Game For Change 

Microaggressions

PLAY: http://www.philome.la/deidrene/microaggressions-and-the-asian-american-experience

This assignment was particularly frustrating because of the software and fickle internet connection. But I think the repetition of process forced me to engage with this issue that is simultaneously important yet painful to me. I mulled around with different issues that I might explore, but microaggressions are something I deal with on a daily basis and I didn’t have a word or language to describe their impact on me until recently. Not one day goes by where I get to forget my Asian-Americanness, and it is not always pleasant. White people get to have nuanced and complicated narratives, but people of color are often tokenized, fetishized, marginalized, and our narratives are isolated to single characteristics that reduce our individuality and our dignity. One microaggression is manageable, but many microaggressions piling on top of each other can be unbearable. A lifetime of passive-aggressive racist comments can feel dehumanizing.

The worst part about microaggressions is that most offenders are well-meaning people who mean no harm. How someone reacts when you tell them they’ve said something offensive can be really indicative of their character, and usually determines the amount of trust a person can put in the offender. In the last year alone, once-important friendships have fallen apart because my identity was constantly invalidated by well-meaning people who decided that I was too sensitive. The moments highlighted in this game are based on real experiences that have happened to me and are written without hyperbole or exaggeration. I wanted to create what it feels like to have these microaggressions pile up.

In an excerpt from “Racial Microaggression and the Asian American Experience” by Derald Wing Sue, Jennifer Bucceri, Annie I. Lin, Kevin L. Nadal, and Gina C. Torino at Columbia University, the researches made the following conclusions about their study:

“Our study provides strong support that microaggressions are not minimally harmful and possess detrimental consequences for the recipients. Most participants described strong and lasting negative reactions to the constant racial microaggressions they experienced from well intentioned friends, neighbors, teachers, co-workers, and colleagues. They described feelings of belittlement, anger, rage, frustration, alienation, and of constantly being invalidated. Common comments from the groups were they felt trapped, invisible, and unrecognized.”

Many more insightful conclusions were drawn from this study, which can be found at the following link: http://goo.gl/VfJzKv

WORLD BUILDING

“What if what you dreamed at night became real in the morning for twenty-four hours in the morning?”

In this world, the forms and figures of our dreams become real for a twenty-four hour period. Reflecting the way in which creation is held in the Unconsciousness, these creations of our sleeping minds have a mediated tangibility but are inaccessible in that they are without physical form- something like a hologram imbibed with the parts of our personalities we have projected onto them. It is a world in which the tenuousness of a collective reality is at the forefront of everyday life, and fact and fiction are treated as two sides of the same coin.

The specificity of the characters in our dreams being realized but not the environments or emotional tenors of the dreams highlights the absurdity of one aspect of our mental creations as part of our daily situations.

Our project utilizes advertisement as a medium in which to convey the relationship between art and politics through the conventions of lived experience. How does this complication effect the social lives of people in the world? How does it affect individuals physically/mentally/emotionally? What types of services and products would people need in a world where dreams and reality were interchangeable? What are ways in which the extraordinary becomes mundane, everyday, ordinary, inconvenient? In what ways might this enhance the human experience? These are some of the questions we asked in building our world. The result are three advertisements that offer a glimpse into a world in which the unconscious and conscious works mix on a daily basis. The services we chose to represent are interested in three areas: the direct interaction with the projections that originate in sleep while they exist, the consequences of the projections after they have gone, and the preventative measures to temper the situation before these dreams are realized.

In the world in which we live, people’s relationships with their dreams vary greatly as a result of their vividity, recollection, and frequency. In the world we created, people are forced to interact with not only their own daily dreams, but other people’s as well. If you dream about a person, you are creating them as a function of your own brain and not as an accurate depiction of themselves, so as they are projected onto the world the person is then aware of your subconscious perceptions of them.

We wanted the ads to be accessible and commonplace, and thus created our designs akin to ones seen in subway stations or Reader’s Digest pages. Any of these could be found in either form and are thus effective means of advertisement in this world. The “Dream Catchers” ad was largely inspired by the Ghost Busters movies because their job is to go into dreams and tame the unconscious projections as they occur, similar to how the Ghost Busters go around “capturing” ghosts as they interfere with people’s daily lives. “Remeditol” was a creation inspired by common name-brand prescription ads as well as the common names for those drugs, which often have something to do with the intended function of the drug. In Remeditol’s case, the prefix “REM-” is dual purpose: REM for the dreaming stage of sleep, and re- to go with the suffix of -meditol. “-medit-” refers to meditation and cognition, so “Remedit-” is intended to reference the ability the drug has help people take control of their lives, to rethink their reality and ultimately make their own conscious decisions. As for the “Romantics Anonymous” ad, what world could possibly be complete without some sort of assisted dating service? At the same time, the service takes advantage of the more pleasant dreams people can have and seeks to help those dreams become lasting realities rather than fleeting days of holographic like projections. The name is perfect because it acknowledges the anonymity of a dreamt character while still representing hope for those with the dreams.

As we designed these ads and services, we did indeed experience the “purposeful reflection and consideration” Julian Bleeker discusses in her essay on Design Fiction. Not only did we reflect on our own experiences with dreaming, advertisements, and pop culture, but we considered how these would become relevant in the world we imagined. Such a process was engaging for us and we felt we could imagine some of the experiences people in this world might go through. At that level of thought, our work was more than simple creativity-- it was an attempt to understand the fiction populace of the sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrifying world where dreams become reality for 24 hours.

NUDE

 

Eyes

Eyes, Lips, Face

Lips & Eyes

A layer of "nude" liquid foundation covers the area of my face.

 

What I prefer to wear regularly: a layer of tinted sunscreen.

When I was 8 years old, a girl named Reilly H. told me I was "too brown" to play with her. From that moment on, I was hyperaware of my "brownness" and I would spend the next decade and a half attempting to make myself "white" enough. Over those next few years, I would do things to decrease my "brownness" so that I would no longer be shooed away for having the wrong amount of melanin in my body: I would wear SPF 70 and long sleeves; I straightened my naturally curly hair and plucked, waxed, trimmed any other hair that seemed out of place; my mother gave me papaya whitening soap and lemon-oil based toners; I pinched my nose and my cheeks and chin trying in vain to sharpen my naturally round face; and I would pose and compose photos of myself to hide those parts of myself that felt wrong in front of a lens.

Years later, a close friend of mine would become an incredible talented make-up artist. Watching her at work as she created her designs, and seeing her handiwork on the faces of men and women of all different skin tones, facial shapes, and personalities, this friend showed me how make-up as a medium could celebrate and enhance those features I had tried to hide. Around this time, I also became interested in the representations of people of color in film, television, advertisements, and in social media. The people of color in the media were beautiful in ways that didn’t reflect my experience because those images were constituted in an aesthetic culture in which white, European features were designated as default.

For people of color, the implications of the marketing of drugstore make-up allude to the implications of systemic prejudice. The reality is that for many people of color, "nude" and "neutral" make-up products are hardly even that. The ways in which we are photographed similarly reflect the complications of being “brown”, "yellow", “black” in a ideologically “white balanced” visual world.  

I imitated some of the procedures from my white roommates' daily make-up routines, respectively, and utilized the products that are part of that routine. The liquid foundations and BB creams that were borrowed from my roommates were marketed with names that included the words "nude" and "neutral": "light nude", "neutral beige", "porcelain nude", etc. The name of my preferred BB cream is "deep tint." A quick perusal of a drugstore make-up section will reveal names for darker toned skin products like: "espresso", "velvet", "caramel", "honey." Fairer skin-tones might include words such as "porcelain", "silk", "ivory" and "luminous.” The names subtly reflect the celebration of white skin and the objectification of non-white skin: while pale shades of make-up are named after precious materials, brown and black shades of make-up are commonly named after food, drink, and other commodified items..

I also chose to photograph of my face using a "color vibrant" pre-set filter available on a popular smartphone photography app to further interrogate the puzzling conundrum of the politicization of color. For four of the photos, I made .gifs alternating between a non-filtered picture and a 'vibrantly' filtered picture, to highlight the contrast between the different "neutral" tones. Notice which parts of my face are highlighted and emphasized in the various filtered shots, and take a moment to question what is pleasing to the eye and why that may be. On another popular photography app, the “beauty” filter sharpens the angles of my cheekbones, chin, and nose while widening my naturally almond shaped eyes. The pre-set software filters of popular smartphone apps imposed onto various shades of brown and black skin, and various brown and black facial features will often fail to capture a landscape of the face that is true to form. Consider how perhaps the white balance of the app filter is adjusted in relation to the color temperature of white skin. Striking the right color balance when taking “selfies” with my white friends is often difficult: one of us is washed out while the other is in shadow. This effect is more evident in photographs in which one subject is much darker than the other.

Lastly, a note on the cartoon-like drawings of tools used in the process to emphasize the artistic expression that can be exhibited through wearing, or not wearing, make up. This is part of the art piece is the most self-serving aspect: as someone who does not wear cosmetic make-up on a regular basis, I wanted to emphasize that make-up is a highly expressive tool for the discretion of the artist. The cartoon-like drawings  emphasize the isolated traits of my brown face that are the hardest for me to “hide”, so to speak. The ways in which I am visually designated Other reflects the exoticization of non-white bodies. The natural features of women of color are often appropriated in white beauty standards. My naturally thick eyebrows and my naturally thick lips have been the subject of teasing (thick eyebrows are easy targets for children to tease you), fetishization (I have been approached by a number of men with lewd comments regarding my lips that I will not repeat here), and various micro-aggressions (ranging from "I wish I looked as unique as you!” to the painfully common suggestion that I don’t look like a “real” Asian). These micro-aggressions regarding the noticeable parts of my face that I try to hide directly contrast the ways in which thick eyebrows and thick lips are “trends” among white cosmetic practices (an example would be the way in Cara Delevingne’s infamously dramatic brow lines, and Kylie Jenner’s recent controversial “lip challenge”).

By exploring the prominence of those features that make me feel most insecure, rather than hiding them, I have become more able to fully accept and embrace them.

For me, and many other women of color “nude” and “neutral” products are anything but.  "Nude" and "neutral" imply the lack of strongly marked or characteristics or features, a true shade, a Platonic ideal, or a median standard. To designate white skin as the median standard inherently implies that those with non-white skin are deviant to that standard, rather than recognizing the nuances of skin color and its politics. The multitudinous ways in which a woman of color can be beautiful require our respect and attention, and a mindful interrogation of American beauty standards. I am no less beautiful than a woman with whiter skin than mine, and I am no more beautiful than a woman with darker skin than mine.

I often try to spend as little time looking in the mirror as I can and, previously, I would choose to not take pictures of myself; I would often feel disappointed in the way my beauty feels deviant or divergent, and sometimes invalid. By taking the time to interrogate the cultural perceptions that made me feel this way through this creative treatment, I was able to reintroduce myself to the features and traits that make me who I am. In time, and through a combination of practices, I am coming to feel truly beautiful according to standards that are my own: skeptical of popular and social media representations of women in color in white America, and unmarred by the effects of drugstore make-up aisles and smartphone camera filters.

Process Piece: 

let's fall in luv

soundcloud.com/deidrene-crisanto/question27

While discussing our ideas for the assignment, we decided that the processes that most interested us were emotional or theoretical. We talked about recording the process of writing a song, scrolling through Netflix, driving to Salt Lake, but the one that we kept coming back to was the process of falling in love. While falling in love may not seem like the most easily trackable concept, we ultimately decided that in our current culture, the most cleanly delineated method of falling in love was Arthur Aron’s “36 Questions: How to Fall in Love.” Though this “process” has many variants and is structured differently for each person, there are common themes and motifs that allow individuals to be themselves wholly while being with each other.

In Commoner’s short film, “The Smokehouse,” Rohan Anderson discusses his noble reasoning for undertaking the daunting task of building his own smokehouse -- to be able to share an experience with his loved ones and feed them delicious, healthy food. As we see him labor towards his goal, we have a greater appreciation for its completion. Along this same vein, hearing the increasingly intense questions in our piece gives the listener an emotional investment in the piece, even if they are not hearing a response. Just imagining someone’s answer or thinking about their own can be enough to illicit a reaction from them. To love is to feel understood and to understand, and these questions allow each individual to spend a concerted effort and time listening and connecting.

To create this piece, we layered a reading of the first 26 questions over the song “Sway with Me” by local artist Batty Blue. As the refrain calls for the listener to “sway with me”- a physically involving act- the questions invite the listener into the process of introversion and reflection- a subjective psychical act. By stopping at the 26th question- the point at which we believed the questions to accelerate particularly in the direction toward romantic love- we highlight the ways in which one can also fall in love platonically, and the suspended process is an invitation for listeners to continue the process should they so choose and to allow for the subjective definition of “falling in love” to become an involved and malleable topic.

Who do you have in mind when you are listening?

27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.

28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met.

29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.

30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?

31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.

32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?

33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?

34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?

35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?

36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

To Fall In With Anyone, Do This.

Song Credit: "Sway with Me" - Batty Blue

Batty Blue Band: battyblue.bandcamp.com/

The 36 Questions: 36questionsinlove.com/

NY Times Article, "To Fall In Love With Anyone, Do This": www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashio…yone-do-this.html

Arthur Aron's Study & Findings: psp.sagepub.com/content/23/4/363.full.pdf+html

Thinking & Writing- I Didn’t Just Come Here to Dance: Pop Music & The Power of Ambiguity

9 September 2015

In a world in which celebrities and musicians feel the need to sell their personal brands and intricately designed personas to a world hungry that has always pined for originality, the pop music canon is being rewritten by an album whose appeal is rooted in its lack of star narrative, its unapologetic nostalgia, and the universality of its sentimental impulses. The once one-hit-wonder queen, Carly Rae Jepsen has become a sophisticated chronicler of the human heart through the her 2015 release, E•MO•TION. An truly teenage dream, this album- even in its imperfection- has created a space for emotional vulnerability in its disconnect from the artist, much unlike the authorial-driven projects that populate the pop music world today.

Since 2011, women in the music industry have have dominated discussion more so than Carly Rae Jepsen: Katy Perry, Beyonce, Nikki Minaj, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, etc. The kingdom of pop is ruled by queens whose narratives have become the standard for entertainment industry news- they distract us and sustain us. As the media grappled with those understandings of intersectional feminism, Jepsen has come onto the scene with another answer to the cultural question of selfhood. Perhaps the greatest power Carly Rae Jepsen has utilized in her 2015 release is that of ambiguity. E•MO•TION lacks the narrative that 1989, Beyonce, The Pink Print and other recent releases thrive on. Compared to the frenzy of media sharks coming after every female artist who shows even an inkling of self-possession, there is relatively little to feed on when it comes to this celebrity’s personal life. Carly’s narrative is very much removed from her most cultivated work, and in doing so the signified is suspended in a swirl of poppy, upbeat, sentimentality that allows for a number of stories to fit in the space of one.

One of the common criticisms of the album is its lack of depth and lack of personal investment. The relationship between people and narrative is a funny thing and even as audiences and listeners hunger for the clarity of didacticism, they find themselves thriving in that delicious space between question and answer. However, that ever-elusive Quintessential Pop Narrative is not so much about depth as it is about breadth. Though the refrain of the album’s first single,“I really really really really really like you”, may be but inches deep, it is a million miles wide- enveloping every pining heart and the naivete of any crush that hasn’t yet crushed us just yet. In that same vein do the simple lyrics and the teen dream rhythms allow one to write their own story into an album that was made to be malleable: Run Away with Me is the party-sized distance between a starcross’d pair of dancing lovers;Your Type is whatever unrequited love we are combating in the moment, and perhaps even the ones we’ve conquered and left behind; LA Hallucinations is each young person’s battle to remain gentle and honest in the often apathy-inducing existence of emerging adulthood . Like a fine oil paint, E•MO•TION’s colors remain eye-catching and pliant- no matter how thick or thin the layers may be.

Underneath its heavily referential synth beats and electronic melodies, are lyrics that are held just shy of resolution. From the refrain of the album’s namesake, the singer invites the self-object of their romantic daydreams into a space of suspended becoming: “In your…Fantasy, dream about me/And all that we could do with this emotion/This emotion, I feel it/This emotion, you feel it/All that we could do with this emotion.” In the song, “Boy Problems”, the uncertainty of relationships and communication is exhibited in the line “I think I broke up with my boyfriend today and I don't really care/I’ve got worse problems (emphasis added).” In an age of modern love, chronicled by The New York Times (nytimes.com/modern-love) and Aziz Ansari (book.azizansari.com) alike, the search for a soulmate is mediated by a number of things that cause our broken hearts to be put on the back burner. And finally, toward the end of the album, “I didn't just come here to dance/If you know what I mean/Do you know what I mean?/If you'd just give me a chance/You’d see what I see/Do you see what I see?” The main criticism’s of E•MO•TION, it’s lack of narrative and the lack of artistic transparency, is perhaps its greatest strength: by keeping things simple, shallow, and vague, the charge of making meaning and confronting complexity is up to the listener.

Much like Taylor Swift’s 1989, and other young contemporary musicians who are remembering a decade in which they existed for a only a minute, this is an album that is seeped in an 80s-like nostalgia from its electrifying mixture of drums, horns, and synthesizers to its lyrics that fit in the dialectic impulses of Brat Pack-era movies. The fickle relationship with past and future as it navigates the nowness of youth is exhibited the capacity for feeling deeply about shallow things.

Pop music is a genre seeped in paradox: we want to hear someone else’s story so that we might make sense of our own, we want depth while shying away from universality, and we hunger for reality while iconizing our creators. Perhaps detaching the singer from the song is what we need to suspend our music in that gray state of becoming rather than letting someone tell the story for us instead of with us. In it’s navigation of retrospection, introspection and anticipation, it shows the command of anonymity that only pop music can have. E•MO•TION operates as a great record to grace mixtapes and party playlists, while on the other hand it’s clear that Carly “didn’t just come here to dance.” In its lack of specificity, a unique kind of universality is imbibed in the Carly’s neon-toned vocals: in a Seinfeldian move, this musical story about nothing (and more importantly, nobody in particular) yet encompasses anything we need it to in the moment. In its review of the album, Pitchfork cited “Drake for performative vulnerability, Taylor for performative generosity” and perhaps now, we have Carly Rae Jepsen for her performative ambiguity.

Links:

Pitchfork Review: http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20898-emotion/

Artist Website: https://www.carlyraemusic.com/