Art as a Political Statement

Blog 1: Art as a Political Statement

During the process of stimulus exploration, I found, was an interesting and thoughtful discussion. Set out were different pictures, we got into small groups to make our way around each stimulus. Each group would write down their thoughts on the paper as we went round. I was with Ella and Imogen and we were able to spark deep discussions on our thoughts, which at times could be similar or opposite. Discussing our thoughts would sometimes allow one to think of the photo differently or think further into your initial ideas. I like how we all had different interpretations for the same thing but brought individuality in terms of scenarios or links that could arise from the stimulus. This also goes for as a whole class, we conversed our different thoughts from each group and how this would inspire me to see things in a different aspect. 

For example, on this particular stimulus, I thought that the pink object was a laser beam, being shot from one person to another whereas someone else thought it was two people on a seesaw. Both ideas I believe are particularly playful but seen in a different light and helped me to envision others' thoughts. Later on, we found out it was in fact two people on a seesaw.

I found it rather insightful when our tutor later explained the true meaning behind each stimulus. Sometimes, my group's observations were rather similar to the factually correct meaning behind the photo but other times we were not even close and had created a different scenario. I like that we could take our thoughts and observations without any factual insight behind the photos as we were able to be creative with our minds and not be 'restricted' to what's 'right' or 'wrong'.

After this task, each group was given a certain stimulus where they had to pick three words and create a small phrase of movements based on these words. My group were given the stimulus of artist Adrian Brandon's 'Stolen Series', in particular the photo of Breoanna Taylor who was killed by police in her apartment in Louisville, Ky during a 'botched raid' (What to Know About Breonna Taylor’s Death, 2021). In the photo we particularly took note of the colours around her eyes, a deep red, we thought this could suggest she is quite tired. There is lots of uncoloured space, we thought this could be due to an emptiness she feels. The photo was unfinished in our eyes so we wondered if perhaps the woman had died or the artist had died therefore the painting was left incomplete. We were later told by our tutor about the background of this picture and that the artist has created this series dedicated to black people who had been killed by police and used the time to determine how long each portrait was to be coloured in (1 year = 1 minute of colour) (2021). 

As a group, we then picked out 3 words that the class had written around the paper and created small phrases, centred around the words. The words we chose included numb, unfinished and vulnerable. We felt as a group that they all communicated the intention of Brandon’s work and the message behind it.

 When thinking about the feeling behind the word numb, we all agreed that is quite a heavy feeling of nothingness and decided that it’s also quite grounded which sparked the intention behind our movements. We started by standing in a line, shoulder to shoulder, and would knock into each other like dominos starting with Ella. This movement rebounded off Imogen and we would go back and forth, slowly making our way to the ground. We showed a blank expression and let our limbs dangle heavily to accentuate the nothingness when numb. I found numb quite an easy word to showcase, our tutor helped with this as we discussed the feelings associated with being ‘numb’ which I felt gave me ideas to use and put together a phrase of movement.

We felt unfinished means to stop midway and to not finish whatever it is that one is trying to complete. For this, we set a phrase of three movements, simple bases off of the outline of the drawing and in a pathway that we feel his pencil may have moved when drawing the outline. This included an arm circle to show the shape of her head, a fold-up to our right arm straight above ones head to embody the shape of her nose and lastly a side bend with the right arm folded across the body to portray her eyes. These body parts were all of which took our attention when first examining the artwork. To show ‘unfinished’ a person would stop after a certain movement in a cannon sort of structure, for example, everyone would do movement one, only myself and Imogen danced the second movement and for the third, Imogen was the only one left. For us, the whole group did not finish the phrase so it was unfinished. As a group we took the word quite literal, I would not be sure on how to communicate ‘unfinished’ if it wasn’t literal as there are not particularly any emotions behind it which we could add to the phrase.

To me, vulnerable always reminds me of the expression “like a deer in headlights”. We conveyed this by staying in our line formation and two people dropping down to a crouch, leaving one person up and in the ‘spotlight’. This meant whoever was left up was quite vulnerable as whoever was down, was down with another person meaning they weren’t alone. We did this in a pattern so everyone was up, and vulnerable, once. I feel that this was a word we struggled with most, unable to think of innovative movements as we thought too deeply into it. Vulnerable could’ve been accentuated by emotion which is something we lacked, so going forward, I will use this experience and learn from it in future tasks.

I quite enjoyed this method of using words/thoughts based on a stimulus to create a phrase as it helped me to stay on track and create movement stemmed from ideas off of the stimuli. Going forwards, I will try to use this method as I feel I thought in depth more so than usual about the stimulus which gave me movement ideas that linked back to my intentions within the piece. Although I sometimes felt a little restricted in what I felt was correct and what conveyed the meaning, I think that this was just because it’s a method I haven’t ventured to so the more I do it, the less restricted I may feel. Saying this, my group helped with the restriction as our ideas inspired each other and we could bounce off of those to create a movement that linked to our intentions. 

Bibliography:

Nytimes.com. 2021. What to Know About Breonna Taylor’s Death. [online] Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html> [Accessed 8 October 2021].

2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.adrianbrandon.com> [Accessed 8 October 2021].