Month: October 2018

I visited the exhibition Strange Days: Memories of the future in a super cold and windy morning. 21 fantastic (also a bit weird) short films from different artists were shown in the exhibition, and the gallery itself was decorated and arranged in a very mysterious way, which gave me an excellent and special experience.

But this post is more about one of the works: The Looks by Wu Tsang.

The Looks was shown in a room which requires us to enter without shoes. The room was covered by soft white blanket and divided into two parts by two projection walls. The first part of the film, in which a girl was woken up by a robotic voice and started to get ready for a show, was projected on the first wall, and with a big heavy loud sound, the show was projected on to the second wall. The whole film is set in a futuristic background, the girl was covered by glitter and had something like a flash light in her mouth when she was giving the show, and wherever she goes, people stare at her and focus cameras on her. The artist Wu Tsang described the girl as a “Digital avatars that control humans through a panoptical social media platform”, and with the work he calls into question the potential of technology, and imagined a future with both social control and “pockets of ecstatic freedom”.

Well, that’s not futuristic for me at all. I’ve seen thousands of people arguing online defending their idols, I’ve seen a post of a pop star on Weibo (Chinese social media) being reposted millions of times. I’ve seen people spending money on something they can’t really afford, just because their idols are using the same product, and I’ve seen people trying to kill themselves because their idols started dating someone… Which really looks like they are being controlled by some secret power, and have this worship towards their idols, their avatars. However, for those who are worshipped, we can’t really know if they want everyone to love them like crazy. Let’s come back to the short film The Looks, one thing that interested me is that the girl on the stage, covered by glitter, didn’t seem happy. She didn’t seem to be satisfied with everyone’s attention. On the contrary, she seemed unnatural, even painful. It seems like she doesn’t want all of this.

I once read that in South Korea and Japan (maybe in China as well), members of pop groups are not allowed to have romantic relationships (some said not allowed to have it in public, which means they can only have a secret boyfriend of girlfriend), and almost everything in their lives, their schedules, their outfits, hair colour… are managed by the entertainment companies, just to create the “perfect image” for fans. So, in another way, it’s not the Avatars who are controlling people, it’s the people who are controlling them. Once everyone starts focusing on you, you can’t just do what you want, say what you like, taking the risk that people would be disappointed to you. And day after day, you’re becoming their puppet.

Well, I’m not challenging the idea of this short film, after all it’s the artist who wants it to show the control a character has over people with the help of media and technology, and that kind of control does exist and is playing a not ignorable part in our life. But it’s kind of interesting to see it from another perspective. And here comes the question: Do we still have the control of ourselves?

 

 

Some thoughts and research. (They are the extension of the diary so I didn’t put the quotes in the text.)

Whether we have free will or not is a very old philosophical question. Some says we can make our own choices, while the others think all the choices we make are influenced by outside world, so we don’t actually have free will. I don’t really want to choose a side, but looking back to my life, what I eat for breakfast, which way I choose to go to uni, what book I read… many, or I can even say most of the choices I make are not because I want to, but because there’s not enough time, or it costs more if I don’t do it that way, or someone told me it’s better to do it that way… In that case, do I still have the control of my life?

Thinking of ourselves as being in control of how we act is part of what enables us to see living as something so valuable. In so far as we can direct and control how we ourselves act, our lives can be genuinely our own achievement or failure. Our lives can be our own, not merely to be enjoyed or endured, but for ourselves to direct and make.

Or so we think. But are we really in charge of our actions? Is how we act truly up to us as things such as the past, the nature of the universe, even many of our own beliefs and feelings, are not? The problem of whether we are ever in control of how we act, and what this control involves, is what philosophers call the free will problem.

 

 

The phrase Eleutheia (freedom) was first only used in political discussion, then used to pick out an individual person’s control over their own action when philosophers started to consider about whether how we act was really up to us. In nowadays’ world, we (most of us) have the freedom to support different political opinions. But we’re only legally free, after all those campaign and advertising, are we still capable of controlling our own minds and making our own choice?

 

The Greek philosopher Aristotle discussed actions and our control over them in one of the oldest and most important discussions of morality by a philosopher-the Nicomachean Ethics. But in the Ethics though Aristotle talked of us as having control of how we act – he stated that our actions are eph hemin, or, literally, ‘up to us’- he did not actually use eleutheria, the Greek word for freedom, to describe this action control. Eleutheria was still a term used only in political discussion as a name for political freedom or liberty.It was in the period after Aristotle that Greek philosophers began using eleutheria in a new and entirely non-political sense, to pick out the idea of being in control of how we act. And ever since then philosophers discussing the up-to-us-ness of our actions have followed the later Greeks: the same term freedom, which is used to pick out political liberty, has also been used to pick out an individual person’s control over their own actions.If what you do really is within your control, then you can be said to be free to act otherwise than as you actually are doing. You are, as philosophers put it, a free agent.

 

Tomas Pink

2004

Free Will – A very short introduction

Published in the United States

Published by Oxford University Press Inc., New York

 

 

 

 

 

Is our Identity controlling us? I would like to buy dress and make up because I choose to be beautiful, I act calm and quiet because I don’t like being dramatic, I take care of young ones because I like looking after others. Or is it I would love to buy dress and make up because I’m a girl, I act calm and quiet because I’m Asian (I don’t know if I’m the only one who thinks that), I take care of young ones because I’m the oldest kid in the family, and it’s my responsibility to do that, so that become something I do unconsciously…? Are we still able to do anything we want once we’re identified as a certain kind of people?

 

On the one hand, the celebration of the group’s uniqueness, which is the basis of its political solidarity, can be translated into essentialist claims For example, some elements of the women’s movement have argued for separatism from men based on women’s identity and unique qualities which men per se cannot possess. There are, of course different ways of understanding and defining that “uniqueness’. It may involve appeals to biologically given features of identity; for example, the claim that women’s biological role as mothers makes them inherently more caring and peaceful.

Or it can be based on appeals to history and kinship: for example, where

women seek to establish an exclusive women’s history or ‘herstory'(Daly,

1979)which men have repressed, and to reclaim a unique women’s culture

through a claim to something about the position of women which has

remained fixed and unchanged by that history and which applies equally to

all women as a kind of transhistorical truth (Jeffreys, 1985)

 

Kathryn Woodward

1997

Identity And Difference

The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA

Published by The Open University, SAGE Publications

 

 

Television and all kinds of media are everywhere. With all the advertisements playing all the time, can we still make our own decision without being influenced?

 

Developed in America, the theory started with the finding that heavy viewers and light viewers tend to have different attitudes towards and perceptions of very many matters.The theory supposed that televisions influence had brought about such differences.

 

Mallory Wober, Barrie Gunter

1988

Television and Social Control

Gower Publishing Company Limited, Gower House, Croft Road, Aldershot, Hants GU11 3HR, England

Published by Gower Publishing Company Limited

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s very obvious that surveillance system is used as a control of people. The best example is the Telescreen in George Orwell’s novel 1984. But it’s not only exist in the novel, but also playing an important part in the real life.

 

Surveillance – the garnering of personal data for detailed analysis – now occurs routinely, locally and globally, as an unavoidable feature of everyday life in contemporary societies.

 

Edited by David Lyon

2003

Surveillance As Social Sorting – Privacy, risk and digital discrimination

Routledge, 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Published by Routledge

 

 

 

How does the surveillance control us? Here’s a very good example:

 

When Google CEO Eric Schmidt was asked in a 2009 CNBC interview about concern over his company’s retention of user data, he infamously replied: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

 

Glenn Greenwald

2014

No Place To Hide

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Published by Penguin Group

 

Under the surveillance, you have to take the risk of “being seen” no matter what you’re doing. But even if everything we do is legal, is not harmful to anyone, there still are things that we don’t want others to see. And the surveillance clearly doesn’t care about that, which somehow means it’s controlling us by only letting us do things that can be seen.

 

 

 

 

 

Everybody, I just watched Bohemian Rhapsody !!!!

Tbh, the film itself is just like a common biography film, starts from how Queen   was formed and ends at the point when the band!@#$%^&*(I don’t want to spoil it. So take a lucky guess or just go watch the film.) They split up and get back together again, Freddie has his dark time but gets himself back again… It’s kind of cliché, but I have to admit that I almost cried my eyes out when seeing the scenes in which the band plays in Live Aid…

I have heard about this band long time ago, not to mention that We will rock you is very popular around students because it’s such a good song that everybody can take part in even if you don’t really know the lyrics. However, I had never bothered to get to know about this band because I didn’t like old bands(such an idiot is it), even after the song Bohemian Rhapsody became more popular among young people as the background music of the Suicide Squad trailer, I still feel nothing about learning more of this band and I only listened to the Panic! At the disco version(I was a super big arrogant dumbass who only listen to young pop stars).

And one day, my friend recommended me to listen to the song Don’t look back in anger.  So I got to know about and started listening to old Rock n Roll bands like  Oasis, also Blur (don’t ask), and Muse, Pink Floyd, David Bowie… And finally Queen after listening to Under Pressure. I remembered thinking how amazing the voice of Freddie Mercury is when listening to their songs, and I have watched some live performances on YouTube, which gave me the image of the band(it’s basically the dramatic performing style of Freddie lol).

The Live Aid is probably the first video of Queen I watched, Freddie was in jeans and vest, leading the audience singing Ay-oh, with his dramatic gestures and body move,  looking so confident of what he’s doing. But soon after giving the performance, he got to know that he’s got AIDS, and he’s going to die in not a long time. Reading that story written down on the website gave me no special feeling, but after spending more then one hour with Freddie on the screen, it felt totally different. I suddenly remembered the video of Under Pressure I watched on YouTube, in which only David Bowie was on the stage. One comment says, I was wondering where Freddie is, then I saw it’s 1995.

He’s gone then. He can never do those dramatic things on the stage, and we’ll never be able to listen to his amazing voice in real.

And I cried so hard thinking about that.

Thinking back, I might not just cried for him, but also because I feel like I’m losing all these, all these people and music, the generation is ageing, their marks are vanishing, and their music will probably become something nobody but only a few old people listen to (think about how we treat opera today)one day. David Bowie is gone, Oasis and PF broke up, Blur is something close to breaking up, and even some of them are still holding on, they’re grandpa and nana now. I watched the video of blur playing Young and Lovely one day, Damon, with his face full of wrinkles, was singing to the young boys and girls: you can get what you want, you’re so young and lovely. Which broke my heart so hard. It’s nobody’s fault that people age, get sick and die, and what’s once the best and popular will go out of style sooner or later.

And all we can do is trying our best not to forget them so quickly I guess.

 

I love El Angel so much that I decided to write another blog about it.

After watching it, I read a reviews by a blogger I followed online. One thing he mentioned really interests me is that the protagonist of the film was shot in the way that often use to shoot women, you might know it as Male Gaze. For example, we can often see the close-up to lips, the body curve, wave of the hair of a girl, but they are seldom used on male characters. That’s because even until today, most of the directors are male, and many of them tend to shoot female characters from their perspective, seeing them as a sexual object instead of a independent being with personality. (I’m not saying that these female characters have no personality at all, but the way they’ve been seen and shot.)

But the gaze in on a boy this time. The scene I can remember clearest is when the mother of the boy’s friend was flirting with him, she put her fingers on the boy’s lips, and we see a close-up of the lips, plump and pinky like strawberry.  The whole atmosphere suddenly became delicate, I can’t really describe how I feel then. I mean, I love this scene, but this is not sexual attraction for me at all. Which is quite weird, because the situation is perfectly in reverse compared to the Male Gaze. And I can say that most man feel flipped when seeing a close-up to a girl’s plump pinky lips.

My explanations is, this kind of shot is feminized, which means the subject is also feminized under the shot. (If that make any sense.)

(Before starting more detailed talking about this, I want to say that this is all my personal feeling. I don’t know if I’m the only girl who felt nothing seeing this scene. But anyway this is my blog so I’m gonna keep talking about why I felt NOTHING.)

What I meant feminized is that the shot is mostly used on female, so when it’s used on male character, we’ll feel like we are using the way we look at female to look at a male, and that somehow makes the image of him in our minds have more feminized features.

Which means, it’s not just the problem of male directors, the audience(me) also play a part of not treating male and female characters in the same way. Even if I’m a girl, I still expect to see red lips and body curve of a girl instead of boy. Which is sad.

I mean, people have been talking about that problem about girls for a long time. But what do we expect to see on the boys? Muscle, wide shoulder, firm jaw line?

Speaking of, I’d like to mention something interesting that happened not long ago. There’s a show called The First Lesson in China, and it’s only played once a year on 1st September, when a new school year starts. So this quite important show would usually invite some famous young people to perform or give speech. This year, a group of young singers was invited and these young boys gave a nice performance. However, the performance was criticised by many people because the boys wore heavy make up and out fits that make them look girly. “Boys should dress like boy!” “The country has no future with boys dress up like girls!” People said.

These saying sounds really humiliating for girls, because they approve that boys are better than girls, so boys shouldn’t be like girls. Actually we can hear this kind of word all the time. Don’t be like a girl! And we always think that it’s not fair for girls. I mean, of course that it’s not fair for girls, but it’s not just about girls from the beginning.

You gotta be tough, don’t you know you’re a man?

Boys don’t cry!

Don’t be like a girl!

What kind of pressure are given to boys? People cry, people break down, that’s not just a girl thing, it’s a human thing! And they are telling boys not to do it, how? And why can girls wear pink and blue, being girly shiny or dark and cool, but boys can’t wear what they want? Why can’t boys wear makeup that makes them look better?

And even if I’ve realised the different expectation on boys and girls, I’m still couldn’t get used to the gaze shot being used on a boy. Lips, body curve, hair, they’re so soft, too soft to be seen as a boy. Part of me is still saying that.

But boys can be soft, just like girls can be strong.

 

(Well, it’s not really done because I’m still writing this blog haha)

I can’t believe six weeks had past and I will be hand in the final out come shortly. In the crazy past one and a half month, I’ve done all the workshop induction, visited lots of galleries and museums with my friends or alone, borrowed books and DVD from the library, spent my whole day working on shooting and editing……regardless of how the result is, I’m actually quite impressed by myself because I managed to do all these strange new things while fitting in the new life in London.

But I’m also feeling not very confident for what I’ve achieved. I’m not talking about the result, but the process. I was never a hard-working enough student, and I like sitting there thinking instead of getting on doing something, and that’s what I did most in the project. Although I did visited a lot of places, I didn’t manage to link them to my project or draw inspiration from others’ work very well. Also, I didn’t get into workshops until the last week of this project because I was constantly changing my idea and didn’t get to plan it really well.

At the same time, I’m glad that this project revealed my problems, and I also found out how efficient I can be if I know what I’m doing(take the last week as an example). That’s the advantage that I should keep. What I do have improve is how I manage my time, like make a plan before I start, spend more time doing research etc. Also I need to learn from others’ work instead of just looking at them thinking whether I like them or not, thinking about Why I like(or not)it, and how did it manage to make me like it is also important.

Research time!!!

Decided to use this type face called Bertram to create my own scrabble V using laser cutter.

Cutting is finished!

Looking good after colouring.

Wondering how it looks before editing? Here’s the original photo!!!

V for victory!!

 

To be honest, I have never done anything close to these cool workshops before. So, everything happened so suddenly and I entered this new world of art and design without any mental preparation.

In the past few weeks, I’ve done the thrilling and technique required screen printing, fun and variety of methods available printmaking, letterpress, which is much harder than I expected, and my favorite photography(simply because I like photography), also the useful and fun 3D workshop. Although all I learnt in these rather short courses is basically what are those weird looking machines and what do they do, but it is a very good start of working and studying, as well as doing experiments at school in the future.

What’s more, attending these workshops changes my opinion towards creating art. I always focused on the concept when I try to do work—I mean, concept is important as well, and to express our feeling with the art work is kind of a final goal. But we can’t just concentrate on building the big concept without doing any specific work. And doing the workshops made me realize that except learning theory and thinking, it’s important to do practice as well. And obviously I have much to learn in terms of that.

Apart from gaining some technique and experience from the workshops, I also met some interesting people. Simon in the screen printing workshop is so caring, always checking if we’re handling the work and if we had breakfast. And I was very lucky that I got to screen print his excellent art work. (Also he didn’t get mad when I ruined it) Richard in rilef printing is so humorous and having class with him is more of a pleasure than a hard work. Weeks had past but I can still recall his dramatic face when we got our works out from the press and the funny “good danmmm!” It’s very cool to work with these people.

So looking forward to working in these workshop in the future!

 well I actually ruined them… Anyway it’s really fun doing it!

Mr.BO was standing on the stairs.

He looked down.

Then he fell off from the stairs.

He found the entrance of a new world.

He entered the new world.

 

This is the first time I’ve got the chance to see a film in film festival, I kind of swore to myself that I have to see at least one film. I booked the ticket to El Angel almost a month ago because this story caught my eyes as soon as I saw it: a beautiful teenage boy becomes a thief, then falls in love with robbery and killing.

Before I heard about this story, I’ve seen quite a few films setting bad guys as the protagonists, also I’ve seen people arguing about it, saying that it’s the beautify of people who did the bad things and caused damages, and we should stop making crimes look romantic in the films. That of course, really make sense. It looks exciting when people fight, kill, smash things in the films, but we don’t actually want that to happen in the real life. And too much scenes of crime and violence on screen can bring negative influence to teenagers. However, what if the criminal is an angel? I mean, people are always judging others by their looking even if we know that’s not fair. How would people think and react in that case? How would I think?  Will I feel sympathetic or even empathetic to this boy?

Now that I’ve seen the film. Walking out from the cinema, sunshine was blinding, but that’s fine, because those images of the film still stayed in front of my eyes: the boy’s big round shining chestnut eyes, rosy cheeks and lips looking like petals, driving fast like crazy with music in the tunnel, burning car in the field, stupid high neck crop top in all kinds of colors, the dancing in well-furnished or ratty empty rooms… The film is full of colors, music, too sweet and beautiful for a crime story, but I love it. What about the boy? The killer, the criminal, the evil angel? Do I hate him as I should feel about who his is?

The answer is that I don’t know. In this film, there’s no clear explanation of why the boy started to do all these bad things. In some stories, the criminals often have bad parents or had been through some terrible things that cause trauma. The boy in this film, Carlitos, has none. However, we can see that’s he’s not just purely evil. He takes things from others not for money, he tells his little thief pal to slow down when robbing the jewelry shop, then put on a pair of earrings and pretended to be Marilyn Monroe, he dances when police are hunting him down, even in the scene which he drove the car into the car from opposite direction and killed his friend, it’s more like he’s doing this in honor of their friendship(in some way their love) instead of committing a murder. Is he crazy? As far as I’m concerned, he is. No normal man can still look at others with such innocent eyes, or talk to who he killed like they’re playing some games. What he did is evil, but he’s such a sweet angel, not just how he looks, it’s in his personality somehow. And that makes the everything happened very ridiculous but also such a tragedy.  Also–I’m not sure if everyone feels the same, it’s actually hard for me to judge a person once you know him or her well. I spent 2 hours with Carlitos in his sunny colorful world, went through all the love and betray with him, I can’t just simply decide whether I hate him or not.

Did I failed in this test of judging people by their appearance, as well as treating the crime in the film like an actual crime instead of something romantic and thrilling? (especially this film is adapted from real story) I don’t know. I actually started to doubt if that arguing really makes sense. Maybe it’s time to stop these moral arguments about films, all we want is a little bit of romance and craziness we don’t really allowed to have in the real life!!! Right, I need to stop talking because it’s obvious that I’m brainwashed by this film right now and couldn’t think straight with all the bubbles in my head.

 

Guess that’s how you’ll feel when you find your film.

 

 

 

I was supposed to write this down a month ago, however I’m not that kind of person who’s good at writing diary and documenting things and feelings… I’ll try my best.

For most of students, the life in elephant&castle probably started after 10th September, or even later. But I moved into a n Air bnb flat around e&c on 30th August and started my in London there. For the first few weeks, E&C looked not as attractive as other places in London. I mean, there’s no historical buildings or famous attractions, and as the junction of many roads, the place is just so confusing that I always got lost.  Sitting on the floor of my little bnb room, watching the show Human, constanly hearing the sounds of motorcycles and ambulances, thinking about what to get in the Sainsbury across the street … That’s my daily life in the first few weeks. Strangely, when I finally moved away to the student house, I kind of miss it. Well, I’m being sentimental. Probably because of the music.

Anyway, I still have to go to E&C everyday because the big hero of the story–London College of Communication is here! Actually, the E&C I see is a bit different after entering school. My active range enlarged, not just the bus stop and Sainsbury opposite, but also Longdan oriental supermarket, the sport centre of South Bank University(I attended an interesting dancing class there), Manna Ash student house(where my friends live) and don’t forget Mercato Metropolitano! I’ve only been there once when going out doing sketch but I’ve never forgotten this lovely place. And there’s so many places that I haven’t  got chance to explore. Now E&C is full of possibility and excitement for me.

After 1st October, all the students in LCC started school, meaning a large group  of cool people is pouring into E&C, which makes the place more interesting. Let’s see if my impression of it will change a month after. (I know this is not a good ending because it’s not the end at all!)