced with a more sensitive way to address LGBT people. 

WE DEMAND you add sexual orientation and gender identity to your non-discrimination policy. 

WE DEMAND that the support group be reinstated, and that an LGBT club can publicly meet on school grounds.

WE WILL NOT TOLERATE this blatant discrimination that has ruined lives any longer.

Sincerely, 

The queer community of St. Ignatius College Prep

Process Notes: I was very much inspired by Layli Longsoldier’s formatting of some of her poetry in Whereas to format this manifesto; I used a demand and shaped it in the form of the cross, and this creates a focused and interactive response in the readers. Something I struggled with in this piece was trying not to keep repeating the issues I bring up in previous pieces in an attempt to avoid being too repetitive.

The New Southern Woman’s Creed-2

TW: Utilization of sensitive language

Process Notes: For this week’s writing, I was inspired, in part, by the form of Marinetti’s “The Futurist Manifesto.” I wanted to begin with this sort-of repetitive preface to the actual content of the work in order to mirror the structure of many similar gatherings that I have witnessed, such as Cotillion classes or church meetings. We’ve generally moved away from the Southern Belle era by this point, so I liked the idea of trying to recreate an identity. I also wanted to play around with slight, momentary shifts in tone, especially from point to point in the list section in order to play up the complexity of the demographic. I thought that putting it in a two-column format and including the flower images would make it more poster- or handout-like.

WEEK 9 WRITING EXERCISE

^linked to PDF form

Process Notes: I wanted to merge the forms of manifesto and instruction manual to come up with a post-breakup code for those identifying as women after a relationship with a man. This merger represents the amalgamation of many of the tropes and facts I’ve learned through my research on the topic in the course of this class, manifesting that in a sort of pass-down lesson to women in the future. I utilized the footnote, as well, in way that I hope reflects the ways we’ve seen it used in the readings. I struggled with where to draw the line between sarcasm and seriousness — I think if I choose to put this in the final project, I may have to pick one or the other and really dig into it. I would appreciate feedback on whether the piece reads as too in-between sarcasm and seriousness, and if so, how I should proceed.

In “On Chinese Acting,” Bertolt Brecht completely subverted my understanding of “good” theater, writing, or other forms of art. I’ve always thought that the goal of such work is to create empathy within the audience; the more that the viewer is enveloped by emotion provoked by the characters and plot, the better. This strategy, Brecht says, is characteristic of the European theatre. The Chinese theater, however, is characterized by the alienation effect through which “Any empathy on the spectator’s part is thereby prevented from becoming total, that is, from being a complete self-surrender” (131). It seems as though this distance created between the audience and the events of the play challenges the notion that the work has to feel “real” to be successful. In a way, more agency is placed in the hands of the audience members. Rather than being “tricked” into feeling as though the fiction that’s presented is reality, an audience member “feels his way into the actor as into an observer. In this manner an observing, watching attitude is cultivated” (131). 

Kat’s point that “the meaning attached to historical context is rendered void by the success with which the European acting style recreates reality” made me wonder how this technique could be a useful tool when creating art that’s intended to inspire social change. As audience members, we are made to interpret certain events through the lens of a repeated message. Viewing the “mundane” with the significance imparted on it by the theatre over time removes the power from the audience and is probably more prone to promoting conventional interpretations of happenings without questioning them. Perhaps the ability to make audience members more aware during their consumption of issues that have been “refracted,” as we’ve been discussing, through this alternative approach to theatre would allow for social issues to be viewed through a new lens with heightened awareness.

Bertolt Brecht’s “On Chinese Acting” explores the concept of cognitive dissonance within the realm of acting, as well as specific types of acting. Specifically, Brecht poses the example of a scene in which “a girl leaves her family to take a job in a big city,” and as her mother hands over the girl’s packed bags, she says, “well, I think that’ll be enough.” Brecht explores the considerations that must go into acting a such a line through a comparison of Chinese and European acting techniques. Brecht’s philosophy dictates that giving a mundane event the significance of a theater production necessitates — when done well — the acknowledgment of the deliberate efforts on part of the actor to make the mundane event appear significant. The definition of what exactly is mundane is, after all, predicated upon history and the “historical nature of a given social condition.” The event of a girl leaving home to go work some place else is commonplace, having taken place millions of times as a normal, expected facet of society. Therefore, the mundanity of an event is historically contextualized. To avert the cognitive dissonance that inevitably arises upon the masking of what is an objectively mundane event, with painted-on (subjective) significance no less, further necessitates “handing [the mother’s line] over for criticism.” Such “handing over” is inherently a mutual act, with the actor of the mother being the “giver” and the audience being the “receiver.” This act is displayed to its fullest potential with the alienation effect, precluding the mirage of an actor so ensconced in their own play that they aren’t conscious of their own action of giving. Brecht’s interpretation of Chinese acting is engaging in the depth with which it analyzes the audience’s psyche to the level of the subconscious — however, at the same time leaves one questioning the merits of straining for the impossible — bridging that cognitive dissonance with such sincerity and skill that even the audience forgets the historical context of an action or line. Or, even better, the meaning attached to historical context is rendered void by the success with which the European acting style recreates reality.