Friday, June 11, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
Typologies of Walking and Not Walking
America loves spending money, and in order for our capitalist market to survive we must inject money into the economy. We spend money out of boredom or for some form of entertainment. Once we’ve invested in new things, there are other things that get roped into the marketbasket and we get sucked into spending more and more. At what point do we realize that we have everything we need, and buying more takes away the benefits of the simple joys of life that are found within us?
I found a simple quote by Richard Wagner that reads, "Joy is not in things; it is within us," and was inspired to show it to others. I went out to a strip mall, with the quote hanging on both sides of a shopping cart. I walked around the parking lot, in a couple stores, and the walkways with the empty cart. More people tended to notice the signs outside; inside people were focused on finishing up their shopping lists. The quote was read by many and hopefully inspires new light on consumerism, because their is such a thing as overconsumption, and can be a problem in many lives.
An Experimentation With(in) Daily Life
The broom became another object I had to carry. I adjusted to its awkwardness while riding my bike to run errands and carrying other things. I didn’t think about it unless in stores or where people took a bit longer a gaze at me. I stopped and swept scatters leaves off areas of the sidewalk on the way to the library and used it to help tote my groceries back home, noticing that drivers took extra caution when passing me. I thought someone might stop and ask me why I had it while walking into Fry’s grocery store or Jones’ Photo, but the most I got was double glances then the gazers returning to their tasks. My roommates were in and out of the house with work, not noticing the broom sitting nearby as I used my computer. Every time the broom end brushed my bare leg I thought of the things that had been swept up with it and tried not to let it happen again. I thought about other changes in people’s routine like hairstyles and colors, glasses, clothes, watches, among other things that may seem drastic to the individual but sometimes means nothing in their day to day lives.
I Walk In Your Name
My loved one is the most compassionate people I know. He is the type of guy who will go in to a convenience store for something specific like a miniature cigar or a snack, and if a homeless person were to ask him for it r or something similar right after he got it, he gives it to them even if he doesn’t have the money for another. When he walks by a homeless person in a parking lot, he goes to his car, grabs as much change as he can, and gives it to him. He will play music on the streets and get tips from those who enjoy, and then give it all to the bums. These actions are done with and without being asked. Whenever I encounter a homeless person who asks for change, I always question what they are really doing with what they collect. I have a fairly strong impression that they use it for intense drugs and that is not what I want to help them do. My loved one has no expectations and no judgments. When he sees a fellow man in need, he helps if he can.
For my walk, I tried to find the places that I have seen the homeless. I grabbed all my change around my house and headed out. Maybe because this venture was so specific in its intentions and that mid-summer day is bringing in over 100 degrees in heat, I had more trouble than usual coming across them. There were many people out that could have possibly been homeless, but they weren’t sitting on street corners begging for change and I didn’t want to be rude. I saw one man near a coffee shop and later on the streets I smiled and waved as he did the same. This simple action made me feel like I did a good deed, even if it was small, as he smiled back at me and moved on. There was a man playing his guitar collecting change. He was by no means a bum, but I respected that he chose to perform for the public on such a hot day and contributed my thanks with coins. I ran into a bum after checking out a restaurant’s menu. He asked me for some money for food from Subway. I gave him four dollars and he gave many thanks. Then he rambled on shortly about his life before the streets, working at a Burger King that, at least in his eyes, unfairly fired him. He mumbled and looked around a lot; it was hard to understand him. He complimented my bike and talked about one he had owned. By the end of the conversation he told me he loved me and started walking in the opposite direction of Subway. I shook my head, but maybe he was just lost. Because of the lack of homeless I was seeing, when I went out for coffee and lunch at local restaurants I was sure to leave a generous tip for their kind services. Later I was buying a movie when a man tried to sell me rap CDs in the parking lot for a bus pass. I did not have change on me nor did I want a CD, but I went to the car I was driving, grabbed what was there, and passed it to him. He replied with a thanks, saying it was probably enough to get him on the bus. There was a part of me that felt guilty when I gave it to him because I felt like he was lying to me. I tried to resist this thought, tried not to hold expectations because there is no way for me to know for sure; it’s quite possible he was telling the truth.
While on this walk, I tried to imagine what sort of things brought the homeless to the streets. There was gossip about a bum who is commonly seen on Campbell Ave between Grant and Glenn with two fistfuls of grocery bags. The gossip suggested that he has money but is living on the streets by choice. I thought about why someone to choose to do so, mostly finding that money is the problem that won’t get solved anytime soon. It brings many stresses that to some are simply not worth losing life; I could see why someone would live without it, but considering the basic needs that would be difficult to find on the streets of a city without money, I wondered what could possibly be the best option for the sake of our mental health, though obviously some kind of middle ground is needed.
I may have more luck with interacting and giving to the homeless when it is more spontaneous and natural; when I’m not looking to help but someone happens to come along asking for it.
For my walk, I tried to find the places that I have seen the homeless. I grabbed all my change around my house and headed out. Maybe because this venture was so specific in its intentions and that mid-summer day is bringing in over 100 degrees in heat, I had more trouble than usual coming across them. There were many people out that could have possibly been homeless, but they weren’t sitting on street corners begging for change and I didn’t want to be rude. I saw one man near a coffee shop and later on the streets I smiled and waved as he did the same. This simple action made me feel like I did a good deed, even if it was small, as he smiled back at me and moved on. There was a man playing his guitar collecting change. He was by no means a bum, but I respected that he chose to perform for the public on such a hot day and contributed my thanks with coins. I ran into a bum after checking out a restaurant’s menu. He asked me for some money for food from Subway. I gave him four dollars and he gave many thanks. Then he rambled on shortly about his life before the streets, working at a Burger King that, at least in his eyes, unfairly fired him. He mumbled and looked around a lot; it was hard to understand him. He complimented my bike and talked about one he had owned. By the end of the conversation he told me he loved me and started walking in the opposite direction of Subway. I shook my head, but maybe he was just lost. Because of the lack of homeless I was seeing, when I went out for coffee and lunch at local restaurants I was sure to leave a generous tip for their kind services. Later I was buying a movie when a man tried to sell me rap CDs in the parking lot for a bus pass. I did not have change on me nor did I want a CD, but I went to the car I was driving, grabbed what was there, and passed it to him. He replied with a thanks, saying it was probably enough to get him on the bus. There was a part of me that felt guilty when I gave it to him because I felt like he was lying to me. I tried to resist this thought, tried not to hold expectations because there is no way for me to know for sure; it’s quite possible he was telling the truth.
While on this walk, I tried to imagine what sort of things brought the homeless to the streets. There was gossip about a bum who is commonly seen on Campbell Ave between Grant and Glenn with two fistfuls of grocery bags. The gossip suggested that he has money but is living on the streets by choice. I thought about why someone to choose to do so, mostly finding that money is the problem that won’t get solved anytime soon. It brings many stresses that to some are simply not worth losing life; I could see why someone would live without it, but considering the basic needs that would be difficult to find on the streets of a city without money, I wondered what could possibly be the best option for the sake of our mental health, though obviously some kind of middle ground is needed.
I may have more luck with interacting and giving to the homeless when it is more spontaneous and natural; when I’m not looking to help but someone happens to come along asking for it.
Infernal Noise Brigade
When a group like the Infernal Noise Brigade enters public space, it transforms the space, bringing life back to the streets, trains, or buses, giving people a reason to enjoy as their sounds resonant within listeners. Even as I sat at my computer watching clips of their marches, I felt their music within me and it gave me the chills, as if pumping energy into my body. The music was powerful and inspirational; it made me want to be a part of the movement. The artistic creation’s potential lies in getting people’s attention and causing a reaction in street performances and thus is an aesthetic based on relations and experiences. It provokes the public to participate in their performance, raise awareness and concern of political events, and an understanding or feeling of a collective life in hopes that its liveliness will carry into one’s day to day life.
Everything today is done to make money, and when such a time and energy investment is made to something that does not yield profits, shows their true commitment to what they believe in. Groups like INB are initiated by people who care, who want to bring pure, fun, live entertainment to people who can’t always get it, with timing that makes a bigger statement. The marches were done as carnivalesque protests; they grabbed people’s attention and thus a greater overall awareness of certain political events. It was nonetheless entertainment, but they weren’t trying to engage a particular audience at a particular time. It wasn’t like going to a concert; people weren’t always aware they were coming. They engaged anyone around who can listen or see whose life is interrupted by the commotion. They wanted to see who is accepting of the noise, who enjoys it, who will participates in it just by listening or dancing and who will be disregard or not like it and want it to stop. There could never be a specific response and this fact that they are never quite sure how the masses will react to their performance plays a role in the unexpectedness of relations within a given space. In street performances they, as Stevphen Shukaitis notes, “break down the wall between artistic activity as separate or removed from daily life because these forms can be inscribed within the flow of people’s everyday experience.” Their performance is based on potential relations with the space they are in and the interactions with people they are around, which is a part of the self-evolving artistic creation. This all contributes to the ephemeral characteristics of street performances, “predicated on the intervention or opening into a system of relations, connecting innovations that are passed along and mutated through the modulation of the relations in which they exist,” as Shukaitis states so well.
Private spaces would have inherently restricted some of the general public. The wall between and artistic performance and everyday experience would have stayed in tack as it clearly separates the artist and the viewer. The performance would have been tamed and controlled. If it were in a gallery or theater setting, it would lose its spontaneity because to some extent what is done in these spaces is expected, and those who expect it go to see it. It doesn’t allow people to be genuinely surprised by it and doesn’t give them the chance to react to it in the same why they might on the street. Thus they tend remain an observer in the gallery or theatre instead of becoming involved in the artistic creation in performances.
I watched a video a few years ago that had interesting ideas as far as entertainment is concerned: that all sports, music, television shows, movies, performances, etc are being used to distract us from what the government is doing. We fall back into our homes, courts, stadiums, theaters constantly and pay attention to more entertainment than the politics that control our lives. Without our attention as a whole, the government could get away with anything. When there is a street performance, however, we get the best of both worlds because it draws attention to political situations while entertaining and bringing the public together. On the streets, the audience is better able to identify with the performance causing an affective composition within both the performer and the viewer, a connection that is sometimes lost in a private setting. Street performances allow public spaces to be shared for a collective experience instead of individually like in private spaces. This in itself is also political because it works against the traditional and conventional distribution of ideas, images, and relations, as Shukaitis notes.
The people within the street performing groups generally use nicknames to hide their identities from employers because of negative associations. It is never really known who comprises groups like INB, allowing them a certain amount of anonymity. This does not question authorship because the performances aren’t about the individual, and they aren’t even about the group. It is more about their influence on the public, raising awareness in themselves and their surroundings. As individuals they are anonymous but as a group they are known and they try to influence people during particular situations because of the situation itself.
Because the articles and video clip were more focused on the action, I was left questions about the cause and how effective the Infernal Noise Brigade was in particular as far as politics was concerned. The most surprising thing to me about the street performances was the reactions they received from police. For their music making, dancing, rifle twirling, and energy to provoke and threaten cops so much to do a thing like tear gassing them shocks me because it seems like their attention-grabbing behavior to get people to enjoy themselves, others, and the music was innocent. Marching down a street is so non-violent that it makes the police look like they over-reacted to a performance that brings enjoyment and awareness on many levels including consciousness and politics, two things that are necessary for a well-lived life.
Everything today is done to make money, and when such a time and energy investment is made to something that does not yield profits, shows their true commitment to what they believe in. Groups like INB are initiated by people who care, who want to bring pure, fun, live entertainment to people who can’t always get it, with timing that makes a bigger statement. The marches were done as carnivalesque protests; they grabbed people’s attention and thus a greater overall awareness of certain political events. It was nonetheless entertainment, but they weren’t trying to engage a particular audience at a particular time. It wasn’t like going to a concert; people weren’t always aware they were coming. They engaged anyone around who can listen or see whose life is interrupted by the commotion. They wanted to see who is accepting of the noise, who enjoys it, who will participates in it just by listening or dancing and who will be disregard or not like it and want it to stop. There could never be a specific response and this fact that they are never quite sure how the masses will react to their performance plays a role in the unexpectedness of relations within a given space. In street performances they, as Stevphen Shukaitis notes, “break down the wall between artistic activity as separate or removed from daily life because these forms can be inscribed within the flow of people’s everyday experience.” Their performance is based on potential relations with the space they are in and the interactions with people they are around, which is a part of the self-evolving artistic creation. This all contributes to the ephemeral characteristics of street performances, “predicated on the intervention or opening into a system of relations, connecting innovations that are passed along and mutated through the modulation of the relations in which they exist,” as Shukaitis states so well.
Private spaces would have inherently restricted some of the general public. The wall between and artistic performance and everyday experience would have stayed in tack as it clearly separates the artist and the viewer. The performance would have been tamed and controlled. If it were in a gallery or theater setting, it would lose its spontaneity because to some extent what is done in these spaces is expected, and those who expect it go to see it. It doesn’t allow people to be genuinely surprised by it and doesn’t give them the chance to react to it in the same why they might on the street. Thus they tend remain an observer in the gallery or theatre instead of becoming involved in the artistic creation in performances.
I watched a video a few years ago that had interesting ideas as far as entertainment is concerned: that all sports, music, television shows, movies, performances, etc are being used to distract us from what the government is doing. We fall back into our homes, courts, stadiums, theaters constantly and pay attention to more entertainment than the politics that control our lives. Without our attention as a whole, the government could get away with anything. When there is a street performance, however, we get the best of both worlds because it draws attention to political situations while entertaining and bringing the public together. On the streets, the audience is better able to identify with the performance causing an affective composition within both the performer and the viewer, a connection that is sometimes lost in a private setting. Street performances allow public spaces to be shared for a collective experience instead of individually like in private spaces. This in itself is also political because it works against the traditional and conventional distribution of ideas, images, and relations, as Shukaitis notes.
The people within the street performing groups generally use nicknames to hide their identities from employers because of negative associations. It is never really known who comprises groups like INB, allowing them a certain amount of anonymity. This does not question authorship because the performances aren’t about the individual, and they aren’t even about the group. It is more about their influence on the public, raising awareness in themselves and their surroundings. As individuals they are anonymous but as a group they are known and they try to influence people during particular situations because of the situation itself.
Because the articles and video clip were more focused on the action, I was left questions about the cause and how effective the Infernal Noise Brigade was in particular as far as politics was concerned. The most surprising thing to me about the street performances was the reactions they received from police. For their music making, dancing, rifle twirling, and energy to provoke and threaten cops so much to do a thing like tear gassing them shocks me because it seems like their attention-grabbing behavior to get people to enjoy themselves, others, and the music was innocent. Marching down a street is so non-violent that it makes the police look like they over-reacted to a performance that brings enjoyment and awareness on many levels including consciousness and politics, two things that are necessary for a well-lived life.
Critical Art Ensemble
The Introduction to the book of Digital Resistance explains the premise of “tactical media;” it is possibly a reconstructed and reconfigured form of avant-garde; participants, however, do not consider themselves artists or political activists in any traditional sense because to do so would limit their capabilities in social and knowledge systems, key components in their work. Before they were named, they focused on intervening in television, but because this was limited to only one media, they expanded to include other forms of media. Over time tactical media became more defined and structured; some were to some extent regretful because it placed boundaries on what they were doing while others appreciated the merging of many different fields whether as an activist, artist, or scientist because it acknowledged and valued each individual and group. The article explains that tactical media is a workable model that is shaped and reshaped; it challenges the government, displaying and critiquing its cover-ups and negativity, giving people a new way to understand and interact with the system that strives for power and self-interest.
Tactical media is ephemeral, leaving few material traces and a living memory. Though it can be secondarily represented through photographs and videos, tactical media is non-archival because it is an action that comes to an end. Sometimes monumental works can help solve the issue because they inscribe their imperatives within their spaces, but again I felt an example would enhance my understanding of how a monumental work could do so. Tactical media is a form of performance to be ephemeral and affects people during some sort of protest, and after the protest nothing is left but thoughts and feelings of what was.
The article needed examples that exemplified how tactical media was used though it was made clear what it was and why it was used. The conclusion implied that the text that followed would provide this but at least one clear example in the introduction could have made it more comprehensive. It was clear that tactical media was used to counteract the rising power of authoritarian culture and that in itself made me more interested and supportive of tactical media and its practitioners. I have a growing frustration with how we are ruled by money when money should be second to one’s internal state of being, one’s peace and happiness. Money causes unnecessary stresses because of our capitalist market but is somehow a necessary evil. I always wonder how and why it got this way and how it could ever be possible to decrease its importance in our lives, though I cannot even imagine what life could be like at that point. These thoughts make me more curious as to what tactical media practitioners may have done with regards to this troublesome issue. “For a brief time there was and continues to be a relief from capital’s tyranny of specialization that forces us to perform as if we are a fixed set of relationships and characteristics and to repress or strictly manager all other forms of desire and expression.”
Tactical media is ephemeral, leaving few material traces and a living memory. Though it can be secondarily represented through photographs and videos, tactical media is non-archival because it is an action that comes to an end. Sometimes monumental works can help solve the issue because they inscribe their imperatives within their spaces, but again I felt an example would enhance my understanding of how a monumental work could do so. Tactical media is a form of performance to be ephemeral and affects people during some sort of protest, and after the protest nothing is left but thoughts and feelings of what was.
The article needed examples that exemplified how tactical media was used though it was made clear what it was and why it was used. The conclusion implied that the text that followed would provide this but at least one clear example in the introduction could have made it more comprehensive. It was clear that tactical media was used to counteract the rising power of authoritarian culture and that in itself made me more interested and supportive of tactical media and its practitioners. I have a growing frustration with how we are ruled by money when money should be second to one’s internal state of being, one’s peace and happiness. Money causes unnecessary stresses because of our capitalist market but is somehow a necessary evil. I always wonder how and why it got this way and how it could ever be possible to decrease its importance in our lives, though I cannot even imagine what life could be like at that point. These thoughts make me more curious as to what tactical media practitioners may have done with regards to this troublesome issue. “For a brief time there was and continues to be a relief from capital’s tyranny of specialization that forces us to perform as if we are a fixed set of relationships and characteristics and to repress or strictly manager all other forms of desire and expression.”
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