WEEK 1
Art can be many different kinds of things and can be used to express various kinds of messages. Socially engaged practice develop relationships between artists and the community. The social interaction is also important in this kind of public art. One of the things that impressed me the most is the artwork “Beijing Besieged by Waste” by WANG Jiuliang. Because the photographs and the map he made has a hugely powerful message behind it and it is much stronger than the message from the Beijing Government. It amazed me that art can be so impactful to people in daily life.
Critical theory mainly contains 4 keywords: power, change, social-cultural context and historical context. It’s to critique and change society as a whole, not just only understand or analyze something. Everything we do every day is connected to the society. We have to dig more deeply beneath the surface of our social life, such as the problems happening in our society. Wealth inequality is a serious problem due to the lack of social mobility but people often overlook it. In a world of globalization, more and more issues occurred. There are critical theories recognized in various kinds of occasions such as race, culture, gender and media theory.
WEEK 2
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WEEK 3
Firstly, epic theater tears down the 4th wall of performance and breaks common rules. It even changes the nature of audiences. It emphasizes the alienation effect and the separation of the elements which involves the use of techniques to distance audience from emotional involvement in the theatrical performance. It is interesting to me because it is so different from classical theater which emphasizes coherence of emotions between the performer and audience. It brings the audience to think more than just the play and reminds them that the play isn’t real, it lets the audience to think critically about the deeper messages and meanings behind the play.
Also, through the theater of the oppressed, the audience can realize that the can adapt the play into the society outside the stage. The concept of forum theatre is very new to me because the whole play in interactive and audience can interrupt the play in anytime and change the outcome of the story. It lets the audience to believe that they can change and interrupt the world in reality. It also offers a belief of desire to the people that they can do things to make the society better.
WEEK 4
Marxist’s concept of production was introduced. There is a total of 4 aspects in the production process: production of goods, production of social relations between people, self-production of human beings and production of time-space. The aspects of production are not separated from each other, they are interconnected. The topic of space is thought-provoking because it is so connected to our daily life and everything we do.
1 – The production of goods
- Means
- Labor power
2 – The production of social relations
- Division of labor
- Relations of control over the forces of production (Class structures like industrial workers)
3 – The self-production of human beings
- The manner of consumption is produced by production (production creates consumers)
4 – The production of space-time
- All production arranges a certain space
- Different societies arrange the space of production in different ways
Lefebvre also suggested three aspects for the production of space for us to think about in our actual life. Sometimes the usage of space by the users are not the same as the original intentions of its original designers, e.g. King of Kowloon graffiti. There is an example of appropriation in Hong Kong and it deeply impressed me which is the Occupy Central. In 2014, Hong Kong people went on the streets of Central and Mongkok, to gather and voice out against the HKSAR Government due to the Chief Executive Election. There are also many examples of occupation around the world to express opinions from the people.
WEEK 5
Capitalism is a system of social relations of power between people and related to every one of us nowadays. I use money and buy things every day but I’ve never thought about what’s behind every product and food. Commodities are all around us and they are used to exchange (commodity must have exchange value) when there are demand and supply. The production of commodities also divided processes of production and commodity exchange. There are always relationships between commodities and people that we never realized or think about.
Commodity fetishism explores that relationship between people by the division of labor and property relations. The commodities control human beings by acting like religious figures but it is human those who created them. We follow the trend, we purchase the latest version of products. But we turn blind eyes on what’s behind the product. Due to the false consciousness of commodity fetishism, we are trapped in a blackbox by capitalists.
WEEK 6
We live in a society of the spectacle, which images around us, such as on the internet, on the street, on the magazine are all commodities (advertisements, public relations, etc.). Advertisement is an important element in the world of commodity fetishism and reification so that consumers will have interests in consuming the products. The image is the thing more important than the meaning and the actual reality beneath it.
For example, The Apple company is always shown as a higher-class brand with high-quality gadgets and elegant design. The products also worth a very high price. The advertisements from Apple are always clean and simple, it gives a noble feeling to the viewers and makes them feel privilege for owning them. However, the making price of an actual iPhone is very cheap and they are manufactured in China using cheap labor. Some smartphones with the same specifications are 3 times cheaper. However, we depend on images to live life, and it creates a social relationship where we are the passive ones being controlled.
WEEK 7
Pedagogic art focuses on promoting education as art which also aims to promote society simultaneously. Baol believed that active participation of spectator in performance should be promoted so they can come up with alternative storylines. It is influenced by Freire that transmission of messages should be communication between two instead of one-way.
There is also an important question raised: Is art autonomous? Many people have different opinions, but in my personal point of view, I think that art is not autonomous and it should communicate with the audience to interfere the society. There is no black and white in this situation but I think art provides/gains things from/for the society, more or less. Everything we do and see is interconnected in the society, art is one of them. Every artwork has a specific relationship to the society and they served social functions in a different way (social, cultural, psychological or even commercial).
In the modern society, art always borrows elements from the outside world like computers. But not all of the artworks are autonomous, the artists’/ audiences’ view of the same artwork is also a debatable discussion.
WEEK 8
Structuralism emphasizes the background conditions that shape how humans think and act. A structure is a relational system where the value of the element depends on its difference between other elements. When we see certain things we will receive specific messages when that ‘thing’ isn’t = the message we received. One of the representations of structuralism is symbols/signs because they represented different meanings with simple graphics, it can be easily understood and followed.
It is also about the power relation of the society. In modern people’s eyes, different people have their specific roles to play, such as female is objectified and to be looked at. In the society nowadays, more men are in the higher-level jobs which lead to a concept that male is more superior sex. We always link ‘man’ to ‘work’, ‘woman’ to ‘home’ and these stereotypes and linkages are opposed by some part of the society, people stood out and tried to change the structure (e.g. feminism).
WEEK 9
Gender stereotype is a good example of structuralism which feminist theories are about equality, difference and power relations. Feminism is always a social issue from a long time ago. Female had no social status and had no rights in most of the things because they’re seen as weak. Male is seen as stronger and smarter class. Until now, there are still examples of gender inequality. In film genres such as action and thriller, most of the protagonists are male and the victims are female because the powerful hero always has to be male.
Gladly, this situation is starting to improve as more and more leading characters in big-budget movies are female. For example, Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman and Sandra Bullock in Gravity. There is also an increasing number of female leaders in workplaces and authorities. The society is accepting female leads more and more and it is not a bad thing. The development of feminism in the modern world shows social change and the importance of equal rights.
WEEK 10
Psychoanalysis is a word from ‘psychology’, means our mind and how we think inside our head. How we think and react is linked to the social relations. Sigmund Freud suggested a theory of psychic reality which emphsaizes they way we think in our minds. Dreams are strongly connected to our wishes and desires, the wish is also often disguised in the dream that it will not be presented in an obvious way. Things that happened in our dream might be a warning or sign to what’s in our deep mind. The concept of dreams is really interesting to me because dreams are like fantasy land to every human being.
There are three levels of consciousness in our minds: conscious, preconscious and unconscious. Freud also developed a structure of model that is related to the above model: id, ego and superego. The id is com pletely unconscious and it shows what we deeply desire (instinctive responses), it’s totally not logical, it only contains wishes. The ego is developed from id to ensure that wishes from id can be satisfied when it is possible in the society. While the superego is our moral standards, it also shows how we should do.
WEEK 11
There are a lot of artists created various kinds of artworks representing the world of dreams which are called surrealism. You can usually see artworks that are totally different from classic artworks because of its elements that usually don’t appear in our world. But it’s a form of identification and idealization, it shows a different way of how artists view the world or themselves.
Dali extends methods of associations that was originally used by Freud to analyze dreams and developed a chain of art from a painting by another artist: The Angelus by Jean-Francois Millet. The idea that a single drawing can influence one so much amazed me so much. He interpreted the drawings in so many aspects and also combine it into different thought experiments similar to dreams. He often replaced realistic objects with other objects that have common properties. Sexuality is a thing he once scared of, he used his artworks express his internal feelings. He also implied a lot of messages with metaphor in his artworks.
WEEK 12
Foucault suggested that power is distributed everywhere and it is in multiple forms/levels, such as knowledge and space. In the society of discipline, prison is a modern form of punishment. By isolating people, it can give pain (not physical) to people. The sense of discipline can be also applied to many different spaces such as factory and schools. If we look it carefully, we can clearly see the similarities of how the modern society train students as prisoners at some point. So that “they” can train people to become normal, based on the standard and rules set by “them”. There were also methods to control our bodies, which make us more regular and efficient. In the modern society, we only do what we are told to do since we are born. We should never express our own feelings or try to change others. The idea of being controlled in different institutions is building a disciplinary society.
CHUNG YIK CHING 