Hi Everyone, Here are all our seminar readings for Week 9. Please read them and post 1 question, comment or quote that stands out to you from each of them in the comments by class time on Monday.
Zeph's Reading:
Intro to Beautiful Trouble: a Toolbox for Revolution, by Andrew Boyd:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1__tf--MT5ksinCpceiz6EAAmr2cKDpST/view?usp=sharing
Lauren's Reading:
Here are parts of the intro to one of my favorite books about cities;
The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and The Erasure of Memory.
https://drive.google.com/a/pdx.edu/file/d/1rj-XPIQOtkbQiSOULKfqfVwkb__dCvWI/view?usp=sharing
If you are at all interested in this topic I highly recommend reading this book!
Michael's Readings:
Geology.com - Oregon Gemstones
http://geology.com/gemstones/states/oregon.shtml
Innagem.com - Oregon Opal
http://www.innagem.com/oregonopal/
Roshani's Reading:
Born in a Dazed and Confused Era - it Was a Fashion Thing! Essay by
Sonia Mehta. Exhibition catalogue: Her Stories: Fifteen Years of South
Asian
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ie2z3XrbrofNjeZ_EkyDkHGrNuRZY7wY
Eric's Reading:
City of the Changers: Indigenous People and the Transformation of
Seattle’s Watersheds, Coll Thrush, 2006
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q9AaYvnuTkChBYELgD98ANYsdlAH5KKK
Tia's Readings:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1w1sQ6PIF0wIH2efnMtu5A4QIXi9ESEx2
Intro to Beautiful Trouble: a Toolbox for Revolution, by Andrew Boyd: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1__tf--MT5ksinCpceiz6EAAmr2cKDpST/view?usp=sharing
ReplyDeleteHere are parts of the intro to one of my favorite books about cities; The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and The Erasure of Memory. https://drive.google.com/a/pdx.edu/file/d/1rj-XPIQOtkbQiSOULKfqfVwkb__dCvWI/view?usp=sharing
ReplyDeleteIf you are at all interested in this topic I highly recommend reading this book!
Geology.com - Oregon Gemstones
ReplyDeletehttp://geology.com/gemstones/states/oregon.shtml
Innagem.com - Oregon Opal
http://www.innagem.com/oregonopal/
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteBorn in a Dazed and Confused Era - it Was a Fashion Thing! Essay by Sonia Mehta. Exhibition catalogue: Her Stories: Fifteen Years of South Asian
ReplyDeletehttps://drive.google.com/open?id=1ie2z3XrbrofNjeZ_EkyDkHGrNuRZY7wY
City of the Changers: Indigenous People and the Transformation of Seattle’s Watersheds, Coll Thrush, 2006 (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q9AaYvnuTkChBYELgD98ANYsdlAH5KKK)
ReplyDeleteTIA'S Readings are all images, find them at the bottom of this post:
ReplyDeletehttps://hsp2017psu.blogspot.com/2017/11/gestures-forfrom-walla-walla.html
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteTia's Readings:
ReplyDeletehttps://drive.google.com/open?id=1w1sQ6PIF0wIH2efnMtu5A4QIXi9ESEx2
Reading Quotes:
ReplyDelete------------------
Beautiful Trouble: "'Human salvation,' Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. argued, 'lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted,' and recent historical events are proving him as prescient as ever"
Oregon Opals: "Exceptional and very rare Oregon opals with precious color play. These have a visual effect of being underwater when held to light. A combination of the facets, inclusions and colors create an unearthly effect.", question how are those amazing inclusions created? Have you seen ones that beautiful?
Tia's Scores: "Even though it might seem like a nice ideal, its not a pretty picture to see someone create without interruptions. [...] Paying heed to interruptions begins to set us on the track of those creators who integrate their art into their daily life"
Born in a dazed and confused era...: "Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness -- and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe."
Histories of Forgetting: "Most of this book centers on neighborhoods just west of downtown, on interviews with residents from 1979 to 1994. This is their imaginary map of community life under fire, while the world around them is being systematically erased." "It remains where we put it, but the details around it get lost as if they were haunted, somewhat contaminated, but empty."
City of Changers: "As Matthew Klingle has shown in his research on Seattle’s environmental transformations, urban development schemes, typically perceived as bringing new order and solving ecological and social “problems” such as flooding and squatters’ camps, often had the result of exacerbating social divisions, placing the greatest burdens upon the most vulnerable, unleashing new ecological challenges, and creating new kinds of disorder."
Beautiful Trouble-
ReplyDelete“Fools, clowns and carnivals have always played a subversive role…” I think this is
important, because so much of our history and of our traditions have been edited and defanged until they’ve lost this element of subversion and chaos. The winter holiday season, for example, was intentionally made into a family holiday because the upper class were nervous about so many drunk working class marauding through the streets on this notorious night of mischief. We need to reclaim these elements!
Rocks-
I want to know how the sunstone is formed from basalt flows! I also really like the word “aventurescence,” and I don’t even want to look it up because I’d rather imagine its meaning. The obsidian varieties are amazing – I didn’t even know it came in different colors.
Sonia Mehta-
“The war ensued while a number of actions and mobilizations hailed from a fragmented Other, putting faith at the center of people’s psychoses. More women started to adopt a veiled presence as an act of solidarity to their faith and people, placing themselves as visible signifiers of anti-establishment protesters.”
Coll Thrush
“Part of Seattle’s ‘green’ persona is a profound ambivalence about its own urban past, perhaps best symbolized by the popularity of community –based organizations and government programs aimed at urban ecological restoration.” Sounds like another city I know!
On Disrupting Routine- my initial reaction was “I don’t agree at all” because I feel like I’m constantly battling with distractions that derail my focus, and not in a positive way. It just feels like me working against myself, not “life.” Then I realized there is a difference between distractions and disruptions, with the latter playing more a role of serendipity, and the former mainly just the self, inventing distraction. I think coincidences and unforeseen conditions or events can be the best some of the best things for the creative mind and process, and being receptive keeps you open and aware.
Sonia Mehta
ReplyDelete“However when you look beneath the face value of this phenomenon, it also raised the question of the Other, and for a time buried it in shallow ground, until the rhetoric surrounding the 9/11 Twin Towers attack raised the ugly head of racialization.” In the U.S., as an example, there always has to be someone to blame, that was made quite clear in the aftermath of 9/11, and the rhetoric that followed, and the patriotic flag waving and all of the Muslim world was on America’s shit list. The aftermath of 9/11 will be with us for a very long time. And now America has some new “Other” to blame, Mexico. Build a wall, never will happen. In the words of comedian Carlos Mencia, “Who’s going to build it? Mexico? Nope. Read, research the history of America’s relationship with Mexico, and for that matter all of Latin America. And dig a little deeper than Facebook!
The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory
“…the phantom limb is often an empty lot where a building once stood…”
This can also be applied to houses we use to live in and how years later they are torn down, with all of those family memories. In my own personal family history research, I tried to recall some childhood memories of my grandparent’s house from many years ago and how most of those memories are still with me. I could still remember in what town the house was at but I didn’t have an address. While researching my grandmother I came across a voters list. My grandmother always voted in elections, she felt it was very important. What the voter lists showed me was the years she voted, and home addresses where she lived at the time. I narrowed down the list by year and looked up the address with Google maps street view. I was hoping the house was still standing. Google showed me an empty lot. I remember the long driveway that led up to the house and the palm trees in back. I could still see a few of those palm trees in the very back of the lot with Google street view. My heart sank a bit. But I am now the keeper of memories of that house. My forgetfulness is only temporary. I have a few photos of that house, standing with my grandfather and my two sisters on a New Year’s morning and my grandfather had the biggest smile on his face.
Beautiful Trouble
“The blending of art and politics is nothing new, Tactical pranks go back at least as far as the Trojan Horse, Jesus of Nazareth, overturning the tables of the money changers, mastered the craft of political theater 2,000 years before Greenpeace.”
That is stretching it a bit. There are better examples then comparing to Greenpeace as political theater. The riots in L.A. after the Roddy King verdict, and the Black Panthers of the 1960’s, was this not political theater? It seems violence gets people’s attention real quick, for better or for worse.
“…if deployed thoughtfully, our pranks, stunts, flash mobs and encampments can bring about real shifts in the balance of power.” What is the definition of “power” by those that deploy such thoughtfulness?
Disrupting Routine
“Even though it might seem like a nice ideal, it’s not a pretty picture to see someone create without interruptions. Because you have to deny other human beings around you.” Nothing wrong with that. It just means being focused, in the zone, so to speak.
City of Changers: Indigenous people and the transformation of Seattle’s watersheds.
“In most cases, the negative legacies of Seattle’s environmental history are seen by residents and planners as just that: environmental. There is however, one exception to this rule: Indians. In the public discourse—thanks in no small part to the insistence of living Native people—the dispossession of Seattle’s indigenous population is often mentioned alongside changes to the city’s original landscape.”
Beautiful Trouble:
ReplyDelete"Fools, clowns and carnivals have always played a subversive role, while art, culture and creative protest tactics have for centuries served as fuel and foundation for successful social movements."
History of Forgetting:
"Therefore, ver soon into this project I realized that imagos - or phantom limbs, or whatever one called them - are extremely deceptive... The shock value obscures entire stages in the political history of collective memory." It's the proceeding two paragraphs that also captivate me. When I have tried to illuminate what is absent with images or performances that draw attention to absence the response is often "ghostly" but ghostly obscures the human-ness and not-unlike-our-present-experience aspects of history that interest me most.
Rocks
"These have a visual effect of being underwater when held to light. A combination of the facets, inclusions and colors create an unearthly effect." Yes. Having just spent a lot of time looking underwater, I concur. I also think it's ironic that under water and unearthly are used concurrently. Underwater is still of the earth!!
Born in a Dazed and Confused Era:
“The war ensued while a number of actions and mobilizations hailed from a fragmented Other, putting faith at the center of people’s psychoses. More women started to adopt a veiled presence as an act of solidarity to their faith and people, placing themselves as visible signifiers of anti-establishment protesters....This suddenly clashed with wider concerns of racial discrimination, and the once unified fight against it became increasingly polarized." I want to know more. I want to know more about this particular phenomenon.
City of Changers:
"As Matthew Klingle has shown in his research on Seattle's environmental transformations, urban development schemes, typically perceived as bringing new order and solving ecological and social "problems" such as flooding and squatter's camps, often had the result of exacerbating social divisions, placing the greatest burdens upon the most vulnerable, unleashing new ecological challenges, and creating new kinds of disorder."
This Very Moment:
"What is the difference between Imitation and Influence? Imitation of others' gestures and delayed imitation create compositional patterns. Species survive the challenges of living by noticing successful patterns. Sometimes we imitate because we want to be included, sometimes it is restful." This particular score is powerful to me because my experiences of it (both from the inside and the outside) often remind me of the innate knowledge we have of satisfying movement. When each person participating trust the process of the group and their own intuition the gestures -even the simplest ones- feel familiar, captivating, and deeply satisfying.
Zeph: “Shit, I know I said I’d write up that guerrilla projection tactic thing you wanted, but I can’t because, get this, I’m DOING ONE RIGHT NOW(!)”
ReplyDeleteLauren: “New plans for revitalization have failed to revive much. Business streets immediately west of Olvera Street remain as dead as a violate graveyard - a warning that downtown will be forgettable even while it continues to be built.
Interesting as some of the premises at the end infer that the low quality nature of some of our developed areas are due to poor planning from start to finish, and the drive was merely the dollar.
Michael: *Photo of Oregon Opal*
Roshani: Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness-- and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling-- their ideas, their vision of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
REmember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
Eric: Seattle was a bad place to build a city. Steep sand slopes
crumbled atop slippery clay; a river wound through its wide, marshy
estuary and bled out onto expansive tidal flats; kettle lakes and
cranberried peat bogs recalled the retreat of the great ice sheets;
unpredictable creeks plunged into deep ravines—all among seven
(or, depending on whom you ask, nine or fifteen) hills sandwiched
between the vast, deep waters of Puget Sound and of Lake Wash-
ington. But built it was, and generations of Seattle’s leaders and
everyday residents have wrested enormous wealth, comfort, and or-
der out of the dynamic and messy ecology that first confronted the
city’s founders in 1851.
Tia: Even though it might seem like an nice ideal, it’s not a pretty picture to see someone create without interruptions. Because you have to deny other humans around you. I like the idea of letting the interruptions in through the door because that allows the world to be present in your process. It allows other human beings to be present It allows other human beings to be present. Allowing our work to be interrupted by a child, to answer a question, to heed an inner voice, will direct our paths to the solution we are working for. They are life and death choice. Paying heed to interruptions begins to set us on the track of those creators who integrate their art into their daily life. There is no separation. Interruptions are essential. They remind us that there is more to life than our art.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteTia 1: “Think of your action as a movement sequence and imagine that it exists on a plane such as a piece of paper. Conceive a way to fold it in half as you would a piece of paper or cloth so that the progression of the sequence is changed. Now some elements will be performed simultaneously. The beginning and the end will be in the same place and the middle will start or finish the sequence.”
ReplyDeleteHow can I practice this same kind of experimentation and playfulness while making work that impacts real life things and is legible to non-artists?
Tia 2: “Paying heed to interruptions begins to set us on the track of those creators who integrate their art into their daily life. there is no separation. Interruptions are essential.”
I like this idea in theory, but I find that I am not able to make work of any depth if my attention is constantly being drawn to something new. That’s why I’m paying PSU to help me focus! Where is the sweet spot between being responsive/engaged and being distracted?
Roshani: “Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness—and our ability to tell our own stories… The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling—their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.”
How can I take these ideas into my cell structure so thoroughly that even when I’m doing awkward and maybe pointless little art experiments, I still have faith that all the small daily small practices are the path to making work that matters?
Lauren: “If we concentrate, the imago seems to be waiting for us intact: a photo, a document, a table of statistics, and interview. It remains where we put it, but the details around it get lost, as if they were haunted, somewhat contaminated, but empty. … They are the rumor that seems haunted with memory”
Eric: “Said to have been uttered during the treaty process of the 1850s but only committed to print a quarter-century later by a white physician, the Chief Seattle Speech has become a “fifth gospel,” thanks to its potent combination of Victorian flourish, ecological longing, and imagined indigenous nobility.”
Michael: the Thunderegg!
http://geology.com/gemstones/states/oregon-thunderegg.jpg
Zeph:
ReplyDelete"In 1994, the Zapatistas, often described as the first post-modern revolutionary movement, awakened the political imaginations of activists around the world, replacing the dry manifesto and the sectarian vanguard with fable, poetry, theater and a democratic movement of movements against global capitalism."
Lauren:
"The imago contains, as Kristeva describes so vividly, 'once upon blotted-out time' when 'forgotten time crops up suddenly and condenses into a flash of lightning'."
Michael:
All the different stones and source locations make me want an interactive map or charting of where you would find the stones in Oregon so you can see the geographical location in relation to geographical features and understand the pattern of gem formation.
Roshani:
"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing"
Eric:
"Part of Seattle's 'green' persona is a profound ambivalence about its own urban past, perhaps best symbolized by the popularity of community-based organizations and government programs aimed at urban ecological restoration"
Tia:
"Paying heed to interruptions begins to set us on track of those creators who integrate their art into daily life."
Introduction to Beautiful Trouble: a Toolbox for Revolution
ReplyDeleteBy Andrew Boyd and Dave Oswald Mitchell
“In short, large numbers of people have seen that creative action gets the goods — and have begun to act accordingly. Art, it turns out, really does enrich activism. making it more compelling and sustainable.
Oregon Gemstones: How might the landscape and geology as understood through a location's gemstones interact with the ecological and social history of a city? For example, how could knowledge of a region's unique rocks enrich some of the topics discussed in "The History of Forgetting" or "City of Changers" in relation to forgotten histories and urban landscaping impacting ecology?
The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and The Erasure of Memory
“New plans for revitalization have failed to revive much. Business streets immediately west of Olvera Street remain as dead as a violated graveyard — a warning that downtown will be forgettable even while it continues to be built.”
“..imaginary map of community life under fire, while the world around them is being systematically erased.”
Born in a Dazed and Confused Era - it Was a Fashion Thing! Essay by Sonia Mehta. Exhibition catalogue: Her Stories: Fifteen Years of South Asian
“Today, as we see a resurgence in the politics of the early 1970s—recession, decline in industry, riots—we are reminded that while the rhetoric does not change, we as artists have the power to respond and take action through a central feminine voice.”
“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. to mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness—and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling—their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” —Arundhati Roy
City of the Changers: Indigenous People and the Transformation of Seattle’s Watersheds, Coll Thrush, 2006
“Part of Seattle’s “Green” persona is a profound ambivalence about its own urban past, perhaps best symbolized by the popularity of community-based organizations and government programs aimed at urban ecological restoration.”
“Seattle’s environmental transformations, urban development schemes, typically perceived as bringing new order and solving ecological and social “problems” such as flooding and squatters’ camps, often had the result of exacerbating social divisions, placing the greatest burdens upon the most vulnerable, unleashing new ecological challenges, and creating new kinds of disorder.”
When attempting to address issues or topics in a community, how can we as art practitioners avoid producing new issues as a consequence of our action?
Impossible Task Exercise
“Allowing our work to be interrupted by a child, to answer a question, to heed an inner voice, will direct our paths to the solution we are working for…Interruptions are essential. They remind us that there is more to life than our art”
This Very Moment: teaching, thinking, dancing
By Barbara Dilley
“What is the difference between imitation and influence?
“When are you aware of being influence? What is this like? Are there times when we are without influence?” What does that feel like? Discuss the differences in these feelings.
-Kayla
Beautiful Trouble: “The realization is rippling through the ranks that, if deployed thoughtfully, our pranks, stunts, flash mobs and encampments can bring about real shifts in the balance of power. In short, large numbers of people have seen that creative action gets the goods…”
ReplyDeleteOregon Gemstone Mining: “A small fraction of Oregon thundereggs are filled with opal, and a smaller fraction of those contain gem-quality material with play-of-color.”
Tia's Readings: “Interruptions are essential. They remind us that there is more to life that our art.”
Born in a Dazed and Confused Era: “With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness - and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.”
Histories of Forgetting: “The imago contains, as Kristeva describes so vividly, ‘once upon blotted-out time,’ when ‘forgotten time crops up suddenly and condenses into a flash of lightning.’ However, when the flash is over, much of what remains as urban history is picturesque, in itself a form of erasure.”
City of Changers: “As Matthew Klingle has shown in his research on Seattle’s environmental transformations, urban development schemes, typically perceived as bringing new order and solving ecological and social ‘problems’ such as flooding and squatters’ camps, often had the result of exacerbating social divisions, placing the greatest burdens upon the most vulnerable, unleashing new ecological challenges, and creating new kinds of disorder.”
Coll Thrush
ReplyDelete“The struggle of the Duwamish and other local indigenous people to survive urban change, as well as the efforts by residents of nearby Indian reservations to maintain connections to places within the city, illustrate the complex, ironic legacies of Seattle’s environmental history. They also show the ways in which urban and Native history are linked through both material and discursive practices.”
Barbara Dilley
“Paying heed to interruptions begins to set us on track of those creators who integrate their art into their daily life. There is no separation. Interruptions are essential. They remind us that there is more to life than our art.”
Andrew Boyd + Dave Oswald Mitchell
“Sorry I had to shut down Wall Street with a blockade-carnival while distracting the cops with 99,000 donuts.”
Gemstones
“Picture Opal: This is a spectacular cab cut from the opal center of a thunderegg. If you look closely, you can see the sun rising over a landscape that is underlain by normal faults. This nice cab was cut by Aaron Buell of West Coast Lapidary.”
Klein
As one old man told me in the 1970s: We always dressed to go downtown. My parents were Serbian farmers. I think they thought it was Vienna.”
Sonia Mehta
Arundhati Roy: Our strategy should not be only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness---and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.