My Critique - March 4th

     During my critique, I took my classmates into a recent surround sound installation I had created for my Video III-B class. The sound contained a loop of Kanye West's "Dark Fantasy" where individuals sang the phrase "can we get much higher?". In addition to the loop, it also included historical speeches, radio interviews, and television show clips which were broken into 4 sections of sound: the "n-word", history, political, and hip-hop, all of which allude to the Black community. In the room I hung different fabric that held ethnic connotation, as well as flyers of words such as "revolt" and a crossed out "black is beautiful". I also posted images of positive and negative "blackness" which ranged from a picture of Malcolm X and the sheet music to "We Shall Overcome" to a picture of hip-hop artist Nas and his girlfriend wearing "nigger" on their clothing. I also posted a number of Curious George pictures on one section of a wall and ended the series with an image of blackface. Additionally, I posted text from historical art passages on "The New Negro" and African-American art on the walls. Finally in the center, I had a bamboo mat with a stool on top of it containing a pair of black combat boots, which were meant to represent the Black Panther Party.
    Upon entering the room, my classmates and GA were immersed in culture and history, being that it was in almost every aspect of the room. I received various comments about my ideas and current project, including that my thesis project should be more minimal (which is ironic being that I consider myself a minimal artist the majority of the time). The group overall had positive feedback on what I was trying to express concerning the Black community. At the time, I had a certain idea, but it became completely changed after my group's discussion of my piece. Being that I have a room to myself in the gallery, Ilana suggested that I use different areas of the room to break down the different themes I would be using in my piece. She thought that lighting would assist in this. Sasha liked the dim lighting I used in my current project as well as the current Kanye music against the historical words and speeches. Gabrielle had an interesting thought of using jazz or blues music behind the words my speakers were saying. Our group leader, Doug thought of translating the text I used in my video piece to finding historical signs and blowing them up and placing them in my space in the gallery. Needless to say, my group gave me a lot to think about, which is why I changed my project once again to the idea I wrote about in my thesis paper.