New World Repitition

ENGL-2001-002:

Intro to Creative Writing

Poem

Weekly Exercise #1

Kong. Who has a loud name like this? As loud as King Kong, Kong the King.

Is this me? Yes, probably.

I am quiet, as quiet as the air? I exist but unnoticeably?

I am quiet but I also speak; I am quiet but I also response.

I exist and people see me; I exist and people talk to me.

I am just somebody.

Am I just somebody?

In deep, I need no attentions, I am invisible, and I don’t need a place in others’ memories.

But, in fact, I feel attentions, I am visible, and people remember me.

Maybe because “Kong” is loud, which somehow makes me loud.

I am so naturally connected to these four letters that I don’t even realize this was just a name for fun from the very beginning.

Short Ficition

Weekly Exercise #5

A picked name in exchange for laughter.

“Kong” is now my name, my representation, my signature, and my existence in the land of Canada and the zone of my friendship.

“It hurts”, she whispers. She is walking and running.

She shakes her hand slightly and repeats louder: “It hurts.” Nothing changes.

She is still walking and running with him.

The past of the days of disconnection to the name becomes fragments of memories.

Memories of the moments of embarrassment when I did not realize “Kong” was me are fading.

Faded past made me who I am. Not who I am that I think who I am, but who I am that people think who I am.

Although Kong was only my English name, Kong is now me.

Kong. This is me.

She shakes her hand again, “It hurts.” He grabs her hand tighter. She resists by pulling her hand back a bit.

His head turns but immediately faces back to the front.

She captures that and she starts staring at his face from the left.

For a moment, she spaces out.

They are moving in the same rhythm.

When she is back, her eyes are pointing to his eyes. Her eyes then wander around him from his face to his ear to his eye, from his eye to his ear to his neck, and from his neck to his jacket. “Your jacket has a hole at the back.”

He says nothing.

“I can see your butt through the hold,” she holds her smile.

“Quiet.”

She looks at the side of his face and her eyes turns into a line.

hurts her eyes.

They are heading somewhere.

“You should have left the room earlier,” She glimpses him.

“It hurts,” she shakes her hand a bit, “I’m not going to run away... you know that…”

She looks at that face from the side, “I won’t go.”

She smiles.

He remains silent.

He is still garbing her hand, not any looser.

Sunlight from the rising sun can almost reach her ankles.

She maintains the same rhythm as him while walking and running.

“The sun is burning my skin.” The light catches her legs.

The sky is getting bright. They are heading against to where the sun is rising.

“It feels weird.” She laughs, “You know we can’t escape.”

“You know we don’t have much time”, he says.

She looks at this almost naked man running in front of her who exhales loud and every inch of his body without the veiling of the jacket is covered with sweats, running down from his skin.

She shakes her hand again. He frowns.

He grabs her hand tight and releases, “you can’t go anywhere anyway.”

She sees the red mark on her wrist and she turns to him.

She wants to say something but still she says nothing.

They are heading to where the night is.

She is wearing only a jacket like him walking and running in the woods.

She looks back. The world is colored in gold, which

She suddenly drags his jacket from the back. His exhausted body pauses and then he lays down straight like a statue. The sunlight then sweeps through their bodies without mercy. Furs grow crazily on them and their bodies shrink into two meatballs in the next second, they didn’t even have time to make a sound.

There in the woods, under two jackets, two bunnies are sniffing.

Under the sunlight, furs grow on her legs.

“Hey!” Her voice is absorbed by the woods surrounded them. They are physical scale that inform the speed of the sun.

They can’t escape.

The sun is rising so fast that the radiation of the light is like arrow that pierce through their bodies.

When her legs start to twist in an abnormal angle, she screams.

Short Ficition

Weekly Exercise #8

She walks along the sidewalk. How skinny she is, the jacket on her is so big that almost crushes her body, the purse hanging on her arms is flapping so hard that as if the bone will break apart, and roundness of the high heels she is wearing makes her legs like a pair of sticks.

She puts her hair down shaking her head a little bit.

Then she looks into her purse, finds the lady’s cigarette and the lighter, hangs that cigarette between her lips and light it, while she is walking without slowing her pace. Her ears are filled with the echo of her high heels hitting the ground. All the shops along the sidewalk are closed. Her reflection in the displayed window is as perfect as the mannequin. She is aware of it that she doesn’t even need to look at the windows. Turning left is a residence area where she can rarely see any lightings. Lights of different colours came through the windows from the townhouses show her way home.

She walks across the road and stop in front of a gate that can’t protect anyone from entering but only signals others that this is a private residential. She pushes the gate and walk straight into the narrow lane. She owns a basement. There is no light around the door. She takes

the key out from her purse and she fumbles with the lock.

She opens the door. The basement is dark but there is light coming out of her bedroom. It must be her sister. He locks the door and ask, “Is there you? What are you doing in my room?” He puts the purse aside.

The door is open while he is taking off her jacket. He looks at the shadow at the door and he immediately wears back the jacket turning to the door. He then stops because he remembers the door is locked. “Why are you wearing like that?” It is his mommy. He is facing the door, silent. “Are you going to escape?” So, he moves, as quick as possible reaching his hand to the lock. “Hey! You! Stop...” He can hear that she is crying. His hand stops in the middle of the air. “Look, mommy”, he is scared trying to maintain his voice, “I just came back from a makeup party...you know…” She stops him from continuing making lies, “I just checked your room.” He shuts his mouth and then his body is shaking as if he is holding a big laughter. “Son, why?

Why? Why…” Her question turns into sobbing. He shouts: “yeah this is me! This is me who you are seeing.”

He turns back. On his face, his teeth are holding tight and his eyes are wide-opened. His hands are holding into a fist so angry so big. He is staring at her, a fat, mid-age, crying woman who looks helpless. “I... mom”, his fists are getting bigger, “...I am sorry.” The

angry fists become his hands. Then she cries because she doesn’t want to say anything and she doesn’t know what to say. He stands there. He looks at that woman sitting on her feet, crying. He waits for a bit. And then he turns to the door, while she does not say anything.

He unlocks the door, making a small sound, while her crying is turning into sobbing. He opens the door, while her sobbing is low. He steps out of the basement, turning back seeing his mommy, and he closes and locks the door.

The night somehow becomes cooler. He looks up to the sky. There he can’t see the moon. He wraps himself in the jacket, as if he is still a baby in her arms.

ENGL-3007-001:

Literary Journalism

Creative Writing-Nonfiction

Harmony and Security

They ride on the same bike among others who were riding their own bikes. Obviously, except the bike they were riding, everyone else’s back seat attached a number of white plastic bags with different logos were wrapped around by red or white nylon. Among all the white bags, one of their back seat attached a silver portable radio cassette player, but unfortunately, it would only be played when they arrived the barbecue place. They kept a consistent order of which one goes first and which one goes next. But four guys and four girls who seemed in pairs did not know each other well, some of them were still strangers. Therefore, although the road was wide enough for three bikes to ride side by side with all the loads at the back, they were as if agreed on maintaining the two by two procession like a snake going toward the “Half Moon Island”.

It was five in the afternoon, the summer sun was still up in the sky, if there wasn’t the endless fields of dragon fruit trees coded dark gold on both sides of the road, people might still think that it was just noon. Leaving the urban area, the road became less even, but at the

same time, the road became empty. They speeded up following the tourist sign indicating where the Island was. The summer wind was hot, by speeding up, they could get rid of the heats attached to their skins.

Sunlight reflected on the steel of each bike’s handle, making them new and shine. They marched to the destination, like a troop coming home with victory.

They were laughing, talking funny things of the people they commonly known. Whenever my dad mentioned my mom, he would call her “my young wife” instead of her name. My mom pretended mad, poking his back a couple times. And my aunt would defense her sister by saying that “What are you talking about, you guys are not married yet. That is not valid, you haven’t even ask for my permission first.“ Other guys would cheer and ask “When will you guys marry?” and girls would laugh.

It was the first time for some of the people in the group to go to the “Half Moon Island”, but following the sign along the road was easy.

When they arrived, the sky was completely dark. They could hear waves in the shore even outside the park. Through the fence, fire could be spotted between the gap of the silowets of bamboo forest. They bought their tickets by the entrance and pushed their bikes walking into the Island area. The barbecue place

their plates and stood up. They washed their hands by the water tap and they walked side by side to the beach.

Following the sound of the waves, they went across the bamboo forest. The first thing they saw was a gradient from the vast dark sky to the dim lighting on the beach.

The beach at night looked mysterious. There were people like them walking side by side on the beach.

They did the same thing like them, walking along the shore side to the end and returned walking under where the light was, but they did not say anything. After walking for a couple rounds, they decided to go back.

Throughout the walk, no one they knew appeared.

When they went back to the barbecue place, things had packed up and cleaned up. People were there waiting for them sitting at the same spot as if they did not move for the whole night. They could not tell whether other people left the fire when they went to the beach.

It was the time to sleep because they had planned to stay overnight. People took out their newspaper and blankets. They picked a place near the bamboo forest where was flat and away from the lighting. In the middle of night, the bugs were surprisingly fierce. Dad gave his blanket to mom to cover her legs.

and the beach were the only places visitor could go inside. There was a brick road leading them in. Ring bells rang one after another indicating an uneven brick on the road. They walked silently towards the fireplace leaving the dim lighting which created more shadow than light behind.

The smells of food reminded how hungry they were.

They walked into the store after they parked their bikes besides others over there. Once the owner shown them the spot, they then untied all the bags and brought them to the flat stone table where people prepared food.

Girls found the water tap and washed utensils; guys stayed to set up the fire and prepared the food. People of the same gender stick together except my parents.

When the preparation was done, they took a spot in and people sat after them. They divided the circle in half. One person opened the cassette player, playing the album of the “Four Kings”. The conversation then intertwined with jokes and gossips. One other guy kept talking to another girl but that girl did not seem to have any interest of that guy.

When the barbecue slowed down, one guy went to the restroom, dad patted slightly on the hand my mom rested on the stone chair. Mom then looked at him. His face was blushed by the fire in front of him. The sweats on his face made every inch of his skin visible. They exchanged each other’s consent and then they took

Memoir

Formula of Family

I stood in the rain holding my umbrella. Theoretically, it was not mine because my dad won it from some kind of step counting app. I never believed people can actually win any prize from random apps, even though the umbrella I was holding proved me wrong. It was the best quality umbrella I ever have, which was unusually heavy, black as high class object, expandable when the button on the handle is pushed, and was labelled “golf umbrella” when I first saw it. It was saved unused in the closet by my mom and given to me before I went to Canada. And I brought it back during the summer while the umbrella was damaged unnoticeably, one spine broken but no one seemed care. My parents didn’t know I bought another umbrella in Canada in order to not use this heavy and big one, but I still pretended that I did use it by bringing it home like I carried it all the time like a habit. It was a representation of their love that actually functioned and had a positive effect on my life that I wanted to show.

My dad was parking the car, while I stood in the middle of the path towards the old concrete building

where we were going to have lunch. It was a typical self-constructed country style house with dark yellow bricks not fully covered up the concrete underneath, a mixture of traditional Chinese exterior and a visible modern framework. The logic here is that the more typical the place looked, the more “authentic” and “natural” the food they served potentially could be, and the more my dad loved it. I saw mom disappeared at the entrance of that three story concrete blocks. One of us had to go first to confirm the lunch with the owner and apparently she was the one. The way she left the car and walked straight through the path stepping on water fearlessly and then into the house was so engaged and exciting as if the feast was so amazing that she couldn’t wait to let me have it. She changed indeed. I still remembered how she was unhappy and kept a distance with dad until the other day because he decided to have similar “village fun” instead of going to cha chaan teng when we traveled to Hong Kong the summer before that one. She changed for the first big meal after I came back from Canada.

Wind wandered around the valley behind the dark yellow box, making raindrop moving like a curtain in the middle of the air. Forest moved with the curtain as if a creature named mountain was coming to destroy all the human civilization. Rains hitting the wide and flat banana leaves amplified through hundreds and

escaping from it. I wonder if I was too selfish to be like that.

When I got into the house, the owner who was a woman in her 50s was there pointing me upstairs. As I expected, the interior was dirty but organized. Some corners were dusty even nested spiders. Wall paints were shredded hidden behind old wooden furniture, pop star posters and a hung calendar. I climbed up the stairs. The steps were extreme high. It made me concern about how this business could be continued while she was as both the chief and manager of this small family restaurant who needed to climb high stairs routinely in a daily basis, which reminded me of my grandma who used to work overly hard for her family, drafting her body and resulted in really bad knee pain after her retirement. I keep asking myself what makes people willing to devote themselves to their families.

Mom was preparing plates, bowls and chopsticks for us when I walked into the room. The room upstairs has a similar face, dirty but organized. “You are here,” she said with a happy face when she saw me. Her beautiful face has deep winkles when she smiled. She was really pretty when she shown me a photo of her and my aunt.

That deepening winkles on her face told me that she was getting old. I just nodded my head, didn’t want to let her know she didn’t look like a young girl anymore even though she still acted like a girl. I helped her

thousands of banana trees in this valley, giving me a hard summer impression. When things go along with each other harmoniously, they are strong. I looked at my feet. They were wet. Even though I hate scandals because how outdated they make a person look, I still wear them since I knew that summer rain was a monster. I stayed there because I was lost, aimlessly. I wanted to help, but I couldn’t help mom since it was my first time being there or my dad who had been there a couple times and thus did not need my help to look for the position. I was lost, because I wanted to be present as fast as possible, to be a gear of the family machine, being useful to mom and dad in some ways to give them some of my love.

I looked at the car, through the windscreen seeing dad turning the car off. He was emotionless as usual. I thought I had to go, because I did not want him come by and walk with me. As I grew, we have less common interests. It became that whenever we talk, there were just big talks about my life. I know he shifted all his focus on me in the rest of his life but I don’t know what I can give him back. I looked down to the uneven path, trying to skip all the reflecting surface to avoid touching dirty water, thinking what he would say when he ran to me or we would just not say anything walking silently and awkwardly together. So I walked faster, like a loser, not solving the problem nor confronting it but

placing the dining wares in sets. And then she went out to get hot water so we could have tea when we eat. Soon, dad went in with mom who held a water container at her hand. They said nothing and didn’t even look at each other. “Son, this place is amazing.

We took quite a long time to finally find it…” dad started bragging when he saw me while he hadn’t even sit down yet. I listened and sometimes nodded. Mom added a few words and waited dad finished, she started asking me my life in Canada where she always wanted to go. I replaced her to achieve it with the support from dad. Just by hearing me saying, she felt satisfied. She leaned forward, putting her arms on the table, asking and listening carefully. She was so focus on what I was saying as if she had a picture in her mind. Dad just took out his phone and looked at it until the owner came with a big pot of juicy meats and vegetables.

“Let’s start!” We held our chopsticks and dug in.

Personal Essay

Good Person’s Night

The weirdest thing that occurred to me was the night when I walked home backward, someone drove by said to me something like “you are walking in the wrong way”. I turned back and I said “thank you”. Whether he heard that or not, I “fixed” it.

It was 2 in the morning. This small town neighborhood was as quiet as usual. Light along the path was dim and the road ahead was long. I decided to walk backward, because I did this all the time and 2 am is an even safer and thus better time to do so. The weather was comfortable because I can’t catch anything from that night when I try to recall. Or it was because I was so used to the good weather I paid no attention to it.

Or because my mind was so unstable that my sensory was taken by my emotion? All I can recall is that I was crying. That purge of tears in my body felt amazing, enjoyably amazing. Not just because I knew it was 2 in the morning, no one could see me crying on a street, but the fact that I can cry when I wanted to.

The way home was long. If it was not necessary, I wouldn’t walk this way. Plus 2 am is late, I was

We walked to the bus stop. His friends were there in the McDonald’s waiting. He said two more people are coming. He asked me if I wanted anything. I smiled and I shake my head. No, it was 2 am. Eating before sleep is not healthy not to mention eating fast food from McDonald’s. I did want something, something that I had no clue of. It was something that has more value, something that weighed as much as I willing to guide him to the bus stop to find his friends from my house and get back home alone at 2 am when my roommate was agreed upon to take the response but fleeted pretending falling asleep. He looked at me, “Okay” he said. And then I stayed. My passiveness and the lack of information made me stay, giving me hope, a chance to identify what I was looking for. But it was boring just by looking at the TV and the people eating in. I sat there because I don’t like to talk to people and I did not know them well. I felt like someone working in here, wasting time and at the same time expecting something, looking at the same interior, smelling the same fried stuff smell for hours everyday, and doing repeated tasks that gains no satisfaction. Even though I wanted out, something was dragging me to stay.

When we finally left MacDonald’s, everyone looked ready as if they were about to go somewhere. I walked first, got to the bus stop, seeing people coming, jumping, walking and smoking across the road. Red

supposed to be sleeping already. And thinking about gunshot in this area on news all the time, with such a high criminal rate, I don’t deserve to walk all the way home at 2 in the morning. I was alone. I was just helping. I took over the responsibility from my roommate. This was not supposed to happen on me.

What was happening? I did not need to suffer. Why am I here? Wait, he did ask me what I wanted to eat but I refused. I remember that face mixed of emotions: confusion, relief and some humiliation, when I said I don’t want anything, his face was as if asking “if you want nothing, why are you here, are you stupid?”

I should have ordered fries, chicken nuggets, and Mcflurry, so I won’t be so upset, at least I payback from suffering. I should have refused to go saying I need to sleep then I won’t be so sad. Why was I even up at 2 and my window was facing out so he knew I was awake? Roommate was lucky even he was up he can still pretend he fell asleep already because his room faced inside. Still, why would he call a cab to drive other people home but no me? I even lived further than them. Because I was alone and they have three people?

Because one of them was a girl and I was a guy? Did he not consider me his friend? The road was too long. I had got too much time to mess my head over and over with negativity. Sadness accumulated and it bursted out as tears that I could not stop.

spot from the end of each cigarette buds were dancing in the night and their energetic bodies somehow vitalized the empty 2 am crossroad. When people gathered around the sign, he said: “let’s go home.” I was fine because people were leaving. Someone’s got a car so some left; he called a cab to drive him and three of them, except me. When he finished the call, he asked: “Are you okay going home alone?” I said I will be fine and I nodded my head. My part ended so I walked back. They waved me goodbye and they were there waiting for the cab. When I looked at the road ahead that seemed endless to go, I thought I did good, whether they agree or not.

Someone knocked my window. I looked at my phone, it was about 1:30. What is he doing here? I got to the door letting him in. He just stood there asking if my roommate is sleeping. I turned seeing the closed door and the darkness leaked under there. So I went in seeing him playing his phone. I told him what happened and he acted as a dead person. I got back looking at him waiting outside the door, alone in the dark. It was late and he was here already so there was no way I would shut him down and as a result I told him that roommate is sleeping and I will go to the bus stop with him.

Gaining some kindness from a strange in random situation like that was out of my imagination. That

random question somehow quickly stabilized my emotion. I walked home. Roommate’s door was dark as before. I won’t tell him what happened that night because I thought swallowing all the bitterness was what a good person should do.

PRNT-3006-001:

Personal Essay

Such a trip is rewarding: my first ever camping experience, first ever sleeping overnight with classmates from university experience, first ever staying in another city for volunteering on a weekend experience, first ever “mentally prepared of no shower for three days” experience even though we eventually had the precious change to shower, and first ever sleeping in the arms of nature experience. For all these breaking records of my life, I feel my soul enriched when I was able to step out and to participated in the kind of life I have never imagined.

Port Hope as I see it

I guess Port Hope is at least one of the beautiful fragments of the world we are living in. Not only because of the unbelievably clear starry night presented in front of my eyes, or because of the borderless backyard of a mysterious farm we camped in that is filled with unknown grass, flowers, woods, and grasshoppers, or because of that cute little business district in the center area that has only a few streets but contains a more than complete community that is functional and connected, or because of the cup of overly sweet hot chocolate with honey added in reminding me the sweetness of the people in town and the cup of morning coffee expressing the warmth from the Sunday morning sun, but because somehow everyone in town just know my name, and because the kids from the town shown me their satisfied and happy smiles, and even adults who also unconsciously shown their curiosity and their creativity to me as if they were going back to their childhoods, this trip to Port Hope has given me so much that I should not say it simply as an experience, but more an exit from my world to the outside world.

Pressing Issues

Every night at the camp was unforgettable. They were so unreal that I automatically link those nights with Port Hope as a representative of the weekend.

The nights were so vivid as if I am going back to the time and space, the moment I was sitting beside the campfire. Under the starry night, I am sitting beside the campfire. The frame is so hot that I can feel it burning my eyes. But the night is cool, I have to stay closer or else I am afraid I will get sick tomorrow morning.

People around me are talking. There are even two of them singing while playing guitar and violin. It is not a huge group of people, but all the sounds make me feel I am surrounded and thus warm. They are talking in English. I am surprised I can understand what they are saying. Wood in the fire makes the sound of “pop”. I think some extremely hot burning piece will jump onto

my pants or even my face, so I look at the campfire, trying to see where the sound came from. I follow the flow of the frame from the inside of the wood to the top end where fire turns into small spark of light flying up into the sky where is full of stars touching the fire as if the sky is made with the spark from the campfire.

“This is stunning”, I say it out loud in my mind. At the moment, I realize I am breathing and I feel that I am alive.

CROS-3009-001:

Publications: Dissemination

Another thing that defines the trip is the kindness in human that I could feel from my classmates and from the people of Port Hope. How classmates helped me to survive through the nights, how people were excited about their shirts getting printed and their buttons being made, how everyone shown their satisfied smile when another sheet of steamroller prints had been printed, how kids asked me if I can use that yellow, how adults said yes when I asked the same question to the children “do you want to make a button?”, how pure and innocent the people really are in my eyes, make me see the true beauty of this world.

And that’s it, that is how amazing that trip was.

Interview

Dyan Marie

Do you have a favorite issue of C Magazine?

DM: We have an issue that Marc de Guerre was on the cover (issue 20). That was such a nice issue but we were pretty invested in all of them. At the time there was just so much going on at Toronto. We were so involved with it. There was just everything, so much good material. So I am not sure if I should say this one particular issue as the best issue.

Do you pay attention to the recent issues of C Magazine? Have you had a chance to read them or the ones that were published after you left?

DM: I do, but perhaps not. After me, Ricks (Richard Rhodes) kept it for a long time and Joyce took it. I wrote for it actually for a couple times. But the recent issues I have not been involved within.

How do you feel C Magazine has changed from the way you originally envisioned it?

DM: On the earlier, I was very busy with the idea of artist projects. That was something I focused on and made sure that artists have a direct voice in the magazine. So artists were getting paid to experiment with their ideas. And as a designer and an artist, I would help them make it real. We had conversations and sometimes they were giving materials or we work with them together. I enjoyed that. They were also people that I work before, personal friends at that time.

At that point of time there was a smaller but very hard working and personal spontaneous community. They have committees and we have decision making process.

We could make the decision on the floor.

Was there a concrete structure? The design was based on whatever came to mind by the designers?

DM: No, we just responded. There was no concrete structure. At the beginning, we decided the size of the magazine and we work around the size. But within the magazine, we were pretty free to foul around.

Because it was an artist project, it was not conceived

as anything that has a real set of design standard. We also made our deadlines to make sure there was no skip issues. We were excellent about coming regularly and be responsible to the people who advertised in it so advertises of the shows can be on time. Saying that, this was not the time computer existed. So it was labor intensive to make change of anything.

How many people contributed to C Magazine?

DM: It changed from time to time. Ricks was always the editor, publisher, writer, designer. He was able to do all of those things. I came in and contributed to editorial content and did the design and also spent a lot of time doing advertising design in the early stage, which was surprisingly time consuming. Bill Wood was a contributing editor in the early days for a while. And people came in to volunteer. We also hired different people to come for internships for a short period of time. But mostly, it was just Rick, Bill and I. Where was your headquarters? Were you working in a studio together?

a pretty natural step to start something here. There was Impulse, Eldon’s magazine at the time, which is awesome but it didn’t review art. Rick was a critic and he wanted to actually have a critical magazine. That’s why we did that. It was a magazine Toronto based, but we also did national and international cover work in the magazine of different countries.

Was there a decision-making process for submissions and design choices?

DM: The community at the time was incredibly serious somehow. We just wouldn’t think of it and we were able to easily get people involved in writing and what not.

So it became that you were reflecting the culture that surrounded you. There was no great flexibility to add and subtract, like adding more pages to give an article that was really great. You kind of write that down or let artist actually develop things so that’s what I meant be rigid but certainly serious that you just fond to the time that was there.

I assume since C Magazine was the only Toronto platform accepting submissions for a periodical, there must have been a lot of them.

DM: At the beginning, we started in my studio. I had a studio on Duncan Street, second floor on 30 Duncan St. That was Queen Street west before. At that time, I had an entire floor. The building was very large and was subdivided. I had a studio there and so we started there.

Rick took over the space within that floor to make C and then we made gallery. The space there was so artist driven. Dunk Walker, he is an artist, and he has a space still. The space was empty for a couple years before. In that area, many space were reused by people because the rent was very minimal. When we have space lots of things were possible.

In the beginning, what inspired you to create C magazine?

DM: I was in Toronto, there were so many things happening and people were so passionate about what they were doing and yet there was no coverage really to speak about Toronto. There wasn’t internet and there were handful of publications that were really seriously read. There was a magazine in Montreal and Vancouver, but nothing in Toronto. But Toronto has always been trying to claim its space. So it was a hole. I knew how to put things together and Rick had been the editor for Parachute and then for Vanguard. It just seemed

DM: There were submissions but often like everything else you just commission people. A few times people would ask and submit things but often we encouraged people to submit. Because the zine was so small and it was still about nurturing people, we were consciously thinking giving them the opportunity to write something. We always asked people “Would you like to write about this? Would you like to change? Do you want to make an artist project for this two dimensional place?” So it was very much about nurturing the Toronto art zine. Rather than waiting for people to come to get things to us, we were busy with getting people. We love this work, we think you are a great writer, or you are the writer who is interested in this who will help to make it happen, so we want you to be in the magazine to have an opportunity to develop your ideas. Because as you probably know, if you write something, often it is a process of finding out what you think about it. It is a creative process as making artist project. You started a magazine and not definitely know how it would finish. You have an idea, how many pages exactly what we wanted to go. But each issue was an opportunity to create something.

How did you find your community? For example, Richard Rhodes and Isaac Applebaum?

DM: It was a small world. Everybody was friends with everybody. Isaac Applebaum had a magazine called Impressions, which was an artist magazine, not a critical magazine. He was giving it up to Ricks, so he could start something. Because we never had done a magazine before, he stayed with us part time for the first issue, to give us some tips, to get us started. Ricks bought it from him, 15000 I think, which allowed us to start in a stable position to help support the magazine by looking for advertising and applying for grant.

For each of the ten issues there was a change in the C Magazine logo, is there a reason for that?

DM: I still like to do that one. I know the world is so busy with branding and I always felt really rebelliously against it especially now it becomes a major compensation. I’ve done a number of things where every single time I refuse to do a logo. And also they were very busy with the cover so in a way I kind of let them do what they want. It was very permissive about that but we did anything possible to not be busy with the branding and the consistency.

Just like you said, there was a rapid change in technology throughout the magazine process.

fall into what is aspidate in terms of standardization for disseminating them in bookstore or for being able to mail them. I think at one point, we even put the logo C at the wrong side so that when you see it you know what is this. For all of those things did come to bare wage so we simplify them. But at start off we just thought that looks good and the size looks good or this paper looks. When I look back at the big issues of news print, I think we should have stayed there, that was the least expensive.

How did you go about distributing C Magazine, what were your methods of dissemination?

DM: So at the beginning, we kind of distributed it more of less ourselves and then we had distribution company. We also distributed to some places that we really wanted them to have it, places like New York, Montréal, Vancouver. We would make sure the magazine taking up to those places. We boxed it up and sent it out. We also have a whole slew of interns that came to us to help with things like distribution and the managing of the magazine. From the very beginning, we started as skeleton and then it would get bigger into perfection as a magazine.

DM: I know it could be middle ages. Well, not exactly, because you would be able to use your typewriter. You would send that type to specialist and they would set for you and come back and it’s called gallies, long thin strips. Then you cut those apart, put wax on the back and then stick them down glue them down. But if you make a typo, for example, if there was a “r” that shouldn’t be there, needed to be an “i”, you have to take another extra work to cut out the “i”. And then with a knife, you put wax at the bottom and you roll the wax so it wouldn’t pull. It was phenomenal and labor intensive. If you decided to change your mind, have it reset was really expensive and time consuming.

You have to send it out, have it done, coming back.

And there was no computer so to get every typo was difficult. Because when you make anything, there are errors, you have to be so careful all the time.

The first issue of C Magazine was newsprint, and then as the periodical progressed the type of paper and quality changed. Why did you make this decision?

DM: The issues also kept getting smaller. As you learn what you were doing, unfortunately, what happens is you start making things simpler and finer. It was tricky.

You just keep playing with the format and then you

Where did you find the funding for C magazine?

DM: Rick was actually really good about dealing with the advertise people. We also tried to figure out the most economical way getting more content into the magazine. Sometimes we let some of the major galleries take off full page, because a big image of their artists’ work was visually amazing and can help us pay the bill. But we never made a living wage or we did it bare hand and mouth. Although we did it in poverty, we were excited and proud of what we were doing. Because we covered our bills and we were able to grow into a substantial magazine that has survived till now. There is one other thing I think that we were also proud that so many magazines were just dying and people were holding them not willing to pass it on and we were able to keep it up.

What lead you to make the decision to pass the magazine on to other people?

DM: I think for myself as much as I enjoyed it, it was just phenomenal amount of work and I had baby. I was in there doing layout with this little knife, the glue, and the wax carrying a baby. It was really tough and it was

really hairline living, so I moved on. Rick kept it for a long time. He at some point wanted to work with real artwork as rather than art criticism and writing, so he passed it along and went to The Power Plant became a curator.

Why did you decide to take a sculpture program in Dundas Valley, as you said you were already very busy and consumed with C Magazine?

DM: I did it. I always make art. I was an artist first.

I started a gallery during this period of time with many of the artists who I designed for the magazines.

So I realized I was bringing artists to the magazine whose work I was really admired and they were from Montréal, Vancouver, Nova Scotia and Toronto who were not showing in gallery in Toronto. So I started a gallery called Cold City and shown those artists in the gallery. Cold City came out of work that I put in C Magazine. And I did teach as well.

I understand your desire to provide a space for artists with an opportunity to be exposed to the public.

or interested in that particular time, or artists that we didn’t cover but we would love to cover. So people are always unhappy with a critical magazine that they are not in. Just like you did a review, write an article that they want to cover or why am I not covered in every show. It is unfortunately, we can’t cover everything and everybody.

Was there any serious conflict with that kind of concern?

DM: I am sure there was but just small conflict not to the extent that they threaten my life. But looking back, it was heartbreaking that there were people that you didn’t cover or you covered them but you didn’t get it quite right. So you always backend certain kinds of regrets that you could have done a better job. But really you did the best you could. We knew it was the best we could. There was no feeling of being reserved. We totally put ourselves into this.

Just to add to that, is there anything you wish you could change in C Magazine back then?

DM: I was passion about it. It just seemed such an amazing thing to live your life as an artist, to be surrounded by people thinking and making interesting work, to be able to document them somewhere into the magazine, having that kind of longevity and getting out to a wider audience. It seemed like a real mission, as a place to think about art, to think about things. We were all engaged with new work and trying to figure out what we can do. Magazine is an amazing place actually being reflective, to think about what that means, to put different voices side by side in a close context to create an origin identity. Publication is an amazing thing, a possibility.

Did you get any critical feedback from the community?

What was the most helpful feedback you received?

DM: You mean people like critiquing the magazine?

No people would always be because the magazine was a critical magazine. People were always like why do we chose this person not that person, so there was always concern about like who did we cover and who we didn’t and we gained, someone wrote a bad review and we published the bad review then you have to follow from that. Or writers who couldn’t get into the issue, who want to write but we don’t have space for it

DM: As I said, there were some people that you just didn’t cover and there were people who died and lots of people who just didn’t continue make art. But really I have no regret. It was an amazing time. I think we were able to capture a lot of the history in Toronto of that particular time. We didn’t have a lot of resources but we did an amazing job with the resources we had, the kind of technology out there. When everything was offset printing, you couldn’t print anything out knowing how they look. It was amazing that people did it actually with the technology and the resources and how busy we were at that time being a young parent.

If you were going to publish C Magazine today, what would it look like?

DM: Occasionally, I have small publications, Blue magazine, one issue. But I don’t think I would do it again. Because I think it is a huge active generosity to do a magazine. You were focusing on other people’s work helping their artwork find a place. Sometimes I look at nowadays, I think how and why is the people aren’t making magazine. It is so simple and inexpensive in comparison to those early time. I think it is important to say that the space was an inexpensive thing. You could live very inexpensively, not be

occupied with the thinking of how would I find a space because space was just there.

How do you feel about your experience during that time? Were there any difficulties being a woman in the industry?

DM: Feminism had not had that long history at that point of time. I think that was during the first wave of feminism. I felt very comfortable with my role. I am looking back now, I think that I was insane because I had a baby and no one else had kids. I was doing the magazine, doing the gallery, teaching, making my own work and being a mother. At one point I was just getting really sick. It was just way too much. I was in a hospital in two weeks and we had a meeting in my studio on the day that I got back from the hospital, so there was no maternity leave, there was no time to rest.

I had a baby and just got back to work because there was some primitive time.

What was it like dealing with all of that stress and tension?

making magazines. I think that’s wonderful that people are so much kinder to people who have children or women who have children right now. Being a woman over and over again certainly in my life time, by either being underpaid, being under appreciated of the work, all of those things which I think is better now. There is a lot more equality out there. There is a women role who found their voices compared to at that time.

And motherhood was a very important, very time consuming, very demanding role. I mean motherhood did not necessarily have anything that we do have. So I have many friends, who were successful artists, had said I am not having children because they didn’t want anything to intervene with their career.

I have a huge empathy for boys actually. I had two sons grown up and I recognized that boys commit suicide more than girls do, boy graduate university less often than girl do, and boys are more likely to be beaten up at the age of fifteen than girls. School at that time was totally turned the resource toward girls rather than boys, empowering girls rather than empowering boys, because of the assumption that boys are really tough and they can just do anything.

They would be heartbroken to be assuming that they were misunderstood just because they are boys, they were supposed to be happy and supposed to be tough.

Also at that time, one of the big thing was AIDS, gay

DM: I look back and now I know people who have a baby can get a year off, but that was just so far from anything that I could imagine at the time. It was phenomenal. And there wasn’t any support. I remember doing my gallery, bringing the baby in and then putting it down a crib in a quiet part in the studio where people were smoking around. There were things that don’t happen now. There wasn’t a lot of considerations of a young mother. Now, a young mother gets more attention. For that there, it was just that I can do it all. And I think people are realizing I can do a certain amount but at that point I just thought I could do it all.

How do you feel about the political correctness?

DM: We published women’s work. There was just so much good women’s work at that time so we published that. But I don’t think if we were even aware of it as “women’s work”. It was just that it was an excellent work so we published. We only make sure that if the work was being shown, it was good. It wasn’t politically driven. I was always a feminist from as a youngster that I was identified. From high school, I was the first girl who took a wood working course. I just assumed again that I could do it all including being a parent and

men were just coming out and were liberated. Two of the artists did artist projects within the magazine and I made a show of that in the gallery. So there was a constant vulnerability tightening with sexual morals opened before that because people were dying. I think there are a lot of important issues out there that in some ways being politically incorrect in terms of just identity is absolutely important. I was really busy doing small gestures towards ecological things that have a long term effect, too. But it should not be the only thing people throw themselves into because there was tricky time for the politic.

CRCP-2001-001:

Contemporary Issues: CRCP

Fragmental reading experience contributes to sparking ideas after reading “‘Tragic Misreading’: Queer Theory’s Erasure of Transgender Subjectivity” by Namaste Namaste’s “‘Tragic Misreading’: Queer Theory’s Erasure of Transgender Subjectivity” is to me fragmented. There seems to be a variety of not directly connected things Namaste wants to say. By reading the essay, I pick up some interesting ideas from here and there and have some thoughts about something I read.

First of all, I fully agree with the idea that gender itself is performative. It is a performance associated with or according to biological sex in a daily base. In this case, unlike the personality performance, gender has a strictly “binary” social model to follow.

Moreover, when it talks about the “misogyny” in gay community, such a deliberate “othering” action can also be seen as a performance for the sake of reinforcing the absoluteness of male sex. The reason behind this absolute quality builds on the gender discrimination

of woman at the time, which also demonstrates the unequal weights on sex/gender verse sexual orientation.

At the same time, transgender group was also oppressed by the community. I was surprised by the treatment “sexual anomalies” received in gay bars and Pride in the 1900s, as Namaste mentions in the essay, whereas drag culture always appears in pubic as the face for homosexual group especially in Prides. Drag, transvestite or transgender should be under gender but it focuses on the reversal of sex, which seemingly triggers “misogyny” hardly and also acts against the absolute male value of homosexual community. Thus, by restricting transgender from nature to performance, the value can be secured through such a manipulation and “control” of the replacement of woman.

Besides that, the term “queer” refers to homosexuality denotatively. However, through the reading and study of the issue, it seems to me that the term “queer” especially in “queer study” represents a broader group of people. It becomes something above simply one category under sexual orientations, associated with not only sexual orientation, but gender and sex and everything relates to these three. Through the continued use of the term “queer” in a more academic or formal situation, it starts to act as a device to normalize sex related nature that was or is suffered from oppressions from the society. It becomes a term for the

“minority” who is outside the “binary”, heterosexual, and so-called normative nature. “Opposite” to which, fluidity defines “queer” nature as a whole that identity is overlapped, blended, multiply and mixed. However, in terms of theoretical study, such an attribute makes it more complex and thus difficult. All the overlapping on identities makes it that the more specific categorizing and defining process is, the harder to study a specific subject alone. In this case, as a result, even though I fully agree with Namaste’s argument about the necessity of “interrogation” in queer study, I believe such an uncertainty of identity will equally affect the subjects themselves, which also challenge the work of specification in terms of “interrogation”. That is to say, the subject to study might not even sure about their identities. Moreover, the idea of “out” for homosexual people also challenges “interrogated” study. In other words, homosexuality is not only one of the sexual orientations, but also a performance that people can decide not to perform.

Lastly, the interrelationship between queer study and “poststructuralism” Namaste mentions is also interesting. In which, the complexity of the queer nature makes it an ideal subject for poststructuralist theories to study and the belief in plurality in poststructuralism contributes to the theoretical foundation for queer study.

Real “decolonization” is unrealistic after reading Tuck and Yang’s “Decolonization is not a metaphor”

less harmful to “the settler”. In other words, I call it a delay tactic–the best solution is to wait “…until the old inhabitant is dead or absorb.” (Tuck)

“Decolonization” is a simple and clear yet vague concept for the public. Simple as it is, “de-colonization” literally states an opposition toward colonialism, but nowadays is found to be twined with and integrated into the idea of decentralization. In the article, Tuck and Yang aim to highlight the “original” definition of “decolonization” and then “remind readers what is unsettling about decolonization” – “the repatriation of Indigenous land and life”. (Tuck)

No surprise, political component plays a vital role in here. After colonialism and slavery, the government becomes the new executioner. Couple of moves have been taken place, such as regulating “indigenous” identity by the “settler” system, and “asterisking” them by zooing them in “faraway reservations” where allows almost no development. They do a great job minimizing the number of “indigenous” population and restricting their growth. On the other hand, as there are less “indigenous people”, there are more “‘little bit Indian’ American. In other words, the more civilized move is to turn all “indigenous people” into American with “Indian blood”, so there are no “indigenous people” at the end. (Tuck)

I deem it unrealistic to “settle” “the repatriation of Indigenous land and life”, due to disproportionate population between the “settler” and the “indigenous people”. With the old “incommensurable logic”, as what Table 1 demonstrates, “Decolonizing the Americas means…all settlers become landless”, which is unrealistic. According to Figure 1.2 under “Reoccupation and urban homesteading”, the population of “indigenous people” has never stopped declining.

It is obvious that the later to solve this problem the

By studying and comparing the French Revolution and the Haitian Revolution, Tuck and Yang notice that the core to the solution is “what/who counts as whose property”. Under “Abolition”, they come to a solution that “requiring the repatriation of land and the abolition of property.” When the identity does not link to the benefit, the “move to innocence” modes become meaningless, so people will either continue as a true fighter or retrieve when “decolonization” brings more harm than benefit to them. (Tuck)

However, the will of the majority has always been the priority to be responded to. Therefore, a throughout ideological revolution becomes necessary. Under “Critical pedagogies”, they mention the importance of “Land Education”. They link “Mother Nature” to “Native culture” as a mean to against what I called the delay tactic. Although I agree education is an essential way to root or change ideas, “Land Education” is more a compromise to the reality than a solution to it because it does nothing to stop the decrease but follows the same “asterisking” process. There is a paradox to make “settler” and “indigenous people” equal and to make “indigenous people” special. (Tuck)

and property”, so “the settlers” are “innocent” once they solve one of many problems. I find it interesting that such a change has been kept tacitly and been acknowledged and act on as something normal.

Although Tuck and Yang might not be intended, there is an implication of a big brother who is responsible for such a large-scale ideological alternation. Otherwise, such a much “easier” and less “harmful” “decolonial” solution can only be a simple natural self-defensive reaction of “settler”. (Tuck)

Interestingly, from the six “moves to innocence” models they summarize, there is an implication that to make “Decolonization” vague is likely resulted from either conspiracism or “settler” self-defense. For example, under “Colonial equivocation” and “Free your mind and the rest will follow”, huge ideological changes have been taken place simultaneously in the majority of the popularity in postcolonial society, namely “homogenizing” and “reduction” of “decolonization”.

“Homogenizing” expends anti-colonization to antioppression, so “the settlers” are free from guilt once they participate in against one of all oppressions. The latter “reduces” “decolonization” to specific problems like “sexuality, legality, raciality, language, religion

Such conspiracism is likely the best way to achieve the true ideological revolution, but this is like mission impossible, especially for “indigenous people” as they are the minority.

In my point of view, the formation of the idea of “decolonization” is also made possible with the increase attention to oppression in the “settler” world. And the reason behind such a tendency might be the self-satisfying and self-proving of the “postcolonial” civilization or personal value of “the settler”. In which, “metaphorizing” “decolonization” is a easier and civilized solution to this unsolved problem in the uncivilized past. And obviously, the attempt to solve uncivilized problem with civilized solution is difficult.

“Metaphorization” becomes a more compromised solution so “the settlers” are allowed to sacrifice less in exchange with more satisfaction or pride. As a result,

“settler move to innocence are hollow, they only serve the settler.” (Tuck) In short, “decolonization” is likely not aim to actually “settle” problems but provide a mean to bring satisfaction and pride to “the settler”. There is still an uneasy path for the true “decolonization” to go. (Tuck) Work Cited Tuck, Eve and Yang, K. Wayne. “Decolonization is not a metaphor”, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. 2012

Avoid criticizing for the sake of making critique “Reading Racial Fetishism: The Photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe” By reading the first part of “Reading Racial Fetishism: The Photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe”, which is “Imaging the Black Man’s Sex”, Mercer wrote as an immediate respond to Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs in his collections The Black Book and Black Males, I realize that Mercer might fall into criticizing for the sake of making critique that is by my definition criticizing a work with no intension to make contribution to the work but other for other purpose.

In this case, Mercer criticizes Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs based on harsh but highly subjective and narrow opinion–the “objectification” of black men through a camera of a white artist as an act of “enslavement”. In order words, to me, the essay becomes a device for Mercer to express his strong anger toward racism through criticizing the work, in which because the cameraman who is Robert Mapplethorpe, a white man, and the subjects are black men, Mercer

defines this situation/relationship as a racist “objects” vs “master” with “omnipotent eye[s]” one. The essay also expands based on this white artist–black subject relationship. Although I believe such a highly personal critique is inappropriate, it is understandable that such an implicative position can easily trigger black people especially for art critics like Mercer who are sensitive and open to all kinds of potential emotions or intensions of an artist behind his/her artwork.

In accordance with “Imaging the Black Man’s Sex”, the technique Robert Mapplethorpe uses, the enlargement of models’ body part in suit with the exposure of black skin and sexual part–the penis in an calm tone, is basically the only thing Mercer really criticizes, in which he defines it as an objectifying process due to the fact that zooming into body parts makes models “anonymous” and “homogeneous” and “emphasizes maximum distance between the spectator and the… object of desire”. He further turns to the side of the artist expanding such an act as “mastery and control over the ‘objects’”. When the races of the artist and the models are placed into the formula, racism is the result. Moreover, he deems that the combination of eroticism and aesthetic of the photograph paralleled to “female nude” is a process of “feminizing”, which is also a form of “objectification”. In short, “objectifying” black models by capturing beauty in parts of their

bodies and “feminizing” them by capturing their sexual parts of their bodies through the camera of a white artist make the work racist. It is easy to see that such a conclusion is too subjective to be illogical as if saying white photographers or even artists should not use black models as subjects otherwise the work can be seen as racist.

Frankly speaking, on the other hand, the emotionlessness of the camera and the minimalism in composition that creates the sense of “objectification” itself is a relatively well-prosecuted aesthetic treatment to capture the pure beauty in human bodies, in contrast with full body model wearing fancy clothing with tons of distractively decorative objects around. The almost impersonal perspective in Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs provides audiences objective lens to directly see the non-decorative and unchanged appearance of human bodies.

As what Mercer states in the next part, the meaning of a work can be “overdetermined” due to the difference of “race” and “ethnicity” between “authors” and “audiences”. Furthermore, there are all kinds of aspects such as personal experience and belief that can “irritate” strong personal emotion from the critic to the specific aspect that he or she can read from the work or anything associated with it. Again, such a strong emotion can result in judgement rather than critique

that only serves the critic but not the actually work or the readers. That is to say, it is “unfair” to criticize a work by giving it a politically incorrect or ethically wrong intension that is unintentional by the artist or pushing too much personal opinion without logical consideration in order to use the critique as a mean to serve the needs of the critic rather than contribute to the artwork or be responsible for helping the readers to understand the piece.

In short, to avoid criticizing for the sake of making critique, critiques that are heavily bias or overly personal so as to be meaningless or harmful to the readers should be re-categorized as simply articles. Also, critics should be aware of the involvement of personal feeling when writing a critique.

Othering of the othering: fourth photograph of “Breakfast for Children Program” of The Vanguard in “ATTICA, USA 1971: IMAGES AND SOUNDS OF A REBELLION”

The fourth photograph in the series, “Breakfast for Children Program”, of The Vanguard, is a vertical, unusually narrow and black and white photograph. It is visually and compositionally divided into three sections horizontally and spatially: the man serving food on the top at the back, the child sitting behind the table below the man, and with two plates of breakfast that is about to be put on the table at the very front and the bottom of the composition.

The moment when the man serves food to the child and the child sees the food with a smile appearing on his face is captured. With two plates of food, table with white tablecloths, two black figures and the kid behind

the table, this photograph is most likely related to the “Breakfast for Children Program” as the name states even though there is no sufficient information from the background to confirm that the time and the place the photo was taken is a¬¬ctually when and where the Program took place.

Love, hope and happiness are the most direct emotions the photograph deliver. A pure smile from the child has been captured when he sees the food; carefulness and professionalism can be seen on the man who is serving food to the child. Moreover, how the man widely opens his back and acts as if he is wrapping the kid with his arms suggests protection and caring toward the children, which is a literal suggestion of caring and also a metaphorical one implicating the act of the “Black Panther Party”. Also, the line drew from the child to the food overlaps the line drew from the man to the food, which implies a continuation of generation that either tells the giving/passing of a good future for this next generation or the passing of the will to achieve such a goal to these children.

The series presents some daily scenes in the “Breakfast for Children Program”, due to the fact that the majority of them are table scenes. In this series of photographs, there is a sense of order, harmony and stability within, strived from the centralization and frontalization of main figures in composition, minimalistic of focal

elements, and the use of vertical and horizontal lines.

The number of figures restricted to no more than two and that they are focus on themselves with little interaction help to reduce unnecessary distraction to bring the attention to the central elements. Regardless of the limitation of included contents, relative information to further explain the story in the photo is included.

When there are oven and pots in the surrounding, for example, it informs the audiences that this is a scene in a kitchen. Moreover, horizontal and vertical lines are widely used in composition. In which, tables and door frame helps to, again, draw attention and create an overall sense of security and stability to the series.

Nonetheless, with a variation of reactions, children’s love toward food are seemingly visible in the photos.

Interestingly, the second to the fourth photographs demonstrates a workflow from making food to deliver food to serve food. The continuation is so smooth that creates harmony in the series.

In the exhibition, this is the last featured series of The Vanguard. There are three more series associating different aspects of “the Black Panthers Party” displayed on the same wall. The series on the left captures moments of “the Black Panther Party assembled in Marin City”. Faces of teens are identifiable that this series also shows a continuation of generation in the sense of use of violence and power. Unlike all the positive and

peaceful signal from “Breakfast for Children Program”, “Marin City, California, August 31, 1968” heavily features weapon in relation with human, reinforcing the strength of the members in the Party. Figures pose heroically with confidence especially the young man in the first photograph. The advantage of similarity has also been emphasized, in order to show their unity and strength.

Above “Breakfast for Children Program” is the series of photographs recording sacrifice the Black Panther Party did against the policeman: the destruction of settlement, homicide of members, note of revenge. In contrast with the happiness and hope in “Breakfast for Children Program”, this series without name is full of silent protest. Lifeless scenes and broken objects dominate the photographs instead of alive figures. The negativity is injected in the series that expresses more furious anger than silent depression due to the use of comparison between the same scene from the past and present and between photographs and captains. Compared with the seriously destructed window, for instance, the caption describes the story in a neutral tone.

Such a contrast leaves the strong emotion from the photographs no way out, which enables a transferring of emotion – anger from the viewed piece to the viewer.

On the other hand, it can also be seen as a self-reflective process on the viewer alone that the viewer produces

being one of the subject matters directly shown in the series is a remarkable and undeniable good that not even the “white” can do in the time, the “worst” can be identified is only the indication of the “bad”, such as the assemble that suggests violence afterward and the destruction that is resulted from violence that has been taken place.

Furthermore, that “black people” are chosen to be the figures exclusively in the series not only because of the subject matter, but also the intention of this “photographic essay” (Label). In this case, the gathering of the same race – “black” and the lack of other races such as “white” is a deliberate act of the authors. In this case, it is noticeable that they tend to avoid capturing the physical interaction between the Party and the “white” society. This is also called “Othering” (Engelund) that is always associates with human rights issues. Such an exclusion works as a silent protest against the exact same “rejection of the different” in the side of the “white”, represented by the society. Compared with the harmless rejection in camera, the social and political rejection is so rooted in mind that deeply hurts the rights of being a human for “black people”.

At the same time, the “rejection of the different” always results in the gathering of the same. The emphasizing of the sameness provides a clearer and more direct perspective to actually see “black people”. Such a direct

and then processes the emotion with no interaction with the photograph. That is to say, the photograph itself contains no suggestion or implication of emotion if there is no interpretation from the audiences. However, direct emotion being a visible and important element of the “Breakfast for Children Program” series delivers the emotion by infecting the audiences. In order words, the photo itself contains feeling that strives from the figures inside.

Generally speaking, documentation should stand in a neutral position that involves no personal feeling of the author to keep the content as “real” and “objective” as possible. The Vanguard as a “photographic essay” “documenting” “the work of the Black Panther Party” with the intention to show “positive response to the Black Panther Party” works against the “recording” purpose of a documentary. However, the positivity actually stands against the general negativity toward the Black Panther Party in the mainstream media at the time: instead of making the unbalanced more unbalanced, Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pickle Jones recorded the “good” of the Party to provide a more “objective” view to the society.

Prisoner, violence and rebellion are the negative words the Black Panther Party most associated with, featured and highlighted, therefore,/but not even one single scene in The Vanguard put them under the camera directly. Alongside the fact that Breakfast Program

contact allows a full and unbiased observation toward “black people”, which makes the realization of “black people” being the same as other races come true. The sameness in humanity places them on a broader identity as human. The beauty in them, such as love, caring, unity, confidence, is also the beauty in humanity. Literally, race is nothing but a category to identify originality. When it becomes the excuse to classify people and the ruler to measure a certain group of people, the one who is behind this is truly violent by positioning themselves in a higher level than the “other” (Engelund).

In short, the series puts forward the beauty of the “Black Panther Party” and protests the same act of “white” by “othering” them in composition, which not only points out the nonsenseness of the act of “othering”, but also directly presents the beautiful sameness in humanity on black people. (Engelund) * I decide not to use ideas from “Decolonization is not a metaphor” and “Racial Fetishism” because I think they are discussing different issues / same issues in different aspects. Probably because I still not fully understand them, I find it hard/wrong to link the ideas from them to the photograph and the series I choose to analyze

Work Cited Baruch, Ruth-Marion Baruch and Jones, Pickle. The Vanguard. 1970 “ATTICA, USA 1971: IMAGES AND SOUNDS OF A REBELLION”, Curated by Philippe Artières with Le Point du Jour. Main Gallery, Ryerson Image Centre.

2017 Label under The Vanguard in “ATTICA, USA 1971: IMAGES AND SOUNDS OF A REBELLION”, Main Gallery, Ryerson Image Centre. 2017 Engelund, Sara Rismyhr. “Introductory Essay: ‘The Other’ and ‘Othering’”, web. <https://newnarratives. wordpress.com/issue-2-the-other/other-and-othering-2/> Following our visit to the Ryerson Image Centre, students will select one image on which to focus in this short writing exercise. The paper will be a short analysis of the work’s formal characteristics, considering, as well, any technical information that can be deduced from the exhibition materials, as well as any technical information you can deduce about the image based on material we have covered in class and in relation to readings during Week 4. In the second part of this assignment, you will try to imagine the image in its original context: why it might have been produced, how it circulated,

of the events within a broader expressive framework, including photography and documentary film alongside artwork, music, agitprop ephemera, and popular cinema to explore the multivalent cultural response to this extraordinary news event.

The Vanguard 1970 Ruth-Marion Baruch & Pickle Jones In 1968, photographers Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pickle Jones spent four months documenting the work of the Black Panther Party in California, with Minister of Information. Published in 1970, The Vanguard was presented as a photographic essay on the Black Panthers and conveyed an image of the movement as more than the anti-white, conservative opponents. Baruch and Jones photographed peaceful demonstrations urging the freeing of party President Huey P. Newton, arrested during a clash with the police in 1967; the 1968 nomination of Eldridge Cleaver as a candidate for the interracial Peace and Freedom Party; and the distribution of free breakfasts organized for children in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Armed young African-Americans do appear in the photographs, but the written essay focuses on the positive response to the Black Panther Party– among the white community as well–and provides a

what it represented in its original cultural/historical context, and what leads you to believe your reading of the image to be “true.” You should back up your narrative/argument about the image by considering, as well, the other images/objects that surround it in the exhibition, and by describing closely what you see in the image itself.

Attica USA 1971 images and sounds of a rebellion This exhibition recounts the story and cultural impact of the notorious Attica prison riots in western New York State. In a context of great political unrest in the United States, including repression of the Black Panther Party and mass opposition to the Vietnam War, 2200 inmates at the Attica Correctional Facility rebelled in demand of civil rights and better living conditions.

Following failed negotiations, New York state police violently regained control of the prison, resulting in the deaths of 42 detainees and correctional officers.

The still and moving images emerging from journalists permitted inside the prison were unlike any photo-reportage seen before, offering extraordinary insight into American incarceration, conditions within the US prison system, and the country’s fraught politics of race and power. This exhibition contextualizes imagery

more comprehensive portrait of its activist members.

The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was found in 1966 by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, who met as students at Merritt College in Oakland, California. The party’s platform stipulated better living conditions and the rights to self-determination for African-Americans, calling for the immediate release of all imprisoned black people and those facing prosecution so that they could be judged by their peers. In practice, the party saw itself as an instrument for self-defense against the violence of American society; and Emory Douglas, its Minister of Culture, powerfully translated Black Panther rhetoric into images. In 1967, he became the graphic designer for the newspaper The Black Panther, which by the early 1970 had a readership of some 400,000.

Breakfast for Children Program Marin City, California, August 31, 1968 In the United States during the late 1960s, organized opposition to the Vietnam War, and to racism and social injustice, spread and intensified. Many artists participated in public protests and in the counterculture true of dissent.

On September 9, 1971, a rebellion against prison conditions and chronic mistreatment of inmates broke out at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York State. The protesting detainees, most of whom were African-Americans, immediately called in journalists, photographers and observers; this was the first time in US history a prison uprising invited media members to cover events from the inside. After four days, the New York State police violently stormed the prison yard. The crackdown led to the deaths of twenty-nine inmates and ten hostages, with dozens wounded. Five others died during the uprising itself. The event had enormous consequences, triggering investigative inquiries and public mobilizations, and turning Attica into a global symbol of the struggle against carceral injustice and in favour of prisoners’ rights.

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The story of Attica, with its political and cultural implications, is the focus of this exhibition. Different kinds of documentary approach is not linear–we hear a multiplicity of voices reflecting different perceptions of what happened. Cultural projects from before and after the uprising invite us to consider the context for the revolt, as well as its subsequent impact. The Attica story highlights the racism that still bests the United States, and the problematic conditions that persist in the country’s prisons.

“Performance” and feminism as a definite crossover

“The bathhouse raids, the defeat of the Spadina Expressway, the feminist movement, the AIDS crisis, the flourishing of the Black community and the indigenous cultural renaissance” (AGO Label), various political and social movements mark the “1970s” and “1980s” the years of conflict. Artists also participated in through their remarkably unique and ground-breaking approaches. By adapting “performance”, a controversial artistic form, The Clichettes attempted to express their ideas by their “feminist performance” – “Up against the wallpaper”. In the “1970s” and “1980s”, “performance” became a “tool to convey political messages” (Abrams) for artists in different identities to “articulate oppressions” (Abrams) and in which feminist artists were the dominant force. (AGO Label) As a performance, “Up against the wallpaper” was meant to be temporary, but the “sculptural” presence of the “remnants” still worth analyzing because the physical part of the “performance” is full of external conflictions. In terms of its internal quality, as a three-

dimensional artwork, interestingly, this piece is only meant to be presented as a two-dimensional work to the audiences in the front. On which all the surface is covered with plaster in highly visibly thick and rough brushstroke as canvas. The overall use of color is dark and pale, emphasizing the sense of flatness of the piece; and there is a strong contrast between shadow and light created through the use of plaster on the surface, further turning this three-dimensional work into a twodimensional painting. (AGO Label) “Up against the wallpaper” is made with two parts: a carbine with artificial fruit on top and a background of presumably part of a wall with a window. The carbine seems to be a free stand one that got cut through by the background, leaving it an irregularly geometric base of shape. Visually, it has six drawers vertically and the second drawer on top is slightly opened, which reduces the sense of flatness from the plaster on the surface.

However, regardless of the fact that all the knobs are physical objects, the shadow and the gaps between drawers are “fake” that the drawers are only made exist visually. The legs, similarly, are also carefully painted cohesively matching the entire “canvas” style on the surface, making them visually “realistic”, while the huge black space – the “shadow” under the legs and the legs together are the actual constructively functional base.

Such a visual confusion plays with the conflict between

what is “real” and “unreal” by constructing the piece against the natural logic in a visual way. The big bowl on top of the carbine contained artificial fruits like bananas, oranges and more; grapes are falling out of the bowl. Also, the inside of the bowl is painted the same way as the entire surface and the shadow it casted is also painted in an exaggerating way that is larger than the natural shadow to fit in the light setting of the artwork itself. (Observation) When it comes to the background, it is visually abstract and unreal due to the use of unusual colors–green and yellow and the cartoony window next to the carbine.

Besides that, the dominate dark green and yellow play a vital role in creating the overall shady tone and artistic atmosphere of the piece and the space it creates.

In this case, the unevenness in the arrangement of the colors and the lack of trace to light source from the wall enable a separation from the background to the carbine and further highlight the being of the carbine. Moreover, there is a window that is the only physical element in the background where next to the cabinet. The use of color for the window follows the color palette of glass but it goes so far as to color even the window frames in light blue and white, which is unconventionally bizarre in a way that puts the idea of deliberate “unreal” forward. On top of that, the choice of not depicting scene “outside” the window stops the

as a “theatrical” act opposed to “actual” “engaged in an actual present” to “resembles” “parallel actuality” in reality. (Johnson) Again, “performance” provides “people whose bodies had been erased by mainstream society, or were only regarded as problems needing solutions” (AGO Label) a powerful “tool” (Abrams).

In which, “a desired future in juxtaposition to contemporary conditions” that “Social justice performance” can reflect and deliver provides adequate justification for the choice of performance as the form to express themselves. (Johnson) In this case, when the necessary aspects/elements gather together – “time, space, the performer’s body, and an audience” (AGO Label), “theater groups” (Abrams), for example, The Clichettes, who “view themselves as cultural activists first and artists second” (Abrams) will use their bodies to deliver their feminist messages.

Moreover, as one of the largest forces of the political movements, feminist artists widely adapted “performance” as their way to speak out. The “slipperiness” of “actuality” that “the ambiguous performing body creates” by “crafting a fiction in which corporeal experience intersects with social discourse” makes “body” a “useful performance tool for…sexual hierarchies” that “have originated from the male/ female binary—particularly when it is deployed on and through the body itself ”. As a result, the involvement

expand of narratives, which locks all the information within the space the piece creates and again draws all the attention from the viewers to what is inside the space. However, the play of conflict between “real” and “unreal” not just restricted to the physical existence in space, it also plays with the appearance of the objects.

In contrast with the realistically artificial fruits that highly mimics the natural texture and colors of the “real” fruits, for example, the bowl, the cabinet and the window are made visually unreal as they are painted deliberately and exaggeratedly to be seen like an oil painting. (Observation) When “Up against the wallpaper” was a “performance”, members of The Clichettes would stay behind the carbine with only their heads appeared to the audiences, which obviously is a metaphorical implication of women being decorative elements of the society. However, The Clichettes attempts to emphasize the fact that what is seemingly wrong is the society around them, by making the surrounding space full of conflictions. In this case, return to the internal quality of the piece, the contrast between visual and logical “real” and actual “unreal” mocks formalism of the mandominant society that what it appears is not what is actually is. (AGO Label) At the same time, “performance” as an artistic form itself is conflicted, due to the fact that “performance”

of body of “performance” itself fits into the “fluidity” of feminism perfectly, in order to against the fixatedly “binary” ideology in the society. (Johnson) In addition to that, as what Silva argues in “Commentary and Criticism: Media Artists and Feminist Performance”: As a way to escape the visual essentialization of the feminine without being relegated to invisibility and to contest the exclusivity of the established canons of the art world, performance art and performativity have been at the core of feminist art and activism from the very beginning…Performances are contingent and ephemeral, virtually repeatable but nonetheless always differently situated…Feminist performers experiment with the provisional, un-fixity, deformity, and the formless in order to contrast the fantasies that circumvent the feminine body and the work of art, accompanied by the desire to possess them both. the more versatile, personalized and inclusive subject matters and ways of presentation that “performance” enables also make it an undoubtedly the choice of artistic form for feminist artists. (Silva) Nonetheless what is displayed is the “remnant” of the “performance”, collected in the exhibition Toronto: Tributes + Tributaries 1971-1989, “Up against the wallpaper” is a typical piece with rich conflicted

internal qualities that reflects the feminist voice and of the form of “performance” in the time. (AGO Label)

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Work Cited Abrams, Danielle. Performative Practices and Poetry in North America and Pakistan. vol. 35, The Feminist Press, New York, 2007.

AGO Label. Toronto: Tributes + Tributaries 19711989, curated by Nanibush, Wanda. Art Gallery of Ontario, Exhibition Label. Sept 28, 2016 to April 2, 2017.

Silva, Kumarini, et al. “Commentary and Criticism: Media Artists and Feminist Performance” Feminist Media Studies, vol. 10, no. 2, 2010, pp. 229-248.

Johnson, Kellyn. “Undermining Identities in Johnny Blazes’Check One Please: The Ambiguous Body as Feminist Performance Tool.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol. 36, no. 2, 2015, pp. 72-87.

The Importance of Female Role in the Fabric Industry through the Analysis of the Case of Maija Isola and Armi Ratia and Other Women in Marimekko

As “a proudly female company, run by women, for women, employing generations of women” (Booth), Marimekko is a unique and distinctive brand in fabric industry in a worldwide level. Founded by Armi Ratia, who was “farsighted” (Marimekko: In) and held firm belief in the “individual freedom” (Collins) of their customers and designers, Marimekko became a bright star in the sky of Finland and global fabric industry in the 1950s (Marimekko: In). Until today, the company still remain as a pioneer of the industry and continues its legacy of a “female company” (Booth). Maija Isola, designer of the simple, vivid and memorable pattern –“Unikko” that now is marked as “the unofficial logo” (Marimekko: In) of Marimekko. As a freelance fabric designer who devoted her whole life into the design of

innovatively refreshing patterns, Maija Isola designed majority of the most well-recognized patterns in Marimekko and even the industry. With the case of Marimekko, the essay will talk about the importance of female role in the fabric design industry (Ekman).

1. Armi Ratia, founder of Marimekko

The first great female is Armi Ratia who played an irreplaceable role in the prosperity of Marimekko and who even changed the fabric design industry. Armi Ratia was a charming woman who was not only a textile designer, a “prolific writer” of “love stories” (Marimekko: In), and an “inimitable” public speaker (Marimekko: In), but also a great business woman who founded Marimekko with her husband Peter Viljo in 1951 (Whitlock) and led the company to its success.

Armi Ratia who “had a typically optimistic postwar ide-

ology” and “dreamed of a Utopia where there was freedom, equality, utility, practicality, optimism and happiness” established the look and feel of Marimekko design “from the start” (Blanchard) - “unisex clothes, simply cut frocks and bright, bold patterns” (Ekman), “instead of producing polite florals and spriggy wallflowers like everybody else” or of the “sleek, blond and minimalist Scandinavian design” around them (Blanchard). “We have realized that hard-edged modernism needs softening, so that it gets a human feel. Marimekko does that very well,” said Charlotte Fiell, a design historian and the author of “Scandinavian Design” (Ekman). And her “optimistic ideology” (Blanchard) also does blend into the design becoming the essence of them. “They are very endearing products. It’s not so much about being design aware. It’s just very happy and innocent,” said Magnus Englund who set up a store for fabric orders (Blanchard). As a result, the design of Marimekko can be essentially “timeless” (Ekman) that “its appeal crosses all generations - 60- to 70-year-olds remember the fabrics from the 60s, while new customers in their twenties and thirties are just as enamored” (Blanchard). “It was inevitable,” said Kate Blee, a London-based textile designer and Marimekko lover, who believes that the “rediscovery” of Marimekko design including “Unikko” “by a new generation” “was bound to happen” – “There are some pieces of unbelievable, wonderful design.

They were good five years ago, and they’re good now.

They are very powerful, confident, cheeky and in your face. Very clean. There’s nothing jaded or cynical about them” (Blanchard).

to move” (Riddle). Moreover, her design philosophy was also based on her firm belief in gender equality, “Women are sexy, not clothing,” (Riddle) she said once in respond to the accuse of their clothes being “sexless” (Booth). Ratia even furthered her belief in “individual freedom” (Collins) especially on women to the inner value or design philosophy of the company, as written in “Marimekko’s trajectory of pattern and color”, “Marimekko’s revolutionary patterned textiles were intended to attract the independent, intelligent woman irrespective of age” (Riddle). Marimmeko means “a dress for Mary” – “ie the woman on the street”. The “early on” intention was to design clothes that “liberate women from the tight, body-shaping dresses of the 1950s” so the clothes of Marimekko were “unconventional, informal, accessible to anyone - young or old, fat or thin” (Booth). They “conveyed a utopian feel of sexual equality,” says Marianne Aav (Booth).

limelight, it was a solo performance” (Booth).

Nevertheless, Marimekko was founded by Armi Ratia with her husband Viljo, Marimekko remains as a “female company” (Booth) since then. “From its inception, Marimekko was in the hands of women.

Even now, women occupy all the top positions” Booth written in her article “Flower power”. “I had the idea of an entrepreneurial couple with Armi on the artistic side, and me on manufacturing and management,” Viljo wrote in 1986. “But once Armi stepped into the

2. Tiiliskivi, pattern designed by Armi Ratia

As a textile designer, her “playfully garish pop art prints” which “manage to be simultaneously sexy and twee” were “everywhere” throughout the 50s and the 60s (Whitlock), which was resulted from her design intention to discover beauty in women and remain “individual freedom” at the same time (Collins), quoted from Ratia, “There is only one responsibility - beauty.

There is only one reality - a dream. There is only one strength - love” (Whitlock), and as what she responded to criticism of Marimekko designs, “Designs made of humble cotton were not form fitting or sexual, but comfortable and vital, giving women the freedom

As a business woman, being a “wordsmith by nature”, she was the “consummate host who charmed business partners, press, and guests” (Marimekko: In) and being a leader of Marimekko, she “placed great importance on developing personal relationships with her designers and distributors, which helped to globally expand the company.” (Collins) While she “fostered unbridled creativity among her designers”, she also promoted “all things Marimekko” from “the company’s screen-printed cottons”, to “loose-fitting dresses”, to “egalitarian philosophy”, through which Marimekko “became one of Finland’s most famous exports” (Ekman). Under the leading of Armi, “Marimekko not only became a phenomenon but also a way of life” (Marimekko: In) – “Marimekko was one of the first companies to market itself as a ‘lifestyle’ brand seeing no boundaries between home furnishings and fashion,” said Kate Blee (Blanchard). In the 1960s, “Marimekko had about 20 shops in Finland and abroad and 300 retailers”, only 10 years after the founding (Marimekko: In).

As both a designer and the founder of Marimekko who “[believes] in individual freedom of creativity and in designers bringing their personal experiences to life through design”, Armi Ratia influenced the company largely to enable Marimekko a company “modernized Finnish design” and at the same time “maintaining

a sense of pride and relationship with the country ‘ s traditional folklore” (Collins). Her initial philosophy which “is based on the power of design in the everyday” continues to shift and refine the path that leads the company, “To be part of our everyday life and to make our every secret dream come true - no more, no less. That’s how I see Marimekko’s future” Armi said (Marimekko: In). She believed that their design as “a cultural phenomenon” shoule be responsible to “guide” “the quality of living” (Marimekko: Colour).

As “farsighted” as Armi’s words, “nowadays Marimekko’s design and design philosophy takes its cue from people’s doing, their lived circumstances, alongside the task of producing print patterns” (Marimekko: In).

The philosophy even made Marimekko a company that revolutionizes the industry, from the “incorporation” of “fabric and textiles into daily life [objects]” to the “transformation” of “restrictive fashions of the somber post-war era into bright and colourful geometric prints and shapes” (Collins).

Moreover, Armi Ratia’s personal beauty not only influenced her child but people around her largely.

Ristomatti Ratia, the son of Armi, also worked for Marimekko as a bag designer since 1970, who “designed numerous bag models for Marimekko” and “many of which have gained immense popularity for their classic form and style” (Marimekko: In). In this

“boldly expressive abstract painting” by Astrid Sylwan who made she promptly decide to make a phone call to Sweden, “[and] thus began the creative collaboration to bring forth Vattenblank.” In the year of 2008, Mika Ihamuotila, “who had been selected by Kirsti Paakkanen as her successor” – “company’s new CEO” leads Marimekko to “internationalizr” “at an even wilder pace” (Marimekko: In).

4. Maija Isola

The other great female is Maija Isola. As a female designer, she was the dominant force contributing to the rise of Marimekko and she even enriched the textile industry as a whole as the treasure of the industry.

It has been widely acknowledged that the success of Marimekko largely ties in with the devotion of Maija Isola to pattern design. Maijla Isola was “one of the first

3. Kirsti Paakkanen, managing director of Marimekko

case, her influence also roots in the “Marimekko Spirit” (Marimekko: Colour) that still guides the company even after her death in October 1979. Kirsti Paakkanen, managing director of Marimekko, “installed faith” in her designers by “[putting] intuition back into its rightful and respected place” when “the country’s textile industry was slipping away to cheaper locales abroad” (Marimekko: In). The trust in intuition here encourage individuality and personal exploration in designers that reflects Armi Ratia’s belief in “individual freedom” (Collins). The birth of “Vattenblank”, “one of Marimekko’s most striking designs in recent years”, should also thank to such a belief in intuition.

The story started at a “chance” Marimekko’s creative director Minna Kemell-Kutvonen “across a picture” in a Swedish magazine. She “immediately recognized Marimekko’s need for a kind of creative energy” in the

Marimekko designers” (Allin) and today Marimekko has become a company “synonymous with modern Finnish design” and “most consider a tenet of the Nordic aesthetic” (Urquhart). In the book Marimekko: In Patterns produced by Marimekko, under the page of Maija Isola it states at the beginning, “Marimekko is Marimekko in large measure thanks to Maija Isola”.

“What we understand as the Marimekko style is very much based on what Maija Isola was doing,” said Marianne Aav, “the director of the Design Museum in Helsinki”, who agrees with Maija’s importance to the company (Ekman).

5. Kristina Isola

Maija Isola was not simply a talented pattern designer, but someone has “a young, free spirit”.

Maija loved travelling so much that she spent most of her life travelling and “handed Kristina over to her own mother” according to her daughter, Kristina Isola (Profile). When Armi Ratia, the founder of Marimekko, “was looking for young designers”, “its artistic director, Arttu Brummer, suggested Isola”

(Profile). At the age of 22 (Profile), “Maija Isola started working for Marimekko after studying painting at the Helsinki Central School of Industrial Arts and soon became the company’s principal textile designer” (Azzarito). “During her 40 years at Marimekko”, Maija Isola “created over 500 prints” (Azzarito), in which includes her most favored patterns such as “Ruhtinatar”, “Karmiini”, “Valmuska”, and of course “Unikko” (Fabric), her “more recognizable print” (Azzarito). Ekman states in his article that her creativity is “almost limitless”. What is “astounding” is not just in the number of prints, but in “the range of prints” as well (Ekman). It goes from “minimalist geometric via toned-down naturalistic” to “the explosion of colors that made her and Marimekko known all over the world” (Ekman).

5. Unikko, pattern designed by Maija Isola 6. Search “Marimekko” and then Unikko appears

In Marimekko: In Patterns, “Unikko” has been described as “an unprecedented success story in the world of textile design”. Jackie Kennedy who was “the company’s most famous early adopter” (Whitlock) “purchased seven Unikko-printed dresses and was pictured on the cover of Sports Illustrated” (MONDAY’S). Nonetheless “Unikko” was “introduced in 1964” (Azzarito), “It has been in continuous production since [then]”. The “timelessness” (Ekman) on “Unikko” has been proving its lasting effect – it “thrived” the 1960s and continued until mid-1970s

(Marimekko: In), and then it “blossomed back at the end of 1990s” “rediscovered” by Marimekko’s young designers (Marimekko: In), and until today “the pattern has appeared on everything” (Azzarito) that “[it] is so well-known that it has become Marimekko’s unofficial logo” (Marimekko: In). Besides that, interestingly, Ratia was also the other person behind the creation of “Unikko”. The pattern was made because Maija Isola “in protest against Armi Ratia, who had forbid the design of floral patterns”. Maija “went on to design Unikko and an entire series of different floral parrerns”

(Marimekko: In) that “were so distinctive and beautiful that Armi immediately bought eight” (MONDAY’S).

Kristina “has been cataloguing, updating and re-issuing” the work of her mom. Until when Maija’s work was too remarkable to “overshadow” the current designers, Kristina decided to work “two-foldedly”. She used her advantage in archiving to make the materials of good designers in Marimekko accessible and “preserved and updated” Maija’s work (Profile). In the 1980s, when the death of Armi Ratia, the founder of Marimekko, “led to ten years of tumult and uncertainty”. It was Kristina Isola and Fujiwo Ishimoto who “guaranteed the continuity of Marimekko’s signature style” when “the heirs of Armi Ratia’s estate sold Marimekko to the Amer consortium at the beginning of 1985” and led to “a change” in “Marimekko’s image” that Marimekko became “a company undistinguishable from the rest” (Marimekko: In). When Kristina was asked if Marimekko is a “female company”, she said yes, “Marimekko’s success has much to do with the fact it is a woman’s company: we’re practical, we don’t waste, we can do many things at the same time, we’re less nervous about our positions, we express our feelings better” (Booth).

7. Kristina Isola with Maija Isola

Similarly, designer Kristina Isola, the daughter of Maija Isola, also “following in the footsteps of her mother” and “together with her daughter Emma Isola”, worked for Marimekko to continue the work of Maija (Marimekko: In). Interestingly, at the very beginning, Kristina was threatened by Maija to work, “Then one day, she returned from a trip to the US and said she’d stop working for Marimekko completely unless I started working with her full time” (Profile). Kristina accepted because she said that “I idolized her as a child; she was so beautiful, so nice to me” (Profile). Not just Maija herself, three generations of Isola also participated in the work of Marimekko. From 1940s onwards,

Therefore, the success of Marimekko fully justifies the value of Armi Ratia, Maija Isola, Kirsti Paakkanen, Kristina Isola and more women work for and believe in Marimekko. Their irreplaceable value to Marimekko and even the fabric design industry has been seen and acknowledged by the public. And their cases are the

best evidence of the importance or capability of female in the industry.

8 http://ep.yimg.com/ay/finnstyle/maija-kristina-isola-13.jpg Work Cited

Image List 1 https://www.marimekko.com/media/wysiwyg/BRAND/DESIGN_STORY/Sk_rmklipp_2015-09-17_02.39.08.png 2 https://www.finnishdesignshop.com/media/447Marimekko14_iso-350.jpg 3 http://static-sls.smf.aws.sanomacloud.net/menaiset.fi/s3fs-public/styles/large_main_image/ public/main_media/1432827764_original_ b88120162z.1_20150528184242_000g83b7dqa.10. iptcstrip.jpg?itok=3UApWHUS 4 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/ a0/Maija_Isola_at_work.jpg/250px-Maija_Isola_at_ work.jpg 5 http://img.yle.fi/uutiset/kotimaa/article6663355.ece/ ALTERNATES/ w960/Kristiina%20Isola.jpg 6 http://68.media.tumblr.com/72b657e9a4a42fe0cbf82885b346c510/ tumblr_n5hkbe3jGB1qak3gxo3_1280.jpg

Allin, Julie. “Marvelous Marimekko: The Revolutionary Finnish Fashion Icon is Enjoying a Revival Marimekko: Fabrics, Fashion, Architecture. Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture.

New York City].” Canadian Interiors, vol. 41, no. 1, 2004., pp. 72 Art, Design & Architecture Collection; Canadian Business & Current Affairs Database, http:// ocadu.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.proquest. com/docview/210833147?accountid=12991.

Azzarito, Amy. “Style Icon: Maija Isola”. Design Sponge. Retrieved 27/11/2015 http://www.designsponge.com/2013/11/style-icon-maija-isola.html Blanchard, Tamsin. “Interiors: Marimekko: The Finnish Line”, The Guardian. Retrieved 18 October 2011.

Booth, Hannah. “Flower power”. The Guardian. Retrieved 18 October 2011.

Collins, Meaghan. Marimekko: With Love. 2013. Print Ekman, Ivar. “Nostalgia for a modern Finnish designer”. New York Times. Retrieved 18/10/2011.

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“MONDAY’S MUSE: MAIJA ISOLA” anyonegirl, web. http://www.anyonegirl.com/mondays-muse-maija-isola/ “Profile: Kristina Isola.” Design Week, vol. 20, no. 36, 2005., pp. 13 Art, Design & Architecture Collection, http://ocadu.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/215608553?accountid=12991.

Riddle, Mason. “Marimekko’s trajectory of pattern and color” Surface Design Journal, Vol 39, 09/01/2014 Urquhart, Kristina. “The Whimsical World of Marimekko”, Applied Arts magazine, Vol29, 09/01/2014 Whitlock, Nathan. “Poppy Love” vol. 47, Toronto Life Publishing Company, Toronto, 2013.

“Fabric & Wall Covering.” Interior Design, vol. 80, no.

6, 2009., pp. 39 Art, Design & Architecture Collection, http://ocadu.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/234955707?accountid=12991.

History of Print & Printmaking

Relief and Intaglio Transmitted Pictorial Information in The Age of Dark In the first chapter of Prints and Visual Communication, Ivins argues that Dark Age was rather a time of exploring that was full of sight of human intelligence than was as ignorant and violent as its name implies and as believed in the general perspective, because of the fact that most of the valuable information about what we know as the Classical Age from Greek and Roman had passed down through proliferated intellectual activities of the Dark Age, of which is to find the mechanical solution to transmit pictorial information.

There were two influential printing methods that raised from the Dark Age: relief and intaglio, represented by woodcut and engraving. They are the technique of transferring image from a carved surface onto printing materials such as paper. What makes them different is the way the surface is carved. For relief, the non-printed area is carved out, while the printed lines are to be carved out for intaglio. Also, the surface for intaglio was more expensive to make and to use than for relief and the process to print is also more time consuming, but

illustrations “harmonize” with the printed text pages and if they attract attention to themselves or interfere with the balance of the blocks of type. (30) Until 1472, Valturius’s Art of War, an illustrated book with “many woodcuts specifically representing machinery and its uses” (31) appeared to justify the value of illustration.

And later in 1475, the first illustrated printed encyclopaedia, Konrad von Megenburg’s Book of Nature was published, which not only created repeatable pictorial statement that can be revisited, but provided a functional way to store information that is practical.

When Pseudo-Apuleius, “the first printed reproduction of both the text and the illustrations”, a botanical manuscript published, of which woodcuts were “careless” copies of the illustrations that was seemed as “closer to their originals” (33). To the extent of this, woodcut illustration had become less decorative and were treated less carefully, but, as a result, it became more informative, which indicates an equal focus on the printing of illustrations and texts. Moreover, the idea of books had change from pure collectable objects to medium of information. Prints continued expanding its capability on the books Latin Herbarius published in 1484 and Gart der Gesundheit published in the next year. They show the ability of print in “the conveyance of information in invariant form” (36), which, in other word, localizes the content for the sake of correctness, proving the potential in modification of content. Again, Sacrobos-

intaglio can provide “more detail without getting so fine in texture” (49). In this case, they shared comparable values in the sense of cost, time and presented quality, so they were able to coexist at the time by serving for different purposes.

Historically, woodcut, as relief, was the first to be used for book printing on the book called Edelstein of Ulrich Boner, which was the earliest book printed from type to contain woodcuts, by Ulrich Pfister who was a church dignitary and amateur printer (27). As Ivins states that “the subject matter of a print…has always had a great deal to do with how it is made” (28), the earliest printed books served only for religious purpose because they contained pictures of dominantly representation of saints who were believed to protect people from “particular dangers and sicknesses” (28). Thus, earliest printed books were only saw as portable objects that carries and represents saints for people to pray, as is written “their buyers were concerned prints were just pictures and not a special kind of a pictorial statement that could be exactly repeated” (29), but it also shows that the ability to reproduce image/information on relief printing had been accepted and acknowledged.

Before the first book communicates information and ideas appeared at Verona, illustrations were only see as decorations. At that time, it was widely acceptable that whether the illustration was “good” depended on if the

co’s Sphaera Mund, the first book with “wholly printed picture or diagram” in “three colors” was published in 1485 (36), opened up the possibility of multiple color printing. From Breydenbach’s Travels published in 1486 to the Nuremberg Chronicle, woodcut prints expanded its scale for presentation and increased its efficiency and at the same time lowered the cost. (36) When woodcut became more refined, its limit started showing. Intaglio was involved when the demand of “accuracy of representation” for illustration steadily increased. (40) As was mentioned, intaglio was immediately adopted for books that needed good quality illustrations, such as, Holbein’s Dance of Death. (46) And relief was favored by prints that needed to be printed efficiently and cheaply, for example, The Florentine presses, which “not only were the first political tracts addressed to a popular audience, but their charming woodcuts are the first body of printed political cartoons.” (39) Therefore, two of many mechanical solutions that were introduced to human in the Dark Age: relief and intaglio, are two great technologies that enabled the transmission of pictorial information that pushed the human moving toward a brighter future.

The Inseparable “Religions” of Japanese Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto to the Japanese State Politics

By looking at the court or religious print in Japan, a visible linkage between the state politics and the so-called religions can be seen, especially of Shinto, a religion that originated in Japan. As print always reflects on reality historically, such a linkage is also visible in the history of Japan, as an underlying force that has been having great impact on the ongoing history of the island, in which no only Shinto, but also Japanese Buddhism and Confucianism, each represented a different discourse and together created a “unitary reality” (Josephson, 592) in the state politics and social life of the Japanese populace. In this essay, such a printing matter embedded in / reflecting to the historical context between Japanese religion and state politics will be examined separately into three sects of discourse in the context of Japanese politics.

The prosperity of ukiyo-e in Edo and then Meiji period,

and “religion” in western spectrum (Godart, 71).

The discourses of these “Three teachings” stand for a broader framework than the western term “religion” as “It seemed that ‘religion’ could be a type of education, something fundamentally un-teachable, a set of practices, a description of foreign customs, a subtype of Shinto, a near synonym for Christianity, a basic human ethical impulse, or a form of politics (among other possibilities).” (Josephson, 593) Similar situation of a “unitary reality” in Japan among Japanese Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto can be understood by borrowing the concept of “Three teachings” from China since this divisive cultural landscape was originated from the Tang Dynasty in China among Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism that later exported to Japan and transformed into these three Japanese religions. (Josephson, 589, 590) However, this “unitary reality” among three discourses were not proportionately influential throughout the history and they were also treated differently as that they each took dominate position in different periods of Japan in response to the state (Starrs, 753), as Josephson put briefly, “Confucianism was not recognized as a religion, but was instead treated as a scholastic subject. Shinto was bifurcated into a national form of Shinto, which was not defined as religion, and various individual Shinto sects, which were. In the end, only Buddhism

for example, had great amount of printing matters that involved both religious and state elements, from which there were two astonishingly complex and detailed three panels works of engraving by Toyohara Chikanobu in 1878 and “Japanese Sun goddess Amaterasu emerging from a cave” by Utagawa Kunisada in 1856 that integrated religious element like kami into emperor family and depicted the presence of royal family in religious moment like the born of god. Although the topics/emphasis were different, the implication of the “linkage” was obvious.

One thing worth mention is that “no such entity as ‘Buddhism’ as a separate, autonomous ‘religion’ in the modern sense ever existed in ancient Japan” (Starrs, 758), in order words, it is doubtful whether religion and state were seen totally separable, which can be seen in the two prints above, since as Starrs put it, “From the very beginning, Buddhism offered itself, and was adopted, as an arm of the state, and operated as an essential part of the governing apparatus. In other words, there was no Buddhism other than ‘state Buddhism’ in ancient Japan…” (Starrs, 758). In Godart’s essay, he also notes that there was no “Japanese equivalents” to the words ‘science’ ‘religion’ and ‘philosophy’ during the Meiji period when “Western thought was imported into Japan on a large scale” and that “Buddhism or Confucianism” were existed as both “philosophy”

was legally described as a religion, but in order to be protected as such it had to be radically reconfigured.”

(Josephson, 594) The linkage between so-called religion and state politics can be traced back to the Asuka period when “Prince Shotoku wrote his ‘Seventeen-Article Constitution’ and adopted both Shinto and Buddhism as ‘nation-protecting religions’”. (Starrs, 753) Prince Shotoku, “the imperial prince regarded as the ‘father’ of Japanese Buddhism”, called for “the official patronage of both Buddhism and Shinto as ‘nation-protecting religions’” in his “Seventeen-Article Constitution” which is a founding document of the Japanese imperial state.

As one of the “Three teachings” the establishment of Japanese Buddhism, “has allied itself closely with political power and has loyally served the interests of conservative and nationalist social forces”. (Starrs, 757) Since then, Buddhism became the “religion of the throne and the empire” and thus “the state functioned not as a patron but as the religious police of Buddhism” (Starrs, 758). During the period of Ashikaga shogunate, Edo bakufu created “a powerful nationwide system of government-sponsored Zen monasteries” to maintain its political influence on the state and thus, in turn, “these monasteries flourished to such an extent that they ‘played a major role in the political and economic as well as in the religious and cultural life of medieval

Japan.’” (Starrs, 759) Even until neo-Confucianism was adopted as the official state ideology during the last of the shogunal dynasties, Buddhism still remained its official status through the control of population by a ‘registry system’, through which “every family was compelled to register with their local Buddhist temple.

Anyone who could not provide an identity paper that showed their temple affiliation was treated as a ‘secret’ Christian (which was illegal) or as a ‘non-person’ (hinin) and subjected to discrimination, and sometimes even arrest and execution” (Starrs, 759, 760) Moreover, not simply performed as a “religion”, buddhist theories were adopted as official state ideology working as “philosophy”, for example, during the Nara and Heian periods, respectively, “The chingo-kokka (‘protection of the state’) and obo-buppo (‘mutual support between the state and Buddhism’) theories”, in which “the obo-buppo ideology, explicitly uniting the interests of church and state, continued to play a supporting role in what the leading medieval historian Kuroda Toshio called the kenmitsu (exoteric-esoteric) system of rule” (Starrs, 758, 759).

On the other hand, Shinto as a “nationalist religion” has always been tightly linked to nationalism, as Starrs noted, “For them [nationalist] the emperor rather than the people or the land itself is the sine qua non of the Japanese nation; without the emperor the nation

without” was needed in order to “transform them into subject-citizens”. “Because of the lack of a foundation for Confucianism in Japan”, he combined “confucian morality” and “national classics” to propose “the Unity of Ritual and Rule and Doctrine (saiseikyō itchi)”, through which Shinto priests became “both state ritual performers and official doctrinal instructors”. (Zhong, 58, 59) In this case, on the one hand, it processed “freedom of religious belief as a symbol of the civilisation and progress” and on the other hand, “as a means of political control in creating the legal framework for the nation-state”. (Zhong, 64, 65) Such an attempt is summarized and commented by Zhong and Josephson respectively as that “Essentially the Meiji government transformed Shinto from an intellectual discourse to a category of political praxis by crafting a discursive distinction that worked to shield the imperial authority from the vexing “religious” doctrinal competition” (Zhong, 58) and that “Japanese officials translated pressure from Western Christians into a concept of religion that carved out a private space for belief in Christianity and certain forms of Buddhism, but also embedded Shinto in the very structure of the state and exiled various ‘superstitions’ beyond the sphere of tolerance.” (Josephson, 594) This “conflation of state and religion” named by Walter Skya, however, was concernable in Japanese prewar

would lose its unique divine status, the very basis of their national pride.” In the case of prewar nationalists, “national-Shinto faith were referred to as the kokutai (national essence)”, which “used imperial mythology to legitimize a modern imperial system and to establish the Japanese people as a distinct race.” (Starrs, 753) Shinto becoming the dominated state-religion since Meiji period as a solution to counter the “freedom of belief ” appeared on a treaty demanded by the US that aimed to pave the way of importing Christianity into Japan. Specifically, as Zhang noted, “After political power was returned to the emperor in the Meiji Restoration of 1868,...the Sun Goddess...came to be enshrined at the top of the newly constituted imperial pantheon, a status confirmed through the Meiji government’s nationalisation of Shinto shrines… The goal of the government was to create a ritual-indoctrination system for preaching Shinto to the populace both to prevent the spread of Christianity, now legalised under the pressure of Western governments, and to create a nation that was unified under the Shinto gods.” In this case, because Inoue Kowashi, who “has been reputed as the architect of the Meiji Constitution”, refused to see the same “church-state relation in Western history” in Japan, a method that “enabled ideological training to penetrate the interior of the individual and transform them from within rather than forcing change from

State Shinto nationalist ideology. As Starrs concluded “the conflation of state and religion” could be “dangerous” because during wartime “State Shinto ideology had become ultranationalist and totalitarian” – “... the emperor (meaning, of course, the state) was owed absolute loyalty and obedience as well as religious veneration” so under such a conflation “‘mass man’ with total devotion to the emperor” was created. (Starrs, 755, 756) Zhong explains this possibility through the understanding of the system that “...it advocated loyalty not to local deities or the emperor but to God.” (Zhong, 61) and in this case, therefore, the bundling state and religion can result in the loyalty toward the God turning toward the emperor at the same time.

Such an imperialism continued and presented with Shinto in contemporary Japan in Yasukuni, a famous Shinto shrine and national war memorial, where the enthronement ceremony of the new emperor, Akihito, took place in 1990. Such a state-religion relationship was found controversial or even problematic because “‘A-class’ war criminals” are enshrined in Yasukuni, “presenting the Japanese Imperial Army as the glorious liberator of Asia from Western imperialism“, which “proudly and defiantly justifies the wartime actions of Imperial Japan in Asia…” (Starrs, 754) However, Paramore argues that Shinto was “only one of ‘pularligh’ of religious pillars that came to support

nativism, ultra-nationalism, the autocratic emperor system, and ultimately fascism in Japan” because Buddhism, new religions, Catholicism and Confucianism “were all in on the ultra-nationalist project in mid-twentieth-century japan.” (Paramore, 273, 274) In this case, “Confucianism is widely recognized as having provided the primary basis for the curriculum of national morality, and Confucianism came to play an even greater role in Japanese imperial ideology through the 1930s as expansionist aggression increased and the country drifted towards fascism.” (Paramore, 275) “In ‘Retaining Confucianism’ (Jukyō wo sonsu), composed between 1881 and 1882, Inoue developed his approach to formulating non-religious teachings for national education. He believed that teachings such as Confucianism, which did not rely on the gods to authorise morality, were similar to philosophy in the West and would eventually replace those teachings dependent upon divinity.” In order words, “Inoue wanted the civil religion, which they called national morality, to be based in...a ‘religious collective conscience without association with a [single] specific religion, and civil religion as the political conscience’”. (Paramore, 275) As is observed by Nosco, “the basic Confucian concern with achieving one’s proper place within society and the contribution made to the harmonious operation of the cosmos by the correct situating of oneself again reflect

lems to shift the history of Japan and thus the printing matters that are closely related to the history in terms of content.

Work Cited Godart, Gerard C. “Philosophy” Or “Religion”? the Confrontation with Foreign Categories in Late Nineteenth-Century Japan.” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 69, no. 1, 2008, pp. 71-91.

Josephson, Jason Ā. “The Invention of Japanese Religions.” Religion Compass, vol. 5, no. 10, 2011, pp.

589-597.

Nosco, Peter. “The Religious Dimension of Confucianism in Japan: Introduction.” Philosophy East and West, vol. 48, no. 1, 1998, pp. 1-4.

Paramore, Kiri. “’Civil Religion’ and Confucianism: Japan’s Past, China’s Present, and the Current Boom in Scholarship on Confucianism.” Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 74, no. 2, 2015, pp. 269-282.

Starrs, Roy. “Politics and Religion in Japan.” Religion Compass, vol. 3, no. 4, 2009, pp. 752-769.

Zhong, Yijiang. “Freedom, Religion and the Making of the Modern State in Japan, 1868–89.”Asian Studies

the ever-present cosmological dimension of Confucian social and ethical discourse” (Nosco, 2), as a result, Confucianism was adopted as a civil religion.

As Paramore argued, “It was certainly the individual-centred nature of a religion that defined its modern nature…” (Paramore, 272) Moreover, “New religions” emerged in the postwar era as public religions protected by the “freedom of religious belief ” and thus falling into the category of “religion”. However, they nonetheless have or attempt to participate in political activities. “Among these the most politically active and successful by far over the past few decades has been the Soka Gakkai (Value-Creation Society), which began as an independent lay organization of the Buddhist Nichiren sect. In 1964, the Soka Gakkai actually founded its own political party, the Komeito (Clean Government Party), which was disbanded in 1994 but then resurrected in 1998 as the ‘New Komeito’ and remains a major player in Japanese politics – it is the third largest party and its support has recently kept the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in power.” (Starrs, 766) By broadly understanding the role Japanese Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto each played in the history of Japan, one can realize how religious concerns can juxtapose and interweave with social and political prob-

Review, vol. 38, no. 1, 2014, pp. 53-70.

Toyohara Chikanobu, unknown, engraved, 1878 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Shinto#/media/ File:Meiji-tenno_among_kami_and_emperors.JPG Utagawa Kunisada, “Japanese Sun goddess Amaterasu emerging from a cave”, 1856 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings#/ media/File:Amaterasu_cave_-_large_-_1856.jpeg

VISD-2004-001:

History & Evolution Typography

Analysis of the Social and Political Impact on the Diverse Appearance of Modern Chinese in Mainland China and Taiwan

Written Chinese in the past century changed radically to the extent that it no longer has consistent appearance in regions that use traditional written Chinese, such as Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.

This essay is going examine several practices related to language reform and the dramatic social and political changes in Mainland China and Taiwan during the twentieth century in order to identify the cause behind the diverse appearance of modern Chinese characters in these regions.

One of the noticeable reasons was the language reform movements took place in China. Academically, these language reforms were language planning activities (LP) and “modern China’s LP activities, related to script reform, can be grouped into three historical periods: (1) the earliest attempts and the 1935 reform; (2) reforms between 1956 and 1978; and (3) after the 1986

National Language Conference including the latest developments” (Zhao). As Zhao summarized, modern Chinese reforms can be analyzed through two stages: “before 1949” when “schemes of alphabetisation” was focused and “after 1949” when “the priority switched to character simplification” after the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established.

Every change in society is difficult and such a cultural, social and even political change no doubt was revolutionary and thus met a lot of obstacles in order to carry it through successfully, but the reform was not only considered necessary but also urgent.

One reason being that, for the sake of the Chinese nation and the country, under the great influence and “encroach” of the “Western powers” (Taso), a “unified national language and mass literacy” was needed “for China to become a strong country” and the current language system (Tsao), traditional Chinese characters, could not meet the need, because on one hand, traditional characters are “too complex to be learned by a great number of people within a short time…”

(Tsao) and on the other hand, due to the difficult nature of the mastering of traditional writing system, it had been criticized as “a tool of privilege for the minority of wealthy elites to rule over the illiterate and poor majority” (Zhao) and thus, politically, “must be replaced by a new form used by the masses – the new

masters in a socialist country” (Zhao).

Surprisingly and not surprisingly, such a huge reform was carried out quite naturally. “Before 1949”, in 1916, “the transcribing alphabets were authorized by the Ministry of Education (MOE)... Immediately after the Committee for the Preparation of a Unified National Language (CPUNL) was founded, …its members set to work to improve the transcribing alphabets… In 1928, the MOE on the recommendation of the CPUNL authorized a romanization system for transcription…”

(Tsao), which is what is called Pinyin today.

“After 1949”, as Zhao put it, “The communists saw eradicating feudal roots as their main mission...it is not surprising that some of the Communist Party leaders themselves were in the forefront of the script reform movement in the 1930s and 1940s... before the establishment of the PRC of China in 1949”. Not only because government was the biggest push hand at the back but the activists were also widely supported by “eminent individuals and non-governmental organizations” (Zhao). Therefore, the First Simplification Scheme, which contained the first list of 324 Simplified Characters, was officially approved by the Ministry of Education in 1935 (Zhao).

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) saw the language reform as an opportunity to “engage with the vast

illiterate working population” (Zhao) and as a powerful political tool, as Zhao states “From 1937 to 1945, during the eight-year war with Japan, the CCP started to use Simplified Characters in materials printed in the regions and base areas under its control to gain the wartime support of the people for its politics”.

Therefore, the CCP took over the job of language reform from the Nationalist government after the PRC was established in 1949, placing “to eliminate illiteracy” as priority “to building a new country” (Zhao). In this case, the second reform took place in 1954 under the commission of the Government, in which the Table of Simplified Characters (TSC) was set up and for which a nationwide survey was done “among the minorities in more than 1500 survey sites” “to devise writing systems for 16 previously unwritten languages” during the 1950s and 1960s (Zhao). Moreover, the reform was also embraced by the public during the time “when Chinese people celebrated the birth of a new country”, as Zhao put it, “their enthusiasm for national construction was at a high. Social reforms were not only considered necessary but even unavoidable, overwhelming strong historical trends at a time when change became the norm.” The Government looked high on to the reform to the extent that “preparations” were done before the official introduction of the TSC as official standard in 1956, one that has been using and

characters overly simply and thus ambiguous resulting slower reading speed when readers need to guess the meanings (Zhao).

The pace of language reform in Mainland China is never stop and since 1980 reform is continued to meet the requirement generated by the developments in the IT industry (Zhao).

Taiwan shared similar complexation in the dialectical environment as Mainland China before its occupation

by Japan. As Tsao notes, the population of Chinese dialect speakers in Taiwan took up 98% in 1895, a year after the Japanese occupation. In order to interstate Taiwan into Japanese Empire, three stages of educational planning had been proposed: “During the first stage (1895-1919), which is generally referred to as the stage of pacification, ...Japanese government urged people in Taiwan to send their children to the public elementary school, where Chinese was taught as a required subject. During the second stage - the stage of assimilation (1919-1937) - all private Chinese schools were banned and Chinese as subject was made elective. During the final stage - the stage of complete Japanisation (1937-1945) - not only was Chinese banned in all public domains… and all other publications in Chinese were banned.” (Tsao) Japanese government launched “a fierce ‘only-Japanese-speakingfamilies’ campaign” in Taiwan to “drive the indigenous

refining in today’s China, in which the “preparation included three key elements: (1) involvement of a wide spectrum of people, (2) support from the top and (3) propaganda.” In this case, propaganda was considered the most “well-defined” and “effective” because it “helped to ensure that the Scheme very quickly penetrated deep into public life”. In this sense, Zhao argues that “Language problems in China, like art and literature, are components of the superstructure, hence they are generally viewed as political vehicles.”

However, in fact, the pace of language reform in China stopped due to the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, because people with critical skills were considered the greatest threat to the power of political opportunists. It was until 1977 the language reform recovered from the disasters of Cultural Revolution when “the Committee on Language Reform (CLR) and the National Bureau of Standards jointly issued a circular as a prelude to the formal declaration” and “Half a year after the appearance of the circular… the committee published the major work of character simplification of the SSSC [Second Scheme of Simplified Characters].” However, the SSSC was abandoned because “just as the Great Leap Forward happened on the economic scene in 1958, the immature SSSC was issued under a similar leftist atmosphere of utopian idealism, hoping for a quick result through a mass campaign”, which made the

language out of the family domain”, because they were “believed to be the best the best stronghold for language maintenance”. (Tsao) However, “partly due to the administration’s unwillingness to fund a full-fledged public education system, the school curriculum in fact amounted to little more than ‘elite education’ paid for by the local community, with a preference for wealthy Taiwanese” (Dupré) Similar to traditional Chinese character situated in society before Qing dynasty, Japanese in Taiwan was seen as a “high” language used

by Japanese and the elites (Tsao), which also indicates a shallow influences of the Japanese language to the original language environment in Taiwan.

Therefore, language reform resumed in 1946 quickly one year after the return of Taiwan due to Japanese government’s surrendered in World War II, mark by the establishment of The Taiwan Provincial CPPNL. Although that the Committee promoted national language in Taiwan through educational change failed because of a lack of qualified teachers and learning materials, the outline for NLM in Taiwan designated and the Dictionary of the Standard Pronunciation of the national language compiled by them played an important role in the standardization of the national language in Taiwan. Learned from the failure, three tasks were held up as exemplars by scholars: first: (1) training of Mandarin (simplified Chinese) promotion

personnel, (2) training of primary and secondary school teachers, and (3) training of students still in school as well as those already working in society. But in the 1960s and 1970s, with the disbanding of the Taiwan Provincial CPPNL, large-scale, organized efforts to promote Mandarin were largely stopped so LP activities in this period turned their focus to areas that had been neglected such as the teaching of reading and composition at the elementary school level, which was reflected in curriculum of Chinese in Taiwan that the courses became “towards Classical Chinese literature and against the modern language and the vernacular literature” (Tsao).

Such a switch of focus was resulted from political change in Taiwan. In the early years of Republic of China (ROC), school language in elementary school was changed from traditional Chinese to Baihua Wen, modern Chinese. But this “distinction was preserved” by the Nationalist government when they came to rule Taiwan. To this extent, although during 1930s and 40s, Baihua (vernacular) literature was flourished in Mainland China, because Baihua Wen was considered “tinged with pro-communist ideology”, it was consequently banned in Taiwan (Tsao).

However, in a sense, “Taiwan’s successful propagation of Mandarin Chinese as the national language has been well documented.” As Tsao summarized from

when the first opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party, was founded. And in 1993, multiparty democracy started to happen in Taiwan when the second opposition party, the New Party, was found.

At the time, political resources distributed among the ethnic groups were increasingly proportionally, “giving the new supra-ethnic group identity a change to emerge”. The emerge began when Taiwan experienced setbacks of the great reduction of its international diplomatic space, which were that Taiwan left the United Nations resulted from the admitting of PPC in the UN and Taiwan being expelled from the world organization. In this case, “people in Taiwan came to identify with the island instead of Mainland China”. The changes were “accelerated” in 1996 when “Mainland Chinese conducted a series of military exercises and missile tests” during the presidential election in Taiwan, which was shown in survey that in 1992, 26.9% of the respondents identified themselves as Taiwanese while in 1996, the percentage increased to 46%. Government also participated in the process by promoting the use aboriginal language when the languages such as Southern Min “are spoken in public by many government officials” and by “blur[ring] the line between ethnic groups” when they removed the box indicated each cardholder’s “native place” on their identification cards. “Such a change signalled. Deemphasis on one’s connection with Mainland China

other’s researches, “the percentage of people who had only elementary education or who were at that time enrolled in an elementary school, then the total comes up to 89.97, roughly 90% of the population aged 7 or above”, even though “after fifty years of strenuous propagation, a number of discrepancies in all aspects of the grammar, but especially noticeable in phonology, have been found”. In other words, the outcome of the Mandarin promotion in Taiwan came out as not simply Mandarin but “Taiwan Mandarin”. The reason was clear, as Tsao argues: “Like many other language planning programmes, evaluation, no doubt, is the weakest aspect of language planning endeavours in Taiwan. In fact, little is known about whether there has been any provision made for continuing evaluation of the NLM [National Language Movement] at the national or local level.”

The “emergence of a new identity” in Taiwan also played a huge role in the tendency of abandoning the use of Baihua, product of language reform in Mainland China, and turning to “Taiwan Mandarin”, or potentially Taiwanese, product of local language reform, in the case of social-politics. “The first sign of ethnic reconciliation appeared when indigenisation of the island’s politicians occurred in 1972, ...Chiang Chingkuo…, proclaimed, ‘I’m a Taiwanese, too’” In 1986, the political environment began to be democratized

and an emphasis on personal identity with Taiwan.”

(Tsao) Therefore, it can be realized that there were three factors played decisive roles in the diverse appearance of modern writing Chinese in Mainland China and Taiwan. Firstly, in terms of language reform, it was the lack of consideration of educational resource in Taiwan and the weak evaluation on language planning that led to the formation of “Taiwan Mandarin” (Tsao); secondly, in terms of politics, the opposed governments in Mainland China and Taiwan led to opposed language policies and consequently opposed public attitude; thirdly, in terms of social-politics, “the emergence of a new identity” in Taiwan led to public’s disinterest in following language policies in Mainland China. In fact, improvements on all three of these factors is visible in the continuous language reform and relationship between Mainland China and Taiwan, which hopefully can be the sign of a tighter communication between these two regions.

Work Cited Zhao, Shouhui. “Chinese Character Modernisation in the Digital Era: A Historical Perspective.” Current Issues in Language Planning, vol. 6, no. 3-4, 2005

Tsao, Feng-Fu. “The Language Planning Situation in Taiwan.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, vol. 20, no. 4-5, 1999

VISD-3012-001:

Radical Graphics & Culture

Dupre, Jean-Francois. “Japanese Models, Chinese Culture and the Dilemma of Taiwanese Language Reform.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, vol. 34, no. 5, 2013

Reading Response #1

In the article “Godless at the Workbench”, although Gerin provides sufficient evidences of “Godlessness” in the State of Soviet, it seems to me that the author does not agree with the eliminating action to religion. First, the author implicates such a “godless” action – the eradication of religion belief on the State the Soviet government took was not honest or backtracking by emphasizing the fact that they were going so fiercely on the antireligious road but at the same time stating “protect the freedom of religion” and religion belief as “basic human right”. Moreover, the unpractical and the unrealistic of some practices in the rashness of the revolution were also carefully listed. (Gerin) The article can be divided into two parts: the use of propaganda and antireligious propaganda. Besides Gerin’s disagreement mentioned above on antireligious propaganda, there is only facts throughout. Structurally, antireligious propaganda is discussed specifically and separately from general propaganda of the same Soviet revolution, but the chronological order of the structure makes them juxtapose and echo to each other. (Gerin)

On one hand, propaganda being a power tool that can “transform” general public’s ideology was believed necessary for the Soviet government that embraced the working class oriented structure to make their political revolution possible. And it was also the way to “accelerate” such a process of ideological shifting.

On the other hand, antireligious propaganda was also as necessary because of the confliction of the presence of religion with the revolution itself, when the theoretical foundation – Marxism criticizes religion which “sustain[s] exploitation of the working class” and Lenin also repeated the same idea in 1909. In this case, the process of “acceleration” to close the gap between the society of pre-revolution and of pro-revolution that was result from the rush adaption of a new political theory that is almost polarizing to the previous one took place through propaganda could also through antireligious propaganda. However, Gerin is failed to mention any other attempt they had made at the time, as if implying that propaganda or antireligious propaganda was the best and the only tool and they knew it from the beginning. (Gerin) Besides that, they both adapted forms of tool representatively: art for general propaganda and publications for antireligious propaganda. In terms of art, not only artists were sponsored by the State, but also artists volunteered to participate in the process of transforma-

tion taking it as an “artistic accomplishment”. Similarly, publications were rise to solve the problem of lacking skilled propagandist, for example, there were publications that produced by Beznozhnik that used “scientific” way like essays that seemingly targeted the literate people and there were also direct “clergy eating” by Maria Kostelevskaya that used Tipazh on religion and clerics that targets the illiterate. (Gerin)

way to deliver message, would that be a better choice when publications were used as platforms for the public to participate in the problem solving process?

Q2. Is Yaroslavskii’s persuasively “scientific” approach to anti-religion radical? Can the goal define the method?

Religion was so deeply rooted that during the accelerating process, problems appeared. This is natural, because not just the belief system and what is carried with like calendar and value system of the population were deeply influential, but the “overt” political power of church made the eradication difficult. One major problem focused was the adjustment of calendar around 1918 and 1929. (Gerin)

Text Cited

Gerin, Annie “Godless at the Workbench” in Godless at the Workbench, pp. 17-41. Dunlop Gallery.

Q1. Publications that target literate people were seemed to have their use limited when they were only another

Reading Response #2

In the article “Anarchism: What it Really Stands For”, Goldman argues that anarchism is rather a key to the next human development, than an idea of ignorance generated only violence. That is to say, the idea of freeing human from the system of religion, government and property in order to embrace such a form of society that bases primarily on individual and social instinct provides a new way to the next form of social structure for human – communism, one that is closely associated.

Firstly, two objections are addressed: its practicality and the potential violence and destruction behind the idea.

In terms of practicality, Goldman argues that anarchism seems impractical only because it is special and conflict.

Based on the theory of Oscar Wilde that the scheme of practicality depends on where the idea is applied, anarchism is impractical, because contradictorily anarchism stands for the opposition of our existing conditions where religion, government and the idea of property exist and dominate. In terms of violence and destruction that is concerned, Goldman articulates it with the fact that is listed above that an overthrown of existing dominate social structure and belief will eventually and

unavoidably lead to a revolution and it is also evident historically that revolution through the carrying out of actions.

Also, in the extent of our existing conditions and at the same time what anarchism is blame to or against to, the system of religion and government and the idea of property are discussed. On one hand, the existence of the current condition is made because of the “human nature” that “primitive man” tends to depend on superior power as “it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think”. On the other hand, religion takes over human mind, diminishing the value of man, saying “man is nothing, the powers are everything” to encourage the pursuing of power such as wealth; property dominates human needs, linking power with property, wealth eventually, and turning producer into “a mere particle of a machine”, embracing centralization, denying individual; government control human conduct, imposing “one single mode of life upon all”.

In this case, government is believed as the “king who could do no wrong”, using “natural law” to bring “social harmony”. Goldman disagrees by not only stating it “only to maintain or protect property and monopoly” of “the lazy class”, but also arguing that “natural law” only derives from man “freely and spontaneously” and “social harmony” only “grows naturally out of solidarity of interests”. That is to say, anarchism is a better choice

to create natural law and bring “social harmony” than government can do.

Thus, anarchism believes in “human nature” itself as both “natural law” and “social harmony” what it leads to can be generated internally and naturally without any external force like government and religion.

Q1.

Is Anarchism really practical when it promotes the idea of community based on naturally grouped individuals, which can easily lead to alienation among different communities, especially in worldwide level that is harmful for the circulation of information and knowledge and thus is destructive for human development?

Q2: As Goldman argues, a system is necessary for man and in the case of Anarchism, man will create this system through themselves collectively, internally and naturally, which implies that the generating process is time consuming. If revolution takes place, what can be used as temporary replacements for the system of government and religion?

Reading Response #3

In the article “Photomontage as a Weapon in Class Struggle”, as the title indicated, Kemenyi argues that photomontage is an effective tool for the class struggle.

Although his way of arguing is interesting that he provides both direct evident and counter-evident to justify his points, his argument is lack of specific examples and explanations.

He first starts from the relationship between form and content of photomontage, arguing that such a practice is not artistically but politically beneficial. On one hand, the technique of this practice based on existing work provides a new way to understand “relationships, oppositions, transitions, and intersections of social reality” (81) and thus, in other words, the form itself can already create content. To this extend, this unique feature is valuable that should be seized and so to be utilized as a weapon in class struggle.

On the other hand, the flourish of proletarian-revolutionary photomontage in the Soviet Union and Germany and the failure of formalist photomontage practice, such as some “superficially interesting experiments”

(81), justify the importance of content in photomontage especially political content because photomontage without a theory behind it is “rootless” (81) in a “class society” (81). In other words, without content, the form cannot live long under that condition. As a result, becoming a weapon in class struggle can give photomontage great value.

Kemenyi then introduces John Heartfield’s work as great examples of the use of photomontage in proletarian liberation struggle, paralleling with the class struggle that he deems photomontage deeply connected to, in order to show the potential in this practice. However, he adds some points that I think unnecessary at the end: the badly in need photomonteurs in bookstores and the lack of in depth political contents in photomontage work at the time.

It can be seen from what I have summarized above that this article arranges the argument in a loose frame and he even brings up related but out of topic points in the second part. Again, I have to mention specifically that one of the missing pieces that requires more expansion and explanation is the term “class struggle” that is apparently a concept of the center point of the article, from which two questions evokes – what is class struggle and how is photomontage the weapon in class struggle.

Q1 What is the class struggle? Is it the “economic crisis” (81) itself? Or it is a bigger body that the “economic crisis” is only one of the parts from the body?

Q2 How is photomontage the weapon in class struggle?

Why is uncovering social reality through photomontage revolutionary in the class struggle?

Reading Response #4

In Fanon’s “Concerning Violence”, he argues that “decolonization is always a violent phenomenon”, because he believes in that the act of decolonization is precisely the saying “The last shall be first and the first last.” In other words, decolonization stands for a complete reversal of a colonial social structure, and thus a “complete disorder”. In this case, he furthers the argument the necessarily of violence by illustrating the difficult nature of decolonization from two factors.

First, “decolonization is the meeting of two [oppsoed] forces“. That by analyzing the historical context of colonialism, Fanon points out that the structure of a colonial society is based the violence towards the colonized: exploitation of the native by the settler that turns the colonized into property to the system and the assimilation process, phrased by him “creation of new men”, that brings a new nature into their existence, in order words, erasing their originality.

Also, the reality of a world divided into two compartments and with a frontier that holds the line, which “characterize an organized society” and thus

Q2: Although he envisions the outcome of decolonization being the native as the first and settlers as the [unoppressed] others, there is an implication of switch role in the same colonial structure here, when he writes: “but the possibility of this change is equally experienced in the form of terrifying future in the consciousness of...the colonizers.” Would decolonization actually be part of a vicious loop of intercolonialization in the switch roles between the colonized and the colonizer?

maintaining the colonial social structure. To this extent, he specifies the forms of frontier in current society and juxtaposed them to the same system from the very beginning of colonization: education system, moral structure, the impose of capitalist value, paralleling to barracks and police stations. In order words, the very colonial society they are living in is maintaining their colonized situation that the colonized will never become the colonizer and thus a complete revolution to the social structure becomes necessary.

Finally, he states that to decolonize is not to abolish the frontier but to completely erase the idea of colonizer from the society by positioning the native as the first, the governing race, and the settlers as “the others”, foreigners who do not belong to the land.

Q1: Fanon’s definition of decolonization stands for pure destruction, standing against the idea of capitalism. I deem it impractical because of the fact that it does not consider the other side of destruction, the creation, that as a result, his argument in the final part becomes unrealistic or ideal when there is only a vision but no solution. I wonder if it is possible to not rebuild a capitalist society after decolonization of the old colonial (capitalist) society?

The Creation of “New Human” in Maoist China

In the leadership of the Communist Party, contemporary China had went through dramatic social and political changes, which were generally represented by heavily politically driven collective activities characterized by mass mobilization in the state. Visual imagery in this time could be seen in a consistent style that was used dominantly in propaganda. The subject matters were also consistent with idealized healthy looking figure(s) situated in communities, workplace, and countryside, depicting and visualizing model figures of the society.

From which, the creation of a kind of “new human” can be seen. In this essay, I am going to discuss such a creation of new human in relation to Chen’s concept of “human-machine continuum”, Liu’s “mobilization of emotion” and Mao’s ideology to understand its position in the changes and its origin.

During the Mao’s period, huge amount of propaganda had been designed and published and they nonetheless had similar graphic styles and subject matters corresponded to each movement of the time. The aesthetic was highly unified in a way that composed narratives

by always dominant figure(s) that implied continuous action, appeared with some kind of tools, or holding the Little Red Book and the background associated to the figure(s). “Brave the wind and the waves, everything has remarkable abilities” [Chengfeng polang gelei shentong (乘风破浪 各显神通)], published in 1958 during the Great Leap Forward, for example, depicted a surreal image of a group of people each associating with different kinds of tools representing various professions heading to the same direction above the waves. Each person appeared positively that all of them looked wellfed, strong, healthy, and at the same time hopeful and ambitious when they were carrying, holding, and driving something happily towards the same destination (bright future of socialism). Similar to other propaganda during the Maoist China, individuals in the posters were depicted idealized to fit in the framework of the “new human” not only in their physical states but their mental states. Therefore, the model can be understood in the same way that the creation process was both external and internal. As Chen and Liu argue in their articles respectively, the creation of “new human” externally is the concept of “human-machine continuum” and internally is the idea of “mobilization of emotion”.

However, the process was intertwined and complementary and thus inseparable.

“Human-machine continuum” as Chen named is

ed to his body that it becomes a leg to support him.

In this case, the external process had been highlighted through the combination of human body and physical tools to the extent that tools and human body “were coordinated and welded together” (Chen, 166, 168).

However, the creation of “human-machine” was self-motivated and self-generated, as Chen put it, “... machinelike repetitive activities in themselves were neither condemned nor celebrated; they acquired importance relative to the types of new bodily forms they imagined and created.” (Chen, 155) Chen explains this situation: “The relationship between conquering nature and conjuring into being ‘the people’ as a collective force in this case rested on the welding of bodies to one another to create a collective force of history.” (Chen, 161) In order words, to become a “human-machine” or “new man” was believed to be the way to achieve liberation–the establishment of an utopian society. As I mentioned above, the external and internal process were complementary, the emergence of this belief in the physical creation of “new human” was the result of the “mobilization of emotion” (Liu), the mental creation process.

The “mobilization of emotion”, on the other hand, as Liu argued, was a method used in Maoist China to mobilize social construction, which specifically was represented by “collective storytelling” and enabled “...

concluded in the article as a “physical and discursive hybrid” form that “derived from a combination of recognition of the dehumanization resulting from feudalist labor exploitation and capitalist labor conditions alongside a belief in mass subjectivity and mobilization as practices of liberation”. In order words, it was the politically driven collective activities and the strong “political consciousness” (Liu) of the mass that dehumanized the body to form “human-machine” (Chen). Therefore, such a “human-machine” form was represented by how individuals were engaged in collective activities with a strong “political consciousness” at the time. In reality, on one hand, they raised individuality and personal value beyond themselves to social construction-“the practices of liberation” and, on the other hand, considered themselves as super human whose tool of labor was an extension of their bodies and thus at the same time their bodies were machinery or “steel” that can excess biological limits of human body (Chen, 155).

A good example in the article is a Chinese youth who engaged in land-reclamation efforts continued the work regardless of the weather or his physical exhaustion, which is similar to the picture of Pavel Korchagin depicted in Soviet films popularized in China that he works continuously with his pickax until his physical collapse but the moment of collapse marks a complete formation of human-machine when the pickax is melt-

individuals [to] remove the burden of being individuals by merging into the history of class struggle” (Liu, 332, ). Therefore, It was this internal creation process that generated “political consciousness” (Liu) in the public enabling the generation of “new human” in Maoist China.

Liu analyzes this method closely and divides it into three themes: “victimization”, “redemption”, and “emancipation”, in which “The victimization theme tells a story of political repression and struggle, it starts with a narrative of a China ridden with poverty, violence, and inequality, in which peasants and workers are victims of ‘class exploitation.’ The redemption theme tells a story of individual transformation: how people were poisoned by feudal or bourgeois through and how the party emerged to purify people’s souls by reforming them into ‘socialist new men.’ The emancipation theme tells a story of social and economic transformation. Through changing the relations of production, enormous productivity was liberated, and people were transported to a land of eternal harmony.”

That is to say, as Liu put it, “The three themes of the discourse-victimization, redemption, and transformation-aimed respectively at provoking a specific type of emotion: indignation, guilt, and euphoria. It was these emotions that maintained the temperature of people’s revolutionary consciousness.” Moreover, by using these

form of emotions respectively, each theme also served three different types of political movements respectively at the time: “struggle movements” that aimed to “attack all sorts of ‘class enemies’”, such as “the Cultural Revolution”, “reform movements” that “sought to reform people’s thinking by eliminating ‘bourgeois’ or ‘feudal’ notions”, such as “the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside movement”, and “social transformation movements” that “sought to transform production relations”, including “the Great Leap Forward” (Liu, 333).

Moreover, the exact technique of the method used in propagation has also been analyzed in the context of the social and political movements in Maoist China, namely, “personalization”, “magnification”, and “moralizations”. “Personalization” was the effective “storytelling”, as Liu states: “In Mao’s China, it was the stories told in ‘bitterness-speaking meetings’ by peasants or workers from ‘the old society’ rather than the convoluted jargon from Marxist textbooks that touched people’s hearts and generated their revolutionary ardor.” “Magnification” was a technique of “politicizing all aspects of life”, which “strengthened the revolutionary discourse in that it sustained an extremely high level of political consciousness, generating deep guilt when people deviated from the official line or a great sense of self-righteousness when they toed the line.” And “moralizations”

human”. It can be realized that the creation of “new human” was inevitable considering the basis built in Maoist China.

In this sense, it can be seen that Mao played an important role in the development of this concept of “new human”. Through the analysis of his ideology, one can argue that although Mao’s ideology was based on Marxism, it was actually rooted in Sakata Shochi’s theory that “The accumulation of transformations in quantity results in gradual qualitative change”, which means that “before entering the final qualitative change, the subject must pass through uninterrupted quantitative changes and a good many partial qualitative changes” (Chen, 157).

In Marx’s view, as Bakshi seen, “All societies, including socialist societies, remain in the ‘realm of necessity’, concerned with meeting the material needs of society.” and “The ‘realm of freedom’...begins only when we leave the ‘realm of necessity’”. (Bakshi, 89) Not through industrialization, collective mobilization of human force (labor) was the Chinese practice of “leaving the ‘realm of necessity’” . Because the society where Marx was in and China at the time was fundamentally different, Marx’s idea had to be changed to fit in the context of Chinese society in order to be used and studied. Therefore, although, Marx argues that a personal value can the found through production process, In

provided a “model of socialist humanity” that can scale individual’s level of moral by how “red” one is. Unlike Marxism that social injustice is originated in social institutions, “class enemies” becomes individuals who can physically be judged (Bakshi). As Liu put, “only by presenting the problem of socioeconomic institutions as one of morality and the impersonal as personal could emotions be maximally stirred.” In this case, “infused with moral righteousness, people tended to act more passionately” (Liu, 334, 335).

The successful perpetuation of this manipulation of emotion in the social mobilization was also in fact the success of the formation of “human-machine continuum”. Two important factors guaranteed the application of the “mobilization of emotion”, as Liu argues, were first the “highly coherent and disciplined” CCP under Mao that enabled “mobilization methods could be efficiently passed on in a top-down manner and from one generation of cadres to the next” and the “highly homogeneous” society under Mao where “almost everyone was encapsulated into a structurally similar work unit, school, or production team and exposed to similar information, education, and consumables” (Liu, 336). In order words, the member of the CCP were themselves supporters and activists of “human-machine continuum” and “the mobilization of emotion” and the societal environment allowed only the creation of “new

Maoist China, such a meaning of life was provided by the party rather than each person generated. Besides that, Marx also viewed “private ownership of means of production” (Bakshi, 87) as an obstacle in the pursuit of happiness for workers and the necessity “to organize productive activity rationally” (Bakshi, 92) in order to make” working in factories mentally and physically less exhausting” (Bakshi, 89). These two ideas were taken in the process of the movements. Former became one identity of “class enemies”– wealthy people like landlords who were capable of owning private property and the latter could be seen during the Great Leap Forward.

Whereas, Sakata Shochi’s theory provided a scientific and thus factual foundation for Mao’s own theories on “continuous revolution, ongoing struggle, the mass line, and the continuous remaking of individual minds and bodies as a means for social revolution” (Chen, 157), as Chen put it, “The human-machine continuum in Maoism embodied faith in the malleability of form and a belief in the inseparability of science and ideology, organic and inorganic matter, individual and society.”

(Chen, 161) The popularization of “How The Steel Was Tempered” in Maoist China, for example, was because “quantitative and qualitative change in human body” was represented in the piece through everyday practice that can be learned, mimicked, and analyzed in China, as Chen put, “[it] is not only to think about

how the body uses technology; it is also about how scientific knowledge and materialist dialectics acquired meaning and form in the PRC… In essence, for a mass audience, the translation of the dialectics of nature and theoretical physics promoted understandings of science and technology as potentially liberating; state policies grounded in modernization theory and the desire to conquer nature; and the radical reconceptualization of the relation between human, land, and technology / steel that recognized these interconnections as essential to collective identities.” (Chen, 171) Therefore, a series of political and social movements in Maoist China can be understood as in essence the practice of the creation of “new human” through two intertwined processes of the externally “human-machine continuum”(Chen) and internally “mobilization of emotion” (Liu) based on Mao’s interpretation of Marxism in the context of Chinese reality and Sakata Shochi’s theory. That is to say, the creation of “new human” was a result of Mao’s attempt to apply Sakata Shochi’s theory about quantitative and qualitative to the construction of a “realm of freedom” (Bakshi) in China.

PRNT-3006-001:

Pressing Issues

Work Cited Bakshi, Om. “Marx’s Concept of Man: Alienation, Exploitation and Socialism.” International Studies, vol.

48, no. 2, 2011, pp. 85-111.

Chen, Tina M. “the human—machine Continuum in Maoism: The Intersection of Soviet Socialist Realism, Japanese Theoretical Physics, and Chinese Revolutionary Theory.”Cultural Critique, vol. 80, no. 80, 2012, pp. 151-182.

Liu, Yu. “Maoist Discourse and the Mobilization of Emotions in Revolutionary China.”Modern China, vol.

36, no. 3, 2010, pp. 329-362.

Break the Cage of Traditional Education Model for the Study of Practical Knowledge

There seem to be a necessity to tear down the walls caging students/artists in school for the study of practical knowledge by the traditional “classroom” education model.

This is the model that places students/artists in space to be assigned tasks that intends to reflect professional workflow/working environment by instructors. Such an environment is believed to be beneficial due to the fact that students/artists are exposed to some degrees of real problems and struggles that will eventually become experience prepared for their future career under the guiding of professional instructors, which is seemingly collective, constructed and thus systematic, in which the problems and struggles are designed to fit in the pace of the course and usually the level of difficulties increase along gradually.

In this case, it is also obvious that the systematicity of the education model has its own shortages in practical content. First, it unavoidably makes the designed tasks

predictable, which contradicts to the way problems and struggles arise during work in real life, largely lowering the level of difficulty of the tasks resulting in a great miss of an important experience. On the other hand, the ability to predict the problems and struggles during the course does not help to solidify the settlement of the experience in the students/artists’ minds, devaluing the actual result getting from the course. Moreover, such a collective lecturing and studioing is restricted to only reflect general problems and struggles in order to cover the need of as many varieties of students/artists as possible. To this extend, the number of reflected situations becomes limited, there is a less chance of getting into specific case study/reflection that might be useful, and the tasks might not reflect the most contemporary problems and struggles in workplace. As a result, what people get from the course will likely be shallow.

get the answer or let them be examined. Therefore, such a model of education is not so suitable for the study of practical content when learning takes place in a vacuum that fails to make the unreal real.

Therefore, in order to fulfill the need to gain experience from the confronting of real situation, the alternative is to study outside the classroom, exposing students/artists to the real world, which literally is to position the class, the lecturing and studioing, to outside the school where they can collectively participate in projects. Students/ artists will be benefit from their full exposure to the real world where problems and struggles are unpredictable and legitimate and thus the approach they take can be examined and they will learn from it whether the outcome is satisfied.

Also, under the traditional education system, a designed task is likely correspond to an designed answer, which is apparently destructive to the express of creativity and originality for students/artists. Besides that, the approach to solve the tasks would also be singular and subjective, due to fact that instructor has to prepare the answer based on his/her experience or knowledge that might not be totally valid. To this extent, when there is question that is beyond the instructor, students/artists studying in a classroom surrounding by walls will never

VISC-4008-001:

Art and Design Activism

Aesthetic and Spectacle in Activist Art

Visuality and aesthetic is often center in the discussion of activist art because of its ambiguity basic on the idea of spectacle. On the one hand, visuality is questioned whether it should still be considered a characteristic of the form of art as traditionally the relationship between art and people is constructed by spectacle, being seen and to see. As Clair Bishop suggested in her talk “Participation and Spectacle: Where Are We Now?”, the current form of participatory art what is literally activist is facing a lack of spectatorship because all the participants or what was called viewers become artists who actively creates art themselves when the process rather than the result is looking upon. (Bishop, 2) Moreover, as activist art becoming more practical and more political, aesthetic is considered extra and distracted because of its implicated passivisity and decorativeness, as Boris Groys mentioned at the beginning of his “On Art Activism”. (Groys, 1) On the other hand, the involvement of visuality is seen contradictory because spectacle what defines social relation in capitalist society creates the established reality that activism is essentially opposed to, which leads to the idea of anti-aesthetic

in contemporary culture. Therefore, the practicality and effectiveness with the involvement of aesthetic in activist art is questioned.

However, being situated in the general framework of the society of the spectacle, by resisting and/or removing aesthetic, it is not hard to see that activist art in contemporary culture becomes unpopular. In this case, the action is likely weak lacking social influence and unable to destabilize society. Thus, to be more practical and effective, lots of activist art projects are turned to be localized. Therefore, utilizing the spectacle by adapting the consumer culture is not necessarily negative for activist art in terms of practicality and effectiveness.

Artists tend to use aesthetic passively. But one has to realize that to judge and at the same time embrace the system is not paradoxical.

For Groys, aestheticization in art is a tool of devaluing. And thus, anti-aesthetic is a natural result of the combination of art and activism. Because in order to achieve its political goal of anti-capitalism, an already false reality has been aestheticized by art objectively but naturally in a way of anti-aesthetic. In order words, activist art projects stages dysfunctioning hyperrealities of the established reality only because the established reality is a false reality.

In his case, art activism becomes mere a more political

again here by Bishop that she deems art being reformed and reshaped into “new models of social and political organization” (Bishop, 10) problematic because in fact practically social change has to be done in some point through institutions rather than art itself and in terms of effectiveness not only artistic project is fragmented with the new understanding of a more socially engaged form of art practice but also these projects disconnect to the “existing political project” (Bishop, 10) when artists are not “best equipped to undertake” (Bishop, 10) such a role. As she argued, this disconnection happens because of the fact that the notion of art in participatory art projects gives too much freedom to viewers or participants to expand on the project in their own ways by their own understandings so they become too broad and thus not specific enough to be effective. Indeed, as the boundary of the form of art expanded through time, what artists try to do with art can exceed what art is capable of doing.

It seems that when artistic projects aim too high to the extent that they try to take over the position of institution, the notion of art becomes obstacle for these highly political, practical and socially engaged projects to be effective, as more mature organizations, more specific political targets, and more professional participants are needed to establish not just functional but influential agency for effective social change. A seemingly better

form of art that is as highly spectacular and lacking social engagement. Although his definition of art does not seem realistic or current, there are similar activist art that simply stages hyperrealities that the notion of art overweighs the notion of activism making it impractical and ineffective. The notion of activism here is represented by human interaction, about where the practicality will take place and what is that practicality for; and the notion of art is represented by the self-generated, individualized, and unfiltered creativity, the freedom of individual expression, about how the practicality will take place. (Groys) The majority forms of the current activist art projects, however, on the contrary, mutated by the same tendency of anti-aesthetic lead to that the notion of activism overweighs the notion of art. This tendency suggests a continued struggle of finding the true or the right form of contemporary activist art or contemporary art to become useful. Although activism and art should be complementary as activism gives art a function and art provides activism a new approach, because such usefulness is acknowledged to be achieved through the production of social change, artists are not satisfied with being passively producing agency of social change by adapting the traditional spectacular relationship but rather actively becoming the agencies themselves. Practicality and effectiveness is questioned

way to approach this foreseeable problem is to step back and reconsider the balance between the notion of activism and the notion of art in activist art projects. In other words, positioning artistic project as a mean or even a window or platform to produce agency of social change. By looking into what art can bring, one looks into the practicality and effectiveness that the freedom of individual expression can help with the production of the agency of social change, accepting art’s passiveness and then fully utilizing the spectacle.

Blackpaper, a periodical magazine published in Hong Kong since 2010, is a good example of activist art project that fully utilizes the spectacle and has its impact on local society. Since the first issue of Blackpaper, the format of using one piece of paper each issue, having minimal amount of content, and a strong and thematical visual are kept throughout six years until it temporarily stopped publishing after 2016. All the decision makings in terms of its aesthetic clearly adapt the consumer culture: a full page visual that is eye catching on the front with minimum amount of text that can be quickly read and consumed like headlines and advertisements.

And since 2011, visual on the cover even changed from more abstract graphic to highly spectacular and more direct portray of celebrities. The thematical and consistent visual connects all the issues to continues the exposedness of the publication constructing a branding

called Blackpaper rather than simply a series of publications in the locals’ everyday lives.

However, aesthetic is only the entrance to capitalist market and the foundation of spectacle that is required for all the presence to stay in the system, because Blackpaper is not the only commodity competing in the consumer market. Besides the visuality of the magazine, the way in which Blackpaper is disseminated also fully utilizes the spectacle. They are sold in convenient store such as 711 around Hong Kong. Since convenient store is a part of daily life for the majority of the people, by selling and displaying there, Blackpaper occupies every piece of the moments fragmented by the capitalist system. In this case, the passivity of spectacle in art has been largely utilized through exposure in a large degree.

As Guy Debord suggested, society of the spectacle requires people in the system to accept all the given passively since people have been implied that what is presented forward by the society of the spectacle is good, the increasing exposedness of the publications or the imposing idea of the branding encourages spectators (whether they are intentional) in the system to interact with it, which is essentially viewing and purchasing.

(Debord) For Bishop, however, our society far exceeds Guy Debord‘s society of spectacle becoming a society of spectacle but “without spectators” with the excessive

The minimum level of essential information encourages people to consume, absorb, and reflect upon by providing overly simple and thus expandable message to the viewers who by participating in the process of interpreting the message become active participants.

The accessibility of the publication either through convenient stores or online platforms passively turns viewers who participate through viewing, purchasing, and clicking into participants. And various platforms and media not only passively increase the exposedness in order to increase the chance of human interaction but also actively promotes itself through sharing on the internet and print copies. online platforms also provide people a space to make comment and debate on the political subjects or more. The simple format of the publication including its minimal and direct context, one-page form and affordable price shares the same attributes with propaganda and the fact that It has been used in activist action like protest proves it practical.

Therefore, in the case of Blackpaper, by utilizing the spectacle, effectiveness and practicality can be achieved with the balance between the notion of activism and the notion of art in the activist art project. In other words, when the aesthetic is ensured, the chance of human interaction increases with the increasing exposedness of the publication through the adaptation of the consumer market. The constructed topic in each issue

amount of self-exhibitionism because of the raise of the new media – the internet. (Bishop, 2) Blackpaper also adapts to the internet culture or the current form of the consumer culture by using online platform and new media like Facebook and YouTube and video. As each issue available for purchase, Facebook will be updated and one video of a short interview of the featured celebrity in that issue will be post on YouTube. Not only on the magazine, the consistent and thematical visual and great aesthetic also extends to the videos and the interview is also kept as part of the format of the publication and named “Black Interview”.

Moreover, the physicality is also taken into consideration. The simple one-page format makes the publication accessible and portable and thus easy for dissemination and exchange, affordable and thus easier for people to purchase and possess when the desire of owning the publication is set up by the capitalist system through spectacle.

Politically, although the given context of each issue is minimal and every issue focuses on a different topic, the publication is nonetheless highly political because all the topics are either associated with problems in the society such as local economics, human relation, and education system, or directly feature activist actions and activists that is relevant to the local. The utilize of the spectacle is also effective in term of political.

generates political discourse with the increasing chance of human interaction with the publication. In this case, although the passiveness of spectacle is kept in the process, adapting the consumer market actively reduces this passiveness. As a result, it is more likely to generate agency of social change among the participants than simply presenting the anti-aesthetic and hardly receive attentions and it is more practical than turning art into the agency of social change that artists have to deal with things outside the notion of art. So take a step back, looking at what art is best of and what artist is capable of doing, it is easier to change the system when they are inside the system.

Work Cited Bishop, Claire. “Participation and Spectacle: Where Are We Now?”, Cooper Union, New York, May 2011 Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Zone Books, New York, 1994.

Groys, Boris. “On Art Activism”, e-flux journal #56 — June 2014, June 2014 Roy Tsui, Luk Ka Chun and Yiu Ka Ho, Blackpaper, since 2009