Flux Without Pause

“Contrary to what people say, using the first person in films tends to be a sign of humility: ‘All I have to offer is myself.’” —Chris Marker

My work for my assessment consists of the various periods of ides that were created in my studio space over the past year from the mind map for my dissertation which contains the key themes of producing socially engaged art and web 2.0 sites. Plus the ideas of my then degree project of walking and how it linked with my 5am project and the Allen Ginsberg poem that it was inspired from. The space contains images of me experimenting with the three screen format and artists who I referenced who also use similar techniques. Also the walls display posters of the films 12 years a slave and the butler, movies that highlighted the aspects of intersectionailtiy.

The yellow tape of the space represents the 10 week period of Hambling incident where in that cycle the studio space became a “scene of a crime” in the way that my original ideas been derailed by having the weight this experience placed upon me. The three tapelines represent the three boundaries that I had to overcome in my last few months,

The tapelines capture that something has been halted and the key of clue to understanding lies within the space which turns the space into a floating signifier.

The desk contains a laptop of the film no to £650 the flyer to the fine art auction, which features Hambling’s image as the main piece, the letter from Ipswich and Suffolk council for racial Equality (ISCRE) to the provost Richard Lister and the book Pedagogy of the oppressed by Paulo Freire.

The Mind map connects with all the themes mention because the experience connected with the themes that I was looking at for my dissertation and when reflecting back on the experience some of the theme connects with the spaces between walking.

Part of the space is unpainted because of keeping the original aspect of the space and to juxtapose the rest of the room. As like in a Brecht plays it makes the frame works visible and making frameworks visible has been the consistent theme of project 5am.

For the degree show I will display the mind map, which defines my 7-year journey of understanding my 5am experience. The notion of the third space has been the glue that has connected all the ideas that I have linked to my project. This has made me wonder if the true aspect of art making takes place in this domain and not the result of being in the domain. Philosopher Graham Harman who wrote about the third space in The Third Table for documenta 13 talks about the fourth space as being a result of capturing the moment of being in the third space. So if the third space represents process and fourth space objects in my opinion the mystery of art lies within the “third space” which produces a feedback loop with the fourth space. My concerns its that art environments can be caught up to much in the fourth space because of the financial aspects which can lead incidents like I experienced and not focusing beneath the surface. I cannot describe my artwork for my assessment because for me the real art has been produced from people’s reactions. Then the art feels activated and alive from action. I have seen the magic of people opinions changing via time and reflection via repeated bouts of dialogue raising the social capital the environment. Seeing people in a different light from their response of lack of response. My work since March 4th has always been about creating a better future environment by inviting others to take control of their own frameworks. This is the main reason why I will have work up at the degree show because I has seen enough signs in the majortiy of the group that they understand or try to understand how serious these last few weeks have been and I totally respect them for that.

If there’s any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it’s almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.”
― Julie Delpy

In early April I was recommended by one of my lectures to take part in a debate about end racism which was hosted by the London based group The Red Room. The timing of this event was powerful because of the situation I was in at the time. After 4 weeks I felt very alienated by the initial incident and the first video I created had cause chaos, fragmentation and friction within my group which alienated me even more. I was told that there was going to be a debate organized by the uni about this topic but there was no confirmed date so it was good to know that there would be a platform in the near future to raise the issue. By the time the event had taken place in May the dynamics had changed radically. After finding out that the university debate would be under the title of “are there any limits to freedom of speech” that showed me that I needed outside voice to highlight the problems that the uni was failing to tackle. It was over that period in April that after starting to slowly understand the writings of critical pedagogy I started to see how the neoliberalism aspects art commodity and objects had filtered into education allow situations like I had experienced to happen. In my opinion I felt that the artist reputation was a major factor in her comments not being challenged during and after the talk especially at the time of the auction where her work was the headline piece. With this understanding I had found a certain sense of peace with what had happened. With this in new found knowledge I wanted to give people a chance to own their experience the past few weeks by putting an ethical weight on the whole process on sale of the painting which was for the upcoming degree show. By making a gesture of no taking the £650 which for me symbolized “commodity over student well-being” it would show that students can think for themselves and were not docile to react to acts of inequity. I created a pdf stating my reasons for boycotting the money as well as creating a petition to find out how many signatures I would get back. As well as send sending the petition out to the students I posted it out on social media sites to get as many outside voices to show the University that this issue should be treated seriously.

The garden of freedom, a group that helps campaigns by writing articles to support their causes showed me the power of the strength in weak ties. They responded to the petition by writing an article about the situation. It was from this article that I had found someone for the first time in 5 week who as well supported me took action. This was the catalyst for others to take action by sharing the article and signing the petition. Within days of the article being published the provost had contacted me to meet up about my concerns.

By the time of The R word event taking place the article had gone viral had reached the mainstream papers. This was a problem because A: they were reporting about an event that had taken place two months ago and since then I had seen from the effect of the garden of freedom article and numerous bouts of dialogue with group member who were seeing a different point people’s views and B: They were only focusing mainly on the artist comments and not the bigger picture. By doing this the papers missed the point but at the same time it was understandable because the nature of the beast of the mainstream media is to go for the eye catching headline. The R Word event was set u in the concept of artist Louis Weaver’s the Long Table format which encourages an open democratic forum for discussion and debate. Invited specialists were asked to start the discussion around 3 key questions.

The format reminded of the essence of what critical pedagogy is a space for equality.

The 2nd question focused on the no to £650 video, which raised a lot of anger when shown. It reminded me of how I felt ten weeks ago.

The event show me a different side of Ipswich that I had never seen before and side that felt very disconnected for the views of the university.

The Red Room: The R Word Ipswich logos

The Third Space

I believe if there’s any kind of God it wouldn’t be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there’s any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it’s almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.”
― Julie Delpy

TEDxBandra – Fenella Kelly – Entering the Third Space

I had a mini epiphany yesterday in the barbers when while waiting for my haircut I was re-reading a chapter from the book critical pedagogy and race and the chapter “Postcolonial literature and the curricular imagination: Wilson Harris and the pedagogical implications of the carnivalesque.”

I was interested in a paragraph by Hommi Bhabha where he defines his use of the word “hybridity”

hybridity: (i) the process of bringing together multiple things to make something new, and (ii) the product of that process. Underlying these two elements is the fundamental role of power in the context of hybridity: these processes seem to be concerned with and mechanisms of challenging power, and the product(s) may represent a new form(s) of power.

I was also flicking back to chapter in the book “questions of third cinema” where it talks about Stuart Hall’s need for articulation when I when to the beginning of the chapter I noticed who for the first time who wrote the essay Hommi Bhabha. When I searched for more information about him online I saw his ideas about the third space.

The third space, that space where oppressed and oppressor are able to come together, free (maybe only momentarily) of oppression itself, embodied in their particularity.

The Third Space acts as an ambiguous area that develops when two or more individuals/cultures interact. It “challenges our sense of the historical identity of culture as a homogenizing, unifying force, authenticated by the originary past, kept alive in the national tradition of the People”.

This reminded me of an interview about temporary autonomous zone where the interviewer mentioned the common theme of the meeting of two people creates a third place which was followed by the quote by Michel Serres “whenever there are two…. Hermes arrives”. The trickster has been an important part of my project 5am as highlighted in an earlier post which documents my encounter with a yogi. My unexpected meeting with the yogi created a space which gave me a new perspective of my surroundings.

The trickster’s who’s milieu lies within the “hybridity of the boundaries” can be best described in the joker’s monolog in the dark knight and the Joseph Campbell description. The “hybridity of the boundaries” is an area for chaos. old forms are broken up into the potentiality of something new.

As I thought about this my ears zoomed into the conversation with the barber and his client talking about a news item about people jumping of the Orwell Bridge. The barber from a South American background said why would someone want to kill themselves as there is some much to live for in this world. The client from a European background then mentioned about it is a mental condition about even if you are seen as successful in material terms you can still be depressed. As I was listening to this I was reading how “the third place” is related to

“In community building, the third place (or third space) is the social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace.”

Free or inexpensive

Highly accessible

Involve regulars – those who habitually congregate there

Welcoming and comfortable

Both new friends and old should be found there.

I then realized that I was in a third place setting the Barbers listening to a hybridity of conversation.

Reflecting back on my invisible man videos I see now they were the act to open a door for “The Third Space” to cause chaos, opinion and whoever enters and leaves that space will come out of it altered for their next experience.

A hybrid genre of this kind say something about contemporary social problems, social contradictions: its politics are in its articulations, events articulation of inarticulate states of being- it has no quick solutions and may well have no immediate solutions at all. It offers challenge rather than solution in the first instance, and allow its audiences themselves to interpret its new spaces with relevant meanings of their own. It does not arrive delivering its meaning already fully-formed- rather it enables new meanings to be created and projected in dialogic encounters. -Robert J. C. Young

Power has to learn to tremble – Henry Giroux

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7cUiERYeEE#t=4371…

Agent of Chaos – The dark knight

To explore why how this incident occurred I will use the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu theories of cultural capital and field theory.

Glossary of terms

Habitus – “A structuring structure, which organizes practices and the perception of practices. eg people

Doxa

“Universe of tacit presuppositions that organize action within the field” e.g university guidelines

Cultural capital –

For Bourdieu, cultural capital which is part of the habitus acts as a social relation within a social system of knowledge that confers power and status.

Displaying cultural capital can lead to benefits, such as gaining status or acceptance, therefore this can also transfer into social capital

Displaying cultural capital can bring rewards or incur costs, depending on the cultural/social situation.

http://youtu.be/FlWf6ejbBGw?t=13m22s

Symbolic capital – can be referred to as the resources available to an individual on the basis of honour, prestige or recognition, and serves as value that one holds within a culture- a well respected artist

The meeting of various habitus produces a social capital

So when applying those terms to the fourth video in no to £650 the social capital of my university environment was changed when the artist abused her position as someone with symbolic capital and the acceptances of the audience went against the doxa of the university guidelines.

My cultural capital came from being born in Birmingham and lived in living in London for many years so I know the artist would not of make those types of comments in those areas, so what does that say about Suffolk? If UCS want’s to attract people from different backgrounds they have got to provide a structure of diversity and equality

In a lecture talk professor Angela Davis talks about how word diversity is missed as an visible term more than a term of content which becomes a difference that doesn’t make a difference.

Angela Davis: How Does Change Happen?

http://youtu.be/Pc6RHtEbiOA?t=44m5s

My experience of the past few weeks has shown me that my diversity left unattended is a purely visible and nothing else.

When understanding Pierre Bourdieu theories of cultraul/social capital and field theory they reminded me of the theories that I was looking at for in the themes of walking before the Hambling incident took place like the Binomial which is the space of action between two forces coming towards each other. This term is used to describe the action scenes in a movie.

The theory of Jean Luc Godard of being the train going between the stations instead of being the station waiting for the train captures my 5am project by having a centre during the unsettling times of my surroundings the centre is still secure enough to understand the flux of change and to take action when needed.

When being in a state of alienation my project handled my the experince of understanding of in order to change mindsets old frameworks needed to be deconstructed and by doing that the social captial for the next students would be enchanced.

Pierre Bourdieu field theory explains my decision to use my studio space as an assessment for my final work. The biggest casualty of having this experience was that it derailed my ideas for my degree show plus over the 2 months because of the tension with the group my space was a very awkward place to being in almost like a scene of a crime where ideas have been killed. So I will be using police styled tape off my space, three strips will be used to capture the three boundaries that I have had to face in understanding my surroundings which are:

*The artist comments

*The reaction to the comments

*The failure of my environment to take this matter seriously

Pierre Bourdieu – An introduction