Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai is probably one of the bravest people on the face of the earth. This week, she was shot in the head and neck by Taliban members as she was leaving school. She's 14, and the reason they shot her was because she's been a global advocate for the rights of woman and girls, and their education for years; since she was 11 actually. This tiny person was targeted by the Taliban. Targeted, meaning she was a threat... a 14 year old girl was a threat to men who carry guns like they're permanently attached to their hips. I read dozens of news articles regarding the shooting, and one said something along the lines of, "...it shocked an unshockable country (Pakistan)" This was really poignant. Think about it. We get shocked when we see a show like Fear Factor, where people eat bugs and voluntarily fling themselves from skyscrapers. For the people of Pakistan, for example, they have endured so much they are "unshockable". Actually they'd probably think some crazy westerner was nuts for flinging themselves off a skyscraper too. But the sentence was thought provoking for sure. The shooting of Malala has shocked the world, I think, and rightly so. We should be shocked! Everyone should hear her story and that's what I've been thinking these last few days.

I have been working predominantly on this blog for the greater part of this year, on - at times - very political subjects. The Internet is a space of global sharing where you can say and do as you please (as I have many times reiterated, apologies) with less potential scrutiny then perhaps if you were to be physically expressing the information or ideas you release on your blog or other social media forum. It does not mean that those who blog or express themselves via digital means are not subject to potential physical abuse or are not held accountable for their words or actions, I just mean that I can write this post about Malala Yousafzai and if someones reading it, if so inclined, could post a comment saying something along the lines of "shut your blabbering pie hole", or numerous variations. Unless of course they were my neighbour and could egg my house or light my rubbish bin on fire... don't do it.

So you get what I mean.
It's a place to share, like sharing has never been done before!

This year I've especially looked at Jacques Ranciere and his writings like The Emancipated Spectator and the Ignorant Schoolmaster. I've studied and experimented with The Emancipated Spectator mostly and have been really interested in Relational Aesthetics, and replacing the word 'viewer' with 'Interlocutor' ("someone who is involved in a conversation" - Cambridge Dictionary), a term introduced to me by Andy. Simply, I wanted my work to be open to anyone and everyone, non discriminatory, non assuming or dictatorial. I think it's wiggled it's way through different forms and mediums, and ended up (surprisingly!) here, my research blog for Year II. In addition to this, the aspect of vast advancements in technology to create a futuristic, perhaps, utopic or distopic world in the novels and films of Science Fiction (big nerd) has also been a heavy interest for me this year, starting at the very beginning with my newspaper paintings.This relates to my blog in so many ways, as I said before, this is sharing platform which has never been done before. This advancement in our own world, has opened up communication into a whole new realm and it's only just beginning. It's changed our human nature; the way we encounter eachother and the world around us. We are living two lives at once, one in the digital and one in the physical.

Is this post, if not all posts, the embodiment of this thinking? A sharing of information, not dictatorial in nature but evoking in thought and potential activation. Perhaps a "share" or a "like" will occur, as we often use these actions to express a confirmation of listening or agreement. Maybe a disgruntled comment or a further action to dismantle the very forum I'm working on.
These are the ideas of my work, that have grown from the paintings in March, of creepy trees on the foreground of American Newspapers.

As for Malala Yousafzai, maybe I can help to share her story of courage and compassion. At 14 years old she's got more bravery then many people I've met in my life.

On wednesday, surgeons operated to remove the bullet that was lodged so close to her brain, and she survived! Amazing! Perhaps she will live to tell her own story, and tell the Taliban to shove it up their ass.

Read about Malala and her survival here

(One of many, many articles)

Pick a city, any city.

LA
New York
Chicago
Montreal
San Francisco
Boston
San Diego
Philadelphia
Atlanta
Detroit
Houston
Minneapolis
Portland
Austin
Baltimore
Denver
Phoenix

Surveillance, from the comfort of your living room.

Wafaa Bilal

Domestic Tension

2007

http://wafaabilal.com/works/

"Iraqi born Wafaa has become known for provocative interactive video installations. Many of Bilal's projects over the past few years have addressed the dichotomy of the virtual vs. the real.

He attempts to keep in mind the relationship of the viewer to the artwork, one of his main objectives being to transform the normally passive experience of viewing art into an active participation."

"...his latest effort, Domestic Tension, viewers can log onto the internet to contact or "shoot" Bilal with paintball guns. Bilal's objective is to raise awareness of virtual war and privacy, or lack thereof, in the digital age."

http://wafaabilal.com/works/

 I won't say much, as I'm not feeling well today, but this work was incredibly interesting. It addresses so many things-as does so much of Bilal's work- but what relates back to my interests and issues within my work, is the use of the Internet. It's almost like a video game, where you log on and shoot at people, only this time it's real.
It's like any kind of confrontation on the internet, these days. You can call someone something horrid, you can be anyone you wouldn't normally be in real life, and not have to worry about the consequences as such; there is no face value.

Earlier today I was also lead to this website - www.blueservo.com, where you can log on and watch surveillance cameras along the Texas/Mexico boarder. It reminded me of a site where you can listen to live police radio feeds, paired with atmospheric music. Listen here.
I always liked listening to the Minneapolis feed.

These three things may seem only slightly relative, but to me it's much more. I haven't figured everything out yet, but listening to the feeds from the police radios and watching the surveillance videos are two things one would think were illegal right? With the birth of the internet, we can all spy on one another, listen in to eachother cities, I just heard that some dude drove his car into a house in New York. It's an experience, it makes us seem so much closer, a lot less different. Maybe this post is just me thinking out loud, but Bilal's work started something today that I'm rather excited about. All this talk about Social Media and the net, about Science Fiction narratives etc etc... perhaps this is an avenue worth taking. Too many ideas in one basket! Blah!  

Man Bartlett - #24hKith

Speaking of social media.....

"Complete the sentence "I AM..." and tag it: #24hKith"

Image and film acquired from here.

'Love You Up' - Two Inch Punch

A brilliant response from Sandro Kopp...

Sandro Kopp, a figurative artist well known for his Skype portraiture, was one of my chosen artists for Theory's, Curate and Critique.
I emailed Kopp about using his images for the presentation, I also stated that I felt as though figurative work is less appreciated nowadays, but that his work has given me hope.
He replied, and not only did he say yes to my use of his images, he also said this:

"There is SO MUCH appreciation of figurative contemporary work nowadays. Don't let those suckers tell you anything else."

Thank you Sandro Kopp, for being 100% BOSS.

Check out his work here: it's frickin incredible.

Claire Bishop is a baddass, who can write a sweet article.

"In other words, relational art works seek to establish inter subjective encounters (be these liberal or potential) in which meaning is elaborated collectively rather then in the privatized space of individual consumption."

-Claire Bishop, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics

I think this has a ton to do with what I've been thinking about recently in terms of blogging, and sharing of information. This is a research blog, to show what I'm reading, what I'm looking at, to back up my folders and research for Studio II. I post things that I read, watch, listen to, experience, but I also post things that I want to share with others, most of which are in my year group who may, or may not, be interested in what I have found while researching. 

Firstly, I made my blog public- not private so that only those I choose are allowed to see - and I did this because this act of making my blog private, reminded me of deliberate exclusion or withholding of collective information. I deliberately made it public so that those who wanted to share, take part in discussion or simply just read any articles I put up, can.

What am I but a speck in the blogisphere; a tiny, talking page with a follow number of 9. But this is not my first time in the blogging world; I made my first blog in mid-2009, my last year of High School. The two blogs, one on Blogspot and one on Tumblr, were purely aesthetic I think. I posted and re-posted photographs, drawings, music I liked from other blogs I'd trip over, from time to time. I enjoyed the collage of images most. If you press the archive button in Tumblr, all the images you've posted over the month and the previous months, mix between themselves, and I enjoyed the colour, the imagery, my interests all in one space.

But blogging for me has come a long way and the more I think about it, the more this blog has the potential to have been an ongoing work of mine since mid July, when we were told to start them.

Since a conversation with MJ last week, I've been thinking more about, and reading more about Relational Aesthetics (probably to Fiona's utter dismay). I came across Claire Bishop's text, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, I'm currently half way through the text, but needed to get some of these ideas out before they pummeled into nowhere land.

You can find Bishop's text here