Gregory

I think the two photos that Gregory posted are spectacular and really made me consider the artistry of the photographer-subjects. The photographs are beautifully framed and posed, they each evoke pride and care though their flavors are very different and I will be curious to know how all of you see and feel them. I am taken by the high bar fence in the photo on the left that implies it is guarding a building of importance and yet the house seems a family house – old and modest, the basement doors (panels) clearly worn. The photographer-subject stands in front of the fence, removed from a building that most hold importance for her and indicating a separation that wasn’t always there. I can’t quite read her expression (does she have a trace of a smile? Is there a bitterness?), but the light pouring in on the right, shadowing the fence and reflecting of her glasses and bounding up the stairs also evokes the passing of time, maybe one of light and dark. It is interesting that her coat is almost all in dark except for opening that is lined in light; her coat is not closed, she is again inside and outside. Very beautiful photo that almost playfully is lined up with the very different photo on the right so that the light from one photo almost seeps into the next.

The photo on the right shows the subject at work, with craft, skill and beauty all central to her task-profession-desire, working with what might be lace- fragility. She is working with hands, paying careful attention. Again she’s framed the photo carefully, its center directly between her and her manikin. The lamp, off-center and tilted is also very beautiful. The light though comes not from that lamp but, briefly, from the window. I can’t quite tell if there are flowers on a distant table and if that is a door on the right. I need to see both these photos more clearly. There is a peace and contentment about this photo; it is not as tense for me as the one on the left. There is a quiet dignity and self-awareness, however, in both images.

Lamar

Picasso said that he spent all his adult life trying to learn how to draw like a child again, and we see in the drawings of Lamar’s students why this might be a goal. These drawings are so full of joy even though so many address tragedy. These students are not afraid of color, and they draw with abandon- people as big as the houses they are next to, pages filled with both scribble and renderings, no obvious needs for rendering perfection but the message is radiantly clear and perfect in its own right. Valerie, who writes that “I have a dream to end world hunger” drew an image that reminds me of Edvard Munch’s Scream; I imagine the text written as if it were a scream. I wonder if Valerie might think about doing that or if she even thinks of her image as screaming.

Some of the texts really stood out for me: Hope is when you never stop believing in someone; Hope is something you fight for; Hope is when you can achieve other things; Hope feasts like an eagle; Hope means drawing; Hope means happiness. These statements make me think of the work of Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer, and you might want to look at their work.

When one of the students includes within her incredible painting the call to “stop selling cigarettes” I couldn’t but help think of Eric Garner.

I love the way, Lamar, you are pursuing this project. I think your questions for your students are good questions, and recording their answers would be great too. I wonder if it might be a good idea to set aside a time for a “reading circle” in which the students would read (and show) what they wrote (and drew) and talk about it. This would be less formal than asking them specific questions but might give you something a bit different. You could also have a performance circle. What would happen if you created collages based on everyone’s images and text, or posters with the images demanding action that were put around the school (or community)? You could invite parents to the reading circles. Your questions and any of these activities would keep pushing on self-reflection while also evoking, for others, what these very young students are grappling with.

I don’t want you to forget about floating copies of these drawings as an exhibition possibility. How would you do that?

It’s been a long time since I’ve used imovie, but it probably is the best program to use since it is very accessible. It will take some work to get used to it, but I am very excited by the possibilities it offers.

Dahlia:

I love this quote from Toni Cade Bambara that Dahlia offers. It reminds me of Emma Goldman, one of our greatest activists and anarchist extraordinaire who wrote that a revolution without dancing isn’t a revolution that’s worth having. As artists and revolutionaries, this might be one of the most important considerations to keep in mind.

Aderinsola

Part of the reason why I wished I had recorded our last class was because the questions that Aderinsola was posing to Wendy, and the prosody of her voice as she posed them, were not only richly critical and direct but also could have been used as voice-overs in her own work. Also they could have been used, in manipulated forms, as separate voice files that challenge the role of the researcher, and in particular the white researcher (though the questions Aderinsola poses have pertinence for all researchers). Why is it that so many progressive white researchers choose to spotlight young people of color? Is this a progressive act, an act of solidarity? Is it undertaken from a sense of guilt or responsibility? Is it exploitative? Who benefits from the research and how do the benefits and costs balance out? Does a balancing in favor of benefit negate the cost? Who decides? Is there a savior-sense to the undertaking? A sense of self-satisfaction? Is it the best that a white researcher can do? Do these same questions plague researchers of color albeit with variation? Is there something else that we think researchers and white researchers should do if the social justice that Anderinsola writes about and that Lamar’s students draw and write about is our primary goal. Where does joy fit in? Is the job of a researcher to make sure that the research participants speak for themselves (as Lamar wants his students to do) and does Wendy’s whiteness, per se, preclude that possibility? Is curation a bad idea? What does Aderinsola mean by a “collective voice?”

From the first time I met Aderinsola a number of years ago I was struck by her refusal to just ride the waves of graduate school. I was also impressed by her persistent challenge of whiteness within the Academy. Her questions posted here are a continued problematizing of positionality and the right (legitimacy) of white researchers to study others. These questions do not have easy or simple answers, but we all need to continue to think about them.

I was attending a panel discussion on whiteness in the Academy. Asilia Franklin-Phipps, who will be visiting us toward the end of the semester, was one of the panelists. One of her co-panelists stated that if you are white and want to be in solidarity with communities of color you need to do so as an “accomplice.” I do not think that unpacking that concept is easy. What does it mean to be a researcher-accomplice? Do researchers of color not struggle with this issue as well though clearly from a different position?

Aderinsola- I am looking forward to the next iteration of your project and curious if any of these issues will infiltrate it.

Noor

 Noor’s post and that of Aderinsola grapple with some of the same issues though move in different directions. Images (Wendy’s photos, my drawings and collages) can be viewed as exploitative and voyeuristic like historic photos of black women and girls but Noor emphasizes the reflexivity of the girls and Wendy’s self-reflexivity as a qualitative difference from those older photographs that has potential for generating (evoking?) insight that is non-reductive though issues of curating and complicity still remain troublesome. Mirzoeff’s The right to look addresses Noor’s efforts to challenge white hegemony, but hegemony – obviously – is a formidable force and combating it demands constant awareness and self-scrutiny. I think Noor’s emphasis on the process, on creating spaces where reflexivity and curiosity bloom, is central to the countervisual and to counter narratives.. Creating what Noor is calling a “real question” helps facilitate that ambiance, and it is something for all of us to consider (I am thinking specifically right now about Lamar’s project though Dahlia’s is prominent in my mind at the moment).

I listend to the Sanctuary sound track that Noor provided the link to and they reminded me of Lamar’s freedom dreams. I’ve always thought of sanctuaries as being, by definition, counter-spaces, escapes from unfreedom and yet many of those who discussed sanctuary envisoned it as the dominant space, without borders, a space infused with love and in which displacement contradicts its very essence. Did Wendy help create sanctuary spaces for those she worked with, are we doing that in our projects? Can arts-based research, infused with the awareness that both Noor and Aderinsola discuss, help create a revolutionary space that is irresistible as Toni Cade Bambara demands?

Noor is running the marathon today. I look forward to hearing, Noor, how it all went. I’m rooting for you.

Gene