Title: Untitled

Medium: Digital image 

Quote:

“A certain intellectual tradition rooted in the writings of Walter Benjamin and Guy Debord states that the aestheticization and spectacularization of politics, including political protest, are bad things because they divert attention away from the practical goals of political protest and towards its aesthetic form. And this means that art cannot be used as a medium of a genuine political protest—because the use of art for political action necessarily aestheticizes this action, turns this action into a spectacle and, thus, neutralizes the practical effect of this action.”

Comment:

I feel as if I have been attempting to fish up all of the emotions I have towards the concept of Art Activism for the past couple of years; this article basically just put dynamite in the water. In light of the recent political office changes in Washington the grand gesture of being apart of the progressive culture is to be incongruently conducting your expressions in the form of a counterculture. Which is tremendous...Until the unstoppable consequence of a new, enormous thing appears, having its conceptual entirety warped and dissected for personal expansion. With such a platform for the simple idea of creating something visually stimulating conducted under the decision making process of satisfying a form of protest (political or societal) to be considered as an Artistic work inherently works only in favor to the opposing side.  More specifically of why I feel that is, is because a creation with the representation of itself having a questionable credibility in terms of the motivations behind it. The drive from the artist propelling the gesture of a movement is then to create a “spectacle” which drives the core, true, values of what is actually trying to be changed into nothing more than hypocritical, self-indulged, content. The moment hypocrisy enters the space of either a protest or an artwork the sincerity and beauty behind the energy spent is completely wasted.

Question

Self Directed Practice 3 

Meme Mini-highway, 2017

“wood destroyer”

student Id: 5507619

As artist we rely extensively on creativity and are often told the advantages of being a creative thinker. As it is, most of our biggest accomplishments and strides in developments such as technology, medicine, and science arrived from creative people who came up with solutions to situations that were not explored or considered at the time. Though people like Albert Einstein, Steve Job, Charles Darwin, etc, are often attributed with revolutionizing the world and how we live and view it, most inventive minds are not seen that way. As stated in the exert from Jessica Olien’s article “ Inside the box”, “People are biased against creative thinking” Often times people view these creative individuals radical ideas as too crazy or plain stupid and just cast them aside. While their ideas may be innovative, people will often times go with a widely accepted basis of what is “correct” or “true” then a brand new view that conflicted entirely with the way we were taught. An example of this was when earth was believed to be the center of the universe and the Bibles idea of creationism. While these were widely accepted theories, new theories arose that trumped the pre-conceived notions that were set. Hence, the thoughts of a heliocentric galaxy and theory of evolution was largely denounced by the people of the time. I do not believe our underlying problem is change but rather how we are taught and told what is acceptable and unacceptable. Through out our time in school we are forced to conform and are disciplined by our instructors to do so. Its is thanks to this strict adherence to what is right and wrong that we are made to be afraid of branching out and experimenting or just trying something new as it will result in failure. Ultimately, it is the strict guidelines set up by the school systems as well as their lack of a silver-lining that inhibits us from performing creative ventures and instead uses grades as either a badge of shame or of praise.