#assessment1

Assessment 1: Reverse Tonal Portrait

Final Artwork: ‘1:26′

I am intrigued by Paul Laszlo’s concept of Atomville. In 1954, Popular Mechanics published an article by Laszlo outlining what his concepts were for American future living in 2004, a place he called Atomville. In this place, most travel is done by flying, with cars only used for short trips around the town. To accomodate this, all the houses are built underground with landing strips for helicopters and ‘convertiplanes’ on top of them.

‘Because of increased population, land would be at a premium, so Laszlo envisioned "three-level use of a lot:  living below the surface, landing on it and traveling above it."’

http://mid2mod.blogspot.com/2011/02/paul-laszlos-atomville.html

Also included in the article is an idea for an underground bomb shelter, which shows a further possible method of underground living.

This whole idea gives a very interesting perspective on what a future world may be like, and consequently how humans would have to live and interact with the environment differently to accommodate it.

FINAL POSTER (double-sided)

Poster: Informal Vote

For this assessment I responded to the second research topic, regarding the canonisation of rebellion in art history. The prompt suggests that rebellion must be an original action, but because rebellion has become a canonical technique, that, in contemporary practice, rebellion is impossible. The work serves as a proposition for what a contemporary rebellion would look like.

Initially, my research began with analysis of a Calvin and Hobbes strip, ‘Metal’. From this, I determined the key to genuine rebellion was the sincerity of the action. In art, wherever sincerity appears in excess, camp often appears alongside it. This led me to Sontag’s Notes on “Camp” which informed the remainder of my assessment.

My work serves as a metaphor for a rebellious action, specifically rebellion against mandatory voting. The ability to vote is often regarded as a privilege, however, when made mandatory not only do you disregard this privilege, you also eliminate the option of abstinence. Under this system, if someone wishes to abstain from voting they must submit an informal vote.

I see intentional submission of an informal vote to be an ideal way to rebel in contemporary society. The action’s ethos borrows heavily from that of 70s and 80s punk culture (that of antiauthoritarianism and individual liberty), yet subverts these attitudes to be more appropriate for a modern person. It assumes the guise of civility and keeps the actor safe from repercussion, yet down the line wastes the time of vote counters and contributes to the ever-growing statistics indicating public frustration and dissatisfaction with our current mode of government.

Sontag’s defines camp as “love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” I tried to harness this with the poster, utilizing the exaggerated and the absurd in order to project onto (and therefore reveal) the ridiculousness of the AEC. It is often said that it is not the lawmaker who incites social change but the artist. My ambition is not that great, but hopefully I have done enough to breed doubt in an individual who might not have felt so otherwise.

References:

Sontag, S ‘Notes on “Camp”’ Camp: queer aesthetics and the performing subject: a reader (1964): 53-65.

http://www.rookiemag.com/2015/02/tiny-rebellions/Final work.

Rebellion is the act of going against the rules to try to invoke change. Since rebellion has now become a norm, nobody really is inspired by simple rebellion art because it has now been demoted to purely just art. The question of whether rebellions have any power to rally the society since they have been canonised in art is a complex issue that has many layers behind it. Rebellion is still very present in our modern day society, however as united protests and demands have become ineffective and less popular, individual rebellions are slowly increasing. People have begun to rebel for the way that they feel unhappy with how their lives are- this may include negative forms of release like drinking or smoking, or personal protests for change such as breaking female stereotypes. I communicated this by photoshopping such personal forms of rebellion onto the fragile petals of a floral background to suggest that in our everyday world, there are always secrets and individual problems that people face. The quote in the rose petals is by Kaveh Sharooz, former senior policy adviser to global affairs Canada, commenting on the Iranian uprising currently fighting for better food and pay conditions. I decided to use a play on words to create my poster, by producing a false quote from an authoritative government figure. The quote, “What I’ll conclude with is; we are proud to tell you that rebelling no longer exists from this day forward.” is supposed to invoke a sense of oppression and loss of hope for those who want change. However, as you shine a torch across the grey words, certain words become highlighted, revealing the secret message “what are you rebelling for?” This is meant to suggest that although creative rebellions have been canonised into art, individuals are still fighting for what they want for every single day, as well as provoke the responder to try to answer the question as a final impression of the work.

references:

B. Fishel., Morpheus, [website], 2015,  https://www.thisismorpheus.com/2015/12/the-art-of-rebellion-in-the-21st-century/, (accessed on 15 Aug 2018)

T. Glavin., The uprising in Iran: ‘This is what revolution looks like’, [website], 2018, https://www.macleans.ca/news/world/the-uprising-in-iran-this-is-what-revolution-looks-like/, (accessed on 15 Aug 2018)