We met again over Skype today. We talked about the Subjective Atlas of Palestine and the images we drew of Ablie Sachs. I shared my confusion with the Daily Reflections on The News on pages 46-49, below I put some of the images I didn't understand. I'm sure they're pretty specific to a time and place.
We had class over Skype today because it was very cold. We discussed the pieces by Nina Katchadourian that we chose to look into. I read the assignment wrong and chose a piece from Uninvited Collaborations
with Nature. I loved the mended spiderwebs and how intricate those pieces were. I think it's also really interesting how strong the spiderwebs are to be able to be mended. It isn't a map but it is a reaction to a destructive force which interacted with this web, a different form of mapping which seems relevant. For the QCQ we listened to the video "Cases for Political Art." I took a screen shot of a piece of the video I thought was interesting. I like the phrase, "political art is uncomfortable knowledge." Today was a field trip to the library to meet up with a Maps librarian as well as Albie Sachs. His fight against apartheid in South Africa is something that was very helpful to hear as someone fighting the apartheid in Palestine. One thing he said that I thought was really interesting was about an image that was circulated during the movement of a woman holding a gun with a baby on her back. He said something like, "at first it was effective, then it became tedious, and eventually it was just cruel." I think this observation is important and it is relevant to the work I do with MSU Students United for Palestinian Rights. Most of the time, making posters for this group is difficult because so many images are used so frequently that it becomes hard to illustrate the fight against the occupation without becoming tedious or cruel.
The video of the courthouse Albie showed the class was refreshing and helpful. It showed collaborative art pieces that came together to display an act of defiance: the existence of the building. The imagery was interesting and touched on the occupation and cultural aspects of South Africa without reusing the symbols from the fight. It was more about the future of South Africa than a reminder of a traumatic past. It reminds me of the poster that says, "the (hi)story is not finished," I will attach it below. Contestation of Space was an interesting project that outlined a very simple way in which Israeli governments control the movements of Palestinians. In a public park created by an educator in the area for the benefit of the children and mothers in the area,
Quotes from Citizenship:
We read Seth Price's Dispersion for class. I was not a huge fan although there were several interesting quotes that I'll list below:
Today was the first day of class. More people than I thought didn't know anything about Palestine. It's funny sometimes but it also can be weird. One girl was not sure if there was junk food in Palestine. We watched a video called Nation Estate which was interesting but the horrible CGI was distracting. I'm not sure what the meaning of having really bad CGI is but I'm sure it's on purpose.
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