Digital Studio: The Social World, Artvertising
September 10th, 2007,Brian Ulrich, of NotIfButWhen.com is teaching Digital Studio this semester, with a focus on developing projects which address social concerns. It’s often surprising to me how art education frequently focuses on the nuts and bolts, the methodology of making art, while rarely teaching how to think about art, how to judge what is worth making art about, or even what to do with art once you’ve made it.
We live in a commercially driven society. The BBC, not reliant on advertising dollars for it’s budget, is free to challenge assumptions made about what people want to watch, and can take a stance on what they SHOULD watch, whether they want to or not. By contrast, America is locked into a system which can only really produce what people think they want. Socially aware art is interesting, and essential to creating awareness of social conditions that need to be addressed, but can such work be sustainable in a society that won’t pay artists to ask us questions, won’t pay teachers to tell us how to question? The Illinois Arts Council, one of the few institutions left in America that still provides grants to individual artists, lost $5 million dollars from their budget this year.
I don’t know if he’ll be addressing these concerns, but I certainly will be trying to.
Under the cut are some possible projects that I’m toying with. Input, as always, is most welcome.
Possible projects :
1) Sexual Assault. The first girl I ever kissed was an abuse survivor by
the age of 11. I’ve often thought about doing a series depicting how that
sort of violence ripples outward into many lives, but am plagued by the
perceived difficulties. Finding a young-looking model, making sure the
images are not arousing yet clearly a sexual violation, etc.
2) Alternative Lifestyles. A friend of mine commented two weeks ago that
the GLBT minority has, in some ways, gained more mainstream acceptance in
the last 30 years than blacks have had in the last 100. It would be
interesting to do a project along those lines, but I don’t have any clear
ideas.
3) Similar to 2, only about alternative music scenes. Punks, Goths,
Ravers, etc, shown having moments in their lives that are similar to the
ones lived by other people.
4) How Technology Affects Society. The way we can interact with each other
has changed so quickly in the last ten years, that we have had little time
to integrate these things into society. How has this affected us? It’s a
good question, but I don’t know how I’d begin asking it photographically.
5) Pro-ana society. Speaking of technology’s affects on society, I really
want the world to be aware of the fact that there are groups of women out
there providing a encouraging, receptive environment to anorexics and
bulemics, telling them that these things are a “lifestyle choice,” rather
than a dangerous mental illness. I don’t know how hard it would be to find
such people in real life, or if I could mask my own disgust of the notion
sufficiently to document it without raising their ire, or if it would be
possible to actually put aside my reaction long enough to interact with
them.