Allen Liu @helloallenliuproject-blog - Tumblr Blog

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In this project, the term eccentric gave me a lot of trouble at the beginning. I focused too much of my concentration on building up an image of an eccentric person who might be a maverick person or some kind of performance art. However, I changed my entry point from someone eccentric to something eccentric and finally found out that the strange font of text may create an eccentric feeling of one image to the audience. It is similar to the juxtaposition effect which could create a sharp contrast between the text itself and the surrounding environment. Thus, I framed myself as a person who really likes using a strange font and may make other people feel eccentric while watching them.

My first photo was taken in front of the door of the apartment I live in. There were a few papers attached to the door with the bleeding words “Home sweet home”, a bleeding handprint and a bloodstain. Usually, people might put the home sweet home sign in front of their home door to welcome their family members and friends come home. I might have a similar purpose, but my eccentric taste might make people more second about whether they really want to enter the door. And the following four photos are having the same idea about using the bleeding words in some cozy domestic scene to create the eccentric feelings to the audience. Such as the bleeding “Happy birthday” will make people feeling uncomfortable and hesitant to open the gift. The word “Recycle” on the trash can would create a feeling of horror to make people think about what is in it. On the fourth photo, I used the bleeding font on the image of my cat and simulating the scene when I present the photo to my friend, the eccentric feeling I shaped here in the audience might be the juxtaposition of the feeling of horror and the lovely animal. On the last one, the strange font and bloodstains of my summer schedule attached to the fridge are creating an eccentric feeling about watch it in a normal kitchen area with numbers of lovely stickers on the fridge at the same time. The dark tone and the vignetting I applied to these photos also helped me to present some eccentric taste of the person I framed in this project.

#BISIA 350 #Project 1 #Something Eccentric

In my project #3, the poetic themes I engaged in my series of using metaphor is to reflect the real identity of a person by the mirror. I construct this relationship visually by photoshopped two images together and have the mirror on one of the images shows the different reflection of the real world. This time, I choose only to reflect on the identity of the model, which is myself, to show my real thoughts in my mind when I am doing something. There is no more juxtaposition and poetic reflection of things in the final version, such as the camera and gun, cat and lion, etc.

The meaning of metaphors are showing the world from a different perspective that will let the creator resonate with the audience and allow them to produce different personal views at the same time. Reflecting the inner world of a person using a mirror is a great approach to engage this artistic practice, which artists usually, use this method to explain what they really want and really think about something. I chose this trick to display my real thinking. For example, in my images, I present a person who is dressing him up and ready to go out for work, but the mirror reflects the same person who is dressing pajamas and really wants to back to sleep. It shows the real thoughts, which is the inner world of a person that we could not see from their appearance. However, by using the poetic reflection of the mirror, we could present them at the same time and create a great juxtaposition between each other to demonstrate how humans are emotionally complex animals. After that, I have the other four iterations all presenting the same topic, which the model is doing the homework while playing video games in the mirror, having junk food while working out in the mirror, welcoming his friend while kicking out the person who the model doesn’t really like in the reflection, and enjoying the personal free time while expecting a party in the inner world. They all use metaphors to reflect what the model really wants when he is forced by his personal reasons, such as idleness, and the pressure and temptation from the outside world.

At last, the greatest challenge in this project is to identify the metaphors we use. They might reflect different identities of different objects, and create a completely different topic of images, even they have the same setup. As a result, we need to put more effort to make a fixed topic consistent.

#BISIA 250 #Project 3 #Metaphor

For my project #1, the juxtaposition I am working with is the difference between the ideal scenes show on an iPad screen with the real scenes in the background. There is a series of five photos all present the same kind of contrast which all have the best scene in my mind that will make me feel happy and warm in the middle, and the cool background around it with few lights to emphasize and highlight this central area. These juxtapositions will also make people have different perspectives when they focus differently on the iPad itself, or the things on the screen.

On the first photograph, which I showed to the class during Work in Progress section last class, I took a photo of my cat sitting on my chair by my iPad, and then I move the screen to make the edges of the chair fit together so that the two pictures look like one whole piece. The image on the iPad screen is brighter and clearer than the background, and the background seems to be out of focus, which will emphasize the central area. I took this picture because my cat really likes sleeping on my chair. As a result, it helps me to express that my cat is very important to me and I really like to keep this moment forever. On the other hand, the photograph will be different if it was not juxtaposed, which it will just be a simple photograph of my cat lying on my chair or even there is no cat at all.

For the rest of the project, I took another four photographs all related to the scenes that will make me happy and warm compared to the dim background with lack of light sources. The full table of a sumptuous dinner with my friends, the variety of food in the fridge, the puppet with my cat on the bed, the computer system with my favorite game on the screen, all have a sharp contrast to the background, such as the disappeared man, the empty fridge, the room with no lights on and the computer, which has been turned off. The will always be the greatest memory or the scene I most want to see in my life. These photographs will lose the sharp contract if there were no juxtaposition of them, both the central area or the background will become two detached banal scenes.

#BISIA 250 #Project 1 #Juxtaposition

Something Mysterious

In this project, when I thought about mysterious as an artistic strategy, the first thing came out was using long exposures to create illusory shadows. It will make the theme more mysterious and horrible. However, after taking many long exposure pictures, I think it was boring to keep all the picture looks the same. As a result, I decided to have a series of picture that introduce the imaginary super powers I have. I used a tripod to achieve stable scenes, and photoshop to edit the first four pictures to achieve psychokinesis, invisibility, extrasensory vision and ability to control the flame. It was a great experience of practicing adjustment of perspectives, lights and shadows. I have got many troubles in this process and feel very glad after I solved all these problems. Such as the depth of field created by the camera when there were people in front of it. The background photo is very clean, because the camera made everything in focus. As a result, I have to edit every object clean enough to avoid strange feelings. For the fourth photo, my original idea was to let someone put a lighter on my wrist, so I can have a little flame in my hand. However, the flame was just too small, while the perspectives and lights cannot be restored to the background image. Then I made the current version of using online materials. The last one was my favorite image because I didn’t use any photoshop skills to achieve the effects. And it was my first time using long exposure with Rear-Curtain Sync flashlights. It was hard to find a balanced dark space at night around my apartment and the camera was very tricky, so I have to dash into the camera at the perfect time. This is the best one out of the twenty attempts and my leg was very aching after the sprints. And I am satisfied with the completion of this image.

#BISIA 350 #Something Mysterious #Project 2

Portfolio of Interventions

For this project, I choose to make a pastiche on a project of Pawel Nolbert, who is an independent artist, illustrator and designer. The project name is “Constructed” and the main idea of the project is about the perception of reality and the creation of subjectivity, and distorted reality in social media, which I think is related to our project to use photography as the intervention of the reality. Basically, Pawel is really good at using colors, so he used colored shapes to create space and reform the world in his perspective. And the colorful shapes made the boring landscape photos interesting to look with its multi-layer space and sharp color contrast. In my project, I took few photos at the Bothell Landing Park and photoshopped them using my own point of views. We know that Bothell city is very natural, and my images just show my assumption about if Bothell becomes prosperous and have more skyscrapers, while the park become more colorful and playful. It was really an interesting experience to play with those details to make the five images connected to each other, while making each of them stands alone.

#BISIA 319 #Portfolio of Interventions

Materialism: People that we will never forget

According to Taja Lindley’s artistic video “This Ain’t a Eulogy: A Ritual for Re-Membering”, she tried to maintain a political focus on the conditions of blackness in her performance, and by using different representation of material in the video to make further exploration of the relationship between politics and blackness. The video comes up with exquisite editing and well-planned movements to demonstrate her impressive and reflecting thoughts about blackness as a victim of Police Brutality and make people have deeper thoughts on the “Black Lives Matter” movement. The significant restored behavior “Don’t Shoot!”, performed by Taja, makes the sound keep echoing in the studio with the trash bags and balloons rotating and flying surround the performer. It is introduced as a healing performance by the performer herself, and shall we just analyze and understand her point of view together as a person who might be healed by this amazing video.

(https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/17/black-lives-matter-birth-of-a-movement)

In the beginning of the video, there are many black colored bodega bags with names written with white marker tied to the fence, lost on the ground, hang on the tree and waving in the air. As we focus more on these names, we could easily find out some names that related to the police brutality that we familiar with. Tamir Rice, Rekia Boyd, Michael Brown and the black people who killed by the police (a structurally white institution). According to Bonilla-Silva’s theory of institutional racism, it is “based on a system in which the White majority ‘raises its social position by exploiting, controlling, and keeping down others who are categorized in racial or ethnic terms’”. (Bonilla-Silva 1997: 466) While reading these names, I could feel my breath is holding for seconds, and I am just quietly feeling the time ticking forward.

(https://futuristicallyancient.com/2017/09/18/m-g-recap-the-bag-lady-manifesta/)

After watching the beginning, I’m starting to interest in how everyday objects (the bodega bags, trash bags, and balloons) embody blackness through performance in order to testify to the physical and structural violence that black people suffer at the hands of the police. In the video, Taja Lindley dressed in the costume that is made of bodega bags and trash bags. She dances on the stage that fulfill with those black colored bags and balloons. The movements of the performer lead the bags and balloons spin and wave surround her with sounds of winds and the music she created as well. The scene was fantastic and make me want to explore more about the materialism she applied in this video. As we known, the representation of bodega bags and trash bags would be cheap and easy to use by people in our daily life. Taja wrote names on it to use these bags as the representative of the black people who died because of police, also have a deeper meaning that shows the historical image of black people, which is related to slavery and trafficking. And the property of balloons, which appear with the bags at the same time, also tells us that black is fragile, weak and easy to hurt. But she tried to use her movement, not only to make people remember these names, but also to unite the blackness surrounds her. The movement of the bags and balloons is mainly on the lower part of the stage, which make Taja look like a giant leader and use her power (wind) to lead the rest. The silence of the objects was breaking by Taja Lindley’s movement and become more and more active to respond her action. Gradually, the bags that made Taja’s costume had a connection with some bags surround her, which created a feeling of they are giving her power and become a greater unity. It indicates that black people should stand together and fight the social injustice for themselves.

(https://openhouseblog.nyc/2017/03/05/taja-lindley-this-aint-a-eulogy-a-ritual-for-re-membering-2/)

In her own point of view, Taja Lindley calls us to recycle the energy of protest, rage and grief, which represented by the bags and balloon in another meaning, to create a new world that black people could live peacefully with the other groups of people. It is a unique way to think about these daily objects as emotional power that could collect by her to help people get over all the difficulties.

(https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/07/data-police-racial-bias)

In the end, I believed that my idea is matter because it is associated with the controversial topic, which is about racism and some of the power that forces African American into a danger situation. It might become the conflict between the black community and the police. And my question would be, if the police is killing blacks indiscriminately, who are they claiming to “protect and serve” actually? Who will protect black people from the police? Where can black people be safe? Are black people even included in society?

#BIS 332 #final project #blog post

Creative Response

Artist statement

During the creating process of this assignment, I chose to write a poem as the response of Taja Lindley’s performance “This Ain’t a Eulogy: A Ritual for Re-Membering”. As a person from Asia, I also sympathize with the experiences faced by black folks. Taja used the restored behavior “Don’t’ shoot” and her performance with daily objects to introduce many examples of the police (a structurally white institution) brutality, which a force to oppress black community, to me. And I want to use my words as a protest to respond to her work.

As I asked in the blog post, if the police are killing blacks indiscriminately, who are they actually claiming to “protect and serve”? Who will protect black people from the police? Where can black people be safe? Are black people even included in society?

So, I used some of the books, poems and artistic works to enrich my work and ask the questions in an artistic way. I wrote the poem in Chinese at first, because most of the sources I read is also translated to Chinese to help me had a better understanding of their feelings. After I finished the creating, I started to translate it back to English and tried my best to find some rhyme feet as I can. So, at the beginning of the poem, I declared the people that I want to speak for, the people next to the cane, way down south in Dixie, between the world and me. These details are from a poem named “Sugarcane” by Nicolás Guillén, who is a national poet from Cuba; Langston Hughes’s song “Song for a Dark Girl”, which he wrote for his daughter to express the anger and sadness after he lost his daughter; and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book “Between the world and me”, which he wrote a letter in the book to his son about the feelings, symbolism, and realities that black people faced in the United States. So, I use these three phrases to represent all the black folks that be oppressed. The white god and god’s hand, which represent historical facts of white enslavement and the privilege that white people have nowadays in the society, which is similar to the white hand.

In the third part of the poem, I decided to use the Portuguese poet, Aguinaldo Fonseca’s poem “MÃE NEGRA”, which means the “Black mother”, to reproduce the feeling of black people who wants to be treated as equal as the other groups but got killed by the police because of structural racism. I read this poem in Chinese version so I may have a different and deeper feeling of the words.

And the last part will be the questions in a more artistic way and I feel like it fits the topic of Taja Lindley, which she recycled the energy of protest, rage and grief, as the bags and balloons stand for, to find a way of creating a new world that black people could live peacefully with the other groups of people.

#BIS 332 #final project #creative response