Akoka'tssini: "As A Means of Contact"

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

"As A Means of Contact"

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGE VIEW)
Medium(s): Linocut Relief Print
October 12, 2009

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USD Printmaking 1 composition done on a linoleum pad (9 1/2 x 11) with about 5+ hours spent. I was very pleased how this turned out (even though this wasn't my final product paper but a proof done on newsprint). I was inspired, as I've stated before, on the current cultura clash of the Jarawa's on an island off the coast of India as well as the other surrounded tribes that have no real contact with the global world. The Jarawa's however have finally opened up to Indians settling on their land and are no longer hostile but eager to hitch rides from a major highway going through their reservation as well as begging for goods. With a very high level of annoyance and discust from settled Indians, the Jarawas are becoming less and less respected on their own land and their culture is at risk.
This piece reflects the mental impact of them from their now constant exposure to technology, even though they themselves feel no effect from it, so is my thesis of radiation.
"CD" on the forehead of the gas mask represents another image I plan to incorperate more into my works, which stood for the "Civil Defense" in the 1950's that was an organization that planned to be organized and defend the public from possible nuclear attack by arming them with knowledge such as "duck and cover" etc. I have turned that slightly to stand for "Culture Defense" in which obviously the gas mask is to resist radiation of our modern world that is toxic to the cultured person and mentality.
As I have personal cultural concern for the Jarawas, this piece represents all cultured people. Not so much the modernized but those that have yet to be uncontacted, such as the many tribes in Brazil and South America where many have yet to even be discovered, nevermind contacted.

-Artist's Critique-
As much as I love the composition as is, as I have said this was but a proof, and I've been having difficulty creating similar, repetative prints. Something I'm sure will come with more exerience in printmaking overall. I have yet to recreate a print similar to this where all my details (done with a thumbtack mostly for the clothing texture) actually are visible repeatively on prints.
Compositionally this was originally just a small time sketch I did that I chose to try out for my class. I'm glad it turned out the way it did and I recieved a lot of positive feedback from professors and peers. I enjoyed working figuratively with printmaking as I do with most mediums, and learned a lot about creating light and reflection as well as textural lines. Overall a piece of work I was content with.

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The Artist

MY THESIS - "By any measure, we live in an extraordinary and extreme time. Language can no longer describe the world in which we live like it used to. With antique ideas and old formulas, we continue to describe a world that is no longer present. In this loss of language, the word gives away to the image as the 'language' of exchange, in which critical thought disappears to a diabolic regime of conformity - they hyper-real, the omnipresent image. Language, real place gives way to numerical code, real to virtual; metaphor to metamorphosis; body to disembodiment; natural to supernatural; many to one. Mystery disappears, replaced by the illusion of certainty in technological perfection. Technological acceleration does not affect out way of living - it is our new and comprehensive host of life, the environment of living itself. It is not the effect of technology on the environment, culture, economy, religions, etc., but rather that all these categories exist in technology. In this sense technology is new nature. The living environment, old nature, is replaced by a manufactured milieu, an engineered host-synthetic nature. In a real sense, we are off planet, swelling on the lunar surface of stone, cement, asphalt, glass, steel and plastics, engulfed in the atmosphere of radioactive oxygen and electromagnetic vibrations - the soothing aroma of atomic nuclear energy, the soothing lullabies of the machine. The common notion tells us that technology is neutral, that we can use it for good or bad. Though, in my opinion, we do not use technology, we live technology; technology is our way of life. Being sensitive entities, we always have and will become our environment - we become what we see (or may not see), what we hear, what we eat, what we smell, what we touch, etc. Where doubt and questioning is prohibited (indigenous or not), we become, without question, the environment we live in. With our Indigenous origins based in the natural order, should this context radically change, the mysterious nature of the human being shall also radically change - a change that will reflect the transformation of nature itself, whether it be a turning point or vanishing point. Natural diversity becomes a burnt offering, sacrificed to the infinite appetite of technological homogenization. We now live in the fiction of science. We are most definitely now, not in some made-up future, cyborgs. As we always have been, we are at one with our environment - we are technology. In this 'wonderland', freedom becomes the pursuit of our technological, industrial, and material happiness. Our standard of living is predictated on commodity consumption, as the practice our new spirituality is "pray for more". In vehicles of ecstasy, with cinematic engines of inertia at audiovisual speed, trans-port and tele-port blend into one. The beginning becomes the end. The 'port' disappears in the speed of light. The nanosecond, technological speed, transforms reality as it creates an ecstatic phenomena of compelling and unparalleled intensity. By human measure, charismatic technique portends the miraculous, as it engenders the condition of 'exit velocity' - a condition that blurs human perceptions, shatters all meanings, drains all content and breaks our bonds with the earth's natural order. All locations are consumed into the startling terra firma of the image, a demonic conformity that is the genesis of man. In this shadow of the mass, all previous definitions crumble. The 'time' and 'space' of history exist to a homogenized zone of no return. In this supernatural implosion of g-force, human moorings give way, sending humans out-of-orbit into the void of technological space. The loss of original habitat and our subsequent relocation into accelerated space, throws nature into catastrophe, as it engenders traumatic stress syndrome as the now normal condition of post-human existence. Technology, while promising comfort and happiness as its 'result', means power, means control, means conformity, means destiny. Technology creates a condition of war that is at once both universal and unseen. The explosive tempo of technology is war; the untellable violence of genocide, relocation and assimilation in technology is war. All of us, are refugees driven from our human and indigenous state."
- 22 year oldart student at the University of South Dakota. Majoring in Fine Arts (double emphasis in Printmaking and Painting), and a minor in American Indian Studies.
- My medium strength would have to be ink mediums such as inkwash, pen & ink, printmaking, lithography, etc. The finer and sharper the point the better. Though I have an increasing strength and interest in color usage with pastels and painting.
- My grandfather was an amazing artist, focusing mostly on landscape and WWII Veteran topics and is well known and highly regarded in the surrounding communities he impacted in central Massachusetts. He spent a lot of his time teaching me to draw what I see, and I've taken that to many different levels.

Oscar Howe Letter to Philbrook Art Center, after being rejected for not being "Indian Art", 1958

"Whoever said that my paintings are not in Traditional Indian style has poor knowledge of Indian art, indeed. There is much more to Indian art than pretty, stylized pictures. There is also power and strength and individualism [emotional and intellectual insight] in the old Indian paintings. Every bit in my paintings is a true studied fact of traditional paintings. Are we to be held back forever with one phase of Indian painting, with no right for individualism? Dictated to as the Indian always has been, put on reservations and treated like a child, and only the white man knows what is best for him. Now, even in art, you little child do what we think is best for you, nothing different. Well, I'm not going to stand for it. Indian art can compete with any art in the world, but not as a supressed art. I see so much of the management and treatment of my people, it makes me cry. My father died here about three years ago in a little shack, my two brothers still living there in shacks, never enough to eat, never enough clothing. This is one reason I have tried to keep the fine ways and culture of my forefathers alive, but one could easily become a social protest painter. I can only hope the Art world will not be one more contributor to holding us in chains."

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

"As A Means of Contact"

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Oscar Howe Letter to Philbrook Art Center, after being rejected for not being "Indian Art", 1958