Iām at a place where, academically, Iām feeling very apathetic and overwhelmed by stress and expectations and when faced with tasks donāt particularly want to do them or see the point in doing them, my focus has recently taken a huge shift to the bigger picture of what I want to do with both myself and my life and that doesnāt exactly line up with what my degree is offering me ā there are plenty of reasons for this too, though through it all I remain in University and remain studying because the bottom line is I need to do this for the money that it will eventually help me make (and in the short term, the money I get from student finance prevents me from needing to get a job to survive).
This is one reality of the society we live in, especially for poorer/working class people. Stay in education and remain financially sustained for as long as you can or go out and get a job to sustain yourself ā either way we become the oil to a huge capitalist machine that aims to consume and make use of us and distract us from breaking away from the status quo set in place by an āimperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchyā [1] (as described and coined by Bell Hooks).
I feel like a good way to demonstrate this lack of a sense of place and belonging currently, as well as a want to simply satisfy and not exert myself as if to āmeet the criteria and get it over withā, was to pick one of the first objects I could find on me, and reflect on this. I chose my student ID card ā I also feel this represents and means a lot of things to me.
Ā To begin, the size of the card is something known as ID-1 in the international standard of identity card sizes (which is known as ISO/IEC 7810), so itās a common size of card used for ID cards, credit cards, licenses and the like. The dimensions of this are 85.6 x 53.98 mm with a thickness of 0.76mm and rounded corners. Itās a clean, glossy white all around with a variety of details on each face ā most of which are black. Itās a professional looking card, with tidy, easy-to-read san-serif typography (an exception is offered in the logo of the University of Huddersfield in the top right, also in a dark blue colour rather than black), a barcode stretched across the bottom of the front face while a portrait of the owner of the card decorates the left side (this picture has been stretched vertically during the making of the card) and warm colours such as pinks and oranges have been used in the upper-left for the NUS logo. The main subjects of the card are both the portrait and the adjacent name of the owner which is the biggest text on the card. The reverse side has simple information regarding the University such as phone numbers and email addresses presented in a minimal fashion.
In the right light thereās a tiled image imposed on top of the face of the card thatās hardly viewable, reminiscent of holographic displays, with a key icon and reads āUltra Securityā.
The purpose of an ID card is first and foremost to help identify the owner of it. This is essential in an environment where there are lots of people, some new and some not, and helps confirm your identity. It lets people know your name and in this case that youāre a student at the University.
In some ways, it can also dictate your identity. What you are can depend on the environment youāre in and how youāre placed in that environment, this ID card for example doesnāt take into account anything that makes up a personās personal identity but rather brands all students with the same treatment as they become as attribute of the University, theyāre reduced to and known as nothing more than A Student ā nothing else is relevant for this circumstance. Just as there are circumstances where a personās educational status isnāt relevant, and āa studentā would not be the identifier for them.
The idea of the ID card can date back to the times of Napoleon ā where these cards where implemented so employers could keep track of individuals and prevent them from having more than one job to prevent them from having more than one source of income. They were also utilized in Nazi Germany to establish supervision of the people. What started off as potentially one of the tools to create a totalitarian society became a necessity in our daily lives now, since the amount of different things people are doing as well as the variety of jobs and technologies there are mean it can be difficult to keep track of people if they donāt have some form of ID on them.
Another service the ID card holds in this University specifically (as this is not something done in all) is that it confirms a personās attendance to sessions/lectures/etc. The University has a scanning system and scanning into a session confirms the studentās attendance.
Attendance is something I struggle with. When going through a lot of personal issues as well as dealing with mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety or socializing difficulties always maintaining a good attendance isnāt easy. The University wants people to attend, as would any capitalist establishment where attendance of the consumers is key to the running of that establishment. Due to this, itās not easy for a person to decide they canāt or wonāt come in as theyāre then followed up or asked to confirm their absence or called in for meetings ā all of this can contribute to stress Iāve found, stress which manifests itself in a number of ways but most of those resulting in a general feeling of wanting to do anything but go in in the future. Despite still doing work, and doing it well, attitude to attendance can still feel ruthless. Itās very much a matter of attend or donāt, and if you continually do not you donāt get to stay. This reflects most establishments propelled by capitalism such as the workplace, which is unfortunate for a lot of people who simply canāt abide by these ārulesā because of a number of factors. So this whole idea of attendance and how it can have an impact on my being in University or not is somewhat stressful to me, and when I see my ID card Iām reminded of that.
However there are also benefits to attendance which are all the main reason for attending University in the first place ā there is access to a wealth of information and resources and if I went through University not attending I probably wouldnāt be learning as much and so it would seem only logical to drop a student who is choosing not to learn or help themselves rather than keep them and risk having a lower pass rate for the course in question.
For the last couple weeks I havenāt been attending University. I didnāt attend much last term and passed the first module with a 1:1 while still having the time and energy to better myself outside of University and I liked how I felt about going against the dictation that āless attendance means worse gradesā (doing this in a way that was slightly influenced by types of āactivist artā, where I played with the idea of perhaps presenting a lack of absence as my āpieceā if I were to explain it well enough) though it was through doing this then and now I noticed the āupsetā it caused and thatās what got me thinking about how essential it is to attend for both the student (consumer) and University (establishment/corporation). I noticed thereās no other realistic choice than to attend and abide by the rules no matter how much I occasionally view it as a perpetuation of capitalism.
There are other things on this card that prompt various thoughts, however. For example the portrait was something we could upload ourselves which left everyone with a choice of what kind of picture to put up (something which probably didnāt cross a lot of peoplesā minds though).
The natural response would have been to do for a more āprofessionalā kind of picture taken in a photo booth, though if this wasnāt necessary I didnāt want to since that costs money. Iām also interested in the idea that anything else, for example a picture taken of the person by the person themselves, is deemed as unprofessional. I feel like this kind of thought process is something rooted in classism as the self-portrait in recent times is met with a lot of scrutiny, though I personally believe itās a good thing to celebrate. At one point in history it would only be the richer people who could indulge in having a portrait of themselves whether it be by being painted by someone or having a camera when they were new, though through consumerism and the increasing availability of the camera now the normal person can capture an image of anything which also means now the normal person is capable of having a portrait of themselves ā something that can tend to make other people uncomfortable for fear of it seeming āvainā or unnecessary.
Another thing I notice on the card is the name, rather than having the name of the person itās their formal title, first initial and then surname. The only part I find questionable is using a title rather than a name, especially in a University environment where most people and definitely students are going to be known on a first-name basis. A part of me asks āwhy does it matter?ā what a personās title is, this is because I focus a lot on gender issues and identity, and I find a name to be much more important than a title as I feel it brings unnecessary emphasis on the gender of the person. This idea comes from experiences Iāve seen and had with people who are either transgender or gender-nonconforming wanting to change their card, a name is one thing but having an indicator of gender can make people uncomfortable and want to change it.
So the ID card represents a lot of things to me and reminds me of my feelings towards University, while also having me consider my place in University and the capitalist society we live in and want to respond to it.
In relation to trends in art, Iād describe this object as a āfound objectā which is simply where a person will find an object that already exists and they would present that as art without particularly changing it. This was a trend started by the āreadymadesā of Marcel Duchamp in the early twentieth century which became the foundation of the Dada āmovementā which is something Iām very interested in. Studying a lot of art with a dwindling passion for art I was pleased when I came across Dadaism and itās interesting and fresh take on rejecting the art worldās ānormsā and standards, it was almost satirical. This in combination with the Arte Povera movement interested me in a relatable way as being anti-establishment commentaries on the art world and eventually capitalism.
Duchampās now infamous āFountainā, an upturned and signed urinal, posed a near-existential question to the art world regarding what could be considered art and just exactly who had the right to decide such. Though he moved from readymades to āassisted readymadesā, the tradition of using found objects and then presenting them as art is something that remains to this day and in my opinion one of the more interesting forms of art; I like art that acts as a commentary on issues and I find a very effective way of doing that is to confront things, concepts, objects and symbols which exist already.
Duchampās explanation behind the readymade is rooted mainly in the idea behind the choice of the object that was used, as said:
āWhether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, and placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view ā created a new thought for that object.ā[2]
Another popular example of āfound objectā art is Tracey Eminās āMy Bedā, or the work of Cathy Wilkes as I recently attended an exhibition to see her work. I was drawn to these ordinary objects that somehow told a story and relied heavily on context and understanding. I feel presenting my University ID card, if I had to fit it into a trend in art, would be classed as a āfound objectā because of what I can make it mean with the context Iāve put behind it.
Ā Ā [1] ā Imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy: a concept coined by Bell Hooks in her book āThe Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Loveā
[2] - Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, and placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view ā created a new thought for that object.: Quote from Avant-Garde magazineās May 1917 issue, cited from Tateās website:
http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/r/readymade
