American Beauty

I picked this image of Amber Heard as a quintessential depiction of American beauty. She epitomizes everything that American society holds as a high standard of beauty: her hair, features, and makeup are all seen as the best of what American woman have to offer the world. 

This is my remix of the American beauty and how the American society actually interacts with American women. The recent vitriol thrown at Amber Heard after she announced her husband has been abusive, is a largely normalized behavior towards women in America. Women have to be beautiful, but they also only exist to be used by men, and their beauty is only for the consumption of the male gaze. 

The Choices We Have

The Choices We Have

For my media remix project I selected a Kodak add from a July 1970 Life Magazine. I chose this add because of the meaning created when the text and images were viewed together. The add suggests to me that a man should be able to choose to use a woman like choosing to use a type of film, women are interchangeable objects to be enjoyed by men. I found the subtext of this add to be particularly poignant at this time because of what happened in the Stanford rape case during the time of our class sessions. A man who was charged guilty on three felony counts of sexual assault was sentenced to six months of his fourteen year sentence because the judge thought any more time would "have a severe impact on him." In court the victim read a letter to the rapist that described the inequities of the entire legal process for sexual assault and how it was colored by male privilege and the cultural assumption that if a woman got raped, they did something wrong. Seeing this add after this incident and after reading many responses to the Stanford case and letter I began thinking about the differences in the choices men and women are culturally afforded. Please read the poem written by Liz Ruddy in response to the Stanford case that most influenced my thinking about choices for this project. In this remix I wanted to highlight how small the choices women are afforded are when it comes to sexual assault. I feel that my finished remix carries the message I was trying to send. I think that viewing the two images together is particularly impactful.

The “Consumers, Middle Class” original image is portraying what the artist, Sally Edelstein, thought the American dream was all about more than half a century ago. Depicting a “family abundance” and the “freedom” that families in the U.S. have in order to entertain themselves and enjoy outside barbeques. Not only U.S. citizens but also humanity itself have paid the price of that “joy of life” of the American dream, with unregulated gun control (among many other consequences of course!) Families and friends of the victims of shootings are the ones who are not living that idea of the American dream (who does?) Well, I think senators and congressmen and women live in a psychological white fence that privatizes the rest of the U.S. citizens to be truly safe. Sally Edelstein created the original image in 2012, in reaction on how, nowadays, reality differs abysmally from the original idea of the American dream. I extrapolated Edelstein’s creation and added another layer: the cruel and sad reality of our actual U.S. gun control polices.

Making the Subliminal Visible

Trigger Warning: This post depicts violence against women.

Original image from Harper's Bazaar, Oct. 2014

Remixed image from Pistrang, June 2016

The goal of this transformation was to make the subliminal visible. The original image is one of supposed pleasure and beauty. This photoshopped lower part of a pale white woman’s face has plump lips that are pushed open by her lipstick tube. The only element of her face that could be considered flawed are her chipped, gap teeth. Although they give the appearance of someone too young for braces, they still seem alluring, thereby continuing America’s fetishization of young girls. The phallic shape of the lipstick forces her mouth open and recalls violence against women. In the remixed image, the lipstick is transformed into what it truly is- a white penis thrusting its dominance between her lips. The penis is made out of female body parts to illustrate the role some women play in judging and blaming other women. As evidenced by the split lip, bruise, and bloody nose, the penis (male sexual aggression and rape culture) has enacted further violence on the woman. The bruise is comprised of skin tones from women of color to honor women of "Other" races and ethnicities who are often excluded from conversations about violence against women and beauty standards. In the end, this piece of body is transformed into its hidden self: a fragmented, incomplete, and sexualized object.

Black Lives Still Fighting & Matter

original digitized Kodak slide from 1965

found on the side of the road

*please do not distribute this photograph*

Black Lives Still Fighting

digital collage

Laura Kathrein

This media remix takes a photograph from March 1965 of children standing on the side of the street waving and cheering on the protesters marching from Selma to Montgomery led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The youthfulness of this photograph gives you hope that these children will grow up in a world where they are treated fairly and equally. However we know that is not the case and thus I’ve remixed this photograph to show a few of the young black men who have lost their lives to police brutality or racial profiling in the last couple years. I found the photographs that depicted the victims as youthful to match the rest of the children in the crowd. From left to right the men include, Eric Garner (born 5 years after the Selma to Montgomery March), Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Grey, and Trayvon Martin (holding the flag). In the background you will also find a remix of protest signs to bring this image into present day. These include “Is my son next?” and “Black Lives Matter.”

I call this remix Black Lives Still Fighting because in 51 years we have not made much social progress as a country to embrace the black man and woman as equal and important to American culture. Perhaps in another 51 years we will see Dr. King’s idea for America come true, however for now Black Lives Are Still Fighting and there are those of us have and will always join in that fight.

All You Need is Love: KEY ASSIGNMENT REMIX and BLOG POSTING - American Dream

Out of the creative process of working with a narrative of transforming themes of male and female ideologies in religion and in culture emerged the title “All You Need is Love”. This examination took a deeper look at the male and female roles in family and society, separate from their sexual orientation, gender identity or physical birth sex. Rather, it looked beyond this to the archetypes of the anima and the animus, as outlined by Jung.

All you need is Love

digital multimedia

Eric Love

Original from Oct 2014 French Magazine for a jean paul gaultier ad:

Perfect Circles

World Champion Freehand Circle Drawer!

Atomic Alert

https://vimeo.com/171313827

As we begin to understand the long term effects of nuclear power and war, this video is a counter narrative to the 1950s Atomic Alert. The sound clip is an extraction from the Atomic Alert video that was distributed to schools to teach children how to protect themselves from nuclear bombs. Our intent was to take the foundational misunderstanding about nuclear power that American government has perpetuated and contrasting it with the devastating reality of nuclear power. The questions that arose to us were: What are we told about nuclear power? How has our perception of nuclear power changed over time? As we begin to understand the long term effects of nuclear power, we wanted to create a complete narrative around the topic.

Some Form of Punishment

https://vimeo.com/171313719

We began our artistic process by deciding to create a counter-narrative to confront the ways Trump speaks about women in the media. Charlotte and Molly selected audio clips and Eric created the audio collage. From the transcript of the audio collage we began collecting images and videos around the themes of the specific language. This collection process helped us refine our theme: if a woman cannot meet society’s standards, she will be vilified and deserves punishment. This theme narrowed our search to campy horror movie clips, beauty pageant clips, and imagery of punishment. The campy horror movie clips allowed us to show violence against women in a detached and humorous way. These clips, along with a variety of images around punishment and the female body make it so we can laugh at the absurdity of what Trump says about women and simultaneously acknowledge the danger of a culture that historically stigmatizes women. We understand that by giving him attention, we are giving him publicity (and helping him “win”), and therefore acknowledge our complicity in passing on a version of Trump’s message. However, by using his words and likeness, we are able to personify the exaggerated male archetype that has been speaking under the surface and now has a vocal, hyperbolic mouthpiece in Donald Trump.

This is a very moving project about the teachers from Ayotzinapa.
http://ilustradoresconayotzinapa.tumblr.com/