Morse
Morse
Using Morse, or inspired language in my work, would make it mysterious, people will not be able to decifer the meaning of this language.
Text
I like how the artist created a "booth' where people can come and go. I would like to use this idea again, instead of using light which implies lots of technical tools, I could make one side of my cloth see through. People would see their happiness but won't be able to reach it. This solves the safety problem of my initial idea which was a performance where people could go through the wall to reach their ultimate happiness, which is on the other side of the curtain.
Shadows
I like how the artist played with the shadows, I expect my curtain to look quite similar as it will also be hang in between two trees. I am hesitant, as I know I would like to play with the idea of the wall dividing people from their own happiness and was especially interested by the idea that the people would see their happiness on the other side however could not reach it as a 'wall was standing in between'. This picture is then quite relevant to this idea, you can see something going on behind the curtain but you cannot reach it. I could use this idea and shine light behind my curtain, and playing with the shadows overnight.
Red
This is in a park, and therefore helpful as my project will be in a park too.
I like the use of material and the color red, the width is roughly the one I would like to reach and the height too.
The role of art
Art cannot be a matter of aesthetics, and Banksy's work definitely inspired me. The commitment of the artist, and his political engagement is encouraging me to create my own work. He uses his art to convey political ideas, and much like him I believe this is the role art has to endorse. I am also stimulated, as often I find that art pieces can shares strong political views but we stay passive in front of the artpiece. Banksy takes his work a step furether, it is an installation, and people can sleep in the rooms. So they are immersed in the work and this will trigger a reaction, one that could change the world if the right people comes in. In this way, I would like my work to be similar, I don't want people to just look I want them to feel. Therefore, I would like my work to be a performance, where people relate to it and identify themselves. I believe this way, my work will be of a much greater Impact.
Wall in the head by Costica Bradatan
Walls are built for various reasons and they serve different purposes, but their function is always fundamentally the same: to create divisions, to prevent people and ideas from moving freely, and to legitimize differences. In the end, it does not even matter whether a wall has been erected by people who are afraid of losing some of what they possess (the most frequent situation) or governments — like the East German state that built the Berlin Wall — afraid of losing their people who, in the absence of any walls, would gladly go elsewhere. Once the wall has been erected, it acquires a life of its own and structures people’s lives according to its own rules. It gives them meaning and a new sense of direction. All those walled off now have a purpose: to find themselves, by whatever means it takes, on the other side of the wall.
Read more at https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/scaling-the-wall-in-the-head/
Inspiration
I was inspired by the work of Banksy, the walled off hotel and the ironic english street party for the 60 years of the Balfour's declaration. As well as the Berlin wall and the remaining sections that you can still find in the city, or travelling today. Banksy politically engaged, created a hotel with the worse view in the world (view of the wall) with only 20 min of sunlight a day. He wanted to educate people on how a decision such as the Balfour declaration caused decades of suffering. The artist said"The British didn't handle things well here - when you organise a wedding, it's best to make sure the bride isn't already married."
Beeing a Victoria secret model
The main target to get that godly VS carved-from-marble figure is sub-18 per cent body fat – the percentage of our body that’s made up of fat tissue (rather than muscle, bones, hair, water and other stuff). We need fat to store energy and protect the organs. After about 20 minutes of exercise, the body no longer draws energy from carbohydrates consumed, and it turns instead to fat stores to continue ‘feeding’ the muscles. This energy is also used to power the organs.
A healthy, fit woman will have between 21 and 24 per cent body fat. Athletes will have between 14 and 20 per cent. Below 13 per cent and you start to experience severe health problems such as confusion, fatigue, hormonal imbalances, organ failure and eventually death.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3132639/The-four-month-hell-turned-Victoria-s-Secret-angel.html#ixzz50scFK9EZ
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Gilbert and George Exhibition
WHite cube press release
In some of THE BEARD PICTURES, the artists stand either in front of a barbed wire or mesh fence, or behind one. Elsewhere, rusted steel rods sprout from collapsing buildings of pre-stressed concrete. In yet other pictures, Gilbert & George are unsmiling comic grotesques, with tiny bodies and huge heads. Behind them a blank silvery void, extravagant ornamental foliage, wire mesh fencing, newspaper advertisements for bouncers, builders and sex workers, the heads in relief of popes, monarchs, worthies and heroes.
Aggressively absurd, trashing contemporary artistic niceties but resonant with intense symbolism, THE BEARD PICTURES turn history into a mad parade, their mood shape-shifting between that of science fiction, lucid dreaming and Victorian caricature. It is a vision and a form which brings to mind Oscar Wilde’s account of Walter Pater’s ‘Appreciations’ (1889): ‘others are medieval in their strangeness of colour and passionate suggestion, and all of them absolutely modern, in the true meaning of the term modernity. For he to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives.’
In the half century that they have lived and worked together as Living Sculptures, embarked on a visionary journey through the modern world, always together and always alone, Gilbert & George have made fiercely singular Anti-Art that is poetic, primal and emotionally driven. Order and madness are held in tension, vaudevillian and nursery rhyme absurdity take on the air of paranormal ritual.
The more the viewer contemplates THE BEARD PICTURES, the more Gilbert & George appear like poltergeists within the cause of art and spirit sentinels within a world gone mad. In this chaos of trashed aesthetics and reversed values, all has become symbol and surface: mad symbols, presented with deadly seriousness. And as such they study the viewer.
In keeping with their career-long merger of cultural and artistic provocation, the FUCKOSOPHY of Gilbert & George exhaustively employs the common yet taboo swear word to create a vast directory of absurd, unusual, amusing, bland or memorable statements. As with their GODOLOGY the artists interrogate the nature of a culturally primal word through myriad repetitions, each in a different context.
Gilbert and George Exhibition
These 3 words onto monumental works: Money Race and Religion. They might express our societies motos or the three poles to defines one's character. Personally it makes me think of the three criterium a parent would ask before you wed someone, as if these defines a character. This ties into my work as I'm exploring society's code and pressure onto one's individuality. I also find the word money as one of these 3 photographs shocking, it shows how we make such a big deal of this pure materalism that nows it is one criterium.
Piotr Pavlensky
I went to see this exhibition at the saatchi gallery and I was astonished to see how far people believe in their idea and how far they were willing to go to defend it. Piotr Pavlensky, is one of those artist who put himself in barbed wire, or sew his lips to show how there was no liberty of expression. The activists, and feminists also showed me that from repression creativity emerges. I'd like to engage people in my work like these artists does, and wish to make them react. Art has this role today. This inspires me for my work, I will try through performance to raise awareness and questions about my work.
From the lecture
Working with objects that you can identify, describe and use is an important process to add meaning. Art not having a utalitarian purpose is coherent however, art using objects that will not stem from previous usable objects is something I personally struggle with. Empty information and working with thingness, objects not having a direct connection with real life is an aspect of my practice yet to be explored. I feel distant from the authors point of view in Made Vs Readymade (p7) :" To the extent that ideas are already encoded conceptual art itself which ironically grew out of a wish to rid 1960s abstract art of its evasive clichés of self expression, has become to be at risk of seeming a symtom of evasion". Richard Deacon (look research) idea of thinking negatively in order to eliminate recognisable things, and Philida Barlow (look research) belief that if a work is easy to describe it is not interesting intrigued me. I understand the need for the public for evasion through Art, but I believe that art has another role. A bigger priority: it has to be engaging, it has to empower people into taking action. Art cannot be passive and decorative anymore, therefore it has to be describable in simple terms, it has to stay into someone memory and the person has to take the idea the work and he/she has to be able to talk about it clearly and not in an abstract manner.
I still believe that it is important, to explore diverse style of art so I will accept the challenge for one day, to make a work where I eliminate likeness, where I eliminate meanings and instead focus on the materials and where they came from, this is what you focus on when the meanings and comparisons are not present. I know I want to work with textiles such as white t- shirt and jeans. Those are objects that have a function, however if i consider the t shirt as a piece of textile in itself and use the texture to create something i could create a shape and play with strings for one day. I am not going to spend furether time with this technique as I would like to expand more on the performative side, and the meaningful side of my work. I agree with one thing that the main difference between object and art is that art does not have to be practical and does not have to be of a direct use. I'm interested in making a bed as an artpiece, but my bed is not going to be a furniture it is art and as the article "The Made v the readymade" states: The linguistic game is a relevant backdrop only because the conventional meanings of sculptures- a three dimensional art object, modelled, carved or cast have come to possess an antidotal charge in relation to the trajectory it sketches ; which might be generalised as a progress from the body to sign or from subjectivity to transferability. Therefore, if a bed is presented in the right environnement it becomes art, if the same object was in a furniture shop such as Ikea it becomes a furniture. Marcel Duchamp played with this idea with his work the readymades "the fountain" which was in fact just a urinoire meant to be bought, but in a gallery it was looked at differently.
Thomas Rentsmeier, John Chamberlain
Thomas Rentmesiter and John Chamberlain played with both, and these artists are of a particular interest to me. Their art is very close to "thingness", it is very abstract but even so it was probably not the artists orignal thoughts ( they might wish of an evasive art, or empty information) they appealed to me in an other way and made me think of our society. Maybe I should just be blank when I look at the work and consider it as art and that 's it but that is not how I approach art and by putting the work into the gallery space, we are free to interpret the work as we wish. Therefore, the crushed cars of John Chamberlain were a reminder of consumerism, How our expensive cars are crushed in order for us to buy another one. The work was almost a dennunciation of our sad society. The nutella, was also interesting it reveals our society main issue obesity, fast food, nutella became such a big deal that it is now beeing photographed and introduced as art.
Choi Xooang
I want to work with polyeurethane foam and I found this artist. The hat even though in concrete and the person is a sculpture reminded me of my material Expanding foam and it is roughly the height I would like to achieve, and integrate materials to this piece. It makes me think about a dream, how someone has her/his head on the clouds and It intrigued me because I realised that this effect was only rendered by the colour pink and the texture, If I however paint it white and integrate materials the idea will be totally different.
Africa vs Europe
In our current society, we feel that having water coming out of a tap is so normal. We became so materialistic while some people have to walk for an hour to get water and carry it on their back every single day, sometimes twice. The time spent fetching water is at costs for the children education and we complain about going to school. I think we lost sense of the real in our country and we have a lot to learn from these nations. Having read about all these cultures I realise that they are much more authentic, true to themselves and thankful for what they have. We, on the other hand are victims of consumerism, we want more. With Christmas coming this is more true than ever. All we ask, is what are you getting for christmas? Not even wondering what is going on at christmas, or what is the actual point of it. Walking in the street, everyshop having the label "the best christmas ever with this new .... ". Sometimes I feel that these nations have much less but do not care about all this materialism and have relationships that goes far beyond it, as well as discussions and conversation. I'd like to demonstrate this in my work.
Allora & Calzadilla
Allora and calzadilla transforms an object into something else, and give them a second life. This was interesting and I'm going to use this for my work, my hat becomes a buoy that I will send into the water asking for help.
curtain wall
Following my idea, where our walls, our blockage from complete happiness is only an illusion the idea of an actual curtain as a door where you can go through could work.
Gardian Article 'the walled off hotel'
The Walled Off hotel may sound utilitarian, even bleak. Its owner says it has “the worst view of any hotel in the world”, while its 10 rooms get just 25 minutes of direct sunlight a day.
But, nestled against the controversial barrier wall separating Israel from the Palestinian territories, the West Bank’s answer to the Waldorf offers travellers something more elusive than any luxury destination.
The lodging in Bethlehem is a hotel, museum, protest and gallery all in one, packed with the artworks and angry brilliance of its owner, British street artist Banksy.
From the disconcertingly lavish presidential suite where water splashes from a bullet-strafed watertank into the hot tub, to the bunk-beds in the budget room scavenged from an abandoned army barracks, the hotel is playful and strongly political.
All the rooms look out on to the concrete slabs of the wall and some have views over it to pill boxes and an Israeli settlement – illegal under international law – on the hillside beyond.
“Walls are hot right now, but I was into them long before [Donald] Trump made it cool,” said Banksy in a statement. The artist, who fiercely guards his anonymity, first came to Bethlehem more than a decade ago, leaving a series of paintings on the barrier that have become a tourist destination in their own right.
Since then, the town’s pilgrim and sightseeing-based economy has been ravaged by ever-tighter Israeli controls on travel between Israel and the Palestinian territories, so the new hotel is expected to provide a welcome boost in jobs and visitor numbers.
Banksy’s reputation is likely to keep all rooms fully booked, but he wants guests to leave with more than just a selfie. “(It’s) a three-storey cure for fanaticism, with limited car parking,” he added in the statement.
The hotel opens to guests on 20 March, with bookings via the website. The team hope Israelis, who rarely see the barrier wall up close or visit Palestinian towns, will be among the guests, even though visiting means breaking the law.
“I would like to invite everyone to come here, invite Israeli civilians to come visit us here,” said manager Wisam Salsaa. “We want them to learn more about us, because when they know us it will break down the stereotypes and things will change.”
Israelis are banned from visiting Bethlehem and its famous sites. And although Banksy has chosen a site officially under Israeli military control – meaning it is legal for Israelis to stay there – all the roads to reach it involve an illegal journey through Palestinian-controlled territory.
The hotel, a former pottery workshop, has a dystopian colonial theme, a nod to Britain’s role in the region’s history, the reception and tea-room a disconcerting take on a gentlemen’s club where a self-playing piano provides an eerie soundtrack.
The fire flickering in the grate glows under a pile of concrete rubble, like a blaze at a bomb site, a classical bust in a niche is wreathed in clouds of gas snaking out of a tear gas canister and, in traditional seascapes, the beaches are littered with life-jackets discarded by refugees.
“It’s exactly 100 years since Britain took control of Palestine and started rearranging the furniture – with chaotic results,” Banksy said. “I don’t know why, but it felt like a good time to reflect on what happens when the United Kingdom makes a huge political decision without fully comprehending the consequences.”
Upstairs, original Banksy artworks decorate several of the rooms. In one, an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian protester thump each other with pillows, the feathers fluttering down towards the real pillows of the bed below.
In another, a pack of cheetahs crouch over a zebra-print sofa, where padded entrails snake out of a cushion. The bookshelves are packed with carefully chosen titles – A Room With a View at the end of one, Cage Me a Peacock on another stack.
The elevator is walled off, too, the doors jammed half open to show concrete breeze blocks, hung with an “out of service” sign.
A small museum explains the wall, the controls on movement and the troubled history of the region, curated together with Essex University professor Gavin Grindon. “If you are not completely baffled, then you don’t understand,” the presenter of a video history signs off.
Also in the building, part of a plan to promote dialogue, is a gallery showing the work of Palestinian artists. It is the first in Bethlehem, says curator Housni Alkateeb Shehada, and a way for artists, who often find it hard to travel, to reach a wider audience.
He wanted to project art on to the barrier wall which lies just five meters away, but decided in the end that it would be too risky, a reminder of the conflict and restrictions that looms over all the people living in Bethlehem. “We are very afraid,” said Shehada. “We don’t know what is going on there with the soldiers and it is forbidden.”
Banksy dismissed worries that security concerns would keep people away, pointing out that he had packed out a “bemusement park” in an unglamorous English seaside town for weeks.
“My accountant was worried some people will be too scared to travel to the West Bank, but then I remind him – for my last show they spent a whole day in Weston-super-Mare.”
The Walled off Hotel, Banksy
Becoming a Barbie DAILYMAIL
Analysis Barbie Article
Some people are ready to undergo different operations to become their vision of "perfect" a fake and superficial barbie or the model icon due to all the media. Summer body tips, winter body, diet, you would find this in every magazine and it is the main subject of all the women magazine. All this struggle takes away from the real purpose of our lives, and the authenticity. For this reason, I've put jeans and T shirts as I feel everyone wears them almost as if they were a uniform, and everyone therefore looks the same and this conceals our own identity which rots under the layers. We struggle so much to become like a barbie when in fact Beauty is in the difference
Performance Clara Macias
Today society has taken away beauty in making us all the same, we are influenced in the way we dress (blue jeans and white t shirt --> sculpture), in the way we behave, we are pressured by the media in the way by body images, barbies, plastic surgeries..., and in the way we think politically. It is all about beeing politically correct.
This performance is alarming, the artist is taking the pose of the faceless barbies. Fake, and personality-less, this is what we are pressured to be. And I would like to work on this idea.
I like the way the artist is laying in the middle of all these barbies on the floor. It inspired me as similarly, i'm making a performance where people will have to weigh 49.5 kg in order to lay on the bed. I think that once everyone has tried my performance, weighed themselves and failed to be the actual weight i will put a barbie , or a mannequin and make the bed stand as to show our society icon or idole, a plastic model. A bit like when we expose these victoria secret model on a catwalk, and everyone's worship their body, almost with a label saying ' This is what you should look like'
Joana Vasconcelos
This feminists artwork appeals to me, it shows women functions in our current society, Seduce and cook. Heels and pans. This illustrates for me the clichés "a way to a mans heart is by cooking".
Richard Serra
This sculpture reminded me of my idea for my work, because people go there not seeing the end and feeling pressured by both walls. (Look reflection)
Feminism- Tracey Emin
In the workshop, the dimensions of my box kept reminding me of a bed. And then my concept evolved again, I looked at artists that worked with bed and was interested by Tracey Emin. As I remembered Tracey Emin was a feminis I thought of my work as a feminists piece, since the beggining I talk about women in africa, and uniforms. I feel this applies to women more than man, because women are pressured so much by our society into beeing skinny and model like size. The myth of the body and the body image. This is a huge problem, they undergoes surgeries to make their boobs bigger, or are hospitalized due to anorexia. I'd like to make a bed where you would only be able to lay on it if you weigh 49.5 Kg, which is the average weight of a victoria secret model, below that you are too skinny and above that too fat. Our society promotes thoses figures, instead of promoting individuality and differences and I believe this is shocking.
The bed reminded me of women function in some mens view, sex, and for this reason women makes themselves attractive, wants to seduce, and be on this bed. Making of themselves a tool, a prostitute.
Karina Kakikonnen
The use of white t shirts to create a landscape is inspiring, I would like to stuff my jeans and white t shirts and stuff it in order to create a landscape. This is in a canvas as well.
Christo et Jeanne Claude
I noticed that while African women were carrying stuff on their head it was always wrapped. It made me think of Christo and Jeanne Claude who wraps everything hiding their original Function, like this or the reichtag. This is a huge metaphor to our personality, we hides ourselves under so many layers, so much uniforms, so much materials and objects. We hide our authenticity, our trueselves behinds uniforms. I also like the way the work is wrapped with the rope. In my first performance piece, you see everything under a big white sheet, as people are embarrassed to show what they carry as they don't like to reveal a piece of theirselves. I've done it myself when I carried my sculptures in the tube I decided to put a cloth on it as I was scared of the public judgement. Christo and Jeanne Claude are artists that through their wrapping have shown how we are intrigued by wrapped buildings/ objects which we would have otherwise probably overlooked
Lecture- Jean Beaudriard
The lectures challenged our conception of Art, I was interested by the thinking of Jean Beaudriard and his book the system of objects This idea: consumption rather than production is the key determinant in society, the most important signifier of "class". Everyone judges by the objects, as if objects determines who we are, clothes and the way we wear them defines us. This ties into my work, I feel that a group of individuals influence our whole population and pressure them to consumerism, stealing their identity and their authenticity. People try to becomes the same as people want to dress like the "upper" "class". Objects is a language and they say so much about you, unless you dress like everyone else.
The Daily struggle
Imagine having to get up at 5am to go and fetch the family’s morning water. If your local waterhole has dried up, you may need to walk an hour or two to the next one.
There you wait with hundreds of others to fill your container with brown muddy water. You probably use a 5 gallon container which will weigh 20kg once full – the same as a large heavy suitcase – which you carry on your head.
You will need to do this at least twice a day. For many women and children fetching water dominates the day, pushing aside all other activities, including school. - Living Water in Africa Charity.
Breakdown
"Most people could just about give up the flat screen television and the DVD and the digital camera, but when it came to the love letters and the photographs, that was more difficult. – Michael Landy"
"The ultimate irony of Break Down is that, as soon as it ends, Landy will have turned himself into the ideal consumer – a man who needs to be sold new underwear, pyjamas, shoes, toothbrush, hairbrush. – Richard Dorment, The Daily Telegraph"
I was interested by the work Michael Landy "Breakdown", i think it reveals a lot on our current society. How we become so attached to objects that they are the cause of a breakdown. Our society became so materialistic it is ruining our authenticity, we let materials rule our lives, we let money decides who we are, we become servants of those objects. Objects represents love, a memory, a feeling, a victory... This reflection and this artpiece will feed into my work, I feel that nowadays we are put under this "uniform" and an example of this is for example the way we dress Jeans and white t shirts. This is a code of our society.
Curtain wall
As a wall is impossible to build due to safety, environment and time issues. I decided to simplify my idea, using cloth, and creating a curtain wall. I believe that this type of installation especially in a park has to be big to be effective, therefore I refused the option of creating a 30cm wall and went for the alternative; fabric.
Christo used here fabric to create and endless wall dividing in two the land. As I find walls very interesting as they do both divide nations but also creates home, I like the idea of fabric as the materials to separate. Fabric weighs nothing, it is not impressive or blocking like a concrete wall would be. It illustrate the contradiction, it divides but yet the fabric allows you to go through or cut through very easily, Through my work I wantto show our very own walls, the ones we all create. The boundaries we make around our personality, I didn't want to talk about A wall I wanted to talk about OUR wall, one we can all identify to. Therefore using fabric is quite relevant as I think these walls are easily breakable, we can all go through them and knock them down.
Materials
This endless wall by Goldsworthy is made with bricks which is what I would like to use for my own wall
Banksy's wall
Inspired by Banksy's work 'The walled off hotel' I realized how often walls are raised as a tragic part of our past and present, for example the Berlin Wall and the wall dividing Mexico and the US.
I will build a wall with the public, from the homeless to the entrepreneurs, I aim to involve people from a variety of backgrounds. Each participant will design a brick responding to the significance of walls as a tool for dividing nations and hierarchizing societies. It still strikes me how much comfort we find in the four walls of a home.
Balfour street Party
The British artist Banksy has organised a "street party" in the occupied West Bank to apologise for the Balfour Declaration, ahead of its centenary.
An actor dressed as Queen Elizabeth II hosted dozens of children at the event.
She also unveiled a new work by Banksy etched into Israel's controversial West Bank barrier that said: "Er... Sorry."
The Balfour Declaration expressed the British government's support for a Jewish national home in Palestine, paving the way for Israel's creation.
Israel and Jewish communities view the pledge as momentous, while Palestinians regard it as an historical injustice.
The British government has said it will mark the anniversary "with pride" and will host at a formal dinner in London on Thursday that will be attended by Prime Minister Theresa May and her Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Banksy's tea party in Bethlehem on Wednesday was attended by children from nearby Palestinian refugee camps. Instead of paper party hats, they wore plastic helmets painted with the British flag and riddled with pretend bullet holes.
A statement by Banksy said: "This conflict has brought so much suffering to people on all sides. It didn't feel appropriate to 'celebrate' the British role in it."
"The British didn't handle things well here - when you organise a wedding, it's best to make sure the bride isn't already married."
The British government's pledge, on 2 November 1917, was made in a letter by the then Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community.
It said the government viewed "with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people", so long as it did not "prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities".
The Balfour Declaration was the first international recognition by a world power of the right of the Jewish people to a national home in their ancestral land and formed the basis of Britain's Mandate for Palestine in 1920.
The Mandate expired on 14 May 1948 and the Jewish leadership in Palestine declared an independent Israeli state. In the Arab-Israeli war which followed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs fled or were forced from their homes.
Palestinians, who see the Balfour Declaration as something that caused decades of suffering and deprived them of their own state on land that became Israel, have called for an apology from the UK ahead of the centenary.
Note
I am interested by this picture, and how the wall is standing on its own. It is quite powerful and impressive.
Inspired by this picture, I think I would like my wall to stand on its own, simple, bear and that would make it strong and powerful.
Saatchi Gallery
This hay, and pink dictators is a strong piece of work associating them with animals
Emma Watson's Speech
I started questioning gender-based assumptions a long time ago. When I was 8, I was confused for being called bossy because I wanted to direct the plays that we would put on for our parents, but the boys were not. When at 14, I started to be sexualized by certain elements of the media. When at 15, my girlfriends started dropping out of sports teams because they didn’t want to appear muscly. When at 18, my male friends were unable to express their feelings.
I decided that I was a feminist, and this seemed uncomplicated to me. But my recent research has shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word. Women are choosing not to identify as feminists. Apparently, I’m among the ranks of women whose expressions are seen as too strong, too aggressive, isolating, and anti-men. Unattractive, even.
Why has the word become such an uncomfortable one? I am from Britain, and I think it is right I am paid the same as my male counterparts. I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body. I think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decisions that will affect my life. I think it is right that socially, I am afforded the same respect as men.
But sadly, I can say that there is no one country in the world where all women can expect to see these rights. No country in the world can yet say that they achieved gender equality. These rights, I consider to be human rights, but I am one of the lucky ones.
My life is a sheer privilege because my parents didn’t love me less because I was born a daughter. My school did not limit me because I was a girl. My mentors didn't assume that I would go less far because I might give birth to a child one day. These influences were the gender equality ambassadors that made me who I am today. They may not know it, but they are the inadvertent feminists that are changing the world today. We need more of those.
And if you still hate the word, it is not the word that is important. It’s the idea and the ambition behind it, because not all women have received the same rights I have. In fact, statistically, very few have.
In 1997, Hillary Clinton made a famous speech in Beijing about women’s rights. Sadly, many of the things that she wanted to change are still true today. But what stood out for me the most was that less than thirty percent of the audience were male. How can we effect change in the world when only half of it is invited or feel welcome to participate in the conversation?
Men, I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue, too. Because to date, I’ve seen my father’s role as a parent being valued less by society, despite my need of his presence as a child, as much as my mother’s. I’ve seen young men suffering from mental illness, unable to ask for help for fear it would make them less of a man. In fact, in the UK, suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20 to 49, eclipsing road accidents, cancer and coronary heart disease. I’ve seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men don’t have the benefits of equality, either.
We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes, but I can see that they are, and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence. If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted, women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled.
Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong. It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum, instead of two sets of opposing ideals. If we stop defining each other by what we are not, and start defining ourselves by who we are, we can all be freer, and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom.
I want men to take up this mantle so that their daughters, sisters, and mothers can be free from prejudice, but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too, reclaim those parts of themselves they abandoned, and in doing so, be a more true and complete version of themselves.
You might be thinking, “Who is this Harry Potter girl, and what is she doing speaking at the UN?” And, it’s a really good question. I’ve been asking myself the same thing.
All I know is that I care about this problem, and I want to make it better. And, having seen what I’ve seen, and given the chance, I feel it is my responsibility to say something.
Statesman Edmund Burke said, “All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing.”
In my nervousness for this speech and in my moments of doubt, I told myself firmly, “If not me, who? If not now, when?” If you have similar doubts when opportunities are presented to you, I hope those words will be helpful. Because the reality is that if we do nothing, it will take seventy-five years, or for me to be nearly 100, before women can expect to be paid the same as men for the same work. Fifteen and a half million girls will be married in the next 16 years as children. And at current rates, it won't be until 2086 before all rural African girls can have a secondary education.
If you believe in equality, you might be one of those inadvertent feminists that I spoke of earlier, and for this, I applaud you. We are struggling for a uniting word, but the good news is, we have a uniting movement. It is called HeForShe. I invite you to step forward, to be seen and to ask yourself, “If not me, who? If not now, when?”
Boltanski
Interested in clothes and uniform I searched Boltanski. By piling all these clothes Boltanski makes his work really powerful. I realized that the quantity enables your work to be strong and this is an aspect I will develop furether in my work.
THE GARDIAN EXTRACT
Boltanski delayed the opening to take advantage of lightless days and winter chill. Personnes is filled with intimations of the dead. To begin with, one is confronted by a long, high wall of stacked rusted boxes, each of them numbered, the contents of which are unknown. Beyond lies a field of old clothes, lain out in a grid running the length of the building, like municipal flower beds or a field of remembrance. There are old coats and anoraks, once-fashionable things and shapeless things, bright cardigans and children's sweaters, tatty jumpers and forlorn skirts – a rag-picker's field or the last day of the spring sales.
Rusted vertical posts divide the grid, supporting striplights slung between wires, whose thin glare gives the space a dismal carnival air – or the feel of some stadium in which detainees have been rounded up and sent to their doom. It is hard not to think of deportations and genocides, a recurrent theme in Boltanski's art.
A great mechanical grab suspended from a crane plucks at a mountain of more old clothes, repeatedly lifting quantities of wretched sweaters, dresses and coats towards the roof of the Belle Epoque building, only to drop them again in a flurry of flailing garments and clouds of dust, back on to the 50-tonne mound. The process is as pointless as it is interminable. Boltanski has said he thinks of the grab as the indifferent hand of God, or one of those fairground amusements where you try to grab a particular toy, and always fail.
Platitudes about death and absence are easy, however close to hand and present death always is. There are more people alive now than ever before. Ghosts have been crowded out and their voices drowned by the living, WG Sebald remarked somewhere. This thought also permeates Boltanski's art, which has insistently returned to the subject not just of death but of the anonymity death confers. He deals in traces rather than ghosts, with shadows and lists, photographs of the dead and piles of old clothes. His art, ultimately, is a memorial to nothing, to everyone and no one.
Comtempor Art Daniel Firman
I was interested by this work and it reminded me of the fetching of water happening in Africa. It is interesting to see how the artist use objects of our daily lives and yet it feels like he is talking about another country. Our current society can then relate. He is making a point on oppression maybe, how the materials destroys us, pressures us. Following this work, I want to do a performance where I would carry an extreme amount for 300 meters the distance of African women until I reach the water as a final destination. Daniel Firman is a very interesting artist, he worked with weight and did a famous serie of work "how to balance an elephant". I think it shows the weight on one's shoulder today, and how we feel we carry the weight of the world. Symbolically his work is interesting
Frieze Art Fair
Daniel Firman, worked with elephants as well as Barcelo. I went to see this impressive artwork at the Frieze art Fair, Regent's Park. It is relevant because it all talks about the weight.