#this_is_the_future

[photographyatmit]

blogpost #11

For me, the central question when watching Waste Land, a film that follows the story of artist Vik Muniz working with catadores in the outskirts of Rio to create art was, who is this for? Should we take the film at face value and buy into the symbiotic relationship portrayed between Vik, Tiao, Isis, Suelem and the others? What was the power dynamic between the privileged art and film crew and the workers living paycheck to paycheck by collecting recycled materials, and was the reality of it captured in the film?

While I thought there were many moving and beautiful parts of the film, I am left skeptical about what Vik’s original intentions were and how we arrived at the film’s conclusion: a historic retrospective solo show celebrating the work of Muniz in which the photos made with the catadores were just one part. There are obviously real material and emotional benefits that Vik brought to the lives of the catadores, but I think the film portrayed Muniz too much as a heroic well-meaning benefactor and played into the western-white-male savior complex, exactly the things that TJ Demos denounces in his article. 

I don’t criticize the act of co-creation with people of different race and class backgrounds, but there are several things that I question. Why was Vik the center of the narrative? Where did the idea for the poses in the portraits come from? What has been Vik’s continued relationship with the catadores? The film itself is made for a western privileged audience who presumably knows Muniz and is interested in his work. The overwhelming message that is imparted upon the viewer highlights the selflessness of Muniz’s charity. But didn’t Muniz himself benefit enormously? Why didn’t the film share more about this mutual exchange? This is perhaps an overly cynical perspective about the film, and I could say more things that I enjoyed about it… but I’ll keep it there!

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #11

The subject matter of this film reminded me of worries I had as a designer entering an academic world where our design studios are focused outward in a community. Entering grad school I had concerns that I would be taking studio courses that would “parachute in” to a community or site, study it, extract information from the landscape, the people, the culture, design something purely academic, show it to the community, and then leave without giving the community any support in kind to achieve any of these designs if they wanted to. I ask myself constantly in design studios and academia that connects with the “Real World,” is there any possible way to design and learn without harm?

Similarly to connect to the film, is there a way to show up one day as a successful artist, gather information and workable medium from people and landscape, and make something with it that will actually change someone’s life? Who is included in this and who is left out? If there were 100 Catadores who wanted to participate, would Vik have had the capacity for that? Certainly at the end of the film we saw the growth of the subjects after this experience of making art as a collective. 

A few ideas I have about why this was successful:

1. The picking of material was collective

2. The making of the final portraits was collective

3. The language of the Catadores was used in the making of the art - Vik stated at the beginning of the film that he wanted to escape from the world of fine art as it felt so restrictive; then he went in the polar opposite direction of what the world understands as fine art, medium of garbage, a collective and non-hierarchical process of physical making and decision making, large format that is almost more of a physical landscape than a painting. Vik employed the language and process of the Catadore, while also letting the Catadores in on his process, the artistic process, his thoughts on material, etc. 

4. I’m not sure how true this is for real but the film portrays the interactions and stories learned from each Catadore as something sincere and voluntarily shared which drove a choice of reference for each portrait, rather than stories extracted from the source or assumed by the artist to be employed in the art. 

5. Vik went into the project with many broad assumptions which he was discussing with his wife early in the film, that the people at Jardim Gramacho were the worst of the worst, the most outcast people. However, the process of meeting the Catadores changed his perspective greatly, especially after seeing the pride that people take in being a Catadore, in organizing groups of Catadores to provide their employees with resources, in the generational factor, in the fact that they are working hard at something they believe in rather than something they don’t agree with. 

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #11

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #11

Early on in the film Waste Land, Vik Muniz questions if art can change people. It evidently can – in perpetuity. It’s certainly easy to disregard art as aesthetic and equate it with beauty. The film proves an opposite point all together. It is not the art, but the people who are beautiful. And what is art if not the process of creation and the drive for change? What’s interesting about this kind of project and initiative is that it creates change across time. It created change during its inception, upon its execution equally as it does today. Not only doe the film inform and educate, but it also promotes introspection: two worlds colliding, activism and humanitarianism.

The change that art incentivizes here is reflected on the artist, the community and individual the art addresses, the environment, and the viewer at once. By escaping the exclusivity of fine art and inviting the art to come to life by people taking control over the art being produced about them, art comes alive. It is indeed Art and a social experiment at once. In fact, the social experiment becomes the art itself.

It was eye opening to recognize the community as human beings, able to dream, raise families, have ambitions and have culture and education. Referencing the likes of Machiavelli and finding knowledge in garbage on one hand while holding beliefs of recycling in support of the environment at a time when that was a topic on the backburner certainly causes one pause. Perpetual change indeed; with a library being established, power gained and joy found anew, I cannot but quote Zumi when he said “That’s not garbage, that’s recyclable material. That’s money; a lot of money”.

From an idea of a product, to a translation in film, to showcasing a lifestyle, to curating a process all of which to only be translated back to product, the concept of art certainly expands.

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #11

The end of the line—the landfill was the boundary that separated not only items, but people. The landfill in Rio marginalized the drug addicts, the poor, and the vulnerable; it ultimately left these individuals in the open to remain indistinguishable from the garbage they worked among.  This week’s film focused on one of the world’s largest landfills by volume, located in Rio de Janeiro. Each day millions of people dump their trash where it will be sorted by pickers in order to reduce the waste and make an income of approximately $25/day. Garbage from the millionaires, the middle class, and the poor was blended together in the landfills, it was a melting pot that did not separate among classes in the same way society did.  The importance I found in the movie was Vik’s ability to bring these people to life through photography. Each day, these individuals would work in this location in order to earn an honest income as opposed to other professions like prostitution. They had their own struggles in terms of family lives, relationships, and income, and they wanted to keep the sense of pride in the work they do.

Through Vik’s photography, he not only unmasked the reality of their lifestyle to the public, but he also sought to know them on a personal level and use the sales to improve their lives. Each time he took their photo, he would learn about their interests (education, service, business) and became a part of their community. This combination helped him display works that changed the dynamic of the picker. The picker was a person, that like the garbage, people did not know about. However, his work changed the pickers identity where they no longer saw themselves in the garbage. In relation to the readings, Vik’s photography is an example of the visual activism that art can have. By becoming a part of social movements that engage with social dynamics and discourse, art can help determine the motion in which society considers a topic. There is an aesthetic to the political nature of the works, where photography can bring hope to altering conventional standards. It leads us to think how we can be a part of this change, and seek to use our photography in relation to our environments. 

[ahalyaramgopal]

Blogpost #11

I found Hito Steyerl’s piece quite interesting, especially in the context of current discussions around NFTs and cryptocurrency. I have a hard time understanding NFTs, and this article hinted at a potential reason for its necessity –– the importance of identifying and defining the “original.” Privatizing an image, or delineating an original, creates a hierarchy of class surrounding one image. As Steyerl states, “poor images are poor because they are not assigned any value within the class society of images” (6). I don’t know if I entirely agree with the premise of the article –– I think poor images are powerful and necessary in the democratization of art. The author states that, “The circulation of poor images feeds into...capitalist media assembly lines” (8); I understand the sentiment but I wonder if one can argue the opposite, that poor images are rebelling against capitalism and profit and promoting access to all. The bourgeois appropriation of art as a commodity concerns me, and I can’t help but wonder if that is what NFTs are doing. On the other hand, I understand the necessity for ownership as a means of combating capitalist exploitation. But I also want to see art continue to be more accessible. The New Inquiry piece is a good insight into how technology is making the personal political, the seemingly private public. We share photos of objects and people via social media for ourselves, but they feed into a much larger system which is harming groups of individuals. One of its last lines says, “We no longer look at images–images look at us. They no longer simply represent things, but actively intervene in everyday life.” This forced me to think about how art’s role has changed in the advent of technology, and how it’s not only a mirror to society now but a force for change.