smART re-creation

A bricolage sculpture by Frank Vagnone.

Postmodernist times witnessed the creation and re-creation of a wide variety of concepts in every area of study, including philosophy, politics, literature and sociology among others. In relation to that, visual arts were no exception.

Bricolage (French for 'tinkering') is a postmodernist artistic tendency characterised by the creation of a new work out of the parts or pieces of other related or non-related objects.

What is interesting about bricolage is the fact that it implies deconstructing the world around you in order to create something beautiful and meaningful. Furthermore, this postmodernist intentional deconstruction knows no difference among the employed objects as it justs rethinks the purpose and the usage of the things around as it puts them together. Moreover, by satisfying the artist's will, the creation of these works finds beauty in daily items while it also questions the randomness of these items.

The following picure shows an example of an array of rooms decorated using bricolage. It was designed by Kurt Schwitters in 1933.

Nowadays, this technique is still employed as a way to attach new meanings to the objects around us.

Marc Sparfel's bricolage sculptures.

'Oiseau Senufo', by Marc Sparfel.

 

Personally, what I like the most about this tendency is the fact that you can make use of long-forgotten items to communicate new ideas. Consequently, sculptures and bricolage works in general promote recycling.

References & more information

https://answersingenesis.org/world-religions/humanism/the-influence-of-postmodernism-part-3-deconstruction/

http://artofbricolage.blogspot.com/2011/11/marc-sparfel-european-bricolage.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bricolage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Schwitters

Anja's diaries: the missing half.

As I was reading Maus I started reflecting on how manipulated the information about our past and our family’s past is. Vladek is such a severe father, and even though he has his reasons, he in a way harms his son.

Since he destroys Anja’s diaries, he is preventing Art from finding himself, he is neglecting Art’s possibility of finding a meaning that goes maybe further or deeper than just being a survivor’s child and I want to clarify that I do not diminish the suffering of people who were in Holocaust, however, I think that giving such a pressure to the children of that generation is just cruel. And that’s why Vladek does not have any rights to destroy Anja’s diaries because for me, whatever the reasons someone could have for hiding the real (an subjective because everyone tells stories from his own point of view) History it is not valid, because you are taking a piece of someone else’s life. After all, what would you do if someone deliberately decides what you have to know?

Construction of reality

At the beginning of the unit was about the words sense ambiguity and in the linguistic side we said that the way we describe reality is reality. The only reality we know is the reality is the one culturally described and constructed and what we take for certain is actually imposed by society. It is for this that it is important to construct your own reality.

Applying this previous statement to the graphic novel Ghost World we can see expressed a different construction of reality, a construction based on the senses of these two teenage girls fed up with the superficiality of society and their attempts to depart from it. Their look of society is a bit cynical, ironic, and sarcastic and a lonely sense of independence. Enid all over the history tries to avoid being label which make her change her imagine again and again which in a way represents the importance of the images in our society and the typical label of a person according to their features that were all influenced by the mass media.

This continuous struggle to be different, not to fall in the game of what society labels you to be, think or behave is what can actually make a difference. However, the intensity of this feeling make Enid to also produce a superficial and quite judgemental personality just by trying to be different (hipster-like?) and not be labeled, she labels everything and everyone. 

Therefore, I can avoid but wonder until what point are we being influenced by the media and society?  Do we judge as the media and society does?

My experience at reading Maus

At the very beginning I wasn’t really motivated to read this comic since I had lots of thing to do, but once I started I couldn’t stop. I am not a person keen on comics and it took me a while to understand why I was so caught by the story, so I will tell you why you should read it.

First of all, the fact that it is a graphic novel helps a lot to people who are not likely to read, and for me it helped me a lot to take my imagination far, because it makes you feel everything more real, for example when Vladek explains the starvation diet in which his father put him. In other cases for example when it is talked about places in Poland it uses maps and that helps a lot to people with orientation problems.

Secondly the narrator is not only one, there are two narrators in first person, and the story is stated in a conversational style creating a sort of dialogue through the book by giving you two perspectives that makes the story more active, at the point that I started feeling like Art, feeling the same anxiety as Vladek was telling his stories. So in a way as you are reading it you become Art listening to his father carefully going through different emotions since the story is really cruel.

Furthermore, there are lots of things in this comic that I really appreciated, for instance, the fact that humans are represented by different kind of species considering the food chain. The fact that story graphics so well how all things took place in the Jew oppression by Germans. And how the story made feel so sensitive, thinking about all the people that lost their families, and how they suffered in this hostile era.

All things considered this novel is totally worth reading, but there is something that I didn’t understand, and that happened at the very end of book two, after his father has told the whole story finishing with a “happy ending” and it is when he called Art with another name, he called him Richieu, his older death brother. And if we consider that Art-Vladek’s relationship wasn’t too close, what does it mean? 

The power of graphic novels and comics

If we go back in human history time, we can see that the old days are an illustration of images which recite each unique event that occurred in our world or in our own lives. If we think, images antedated writing and it is believed that they have served a source for words. Moreover, in the earliest civilisations, nearly most of inhabitants were illiterate for the reason that reading was an activity that just rich people have access to. Alternatively of written announcements, in many cases cartoons and draws were used as a modest way to communicate ideas, feelings and thoughts to the working class populace. Considering that, the act of visualizing and conceiving the world through images by adding colour and shapes it is been a fundamental part of our nature.

 

 Although there is a little doubt about how the origin of comics and graphic novels emerged, we can say that its roots come from the days of pre historic man, when individuals told stories by utilizing images as a substitute of text. 

 Now, looking at our society in the current days, I ask myself why images have lost interest among the people. Why the current societies of the world do not include graphic novels and comics in the curricula? Is there any specific reason why our society has left behind a powerful source which has proved to be beneficial to our people?

 Well, in order to answer these questions, I would like to mention that when I was searching for the history of graphic novels and comics I found that there is lot of evidence of the advantages of including these materials in the educational field, however if we look at the current curricula of our education there is little not to say nothing about graphic novels and comics.

I sincerely believe that this has to do with the society that we live in and the people who control certain aspects and fields of our society such as the educational field. If we look around, we can see that for the elite powers there is no convenience for them to include these types of materials due to its positive impact in young generations. These materials such the graphics novels and comics can be use to educate from little children to adults in order to develop their thinking process, to develop their cognitive abilities and to build complex reading skills. In addition, they do not just promote academic skills, but they also prompt the critical thinking capacity and the abstract thinking capacity.

All in all, as pre-service teachers we need to be aware of how our current education is manipulated by the great powers, but more important we do need to have certain strategies in order to make a revolution inside our classroom. In other words, we need to be able to influence our students by providing them the right materials so our students will be able to think for themselves, we do not need to follow the traditional course, but we can take courage and include useful and powerful material that will make a difference in our students’ lives such as graphic novels and comics.

Ghost World-ish view of reality: What is it exactly?

As we know, the graphic novel Ghost World is immersed in the period we know as Postmodernism. This is a period which has been influenced by two world wars that have devastated the countries involved, not only physically, but also psychologically. One might say that people have lost faith in mankind after these episodes. Nothing makes sense anymore and people try to find their own way out of this reality. This is the case of Rebecca and Enid, two friends who are about to enter adulthood. This graphic novel has the particularity that does not narrate a story with a clear thread or plot. Instead, it tries to illustrate what goes on in the lives of two girls who are trying to find a meaning in their lives. As it is expected by the period in which they are immersed, they view reality in a certain way, their own way and no one else’s. For example, they always go to eat to a place which is visited by weird people. However, when more and more people start to attend the same place they don’t think it is appealing anymore. This is when the term “hipster” comes into play. These girls have created their own ghetto, in which only things and habits that are not appealing to the rest of the regular people are appealing for them and, once people have realized that it is appealing, they decide that it is not anymore.

The casual behavior that they exhibit is surprising. It is interesting how they seem to perceive the world in a different dimension than regular people. The dressing changes with no apparent pattern. It seems that the only objective is to differentiate with the apathetic crowd. For example, in a passage of the novel, Enid goes to a sex shop with her friend, Josh, who is the shiest but coolest guy she knows. At the beginning he, of course didn’t want to go, but she ends up convincing him.  When they are inside, there are several “creepy” people and artifacts that call Enid’s attention. However, she ends up buying a piece of clothes that looks like a leather cap that is part of a sadomasochistic disguise. She is excited telling this story to her friend on the phone, Rebecca, but she does not reveal what she bought. At the end of the chapter, she appears wearing this cap as if nothing were wrong and, when Rebecca sees her, she asks her to take that silly thing off.

This brief contextualization of the novel made me remember of a discussion that I’ve had with many good friends about our reality and how we shape it. To be more specific, the topic of football has been highly controversial these days. I love football; I wouldn’t be able to explain why, however, there are people that disagree with me, naturally. It is my reality which I have shaped with my experiences and beliefs. It is like wearing the silly cap in public. However, I might also not agree with the beliefs of the same people that criticize me. This is what postmodernism is about. No reality is absolute and, if there is one, we never look at the whole scene. Never. Maybe Enid wore that cap because she was trying to express this very same concept that she only wanted to give a connotation to that part of the disguise and not all of it. Advertisement is also based on this game of hiding reality; it only exacerbates certain features of the human body or the icons it uses to promote products, but it never shows what’s behind it. Many people criticize the World Cup because Brazil invested millions of dollars in building stadiums while most Brazilians are asking for education and health or because workers died in the construction of these buildings. I don’t agree with it either, I only like the sport, not the commercial connotation. However, how many of those people have stopped to think who is behind the shoes they wear or the jewels they buy, maybe an exploited kid in Indonesia or another one in Sierra Leone? Despite the fact that there is a partial reality that most of us try to grasp, let’s not forget that there are many others as well. I want to copy a quote by Eduardo Galeano, who addressed the topic of football. Enjoy and reflect.

“El fútbol sigue siendo la pasión popular más importante del mundo; les guste o no les guste a quienes siguen todavía aferrados a los viejos prejuicios de izquierda y derecha, que han tenido y compartido sobre el fútbol. Para la derecha, el fútbol era la prueba de que los pobres piensan con los pies; y para la izquierda, el fútbol tenía la culpa de que el pueblo no pensara. Esa carga de prejuicio hizo que se descalificara una pasión popular. Lamentablemente eso también pasa en la izquierda, o en una izquierda que todavía no se ha enterado de que Stalin murió; esta idea de que el partido o algún intelectual tienen el derecho de decidir cuál alegría es legítima y cuál no. Entonces, el fútbol era una alegría ilegítima, porque desviaba al pueblo de sus destinos revolucionarios. Una estupidez total, y los hechos demostraron que no tenía nada que ver con nada. Yo sigo siendo un apasionado del fútbol y a mucha honra"

Eduardo Galeano

Suicide Island

Suicide Island is a manga that is set in Japan in the near future. In this Japan, the suicide rates had grown alarmingly high. The problem the government has is that people attempting suicide is expensive for them, as they have to cover medical expenses and spend money on programs to get these people on track. So, the government looks for an alternative solution. They send people who have attempted suicide to an island near Japan, and there people are allowed to do whatever they want as long as they do not try to leave the island.

The main character, Kei, after failing his suicide attempt, is asked by the doctor if he wants to live or not. He answers that he does not, so they send him along other people to the suicide island. Upon getting there some people jump to the opportunity to do what they want, literally, as they jump off cliffs to kills themselves. The group that is left realize that they have no roof or food to survive on the island, so they start to search for a water stream and fruits they can eat. As they walk one of the people in the group asks the question that I had been asking myself: why waste energy trying to survive? The reason they are in that situation is that they did not want to live anymore so trying to survive when they could perfectly kill themselves is illogical. None of them have an answer, but they still carry on their task.

They struggle every step of the way while they try to survive. Finding shelter, having water, getting food, people giving up, people committing suicide are their main problems at first. But as human beings their biggest enemies are other human beings. In this island there are no rules, you can steal things or kill someone and there is no law to punish those actions.

One thing that caught my attention is Kei's struggle with hunting. At some point of the manga Kei makes himself a bow and tries to hunt a deer, but when it comes to the moment in which he has to shoot, he freezes. He sees this animal that has never done any harm and is pure and full of life, and he starts to think of himself someone who did nothing with his life and was the worst of his society. He questions himself, because how can he take a life when he so readily threw away his? What gave him the right to decide the fate of other living creature when he did not want a future?

These questions are the ones that give him the strength to try to survive. He decides that he is going to cherish life and by hunting he becomes part of nature after being isolated from everything back in Japan. This reminds me a little to The Sun Also Rises, as both Kei and Jake felt truly at ease when they were surrounded by nature.

I think this manga has some elements of post modernism as throughout the story most of the characters are disappointed of themselves and humanity, they question values and rules and struggle to make their own to regulate the behaviour within the group.