public workshop
On Friday, October 20, we came together for the final workshop in the three-part Me(dia) Response Self-Awareness and Activism Through Art-Making series at MIT List Visual Art Center.
Photojournalist Dominic Chavez presented his work and recounted tales of visiting Sierra Leone, Iraq and other conflict areas and Danielle Benaroche Gottesman shared insight into the importance of self-care in managing the barrage of stressful circumstances, including violent imagery.
Read MoreOn Friday, October 20 from 12-2pm we'll conclude the Me(dia) Response series at MIT List Visual Art Center with a creative action open to the public. I'm eager to share the works participant's made during the first two workshops, expand the dialogue we've been having, and conclude with a cathartic activity during this free workshop open to the public. (image: workshop participant work)
Read MoreOn September 15, 2017 ten inquisitive and empathetic souls arrived at the second of three Me(dia) Response: Self-Awareness and Activism Through Art-Making workshops at MIT List Visual Art Center to explore their role in shaping media and responding to it. (Image: Gilbert. newspaper, plastic, greenery and grenade pull.)
Read MorePresenting the ten accumulations made at the second Me(dia) Response workshop at MIT List Visual Art Center on September 15.
The next and final workshop on October 20, 12–2pm and is free and open to the general public. Visit MIT List to register.
Following the first Me(dia) Response workshop at MIT List Art Center on August 18, I altered the twelve accumulations made by participants by adding Plasti Dip.
Presenting the twelve accumulations made at the first Me(dia) Response workshop, pre-alteration.
On Friday, August 18, 2017, I had the pleasure of working with twelve curious and courageous souls who attended the Me(dia) Response: Self-Awareness and Activism Through Art-Making workshop at MIT List Visual Art Center. This, the first of a three-part workshop, stirred a conversation about the excess of violent imagery in our news and questioned the role of the photographers, editors, and consumers (us) in making (and disseminating) political statements.
After a guided meditation, participants selected violent images that spoke to them—hands that called out for help, people locked in protest for their civil rights—from a collection of over 100 that I've been snipping from newspapers since December 2016.
We got right to making, each person gluing together over 60 pages of newspaper. The goal was to give participants quiet time to consider the glut of violent imagery and news as they busied their hands. But heated political conversations quickly ensued. The imagery may have aggrevated some who were not comfortable sitting with the feelings it evoked. Or perhaps they were frustrated at not being heard in other contexts.
As time went on, the suggested shape, a vertical stack akin to striated rock, took on new and surprising shapes — a flower, a frayed puck shape, and a hand for instance.
Now it is my turn to alter the twelve completed accumulations with a unifying color and texture using a black rubbery paint. I'll return in September to guide the next set of participants through a deeper understanding of their role in shaping media (and how they can take control of it) by altering someone else's creation.
Me(dia) Response: Self-Awareness and Activism Through Art-Making is part of List Projects: Civil Disobedience, a program of documentaries, news footage, citizen journalism, artist’s films and videos focusing on moments of political resistance and public demonstration from the early 20th century through today. Presenting records from the historical Civil Rights and women’s movements, gay liberation and AIDS activism, the Black Lives Matter movement, and recent Women’s Marches recognize the history of resistance, and considers the role that artists and documentarians play in chronicling and confronting abuses of power and social injustice. July 18, 2017 - October 29, 2017 (Note: closed August 22–27. Daily screening program will resume on August 29.)
I have just returned from the Gardner Museum where, from 1 to 3pm, I was the host of the Living Room – a project based on Lee Mingwei’s original artist-in-residence project from 1999.
It is a remarkably informal project. You show up with a few objects, put them on a table and then talk to people about the objects. But that’s the hard part, talking. Without a formal context, how does one strike up conversation in a serene space where people go to rest and get away? It’s easy on a crowded train or a doctor’s office where there’s a common injustice or suffering. Our only hardship is Whistler the singing canary whose energetic song at times gets a bit loud. There is no sign that reads, “Warning: a stranger may attempt to be intimate with you.”
I try multiple approaches.
Read MoreI’m please to be part of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s new “Sanctuary Series” with a workshop of meditation and art making that provides a unique experience within the museum’s collection and provides tools for synthesizing the barrage of mass media imagery that fills our daily lives.
As a young child I was “diagnosed” as having an over active imagination. This was my parents way of soothing me back to sleep after a particularly realistic nightmare in which the Pink Panther stalked me while his theme song played. This “superpower” as I now like to see it, the ability to imagine what isn’t there, is closely correlated with imagining what could happen or what is to come in the future. It is the power of imagination. And when not harnessed properly it can lead to useless worry.
It is also the power of empathy.
After learning to recognize the difference between dreams and reality I next had to content with the nagging worry about what could happen in real life – especially when it came to human suffering.
Read MoreWe breath everyday, but what connection is made when we breathe in other people's air? Since seeing these photos of "Talisman of Breath" at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in early June, the idea of swaping "breaths" has been on my mind. By containing our breath in a little inflatable origami ball that can be given away or lost, we are reminded of what is essential versus what isn't. What if all we needed was to carry a little personal spiritual token everyday?
-Audrey Hsia, studio assistant
