Intro to Visual Practice / Fall 2010

When I think of social structure my mind automatically jumps to social norms. A social structure cannot maintain its structure without rules that must be followed by the individuals participating in this structure. Rather it be a family, group of friends, classroom etc.  With this in mind, I choose the social structure of the interactions between groups of friends at a dining table. I believe there is 2 major social norms that must individuals follow when in this situation.

1) No elbows, feet, whole bodies can be on the table. A table is where you have food, placing body parts on it is seen as frankly gross.

2) Unless the topic of today’s discuss is you, you don’t need to become a spectacle and make the conversation all about you.

People are usually unable to break out from these social norms, and do something out of the ordinary. Individuals daydream about how they will break these norms, but don’t actually commit the act.

By taking art history this semester, I was able to broaden my perceptions of art. I now see that art can come in many different forms. Using this, I see the art and beauty in the ability to break out against the social norm. This is art, because it is unusually and rarely seen in our structured society.

Secondly, my project also comments on the fact that a scene can go from standard every day action to art in a spilt second. In a group of 4 and a table, the combination is simple. You have one performer, a stage and an audience. If people choose to breakout from the norm, performance art would be all around us.

To articulate this I made a short 42second film. It centers on a group of friends. When it zooms in on one girl you go into her thoughts; her thoughts of performing ballet on a stage. You than see the protagonist dance on the table as a stage, breaking social norms in the process. At the end we are brought back to the original scene, but instead it is in black – and –white. The girl did not dance on the table in reality, but only in her daydreams. The black – and – white ending is in reference to Pleasantville, because we live in a society that is unknowingly constrained by our social norms.

I also asked around 5 to 6 people if they would ever dance on a table in front of the crowd. I use their quotes and let them float through the screen. The quotes show the Secret Desires of the people on campus.

Peoples Responses:

Question: Would you dance on top of a table in public?

“Yes, I would totally jump on a table and dance for a crowd!”

“NO Ma’am”

“Yes”

“Under the right circumstance…quite possibly”

“No, Would You?”

“Um…No”

For my IVP3, I wanted to use family as the social structure on which I would base my piece.  My family and my home are extremely important to me, and I would say I have a very “typical” family in the traditional sense.  I live with my parents, who are married, and I have one sister and a dog.  We get along very well, and I turn to them whenever I need anything.  I know I can count on my family.  However, I know that this is not the case for many people, and in recent years, I have become more aware of different types of families – two moms, two dads, single-parent, unmarried, mixed race couples, steps, half-siblings, etc.  This is not to say I did not know these existed previously, but with all the hubbub concerning gay rights in recent years, these deviations from the traditional family have been made more public.

So this was my idea for my project.  First, I bought a family-and-home-oriented magazine, Better Homes.  It has a lot of family ideas, especially since it is a holiday edition.  I used that magazine to represent “family.”  So I cut up strips and sculpted my family out of pieces of the magazine, rolling the strips and wrapping them around each other, coiling them up, etc.  I glued the pieces together, basing the sculpture off of a photo from 1997.  This is what it looked like:

And this is the photo:  

I wanted this to symbolize how much my family and my home make me who I am.  So by using the magazine to represent family, I created a representation of myself built from “family” to show how my upbringing, my parents, and my sister influence who I am.  So in the project, I am built out of “family.”
Next, I wanted to see how others reacted to my “type” of family.  So I covered a piece of cardboard in pictures of families that I found in the same magazine, and I also used the photo I based my sculpture on.  Then I glued the sculpture on top.  I made a sign that says, “Typical Family of 4.  Please write what you think of the typical family of 4 on the cardboard platform on top of the pictures.  Please do NOT remove ☺” and I placed this, along with a Sharpie marker, in the computer cluster in my dorm on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

I took it back to my room overnight (for fear of destruction).  This is what it looked like on Friday:

Before putting it back out on Sunday, I wrote “This Is My Family” over the photo of my family.

I was surprised that people actually commented on it.  Some of the comments were very strongly worded.  I was surprised that very few people had positive things to say about the families.  Some examples of the comments are “heterosexist bullshit,” “why is everyone white?” “suburbia,” “divorce,” and “the perfect family has young parents.” I wanted to take a risk with this project and involve other people and gauge their reactions to something that is so important to me.  Perhaps people only commented when they felt strongly about it or had a reaction to something someone else wrote.  But I would say this project was a success because I was able to incorporate at least some of the public’s reaction, and I am now more aware that many people don’t appear to value the traditional family as much as I do.  I don’t mean “white” when I say traditional.  I mean the family structure.  I am also more aware of the fact that many of the families portrayed in this magazine are white.  I never noticed that before.  I didn’t even realize that this was the case as I was gluing the pictures down.

Final Results

Create an artwork that either is or uses a social structure as its content, aesthetic impetus, physical/virtual/conceptual form, or meaning. It can be any medium or combination of media. It can be individual or collaborative.

No matter what it is, it will have to be represented on the blog through artwork, documentation, texts, maps, or anything that makes sense. Spend at least 3 hours a week on this from now until the end of the semester (it is Due December 7th for final Critique). Your Book of Notice will also be due then.