WESLEY @lealca - Tumblr Blog

TASK 5

BS REFLECTION:

TO FREELANCE OR NOT TO FREELANCE

If I had written this a few months ago I definitely would have said I 100% want to go straight into freelancing however in light of recent global events I’ve done a lot of thinking about my own very uncertain future. In this scary time so many of my friends are in very sticky situations after the country went into lockdown a month ago. This lockdown and just the pandemic and its effects on the economy will prove devastating to so many of these freelance artists, designers and creatives. This has added so much more uncertainty to an already tricky industry so it makes me really want to think twice before committing myself to a certain way of living and working. That being said I know so many freelancers who earn their living off of various other side jobs like bartending and so on. At this point I think everything is up in the air, and there is tension and anxiety around how creatives will live and continue to be able to practice. I think freelancing is a dream of many but something that you really have to commit to and do very well in order for it to work out. I think it’s definitely a gamble but if it works out it can really be a huge win.

#bs300

TASK 4

BS READING REFLECTION:

Build a network, even when you don’t think you need one

Networking is a point of inner contention for me as I’m definitely an introvert but I do also enjoy the company of creatives and queers who share similar values and interests as I do. This reading suggest that folks don’t network for various reasons from busy schedules to self proclaimed ‘lone wolf’ tendencies. When I first moved to Cape Town, in the beginning of 2017 I definitely thought of myself as a lone wolf creating and working within the confines of my very small room. After throwing a series of events with my partner I was introduced to the queer creative community of Cape Town and since then have been very keen on networking and building friendships. I think this reading touches on a very important point when talking about identifying people that you admire in the industry and networking with these people specifically. I know that my lack of networking skills was definitely holding me back in the past as I often didn’t see the point in attending events and gathering where I would be able to network. In Cape Town networking is really easy once you get the courage to go out and do it, everyone knows everyone so it’s not very hard to expand on your network at any Cape Town event.

#bs300

TASK 3

BS READING REFLECTION:

PREFESSIONAL SKILLS

I really like that this excerpt from how to be a graphic designer without losing your soul starts with a list of essential attributes one needs in order to be a ‘fully functioning practitioner’ I think that the first attribute: cultural awareness is definitely very important especially within today’s context. I think it’s important that this reading highlights that not all creative skills can be taught/learned, yes a lot of the practical stuff is about technique and practice but equally important are so called ‘practices of the mind’ attributes earned from lived experience and open thinking. Time management is something that is spoken about in this chapter as something that gets in the way of creating, I myself often complain about not having enough time to achieve certain tasks but according to this reading the idea of ‘not having enough time’ is a myth as we often have enough time but lack the skills to manage this time wisely. I think that for myself this lack of time management skills is definitely rooted in anxiety which the reading suggests is not necessarily a bad thing as the lack of anxiety would be a sign that we are lacking in passion or commitment so I think that’s obviously important to remember. The section about research is also very applicable to my own practice as I’ve definitely been told by lecturers that I have a tendency to over research which I know is an issue as I struggle to trust my own intuition and creativity but I think reading this has helped me understand that I definitely need more of a balance.

#bs300

TASK 2

BS READING REFLECTION :

Overthrowing the Tyranny Of the Ideal

In the reading, Overthrowing the Tyranny Of the ideal we are introduced to the idea of the inner critic and inner strong man. The idea of the inner critic definitely resonates with me as I often find myself disappointed with myself or the outcome of my projects due to ‘superficial optimism’, I think that this is something that gets in the way of almost all creativity for a lot of people. The idea that this voice of ones inner critic is loudest before one has even began a project is something that I know often holds me back from achieving my goals, I think this can even manifest in pure apathy sometimes. The fear of not achieving ones idea of perfection is what strips us from even trying. According to the reading we can access our inner ‘strong man’ by understanding that ‘external comparison is meaningless in this context’ in other words we can’t let our fears of judgment by others of ourselves hold us back and we must refrain from comparing our own progress and achievements to those of others around us.

#bs300

TASK_0

Work from series, Thanks John

2020

Internships

BS300

1. Artists assistant

For my first internship I plan on working of an artist as this is what I think I will be most comfortable doing, I’ve already had some experience in being an artists assistant and I’m keen to get into it again. I believe I can learn so much from helping others and doing things that I maybe wouldn’t do in my own practice. I already have an internship lined up with an artist that I know personally and who works from a studio that is both close to my home and to college. I’m currently just waiting to till my weekly college schedule becomes less erratic so I can have a professional approach to my work days and hours. I know I have a lot to learn for my internship lined up as the artist I’m working for makes his own canvases and I’m not the most comfortable woth woodwork but he has promised to teach me so I’m going in with a keen to learn attitude.

1. Gallery assistant

For my second internship I’d like to work in a gallery, this is a job I’m a lot less comfortable with but I’m very keen to get to know how the gallery works from the inside. I’m planning to approach this through one of my connections after completing some time working as an artists assistant. I would definitely like to work at What If The World gallery or Smac as I really love the artists that these galleries have signed and the work and shows that they’ve had on recently has been so interesting I’d love to experience this part of the art world.

1. NGO volunteer/assistant

I would also really love to get into some activist work by helping out at one of the NGO’s in Cape Town. I have connections at SWEAT (Sex Work Education Advocacy Team) and it is a cause close to my heart so I’d love to reach out to them and see if they need any help in the office.

BS 300

Session 2

Daily

For my daily ritual I would like to start waking up and getting going a little earlier. I always enjoy having a full day and bing up early but I struggle with early rising. The the start of collage again my routine as become a lot more solid and I have a good work schedule although I still struggle to accomplish everything I need to in a day, therefore I think an earlier rise could help me get some stuff done in those few hours before school! I’ve been waking up at 6:30 everyday for the past week and it’s really helped me stay on top of home chores and school assignments. I’m going to try get out of bed 15 minutes earlier this week and we’ll see how I feel the week after next!

Weekly

For my weekly routine I’d really like to reinstate a date night schedule with either my partner or a friend. I think it’s so easy to keep yourself locked up and never go out and experience actual life! When I first moved to Cape Town I’d be sure to go out and explore at least once a week but now I find I don’t make time for it. A movie, a dinner, a walk as long as I do something with someone once a week I’ve achieved this goal! This week my partner and I went to town to check out some of the gallery shows on at the moment, we walked around and checked out some old book stores.

Monthly

I definitely know I need to go to more gallery openings! It’s rather tricky to fit in gallery openings around my work schedule as they always happen in the hours in either working late in studio or working my job there are definitely some openings that he open but I’m just too lazy to get myself to go! But that’s all going to change as I’m now making a rule for myself that I have to go to at least one gallery opening a month!

BS300: Session 1

Self-management

As I sit here at 20:39 on Sunday night with two tasks still to complete I realize that I might need some better self management more than I thought. I’ve always known that I have a tendency to be a little apathetic towards school assignments that involve a whole lot of writing. That being said I know that I can show real passion and commitment to the specific things that I am interested in or enjoy doing. According to healthy living now, self management is all about being able to mange and cope with daily tasks and activities. I think that now in my 4th year of living away from home I’m better than I ever have been with my personal self-management and managing my home life and the daily tasks in order to maintain my life and household but after all of this on top of school and work hours, I struggle to find the tome and motivation to have to self-management to do homework. I know that there are definitely times where I am sitting around scrolling on my phone or watching tv where I feel guilty for not being busy or not doing that one business studies task that I know is due in a few days but sometimes that terrible laziness always holds me back. I know that when I actually do the task it always makes me feel so much more motivated to do more! I plan on trying to complete tasks as they come instead of waiting till the last minute.

#BS300

GALLERY QUESTIONS

Wallen Mapondera

Smac

Chirema Chine Mazano Chintamba Chakazendama Madziro Part 2

1. Were the shadows created by the artworks intentional?

2. Are all the materials found materials?

3. What is the artist trying to say in the work with the frame with the separated 2 ply and 1 ply toilet paper?

Sabelo Mlageni

Blank

The Royal House of Allure

1. Re-emergence of ball cultured the interest from galleries

2. Why are some images in colour and others are black and white?

3. Is the placement of these photos in this gallery space a practice of reimagining and being seen or is it just fetishization?

Barthelemy Toguo

Stevenson

1. Is the use of natural materials intentional

2. What is the connection between the writing and the images

3. What is the connection between the photographs and portraits

Final lab 8 Installation

Thank god im gay

DIGITAL QUEER UTOPIANISM

Emerging from a need for an alternative to the standard heteronormative nature of the internet. The Digital Queer Utopianism movement challenges the inherent heteronormative nature of the internet challenging ideas of gender and sexuality.

The movement takes a DIY, makeshift approach to digital art making connecting various artists from across the world. The work created deals with lives traumas through images or imaginings of a queer utopian future. The movement started deep within the far reaches of the deep dark queer web and developed through small online chat groups and forums pertaining to queer identity. Through this formation the moment gained it eclectic style.

Interview with co-founder of the movement Ray Quinn delves a little deeper into the new movement.

Ray, as I’m aware you’re one of many co-creators of this new movement who are the can you tell us a little more about the formation of the movement and the other co-creators.

Ray:

“The web built up on a history of cis, het mostly white and mostly male intelligence, white men built the internet and filled it with all the info that is there right now, it is inherently biased. All far reaches of the internet are densely overrun by cisnormativity. The movement really came out of a need to connect the dots so to speak, joining and essentially archiving all the rest of what’s out there that isn’t built upon the ideals of the patriarchy.

As for the rest of the creators the group is so large and we draw upon the knowledge of a very large group of people with variying identities in a vast amount of different places around the globe who can all bring very different yet specific experiences and knowlages.

Interviewed:

A lot of critics have claimed that this movement is polarizing, in that it aids the distance and sustain between the nominal ‘left’ and ‘right’. Do you think that this movement aids in the gap between political groups?

I think it’s easy to point to a negative alienating nature of the movement, but unfortunately the fact of the matter is that there simply are people out there with very specific experiences that happen to be different to the majority of people and these people need a space to connect with others like them, that on top of the fact that 99% of the wider web is informed by the knowledge of cis-het white men, I don’t think it’s a problem to have a space that is totally free of that history.

A lot of queer youths are severely isolated from others like them, a lot of queer kids grow up in small towns or just conservative close knit communities that don’t accept or acknowledge gender difference or homosexuality. These kids are lucky enough to have these spaces on the internet to turn to find some sort of representation.

Interviewer: Although This movement strives for inclusivity, you must struggle to keep up with the high demands of the ever evolving PC society we live in today, do you suffer any backlash at all or experience any obstacles in this sense?

Ray: I think it’s only as hard as you want to make it to be as inclusive as possible, that being said there’s obviously a large number of people who we are in able to reach and that’s because a lot of what we do takes place online and therefore there unfortunately a lot of people who don’t have access to the technology required to experience the work. We’re trying our best though to make our work more available offline as well now.

Interviewer: Tell us a little more about your artists, who’s really leading this movement?

Ray: Well that’s a tricky one because a lot of our work is collectively produced and a lot of our artists remain completely anonymous for a variety of different reasons. The movement is a sort of rejection of the singular named artist.

Interviewer: Very interesting, could you tell us a little more about this anonymous approach to art making?

Ray: well I think for one it’s a political move, trying to strip the word from gender, a sort Agender AI for example, a group of our artists have been working on the creation of a new form of AI that is completely free of gender in all of its form, from the specific voice tone and pitch as well as entirely neutral facial features. This is a challenge and it’s taken a large research team working on gender performance and the way in which we as humans read gender, which obviously differs from person to person. Unfortunately the rest of this project is top secret for now so I can’t say much more.

Interviewer: wow that sounds fascinating, seeing as you can’t tell us any more about this project, would you mind telling us about another artwork that you think really defines the Digital Queer Utopianism moment?

Ray: I think a really great piece is, No SWERFS, No TERFS, by Wes Leal, the Digital collage is a very simple composition that contains a statement that really shows what our movement stands for. The statement is about denouncing, SWERFS (Sex Worker Exclusionary Feminists)and TERFS (Trans Exclusionary Feminists), access to our movement.

No SWERFS, No TERFS

Wes Leal

2019

Shelf with string

The internet does not exist

Just look around you: artificial islands mimic genetically manipulated plants. Dental offices parade as car commercial film sets. Cheekbones are airbrushed just as whole cities pretend to be YouTube CAD tutorials. Artworks are e-mailed to pop up in bank lobbies designed on fighter jet software. Huge cloud storage drives rain down as skylines in desert locations. But by becoming real, most images are substantially altered. They get translated, twisted, bruised, and reconfigured. They change their outlook, entourage, and spin. A nail paint clip turns into an Instagram riot. An upload comes down as shitstorm. An animated GIF materializes as a pop-up airport transit gate.

Pg 10

In the past few years many people – basically everybody – have noticed that the internet feels awkward, too. It is obviously completely surveilled, monopolized, and sanitized by common sense, copyright, control, and conformism. It feels as vibrant as a newly multiplexed cinema in the nineties showing endless reruns of Star Wars Episode 1. Was the internet shot by a sniper in Syria, a drone in Pakistan, or a tear gas grenade in Turkey? Is it in a hospital in Port Said with a bullet in its head? Did it commit suicide by jumping out the window of an Information Dominance Center? But there are no windows in this kind of structure. And there are no walls. The internet is not dead. It is undead and it’s everywhere.

Pg 10

Under these conditions, production morphs into postproduction, meaning the world can be understood but also altered by its tools. The tools of postproduction: editing, color correction, filtering, cutting, and so on are not aimed at achieving representation. They have become means of creation, not only of images but also of the world in their wake.

Pg 12

A vast quantity of images covers the surface of the world – very in the case of aerial imaging – in a confusing stack of layers. The map explodes on a material territory, which is increasingly fragmented and also gets entangled with it: in one instance, Google Maps cartography led to near military conflict.

Pg 12

Digital Justice

Week 4

Reclaiming digital spaces

Louise Selby a doctor in the UK was denied access to the womxn’s changing rooms at her local gym due to the fact that her access card and computer system assumed that because of her title (Dr.) that she was a man. I think this a shocking but great example of digital bias that isn’t always so easy to see.

So many companies, even the police, rely on computer systems and that are systematically bias based on years of racist data and institutionalization racism.

Stephanie Dinkens and artists,who works with new technologies however is rather optimistic about future technologies by reclaiming digital spaces. After deciding to (create) a new form of AI that better represents a diverse range of people with an intersectional perspective. With the help of a team of mostly people of colour using her own family history from generations of womxn of colour the new AI will have a unique perspective.

Below: Stephanie Dinkens and AI

Session 3 BS

Guide to managing your manager

Chapter 2

Steps for Presenting Problems or Opportunities to Your Boss

The key to presenting problems or opportunities in the workplace is in the way in which we approach the situation. The Solution to these workplace issues, particularly bringing up tricky topics with the boss, is in our communication.

Below are 5 summarised steps to presenting such problems or opportunities to your boss.

Step one is about describing the problem/opportunity

Explain the problem/opportunity to your boss. It is important to clarify exactly how the company and all its employees will be influenced by this problem/opportunity.

Step two is figuring out a soluction or way of approaching the issue

Suggest a number of recommended ways to deal with the issue whilst making sure to include all the risks in each approach.

Step three is explaining further implications

Further unpack all effects that this opportunity/problem, as well as the way it is dealt with, will affect yourself, the company, and its employees.

Step four is discussing the benefits

Point out all the key benefits of your idea/approach and investigate implementation.

Step five is accepting responsibility for the outcome

This is the time to develop an “action plan” in how your plan will be implemented. Show your liability by taking responsibility for the outcome of your plan.

#bs220

Reading list for Rowan

Reading list

Intersectionality

ARICA L. COLEMAN

Time

https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/time.com/5560575/intersectionality-theory/%3famp=true

Intersectionality

The intersectionality wars

Jane Coaston

Vox

https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/the-highlight/2019/5/20/18542843/intersectionality-conservatism-law-race-gender-discrimination

'The future is not female, it's intersectional' - Women in Architecture

Biz Community

https://m.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/492/194604.html

What Is White Privilege, Really?

Cory Collins

Teaching Tolerance

https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2018/what-is-white-privilege-really

Why do so many white people deny the existence of white privilege?

Brando Simeo Starkey

The Undefeated

https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/theundefeated.com/features/why-do-so-many-white-people-deny-the-existence-of-white-privilege/amp/

I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked.

Najeebah Al-Ghadban

New York Times

https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/magazine/white-men-privilege.amp.html

Allyship - The Key To Unlocking The Power Of Diversity

Sheree Atcheson

Forbes

https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/shereeatcheson/2018/11/30/allyship-the-key-to-unlocking-the-power-of-diversity/amp/

Black People cant be racist

Sobantu Mzwakali

https://www.pambazuka.org/governance/black-people-can’t-be-racist

10 Reasons Why White People Think Racism Is Over

Kevin Clark

Black Enterprise

https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/www.blackenterprise.com/10-reasons-why-white-people-think-racism-is-over/amp/

The Fight to Redefine Racism

Kelefa Sanneh

The New Yorker

https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/19/the-fight-to-redefine-racism/amp

On eating watermelon in front of white people: “I’m not as free as I thought”

Cynthia Greenlee

Vox

https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/first-person/2019/8/29/20836933/watermelon-racist-history-black-people

How White People Can Hold Each Other Accountable to Stop Institutional Racism

Elly Belle

Teen Vogue

https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/www.teenvogue.com/story/white-people-can-hold-each-other-accountable-to-stop-institutional-racism/amp

4 ‘Reverse Racism’ Myths That Need To Stop

Zebra Blay

HuffPost

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_55d60a91e4b07addcb45da97

Reverse Racism is a Myth

ACLRC

http://www.aclrc.com/myth-of-reverse-racism

Trump embraces the ‘reverse racism’ feared by his supporters in a new ‘squad’ attack

Phillip Bump

https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/22/trump-embraces-reverse-racism-feared-by-his-supporters-new-squad-attack/%3foutputType=amp

White People Can Experience Racism BUT Reverse Racism is DEFINITELY NOT a Thing

Jonathan Walton

Medium

https://medium.com/@jonathanwalton_36845/white-people-can-experience-racism-but-reverse-racism-is-definitely-not-a-thing-9abb34e05b1b

Why we need to talk more about colourism and light-skinned privilege

702

http://www.702.co.za/articles/309248/why-we-need-to-talk-more-about-colourism-and-light-skinned-privilege

Why are memes of black people reacting so popular online?

Ellen E Jones

The Guardian

https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/culture/2018/jul/08/why-are-memes-of-black-people-reacting-so-popular-online

We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface in Reaction GIFs

Lauren Michele Jackson

Teen Vogue

https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/www.teenvogue.com/story/digital-blackface-reaction-gifs/amp

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