For my final project I'm really thinking about doing something with the human mind and how it works. The video we watched of people in the elevator and how they changed just because the group was changing was really funny and also intriguing. I think it is really interesting how people's minds work and will just subconsciously do something like that.
In my writing 209 class our subject is race and power, and a lot of what we have been learning is how racism is institutionalized and even though people may not be racist they do benefit from racist institutions (if they are white). One author we read a lot argues that subconsciously all white people are racist. Im not about to get into the whole racism argument, but I think it would be interesting to investigate the subconscious of race. If i could somehow design a project that would function like the elevator video, but put it in a social context and have it illustrate some sort of dialogue on race in america. What I immediately think of is this girl from my middle school (I went to a very diverse middle school) who would act "normal" around me and other white girls (and by me saying this way of her acting is normal plays into the whole racist ideal, what i've been learning is that it is a racist institution that I believe my way is the normal, but that's a whole other subject) and then whenever any of our black friends would come she would completely change demeanor and talk "ghetto" (again im being very ignorant my writing teacher would think i learned nothing from the course by discussing my topic in these terms but its just easier to get my idea across using this). Maybe something like that, I still don't really know exactly what i want, i'll have to do some more research on psychology of race and different experiements, but that's where im leaning towards.
If i dont go down the race path, i would like to keep with the psychology idea and maybe do something with language, like how we change and manipulate language. Maybe have a video of a person talking to someone who just learned english, but use slang and the non-english speaker will have no idea what there saying . . . Like "whats up" "that shirt is cool" "chillin" , these things make sense to us but to an outsider saying your shirt is cool would imply you literally think their shirt is cold.
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This is a great set of starter ideas. The world of neuroscience, social psychology, philosophy of the mind is HUGE. There are all kinds of clever experiments that you could use as jumping off points for your own performance based work.
ReplyDeleteOn the theme of subconscious racism has your class discussed the implicit association tests? There are a number of tests like this that reveal our subconscious preference for some races over others. Here is one example from Harvard: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/Study?tid=-1
Here is another fantastic video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjfihtGefxk
I especially like (and agree with) the comments he makes near the end, that is is possible to have a system where every individual is more or less tolerant but where the system itself is racist.
Think about our legal system. It is populated my many police officers, lawyers and judges. Some of these people are going to be out and out racists, but most the them are going to be well meaning with high ideals. Yet it is clear from any examination of our prison population that the system as a whole is extremely racist.
I find these issues fascinating. The key now is to find an entry point the results in an artwork. This means doing a bit of research and maybe talking to your writing professor. While doing research keep you imagination wide open. At every moment ask yourself "How can I exploit this for artistic or poetic affect?"